He was very pleased with Jim's eulogiums on Captain Jolly, and forthwith decided that Jack must make the next trip with him.
So they had a very pleasant time in the banked-up tent, in spite of the dreariness of things outside. But all too soon it came to an end, and Jim had to go off to his own Spartan quarters, where the heartiness of his greeting almost made up for the lack of everything else.
He settled down into the rut of camp life again, but found it all very slow and dull and dirty.
There was little doing. It was as much as they could do simply to live.
The dull routine of the trenches went on. The batteries spat shot and shell at the town at intervals, and Russian shot and shell came singing back in reply, and sometimes did a little damage.
And at times the camps would be wakened by furious fusillades in the advanced French lines, when the Russians enlivened matters with a sortie. But these alarms were spared the English, on account of the bad ground in their front, which did not lend itself to such matters.
More than once, too, they all turned out en masse in the middle of the night--and always on the bitterest nights--to repel attacks in the rear which never came off.
And every day there went down to Balaclava the long slow procession of sick men, and to the cemetery another procession of those who had died in the night.
Jack duly got his leave and went away with Captain Jolly, and Jim busied himself, as well as the authorities would let him, in providing for the reception of the men and horses of the Light Brigade on the hill-side above Balaclava Bay.
A slow, dull time, wearing on body, mind, and spirit--and yet, not the worst time possible.