‘Is that you?’ said Paddy. ‘I beg yer pardon, and be damned to you. And now will ye just listen? D’ye hear the death cry?’
Everybody heard the death cry, filling the air from barely a third of a mile away: the voice of pork at the last agony.
‘The Lord alone knows where it’s come from, but that Mussulman crush down below has got hold of a pig. The devil a ration has been served to them for a month past, and they ought to know what hunger means be this time. But bhoys,’ the speaker went on, with a whispered emphasis, ‘we’re Christian men, I hope, and we can’t dream of allowing those poor infidels to peril their immortal salvation by the eating of strange food. It’s eternal loss to the soul of a Mussulman that puts a knife and fork into a griskin. And I’m proposin’ a work of Christian charity. Have ye got the matayrials for a fire handy?’
One of the men sleepily bade him be damned, and turned over in the mud in a scrap of ragged blanket; but all the rest at the bare suggestion of a meal were wide awake. ‘Sergeant, darlin’, just be giving me half-a-dozen men and we will make an exploitation, and be back in no time with a meal of meat that ought to be good enough for this particular mess from now till New Year’s Day. Is there any chance of a fire now?’
A member of the hungry, hard-bitten band owned a solitary lucifer; but was afraid that the damp had deprived it of all virtue.
‘Hurry up, boys,’ said one. ‘If once those blessed Bazouks get a fork into piggy, we shall have to fight for a share of him.’
‘We’ve got the makings of a fire here somewhere,’ said the man with the solitary lucifer. ‘But how are we to start it? This brushwood stuff is all wet, and it won’t catch.’
But one man was there with a providential scrap of newspaper. There was a moon in the frosty sky, with tatters of windy cloud about it, which gave light enough to show the men each others’ faces dimly, and they all clustered in a rough ring, some kneeling, some standing, and the centre of the throng was the man with the match. Near him, second only in importance, was the man with the newspaper, and kneeling near was a third who stirred up the loose brushwood below the heaped fuel which had been gathered and hoarded for a month past for a Christmas fire.
‘Here’s a dry pebble,’ said one man, pressing solicitously forward, and proffering his midnight find to the man with the match. ‘Strike her on that, and for God’s sake hold your breath, boys.’
The human centre of interest, the man with the match, took the pebble and polished it to complete dryness on the lining of his overcoat. Then he struck the match, which emitted a faint phosphorescent glow, and went dark again.