s
creditors, and enlisted. Having once chosen his profession, he went at
it with prodigious zeal, and lost no opportunity of attending any school
of instruction which was open to him. When he had once acquired his
drill, he was soon made corporal, then sergeant. He distinguished
himself at Hythe; he learnt signalling both with flags and flashes. And
when useful men were wanted for the formation of Camel Corps, and the
battalions in Egypt searched for them, he was one of the first pitched
upon to learn and then to instruct. For, when people talk of the super-
human intelligence of German officers and soldiers, and speak of ours as
a set of dunder-headed idiots, you need not quite take all they say for
absolute fact. I think if you took the adjutants, sergeant-majors, and
musketry instructors of the British army, you would find it hard to pick
out an equal number of men in any country, even Germany itself, to beat
them for intelligence, common sense, and promptitude.

"There will be a new drill to learn!" growled Tarrant.

"Oh, that won't be much," said Kavanagh. "Lots of old words of command
would do over again, I should say. For instance, `Shouldare--oop!' only
it would be the camel's shoulder which has to be mounted."

"Now, that's mighty clever," said Grady. "Will you tell me something,
Kavanagh, you that's a real scholar now--can a man be two things at the
same time?"

"Of course he can; he can be an Irishman and a barge horse, you see."

"Ah, then a Mounted Infantry man can be a trooper and a foot soldier all
at once. And a camel rider, would you call him a horse soldier, now?"

"No, Pat, I could not afford it. I'm an Irishman as well as yourself,
and dull people would think it was a blunder."

"That's a true word," said Grady. "And have you not noticed now, when
folks laugh at an Irishman, he is mostly quite right if they had the
understanding? Now you have observed, and heard, what a bad country
Egypt is for the eyes. Sure they give us green goggles, or we should
get the--what do you call it, Mr Corporal, sir, if you plaze?"

"The hop-fallimy," replied Corporal Adams, proud of being appealed to.

"Thank you; the hop-family, what with the sun, and the sand, and the
flies. And if you get the hop-family you are likely to go blind, and
that is a bad thing. Is it not curious that the great river of a
country that is so bad for the eyes should have cataracts itself in it?
Now that would sound fo