“Oh, keeping things in order generally, and running about after little dakus—that's dacoits—and so on. There's nothing to explain.”
“Make that young Leviathan speak,” said Cleever impatiently, above his glass.
“How can he speak?” said I. “He's done the work. The two don't go together. But, Infant, you're ordered to bukb.”
“What about? I'll try.”
“Bukb about a daur. You've been on heaps of 'em,” said Nevin.
“What in the world does that mean? Has the Army a language of its own?”
The Infant turned very red. He was afraid he was being laughed at, and he detested talking before outsiders; but it was the author of “As it was in the Beginning” who waited.
“It's all so new to me,” pleaded Cleever; “and—and you said you liked my book.”
This was a direct appeal that The Infant could understand, and he began rather flurriedly, with much slang bred of nervousness—
“Pull me up, sir, if I say anything you don't follow. About six months before I took my leave out of Burma, I was on the Hlinedatalone, up near the Shan States, with sixty Tommies—private soldiers, that is—and another subaltern, a year senior to me. The Burmese business was a subaltern's war, and our forces were split up into little detachments, all running about the country and trying to keep the dacoits quiet. The dacoits were having a first-class time, y' know—filling women up with kerosene and setting 'em alight, and burning villages, and crucifying people.”