Squatted by a lichened boulder in a clump of sun-scorched bracken, P. C. Breagh searched his pockets, and then the recesses of his knapsack, for something to eat. An ancient crust of black bread rewarded his investigations, just as the savory-smelling camp-kettles were taken off the fires.
He fell to work upon his crust as the stew was apportioned, and the big cans of beer distributed to each mess; and as he gnawed dog-like at the stone-hard lump of baked rye-dough, he caught the eye of one of the Barmecides, a merry-faced, red-haired young private, who was evidently the jester of his squad.
"Our soup smells good, what? Well, the smell may be had for nothing. He may fill his belly with as much of that as he can!"
A roar of laughter greeted the sally of the humorist. To whom P. C. Breagh nodded assent, and, gravely extending his diminished crust in the quarter from whence the whiff of oniony pea-soup came most powerfully, fell to with apparently renewed appetite, provoking the approving comment:
"He can take a joke! Well, then, let him take this! and this! Catch it, junge!"
A lump of very fresh beef, boiled in the oniony pea-soup, was dumped into a bit of newspaper, screwed up, and pitched across to the supperless. P. C. Breagh gratefully caught the oleaginous parcel and the two hard Army biscuits that came after, and, pulling out some small change, signified his desire to pitch back the coins in return. But a big hand waved them vigorously away, with the gruff exclamation: "Der Teufel! let him keep his pfennigs. One gives a share of one's supper—one doesn't sell!"
And so genuine was the one that, despite the smarting weal that had been the gift of another less kindly, P. C. Breagh's faith in humanity lifted up its head.
He disposed of the grub, and drank some hill-water tinctured with Kinahan, a permissible indulgence in view of his fatigue, and stuffed the well-used briar-root with bird's eye, and, propping his back comfortably against the boulder, kindled the pipe of peace. By nature clubbable, and athirst for news, he would have liked to mingle with the replete, unbuttoned soldiers, who, supper over, gathered round the fires to smoke and chat and sing. But the snub dealt by Valverden had not left off smarting; the fear of incurring another rebuff, even from a social inferior, kept him aloof and solitary. He realized with dismay that his stock of self-confidence was beginning to run low.
"I'd a lot of faith in myself when I accepted that commission from Knewbit," he ruminated, chewing hard on the stem of the venerable briar-root. "More than half his money's spent—what did I want with that revolver?—and I haven't written him a line. Instead, I've swotted up a thundering long descriptive article, telling people all about what they know already—and sent it to that shaved sea-elephant in a Gladstone collar, who told me I might forward letters from the seat of hostilities if ever I got there!"
He frowned, mentally reviewing the points of the first-born launched upon the tide of speculation. However ancient its matter might be, the vigor and mastery of that descriptive article—completed in the train between Bingen and Mayence, and dropped with paternal solicitude into the sack of a corporal of the Field Post—would surely—could not fail to—insure its appearance in print.