Part 34 (1/2)

”Huh!” said Matthews scornfully. ”They're always doin' it in the Line and Militia drill-halls. It's only circus-work.”

The guns were a.s.sembled again and some one called the time. Then followed ten minutes of the quickest firing and feeding with dummy cartridges that was ever given man to behold.

”They look as if they might amount to something--this draft,” said Matthews softly.

”What might you teach 'em after this, then?” I asked.

”To be Guard,” said Matthews.

”Spurs,” cried Purvis, as the guns disappeared through the doors into the stables. Each man plucked at his sleeve, and drew up first one heel and then the other.

”What the deuce are they doing?” I asked.

”This,” said Matthews. He put his hand to a ticket-pocket inside his regulation cuff, showed me two very small black box-spurs: drawing up a gaitered foot, he snapped them into the box in the heel, and when I had inspected snapped them out again.

”That's all the spur you really need,” he said.

Then horses were trotted out into the school barebacked, and the neophytes were told to ride.

Evidently the beasts knew the game and enjoyed it, for they would not make it easy for the men.

A heap of saddlery was thrown in a corner, and from this each man, as he captured his mount, made s.h.i.+ft to draw proper equipment, while the audience laughed, derided, or called the horses towards them.

It was, most literally, wild horseplay, and by the time it was finished the recruits and the company were weak with fatigue and laughter.

”That'll do,” said Purvis, while the men rocked in their saddles. ”I don't see any particular odds between any of you. C Company! Does anybody here know anything against any of these men?”

”That's a bit of the Regulations,” Matthews whispered. ”Just like forbiddin' the banns in church. Really, it was all settled long ago when the names first came up.”

There was no answer.

”You'll take 'em as they stand?”

There was a grunt of a.s.sent.

”Very good. There's forty men for twenty-three billets.” He turned to the sweating hors.e.m.e.n. ”I must put you into the Hat.”

With great ceremony and a shower of company jokes that I did not follow, an enormous Ally Sloper top-hat was produced, into which numbers and blanks were dropped, and the whole was handed round to the riders by a private, evidently the joker of C Company.

Matthews gave me to understand that each company owned a cherished receptacle (sometimes not a respectable one) for the papers of the final drawing. He was telling me how his company had once stolen the Sacred Article used by D Company for this purpose and of the riot that followed, when through the west door of the schools entered a fresh detachment of stripped men, and the arena was flooded with another company.

Said Matthews as we withdrew, ”Each company does Trials their own way. B Company is all for teaching men how to cook and camp. D Company keeps 'em to horse-work mostly. We call D the circus-riders and B the cooks. They call us the Gunners.”

”An' you've rejected _me_,” said the man who had done sea-time, pus.h.i.+ng out before us. ”The Army's goin' to the dogs.”

I stood in the corridor looking for Burgard.

”Come up to my room and have a smoke,” said Matthews, private of the Imperial Guard.

We climbed two flights of stone stairs ere we reached an immense landing flanked with numbered doors.

Matthews pressed a spring-latch and led me into a little cabin-like room.