Number Seven is likely to come out of the chloroform?"

"He has been sitting up and taking nourishment for some hours,"
replies the voice of Wagstaffe. "What message can I deliver to him?"

"None in particular, except that he has not signalled a single one of
Sergeant-Major Pumpherston's shots!" replies the Captain of D, with
crushing simplicity.

"Half a mo'!" replies Wagstaffe.... Then, presently--

"Hallo! Are you there, Whitson?"

"Yes. We are still here," Captain Whitson assures him frigidly.

"Right. Well, I have examined Number Seven target, and there are no
shots on it of any kind whatever. But there are ten shots on Number
Eight, if that's any help. Buck up with the next lot, will you? We are
getting rather bored here. So long!"


There was nothing in it now. D Company had finished. The last two
representatives of A were firing, and subalterns with note-books were
performing prodigies of arithmetic. Bobby Little calculated that if
these two scored eighteen points each they would pull the Company's
total average up to fifteen precisely, beating D by a decimal.

The two slender threads upon which the success of this enterprise hung
were named Lindsay and Budge. Lindsay was a phlegmatic youth with
watery eyes. Nothing disturbed him, which was fortunate, for the