It was as much climbing as marching, and, as Bill Gedge said, “all agin the collar;” but the men did not seem to mind, as they mounted higher and higher in the expectation of finding that the next turn of the zigzag was the top of the pass.
“Here, I say,” cried the owner of the just-mentioned name, a thin, wiry-looking fellow, whom so far drill and six months in the North-west Territory of Her Majesty’s Indian dominions had not made muscular-looking; though, for the matter of that, he did not differ much from his companions, who in appearance were of the thorough East-end Cockney type—that rather degenerate class of lads who look fifteen or sixteen at most when twenty. Stamina seemed to be wanting, chests looked narrow, and their tunics covered gaunt and angular bodies, while their spiked white helmets, though they fitted their heads, had rather an extinguisher-like effect over the thin, hollow-cheeked, beardless faces.
Defects, all these, that would naturally die out; but at the time now under consideration any newspaper writer would have been justified in calling them a regiment of boys.
But, boy-like, it did not trouble them, for, apparently as fresh as when they had started hours before, they seemed to be revelling in the wonderful air of the mountain region, and to be as full of antics as a party of schoolfellows out for a day. Songs had been sung, each with a roaring chorus; tricks had been surreptitiously played on the “pass it on” principle—a lad in the rear tilting the helmet of the file in front over his eyes, or giving him a sounding spank on the shoulder with the above admonition, when it was taken with a grin and passed on right away to the foremost rank; while the commissioned officers seemed to be peculiarly blind and deaf so long as their lads marched well, and there was no falling-out of done-up fellows waiting for the ambulance to overtake them for the rest of the march.
“Here, I say,” cried Private Gedge, “I ain’t a-going to drop no coppers in no blessed hats when that there band comes round. They don’t ’arf play.”
“Don’t keep on,” said the file on his left.
“Play? Yah! Why, we might jest as well have a dozen of them tom-tomming niggers in front saying ‘Shallabala’ as they taps the skins with their brown fingers.”
“You are a chap, Bill,” said another. “Talk about yer Syety for Cruelty to Hanimals! Why, yer orter be fined. It’s all I can do to keep wind enough to climb up here, let alone having to blow a brass traction-engine, or even a fife.”
“Gahn! They’re used to it. They don’t half play. Pass the word on for ‘Brish Grannydiers.’”
Bang—bang—bang—bang! Four distinct beats of the big drum, which were taken up by the echoes and repeated till they died away in the distance, in company with volleys of notes in a spirited crash from the brass instruments far in front, as the band struck up a rattling march, whose effect was to make breasts swell, heads perk up, and the lads pull themselves together and march on, many of them beginning to hum the familiar melody which had brightened many a long, up-country tramp.