“Say, you fellows!... I propose we call on Sergeant Benton, here, for a song!”
A vociferous assent greeted his suggestion immediately, and all eyes were turned on Ellis, with encouraging shouts of: “You bet!... That’s the talk! Come, on, Sergeant! please!... Order, there!... Shut your traps for a bit!” For, they all knew that when in the mood he could sing.
Benton did not move for a minute, then: “Doggone you!” he remarked, with a resigned sigh to Dudley, “you’ve let me in for this!... An’ I just wanted to sit here quiet!”
He quaffed a long draught of beer and got up though presently and, sauntering over to the piano which O’Hara promptly vacated for him, seated himself. A comparative quiet ensued. Even “the Monk’s” maudlin ribaldry ceased, and that worthy becoming interested, he slewed around on his perch so as to hear the better, unceremoniously shoving off his faithful pup—“Kid”—in the movement, which sent that canine with a hasty “flop” to the floor.
With the hard lines of his face momentarily softened with an expression of genial bonhomie, the Sergeant toyed absently with the keys for a space, thinking of something appropriate for that hilarious company; then suddenly, a clear baritone voice of remarkable depth and richness, rang out in the old familiar song of “Mandalay”:
“Come you back to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay:
Can’t you ’ear their paddles chunkin’ from
Rangoon to Mandalay?
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin’-fishes play,
An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer
China ’crost the Bay!”
The last verse but one begins, as you know, with the sort of irritable abandon typical of a soldier’s “grouse”:
“Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
Where there aren’t no Ten Commandments an’ a man can raise a thirst;
For the temple-bells are callin’, an’ it’s there that I would be—
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin’ lazy at the sea;”
He finished the rollicking old ballad amid thundering applause and loud shouts of “’Core! ’Core!” “Give us ‘In Cellar Cool’!” “Give us ‘Father O’Flynn’!” etc. But just then the clear, long-drawn-out, sweet notes of a trumpet-call sounded outside on the square. The Orderly-room Sergeant looked at his watch.
“Hello!... Didn’t know it was so late!” he ejaculated. “Come on, there! Turn out!... ‘First Post’s’ just gone!”