wo nights before the attack on McNeill's
zeriba at Tofrik.

"Serve 'im right. Janders was too bloomin' suddint," skirled Henry
Withers of the Sick Horse Depot from the bottom of the table.

"Too momentary, I believe you," said Corporal Billy Bagshot.

At the Sick Horse Depot Connor had, without good cause, made some
disparaging remarks upon the charger ridden by Subadar Goordit Singh
at the fight at Dihilbat Hill, which towers over the village of Hashin.
Subadar Goordit Singh heard the remarks, and, loving his welted,
gibbet-headed charger as William Connor loved any woman who came his
way, he spat upon the ground the sergeant's foot covered, and made an
evil-smiling remark. Thereupon Connor laid siege to the white-toothed,
wild-bearded Sikh with words which suddenly came to renown, and left not
a shred of glory to the garment of vanity the hillman wore.

He insinuated that the Sikh's horse was wounded at Hashin from behind
by backing too far on the Guards' Brigade on one side and on the Royal
Mounted Infantry on the other. This was ungenerous and it was not true,
for William Connor knew well the reputation of the Sikhs; but William's
blood was up, and the smile of the Subadar was hateful in his eyes. The
truth was that the Berkshire Regiment had had its chance at Dihilbat
Hill and the Sikhs had not. But William Connor refused to make a
distinction between two squadrons of Bengal Cavalry which had been
driven back upon the Guards' square and the Sikhs who fretted on their
bits, as it were.

The Berkshire Regiment had done its work in gallant style up the steep
slopes of Dihilbat, had cleared the summit of Osman Digna's men, and
followed them with a raking fire as they retreated wildly into the
mimosa bushes on the plain. The Berkshires were not by nature proud
of stomach, but Connor was a popular man, and the incident of the Sick
Horse Depot, as reported by Corporal Bagshot, who kept a diary and a
dictionary, tickled their imagination, and they went forth and swaggered
before the Indian Native Contingent, singing a song made by Bagshot and
translated into Irish idiom by William Connor. The song was meant to
humiliate the Indian Native Contingent, and the Sikhs writhed under
the raillery and looked black-so black that word was carried to McNeill
himself, who sent orders to the officers of the Berkshire Regiment to
give the offenders a dressing down; for the Sikhs were not fellaheen, to
be heckled with impunity.

T