"Hope is sending me with a despatch to Seville, to Mr. Frere, our minister there. I'm to put myself at his orders. The general thinks that people at home will be so mad at this retreat that they'll howl for leaving Spain to its fate; so it's very probable that I shall not be long behind you. And you'll be as fit as fiddles when I see you again."
"My own mother wouldn't know me now," said Smith. "You always have had all the luck. Ten chances to one you'll be promoted again, while we, what with our wretched condition and that awful Bay of Biscay, shall either be thrown to the fishes on the way home or drop into our graves as soon as we get there."
"'Call for the robin redbreast and the wren,'" quoted Shirley dolefully.
"Now, Shirley, cheer up!" said Jack. "Don't give all the fellows the blues."
"Faith, no," said the voice of Captain O'Hare, who had heard the last words as he entered. "I'm so weak myself I could hardly kill a fly, but I'm captain o' this company, and I won't have my men driven into the dumps. There's that Wilkes, now. I left him outside, smoking some unmentionable stuff with his mates, singing 'Down among the dead men', in a voice that would scare an undertaker. 'Faith,' says I, 'it's delighted ye ought to be, seeing ye're a sergeant before your time.' 'Sir,' says he, 'I'm only promoted cos poor Sergeant Jones is down among the dead men, and what I want to know is, whether it ain't my dooty to have the nat'ral feelings of a man and a brother.' But what's this I hear, Lumsden?—we leave you behind, eh?"
"Yes, though I hope you'll soon be out again. Surely our government won't throw up the sponge!"
"Bedad, not if they ask my advice. No Englishman, let alone an Irishman, ever turned his back for good on a Frenchman yet; and as the war secretary's an Irishman, why, I prophesy we'll be wid ye in six months, my boy."
"Oh! but I'll be home long before then. There's one thing I'd like to stay in Spain for, but I see little chance of doing anything in it till the war's over, and then it'll be too late, so no doubt Mr. Frere will send me home at once."
"Ah! And your one thing?"
"A precious secret," interposed Pomeroy. "Lumsden's a mystery-man ever since he picked up that brat Pepito, who's the owner of the evil eye if ever gipsy was. Some cock-and-bull story of a hidden treasure, or a beautiful heiress, or something of that kind, if the truth was known; but Jack's as mum as a mile-stone."