"I know," he cried. "Let's cut the letters orf our uniforms. They won't be able to tell w'ere we come from an' we can make up some yarn—say we found 'em—'ad our own togs pinched by the soldiers."
The others seized on the suggestion. To their alcoholised brains the plan seemed more than feasible; it was certain of success. Feverishly and clumsily they ripped the regimental letters from each other's uniforms and cast them into the fire. The identification labels, everything which could point to their connection with the army, followed. They stood, anonymous it seemed to them, in their stripped khaki.
"That's done wiv," said Sam, with a heavy sigh. "Let's 'ave some more beer."
Joyous now, their minds relieved of the fear of recapture, the trio refilled their tankards and their pipes. They settled themselves again.
"I say, mates," said Oswald, "ever 'eard the yarn of the bloke 'oo——?" He told the story and, ere the noisy laughter which greeted the end had died away, began another. He revealed himself as a fellow of rare social qualities. His repertory of anecdotes, many of them relating shady episodes of his own career, was inexhaustible. On his own confession he was a sharper or worse; the humour of his experiences the eternal humour of the sharp-witted clown and the dull policeman. He diversified his entertainment with comic songs rendered with more verve than elegance. Bill obliged with others of a sentimental nature. They drank beer and more beer. They bellowed out choruses whose rhythm was marked by the heavy beating of tankards upon the table and laughed and shouted as though they sat at a "free-and-easy" in the Old Kent Road. The fire blazed up the chimney, fed by chairs demolished one after another. Such merry men as they could not condescend to the fetching of fuel. The room was thick with tobacco-smoke. On the floor little lakes of beer communicated by a rivulet whose source was the spigot of the barrel. The three men gave themselves up to a roaring orgy. They forgot entirely the army which was marching away from them, the other army which approached.
At last, in an atmosphere heavy with debauch, they slumbered, three worthless soldiers of whom any army was well rid.
Sam was awakened from a muddled dream of a tenement near the Old Kent Road by a rough hand upon his shoulder and the sound of a peremptory voice.
"All-ri', Bill," he murmured, "revalley 'asn't sounded yet." Then he opened his eyes, tried to orientate himself in his surroundings. It was morning. He was in an unfamiliar room and the room was filled with unfamiliar men, dressed in a strange uniform. His shoulder was again roughly shaken. The voice, uttering words foreign to him, but whose meaning was not in doubt, spoke again. A strange stern face was thrust close to his. Sam got on his feet, still bewildered. Immediately he felt his arm firmly grasped. His companions were undergoing similar treatment. At the sight of them, the incidents of the previous night returned to his memory. Recapture? He was reassured by the foreign incomprehensible language about him. He would give himself up comfortable as a prisoner. His dangers were over.
Oswald was in the grasp of two stalwart captors, the frightened eyes in his cunning little face looking up wildly into their unemotional countenances. Bill, who had slid with his head under a chair in the stupor which followed their orgy, was less easy to awaken. The strange soldiers kicked him liberally, eliciting sleepy curses but scarce a movement.