In those days, when a Russian gunner felt aweary, and found a lack of interest in the crawling hours of darkness, he would let bang a gun from the Redoubt, simply pour passer le temps; and at this minute the skipping ‘zip’ of a shot, a splutter of earth, and then the sullen boom of the discharge came to give variation to the scene. The lucifer match, however, was the all-absorbing centre of interest just then, and the scratch on the pebble was a much more important sound than any bellow of cannon from the fort. The lucifer was barely equal to its duties, and half-a-dozen times it gave its feeble spark of phosphorescent light in vain; but at last it struck, and the blue and yellow sulphur bubbled and crackled into flame. The man with the newspaper was ready, and caught the fire. The wet twigs smoked pungently, and there was one heart-sinking moment when the last chance seemed to have vanished; but then the fire sparkled up merrily, and the blaze lit the earthen side of the trench and the silky-bearded, bronzed, unwashed faces, and the stalwart, tattered figures of the crowd, with a flickering changeful brightness.
‘That’s all right, boys,’ said the Honourable Patrick Erroll, Private of Dragoons. ‘And now, Sergeant darlin’, give me half-a-dozen rank and file, and, please God, well have a meal for Christmas morning.’
‘Now, I’m just as keen as any one of you,’ said Sergeant Jervase, ‘and just as hungry; but be very quiet about the business, Paddy, and don’t have a row with the Bashis, for the Lord’s sake.’
‘Trust me, Sergeant,’ said the Honourable Mr. Erroll, ‘and nurse the fire whilst we’re away.’
Out of the blank darkness of the night the flame and glow from the second parallel seemed to bite a hole; and as its brightness grew, it drew the attention of the gunners of the Malakoff, who banged at it sulkily from time to time. But the reckless contingent under Paddy’s leadership had already clambered to the open and were making a muddy way in the darkness towards the Turkish camp.
Down in the trench the fire grew to a rich and splendid glow, and one or two of the favoured of fortune, who owned pipes and tobacco, plucked bright embers from it, and, nestling under the shelter of the wall, sucked away at their comfort with simple animal noises of satisfaction.
‘I say, Bill,’ says one, ‘was you ever Hingry before you seen this Gawd-forsaken Crimea?’
‘Lor’ love yer,’ says the man questioned, ‘I was born hungry, and I’ve been hungry ever since. But if the Honourable Paddy finds that ‘og, and I get hold of a hind leg of him, I won’t complain before to-morrow midnight.’
The fire glowed with a richer and a richer light, and men of hospitable minds wiped their half-smoked clays on the inside crook of a coated elbow and passed on luxury and refreshment to less-favoured neighbours. It was a time for comradeship, if only for the fact that it was Christmas Eve, and coming fast towards Christmas morning. But the thought of the slain porker was in all men’s minds, and made them expansive and generous and reserved by turns. Boom! said the gun from the Redoubt, and the earth spluttered between the collar of Sergeant Polson’s jacket and his neck, and dribbled comfortlessly down his back, colder than any charity he had known of: lately-frozen earth, half thawed, with wet snow on the top of it, and a sulky boom behind to add a threat to its cold sting.
After long waiting, a voice in ecstatic laughter, and surely the voice of the Honourable Paddy, Shuffling footsteps in the dark, and the hungriest of the whole crowd in the trench climbing to peer into the blackness; a youth who has not yet finished growing, and who finds the irregularity of meals a cruel thing.