This was the climax to a
very happy day, and Archie went to bed in his little old bunk feeling
that he was a very lucky boy for having been wounded in battle.
Of course the next few days were very busy ones for all the men, and
for Archie, too. He was obliged to tell, over and over, the story of
his experiences, and how he had managed to escape from the rebels when
they had him. This story always made the men roar with laughter, and
increased their already strong contempt for the Filipino army. He
told, too, about brave Bill Hickson, and that gentleman's cot was
always the centre of an admiring throng of visitors, who shook his
hand and told him how proud they were of what he had accomplished. And
all the poor hero could do was to smile feebly, for he was still too
ill to talk much.
Archie felt that he had almost volumes to write about his experiences
in battle, and he did send a very long account of this encounter to
Mr. Van Bunting. It was written in his boyish way, but one of the
officers who read it said that it was the best thing of its kind he
had ever read, so he wasn't at all backward about mailing it. All the
other newspaper correspondents in Manila were wishing they had gone
with the regiment and witnessed the battle, but they had stayed in
Manila, thinking that this would be like the other expeditions of the
kind, a mere wild-goose chase, which wouldn't amount to anything at
all.
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