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Updated: May 1, 2025
If Polson had not to be taught how to ride, how to handle a sabre or a gun, or how to balance himself in the goose-step matters which he had taken the pains to master long ago there were still certain things to learn, and the button stick, and the flat and chain burnish, and the pots of chrome yellow, and blacking, and pipeclay, were just as strange to him as they would have been to any other raw recruit; so that he was teaching his business at one end and learning it at the other for a matter of some four or five days.
The dress was quite in keeping with the figure: in his hat, which was slightly peaked, was stuck a peacock's feather; over a waistcoat of hide, untanned and with the hair upon it, he wore a rough jerkin of russet hue; smallclothes of leather, which had probably once belonged to a soldier, but with which pipeclay did not seem to have come in contact for many a year, protected his lower man as far as the knee; his legs were cased in long stockings of blue worsted, and on his shoes he wore immense old-fashioned buckles.
"Curse pipeclay and red blanketing, and the life of a swaddy. The sea, the blue glorious sea's the place for a bold heart like you." I answered that I knew not enough of seamanship to take the place of an officer, and that I considered the condition of a common sailor as too base for one of my bringing up.
There was hail before it, too big as emu eggs, the boys said that lay feet deep in the old diggers' holes on Pipeclay for days afterwards weeks some said.
Few of the men were tall, but they were burly, square-set fellows, broad of shoulder, deep of chest, and smart of limb. They wore a French-like blue cap, with a red band round it, and a blue tunic, with loose blue trousers stuffed into boots that reached the knee. Their knapsacks were hairy, and their belts black, the latter suggesting deliverance from that absurdity of old, pipeclay.
Pipeclay in all its varieties came on the tapis; the last regulation cap, the new button, the promotions, the general orders, the colonel and the colonel's wife, stoppages, and the mess fund were all well and ably discussed; and strange enough, while the conversation took this wide range, not a chance allusion, not one stray hint ever wandered to the brave fellows who were covering the army with glory in the Peninsula, nor one souvenir of him that, was even then enjoying a fame as a leader second to none in Europe.
The strata cut through varied considerably, in part consisting of ironstone mixed with a white kind of marl or pipeclay, for eight feet, then sandstone of a reddish colour and in a state of decomposition, with a darker kind of marl, in which were small bits of mica, for a depth of sixteen feet, the remaining portion of two or three being a sandy mud, apparently of the consistency of clay and of a light grey colour.
As for the other things, I don't suppose we shall ever have our boots cleaned; we have no white belts to pipeclay, for they are made of buff leather; and we shall not have to pitch tents, for we don't take them with us, but shall, when necessary, sleep in the open air." Tim was too surprised to speak, for a time.
Take off your hat when he passes." At a slow and stately pace the carriage of the kind-hearted monarch of Great Britain approached. First came the body of Life Guards, their belts well whitened with pipeclay, and their heads plastered with pomatum and powder; and then followed the royal carriage, as fine as gold and paint and varnish could make it.
"That's the same with my hurt, sir; but one can't expect what we got to get well directly. Wish we'd got something to do, if it was only to clean one's buckles and lay on a bit of pipeclay. Is my face dirty, sir?" "Horribly, Pete. Is mine?" Pete showed his teeth in a broad grin. "Well, it would be all the better for a wash, sir, before you went in to mess. We might have a bit of a sluice.
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