“Look here, sergeant,” said a fine broad-shouldered young fellow, whose face was like a sweep’s with powder and dust, and whose clothes were bespattered with what Tennyson delicately calls “drops of onset,” as he showed his bayonet twisted like a corkscrew, with the point bent over into a hook.
“Why, what have you been using it for, Sullivan?” asked the sergeant, taking it into his hand.
“Only prodding Johnnies, and not above three of them. It wouldn’t go into the last, and I had to polish him off with the butt end. Might have smashed the stock, for their heads is uncommon hard.”
“It’s a deal too bad,” said the sergeant. “I’ll show it to the captain, and he will report it. Take Brown’s rifle and bayonet, he will never want it again, poor fellow.”
And indeed poor Brown was lying at the foot of the parapet with a spear completely through his body, his first and last battle ended. The spears and swords of the savages did not break or bend, or lose their edge over the first bone they touched, like the weapons of their civilised opponents.
Fitzgerald came up, and the sergeant showed him the twisted bayonet. He was not easily put out, but the sight was too much even for his placid temper.
“Keep it, sergeant, keep it. We will see if we cannot get it stuck up in Saint James’s Park with the trophies of captured guns, that the British public may see the weapons soldiers are sent out to fight with. The man who is responsible for this, and the fellow who forged it, ought to be shot.”
“Forged is a good word,” said Major Elmfoot. “To pass off stuff like that for good steel is rank forgery, and a worse crime than making bad money, for here men’s lives are sacrificed by it.”
“I wish we had some of ’em here!” murmured one of the men.
“Aye, and the triangles rigged up,” said another, “I should like to lay on the first dozen myself.”