[17]
'Cecil'"--a man with a quicker guard, a harder punch, a smarter
ring-craft, a better wind, and a tougher appetite for "gruel"
than himself.

The occasion was furnished by a sad little experience.

Poor drunken Trooper Bear (once the Honourable MacMahon FitzUrse),
kindliest, weakest, gentlest of gentlemen, had lurched one bitter
soaking night (or early morning) into the barrack-room, singing in a
beautiful tenor:--

"Menez-moi" dit la belle,
"A la rive fidele
Ou l'on aime toujours."
...--"Cette rive ma chere
On ne la connait guere
Au pays des amours."....

Trooper Herbert Hawker had no appreciation for Theophile Gautier--or
perhaps none for being awakened from his warm slumbers.

"'Ere! stow that blarsted catawaulin'," he roared, with a choice
selection from the Whitechapel tongue, in which he requested the
adjectived noun to be adverbially "quick about it, too".

With a beatific smile upon his weak handsome face, Trooper Bear
staggered toward the speaker, blew him a kiss, and, in a vain
endeavour to seat himself upon the cot, collapsed upon the ground.

"You're a...." (adverbially adjectived noun) shouted Hawker. "You
ain't a man, you're a...." "[Greek: skias hovar havthropos]" ... "Man
is the dream of a shadow," suggested Bear dreamily with a hiccup....

"D'yer know where you _are_, you ..." roared Hawker.

"Dear Heart, I am in hell," replied the recumbent one, "but by the
Mercy of God I'm splendidly drunk. Yes, hell. '_Lasciate ogni
speranza,_' sweet Amaryllis. I am Morag of the Misty Way. _Mos'_
misty. Milky Way. Yesh. Milk Punchy Way." ...

"I'll give you all the _punch_ you'll want, in abaht two ticks if you
don't chuck it--you blarsted edjucated flea," warned Hawker, half
rising.

Dam got up and pulled on his cloak preparatory to helping the
o'er-taken one to bed, as a well-aimed ammunition boot took the latter
nearly on the ear.

Struggling to his feet with the announcement that he was "the King's
fair daughter, weighed in the balance and found--devilish heavy and
very drunk," the unhappy youth lurched and fell upon the outraged
Hawker--who struck him a cruel blow in the face.

At the sound of the blow and heavy fall, Dam turned, saw the
blood--and went Stukeley-mad. Springing like a tiger upon Hawker he
dragged him from his cot and knocked him across it. In less than a
minute he had twice sent him to the boards, and it took half-a-dozen
men on either side to separate the combatants and