eve that you have become a wiser
man."

SPITZBERGEN TALES

THE KICKING TWELFTH

The Spitzbergen army was backed by tradition of centuries of victory. In
its chronicles, occasional defeats were not printed in italics, but were
likely to appear as glorious stands against overwhelming odds. A
favourite way to dispose of them was frankly to attribute them to the
blunders of the civilian heads of government. This was very good for the
army, and probably no army had more self-confidence. When it was
announced that an expeditionary force was to be sent to Rostina to
chastise an impudent people, a hundred barrack squares filled with
excited men, and a hundred sergeant-majors hurried silently through the
groups, and succeeded in looking as if they were the repositories of the
secrets of empire. Officers on leave sped joyfully back to their
harness, and recruits were abused with unflagging devotion by every man,
from colonels to privates of experience.

The Twelfth Regiment of the Line--the Kicking Twelfth--was consumed with
a dread that it was not to be included in the expedition, and the
regiment formed itself into an informal indignation meeting. Just as
they had proved that a great outrage was about to be perpetrated,
warning orders arrived to hold themselves in readiness for active
service abroad--in Rostina. The barrack yard was in a flash transferred
into a blue-and-buff pandemonium, and the official bugle itself hardly
had power to quell the glad disturbance.

Thus it was that early in the spring the Kicking Twelfth--sixteen
hundred men in service equipment--found itself crawling along a road in
Rostina. They did not form part of the main force, but belonged to a
column of four regiments of foot, two batteries of field guns, a battery
of mountain howitzers, a regiment of horse, and a company of engineers.
Nothing had happened. The long column had crawled without amusement of
any kind through a broad green valley. Big white farm-houses dotted the
slopes; but there was no sign of man or beast, and no smoke from the
chimneys. The column was operating from its own base, and its general
was expected to form a junction with the main body at a given point.

A squadron of the cavalry was fanned out ahead, scouting, and day by day
the trudging infantry watched the blue uniforms of the horsemen as they
came and went. Sometimes there would sound the faint thuds of a few
shots, but the cavalry was unable to find