"Pore beggar--oh pore, _pore_ beggar!" said Alf, leaning in on one side of
him, while Pinewood blocked him on the other.
"Let me go! Let me go! Mann, I tell you, let me go----"
"'E screams like a woman!" said McBride. "They'll 'ear 'im five miles
off."
"There's one or two ought to 'ear 'im--in England," said Copper, putting
aside a wildly waving arm.
"Married, ain't 'e?" said Pinewood. "I've seen 'em go like this before--
just at the last. '_Old_ on, old man, No one's goin' to 'urt you."
The last of the sun threw the enormous shadow of a kopje over the little,
anxious, wriggling group.
"Quit that," said the Serjeant of a sudden. "You're only making him worse.
Hands _up_, prisoner! Now you get a holt of yourself, or this'll go off."
And indeed the revolver-barrel square at the man's panting chest seemed to
act like a tonic; he choked, recovered himself, and fell in between Copper
and Pinewood.
As the picket neared the camp it broke into song that was heard among the
officers' tents:
'E sent us 'is blessin' from London town,
(The beggar that kep' the cordite down,)
But what do we care if 'e smile or frown,
The beggar that kep' the cordite down?
The mildly nefarious
Wildly barbarious
Beggar that kept the cordite down!
Said a captain a mile away: "Why are they singing _that?_ We haven't had a
mail for a month, have we?"
An hour later the same captain said to his servant: "Jenkins, I understand
the picket have got a--got a newspaper off a prisoner to-day.
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