tired to tell you about the
matter. I can assure you that it is no joke, being carried down
fifteen miles on a stretcher; so please go and ask somebody else,
that's a good fellow."

In a quarter of an hour Hallett returned again, put his eyeglass in
his eye, and stood for a couple of minutes without speaking,
regarding Lisle furtively.

"Oh, don't be a duffer," the latter said, "and drop that eyeglass.
You know perfectly well that you see better, without it, than with
it."

"Well, you are a rum chap, Bullen. You are always doing something
unexpected. I have been hearing how you and a Sikh started to swim
the Ordah, when it was in flood, with a wire; how you were washed
away; how you were given up for lost; how, two days later, you
returned to camp and went straight out again, with a party of
twenty Sikhs, took a little stroll for ten miles into the bush--and
of course, as much back--to carry in the Sikh soldier you had had
with you, but who had been wounded, and was unable to come with
you. I don't know why such luck as this is always falling to your
lot, while not a bit of it comes to me."

"It is pure accident, Hallett. You will get a chance, some day. I
don't know that you would be good for a thirty-mile tramp, but it
must be a consolation to you that, for the last five miles, I had
to be carried."

"It is a mercy it is so," Hallett said, in an expression of deep
thankfulness, "for there would have been no holding you, if you had
come in on your feet."

Chapter 16: The Relief Of Coomassie.

"I Certainly should not have volunteered for this work, Bullen, if
I had known what it was like. I was mad at not being able to go out
to the Cape, and as my regiment was, like yours, stationed in
India, there was no chance of getting away from there, if I had
once returned. Of course, I knew all about the expeditions of
Wolseley and Scott; but I forgot that these were carried on in the
dry season, and that we should have to campaign in the wet season,
which makes all the difference in the world. We are wet through,
from morning till night--and all night, too--and at our camping
places there is no shelter. The low-lying land is turned into deep
swamps, the little streams become great unfordable torrents, and
the ground under our feet turns into liquid mud. It is really
horrible work, especially as we get very little food and less
drink. It is not work for dogs."

"It is all very well for you to grumble, Hallett,