'Pop!' said he on the seventeenth round, 'are we going to chop all day?'
'Chiv,' said I, as I drew my castor, 'are you ready?'
'Ready,' quoth he, effecting the same manœuvre—'one, two, three.'
I scratched his cheek, but the mustard settled him. Sputter—p'l'z'z'z—how he swore! I went at him with both hands.
'Priz?' I cried.
'Priz it is,' he answered.
So I took him off as a priz. He was very glad to go too, for he hadn't had a dinner for six weeks, and would have made a fine study for a Murillo beggar so ar as rags went.
I punish my men whenever I catch them foraging. Punish them by confiscation. Mild as I am by nature, I never allow them to keep stolen provisions—when I am hungry.
Yesterday evening I detected a vast German private with a colossal bull-turkey.
'Lay it down there, sir!' I exclaimed fiercely—indicating the floor of my tent as the bank of deposit.