The want of cartridges was what the troops felt most direly. They growled savagely and grumbled at the mismanagement that kept back these indispensable supplies.
Only here and there the energetic action of a few shrewd officers did something to mend the mischief.
Thus the Royal Picts benefited by the astute promptitude of long-headed Sergeant Hyde. He was acting as quartermaster, and as such had been left behind in camp, although sorely against his will, when the rest of the regiment went out to fight. But he had heard the long, well-sustained roll of musketry-fire, and it satisfied one not new to war that a very close contest had begun.
"They'll soon fire away their cartridges at this rate," he said to himself. "If I could only get the ammunition-reserves up to them! I'll do it." And on his own responsibility he laid hands on all the beasts in camp: spare chargers, officers' ponies, and other animals, and quickly loaded them with the cartridge-boxes. Then, leading the cavalcade, he hurried to the front, asking as he went for the Royal Picts.
He found his regiment in the Sandbag Battery, and they received him, so soon as his errand was known, with a wild cheer.
"Excellently done!" cried Colonel Blythe. "You have a good head on your shoulders, Hyde: ammunition was the one thing we needed."
"Yes," shouted a brawny soldier, "we were just killed for want of cartridges."
"And want of food," grumbled another; "sorra bite nor sup since yesterday."
"Sergeant darling," said a third, "won't you sound the breakfast-bugle? Fighting on an empty stomach is but a poor pastime."
Thus, in the interval between two combats, but always under a galling and destructive fire, they joked and bandied words with a freedom that discipline would not have tolerated at any other time.