“What’s the use,” one of them asked, “of pullin’ a long face over what you can’t change? Here we are, boys, to kill or be killed. My creed is, ‘Take things as they come, and be jolly!’ It won’t mend matters to think about wives and child’n.”
“Won’t it?” cried Armstrong, looking up with a bright expression from a sheet of paper on which he had just been writing. “Here am I writin’ home to my wife—in a hurry too, for I’ve only just heard that word has been passed, the mail for England goes to-day. I’m warned for guard to-night, too; an’ if the night takes after the day we’re in for a chance o’ suffocation, to say nothing o’ insects—as you all know. Now, won’t it mend matters that I’ve got a dear girl over the sea to think about, and to say ‘God bless her, body and soul?’”
“No doubt,” retorted the take-things-as-they-come-and-be-jolly man, “but—but—”
“But,” cried Hall, coming promptly to his rescue, “have not the Soudanese got wives an’ children as well as us?”
“I daresay they have—some of ’em.”
“Well, does the thought of your respective wives an’ children prevent your shooting or sticking each other when you get the chance?”
“Of course it don’t!” returned Armstrong, with a laugh as he resumed his pencil. “What would be the use o’ comin’ here if we didn’t do that? But I haven’t time to argue with you just now, Hall. All I know is that it’s my duty to write to my wife, an’ I won’t let the chance slip when I’ve got it.”
“Bah!” exclaimed the cynic, relighting his pipe, which in the heat of debate he had allowed to go out.
Several of the other men, having been reminded of the mail by the conversation, also betook themselves to pen and pencil, though their hands were more familiar with rifle and bayonet. Among these was Miles Milton. Mindful of his recent thoughts, and re-impressed with the word Duty, which his friend had just emphasised, he sat down and wrote a distinctly self-condemnatory letter home. There was not a word of excuse, explanation, or palliation in it from beginning to end. In short, it expressed one idea throughout, and that was—Guilty! and of course this was followed by his asking forgiveness. He had forgiveness—though he knew it not—long before he asked it. His broken-hearted father and his ever-hopeful mother had forgiven him in their hearts long before—even before they received that treasured fragment from Portsmouth, which began and ended with:
“Dearest Mother, I am sorry—”