Saxham, emptying and filling the magazine with cool, methodical regularity, kept changing his position with a restlessness and recklessness puzzling alike to friends and foes. Now he aimed and fired, lying "doggo" behind his favourite stone, while bullets from the enemy's trenches flattened themselves upon it, or buried themselves harmlessly in the dry hot soil. Now he moved from cover, and shot squatting on his heels, or sprawled lizard-like in the open, courting the King of Terrors with a calm indifference that was commented upon by those who witnessed it according to their lights.
"Begob!" said Kildare, ex-driver of Engine 123, who, with the Cardiff man, his stoker of old, was doing duty at Fort Ellerslie vice two Town Guardsmen permanently resting, "'tis a great perfawrumance the Doc is afther givin' as this day!" He coolly borrowed the gunner's sighting-glasses, and, with his keen eyes glued to them and his ragged elbows propped on the Fort parapet, he scanned the distant solitary figure, dropping the words out slowly one by one. "Twice have I seen the fur fly off av' wan av' thim hairy baboons av' Boers since he starrtud, an' supposin' the air a taste thicker, 'tis punched wid bullet-holes we'd be seem' ut all round 'um, the same as a young lady in the sky-in-terrific dhressmakin' line would be afther jabbin' out the pattern av' a shoot av' clothes."
"And look you now, if the man is not lighting a pipe," objected the Cardiff stoker, whose religious tendencies were greatly fostered by the surroundings and conditions of siege life. "Sitting on a stone, with the rifle between his knees and the match between his two hands, as if the teffel was got tired of waiting, and had curled up and gone to sleep." The speaker sucked in his breath and solemnly shook his head, adding: "It is a temptation of the Tivine Providence, so it is!"
"Sorra a timpt," rejoined Kildare, reluctantly surrendering the glasses to the gunner, a grey ex-sergeant of R.F.A., "sorra a timpt, knowin', as the Docthur knows, that do what he will and thry as he may, no bullut will do more than graze the hide av him, or sing in his ear."
"And how will he know that, maybe you would be telling?" demanded the Cardiff stoker incredulously.
"I seen his face," said Kildare, jerking a blackened thumb towards the gunner's sighting-glasses, "minnits back through thim little jiggers, an' to man or mortal that's as sick wid the hate av Life, an' as sharp-set with the hunger for Death as the Docthur is this day, no harrum will come. 'Tis quare, but thrue."
"I've 'ad a try at several kinds of 'ungers," said the R.E. Reserve man, who acted as gunner's mate. "There's the 'unger for glory, combined with a smart uniform wot'll make the gals stare, as drives a man to 'list. There's the 'unger for kisses an' canoodlin' wot makes yer want to please the gals. There's the 'unger for revenge, wot drives yer to bash in a bloke's face, and loses you yer stripes if 'e 'appens to be your Corp'ril. Then there's the 'unger for gettin' under cover when you're bein' sniped, an' the 'unger for blood, when you've got the Hafridis, or the Fuzzies, or the Dutchies, at close quarters, and the bay'nits are flickerin' in an' out of the dirty caliker shirts or the dirty greatcoats like Jimmy O! There's the 'unger for freedom and fresh hair when you're shut up in a filthy mud cattle-pound like this 'ere Fort, or a stinkin' trench, with a 'andful of straw to set on by day an' a ragged blanket to kip in by nights. But the 'unger to die is a 'unger I ain't acquainted with. I'm for livin' myself."
"I was hungry when you began to jaw," snarled the man who had been clerk to the County Court. His lips were black and cracking with fever, and his teeth chattered despite the fierce sunshine that baked the red clay parapet against which he leaned his thin back. "I'm hungrier now, and thirsty as well. Give the bucket over here." He drank of the thick, yellowish, boiled water eagerly and yet with disgust, spilling the liquid on his tattered clothing through the shaking of his wasted hands. Then he turned to the wall, and lay down sullenly, scowling at the lantern-jawed sympathiser who tried to thrust a rolled-up coat under his aching head.
"They'll be bringin' us our foddher at twelve av the clock," said Kildare, with a twinkle of inextinguishable humour in his hollow eyes. "Shuperannuated cavalry mount stuped in warrum kettle-gravy, wid a block av baked sawdust for aich man that can get ut down. 'Tis an insult to the mimory av the boiled bacon an' greens I would be aiting this day at Carricknavore, to say nothin' av' the porther an' whisky that would be washing ut down. Lashin's and lavin's there 'ud be for ivery wan, an' what was over, me fadher—God be good to the ould boy alive or dead!—would be disthributin' amongst the poor forninst the dure——"
"Beg pardon, sir." Another of the famine-bitten, ragged little garrison addressed the question to the officer in charge of the Fort battery, as he stepped down from the lookout with his field-glass in his hand. "Can you tell us the difference of time between South Africa and England?"