Strogoff had to relate how he had received his wound. His story was long in the telling, punctuated by many an "Ach!" "Och!" "Eka!" "Nu!" from his comrades.
"Ach!" he concluded, "the Japanese are fine fellows, but they are too little to use the bayonet. A bigger man would have made a better job of it, and I should be dead now."
"Da! But you'd rather be alive, Strogoff?"
"How can I tell, Kedril? Will the doctors be able to mend my wound?"
"Not if they're such fools as the generals," grunted Kedril, a big, shaggy rifleman who had lost an arm.
"True, there are some fools among them. But better be a fool than a knave, like the commissaries. Why, half the biscuits served out to us to-day were full of maggots, and my boots—look at them!—are made of paper. Do you think the Little Father knows how we are cheated?"
"No, no; the Emperor does not know, Almazoff. He would not suffer these evils if he knew them. Nu! he cannot be everywhere, like the Lord God."
"Things will be better some day. We've done our part, little pigeon. But the Emperor would not like it if he knew what lies they have told us. Why, they said the Japanese were dirty little men like monkeys; but they're cleaner than you and me, Strogoff."
"And they said they walked with their heads downwards."
"No, Chapkin, that's the English. They say the English walk upright in their own country, but when they go to another place of theirs called Australia they turn upside down and walk on their heads."