The Red Horizon | Page 5

and drew lean, skinny hands across their throats, and yelled advice and imprecations in hoarse voices. We understood. The ancient warriors ordered us to cut the Kaiser's throat and envied us the job.
The day wore on, the evening fell dark and stormy. A cold wind from somewhere swept in through chinks in windows and door, and chilled the compartment. The favourite song, Uncle Joe, with its catching chorus,
When Uncle Joe plays a rag upon his old banjo, Eberybody starts aswayin to and fro, Mummy waddles all around the cabin floor, Yellin' "Uncle Joe, give us more! give us more!"
died away into a melancholy whimper. Sometimes one of the men would rise, open the window and look out at a passing hamlet, where (p. 027) lights glimmered in the houses and heavy waggons lumbered along the uneven streets, whistle an air into the darkness and close the window again. My mate had an electric torch--by its light we opened the biscuit box handed in when we left the station, and biscuits and bully-beef served to make a rather comfortless supper. At ten o'clock, when the torch refused to burn, and when we found ourselves short of matches, we undid the bale, spread out the hay on the floor of the truck and lay down, wearing our sheepskin tunics and placing our overcoats over our legs.
We must have been asleep for some time. We were awakened by the stopping of the train and the sound of many voices outside. The door was opened and we looked out. An officer was hurrying by, shouting loudly, calling on us to come out. On a level space bordering the line a dozen or more fires were blazing merrily, and dixies with some boiling liquid were being carried backwards and forwards. A sergeant with a lantern, one of our own men, came to our truck and clambered inside.
"Every man get his mess tin," he shouted. "Hurry up, the train's not stopping for long, and there's coffee and rum for us all." (p. 028)
"I wish they'd let us sleep," someone who was fumbling in his pack remarked in a sleepy voice. "I'm not wantin' no rum and cawfee. Last night almost choked in the bell-tent, the night before sea-sick, and now wakened up for rum and cawfee. Blast it, I say!"
We lined up two deep on the six-foot way, shivering in the bitter cold, our mess-tins in our hands. The fires by the railway threw a dim light on the scene, officers paraded up and down issuing orders, everybody seemed very excited, and nearly all were grumbling at being awakened from their beds in the horse-trucks. Many of our mates were now coming back with mess-tins steaming hot, and some would come to a halt for a moment and sip from their rum and coffee. Chilled to the bone we drew nearer to the coffee dixies. What a warm drink it would be! I counted the men in front--there were no more than twelve or thirteen before me. Ah! how cold! and hot coffee--suddenly a whistle was blown, then another.
"Back to your places!" the order came, and never did a more unwilling party go back to bed. We did not learn the reason for the order; (p. 029) in the army few explanations are made. We shivered and slumbered till dawn, and rose to greet a cheerless day that offered us biscuits and bully-beef for breakfast and bully-beef and biscuits for dinner. At half-past four in the afternoon we came to a village and formed into column of route outside the railway station. Two hours march lay before us we learned, but we did not know where we were bound. As we waited ready to move off a sound, ominous and threatening, rumbled in from the distance and quivered by our ears. We were hearing the sound of guns!
CHAPTER III
(p. 030)
OUR FRENCH BILLETS
The fog is white on Glenties moors, The road is grey from Glenties town, Oh! lone grey road and ghost-white fog, And ah! the homely moors of brown.
The farmhouse where we were billeted reminded me strongly of my home in Donegal with its fields and dusky evenings and its spirit of brooding quiet. Nothing will persuade me, except perhaps the Censor, that it is not the home of Marie Claire, it so fits in with the description in her book.
The farmhouse stands about a hundred yards away from the main road, with a cart track, slushy and muddy running across the fields to the very door. The whole aspect of the place is forbidding, it looks squalid and dilapidated, and smells of decaying vegetable matter, of manure and every other filth that can find a resting place in the vicinity of an unclean dwelling-place. But it is not dirty; its home-made bread and beer are