‘If you can manage to hack a slice of that pork off, Sergeant!’ said Volnay, ‘I’m beastly hungry.’
‘Done, I think, to a turn,’ said Polson. ‘Who’s got anything that will cut?’
‘I’m tould, sir,’ said a voice out of the darkness, with a rich oily brogue in it, ‘that there’s hours of difference between here and Limerick. Won’t it be Christmas morning in old Ireland, sir? And will the bells be ringing?’
‘Ye’re out in your reckonin’,’ said another voice amid the shadows. ‘It’s exactly the other way. Your folks is going to bed in Limerick. The sun has a knack of risin’ in the east, my lad, and we’re far east of Ireland, or Aberdeen for that matter. I’m not mindin’ the exact particulars, but it’s a matter of some two hours, I’m thinking. It’s deep midnight here, and an hour or so beyond it, and they’ll be over their punchbowls, yonner. That’s so, sir, I’m believin’?’
‘I don’t know, upon my word,’ said Volnay. ‘You’re out of my depth, my lad. But it’s a bit of a sin to talk about punch-bowls, isn’t it, on a night like this, when there isn’t a hot drink within a hundred miles? Sergeant, this pork is like manna in the wilderness. Look me up before you report yourself to Major de Blacquaire, will you? I’m responsible for the fire, you understand. It was my duty to retire the whole crowd of you under arrest, I know, but there isn’t a lot of fun going for you beggars here, is there? Goodnight, Sergeant, and don’t forget the hour in the morning.’
‘Good-night, sir.’ ‘God go with you, sir.’ ‘A merry Christmas and a loight harrut to you, sir, for many a year.’
‘That’s your man, nah, Sergeant,’ said one man out of the shadow in a tone that was learned in Rotherham, or very near it. ‘Ah like Captain Volnay as mooch as ah like anybody. He’s got a kind of a way with him an’ he sits dahn with the like of huz, and he talks to us as if we was men in place o’ bein’ cattle, which is the way with most on ‘em. Here’s good luck to Captain Volnay, an’ if ah’d got a glass o’ that steamin’ poonch they’n got in Aberdeen, ode bird, ah’d scald my throat with a relish.’
They were all full of roast pork, or of pork more or less roasted, and the scent of the sacrifice was yet in the air, and their war-bitten souls were cheered and warmed, if ever so little.
‘Yis,’ said one lad, ‘if half the quality knowed!’
‘Hallo!’ said Polson, turning in the fragrant dark. ‘How far from Bilston were you born?’