invitation enough, and both the long arms of Hank shot out, and, in a moment, he was on his bed, a bowl in either hand.
Buddy followed his example.
I looked round. There appeared to me to be more bowls than there were people in the room. I snatched two, before the rush of hungry men from other parts of the room arrived with outstretched hands.
This disgusting exhibition of greed on my part cannot be excused, but may be condoned as it was not made in my own interests. I was not hungry, and the look of the stuff was not sufficiently tempting for me to eat for eating's sake. By the time I reached my cot, Hank had emptied one bowl, and was rapidly emptying the other.
"Gee! That's what I come to the Legion for," he said, with a sigh of content. When he had finished, I offered him one of my two.
"Fergit it," said he.
"I want to," said I.
He stared hard at me.
"Not hungry," I assured him.
"Honest Injun?" he asked doubtfully, but extending his hand.
"Had a big breakfast an hour ago," said I. "I never take soup in the middle of the morning. I got this for you and Mr.----er. . ."
"Buddy," said the little man and took the other bowl.
Hank swallowed his third portion.
"You're shore white, pard," he said.
"Blowed-in-the-glass," agreed Buddy, and I felt I had two friends.
A large German lumbered up gesticulating, and assailed Hank.
"You eat dree!" he shouted in guttural English. "I only eat vun! Himmel! You damn dirdy tief!"
"Sure thing, Dutchy," said Buddy. "Don't yew stand fer it! You beat him up. You make him put it back."
The German shook a useful-looking fist under Hank's nose.
"I cain't put it back, Dutch," said he mildly. "'Twouldn't be manners," and, as the angry German waxed more aggressive, he laid his huge and soupy hand upon the fat angry face, and pushed.
The German staggered back and fell heavily, and sat looking infinitely surprised.
"Now, pard," said Hank to me, "I could shore look upon the wine without no evil effecks to nobody," and we trooped out in search of the canteen.
The big gloomy quadrangle of Fort St. Jean was now crowded with soldiers of every regiment of the army of Africa, the famous Nineteenth Army Corps, and, for the first time, I saw the Spahis of whom the French officer had talked to us at Brandon Abbas.
Their trousers were voluminous enough to be called skirts, in fact one leg would have provided the material for an ample frock. Above these garments they wore sashes that appeared to be yards in length and feet in width. In these they rolled each other up, one man holding and manipulating the end, while the other spun round and round towards him, winding the sash tightly about himself as he did so.
Gaudy waistcoats, zouave jackets, fez caps, and vast scarlet cloaks completed their picturesquely barbaric costumes.
Besides the Spahis were blue-and-yellow Tirailleurs, pale blue Chasseurs d'Afrique, and red-and-blue Zouaves, blue Colonial Infantry, as well as artillerymen, sappers, and soldiers of the line, in their respective gay uniforms.
There was a babel of noise and a confusing turmoil as these leave-men rushed about in search of pay-corporals, fourrier-sergents, kit, papers, food, and the canteen. The place was evidently the clearing-house and military hotel for all soldiers coming from, or returning to, the army of Africa.
Following the current that flowed through this seething whirlpool, in the direction of a suggestive-looking squad of huge wine-casks that stood arrayed outside an open door, we found ourselves in the canteen and the presence of the national drink, good red wine.
"No rye-whiskey at a dollar a drink here, Bo," observed Buddy, as we made our way to a zinc-covered counter, and found that everybody was drinking claret at three-halfpence the bottle. "Drinks are on you, pard. Set 'em up."
"Gee! It's what they call 'wine,'" sighed Hank. "Gotta get used to it with the other crool deprivations and hardships," and he drained the tumbler that I filled.
"It is lickker, Bo," replied Buddy tolerantly, and drained another.
It was, and very good liquor too. It struck me as far better wine than one paid a good deal for at Oxford, and good enough to set before one's guests anywhere.
Personally I am a poor performer with the bottle, and regard wine as something to taste and appreciate, rather than as a thirst-quenching beverage.
Also I freely confess that the sensation produced by more than enough, or by mixing drinks, is, to me, most distasteful.
I would as soon experience the giddiness caused by spinning round and round, as the giddiness caused by alcohol. More than a little makes me feel sick, silly, depressed, and uncomfortable, and I have never been able to understand the attraction that intoxication undoubtedly has for some people.
It is therefore in no way to my credit that I am a strictly sober person, and as little disposed to exceed in wine as in cheese, pancakes, or dry toast.
"Quite good wine," said I to the two Americans, "but I can't say I like it as a drink between meals."
I found that my companions were of one mind with me, though perhaps for a different reason.
"Yep," agreed Buddy. "Guess they don't allow no intoxicatin' hard lickkers in these furrin canteens."
"Nope," remarked Hank. "We gotta swaller this an' be thankful. P'r'aps we kin go out an' have a drink when we git weary-like. . . . Set 'em up again, Bo," and I procured them each his third bottle.
"You ain't drinkin', pard," said Buddy, eyeing my half-emptied first glass.
"Not thirsty," I replied.
"Thirsty?" said Hank. "Don' s'pose there's any water here if you was," and feeling I had said the wrong thing, covered my confusion by turning away and observing the noisy, merry throng, drinking and chattering around me. They were a devil-may-care, hard-bitten, tough-looking crowd, and I found myself positively looking forward to being in uniform and one of them.
As I watched, I saw a civilian coming from the door towards us. I had noticed him in the barrack-room. Although dressed in an ill-fitting, shoddy, shabby blue suit, a velvet tam-o'-shanter, burst shoes, and apparently nothing else, he looked like a soldier. Not that he had by any means the carriage of an English guardsman--far from it--but his face was a soldier's, bronzed, hard, disciplined, and of a family likeness to those around.
Coming straight to us, he said pleasantly, and with only the slightest foreign accent:
"Recruits for the Legion?"
"Yes," I replied.
"Would you care to exchange information for a bottle?" he asked politely, with an ingratiating smile which did not extend to his eyes.
"I
