“Rum ration all right?” asked the Major. “How do you know the jars aren’t full of water?”
“P’raps he’d better select one at random as a sample and bring it over here, Major,” suggested Macke. And it was so. . . .
Another officer drifted in and was introduced to Bertram as Lieutenant Halke of the Coolie Corps, in charge of the Kavirondo, Wakamba, and Monumwezi labourers and porters attached to the Butindi garrison.
He was an interesting man, a big, burly planter, who had been in the colony for twenty years. “I want your birds to dig another trench to-morrow, Halke,” said the Major. “Down by the water-picket.”
“Very good, sir,” replied Halke. “I’m glad that convoy rolled up safely to-day. Their posho [167] was running rather low . . .” and the conversation became technical.
Bertram felt distinctly better for his rum and milk. His weariness fell from him like a garment, and life took on brighter hues. He was not a wretched, weary lad, caught up in the maelstrom of war and flung from pleasant city streets into deadly primeval jungles, where lurked Death in the form of bacillus, savage beast, and more savage and more beastly Man. Not at all. He was one of a band of Britain’s soldiers in an outpost of Empire on her far-flung battle-line. . . . One of a group of cheery comrades, laughing and jesting in the face of danger and discomfort. . . . He had Answered His Country’s Call, and was of the great freemasonry of arms, sword on thigh, marching, marching. . . . Camp-fire and bivouac. . . . The Long Trail. . . . Beyond the Ranges. . . . Men who have Done Things. . . . A sun-burnt, weather-beaten man from the Back of Beyond. . . . Strong, silent man with a Square Jaw. . . . Romance. . . . Adventure. . . . Life. He drank some more of his rum and felt very happy. He nodded, drooped, snored—and nearly fell off his stool. Wavell smiled as he jerked upright again, and tried to look as though he had never slept in his life.
“So Pappa behaved nasty,” Gussie Augustus Gus was saying to a deeply interested audience. “He’d just been turned down himself by a gay and wealthy widowette whom he’d marked down for his Number 2. When I said, ‘Pappa, I’m going to be married on Monday, please,’ he spake pompous platitudes, finishing up with: ‘A young man married is a young man marred.’ . . . ‘Yes, Pappa,’ says I thoughtlessly, ‘and an old man jilted is an old man jarred.’ . . . Caused quite a coolness. So I went to sea.” Augustus sighed and drank—and then almost choked with violent spluttering and coughing.
“That blasted Eustace!” he said, as he suddenly and vehemently expelled something.
“Did you marry her?” asked Vereker, showing no sympathy in the matter of the unexpected recovery of the body of Eustace.
“No,” said Augustus. “Pappa did.” . . .