No More Learning

When "Take me to London again" stopped, after twenty bars, every
one in the Mess said:--"What on earth has happened? " A minute later,
they heard unmilitary noises, and saw, far across the plain, the White
Hussars scattered, and broken, and flying.

The Colonel was speechless with rage, for he thought that the Regiment
had risen against him or was unanimously drunk. The Band, a disorganized
mob, tore past, and at its heels labored the Drum-Horse--the dead and
buried Drum-Horse--with the jolting, clattering skeleton. Hogan-Yale
whispered softly to Martyn:--"No wire will stand that treatment," and
the Band, which had doubled like a hare, came back again. But the rest
of the Regiment was gone, was rioting all over the Province, for the
dusk had shut in and each man was howling to his neighbor that the
Drum-Horse was on his flank.

Troop-Horses are far too tenderly treated as a rule. They can, on
emergencies, do a great deal, even with seventeen stone on their backs.
As the troopers found out.

How long this panic lasted I cannot say. I believe that when the moon
rose the men saw they had nothing to fear, and, by twos and threes
and half-troops, crept back into Cantonments very much ashamed of
themselves. Meantime, the Drum-Horse, disgusted at his treatment by
old friends, pulled up, wheeled round, and trotted up to the Mess
verandah-steps for bread. No one liked to run; but no one cared to go
forward till the Colonel made a movement and laid hold of the skeleton's
foot. The Band had halted some distance away, and now came back slowly.
The Colonel called it, individually and collectively, every evil name
that occurred to him at the time; for he had set his hand on the
bosom of the Drum-Horse and found flesh and blood.
Then he beat the
kettle-drums with his clenched fist, and discovered that they were but
made of silvered paper and bamboo. Next, still swearing, he tried to
drag the skeleton out of the saddle, but found that it had been wired
into the cantle. The sight of the Colonel, with his arms round the
skeleton's pelvis and his knee in the old Drum-Horse's stomach, was
striking. Not to say amusing. He worried the thing off in a minute or
two, and threw it down on the ground, saying to the Band:--"Here, you
curs, that's what you're afraid of. " The skeleton did not look pretty in
the twilight. The Band-Sergeant seemed to recognize it, for he began to
chuckle and choke. "Shall I take it away, sir? " said the Band-Sergeant.
"Yes," said the Colonel, "take it to Hell, and ride there yourselves! "

The Band-Sergeant saluted, hoisted the skeleton across his saddle-bow,
and led off to the stables. Then the Colonel began to make inquiries
for the rest of the Regiment, and the language he used was wonderful. He
would disband the Regiment--he would court-martial every soul in it--he
would not command such a set of rabble, and so on, and so on. As the
men dropped in, his language grew wilder, until at last it exceeded the
utmost limits of free speech allowed even to a Colonel of Horse.

Martyn took Hogan-Yale aside and suggested compulsory retirement from
the service as a necessity when all was discovered. Martyn was the
weaker man of the two, Hogan-Yale put up his eyebrows and remarked,
firstly, that he was the son of a Lord, and secondly, that he was
as innocent as the babe unborn of the theatrical resurrection of the
Drum-Horse.