THE MUD LARKS.
One reads a lot nowadays about the "slavery" of various habits (drug, drink, bigamy, etc.) and loud is the outcry. But there is yet another bondage, just as binding and far more widespread, which nobody ever seems to mention, namely, the drill habit. Drill the young soldier up in the way he should go and for ever after his body will spring to the word of command, whether his soul approves or no.
Once upon a time two men turned up in a railway construction camp deep in the Rhodesian bush. They were a silent, furtive, friendless pair, dwelling apart, and nobody could discover whence they came, whither they were bound, or, in fact, anything about them. It was generally conceded that they had some horrid secret to bury (camp optimists voted for "murder") and left it at that. Time went by and so did the rail-head, leaving the two mysteries behind as permanent-way gangers. Solitude seemed to suit them. Years passed along and still the two remained in that abomination of desolation guarding their stretch of track and their horrid secret. Then one day ROBERTS rolled by on his way to Victoria Falls, and, his train halting to tank-up, the old Field-Marshal stepped ashore and called to the two gangers, who happened to be close at hand tinkering at their trolley. The guard, who was taking a bottle of Bass with the steward on the platform of the diner, suddenly jabbed his friend in the brisket.
"Look, for the love of Mike!" he giggled.
The two gangers were standing talking to "BOBS," shoulder to shoulder, heels together, feet spread at an angle of forty-five degrees, knees braced, thumbs behind the seams of their trousers, backs hollowed, heads erect—in short in the correct position of attention as decreed in the Book of Infantry Training. The old man finished speaking and the two saluted smartly and broke away. The steward looked at his friend and nodded, "Old soldiers."
"Old deserters, you mean," retorted the guard. "Now we know."
The drill habit had been too strong for those two fugitives even after ten years.
The other night our Babe, as Orderly Officer, sat up alone in the Mess, consuming other people's cigarettes and whisky until midnight, then, being knocked up by the Orderly Sergeant, gave the worthy fellow a tot to restore circulation, pulled on his gum-boots and sallied forth on the rounds. By 12.45 he had assured himself that the line guards were functioning in the prescribed "brisk and soldierly manner," and that the horses were all properly tucked up in bed, and so turned for home.
He paused at the cross-roads to hear the end of the Sergeant's reminiscences of happy days when he, the Sergeant, (then full-private, full in more senses than one) had held the responsible position of beer-taster to a regiment at Jaipurbad ("an ideal drinkin' climate, Sir"), then, dismissing the old connoisseur, continued on his way bedward.
It must have been one o'clock by then, a black wind-noisy night. As the Babe turned into the home straight, he saw a light flash for an instant in a big cart-shed opposite the Mess—just a flicker as of a match scratched and instantly extinguished.