The admiral, standing on the porch, gave a sort of gasp when the shot rang out—and every man in the pick and shovel squad stood stock still for a moment. The boys, except Micky O’Toole, all ran away immediately.
Grubb was the first to recover himself. Young Brydell had never lost his composure and was now holding the rifle at parade rest, and the rifle was exactly as high as he was.
“You come along!” suddenly cried Grubb, seizing the boy and the rifle too, and forgetting to drop the flag. It hurt Young Brydell’s dignity to be hauled off so summarily in the presence of the public, and it also hurt his shoulder, but he said not a word until he stood before Admiral Beaumont. The admiral was small and lithe and had a pair of light blue eyes that could look through a man and nail him to the wall—and these eyes were fixed upon Young Brydell in a way that would have made him flinch to the marrow of his bones, had he been a man instead of a little lad.
“BOY!” said the admiral, “I sent for you in order to reprove you for your outrageous behavior in tearing up the turf and making ruin and destruction of the government’s lawn. I find you, instead, guilty of a most terrible act—a thing much more serious than any destruction you might do to government property. But for God’s Providence you might be this moment a murderer, boy as you are—for I saw you take deliberate aim at the orderly and fire in his face!”
“Oh, no, sir!” chirped Young Brydell quite cheerfully; “I didn’t mean to shoot, you know; I was just trying to scare Grubb!”
At that, Grubb, who had been standing very rigid, with his handkerchief to his bleeding ear, suddenly smiled broadly and whispered involuntarily under his breath:—
“Skeer Grubb!”
“You see, sir,” continued Young Brydell in a tone of animated argument, “it was like this. We got up early this morning and built the fort—there were seven of us, and it didn’t take half an hour.”
“There were others responsible, then?” asked the admiral, for like everybody else he had taken it for granted that Young Brydell was bound to be the ringleader, if not the sole culprit.
Young Brydell thrust his hands into the pockets of his sailor suit, planted his feet wide apart, and reflected.