There seemed to John only one course to pursue.
He shouted.
It was an injudicious move. The top of his head did not actually come off, but it was a very near thing. By a sudden clutch at both temples he managed to avert disaster in the nick of time, and tottered weakly to the bed. There for some minutes he remained while unseen hands drove red-hot rivets into his skull.
Presently the agony abated. He was able to rise again and make his way feebly to the jug, which he had now come to look on as his only friend in the world.
He had just finished his second non-stop draught when something attracted his notice out of the corner of his eye, and he saw that in the window beside him were framed a head and shoulders.
"Hoy!" observed the head in a voice like a lorry full of steel girders passing over cobblestones. "I've brought you a cuppertea."
II
The head was red in colour and ornamented half-way down by a large and impressive moustache, waxed at the ends. The shoulders were broad and square, the eyes prawn-like. The whole apparition, in short, one could tell at a glance, was a sample or first instalment of the person of a sergeant-major. And unless he had dropped from heaven—which, from John's knowledge of sergeant-majors, seemed unlikely—the newcomer must be standing on top of a ladder.
And such, indeed, was the case. Sergeant-Major Flannery, though no acrobat, had nobly risked life and limb by climbing to this upper window to see how his charge was getting on and to bring him a little refreshment.