“But, good Heavens, man, can’t you see I’m as sober as you are, and much less excited?  Can’t you send for the key of the mortuary and call the doctor?  The poor chap may die for your stupidity.”

“You call me a ‘man’ again, my lad, an’ I’ll show you what a Sergeant can do fer them as ’e don’t like!  As fer ’sober’—­I’ve ’ad enough o’ you ‘sober’.  W’y, in two ticks you may be on the ground ‘owlin’ and bellerin’ and squealin’ like a Berkshire pig over the blood-tub. Sober!  Yus—­I seen you at it.”

“Why on earth can’t you come and prove I’m drunk or mad,” besought Dam.  “Open the mortuary and prove I’m wrong—­and then put me under arrest.  Call the Surgeon and say the sentry over the mortuary reports the inmate to be alive—­he has heard of catalepsy and comatose collapse simulating death if you haven’t.”

“Don’ use sech ’orrible languidge,” besought the respectable Corporal Prag.

“Ho, yus! I’m agoin’ to see meself whipt on the peg fer turnin’ out the Surgin from ‘is little bed in the middle o’ the night—­to come an’ ’ave a look at the dead corpse ’e put in orders fer the Dead ’Ole, ain’t I?  Jest becos the champion snaike-seer o’ E Troop’s got ’em agin, wot?”

Corporal Prag laughed merrily at the wit of his superior.

Turning to Bear, whom he knew to be as well educated as himself, Dam remarked:—­

“Poor chap has rallied from the cholera collapse and could probably be saved by stimulants and warmth.  This suspended animation is common enough in cholera.  Why, the Brahmins have a regular ritual for dealing with cases of recovery on the funeral pyre—­purification after defilement by the corpse-washers or something of the sort.  These stupid oafs are letting poor Priddell die—­”

“What! you drunken talkin’ parrot,” roared the incensed Sergeant.  “’Ere, sling ’is drunken rotten carkis—­”

“What’s the row here?” cut in a quiet curt voice.  “Noise enough for a gang of crows——­”

Surgeon-Captain Blake of the Royal Army Medical Corps had just left the Hospital, having been sent for by the night Nursing Sister.  The men sprang to attention and the Sergeant saluted.

“Drunk sentry left ’is post, Sir,” he gabbled. “’Spose the Dead ’Ole—­er—­Morshuerry, that is, Sir, got on ’is nerves.  ’E’s given to secret boozin’, Sir——­”

“Excuse me, Sir,” broke in Dam, daring to address an Officer unbidden, since a life was at stake, “I am a total abstainer and Trooper Priddell is not dead.  It must have been cataleptic trance.  I heard him groan and I climbed up and saw him lying on the ground.”

“This man’s not drunk,” said Captain Blake, and added to himself, “and he’s an educated man, and a cultured, poor devil.”

“Oh, that’s how ‘e goes on, Sir, sober as a judge you’d say, an’ then nex’ minnit ‘e’s on the floor aseein’ blue devils an’ pink serpients——­”

“The man’s dying while we talk, Sir,” put in Dam, whose wrath was rising. (If these dull-witted ignorant louts could not tell a drunken man from a sober, nor realize that a certified dead man may not be dead, surely the doctor could.)