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How had this corpse been fixed to the side of the mound at six feet above the ground? Across the body, held in place by its cross-belt, we saw the twisted barrel of’ a musket, half-eaten by rust. “Pym-my poor Pym!” groaned Dirk Peters. He tried to rise, that he might approach and kiss the ossified corpse.
Sometimes both the girdle round the waist, and the cross-belt, which was often worn without a sword, were deeply fringed, the two fringes falling one over the other, and covering the whole body from the chest to the knee.
He opened and closed the breech of his heavy double-barreled Express rifle to make sure that the sand clouds had not clogged its mechanism, and fingered the cartridges in his cross-belt. Then he waited.
"Well said, Shehan," observed the man who had so warmly reproved Will Burford, and who had formerly been servant to De Haldimar; "the captain's hand is as white and as soft as my cross-belt, or, what's saying a great deal more, as Miss Clara's herself, heaven bless her sweet countenance! and Lieutenant Valletort's nigger's couldn't well be much blacker nor this."
The adventurous O'Donovan thus describes an Afghan cavalryman whom he met unexpectedly, near Herat, in 1880: "He wore a dark-colored turban, one end of the cloth pulled up in front so as to resemble a small cockade. His uniform was blue-black, and he wore long boots. A broad black leather cross-belt, with two very large brass buckles, crossed his breast. He had sabre, pistols, and carbine."
'Twas the scarlet dragoon with his ashen face; and behind him, holding to his cross-belt, rode a little shape that tugged and wailed and raved. As I stand here, sir, 'twas the shape of a naked babe! Well, I won't go on to tell how my father dropped upon his knees in the water, or how my mother fainted off.
He aimed at the cross-belt of a man in the middle of the file, and pulled the trigger. He caught a glimpse of a man falling, but found himself reeling to the ground. A bullet had pierced his breast. The British passed on. A woman came from the house, and looked down into his face. "A drink of water, please marm," he said.
When the surgeons came to examine him for the bullet, they found that it had struck the broad brass plate of his cross-belt fairly in the middle, penetrating it and shattering his breast bone. But after torturing him vilely with the probe, they were about to give up the search in despair, when he told them he felt a pain in his back.
His cross-belt was set with gems and hung with little bells, tinkling as he moved and jarring with our song; and in this hot summer-tide it could not have been for his easement that he wore the tagged lappets, which fell, a hand-breadth deep, from his shoulders over the sleeves of his velvet tunic.
There is always a good deal of ornamentation about his dress, which otherwise nearly resembles that of the inferior royal attendants, consisting of a long fringed gown or robe, a girdle fringed or plain, a cross-belt generally fringed, and the scarf already described. His head and feet are generally bare, though sometimes the latter are protected by sandals.
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