were troublesome when I took off my helmet,
which hurt, I asked a doctor to look at it, and he put this thing on to
keep the lint in its place."

"You will never be able to wear earrings, if they come into fashion for
men, my poor Green," said Strachan. "But what is the row with your
hand, Edwards? I did not see it was bound up in a handkerchief before."

"Ah, it's nothing; only a bite."

"A bite!"

"Yes. There was a poor little Arab chap, such a game little boy, with a
small spear made for him, fighting like a bantam till a bullet broke his
leg and knocked him over. He lay in the first earthwork, and I tried to
give him a drink, but the little rat darted up at me and bit my hand."

"Have you had it cauterised? I do believe these savages are mad," said
the major. "And what became of the varmint?"

"I don't know; we had to move on just then."

"That is the worst part of these Arabs, letting their children go into
the ranks so soon. I hate to see babies made into little men and women.
If they must fight, let them punch one another's heads with their
fists."

"I suppose, major, that as these Arabs are always fighting with one
another, if there is no one else, it becomes a necessary branch of
education."

"Well, at any rate," said Jones, who was learned in dogs--their training
and management--and who, indeed, was known as Doggy Jones, "they need
not `enter' them to the British soldier. There are plenty of Egyptians
for them to worry till they have come to their full growth."

"That is a curious thing about General Baker," said the colonel to Major
Elmfoot.

"Yes, indeed, it is."

"Was he hit, sir?" asked Dudley. "I heard something of it."

"Yes, by a splinter of a shell in the face, just as we came under fire."

"But I saw him after that."

"Oh, yes; he got the wound dressed, and remounted, knowing how useful he
could be, knowing the ground. But it is a nasty wound for all that,
MacBean says. The strange thing is that he should have passed unscathed
through the hordes a month ago, when his troops fled and left him
unprotected, and the chances against him looked a hundred to one, and
get hit to-day; the odds were a hundred to one the other way."

"The most curious case of that sort was Sir Charles Napier," said the
major. "He was one of the most unlucky men that ever lived in the way
of getting hit. In every great battle in which he took part during the
Peninsular War he was severely wounded