“Perhaps your captain had not your appreciation of wit,” replied Tom.
“Wit, indeed! You call your bad puns wit, do you?”
Next day the rest of the troops marched in from Trinkitat, and bivouacked outside the fort. They had made a fair start, and commenced the campaign now, and the novelty of eating their evening meal in the open, by the light of a bonfire, had a charm for some of the young ones. The officers’ mess of the First Blankshire was held round an oval trench. A coat thrown on the earth dug out of it served for a seat; the feet were placed in it, and the pewter plate with food on it was held on the knees. This is infinitely more comfortable than feeding in a cramped position on the ground.
Though they knew all about it before, it seemed strange to the inexperienced to lie down at night in the open, like animals, instead of going to bed, but some were so tired that, not being on duty, they rolled themselves up in the coats they had been sitting on, and courted a nap directly they had done feeding.
Those who did so, however, were presently aroused by a tremendous cheering, which made them jump up, and run to see what had happened. It was the arrival of the Sixty-fifth, who had been stopped on their return from India, and sent to Trinkitat instead of England. They had only landed that afternoon, and had marched on at once. It was not long, however, before the challenge of the sentries, and the snores of sleepers alone broke the silence of the little host, lying stretched in slumber under the faint light of the new moon. Their sleep was disturbed by showers of rain, which interfered with all but the very sound, and even these were fairly roused at last by a regular drencher, the water coming down tropical fashion, in bucketfuls.
“Halloa, Green!” said Strachan, to that young hero, whom he found standing in astonishment, drenched, but not dismayed. “Do you believe that it rains sometimes in the Soudan, now?”
“I do,” replied Green, solemnly. “Books talk nonsense.”
“I wish it was time to start,” said Edwards, joining them. “It seems so absurd to stand here saturated, with no possibility of resting oneself, when one might be getting on.”
“It is more than half-past four, and reveille is to sound at five. Let’s try and light the fire again; there’s a bit smouldering, in spite of the rain.”
This was Strachan’s suggestion, and voted a good one; and they had just succeeded in raising a blaze, when a bugle started the most romantic, melancholy, musical call in the whole category. I mean in itself, and not for its associations; and yet when one thinks how many thousands of brave men have been roused by it to go to death, it is not free from these. Number one only got about three notes start, when a second began, and presently the whole air was full of plaintive sound.