"So I sent a challenge into their lines. There was nothing stirring just then, and they took the thing up very readily. The business took place before reveille out in the desert, between the out-post lines at a place they got to call the cock-pit. All the bloods and bucks on both sides used to come out to see the fun. It was the regular thing-- to see Black Cock breakfast.... "Well, on the seventh morning as they were carting their chap away, and I was wiping my sword, a swaggering great Cuirassier turned round and shouted, "'To-morrow we bring David to slay your Goliath!' "'D'you hear that, Black Cock?' says Olifant, the Guardsman. 'Are you game?'--'I'm not tired, if they ain't,' says I." His blue eyes began to twinkle. "Next dawn, when I got to the Cock-pit, and saw their champion, why, he was a boy!--a boy like a girl!--one of these pretty pink and white things, all eyes and legs and a silly smile. 'I am David,' says he. 'Then go back to Jesse,' says I, pretty short. 'I don't fight with kids.'... And that afternoon I sent him a bottle of milk with my compliments." The Parson stopped his pacing, and looked the boy in the eyes. "Next day they broke us, sir,--broke the Black Borderers in square." "Who did?" The Parson was breathing deep, and his eyes were smouldering. "The Legion d'Irlande. No other regiment in the world could have got in; and once in, no other regiment in the world but ours could have got em out, though I say it as shouldn't." Voice and eyes burst into thunder and flame. "And who led em? Why, my boy-girl friend storming along on an old white Arab, and laughing like the devil. 'Here, they come!' yells the Colonel. _'Prepare for--Cavalree!'_ I jumped on to the big drum, and had a squint over the men's heads. Lor! I can see the dust of em now--like a mighty great wave sweeping across the desert, and the boy on the white Arab coming along like an earthquake six lengths before the lot. It sent me screaming mad to see em. 'Come on, ye dirty black- a-mouths!' I screeched. 'Irish stew for the rebel brigade!' 'Hullo, Black Cock!' he cried, and I saw him grinning through the dust. 'I'm going to cut your comb.' And he took the old horse by head, and rammed him at us--slap-bang, like riding at a bull-finch; and the whole blanky lot after him." The Parson was stamping up and down, roaring out his story, his eyes laughing and battle-lusty. "Such a hell of a hugger-mugger you never saw! They rolled in on us like the sea. Rough and tumble every man for himself--stab somebody-- don't matter who!" He paused to pant. "It was the day of my life. The Colonel was down; the Majors were dead; the Captains heaven-knows- where. Our old Raven banner, that we took from their Black Horse at Dettingen was in the dust, the Junior Ensign tumbled up in it all anyhow. 'Got it, Miss B.?' I cried. 'Here!' squeals the poor little chap. 'Heave her up!' Then a horse jumped on him, and put him out of his pain.