“Sure, won’t they be glad when they hear our guns!” cried Grady. “And won’t they come out and tackle the naygurs that have been bothering them on the one side, while we pitch into them on the other! We’ll double them up and destroy them entoirely.”
“I doubt if we go at Matammeh before we get reinforcements,” said Macintosh.
“And what will we want with reinforcements?” asked Grady; “haven’t we bate the inimy into fiddle-strings already?”
“Yes, if they only knew it,” said Kavanagh.
“But they seem to take a lot of persuading before they own themselves beaten.”
“They do, the poor ignorant creatures,” said Grady, reflectively. “And we can’t kill the lot of ’em, which is what they seem to want; they are too many.”
“If there is a big fight in a day or two we shan’t be in it,” said Corporal Adams, who had come up in time to hear the end of the conversation.
“The orders are out, and our company has got to go ten miles off to-morrow.”
“Only our company, corporal?”
“That’s all detailed in orders.”