“Bejazus! so-it-is!”
“Come an' see Path-rick—Kitchener's cowboy!—by-the-holy-sufferin'-jazus!”
I found an old curio-shop down near the docks, and here I used to rummage among the gilded Siamese idols, and the painted African gods and drums. I discovered some odd parts of A Thousand-and-One Arabian Nights, which I bought for a penny or two, and took back to my barrack-room to read. By this means I forgot the gray square, and the gray line of the barracks outside, and the bare boards and yellow-washed walls within.
I used to practise “slipping” the guard at the guard-room gate. This form of amusement became quite exciting, and I was never caught at it.
Next I got a very old and worn copy of the Koran.
By this time I was a full-blown sergeant. I made a mistake in walking into the sergeants' mess with the Koran under my arm. It was difficult to explain what sort of book it was. One day the regimental sergeant-major said—
“You know, Hargrave, I can't make you out.”
“No, sir?”
“No;—you're not a soldier, you never will be—you act the part pretty well. But you don't take things seriously enough.”
We were often out on the Clare Mountains for field-days with the stretcher-squads. Coming back one day, I spotted two herons wading among some yellow-ochre sedges in a swampy field. I determined there and then to come back and stalk them. The following Saturday I set out with a fellow we called “Cherry Blossom,” because he never cleaned his boots. I took a pair of field-glasses, and “Cherry” had a bag of pastries, which we bought on the way. We stalked those herons for hours and hours. We crept through the reeds, hid behind trees, and crawled into bushes, but the herons were better scouts. We only got about fifty yards up to one. For all that, it was like my old scout life—and we had had a break from the gray walls and the everlasting saluting of officers.