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"This is a terrible business," he said in a low tone to Adams, while the murderers were disputing noisily about going into the woods to hunt down McCoy and Quintal. "Have they killed many of our comrades?" "God knows," said Adams, while Quintal's wife bound up the wound in his neck. "There has been firin' enough to have killed us all twice over.
Whooo-o. . . . Boom-m-m. A rocket! They were looking for us then! The pinnace must have been picked up! A cheer what a cheer! came brokenly from our lips; and we lashed furiously at the oars, steering to where a glare in the mist had come with the last report. Roused by the thrash of our oars, the old man sat up. "Whatt now, b'ye? Whatt now?" "Ship firin' rockets, sir," said Jones.
Purty soon they quit firin' again an' then the freight wagon started up the hill. They had put their ropes on the tongue an' were draggin' it out with ponies. We knew what that meant an' took a brace. The lull what followed was the hardest part o' the whole business. Ther' wasn't a blasted thing we could do, an' it seemed hours before the neat volley came from the corner o' the dug-out.
"Well, some time near midnight we, out in th' bunkhouse, was roused up by shootin' from your father's bungalow, Bud. Course that couldn't mean but one thing, an' we all got our guns an' rushed out, natcherally. But all we saw was a bunch ridin' off in th' darkness, your father firin' at 'em, Bud. "Come t' find out, your mother had been woke up by a noise in th' office where th' safe was.
"Well, sir, Reilly was a good scout, and inside of a minute he had six doughboys lined up behind the hearse and him bringin' up the rear in the side-car. The side-car kept backfirin', and it sounded like we was firin' salutes to the dead all the way to the park. "I wanta tell ya, that old lady was tickled.
If you have too many sarvents, pay some on 'em off, or when they quit your sarvice don't hire others in their room, that's all; but you miss your mark when you keep firin' away at bankers, lawyers, and public officers, the whole blessed time that way. "'I went out a-gunnin' once when I was a boy, and father went along with me to teach me.
"He'll be tellin' us," suggested a humourist, "that the British Navy is firin' on pilchards, in the hope there may be a submarine somewhere amongst 'em." "I never rose to the height o' puttin' myself into the enemy's mind," retorted Un' Benny; "which they tell me, in the newspapers, is the greatest art o' warfare.
Ay, an' what's mair, the mere lauchin's no the important side o' humour, even though ye hinna to be telt to lauch. The important side's the other side, the sayin' the humorous things. I'll tell ye what: the humorist's like a man firin' at a target he doesna ken whether he hits or no till them at the target tells 'im."
He was already in that twilight region which is the border land between the known and the unknown. Billie spoke his name, and for a moment the eyes of the man cleared. "Yore boys got me when they jumped our camp," he explained feebly. "Sorry, Joe. You were firin' when they hit you." The wounded man nodded. "'S all right. Streak o' bad luck. Gimme water.
As he's prancin' along at the head of his men where a great commander belongs, he's shore scandalised by hearin' his r'ar gyard firin' on the Yanks. So he rides back, my old pap does, an' he says: "Yere you-all eediots! Whatever do you mean by shootin' at them Yankees? Don't you know it only makes 'em madder?" An' that, concloods Dan, 'is how I feels about spectres.
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