“Here comes old Bill,” was remarked by Cootie, of the Bays, as the Colonel sauntered in with a toothpick in his mouth. “I’ll bet a fiver I’ll start a yarn he’ll never be able to cap.”
“Done!” cried Kirby, “and if he doesn’t keep up his reputation I’ll pay you on the nail, and send in my papers in the morning.”
“Good evening, Colonel,” began Cootie. “I was just relating a most extraordinary coincidence that was lately told me by a man whose veracity I can vouch for—Shute of ours.”
“Indeed,” replied the Colonel, filling a pipe—Bill invariably smoked a dudeen at the head of the regiment. “By all means let me hear it.”
“It is simply this. Coming home on sick leave in a P. and O. not long ago, the look-out man descried half a mile out at sea what appeared to be a huge box; a long boat was immediately lowered, and when the derelict was brought on deck, conceive the astonishment of everybody in discovering that it was a hencoop, and a live man inside. It was a case of shipwreck it appears, and the man saved was the only survivor of some 180 souls. Rum thing, wasn’t it? but some people have infernal luck.”
“Yes,” replied the Colonel. “I believe I was horn under a lucky star; perhaps you will be surprised to hear that I was the man.”
A roar of astonishment greeted this admission, whilst Cootie, hastily thrusting a fiver into Kirby’s hand, whispered, “I presume you won’t send in your papers to-morrow?”
But, despite his peculiarity, old Bill was universally popular. A splendid billiard player, he had in India created such excitement in a match for £500, that even Lord Faulkland, the Governor of Bombay, who never parted with a sixpence without looking at it twice, was said to have put a gold mohur on it, and in later times I can remember the Club House at Aldershot being crammed to suffocation when the same redoubtable warrior licked Curry the Brigade Major, who till our arrival had no compeer.
One curious experience he had had which he never tired of narrating: “I was once waiting for the d— packet at Dover to take me over to Calais, and at the hostelry I met a d— Frenchman, who asked me if I could ‘parley vous,’ and I said ‘no,’ but offered to play him a game of billiards. We had a fiver on it, but I soon discovered that no matter where I left the balls the d— fellow made a cannon. I was only about three ahead of him, so when next I played I knocked a ball off the table. The first time the d— fellow sympathised with me, and picked up the ball; after two or three repetitions the coincidence appeared to puzzle him. ‘I can’t play if Mooser does this,’ he said angrily. ‘I can’t help that,’ I replied, and ran out with a break. He declined to go double or quits, so I pocketed the fiver, and often found myself laughing over it in the d— boat, where I was d— ill.”
This persistent swearing may sound curious to the student of to-day, but in those halcyon days everybody swore. The Iron Duke, it is well known, never opened his mouth without a superfluous adjective, and General Pennefather, who commanded at Aldershot in my time, literally “swore himself” into office. On one occasion, when the Queen was on the ground, he wished every regiment so vehemently to the “bottom of the bottomless pit” that it frightened the gracious lady, who sent an equerry to remind him of her presence. The monition had the desired effect for ten minutes, when the bombardment commenced afresh, and brought the field-day to an abrupt termination. The Queen had bolted in sheer trepidation of an earthquake.