So Jock took me in hand that very evening after we reached camp, and began to teach me what he called “knapsack drill.”
It was very simple. I was put on top of the knapsack and Jock fixed the bayonet on his gun and commenced plunging about up and down, and high and low, as if in front of the enemy. But I set my nails firmly into the knapsack and nothing could shake me off.
“That’ll do fine for a beginning,” said Jock.
There were British soldiers in the entrenched camp before Bushire, when we landed there, and marched to it, and right hearty welcome they made us.
The camp was in the middle of a vast plain, on which grew here and there some clumps of palm trees, and here and there a ruin stood. To our left was the blue sea, with the far-off shipping. Some distance in front of us was the walled town itself, built upon a long spit of land, and washed nearly all round by the sea. Far away behind the town were the lofty mountains, their snowy heads rising-high into the azure sky.
“Poetry again!” said Warlock.
“A spice of poesy,” said Shireen grandly, “sometimes adds attraction to a scene. Don’t you think so, Cracker?”
“Well, Shireen, to tell you the truth I can’t say I understand it like. My mother used to say to me ‘Cracker,’ she said, ‘in your journey through this vale of tears, always make a better use of your teeth than your tongue.’”
“Very good,” said Warlock. “Your mother must have been a brick, Cracker.”
“A brick, Warlock. What a funny idea! No, no, my mother was a Bingley terrier. But go on, Shireen, when did the fur begin to fly?”