The men were still clamoring n the veranda. Simmons
appropriated two more packets of ammunition and ran into the moonlight,
muttering: "I'll make a night of it. Thirty roun's, an' the last for myself.
Take you that, you dogs!"
He dropped on one knee and fired into the brown of the men on the veranda, but
the bullet flew high, and landed in the brickwork with a vicious phat that
made some of the younger ones turn pale. It is, as musketry theorists observe,
one thing to fire and another to be fired at.
Then the instinct of the chase flared up. The news spread from barrack to
barrack, and the men doubled out intent on the capture of Simmons, the wild
beast, who was heading for the Cavalry parade-ground, stopping now and again
to send back a shot and a curse in the direction of his pursuers.
"I'll learn you to spy on me!" he shouted; "I'll learn you to give me dorg's
names! Come on the 'ole lot o' you! Colonel John Anthony Deever, C.B.!"--he
turned toward the Infantry Mess and shook his rifle--"you think yourself the
devil of a man--but I tell you that if you put your ugly old carcass outside
o' that door, I'll make you the poorest-lookin' man in the army. Come out,
Colonel John Anthony Deever, C.B.! Come out and see me practiss on the rainge.
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