'Well done, Billy!' said Dick. 'You've pulled 'em down in great style. I've only had one; but he'd got a couple of our fellows' flags.'
'Oh,' said Billy, 'a couple of 'em were very easy shots. The third chap was rather more sticky, but I had him at last.'
'Now we'll work back and tackle the other two,' said Dick. 'There are two on each side in the game now.'
'All right,' said Billy; 'we'll go for 'em in style this time. There'll be some flags handed over, whoever gets collared!'
Each of them showed five flags in his hat. Billy had his own yellow and four of the Ravens' black. Dick had three yellow, two recaptured, and two black. And now they plunged into cover for the final round.
Billy was the first to come into touch with the enemy. He was stealing along under cover of a patch of hollies, when, faint but clear, he caught the Ravens' patrol call—'Kar-kaw! Kar-kaw!'
'Where's that merry hooter?' thought Billy. 'He's giving himself away, calling for the other fellow. He's mine if I can spot him.'
Again the call came, a short distance ahead, and Billy crept forward with the utmost caution. The cry seemed to come from the other side of a space littered with blocks of turf. Some cottagers who lived on the heath had the right to cut turves, and this was a place where they worked. Here and there the turves were gathered into little heaps. In the centre of the open ground was a larger heap.
'I can get a shot, perhaps, from cover of that bigger heap,' said Billy to himself, and he began to worm his way across the ground. He reached the big heap and crouched behind it, and peered round it in search of the Raven who had been uttering his patrol call.
'Where is he?' muttered Billy to himself, and at the next second be knew. A faint hiss sounded in the corporal's very ear. Billy thought of the vipers that swarmed on some parts of the heath, and jumped round in affright, and at that instant a ball was flipped into his eye from some unseen thumb and finger.