Then an officer--some tremendous swell at an adjoining table had objected to his talking so loud, and Peter had replied insolently in respectable German.

After that things became mixed.

There was some kind of a fight, during which Peter calumniated the German army and all its female ancestry.

How he wasn't shot or run through I can't imagine, except that the lieutenant loudly proclaimed that he was a crazy Boer.

Anyhow the upshot was that Peter was marched off to gaol, and I was left in a pretty pickle.
'I don't believe a word of it,' I said firmly.