“Sit down, won’t you?” said Sandiland. “There’s a box kicking about somewhere. This is Jameson.”
“Glad to know you.” Henry made a movement as if to shake hands; thought better of it; found the box Sandiland indicated; and sat down with that peculiar straddle which denotes a horseman the world over.
There was the usual awkward Anglo-Saxon silence during which men try to sum up fresh acquaintances. To the newcomer, his two hosts seemed two very ordinary British officers; they looked terribly tired, he thought, but their controlled features gave no hint of any other emotion. (For it is only to tried friends that men in battle voice the secret fears of true courage.)
“Have a drink?” asked Sandiland.
“Thanks, no.” The man extracted a small looped bag from one pocket, a packet of cigarette papers from the other; flicked off a thin leaf of paper, moistened it at his lips. Then, holding the paper between fingers and thumb of his right hand, he opened the bag with his left; poured a little heap of tobacco onto the paper, began to roll a cigarette.
“You’re a Canadian, aren’t you?” asked the battery-commander.
“Yes, sir. I’m a Canadian.”
“Been out long?”
“No, sir. About three months. I’ve been with the Ammunition Column most of that time.”
The newcomer spoke slowly, not nasally but with a curious deliberate drawl—a drawl somehow reminiscent to Peter Jameson of five men sitting round a poker-table under the awning of a zinc-decked ship in the Caribbean. One of those five men had drawled his words with just that identical deliberation—and would have been very insulted if he had been referred to as a “Canadian.”