A minute or two elapsed and no explosion taking place, Hambone rejoined the wagon and the party proceeded.  Then Snow slipped off the back and went back for the jar, but instead of going up the road, he took the railroad track, beating the wagon by some minutes and hiding his jar of joy in my gun pit, immediately got back and was standing beside the wagon when it arrived.  Hambone seeing him there hadn’t the remotest idea that he had hopped off at any time, and supposed that he had ridden the entire way with them.  Snow gave Reynolds the wink and he knew the prize was safe.

The first thing Hambone did was to go to the back of the wagon for the jar.  It was gone!  He searched wildly about for a moment, asking first one and then the other what had become of it, and Snow volunteered the opinion that probably it had dropped off when the wagon lurched that time he thought the shell was coming.  There was nothing for it but to report his loss, and the only excuse he could give was that the rum had probably rolled off when they trotted at a coming shell, and what the officer didn’t say to Hambone for trotting, which was a violation of orders, would not be worth repeating.  He bellowed at him to go and search for it, and with wicked delight we watched the duffer going back over the route, peering from side to side of the road in his vain search.

The journey was a nine-mile trot and he covered more than half the distance, endeavoring to find the precious container, and when he came back in a couple of hours without it, the poor devil thought he was going to be licked, such was the anger of the men at missing their rum rations, because they sorely needed it; none but those who have been there can and do appreciate how sorely it is needed in that region of the world.

I make no apology or attempt to excuse myself as an accessory after the fact.  It is an unwritten law among the men that the only crime involved in stealing liquor is—­using an Irishism—­not to steal it.

The only men in the section that night who had a ration of the treasured fluid were Dick Snow, Reynolds and myself, and in the midst of our conviviality we prophesied that if Hambone survived this disaster, he was immortal.

Toasting the health of the King, the army, the navy and our loved ones at home, we retired in blissful consciousness of a good job well done.

Next morning, black looks and cursing threats in low voices greeted Hambone on all sides, and his work that day was so fidgety, and he made so many mistakes in getting the ranges on the sights, that the Major performed the coup d’etat for which we were all anxiously waiting by transmitting as quickly as he could to headquarters his recommendation that he be retired, and Hambone, to our immense relief, was shipped back to England.

CHAPTER X

BEES, HONEY AND HELL