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All the soljers does, from the Major-Gin'rals down to the tail-end of the mule-whackers. Ye mind them 'Sconsin chaps we was lookin' at a little bit ago?" "Yes," said Si. "Well, graybacks was what ailed 'em. The fellers with their shirts on their knees was killin' 'em off. That's what they calls 'skirmishin'. There's other kinds o' skirmishing besides fitin' rebels!
There was the cutter's innards spread out like a Fratton pawnbroker's shop; there was the 'tiffies' hammerin' in the stern of 'er, an' they ain't antiseptic; there was the Maxim class in light skirmishin' order among the pork, an' forrard the blacksmith had 'is forge in full blast, makin' 'orse-shoes, I suppose. Well, that accounts for the starboard side.
Let's go out'n do a little skirmishin' ourselves." "We'd better go off a good ways," said Si, "so's the boys won't see us." "You're too nice and pertickler for a soljer. Si. They'll all be doin' it, even the Cap'n himself, by termorrer or nex' day." They went out back of the camp, where Si insisted on getting behind the largest tree he could find.
Besides, there's plenty of his kind over in those Jerseys who'd take good care of the likes of him. Was ye ever foragin' over there, lad?" The other grunted, and the speaker went on steadily. "They take pot shots at ye from every bit o' woods, or stone wall. They're sure devils for that kind o' skirmishin' work. God pity the men ordered out into them parts."
"O, the rebels skipped out in sich a hurry," ex plained Shorty, "that they even dropped their house hold pets, which we inherited as we follered 'em up. I wish this infernal rain'd let up long enough for us to do some skirmishin' and bile our clothes. Or if the sun'd only come out an hour or two, we could find an ant-hill, an' lay our clothes on it.
Now go on and tell me all about it as fast as you can," commanded Christie, walking along the rough road so rapidly that Private Wilkins would have been distressed both in wind and limb if discipline and hardship had not done much for him. "Well, you see we've been skirmishin' round here for a week, for the woods are full of rebs waitin' to surprise some commissary stores that's expected along.
"It ain't no time when this yere bluff on the part of the drinkin' Red Dog gent attracts Toothpick, who's been skirmishin' 'round among us where we're standin', an' is at that time mentionin' Freighter's Stew, as a good thing to eat, to Dave Tutt. "'Who be you-all admirin' now? asks Toothpick of the Red Dog party, who's glarin' towards him.
We've got to stay somewhere till mornin'. Now, I ain't got no two dollars to waste on a hotel. I've got a wife and children, so I'm goin' to roost on a bench and take the cost of a bed out of my hide." "Same here," put in one of the other men. "Hide'll grow on again, dollars come hard. It's goin' to be mighty hot skirmishin' to find a dollar these days."
An iceberg must be kind o' hard to do, I should think likely." "I should think it might be. Music isn't cold enough." "'T ain't the cold," said Uncle William, hastily. "I run acrost an iceberg once. We was skirmishin' round up North, in a kind o' white fog, frosty-like, and cold cold as blazes; and all of a sudden we was on her close by her, somewheres, behind the frost. We wa'n't cold any more.
"Smoke yore own, you hunk of misery. You had four extra sacks in yore warbags this morning." "Had? So you been skirmishin' round my warbags, have you? How many of those sacks did you rustle?" "I left two." "Two! Two! Say, I bought that tobacco myself for my own personal use, and not for a lazy, loafing, cow-faced lump of slumgullion to glom and smoke.
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