But one afternoon Scuts came trotting in, looking as yellow as Durham, and had a hablar with the Top, and then they both went across to the Lieutenant's quarters. They didn't come out till just before Assembly went for Retreat, and we smelled something. Sure enough, orders was read to keep magazines loaded, carry two hundred rounds in the belt, and not be absent from quarters between sunset and sunrise. Soon as we were dismissed, we got after Scuts.
"The natives had it fixed to rush us at night," he says. "Marie tipped me off. She told me not to be out of quarters to-night, an' th' Top, he figured out the rest," says Scuts, shortsighting, you might say, out into the underbrush as if he expected to see a gang of bolomen, and holding tight to his rifle.
"An' th' lady, she had another friend," sings out Piggy O'Neil. The crowd laughs, and Scuts turns a dirty pink again.
"Aw," he says, "she wouldn't tell me no lie. She's a good straight girl."
Then we began to debate it, the way we always do in the Army, if it's only a question of how far it is from New York to the moon, and finally everybody called everybody else a liar and we went to sleep.
In the morning everything was quiet and peaceful, so after drill the crowd was beginning to jolly Scuts for fair, when the operator stuck his head out of the window.
"Come up here, some of you, for God's sake," he says, and we didn't stop to ask questions. He was bending over his ticker, white as a sheet. "I'm a fool, all right," he says, "but this is sure gettin' on my nerve. There was a message started to go through from Balangiga ten minutes ago, and all to once— Hear that!" he says. The machine gave a jerky little chatter. "It's like a man sendin' in his sleep," says the operator. "For ten mortal minutes that thing has been stuttering halves of words."
"Who is it?" asks Terry.
"Murphy's sendin'," says the operator.
"Then he's jokin' with ye," says Terry. "Billy always was a great hand for his—"