"Beg pardon, sir," growled one of the men, who had a bandage round his arm; "you wouldn't ha' said so if you'd been there.  They was all alike. The junk we took was burning like fat in a frying-pan, and me and my mate see one o' them chaps going to be roasted, and made a run for it and hauled him away--singed my beard, it did; look, sir."