“If we want anything more than drums and fifes on ‘heef’ we sing,” said Pigeon. “Singin’ helps the wind.”
I rejoiced to the marrow of my bones thus to be borne along on billows of surging music among magnificent men, in sunlight, through a crowded town whose people, I could feel, regarded us with comradeship, affection—and more.
“By Jove,” I said at last, watching the eyes about us, “these people are looking us over as if we were horses.”
“Why not? They know the game.”
The eyes on the pavement, in the trams, the cabs, at the upper windows, swept our lines back and forth with a weighed intensity of regard which at first seemed altogether new to me, till I recalled just such eyes, a thousand of them, at manœuvres in the Channel when one crowded battleship drew past its sister at biscuit-toss range. Then I stared at the ground, overborne by those considering eyes.
Suddenly the music changed to the wail of the Dead March in “Saul,” and once more—we were crossing a large square—the regiment halted.
“Damn!” said Pigeon, glancing behind him at the mounted company. “I believe they save up their Saturday corpses on purpose.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“A dead Volunteer. We must play him through.” Again I looked forward and saw the top of a hearse, followed by two mourning-coaches, boring directly up the halted regiment, which opened out company by company to let it through.
“But they’ve got the whole blessed square to funeralise in!” I exclaimed. “Why don’t they go round?”