He didn't say no more, but when th' nigger band struck up th' Umpty-dee-he-hee-heee music, to show it was all over now, Terry got up slow and stiff, and threw a chest and squeezed his hat to his left breast and stood there in th' rig, lookin' considerable like some gen'rals you and me've seen. He kep' on standin' there after th' music had stopped, and after a while it got tiresome, and th' Engineer told th' cochero to sigue ahead.
"Hindi!" says Terry. "Don't you believe it. You're like all th' rest," he says to us, plumb disgusted. "You call yourselves soldiers, and all you think about is just chow. Chow, at a moment like this! There ain't a ripple of patriotism in the whole bunch of ye big enough to grease a twenty-two cartridge." And he made us drive up and down th' Malecon twice in th' moonlight before he'd go to supper.
While we was chowin', he kep' gettin' grumper an' grumper, and after supper, when th' Engineer wanted to be gettin' back to quarters—he was livin' over'n old Santiaygo—Terry just busted loose.
"Pontoons," he says, "I t'ought you was a man. You're big enough f'r one. Run away an' join th' Naytional Guard. Go an' be a pinkety-pink Vol'nteer, an' tell th' nurs'ry-sergeant not to wake you up without your p'rmission. Go an' dog-rob f'r a c'mission. Go an' do this an' do that," he says, thinkin' up a whole lot of places f'r th' Engineer to go, till fin'lly he got so ugly-ugly we took him into th' New Bridge again, and bought him a drink to calm him down.
It didn't do no good. He kep' one eye on his glass an' th' other on the Engineer, an' slung hot air till you wouldn't think a big guy like that would stand f'r it. But th' Engineer just grins and drinks his beer.
"Gentlemen," he says, "gentlemen and friend Clancy, there's a hard-hearted son of Plymouth Rock commands th' comp'ny that'll be roundin' up all th' poor little devils to check roll-call six times a day before he's been dead a month. He'll mult me a month's pay f'r missin' Retreat to-night—not that th' pleasure of enjoyin' you ain't worth th' price," he says to Terry, "but I might just as well miss Taps now, an' get a month in th' jug besides. What's th' use of freedom without money? To-night we have both, and we'll pour them out like blood, to soothe th' feelin's of a friend whose heart is sad to think th' flag which decked his cradle now floats over th' school-houses of th' brave but ex-tremely eelusive Fillypeeners."
Terry's mouth sort of hung open when th' Engineer struck his pace, but he brightened up quick as he got on to the drift of it.
"Ye read my feelin's like a padre," he says to him, "an' I like your build. If you was on'y in th' comp'ny, it's many a fight we'd have together, an' we may have one even yet. Here's lookin' at ye! You're a soldier, you are, and a gentleman. Here's how."
Of course we had a beer on the Engineer after that, and two on the Coast Artillerys, who'd been sayin' little all day and drinkin' hearty. Th' poor devils get that way, bein' stationed mostly near big cities like Portland, Maine, an' Guam, where chanstes are few since th' Christian Temp'rance persons got their strangle-holt. And then our A.O.H. friend, Schleimacher, sets them up an' says: "Fellers, a sailor like me—"
"Don't you miscall yourself; you're more of soldier than a heap of th' muts I herd with," says Terry, takin' a sling at us, "but ye do loot like a sailor," he says.