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"Butson of Leicester is the strict one, sir; he plucks one man in three. He plucked last week Patch of St. George's, and Patch has taken his oath he'll shoot him; and Butson has walked about ever since with a bulldog." "These are reports, Mr. Sikes, which often flit about, but must not be trusted. Mr. Patch could not have given a better proof that his rejection was deserved."
After desperate fighting, he stormed the ridge. Great masses of the enemy in the meantime were moving round, so as to threaten the road to Sherpur. The 9th Lancers charged with great gallantry among them, and defeated them. Captain Butson, who commanded the Lancers, was, however, killed, and two other officers wounded.
Teddy Butson wagged his head solemnly at a light which showed foggily for a moment on the distant ramparts. "All right," said he, "you town! Little you know 'tis Teddy's birthday." "There will be wine," said Dave, dreamily. "Lashins of it; wine and women, and loot things. I wonder how our boys are feeling on the right? What's that?" as a light shot up over the ridge to the eastward.
Nat heard the word passed back by the young engineer officer who had crept forward to reconnoitre: and then an order given in Portuguese. "Ay, bring up the ladders, you greasers, and let's put it through." This from Teddy Butson chafing by Nat's side. The two Portuguese companies came forward with the ladders as the storming party moved up to the gateway.
"Well, now" Dave seemed to be considering "it will not be for the likes of me to be telling the brigadier-general. But if Walker comes to me and says, 'Dave, there's a mine hereabouts. What will I be doing? it's like enough I shall say: 'Your honour knows best; but the usual course is to walk round it." Teddy Butson chuckled, and rubbed the back of his axe approvingly.
Save for Nat and the dead, the Trinidad was a desert. Yet he talked incessantly, and, stooping to pat the shoulder of the red-coat beneath the chevaux de frise, spoke to Dave McInnes and Teddy Butson to come and look. He never doubted they were beside him. "Pretty mess they've made of this chap." He touched the man's collar: "48th, a corporal! Ugh, let's get out of this!"
Seventeen months later they marched him back through the length of England outwardly a made soldier and shipped him on a transport for Gibraltar. In the meanwhile he had found two friends, the only two real ones he ever found in his life. They were Dave McInnes and Teddy Butson, privates of the 4th Regiment of Foot, 2nd Battalion, C Company.
He saw other men drop; he saw Teddy Butson parallel with him on the far ladder, and mounting with him step for step now earlier, now later, but level with him most of the time. They would meet at the embrasure; find together whatever waited for them there. Nat was sobbing by this time sweat and tears together running down the caked blood on his cheek but he did not know it.
Dave McInnes came from somewhere to the west of Perth and drank like a fish when he had the chance. Teddy Butson came from the Lord knew where, with a tongue that wagged about everything except his own past. It did indeed wag about that, but told nothing but lies which were understood and accepted for lies and by consequence didn't count. These two had christened Nat Ellery "Spuds."
Captains Butson and Chisholme led their squadrons against the Afghan flanks, and the troopers of the 9th avenged the mishap which had befallen that gallant regiment two days before, riding through and through the hostile masses and scattering them over the plain.
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