The Young Dragoon: Every Day Life of a Soldier — John Shaqi
The Young Dragoon: Every Day Life of a SoldierDrayson, Alfred W. (Alfred Wilks)
History
The Young Dragoon: Every Day Life of a Soldier
Drayson, Alfred W. (Alfred Wilks)
Soldiers -- Juvenile fiction
The same evening, however, while reconnoitring from the barrack-windows,
we espied the four policemen, who, having made a report of the case at
the guard-room, were anxiously striving to recognise in the many men
passing to and fro the parties who had left them in so ignominious a
position. At last they appeared to have found one of the delinquents in
one Barney Camel, who was making the best of his way across the
barrack-yard from the canteen, with a rasher of bacon in his hand, to
his room. Barney bore a striking resemblance to Charley Dundas, the man
who had so unceremoniously tumbled one of our enemies into the brook.
Like Charley, too, when the police attacked us, he had no jacket on, but
his braces were about his hips, his forage-cap was cocked on "three
hairs," and the chin-strap turned over the crown. He was, as he
afterwards remarked, "whistling the `Groves of Blarney,' and thinking of
nothing but the bacon;" when the four policemen surrounded him and
forthwith proceeded to take him to the station-house, followed by a
crowd who rapidly gathered from all parts of the barracks. Now, it so
happened that Barney Camel had but one hour previously returned with a
detachment who had formed an escort of Her Majesty and suite from
Buckingham Palace to Windsor Castle (at that period the railway between
London and Windsor had not been formed). Barney had groomed his horse,
cleaned his saddlery, and was about to enjoy his frugal meal as he
thought, in peace, when he was marched off to the police-station. A
sergeant, however, was sent to tender evidence in his behalf, viz, that
he had been on duty as stated, and at the time the alleged assault was
committed on the police, he must have been on the road between Hounslow
and Windsor. The result was that Barney was discharged, and we never
heard any more of our eventful bathing-excursion, probably because the
police had figured so ingloriously in the contest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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