Evidently the beasts knew the game and enjoyed it, for they would not make it easy for the men.
A heap of saddlery was thrown in a corner, and from this each man, as he captured his mount, made shift to draw proper equipment, while the audience laughed, derided, or called the horses towards them.
It was, most literally, wild horseplay, and by the time it was finished the recruits and the company were weak with fatigue and laughter.
“That’ll do,” said Purvis, while the men rocked in their saddles. “I don’t see any particular odds between any of you. C Company! Does anybody here know anything against any of these men?”
“That’s a bit of the Regulations,” Matthews whispered. “Just like forbiddin’ the banns in church. Really, it was all settled long ago when the names first came up.”
There was no answer.
“You’ll take ’em as they stand?”
There was a grunt of assent.
“Very good. There’s forty men for twenty-three billets.” He turned to the sweating horsemen. “I must put you into the Hat.”
With great ceremony and a shower of company jokes that I did not follow, an enormous Ally Sloper top-hat was produced, into which numbers and blanks were dropped, and the whole was handed round to the riders by a private, evidently the joker of C Company.