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Presently the whistles trilled, and a sigh of relief went up. 'Cold steel, bhoys, said Sergeant O'Brien. 'Don't any of ye wait to shoot. And open order, mind ye! Eagerly the men scrambled out of their trench and plunged into the scrub. In a long yet level line they went charging through it. The snipers had not expected another advance. That was clear enough.
Above the tumult of shouts and oaths and groans, of pistol-shots and clashing steel, I heard Ryan give a ringing cheer and an encouraging shout of "Hurroo, bhoys, the more the merrier!
"Aye, we see," said the hands, winking at each other and whispering that Pat was "carrying on finely this morning!" "Well, bhoys, as I was a sayin'," continued the narrator, serving out pannikins of hot coffee to the watch the while, and so attending to duty and pleasure in the same breath, "I notic't this sthripy mule when it was chucked over the side at the beginning of the month.
That night a heavy storm set in, and next day the boys found their flimsy wigwam blown down nothing but a heap of ruins. Some time after, Raften asked at the table in characteristic stern style, "Bhoys, what's doin' down to yer camp? Is yer wigwam finished?" "No good," said Sam. "All blowed down." "How's that?" "I dunno'. It smoked like everything. We couldn't stay in it."
For two months he had been saving his money toward a passage home to Ireland and the purchase of a rifle and two thousand rounds of ammunition soft-nose bullets preferred with the pious intention of starting with "th' bhoys" at the very beginning and going through with them to the bloody and triumphant finish.
"Th' bhoys, sir, have been thinkin' as how we would loike to ixpress our appreciation av what ye've done for us, sir, in a little spache, something loike a little spache av wilcome, sir, an' asked me to do it, if ye don't moind." "Go ahead," nodded Madden, "but don't expect much of a response from me. I'm no speaker and " "Go on, Mike!" "Go to it, Mike!"
An' he was a moild man! But I'm digreshin'. 'Tis a shame both to the rig'mints and the Arrmy sendin' down little orf'cer bhoys wid a draf' av strong men mad wid liquor an' the chanst av gettin' shut av India, an' niver a punishment that's fit to be given right down an' away from cantonmints to the dock! 'Tis this nonsince.
''Tis the pervarsity av the sect, sez I to mesilf, an' gave my cap another cock on my head an' straightened my back 'twas the back av a Dhrum Major in those days an' wint off as tho' I did not care, wid all the women in the Married Quarters laughin'. I was pershuaded most bhoys are, I'm thinkin' that no women born av woman cud stand against me av I hild up my little finger.
"Is ut like?" sez I. "But ye might give me my railway fare. I'm far from my home an' I've done you a service." Bhoys, 'tis a good thing to be a priest. The ould man niver throubled himself to dhraw from a bank.
For awhile the trio cogitated in silence; each man striving desperately to arrive at some logical solution to the extraordinary problem that now faced them. "Bhoys!" said Slavin presently, "there's no doubt there is . . . somethin' damnably wrong 'bout all this.
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