Ch. 15: The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney - Page 2

as regarded Mulvaney and the Yorkshireman; and
assault on Ortheris meant a combined attack from these twain--a business
which no five men were anxious to have on their hands. Therefore they
flourished, sharing their drinks, their tobacco, and their money; good
luck and evil; battle and the chances of death; life and the chances of
happiness from Calicut in southern, to Peshawur in northern India.

Through no merit of my own it was my good fortune to be in a measure
admitted to their friendship--frankly by Mulvaney from the beginning,
sullenly and with reluctance by Learoyd, and suspiciously by Ortheris,
who held to it that no man not in the Army could fraternise with a red-
coat. 'Like to like,' said he. 'I'm a bloomin' sodger--he's a bloomin'
civilian. 'Tain't natural--that's all.'

But that was not all. They thawed progressively, and in the thawing told
me more of their lives and adventures than I am ever likely to write.

Omitting all else, this tale begins with the Lamentable Thirst that was
at the beginning of First Causes. Never was such a thirst--Mulvaney told
me so. They kicked against their compulsory virtue, but the attempt was
only successful in the case of Ortheris. He, whose talents were many,
went forth into the highways and stole a dog from a 'civilian'--
videlicet, some one, he knew not who, not in the Army. Now that civilian
was but newly connected by marriage with the colonel of the regiment,
and outcry was made from quarters least anticipated by Ortheris, and, in
the end, he was forced, lest a worse thing should happen, to dispose at
ridiculously unremunerative rates of as promising a small terrier as
ever graced one end of a leading string. The purchase-money was barely
sufficient for one small outbreak which led him to the guard-room. He
escaped, however, with nothing worse than a severe reprimand, and a few
hours of punishment drill. Not for nothing had he acquired the
reputation of being 'the best soldier of his inches' in the regiment.
Mulvaney had taught personal cleanliness and efficiency as the first
articles of his companions' creed. 'A dhirty man,' he was used to say,
in the speech of his kind, 'goes to Clink for a weakness in the knees,
an' is coort-martialled for a pair av socks missin'; but a clane man,
such as is an ornament to his service--a man whose buttons are gold,
whose coat is wax upon him, an' whose 'coutrements are widout a speck--
THAT man may, spakin' in reason, do fwhat he likes an' dhrink from day
to divil. That's the pride av bein' dacint.'

We sat together, upon a day, in the shade of a ravine far from the
barracks, where a watercourse used to run in rainy weather. Behind us
was the scrub jungle, in which jackals, peacocks, the gray wolves of the