Ortheris did ‘fetch ut out,’ from under the trunk of an elephant, in the shape of a servant and an animal both laden with medical comforts.  The little man’s eyes sparkled.

‘If the brutil an’ licentious soldiery av these parts gets sight av the thruck,’ said Mulvaney, making practised investigations, ’they’ll loot ev’rything.  They’re bein’ fed on iron-filin’s an’ dog-biscuit these days, but glory’s no compensation for a belly-ache.  Praise be, we’re here to protect you, sorr.  Beer, sausage, bread (soft an’ that’s a cur’osity), soup in a tin, whisky by the smell av ut, an’ fowls!  Mother av Moses, but ye take the field like a confectioner!  ‘Tis scand’lus.’

‘Ere’s a orficer,’ said Ortheris significantly.  ’When the sergent’s done lushin’ the privit may clean the pot.’

I bundled several things into Mulvaney’s haversack before the major’s hand fell on my shoulder and he said tenderly, ’Requisitioned for the Queen’s service.  Wolseley was quite wrong about special correspondents:  they are the soldier’s best friends.  Come and take pot-luck with us to-night.’

And so it happened amid laughter and shoutings that my well-considered commissariat melted away to reappear later at the mess-table, which was a waterproof sheet spread on the ground.  The flying column had taken three days’ rations with it, and there be few things nastier than government rations—­especially when government is experimenting with German toys.  Erbsenwurst, tinned beef of surpassing tinniness, compressed vegetables, and meat-biscuits may be nourishing, but what Thomas Atkins needs is bulk in his inside.  The major, assisted by his brother officers, purchased goats for the camp and so made the experiment of no effect.  Long before the fatigue-party sent to collect brushwood had returned, the men were settled down by their valises, kettles and pots had appeared from the surrounding country and were dangling over fires as the kid and the compressed vegetable bubbled together; there rose a cheerful clinking of mess-tins; outrageous demands for ‘a little more stuffin’ with that there liver-wing;’ and gust on gust of chaff as pointed as a bayonet and as delicate as a gun-butt.

‘The boys are in a good temper,’ said the major.  ’They’ll be singing presently.  Well, a night like this is enough to keep them happy.’

Over our heads burned the wonderful Indian stars, which are not all pricked in on one plane, but, preserving an orderly perspective, draw the eye through the velvet darkness of the void up to the barred doors of heaven itself.  The earth was a gray shadow more unreal than the sky.  We could hear her breathing lightly in the pauses between the howling of the jackals, the movement of the wind in the tamarisks, and the fitful mutter of musketry-fire leagues away to the left.  A native woman from some unseen hut began to sing, the mail-train thundered past on its way to Delhi, and a roosting crow cawed drowsily.  Then there was a belt-loosening silence about the fires, and the even breathing of the crowded earth took up the story.