'Well,' said he, 'if they surprise their own Colonel, they're bound to surprise the enemy much more!'
Breakfast being ended, the manœuvres commenced. Baby Jane did not take part herself, but, sitting beneath a palm upon a little knoll, with the deepest interest she watched her regiments wheel and turn and form into columns and squares before her.
'If it doesn't frighten that Black Mountain Band,' thought she, 'to see my army doing these odd things on the sand, they must be brave!' But here her reflections were painfully interrupted.
The second regiment on the right, a little brown regiment, that had been performing brilliantly, though rather noisily, and had just at that moment formed an elegant hollow square, suddenly broke up, and, with deafening yells, piled itself in a heap, like a swarm of bees, upon its Colonel.
Then Mary Carmichael, with a terrified face, came galloping up to Baby Jane, and pulling up on her haunches, panted out the words:
'The Flanagans have mutinied!'
Baby Jane sprang upon her back, and galloped her across the desert straight at the shrieking pile of monkeys. At her approach they fell apart, and leaving their Colonel sitting crushed and forlorn, they rushed at her with a volley of explanations.
'Ah, the spalpeen! He said his poor ould father was a standing disgrace to the regiment, and, as he couldn't look decent on his feet, he'd make him do his drills on his head. And as for his mother, poor ould soul, he's made her a drummer-boy!'
Clearly Patsey had been misusing his military authority to get even with his parents for past thrashings, and it took some time before Baby Jane, holding the bruised Colonel in her arms, could make peace between him and his rebellious regiment. She had to be very severe with them.
'You're not a bit of good as infantry,' she said. 'Just fancy a regiment that ought to be stretched out in a thin red—I mean brown—line, piled in a heap on top of the Colonel! No, you are not infantry any more—you're artillery, and will have to stand in rows and throw cocoa-nuts for cannon-balls.'