‘Look out!’ said Oswald in a low but commanding whisper, ‘the camp’s down in that field. You can see if you take a squint through this gap.’
The speaker took a squint himself as he spoke, and drew back, baffled beyond the power of speech. While he was struggling with his baffledness the British Colonel had his squint. He also drew back, and said a word that he must have known was not right--at least when he was a boy.
‘I don’t care,’ said Oswald, ‘they were there this morning. White tents like mushrooms, and an enemy cleaning a cauldron.’
‘That’s most convincing,’ said the Colonel, and I did not like the way he said it.
‘I say,’ Oswald said, ‘let’s get to the top corner of the ambush--the wood, I mean. You can see the crossroads from there.’
We did, and quickly, for the crackling of branches no longer dismayed our almost despairing spirits.
We came to the edge of the wood, and Oswald’s patriotic heart really did give a jump, and he cried, ‘There they are, on the Dover Road.’
Our miscellaneous signboard had done its work.
‘By Jove, young un, you’re right! And in quarter column, too! We’ve got em on toast--on toast--egad!’ I never heard anyone not in a book say ‘egad’ before, so I saw something really out of the way was indeed up.
The Colonel was a man of prompt and decisive action. He sent the orderly to tell the Major to advance two companies on the left flank and take cover. Then we led him back through the wood the nearest way, because he said he must rejoin the main body at once. We found the main body very friendly with Noel and H. O. and the others, and Alice was talking to the Cocked-Hatted One as if she had known him all her life.
‘I think he’s a general in disguise,’ Noel said. ‘He’s been giving us chocolate out of a pocket in his saddle.’
Oswald thought about the roast rabbit then--and he is not ashamed to own it--yet he did not say a word. But Alice is really not a bad sort. She had saved two bars of chocolate for him and Dicky. Even in war girls can sometimes be useful in their humble way.
The Colonel fussed about and said, ‘Take cover there!’ and everybody hid in the ditch, and the horses and the Cocked Hat, with Alice, retreated down the road out of sight. We were in the ditch too. It was muddy--but nobody thought of their boots in that perilous moment. It seemed a long time we were crouching there. Oswald began to feel the water squelching in his boots, so we held our breath and listened. Oswald laid his ear to the road like a Red Indian. You would not do this in time of peace, but when your country is in danger you care but little about keeping your ears clean. His backwoods’ strategy was successful. He rose and dusted himself and said--‘They’re coming!’