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Thus went the days by, the weeks and the months; four days in the front line, the harassing journey to and from it, the monotonous sentry-go, the spy-hole on the plain, the mesmerism of the empty outlook and of the deserts of waiting; and after that, four days of rest-camp full of marches and parades and great cleansings of implements and of streets, with regulations of the strictest, anticipating all the different occasions for punishment, a thousand fatigues, each with as many harsh knocks, the litany of optimist phrases, abstruse and utopian, in the orders of the day, and a captain who chiefly concerned himself with the two hundred cartridges and the reserve rations.
The sandy spit of Neutral Ground at one side of which Tommy Atkins, fresh-faced, does his sentry-go in brick-red tunic and white pith-helmet, and at the other side of which swarthy Sancho Panza y Toro, in projecting cap and long blue coat, fondles a rifle in the bend of his arm, can readily be flooded; and the bare, sheer, lofty north front, with scores of cannon of the deadliest modern pattern lying in wait behind the irregular embrasures that grimly pit its surface, hardly invites attack.
He whistles or sings to himself until, at last, he hears the platoon sergeant waking the next relief by whacking the soles of their boots with his rifle butt. "Wake up 'ere! Come along, my lads! Your sentry-go!" Cave life had its alleviations, and chief among these was the pleasure of anticipating our week in reserve. We could look forward to this with certainty.
"Colonel, you'll permit me to present Alderman Brooker, one of our most energetic and valued townsmen, President of the Gas Committee, and an Assistant Borough Magistrate. One of Major Panizzi's Town Guardsmen. Was on sentry-go last night not far from here, and had a most extraordinary experience. Worth your hearing, if you can spare time to listen to my friend's account of it."
In all probability I should have continued my solitary sentry-go and my reverie until daybreak, had not my thoughts been sharply recalled to earth. On reaching my own doorway for the fifth or sixth time I had just turned, when I saw a black shadow on the road opposite the Maitlands' house. One glance was enough; it was the Motor Pirate again, and I began to count.
Just as my chum and I had entered the dug-out, and were preparing to make ourselves comfortable, as our turn for sentry-go would not be for two hours, the sergeant shoved his head in and shouted that we were wanted for a ration party. A ration party consists of fourteen men fewer sometimes, but fourteen if possible, as the proper full complement.
Now I been penned up from the sea by these farmers comin' 'ere, doin' swottin' sentry-go all round me. I tell yer, I'll cut up sour, if they pen me in, now I'm so near got away. I been with Avery. They call Avery a pirate. They said I was a pirate. It's 'anging if they ketch me. Do yer think I could get away to Lyme or some place, to get took into a ship?"
When Vogt went into the dormitory from the fresh, pure, night air he thought at first that he would choke in the atmosphere laden with stale tobacco-smoke and foul odours; but in the end he slept splendidly, despite his hard bed. At five o'clock he was again on sentry-go. It was still dark, but there was already movement in the kitchen and the stables.
"Got a chill on yer stummick on sentry-go in the fog an' rine las' night.... I'd give a 'ogs'ead to see the bloke who wrote in the bloomin' Reggilashuns 'nor must bloomin' sentries stand in their blasted sentry-boxes in good or even in moderate-weather' a doin' of it 'isself in 'is bloomin' 'moderate weather' with water a runnin' down 'is back, an' 'is feet froze into a puddle, an' the fog a chokin' of 'im, an' 'is blighted carbine feelin' like a yard o' bad ice an' then find the bloomin' winder above 'is bed been opened by some kind bloke an' 'is bed a blasted swamp... Yus you 'ave four o' rum 'ot and you'll feel like the bloomin' 'Ouse o' Lords.
The ground to be patrolled by the sentries is divided into three parts, each of which is entrusted to one man. Kennedy was one of the ten privates, and his first spell of sentry-go began at eleven o'clock. On this night there was no moon. It was as black as pitch. It is always unpleasant to be on sentry-go on such a night.
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