"Obediently,
"H. Wrynche."
Underneath is the sarcastic comment:
"December 27th.
"Nice if you had got this in time, eh? And we wanted those boots and badges.
"P. B."
"She got hold of a nugget that once, anyway," says Captain Bingo, blowing his nose emphatically; "and—by the Living Tinker! if it had reached us in time, we'd have saved a loss of twenty-one killed and stripped, and twenty-two wounded, and the stingin' shame of a whippin' into the bargain."
"Perhaps," says the Colonel, with a careworn shadow on the keen, sagacious face, and both men are silent, remembering an assault the desperate, reckless valour of which deserves to be bracketed in memory with the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, "If Defeat is ever shame, perhaps, Wrynche. But if you could put the question to each of that handful of brave men sleeping side by side over there"—he nods in the direction of the Cemetery, where the aftermath of Death's red harvest has sprung up in orderly rows of little white crosses—"they would tell you it can be more glorious than victory."
"Of course, you're right, sir. I gather now what your bad news is," says Bingo, who has been dejectedly rubbing his finger along the bristly edges of his sandy moustache, for a minute past. "Judgin' by the marginal annotations of this man Blinders—brute I'd kick to Cape Town with pleasure—my wife's a prisoner in Brounckers' hands?"
"An unconscious prisoner—yes. Give 'em their due, Wrynche. I shouldn't have credited 'em with the sense of humour they have displayed in their dealings with her."
If it were possible for Bingo to grow redder in the face, one would say that he has done so, as he bursts out, in a violent perspiration, striding up and down over Nixey's sheet-leaded roof.