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A very sweet reflection to poor fellows habituated to respect and obedience towards the underlings of the sergeants of the bailiff of Sainte-Genevieve, the cardinal's train-bearer.
Then others were brought to stand by. Shells were falling anything from thirty to forty in the minute. One of the remaining Tasmanian sergeants a Lewis gunner came back from an errand, crawling, wounded dangerously through the neck. "I don't want to go away," he said. "If I can't work a Lewis gun, I can sit by another chap and tell him how to."
And then, having seen to these arrangements, Dick bade good-by to his comrades, rubbed Jan's ears and told him to be a good lad till they met again, in forty-eight hours' time, and rode away, carrying with him the good wishes of every one in the barracks, with the exception of one who looked out at him from the windows of the sergeants' quarters, with grimly nodding head and a singularly baleful light in his eyes.
Then, over the uproar, could be heard the orders of the new captain. "Form your companies!" the shouts of the sergeants: "Fall in, men, fall in!" And then the demand: "March us back, Hefty! Take command once more!" "Start 'em back, Harris, for God's sake! I can never straighten 'em out," cried his half-laughing, half-sobbing successor, his first sergeant of the year gone by.
Still below these were two sub-officers, or sergeants, and the decanus, or corporal, to every ten men. There was a change in the constitution and disposition of the legion after the time of Marius, until the fall of the republic.
The train moved off, dark as a pocket, and some of the men nearly froze to death. Something had got to be done. After a little consultation, the two officers took command of the two wings respectively, and the First Sergeants the companies. The regiment moved off by the flank to cut their way through the darkness and encamp somewhere, until daylight.
Having served as Sergeant-Major in the United States Cavalry, I tried to tell the English drill sergeants their business but it did not work. They immediately put me as batman in their mess. Many a greasy dish of stew was accidentally spilled over them.
Under his orders two sergeants were to act, and enforce justice; he desired that twice a year news of the colony should be sent to him in Normandy, and the revenue from Lancerota and Fortaventura was to be devoted to building two churches.
I fell into luck here. It was customary, when we were marching on some unsuspecting village, to send the quartermaster sergeants ahead on bicycles to locate billets. We had an old granny named Cypress, better known as Lizzie. The other sergeants were accustomed to flim-flam Lizzie to a finish on the selection of billets, with the result that C company usually slept in pigpens of stables.
The crew consisted of two hundred privates, fifty corporals, five sergeants, ten lieutenants, ten captains, one chief engineer with two assistants, one lieutenant commander and the commander, who was captain of the ship and had the same rank and pay as a colonel in the army. The gunner and assistant gunners held the same rank and pay as captains and lieutenants in the army.
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