“So that,” concluded the Orderly-room Sergeant, “is what the old man’s got you in for. Did you make a good job of it?”
Benton’s pale, deeply set eyes began to glow with their peculiar baleful light.
“Did I?” he echoed mirthlessly. “Well, I should smile!... An’ I’ll make a better one still when I go back. I’ll bash that —— till he spits blood!”
He uttered the threat in an even, passionless, unraised voice, as if it were just the merest commonplace remark. A canteen-chant held its own with steady insistence:
Three—men—in-a-boat, inaboat,
Three—men—all-very-dry,
Three—men—ridin’-a-Nannygoat,
Go it you—! you’ve only one eye.
Dudley summarized briefly, in a tense undertone, the thing that Benton need not be, regarding him closely meanwhile with slightly anxious eyes. The bronzed, reckless face—naturally somber when in repose—wore a terribly ruthless expression just then.
“Oh, now, forget it, Ben,” was his half joking admonition. “What the d—l’s the use of you runnin’ amuck again an’ makin’ bad worse?... That won’t help matters one little bit ... an’ you know it.”
Ever and anon—above the roar of the Canteen, not unlike the booming note of a bittern amid the croaking and chirping of all the other lesser denizens of some swamp—would rise the mighty brogue of the genial Constable O’Hara, in a general exhortation to:
“Come on! Fwet yure whustles an’ sing-g, ye scutts, with ‘gr-reat gusto.’ For ut was:
Down, down, in swate Counthy Down,
An’ th’ pore ol’ night-watchman was jus’ passin’ roun;
Puts his hand to his nob to feel where he was hit—
Sez he “Holy Shmoke! but Oi’m—”