the captain called out to him to come off?"

"Hold your clapper, you spooney, and be damned to you!"
exclaimed the angry veteran.--"Had the Ingian fastened
his paw upon your ugly neck as he did upon mine, all the
pitiful life your mother ever put into you would have
been spirited away from very fear; so you needn't brag."

"Sure, and if any of ye had a grain of spunk, ye would
have fired, and freed a fellow from the clutch of them
hell thieves," muttered another of the men at the litter.
"All the time, the devil had me by the throat, swinging
his tommyhawk about my head, I saw ye dancing up and down
in the heavens, instead of being on your marrow bones on
the common."

"And didn't I want to do it?" rejoined the first speaker.
"Ask Tom Winkler here, if the captain didn't swear he'd
cut the soul out of my body if I even offered so much as
to touch the trigger of my musket."

"Faith, and lucky he did," replied his covering man (for
the ranks had again joined), "since but for that, there
wouldn't be at this moment so much as a hair of the scalp
of one of you left."

"And how so, Mr. Wiseacre?" rejoined his comrade.

"How so! Because the first shot that we fired would have
set the devils upon them in right earnest--and then their