Penryhn picked up the mug which Sam had set upon the table, took a long pull at its amber contents, and then remarked, "Do you know, this American beer of yours is very good? In fact, I find myself coming to fancy it strongly, though I must admit that at first I didn't. It's much the same with Americans themselves: we Englishmen really don't care much about them until we learn to know them well, but when we do know them we become very fond of them. I found that to be so in the case of Carroll—Major Carroll, of your Eighteenth Regular Cavalry, who was with me on the campaign of which I am telling."
"Of our Eighteenth Cavalry?" said I, inquiringly. "Why, how came he in Egypt?"
"He was looking for sport, as I was," Captain Penryhn replied. "He was military attaché at Berlin, and had got leave for a few months. We both were volunteer aides-de-camp to Baker."
Here, noticing that the Englishman had got well towards the last inch of his cigar, I silently proffered my freshly filled case. He half drew out a weed, but pushed it back to its place, saying "I'm of a mind to try one of your pipes, if I may?"
"You certainly shall," said I. "Hi! Sam, bring the cobs." Penryhn took a pipe, filled and lighted it, and then remarked, "Oh, I say! I rather wondered why so many of you were smoking these things, but now I don't. Sweet, isn't it, eh?"
"Yes, we call a cobful of plug a comforting sort of smoke," said Van, "and it takes the entire crop of a fifty-acre cornfield to keep The Battery supplied with smoking utensils."
"Not really?" said our astonished guest.
"Possibly not quite," I put in; and then, in order to check Van in any further flights of imagination, I asked, "Didn't you have some difficulty, captain, in getting your expedition into shape? As I recall it, at this late day, Baker Pacha rather came to grief in his attempt at relieving Tokar."
"Difficulty?" said Penryhn. "Yes, we had an abundance of it. Baker had drawn together a mob of something over five thousand men. Did I say men? Sheep would be better—and black sheep, too; for the rabble we had with us, under the nickname of 'soldiers,' was made up for the most part of cowardly Egyptian fellahen, who had been driven into the ranks either through fear of the bastinado or else by the actual application of it. Great Wolseley! Never such a mob had masqueraded as an army since war was invented."
"How were you officered?" asked Stearns, tossing a match to Van, whose pipe had managed to go out.