“We ought to be used to hot corners by this time,” said the grizzled corporal, in comment, “but it’s the deuce to go into ’em on empty stomachs. We’ve been on half-rations two days.”
“There’ll be the more to go round among them that’s left,” said the sergeant, grimly, and turned on his heel.
The Irishman, pulling his feet with difficulty out of the ooze into which they had settled, suddenly left his place and walked over to the corporal, lifting his hand in a sidelong, clumsy salute.
“Wud ye moind tellin me, sur, where I’m to sleep?” he asked, saluting again.
The corporal looked at his questioner, spat meditatively into the embers, then looked again, and answered, briefly:
“On the ground.”
Linsky cast a glance of pained bewilderment, first down at the mud into which he was again sinking, then across the fire into the black, wind-swept night.
“God forgive me for a fool,” he groaned aloud, “to lave a counthry where even the pigs have straw to drame on.”
“Where did you expect to sleep—in a balloon?” asked the corporal, with curt sarcasm. Then the look of utter hopelessness on the other’s ugly face prompted him to add, in a softer tone; “You must hunt up a tent-mate for yourself—make friends with some fellow who’ll take you in.”
“Sorra a wan’ll be friends wid me,” said the despondent recruit. “I’m waitin’ yet, the furst dacent wurrud from anny of ’em.”