And so it was. Although at first the cook protested that the hour being seven and dinner due at seven-thirty, there was not time for the just and proper cooking of a big plum-pudding. But, “To hell with that for a Tale,” said the Major, and waved pudding and cook away, with instructions to serve the pudding steaming hot, in half an hour, with a blaze of brandy round it, a sprig of holly stuck in it, and a bunch of mistletoe hung above it.
“And write ‘God Bless Our Home’ on the banda wall,” he added, as a happy after-thought. The cook grinned. He was a Goanese, and a good Christian cheat and liar.
The Bristol Bar settled down again to talk of Home, hunting, theatres, clubs, bars, sport, hotels, and everything else—except religion, women and war. . . .
“Heard about the new lad, Major?” asked Forbes. “Real fuzzy-wuzzy dervish Soudanese. Lord knows how he comes to be in these parts. Smelt war like a camel smells water, I suppose. . . . Got confused ideas about medals though. . . . Tell the tale, Wavell.”
“Why—old Isa ibn Yakub, my Sergeant-Major—you know Isa, six-feet-six and nine medals, face like black satin”—began Wavell, “brought me a stout lad—with grey hair—who looked like his twin brother. Wanted to join my Arab Company. He’d come from Berbera to Mombasa in a dhow, and then strolled down here through the jungle. . . . Conversation ran somewhat thus:
“‘You want to enlist in my Arab Company, do you? Why?’
“‘I want to fight.’
“‘Against the Germanis?’
“‘Anybody.’