he is ungrammatical,
ordinary, but never uninteresting or slow of intuition.

He was a master of slang, and like all strong and vivid characters had
his own peculiar sayings.

He never thought of looking over my shoulder when I was sketching. He
was a gentleman of Nature. But when he saw I had finished, his clear,
deep-set eyes (handed down to him from those old Norseman ancestors)
would glint with interest--

"Dekko the drawing," he would say, using the old Romany word for "let's
see."

"PRACtically" was a favourite word.

"PRACtically the 'ole Peninsula--"

"PRACtically every one of 'em--"

"It weren't that," he would say; or, "I weren't bothering--"

"I'm not bothered--"

"Thee needn't bother, but it's a misfortunate thing--"

"Hates me like the divil 'ates Holy Water."

"Like enough!"

"A pound to a penny!"

"As like as not!"

"Ah; very like."

These were all typical Hawkish expressions.

His yarns of India out-Rudyard Kipling. They were superb, full of
barrack-room touches, and the smells and sounds of the jungle. He told
of the time when a soldier could get "jungling leave"; when he could
go off with a Winchester and a pal and a native guide for two or three
months; when the Government paid so many rupees for a tiger skin, so
many for a cobra--a scale of rewards for bringing back the trophies of
the jungle wilds.

He pictured the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush, describing the everlasting
snows where you look up and up at the sheer rocks and glaciers; "you
feel like a baby tortoise away down there, so small, as like as not you
get giddy and drunk-like."

One night Hawk told me of a Hindu fakir who sat by the roadside
performing the mango-trick for one anna. I illustrated it in the sand as
he told it.

_caption: Dug-out, September 9, 1915._

1. The fakir puts a pinch of dust from the ground in a little pile on a
glass plate on a tripod.

2. He covers it up with a handkerchief or a cloth.

3. He plays the bagpipes, or a wooden flute, while you can see the heap
of dust under the cloth a-growing and a-growing up and up, bigger and
bigger.

4. At last he lifts up the cloth and shows you the green mango-tree
growing on the piece of glass.

"He covers it again--plays. Lifts the cloth, shows you the mango tree in
leaf. Covers it again--plays again. Takes away the cloth, and shows you
the mango-tree in fruit, real fruit; but they never let you have the
fruit for love or money. Rather than l