United States or Maldives ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We knew that they had not crossed the pass, or we should have seen them before this, so we were pretty hopeful of a fight soon after crossing the pass, and we were not disappointed. At Ghizr we also found Oldham, a Sapper subaltern, who had preceded us by a few days. He had with him a party of Kashmir Sappers and Miners, who were now armed with Snider carbines.
Men of his type are rarely overburdened with correspondents. The first was a business letter. He read it with scant attention, and returned it to his breast-pocket. The second envelope bore the handwriting of his senior subaltern, now in England on short leave.
Such a crowd, some well mounted, some ill, but all flying along as best they might, the subaltern as good as the general, jostling and pushing, spurring and driving, with every thought thrown to the winds save that they should have the blood of this absurd fox! Truly, they are an extraordinary people, the English!
He called an officer from the next room. "Has any one been here since my absence?" "No, General." "Has any one passed through the hall?" He had fully anticipated the answer, as the subaltern replied, "Only the women servants." He re-entered the room.
They spoke guardedly, but we could hear could not help hearing. "You have seen nothing, Gordon?" "Nothing, as yet." "Make the round again and tell the men 'twill be ten gold joes and a double allowance of liquor to the man who first claps eyes on any one of the four." The subaltern went to carry out the order, and Falconnet fell to pacing back and forth before the little wigwam.
And whenever I wait for the letters, I recall a little episode of the War told me by a wounded subaltern at an evacuated point. He had sustained a slight head wound, and I am certain he was not normal, but was suffering from shell-shock. Dark-eyed, swarthy, he was lying on a stretcher and wearing a white bandage.
Within half-an-hour of their arrival, a stray shell came over and caught the subaltern and five of the gun-detachment. It was plain at once that the subaltern was dying his name must have been written on the shell, as we say in France. We got a stretcher and made all haste to rush him out to a dressing-station. Just as he was leaving, he asked to speak with his major.
I ordered them to be removed instantly behind the village; and this we completed without the enemy's firing one shot. I found, on inquiry, that the captain to whom the general's command was given, delivered his orders to his subaltern the subaltern to the sergeant the sergeant to the corporal and so on to the poor stupid driver of the bullocks.
The entire male population thus devoted to works of constraint, nothing else in prospect for either the cultivated or the uncultivated, no military or civil career other than a prolonged guard duty, threatened and threatening, as soldier, customs-inspector, or gendarme, as prefect, sub-prefect, or commissioner of police, that is to say, as subaltern henchman and bully restraining subjects and raising contributions, confiscating and burning merchandise, seizing grumblers, and making the refractory toe the mark.
For some minutes the court-yard remained empty, then a man hurriedly crossed it, unlocked the door of the room where Klea was, and informed her that he was a subaltern under Glaucus, and had brought her a message from him. "My lord," said the veteran soldier to the girl, "bid me greet you, and says that he found neither the Roman Publius Scipio, nor his friend the Corinthian at home.
Word Of The Day