ur months!'

'I don't care. It's all one to me. 'Ow d'you know I ain't 'fraid o'
dyin' 'fore I gets my discharge paipers?' He recommenced, in a
sing-song voice, the Orders.

I had never seen this side of Ortheris's character before, but
evidently Mulvaney had, and attached serious importance to it. While
Ortheris babbled, with his head on his arms, Mulvaney whispered to
me:--

'He's always tuk this way whin he's been checked overmuch by the
childher they make Sarjints nowadays. That an' havin' nothin' to do. I
can't make ut out anyways.'

'Well, what does it matter? Let him talk himself through.'

Ortheris began singing a parody of _The Ramrod Corps_, full of
cheerful allusions to battle, murder, and sudden death. He looked out
across the river as he sang; and his face was quite strange to me.
Mulvaney caught me by the elbow to ensure attention.

'Matther? It matthers everything! 'Tis some sort av fit that's on him.
I've seen ut. 'Twill hould him all this night, an' in the middle av it
he'll get out av his cot an' go rakin' in the rack for his
'courtremints. Thin he'll come over to me an' say, "I'm goin' to
Bombay. Answer for me in the mornin'." Thin me an' him will fight as
we've done before--him to go an' me to hould him--an' so we'll both
come on the books for disturbin' in barricks. I've belted him, an'
I've bruk his head, an' I've talked to him, but 'tis no manner av use
whin the fit's on him. He's as good a bhoy as ever stepped whin his
mind's clear. I know fwhat's comin', though, this night in barricks.
Lord send he doesn't loose on me whin I rise to knock him down. 'Tis
that that's in my mind day an' night.'

This put the case in a much less pleasant light, and fully accounted
for Mulvaney's anxiety. He seemed to be trying to coax Ortheris out of
the fit; for he shouted down the bank where the boy was lying:--

'Listen now, you wid the "pore pink toes" an' the glass-eyes! Did you
shwim the Irriwaddy at night, behin' me, as a bhoy shud; or were you
hidin' under a bed, as you was at Ahmid Kheyl?'

This was at once a gross insult and a direct lie, and Mulvaney meant
it to bring on a fight. But Ortheris seemed shut up in some sort of
trance. He answered slowly, without a sign of irritation, in the same
cadenced voice as he had used for his firing-party orders:--

'_Hi_ swum the Irriwaddy in the night, as you know, for to take the
town of Lungtungpen, nakid an' without fear. _Hand_ where I was at
Ahmed K