'Even the worst whusky, whateffer, would be better to my mind; and we have Scripture for it that we should not drink water alone.' 'Indeed!' said the reader, doubtfully. 'Yes,' urged the corporal, who knew his Bible well; 'are we not told in Maccabees, chapter xv. and verse 39, that "it is hurtful to drink wine or water alone, as wine mingled with water is pleasant and delighteth the taste?"' 'For all that,' replied the Scripture-reader, 'I agree with Sir Garnet that water is alone the drink for man.' 'Yet the only man that Holy Writ records as ever asking for it, didn't get it.' 'Who was _he_?' 'Dives, and we all know where _he_ was then. Scripture again!' said the corporal, with a smirk on his sharp Highland face, and thinking he had decidedly the best of the argument. During a mid-day halt on this march, some of the troops constructed out of blankets and rifles with fixed bayonets erections like gipsy tents, to shelter them from the blazing heat of the sun, and a singular kind of encampment they presented. With ship biscuits and tinned meat and some brandy to flavour their cold tea, Allan Graham, Cameron, Carslogie, and some other officers of the corps made themselves as comfortable as they could under shelter of their impromptu tents, and many were even jolly, especially Carslogie, who was rather a noisy and irrepressible fellow. Stretched on the sand with his tropical helmet tilted back on his head, he drank his 'cold tea,' as he called it, though it was stiff half-and-half grog, and proffered his cigar-case to all. 'Isn't this jolly!' he exclaimed. 'Instead of this, we might have been out in the blazing open.' Then he struck up a verse of a song to the air of the 'Garb of Old Gaul,' and composed by an anonymous writer, though he hinted it was Mr. John Bright:-- 'They talk of a good time, when warfare shall cease, And the nations hobnob o'er a big pipe of peace, And the lion and the lamb in auriferous mead On bills of exchange in beatitude feed. But keep your powder dry, my boys, and keep your bayonets keen; The world can't do without us yet, nor will it soon, I ween! Then stern and true, where work's to do, we'll do it as we can, And shoulder to shoulder still march in the van!' 'The good time predicted seems a long way off yet,' he added, with a sigh, to find that the last of his grog was gone, for after a hot morning's march it was, as he said, 'quite a Sybaritish luxury.' 'Well, well, a little time will find us face to face with Arabi, and we shall exchange the fleshpots of Egypt for those of the old country.'