Part 11 (1/2)

”Third time this morning, sir,” added a sycophantic subaltern.

The sergeant-major smiled indulgently,

”I can do without signals, sir,” he said ”I know where the shot went all right. I must get the next a _little_ more to the left. That last one was a bit too near to three o'clock to be a certainty.”

He fired again--with precisely the same result.

Every one was quite apologetic to the sergeant-major this time.

”This must be stopped,” announced the Captain. ”Mr. Simson, ring up Captain Wagstaffe on the telephone.”

But the sergeant-major would not hear of this.

”The b.u.t.t-registers are good enough for me, sir,” he said with a paternal smile. He fired again. Once more the target stared back, blank and unresponsive.

This time the audience were too disgusted to speak. They merely shrugged their shoulders and glanced at one another with sarcastic smiles. The Captain, who had suffered a heavy reverse at the hands of Captain Wagstaffe earlier in the morning, began to rehea.r.s.e the wording of his address over the telephone.

The sergeant-major fired his last two shots with impressive aplomb--only to be absolutely ignored twice more by Number Seven. Then he rose to his feet and saluted with ostentatious respectfulness.

”Four bulls and one inner, I _think_, sir. I'm afraid I pulled that last one off a bit.”

The Captain is already at the telephone. For the moment this most feminine of instruments is found to be in an accommodating frame of mind. Captain Wagstaffe's voice is quickly heard.

”That you, Wagstaffe?” inquires the Captain. ”I'm so sorry to bother you, but could you make inquiries and ascertain when the marker on 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 crus.h.i.+ng simplicity.

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

”Hallo! Are you there, Whitson?”

”Yes. We are still here,” Captain Whitson a.s.sures 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 commotion which surrounded him was considerable. A stout sergeant lay beside him on a waterproof sheet, whispering excited counsels of perfection, while Bobby Little danced in the rear, beseeching him to fire upon the proper target.

”Now, Lindsay,” said Captain Whitson, in a trembling voice, ”you are going to get into a good comfortable position, take your time, and score five bulls.”

The amazing part of it all was that Lindsay very nearly did score five bulls. He actually got four, and would have had a fifth had not the stout sergeant, in excess of solicitude, tenderly wiped his watery eye for him with a grubby handkerchief just as he took the first pull for his third shot.

Altogether he scored nineteen; and the gallery, full of congratulations, moved on to inspect the performance of Private Budge, an extremely nervous subject: who, thanks to the fact that public attention had been concentrated so far upon Lindsay, and that his ministering sergeant was a matter-of-fact individual of few words, had put on two bulls--eight points. He now required to score only nine points in three shots.