’"I haven’t half got occupation for the next twenty minutes,” says your Mr. Leggatt, rootin’ and blasphemin’ in the dark.  Mark, now, ’ow Morshed changed his tactics to suit ’is environment.  “Right!” says he.  “I’ll stand by the ship.  Mr. Pyecroft and Jules, oblige me by doubling along the ridge to the east with all the maroons and crackers you can carry without spilling.  Read the directions careful for the maroons, Mr. Pyecroft, and touch them off at half-minute intervals.  Jules represents musketry an’ maxim fire under your command.  Remember, it’s death or Salisbury Gaol!  Prob’ly both!”

’By these means and some moderately ‘ard runnin’, we distracted ’em to the eastward.  Maroons, you may not be aware, are same as bombs, with the anarchism left out.  In confined spots like chalk-pits, they knock a four-point-seven silly.  But you should read the directions before’and.  In the intervals of the slow but well-directed fire of my cow-guns, Jules, who had found a sheep-pond in the dark a little lower down, gave what you might call a cinematograph reproduction o’ sporadic musketry.  They was large size crackers, and he concluded with the dull, sickenin’ thud o’ blind shells burstin’ on soft ground.’

‘How did he manage that?’ I said.

‘You throw a lighted squib into water and you’ll see,’ said Pyecroft.  ’Thus, then, we improvised till supplies was exhausted and the surrounding landscapes fair ’owled and ’ummed at us.  The Jun or Service might ’ave ’ad their doubts about the rockets but they couldn’t overlook our gunfire.  Both sides tumbled out full of initiative.  I told Jules no two flat-feet ’ad any right to be as happy as us, and we went back along the ridge to the derelict, and there was our Mr. Morshed apostrophin’ his ‘andiwork over fifty square mile o’ country with “Attend, all ye who list to hear!” out of the Fifth Reader.  He’d got as far as “And roused the shepherds o’ Stonehenge, the rangers o’ Beaulieu” when we come up, and he drew our attention to its truth as well as its beauty.  That’s rare in poetry, I’m told.  He went right on to—­“The red glare on Skiddaw roused those beggars at Carlisle”—­which he pointed out was poetic license for Leith Hill.  This allowed your Mr. Leggatt time to finish pumpin’ up his tyres.  I ’eard the sweat ‘op off his nose.’

‘You know what it is, sir,’ said poor Leggatt to me.

‘It warfted across my mind, as I listened to what was trarnspirin’, that it might be easier to make the mess than to wipe it up, but such considerations weighed not with our valiant leader.

’"Mr. Pyecroft,” he says, “it can’t have escaped your notice that we ’ave one angry and ‘ighly intelligent army in front of us, an’ another ’ighly angry and equally intelligent army in our rear.  What ’ud you recommend?”

’Most men would have besought ’im to do a lateral glide while there was yet time, but all I said was:  “The rocking-horse isn’t expended yet, sir.”