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Worn-out with whiskey-fetching and with helping to deck barrack-rooms and carrying pots and trestles, John Broom was having a nap in the evening, in company with a mongrel deer-hound, when a man shook him, and said, "I heard some one asking for ye an hour or two back; M'Alister wants ye." "Where is he?" said John Broom, jumping to his feet. "In hospital; he's been there a day or two.
"No; he's either fallen into a mischief among the villagers and yet that isn't likely, for he'd blarney himself out of the Pit; or else he is engaged on urgent private affairs some stupendous devilment that we shall hear of at mess after it has been the round of the barrack-rooms.
And here, on a hot summer afternoon, is the Amazon-ant, who leaves her barrack-rooms in long battalions and marches far afield to hunt for slaves. We will follow her in her raids when we find time. What subjects for study! And there are more to come. The house was as utterly deserted as the ground. When man was gone and peace assured, the animal hastily seized on everything.
Devlin, the Colour-Sergeant of E Company, glanced at the empty saddle and tumbled through the barrack-rooms, kicking; up each Room Corporal as he passed. 'Up, ye beggars! There's something happened to the Colonel's son, he shouted. 'He couldn't fall off! S'elp me, 'e couldn't fall off, blubbered a drummer-boy. 'Go an' hunt acrost the river.
Others have depicted her as a royal wanton and have gathered together a mass of vicious tales, the gossip of the palace kitchens, of the clubs, and of the barrack-rooms. But perhaps one finds the chief interest of her story to lie in this that besides being empress and diplomat and a lover of pleasure she was, beyond all else, at heart a woman.
Indeed, although he had the reputation of a bold, bad blackguard, he never led any one else on the "wrong trail," and his advice to young soldiers in the barrack-rooms was wonderfully clear and useful. If he respected you, you could trust your life with him. If he didn't, you could "look up" for trouble.
Devlin, the Color-Sergeant of E Company, glanced at the empty saddle and tumbled through the barrack-rooms, kicking up each Room Corporal as he passed. "Up, ye beggars! There's something happened to the Colonel's son," he shouted. "He couldn't fall off! S'help me, 'e COULDN'T fall off," blubbered a drummer-boy. "Go an' hunt acrost the river.
When two hours had elapsed this assemblage was driven into barrack-rooms upstairs, where most of them spent the night, without fire and almost without food, stretched upon the boards. It only remained to carry off to prison these honorable men, guilty of no crime but the defence of the laws of their country. For this purpose the most distressing and ignominious means were selected.
"He's just the regulation, sir," he said, after inspecting the measure. "Thirty-one inches, sir, exactly." The doctor looked at Reeks's papers again. "Ah, yes, all right, his age is under sixteen, I see," said he. "Just test his height, Trimmens." The sick-bay steward took Reeks to the bulkhead opposite, where was a standard for measurement, the same as they keep in barrack-rooms.
I suppose that was the object of the new regulation, but it caused misunderstanding, and to this day the spontaneous rush of the first month of the war has never been repeated. Beyond doubt the numbers were too great to be properly handled. Men slept in the garrison church, in the riding school, on the floor in over-crowded barrack-rooms, in leaky tents without bottoms to them.
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