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This gyard'll shtay lively till relieved." He himself was stripped to the waist; Learoyd on the next bedstead was dripping from the skinful of water which Ortheris, clad only in white trousers, had just sluiced over his shoulders; and a fourth private was muttering uneasily as he dozed open-mouthed in the glare of the great guard-lantern. The heat under the bricked archway was terrifying.
"I'll take Ernst Mallin along," he said at length. "This man Rainsford has no grounding whatever in any of the psychosciences. He may be able to impose on Ruth Ortheris, but not on Ernst Mallin. Not after I've talked to Mallin first." He thought some more. "We'll have to get these Fuzzies away from this man Holloway.
Perhaps his best-known characters are the privates Mulvaney, Ortheris, and Learoyd, whom we meet in such tales of mingled comedy and tragedy as With the Main Guard , On Greenhow Hill , The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney , The Courting of Dinah Shadd .
How Ortheris, a fox-terrier of a Cockney, ever came to be one of the trio, is a mystery which even to- day I cannot explain. 'There was always three av us, Mulvaney used to say. 'An' by the grace av God, so long as our service lasts, three av us they'll always be. 'Tis betther so.
Mulvaney came out of a revery he was lying down and flourished his heels in the air. "You're a man, Learoyd," said he, critically, "but you've only fought wid men, an' that's an ivry-day expayrience; but I've stud up to a ghost, an' that was not an ivry-day expayrience." "No?" said Ortheris, throwing a cork at him. "You git up an' address the 'ouse you an' yer expayriences.
DeSussa threwed hints how t' cold weather would soon be ower an' she was goin' to Munsooree Pahar an' we was goin' to Rawalpindi, an' she would niver see Rip any more onless somebody she knowed on would be kind tiv her. Soa I tells Mulvaney an' Ortheris all t' taale thro', beginnin' to end.
'Tie up your 'orse, shouted Ortheris, 'an' come on, Sir. We're all goin' 'home in this 'ere bloomin' boat. From the bridge-head to the Forest Officer's bungalow is but a step. The mess-man was there, and would see that a man held my horse. Did the Sahib require aught else a peg, or beer?
"Might 'a' know'd you'd 'a' got liquor out o' bloomin' desert, sir," said Ortheris, gracefully, to me. Then to the mess-man: "Easy with them there bottles. They're worth their weight in gold. Jock, ye long-armed beggar, get out o' that an' hike 'em down." Learoyd had the basket on the pontoon in an instant, and the Three Musketeers gathered round it with dry lips.
A shadow fell on the drawbridge, and Ortheris began to rise into the air, lifted by a huge hand upon his collar. "Onything but t' braass," said Learoyd, quietly, as he held the Londoner over the ditch. "Onything but t' braass, Orth'ris, ma son! Ah've got one rupee eight annas of ma own." He showed two coins, and replaced Ortheris on the drawbridge rail.
I suspicioned he'd go to the station wid the gurl's kit at the end av the first piece. 'Twas the kit that flusthered me, for I knew for a Capt'n to go trapesing about the impire wid the Lord knew what av a truso on his arrum was nefarious, an' wud be worse than easin' the flag, so far as the talk aftherwards wint. ''Old on, Mulvaney. Wot's truso? said Ortheris.
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