chest but a low-dahn
cockney wheeze w'en a benefactor's givin' yer the strite tip. Pore
Shiney! Ye think yer goin' back to Hengland, 'ome, an' beauty--to the
barrick-square, bully-beef an' booze, an' plenty o' it. Dontcher believe
it! Wot you're in fer is a dose o' German _Kultur_. W'en yer ship's
been torpedoed fourteen times between Hostend an' Dover, w'en yer
sarth-eastern trine 'as bumped inter a biker's dozen o' different sorts
o' mines, w'en you're Zepped the minnit you crorse the Strend to the
nearest pub, you'll begin ter twig wot the Hemperor of All the 'Uns is
ackshally a-doin' of. It's hall hup wiv yer, Shiney! You've ether got
ter lie dahn an' doi, er learn German. Nah, w'ich is it ter be? Go west
wiv yer benighted country, or go nap on the Keyser?"

"Torkin' o' pubs reminds me," yawned Shiney. "I couldn't get any
forrarder on that ginger-pop the Belgian horficers gev us. In one o'
them Yewlans' pawket-books there was five French quid. Wot abart a
bottle o' beer?"

"What abart it?" agreed Smithy instantly.

The soap was drying on Dalroy's face, but he thrust his head out of the
window to look at two of Britain's first line swaggering through the
gateway of the inn, and whistling, "It's a long, long way to Tipperary."
Smith and Shiney were true types of the somewhat cynical but ever
ready-witted and laughter-loving Londoner, who makes such a first-rate
fighting man. They were just a couple of ordinary "Tommies." The deadly
fury of Mons, the daily and nightly peril of the march through a land
stricken by a brutal enemy, the score of little battles which they
had conducted with an amazing skill and hardihood--these phases of
immortality troubled them not at all. An eye-rolling and sabre-rattling
emperor might rock the social foundations of half the world, his
braggart henchmen destroy that which they could never rebuild,
his frantic gang of poets and professors indite Hymns of Hate and
blasphemous catch-words like "Gott strafe England"; but the Smithies
and Shinies of the British army would never fail to cock a humorous
eye at the vapourers, and say sarcastically, "Well, an' wot abart it?"

* * * * *

Somehow, on 7th September 1914, there was a hitch in the naval programme
devised by the _Deutscher Marineamt_. The Belgian packet-boat, _Princess
Clementine_, steamed from Ostend to Dover through a smiling sea unvexed
by Krupp or any other form of _Kultur_. Warships, big and li