The
Regimental Sergeant-Major looked wearily across the Sergeants'
Mess tent when the news was announced.
'There goes the worst of them,' he said. 'It'll take the best, and then,
please God, it'll stop.' The Sergeants were silent till one said: 'It
couldn't be him!' and all knew of whom Travis was thinking.
Bobby Wick stormed through the tents of his Company, rallying,
rebuking, mildly, as is consistent with the Regulations, chaffing
the faint-hearted; haling the sound into the watery sunlight when
there was a break in the weather, and bidding them be of good
cheer for their trouble was nearly at an end; scuttling on his dun
pony round the outskirts of the camp, and heading back men who,
with the innate perversity of British soldiers, were always
wandering into infected villages, or drinking deeply from
rain-flooded marshes; comforting the panic-stricken with rude
speech, and more than once tending the dying who had no friends
the men without 'townies'; organising, with banjos and burnt cork,
Sing-songs which should allow the talent of the Regiment full
play; and generally, as he explained, 'playing the giddy garden-goat
all round.'
'You're worth half-a-dozen of us, Bobby,' said Revere in a moment
of enthusiasm. 'How the devil do you keep it up?'
Bobby made no answer, but had Revere looked into the
breast-pocket of his coat he might have seen there a sheaf of
badly-written letters which perhaps accounted for the power that
possessed the boy.
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