“I am, sir,” replied Bertram.
“Then what’s all this infernal row about?” replied Captain Angus.
Bertram felt that he understood exactly how children feel when, unjustly treated, they cannot refrain from tears. It was too bad. He had stood in this smiting sun for over two hours awaiting the promised trucks—and now he was accused of making an infernal row because he had mentioned that they had not turned up! If the man had told him where they were, surely he and his three hundred men could have gone and got them long ago.
“By the way,” continued Captain Angus, “I’d better give you your route—for when you do get away—and you mustn’t sit here all day like this, y’know. You must ginger ’em up a bit” (more formula this) “or you’ll all take root. Well, look here, you go up the hill and keep straight on to where a railway-bridge crosses the road. Turn to the left before you go under the bridge, and keep along the railway line till you see some tents on the left again. Strike inland towards these, and you’ll find your way all right. Take what empty tents you want, but don’t spread yourself too much—though there’s only some details there now. You’ll be in command of that camp for the present. . . . Better not bung off to the Club either—you may be wanted in a hurry. . . . I’ll see if those trucks are on the way as I go up. Don’t hop off till you’ve shifted all your stuff. . . So long! . . .” and the Military Landing Officer bustled off to where at the Dock gates a motor-car awaited him. . . .
Before long, Bertram found that he must either sit down or fall down, so terrific was the stifling heat, so heavy had his accoutrements become, and so faint, empty and giddy did he feel.
Through the open door of a corrugated-iron shed he could see a huge, burly, red-faced European, sitting at a little rough table in a big bare room. In this barn-like place was nothing else but a telephone-box and a chair. Could he go in and sit on it? That dark and shady interior looked like a glimpse of heaven from this hell of crashing glare and gasping heat. . . . Perhaps confidential military communications were made through that telephone though, and the big man, arrayed in a singlet and white trousers, was there for the very purpose of receiving them secretly and of preventing the intrusion of any stranger? Anyhow—it would be a minute’s blessed escape from the blinding inferno, merely to go inside and ask the man if he could sit down while he awaited the trucks. He could place the chair in a position from which he could see his men. . . . He entered the hut, and the large man raised a clean-shaven crimson face, ornamented with a pair of piercing blue eyes, and stared hard at him as he folded a pinkish newspaper and said nothing at all, rather disconcertingly.
“May I come in and sit down for a bit, please?” said Bertram. “I think I’ve got a touch of the sun.”
“Put your wacant faice in that wacant chair,” was the prompt reply.
“Thanks—may I put it where I can see my men?” said Bertram.
“Putt it where you can cock yer feet on this ’ere table an’ lean back agin that pertition, more sense,” replied the large red man, scratching his large red head. “You don’ want to see yore men, you don’t,” he added. “They’re a ’orrid sight. . . . All natives is. . . . You putt it where you kin get a good voo o’ me. . . . Shed a few paounds o’ the hup’olstery and maike yerself atome. . . . Wisht I got somethink to orfer yer—but I ain’t. . . . Can’t be ’osspitable on a basin o’ water wot’s bin washed in—can yer?”