Mr. Massinger's arm was sore enough that night, though he was loth to admit it.
"'Quite enough to get,' as the soldier remarked in 'Pickwick.' Deuced hot work while it lasted. New style of bathing-party. Have to look up a tree before you sit under it next. Maoris everywhere."
"'All's well that ends well,'" rejoined Massinger, with his arm in a sling. "Lucky that Warwick brought the carbines. I wouldn't have missed that dash across the river for worlds. We also covered the rear effectually, Von Tempsky marching as if he was on parade."
"He wasn't the only one who was cool," said Warwick. "The adjutant-surgeon stopped the bleeding in your arm as steady as if he was in the hospital tent. Bullets pretty thick, too."
The colonel commanding did justice to the merits of all concerned, and when Lieutenant Roland Massinger's name occurred in the list of wounded among the Forest Rangers, under Major Von Tempsky, that gentleman felt himself more than recompensed for any trifling inconvenience he might have undergone.
CHAPTER XII
The campaign dragged on till June, the antipodean mid-winter, was reached. Dark were the long cold nights, ceaseless the rain, as the troops and volunteers struggled through forests knee-deep in mud, with creeks to ford and flax swamps to wade through.
An insufficient commissariat tried the constitution of the hardiest. Massinger was now in a position to comprehend thoroughly the fearful odds against which the British regulars fought in the American revolutionary war. There they confronted an enemy whose very children, as soon as they were strong enough to lift the long rifle of the period, were the deadliest of marksmen.