"You are overdoing it, Bobby," said his skipper. "'Might give the rest of us
credit of doing a little work. You go on as if you were the whole Mess rolled
into one. Take it easy."
"I will," said Bobby. "I'm feeling done up, somehow." Revere looked at him
anxiously and said nothing.
There was a flickering of lanterns ab3ut the camp that night, and a rumor that
brought men out of their cots to the tent doors, a paddling of the naked feet
of doolie-bearers and the rush of a galloping horse.
"Wot's up?" asked twenty tents; and through twenty tents ran the answer--
"Wick, 'e's down."
They brought the news to Revere and he groaned. "Any one but Bobby and I
shouldn't have cared! The Sergeant-Major was right."
"Not going out this journey," gasped Bobby, as he was lifted from the doolie.
"Not going out this journey." Then with an air of supreme conviction--"I
can't, you see."
"Not if I can do anything!" said the Surgeon-Major, who had hastened over from
the mess where he had been dining.
He and the Regimental Surgeon fought together with Death for the life of Bobby
Wick. Their work was interrupted by a hairy apparition in a blue-grey
dressing-gown who stared in horror at the bed and cried--"Oh, my Gawd.
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