CONCERNING
THE
VALUE OF SLEEP.
Over the mantel in Major Pollard's smoking-room, in a heavy, elaborately carved frame, there hangs a colored photogravure of De Neuville's "Une Pièce en Danger," that terrible group—outlined against a gray background of battle-haze—of rearing, plunging horses, and of fiercely fighting German cavalrymen and French gunners, surging in desperate struggle around a limbered gun. Many a time I've sat and looked up at it, idly wondering whether the troop of Cuirassiers, dimly visible in the drifting smoke at the right, would come rushing into the rumpus in time to save the battered handful of artillerymen and the piece to which they so grimly and absurdly cling. But all this is neither here nor there: for the picture tells its own story—while the story I have in mind to tell is quite another one.
It's not a very thrilling story. In fact, I doubt if it will have much interest for any one outside the regiment; but it will please Pollard to see it in cold, black type, and I'm indebted to him for so many comfortable hours, passed in the fragrant atmosphere of that same smoking-room of his, that I gladly take this opportunity to even up in the matter of obligations.
It so happens that these are times of peace, and—though there are a few of us who childishly consider that the very peacefulness of the times affords a most excellent opportunity to prepare for war—the tranquillity of everything bids fair to continue undisturbed. But even in quiet days something in the blood of the Anglo-Saxon craves rivalry and contention, and so from year to year we of the volunteers get together and shoot—projecting much lead at remote bullseyes, in order to find out who are the most disgracefully erratic marksmen.
Now, in these days the soldier who cannot shoot—however pleasing to the eye he may be—is of no earthly sort of use. Pollard can shoot. On battalion drill he sometimes may find himself at a loss for just the proper command; and once, in earlier days, I heard him direct his astonished company to execute "Right forward, fours left!"—but there is no denying that he can shoot.
To the scroll-work on the bottom of the great carved frame enclosing the picture of which I have spoken, there is fastened a bevelled, gilded panel, very modestly lettered in black, "LAST SHOT, 1890:" and this ideally simple inscription commemorates a shot which—if not "heard 'round the world"—has not yet ceased to be remembered whenever, in the company-rooms of the Third, men drift into rifle-talk.
Pollard was not always a major. It was only last October, when, in the nature of things, leaves were falling freely, that two pairs of bright, golden ones found a resting-place upon his broad shoulders. Back in '90, he was captain of "M" Company; and one night, early in September of that year, he found himself badly out of sorts at the news that one of the best men on his company rifle-team had slipped, fallen, and gone into temporary retirement with a broken wrist.