"And the captain?"
"Brandy, and delirium tremens," the major said, between the puffs of his cigarette. "Jumped overboard off Finisterre, on the homeward vyage. Shocking thing, gamblin'--when you lose."
"Ach Gott! And those two knives upon the wall, the straight one and the one with the crook; is there a history about them?"
"An incident," the major answered languidly. "Curious, but true. Saw it meself. In the Afghan war I was convoying supplies through the passes, when we were set upon by Afreedees, hillmen, and robbers. I had fifty men of the 27th Native Infantry under me, with a sergeant. Among the Afreedees was a thumping big chief, who stood among the rocks with that very knife in his hand, the long one, shouting insults at our fellows. Our sergeant was a smart little nigger, and this cheek set his blood up. Be jabers! he chucked his gun down, pulled out that curved dagger--a Ghoorkha knife it is--and made for the big hillman. Both sides stopped firing to see the two chaps fight. As our fellow came scrambling up over the rocks, the chief ran at him and thrust with all his stringth. Be jabers! I thought I saw the pint of the blade come out through the sergeant's back. He managed to twist round though, so as to dodge it. At the same time he hit up from below, and the hillman sprang into the air, looking for all the world like one o' those open sheep you see outside a butcher's shop. He was ripped up from stomach to throat. The sight knocked all the fight out of the other spalpeens, and they took to their heels as hard as they could run. I took the dead man's knife away, and the sergeant sold me his for a few rupees, so there they are. Not much to make a story of, but it was intheresting to see. I'd have bet five to three on the chief."
"Bad discipline, very bad," Baumser remarked. "To break the ranks and run mit knives would make my old Unter-offizier Kritzer very mad indeed." The German had served his time in the Prussian Army, and was still mindful of his training.
"Your stiff-backed Pickelhaubes would have had a poor chance in the passes," answered the major. "It was ivery man for himself there. You might lie, or stand, or do what you liked as long as you didn't run. Discipline goes to pieces in a war of that sort."
"Dat is what you call gorilla warfare," said Von Baumser, with a proud consciousness of having mastered an English idiom. "For all dat, discipline is a very fine thing--very good indeed. I vell remember in the great krieg--the war with Austria--we had made a mine and were about to fire it. A sentry had been placed just over this, and after the match was lit it was forgotten to withdraw the man. He knew well that the powder beneath him would presently him into the air lift, but since he had not been dismissed in right form he remained until the ausbruch had exploded. He was never seen no more, and, indeed, dat he had ever been dere might well have been forgotten, had it not been dat his nadelgewehr was dere found. Dat was a proper soldier, I think, to be placed in command had he lived."
"To be placed in a lunatic asylum if he lived," said the Irishman testily. "Hullo, what's this?"
The "this" was the appearance of the boarding-house slavey with a very neat pink envelope upon a tray, addressed, in the most elegant of female hands, to "Major Tobias Clutterbuck, late of Her Majesty's Hundred and Nineteenth."
"Ah!" cried Von Baumser, laughing in his red beard, "it is from a woman. You are what the English call a sly hog, a very sly hog--or, I should say, dog, though it is much the same."
"It's for you as well as for me. See here. 'Mrs. Lavinia Scully presints her compliments to Major Tobias Clutterbuck and to his friend, Mr. Sigismund von Baumser, and trusts that they may be able to favour her with their company on Tuesday evening at eight, to meet a few frinds.' It's a dance," said the major. "That accounts for the harp and the tables and binches and wine cases I saw going in this morning."
"Will you go?"
"Yes, of course I will, and so shall you.