“Yah! Gee up! Gee! Who wouldn’t be a sergeant? Bless his heart! I love him ’most as much as my mother dear—my mother dear—my gee-yentle mother deear.”
He sang the last words, but in a suppressed voice, to the great amusement of his fellows.
“Oh, I say, I wish I warn’t a swaddy,” he whispered.
“Why?” asked the lad on his left.
“So as to give old Gee one on the nose, and then have it out with him. I’d make him warm. It’s this sort o’ thing as makes me hate it all. The orficers don’t mind us having a bit of a lark to make the march go light. They takes no notice so long as we’re ready for ’tention and ’ll fight. It’s on’y chaps like Tommy Gee as has got his stripes that comes down upon you. Why, I was singing and doing that plantation song on’y yesterday, and Mr Bracy and Cap’en Roberts come along, and they both laughed. Bet sixpence the Colonel would have looked t’other way.—Oh, I say, ain’t I hungry! Is it much farther?”
“I dunno,” said another; “but ain’t the wind cold up here?”
“Band’s done again,” said Gedge. “That was a short un. I s’pose if I was to cry ‘Hongcore’ old Gee ’d be down upon me again.”
Ten minutes later the men had something more substantial to think about than music, for the shelf-like track came to an end in a great natural amphitheatre, whose walls were dwarfed mountains streaked with rifts and ravines which glistened white and sparkling as they scored the green grassy slopes, while the floor of the great hollow was a beautiful mead through which a fairly rapid torrent ran.
The halt was called upon a tolerably smooth level, arms were piled, and with the celerity displayed in a regiment on the march, the camp kitchens were formed, the smoke of fires rose, and videttes being thrown out after the fashion observed in an enemy’s country, the men were free for a couple of hours’ halt for rest and refreshment, to their great delight.
Pending the efforts of the regimental and camp follower cooks, some of the men began to roam about within bounds; and the group to which Private Gedge was joined made for one of the little ravines which glistened white in the sunshine, and the joker of the company soon made his voice heard.