Bertram dressed, feeling weak, ill and unhappy. . . .
“Am I coming in, sah, thank you?” said a well-known voice at the doorless doorway of the hut.
“Hope so,” replied Bertram, “if that’s tea you’ve got.”
It was. In a large enamel “tumbler” was a pint of glorious hot tea, strong, sweet and scalding.
“Useful bird, that,” observed Hall, after declining to share the tea, as he was having breakfast at four o’clock over in the Mess. “I s’pose you hadn’t ordered tea at three forty-five, had you?”
Bertram admitted that he had not, and concealed the horrid doubt that arose in his mind—born of memories of Sergeant Jones’s tea at Kilindini—as to whether he was not drinking, under Hall’s very nose, the tea that should have graced Hall’s breakfast, due to be on the table in the Mess at that moment. . . .
If Captain Hall found his tea unduly dilute he did not mention the fact when Bertram came over to the Mess banda, and sat yawning and watching him—the man who could nonchalantly sit and shovel horrid-looking porridge into his mouth at four a.m., and talk idly on indifferent subjects, a few minutes before setting out to make a march in the darkness to an attack at dawn. . . .
Ill and miserable as he felt, Bertram forgot everything in the thrilling interest of watching the assembly and departure of the little force. Out of the black darkness little detachments appeared, sometimes silhouetted against the red background of cooking fires, and marched along the main thoroughfare of the Camp to the place of assembly at the quarter-guard. Punctual to the minute, the column was ready to march off, as Captain Hall strolled up, apparently as unconcerned as if he were in some boring peace manœuvres, or about to ride to a meet, instead of to make a cross-country night march, by compass, through an African jungle-swamp to an attack at dawn, with the responsibility of the lives of a couple of hundred men upon his shoulders, as well as that of making a successful move on the chess-board of the campaign. . . .
At the head of the column were a hundred Sepoys of the Hundred and Ninety-Eighth, under Stanner. In the light of the candle-lantern which he had brought from the banda, Bertram scrutinised their faces. They were Mussulmans, and looked determined, hardy men and fine soldiers. Some few looked happily excited, some ferocious, but the prevailing expression was one of weary depression and patient misery. Very many looked ill, and here and there he saw a sullen and resentful face. On the whole, he gathered the impression of a force that would march where it was led and would fight bravely, venting on the foe its anger and resentment at his being the cause of their sojourning in a stinking swamp to rot of malaria and dysentery.
How was Stanner feeling, Bertram wondered. He was evidently feeling extremely nervous, and made no secret of it when Bertram approached and addressed him. He was anything but afraid, but he was highly excited. His teeth chattered as he spoke, and his hand shook when he lit a cigarette.