Page:Life's Handicap - Kipling (1891).djvu/224

 They were heart-filling lines and they ran with a swirl; the I.A.A. are better served by their pens than their petards. Dan clapped Mulcahy merrily on the back, asking him to sing up. The officers lay down again. There was no need to walk any more. Their men were soothing themselves thunderously, thus—

St. Mary in Heaven has written the vow That the land shall not rest till the heretic blood, From the babe at the breast to the hand at the plough, Has rolled to the ocean like Shannon in flood!

'I'll speak to you after all's over,' said Father Dennis authoritatively in Dan's ear. 'What's the use of confessing to me when you do this foolishness? Dan, you've been playing with fire! I'll lay you more penance in a week than'

'Come along to Purgatory with us, Father dear. The Boneens are on the move; they'll let us go now!'

The regiment rose to the blast of the bugle as one man; but one man there was who rose more swiftly than all the others, for half an inch of bayonet was in the fleshy part of his leg.

'You've got to do it,' said Dan grimly. 'Do it decent, anyhow;' and the roar of the rush drowned his words, for the rear companies thrust forward the first, still singing as they swung down the slope—

From the child at the breast to the hand at the plough Shall roll to the ocean like Shannon in flood!

They should have sung it in the face of England, not of the Afghans, whom it impressed as much as did the wild Irish yell.

'They came down singing,' said the unofficial report of the enemy, borne from village to village the next day.