“That’s the way to run fellows in!” cried Tom, enthusiastically. “A fellow, you see, is bound to go straight when he has several rifles pointed at his head in cold blood. There goes the interpreter. I wish the colonel would just go up and hear what it is about, because he would tell the major, and the major would tell the captains loud enough for us poor subs to hear, perhaps.”
“The colonel knows his duty,” said Fitzgerald, “and does not intrude upon the general unless he is sent for.”
“I know he doesn’t, but I wish he did,” replied Tom. “However, we shall get it all out of old MacBean.”
And sure enough, soon after the captured natives had been pumped dry and dismissed, the doctor rode up.
“No fighting for you, my boys,” he said. “The Arabs won’t meet you this time, I expect, and you have had your walk for nothing. I expect that they see that the sun will lick us single-handed, and they need not take the trouble.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, at El Teb, you know, they kept their women and boys with them, and these carried hatchets to kill our wounded with after the fight.”
“That’s their notion of surgery,” said Tom, in a very audible aside.
“It goes more directly to its result than ours.”
“Wait till you come under my hands, you young monkey! You will sing a different song then.”