They Are Both Much The Same In
The Mere Exterior, For Each Is A Flat Platform, Sloping At The Sides
And Covered With Grass, And Each Has Mysterious Doors.
But, for my
part, I never see a powder-magazine without being filled at once with
two very good feelings - - laughter and companionship.
For it was my
good fortune, years and years ago, to be companion and friend to two
men who were on sentry at a powder-magazine just after there had been
some anarchist attempts (as they call them) upon such depots - and for
the matter of that I can imagine nothing more luscious to the
anarchist than seven hundred and forty-two cases of powder and fifty
cases of melinite all stored in one place. And to prevent the enormous
noise, confusion, and waste that would have resulted from the
over-attraction of this base of operations to the anarchists, my two
friends, one of whom was a duty-doing Burgundian, but the other a
loose Parisian man, were on sentry that night. They had strict orders
to challenge once and then to fire.
Now, can you imagine anything more exquisite to a poor devil of a
conscript, fagged out with garrison duty and stale sham-fighting, than
an order of that kind? So my friends took it, and in one summer night
they killed a donkey and wounded two mares, and broke the thin stem of
a growing tree.
This powder-magazine was no exception to my rule, for as I approached
it I saw a round-faced corporal and two round-faced men looking
eagerly to see who might be attacking their treasure, and I became
quite genial in my mind when I thought of how proud these boys felt,
and of how I was of the 'class of ninety, rifled and mounted on its
carriage' (if you don't see the point of the allusion, I can't stop to
explain it.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 97 of 361
Words from 26170 to 26494
of 97758
