"If we want anything more than drums and fifes on 'heef' we sing," said
Pigeon. "Singin' helps the wind."
I rejoiced to the marrow of my bones thus to be borne along on billows of
surging music among magnificent men, in sunlight, through a crowded town
whose people, I could feel, regarded us with comradeship, affection--and
more.
"By Jove," I said at last, watching the eyes about us, "these people are
looking us over as if we were horses."
"Why not? They know the game."
The eyes on the pavement, in the trams, the cabs, at the upper windows,
swept our lines back and forth with a weighed intensity of regard which at
first seemed altogether new to me, till I recalled just such eyes, a
thousand of them, at manoeuvres in the Channel when one crowded battleship
drew past its sister at biscuit-toss range. Then I stared at the ground,
overborne by those considering eyes.
Suddenly the music changed to the wail of the Dead March in "Saul," and
once more--we were crossing a large square--the regiment halted.
"Damn!" said Pigeon, glancing behind him at the mounted company. "I
believe they save up their Saturday corpses on purpose."
"What is it?" I asked.
"A dead Volunteer. We must play him through." Again I looked forward and
saw the top of a hearse, followed by two mourning-coaches, boring directly
up the halted regiment, which opened out company by company to let it
through.
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