Maurice Tiernay, Soldier of Fortune. Lever Charles James
is free to spend an hour at the canteen, or take his sweetheart to the theatre.’
‘What! more fatigue! more exhaustion to an already tired and worn-out nature!’
‘I ask pardon, sir, I see I was wrong; but I had forgotten how thoroughly the poor fellow was done up. I now see that you told him to go to bed.’
‘To bed! to bed! Is it that he might writhe in the nightmare, or suffer agony from cramps? To bed after fatigue like this! No, no, Tiernay; that was not the school in which I was brought up; we were taught to think of the men under our command; to remember that they had wants, sympathies, hopes, fears, and emotions like our own. I tell him to seat himself at the table, and with pen, ink, and paper before him, to write up the blanks. I see you don’t quite understand me, Tiernay, as to the meaning of the phrase, but I’ll let you into the secret. You have been kind enough to give me a peep at your note-book, and you shall in return have a look at mine. Open that volume, and tell me what you find in it.’
I obeyed the direction, and read at the top of a page the words, ‘Skeleton, 5th Prarial,’ in large characters, followed by several isolated words, denoting the strength of a brigade, the number of guns in a battery, the depth of a fosse, the height of a parapet, and such like. These were usually followed by a flourish of the pen, or sometimes by the word ‘Bom.,’ which singular monosyllable always occurred at the foot of the pages.
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