“Ah! I’m not a tax-payer,” said Hooper, and opened a fresh bottle. The Sergeant seemed to be one who had a difficulty in dropping subjects.
“How it all comes back, don’t it?” he said. “Why Moon must ’ave ’ad sixteen years’ service before he ran.”
“It takes ’em at all ages. Look at—you know,” said Pyecroft.
“Who?” I asked.
“A service man within eighteen months of his pension, is the party you’re thinkin’ of,” said Pritchard. “A warrant ’oose name begins with a V., isn’t it?”
“But, in a way o’ puttin’ it, we can’t say that he actually did desert,” Pyecroft suggested.
“Oh, no,” said Pritchard. “It was only permanent absence up country without leaf. That was all.”
“Up country?” said Hooper. “Did they circulate his description?”
“What for?” said Pritchard, most impolitely.
“Because deserters are like columns in the war. They don’t move away from the line, you see. I’ve known a chap caught at Salisbury that way tryin’ to get to Nyassa. They tell me, but o’ course I don’t know, that they don’t ask questions on the Nyassa Lake Flotilla up there. I’ve heard of a P. and O. quartermaster in full command of an armed launch there.”