resist you.

"Obediently,
"H. WRYNCHE."

Underneath is the sarcastic comment:

"_December 27th._

"_Nice if you had got this in time, eh? And we wanted those
boots and badges._

"_P. B._"

"She got hold of a nugget that once, anyway," says Captain Bingo, blowing
his nose emphatically; "and--by the Living Tinker! if it _had_ reached us
in time, we'd have saved a loss of twenty-one killed and stripped, and
twenty-two wounded, and the stingin' shame of a whippin' into the
bargain."

"Perhaps," says the Colonel, with a careworn shadow on the keen, sagacious
face, and both men are silent, remembering an assault the desperate,
reckless valour of which deserves to be bracketed in memory with the
Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, "If Defeat is ever shame,
perhaps, Wrynche. But if you could put the question to each of that
handful of brave men sleeping side by side over there"--he nods in the
direction of the Cemetery, where the aftermath of Death's red harvest has
sprung up in orderly rows of little white crosses--"they would tell you it
can be more glorious than victory."

"Of course, you're right, sir. I gather now what your bad news is," says
Bingo, who has been dejectedly rubbing his finger along the bristly edges
of his sandy moustache, for a minute past. "Judgin' by the marginal
annotations of this man Blinders--brute I'd kick to Cape Town with
pleasure--my wife's a prisoner in Brounckers' hands?"

"An unconscious prisoner--yes. Give 'em their due, Wrynche. I shouldn't
have credited 'em with the sense of humour they have displayed in their
dealings with her."

If it were possible for Bingo to grow redder in the face, one would say
that he has done so, as he bursts out, in a violent perspiration, striding
up and down over Nixey's sheet-leaded roof.

"Confound their humour! It's the humour of tom-cats playin' with a--a
dashed little silly dicky-bird. It's the humour of aasvogels watchin' a
shot rock-rabbit kick. It's the humour of the battledore and the
shuttlecock. And I'm the dicky-bird's mate and the bunny's better-half,
and the other shuttlecock of the pair, and may I be blessed if I can take
it smilin'!" He mops his scarlet and dripping face, and puffs and blows
like a large military walrus on dry land.

"Perhaps you'll manage a smile when you've read this?"

Bingo stops in his stride, wheels, and receives an official document on
blue paper. Under the date of the p