Page 362 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

‘How the deuce did he do it, Jenkins?’ he asked, as soon
as he reached the yard.
‘Well, I’m blessed if I rightly know, your honour,’ says
Jenkins. ‘He was over the wall before you could say ‘knife’.
Scott fired and missed him, and then I heard the sentry’s
musket, but he missed him, too.’
‘Missed him!’ cries Frere. ‘Pretty fellows you are, all of
you! I suppose you couldn’t hit a haystack at twenty yards?
Why, the man wasn’t three feet from the end of your car-
bine!’
The unlucky Scott, standing in melancholy attitude by
the empty irons, muttered something about the sun hav-
ing been in his eyes. ‘I don’t know how it was, sir. I ought to
have hit him, for certain. I think I did touch him, too, as he
went up the wall.’
A stranger to the customs of the place might have imag-
ined that he was listening to a conversation about a pigeon
match.
‘Tell me all about it,’ says Frere, with an angry curse. ‘I
was just turning, your honour, when I hears Scott sing out
‘Hullo!’ and when I turned round, I saw Dawes’s irons on the
ground, and him a-scrambling up the heap o’ stones yonder.
The two men on my right jumped up, and I thought it was
a made-up thing among ‘em, so I covered ‘em with my car-
bine, according to instructions, and called out that I’d shoot
the first that stepped out. Then I heard Scott’s piece, and the
men gave a shout like. When I looked round, he was gone.’
‘Nobody else moved?’
‘No, sir. I was confused at first, and thought they were all

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