No More Learning

Their only amusement came late in the day, when they fell upon the
battery of Horse Artillery and chased it for two mile's. This was a
personal question, and most of the troopers had money on the event; the
Gunners saying openly that they had the legs of the White Hussars. They
were wrong. A march-past concluded the campaign, and when the Regiment
got back to their Lines, the men were coated with dirt from spur to
chin-strap.

The White Hussars have one great and peculiar privilege. They won it at
Fontenoy, I think.

Many Regiments possess special rights, such as wearing collars with
undress uniform, or a bow of ribbon between the shoulders, or red and
white roses in their helmets on certain days of the year. Some
rights are connected with regimental saints, and some with regimental
successes. All are valued highly; but none so highly as the right of
the White Hussars to have the Band playing when their horses are being
watered in the Lines. Only one tune is played, and that tune never
varies. I don't know its real name, but the White Hussars call
it:--"Take me to London again. " It sounds very pretty. The Regiment
would sooner be struck off the roster than forego their distinction.

After the "dismiss" was sounded, the officers rode off home to prepare
for stables; and the men filed into the lines, riding easy.

That is to say, they opened their tight buttons, shifted their helmets,
and began to joke or to swear as the humor took them; the more careful
slipping off and easing girths and curbs.
A good trooper values his
mount exactly as much as he values himself, and believes, or should
believe, that the two together are irresistible where women or men,
girls or guns, are concerned.

Then the Orderly-Officer gave the order:--"Water horses," and the
Regiment loafed off to the squadron-troughs, which were in rear of
the stables and between these and the barracks. There were four huge
troughs, one for each squadron, arranged en echelon, so that the whole
Regiment could water in ten minutes if it liked. But it lingered for
seventeen, as a rule, while the Band played.

The band struck up as the squadrons filed off the troughs and the men
slipped their feet out of the stirrups and chaffed each other.

The sun was just setting in a big, hot bed of red cloud, and the road to
the Civil Lines seemed to run straight into the sun's eye.

There was a little dot on the road. It grew and grew till it showed as
a horse, with a sort of gridiron thing on his back. The red cloud glared
through the bars of the gridiron. Some of the troopers shaded their eyes
with their hands and said:--"What the mischief as that there 'orse got
on 'im! "

In another minute they heard a neigh that every soul--horse and man--in
the Regiment knew, and saw, heading straight towards the Band, the dead
Drum-Horse of the White Hussars!

On his withers banged and bumped the kettle-drums draped in crape, and
on his back, very stiff and soldierly, sat a bare-headed skeleton.

The band stopped playing, and, for a moment, there was a hush.

Then some one in E troop--men said it was the
Troop-Sergeant-Major--swung his horse round and yelled. No one can
account exactly for what happened afterwards; but it seems that, at
least, one man in each troop set an example of panic, and the rest
followed like sheep. The horses that had barely put their muzzles into
the trough's reared and capered; but, as soon as the Band broke, which
it did when the ghost of the Drum-Horse was about a furlong distant, all
hooves followed suit, and the clatter of the stampede--quite different
from the orderly throb and roar of a movement on parade, or the rough
horse-play of watering in camp--made them only more terrified.