Learoyd, bowed on his bedstead, groaned, and the gentleman-ranker sighed in his sleep. Ortheris took Mulvaney's tendered pouch, and we three smoked gravely for a space while the dust-devils danced on the glacis and scoured the red-hot plain. "Pop?" said Ortheris, wiping his forehead. "Don't tantalize wid talkin' av dhrink, or I'll shtuff you into your own breech-block an'--fire you off!" grunted Mulvaney. Ortheris chuckled, and from a niche in the veranda produced six bottles of ginger ale. "Where did ye get ut, ye Machiavel?" said Mulvaney. "'Tis no bazar pop." "'Ow do _Hi_ know wot the Orf'cers drink?" answered Ortheris. "Arst the mess-man." "Ye'll have a Disthrict Coort-martial settin' on ye yet, me son," said Mulvaney, "but"--he opened a bottle--"I will not report ye this time. Fwhat's in the mess-kid is mint for the belly, as they say, 'specially whin that mate is dhrink, Here's luck! A bloody war or a--no, we've got the sickly season. War, thin!"--he waved the innocent "pop" to the four quarters of Heaven. "Bloody war! North, East, South, an' West! Jock, ye quakin' hayrick, come an' dhrink." But Learoyd, half mad with the fear of death presaged in the swelling veins of his neck, was pegging his Maker to strike him dead, and fighting for more air between his prayers. A second time Ortheris drenched the quivering body with water, and the giant revived. "An' Ah divn't see thot a mon is i' fettle for gooin' on to live; an' Ah divn't see thot there is owt for t' livin' for. Hear now, lads! Ah'm tired--tired. There's nobbut watter i' ma bones. Let me die!" The hollow of the arch gave back Learoyd's broken whisper in a bass boom. Mulvaney looked at me hopelessly, but I remembered how the madness of despair had once fallen upon Ortheris, that weary, weary afternoon in the banks of the Khemi River, and how it had been exorcised by the skilful magician Mulvaney. "Talk, Terence!" I said, "or we shall have Learoyd slinging loose, and he'll be worse than Ortheris was. Talk! He'll answer to your voice." Almost before Ortheris had deftly thrown all the rifles of the Guard on Mulvaney's bedstead, the Irishman's voice was uplifted as that of one in the middle of a story, and, turning to me, he said-- "In barricks or out of it, as _you_ say, sorr, an Oirish rig'mint is the divil an' more. 'Tis only fit for a young man wid eddicated fistesses. Oh the crame av disruption is an Oirish rig'mint, an' rippin', tearin', ragin' scattherers in the field av war! My first rig'mint was Oirish--Faynians an' rebils to the heart av their marrow was they, an' _so_ they fought for the Widdy betther than most, bein' contrairy--Oirish. They was the Black Tyrone. You've heard av thim, sorr?"