“That’s all right, Sergeant-Major,” he said. “We’re all that and a perishin’ lot more perhaps, but not you nor Jesus Christ is going to make me do a perishin’ ride like that and come back to perishin’ barracks and get no perishin’ breakfast and go on perishin’ parade again at nine with not a perishin’ thing in my perishin’ stomach.” “What do you mean?” asked the sergeant-major. “What I says,” said Sailor, standing to his guns while we, amazed, expected him to be slain before our eyes. “Not a perishin’ bit of breakfast do we get when we go back late.” “Is that true?” The sergeant-major turned to us. “Yes,” we said, “perishin’ true!” “Mount!” ordered the sergeant-major without another word and we trotted straight back to barracks. By the time we’d watered, off-saddled and fed the horses we were as usual twenty minutes late for breakfast. But this morning the sergeant-major, with a face like a black cloud, marched us into the dining-hall and up to the cook’s table. We waited, breathless with excitement. The cook was in the kitchen, a dirty fellow. The sergeant-major slammed the table with his whip. The cook came, wiping a chewing mouth with the back of his hand. “Breakfast for these men, quick,” said the sergeant-major. “All gone, sir,” said the cook, “we can’t----” The sergeant-major leaned over with his face an inch from the cook’s. “Don’t you perishin’ well answer me back,” he said, “or I’ll put you somewhere where the Almighty couldn’t get you out until I say so. Breakfast for these men, you fat, chewing swine, or I’ll come across the table and cut your tripes out with my riding whip and cook _them_ for breakfast! Jump, you foul-feeder!” and down came the whip on the table like a pistol shot. The cook swallowed his mouthful whole and retired, emerging presently with plenty of excellent breakfast and hot tea. We laughed. “Now,” said the sergeant-major, “if you don’t get as good a breakfast as this to-morrow and every to-morrow, tell me, and I’ll drop this lying bastard into his own grease trap.” Sailor got drunk that night. We paid. 8 The evenings were the hardest part. There was only Bucks to talk to, and it was never more than twice a week that we managed to get together. Generally one was more completely alone than on a desert island, a solitude accentuated by the fact that as soon as one ceased the communion of work which made us all brothers on the same level, they dropped back, for me at least, into a seething mass of rather unclean humanity whose ideas were not mine, whose language and habits never ceased to jar upon one’s sensitiveness. There was so little to do. The local music hall, intensely fifth rate, only changed its programme once a week. The billiard tables in the canteen had an hour-long waiting list always.