Page:Life's Handicap - Kipling (1891).djvu/223

 through the files. It is at this hour, when the breeze brings the first salt whiff of the powder to noses rather cold at the tip, and the eye can quietly take in the appearance of each red casualty, that the strain on the nerves is strongest. Scotch regiments can endure for half a day and abate no whit of their zeal at the end; English regiments sometimes sulk under punishment, while the Irish, like the French, are apt to run forward by ones and twos, which is just as bad as running back. The truly wise commandant of highly-strung troops allows them, in seasons of waiting, to hear the sound of their own voices uplifted in song. There is a legend of an English regiment that lay by its arms under fire chaunting 'Sam Hall,' to the horror of its newly appointed and pious colonel. The Black Boneens, who were suffering more than the Mavericks, on a hill half a mile away, began presently to explain to all who cared to listen—

We'll sound the jubilee, from the centre to the sea, And Ireland shall be free, says the Shan-van Vogh.

'Sing, boys,' said Father Dennis softly. 'It looks as if we cared for their Afghan peas.'

Dan Grady raised himself to his knees and opened his mouth in a song imparted to him, as to most of his comrades, in the strictest confidence by Mulcahy—that Mulcahy then lying limp and fainting on the grass, the chill fear of death upon him.

Company after company caught up the words which, the I.A.A. say, are to herald the general rising of Erin, and to breathe which, except to those duly appointed to hear, is death. Wherefore they are printed in this place.

The Saxon in Heaven's just balance is weighed, His doom like Belshazzar's in death has been cast, And the hand of the venger shall never be stayed Till his race, faith, and speech are a dream of the past.