True Stories of the Great War, Volume 2 (of 6): Tales of Adventure--Heroic Deeds--Exploits Told by the Soldiers, Officers, Nurses, Diplomats, Eye Witnesses
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True Stories of the Great War, Volume 2 (of 6): Tales of Adventure--Heroic Deeds--Exploits Told by the Soldiers, Officers, Nurses, Diplomats, Eye Witnesses
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
We were going down some unseen slope, I remember, when the change
occurred. My horse was plunging a good deal, and I had to use both
hands to prevent his getting away from me. The man on my right seemed
to be having similar difficulty with his animal. Strange! they were
all quiet enough a minute ago, and now----"Look out!" The words were
shot at me by No. 3 of the section as, with his horse completely out of
control, he raced past me into the darkness and the dust. "Rummy," said
the man on my right, "I don't know what's the matter with the beasts.
They're scared out of their lives, that I'll swear--Good Lord!" His
ejaculation was spoken away from me, for his pony had swung suddenly
about with a quick, frightened movement, and was now staring into the
blackness from whence we had come. A moment later and my own beast had
spun around. We waited in silence.
"Where's T----?" said the other man suddenly. (T---- was of my section,
and I seemed vaguely to remember that he had been riding behind us.)
If my memory was right, then T---- was somewhere out there in the
blackness, and the--the--whatever it was that was frightening our
horses was out there with him. It was not a nice thought. We waited
again, and I found myself wondering what it would sound like to call
out T----'s name, when out of the darkness came the sound of a snort,
followed by what seemed like the frenzied plunging of some heavy beast.
Then a voice uplifted itself in earnest supplication, and the voice was
the voice of T----.
He seemed to be calling upon the name of a god not altogether
orthodox. I caught, here and there, strong expressions of his
disapproval of some person or thing. The voice was growing louder and
clearer, and it became obvious that T---- was being borne towards us at
a high rate of speed. The pale sheet of the sky held him in silhouette
for an instant, and then he flung down upon us in a perfect flood of
invective.
I had never heard him talk quite like that before. It was really,
and almost literally, illuminating, and we reined aside in a sort
of reverential awe to let him pass. He did so on the wings of some
of the most golden eloquence that it has ever been my lot to hear.
"Goddam!" I heard distinctly, followed by a string of words which I
do not know how to spell; and then some fine but strictly censorable
phrases, out of which I collected fragments that made a disconnected
yet interesting whole. In this way I was puzzled for some moments by
the many variations of the word camel. "Camel!" I found myself saying,
"camel!" when "Look!" said the other man suddenly, and I looked, and
saw striding down upon us from the same pale sheet of sky that had held
T---- only a few minutes before three gaunt, long-legged shadows.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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