The two crouching friends taking advantage of the cessation in the storm,
prepared to start. But in straightening the acute angles of their legs
and arms, Mr. Sprigg's piece, by some entanglement in his protecting
garb, went off, and the barrel striking Mr. Grubb upon the os nasi,
stretched him bawling on the humid turf.

"O! Lord! I'm shot."

"O! my heye!" exclaimed the trembling Spriggs.

"O! my nose!" roared Grubb.

"Here's a go!"

"It's no go!--I'm a dead man!" blubbered Mr. Richard. Mr. Augustus
Spriggs now raised his chum upon his legs, and was certainly rather
alarmed at the sanguinary effusion.

"Vere's your hankercher?--here!--take mine,--that's it--there!--let's
look at it."

"Can you see it?" said Grubb, mournfully twisting about his face most
ludicrously, and trying at the same time to level his optics towards the
damaged gnomon.

"Yes!"

"I can't feel it," said Grubb; "it's numbed like dead."