It may be well to explain that when troops get the word March at ease!—which is generally given directly they step off, when they are not drilling or manoeuvring, but simply on the route—they are allowed to carry their arms as they please, open the ranks, though without losing their places or straggling, smoke their pipes, and chat or sing if they like.
At the word of command—Attention! They close up, slope their arms properly, put away their pipes, and tramp on in perfect silence.
But marching at ease was such a singularly inappropriate expression for men who were dragging a heavy nuggar up a cataract under a blazing sun that there was a general laugh, and even Tarrant relaxed into a grin. A general laugh, I say, not a universal one, for Macintosh, who was plodding along behind Grady, preserved his gravity.
“I don’t say that silence is incumberous,” explained Corporal Adams, who, since he had got his stripes, had taken to using rather fine language, “but too much talking don’t go with hauling.”
“Ho, ho, ho!” chuckled Macintosh, and the corporal began to think he had said something funny. But no; Macintosh had trodden on an unusually sharp flint, and that presented Grady’s idea of what marching at ease was in a ridiculous form to his mind. So when the pang was over he was tickled.
“Eh, but Grady’s a poor daft creature to call this marching at ease; ho, ho!”
A particularly stiff bit came just now. The rope strained as if it would snap; the bows of the nuggar were buried in foam, and the men hauling were forced to take the corporal’s hint, and keep their breath for other purposes than conversation.
When they had got over the worst, however, the boat got jammed on a rock, and the work of getting her off devolved on the crew on board of her, unless she were so fast as to require the aid of the others, who for the present got a much-required rest.
“A set of duffers, those chaps,” said the sergeant in charge of the party, a young fellow named Barton, of good parentage, and Kavanagh’s particular friend off duty. “A regular Nile reis, with his crew of four natives, would never have stuck the nuggar there.”
“I wish we had them Canadian vogajaws, sergeant,” said Corporal Adams.