“This is no time or place for wrestling and horse-play,” Raymond admonished them.
“Oh, no, sir,” another replied, “that little fool drummer stopped here as he came in the fort, and we put him out.”
“Half frozen, I dare say. I see no fun in that,” responded Raymond. Then because the night was long and monotonous, and the reconnaissance unfruitful, and the fire genial, as he stood before it, and subversive of unbending—“What was the joke?” he demanded, feeling that a flavor of joviality might season the arid and tasteless interval of time.
The men hesitated, looking doubtfully from one to the other. But Raymond was a favorite among them, and his query could not be disregarded. In view of their sentiment toward him they did not seek a subterfuge or to baffle his curiosity.
“’Twon’t be like reporting on the gossoon, Ensign?” demanded the Irishman, anxiously, and with the negative reply he burst into a spirited detail of the drum-beating episode and the freakish drum-sticks.
“We were not goin’ to put up with the loikes av that, Ensign, av course,” he concluded. “As soon as we cud lay hands on the slippery little baste, we doubled up the long legs av him an’ flung him out into a snow-drift.”
Raymond smiled indulgently as he stood before the fire, looking down thoughtfully into the bed of coals, glistening to a white heat under the flaming logs. Then he turned away.
“I think I’ll see Peters, Sergeant. If he is as bad as he was, he must be sent to the hospital.” Thus he disappeared into the inner room.
The group of soldiers resumed their places on the settle and on the hearth before the flaming fire. By slow degrees the long night wore away. Now and again the fire was replenished, but as the hours passed it was suffered to burn low, for the weather had moderated. The clouds thinned and fell apart, and when the relief went out there were stars in a chill glitter in a clear dark sky. The wind was astir; it was blowing from the south. Again and again a commotion within the forest verges told of dislodged drifts from the branches of the trees. The thaw set in before dawn, and when the sun appeared in a gorgeous emblazonment of deep red, and purplish pink, and roseate saffron on the opaline sky, its light suffused a world all adrip with moisture, and the slopes of the neighboring mountains, darkly purple, were half veiled in shimmering mists, that reached from creek and valley to the zenith and hung in the air in motionless suspension. The Keowee River was of a dull, rippled slate-color, till a sudden shaft of light struck out a steely gleam as if a blade had been suddenly unsheathed. The bugle’s stirring acclaim of the reveille rang out to far distant coverts of the mountain, where the deer, coming down to drink, paused to listen, and the marauding wolf, and catamount, and panther, cogeners of the night, slunk to their caverns and dens, as if warned by the voice of the morn to vex no more for a season the peace of harmless wildlings. The sun-rise gun smote the air with all its dull echoes booming after. The flag rose buoyantly to the tip of the staff. The Indian town of Old Keowee, on the opposite bank of the river, was all astir, and now and again the sonorous note of the conch-shell, a detail of the matutinal savage worship, blended oddly with the martial resonance of the British drums beating for roll-call as the garrison of Fort Prince George lined up in front of the barracks.