do, for the
whole of this month, with managing a stupid gang of men." "Thanks!" said
Corder and I together, and we bowed as if we had been drilled to do it,
exactly together. Knudsen was rather taken aback, but he laughed and
apologized. "You ought to be corporal of a squad," said Corder. "Do you
want to get me out of this one?" demanded Knudsen. "Bannister is all
right. I tell you I'm here for a rest, and I want to escape the captain's
notice." We promised (_Bugle!_) to help him keep in his obscurity. Lucy
stood silent, but full of admiration.

(_Sergeant's whistle, and Pickle comes running in. "Make up the packs
without the ponchos!" Good by for the present._)

(_Four hours later, after skirmish practice in the roughest kind of low
underbrush, in which I nearly lost a legging, and wished for a pair of
wooden elbows._)

The company was split in two this morning, those men who had used
high-power rifles being taken away by the captain, whose specialty is
shooting, while the rest of us went with the lieutenant up the Peru road,
and turned into an old overgrown blueberry pasture. Luckily there were no
blueberries, for whenever we threw ourselves flat we should have squashed
more on our clothes than we should have had time to eat. Bannister being
with the shooters, we (such as remained of our squad) were put with a
neighboring corporal who did not know his business, and

(_Forty minutes for mess. After a cigarette, I am trying to snatch a few
minutes now_)

and speedily had the lieutenant "bawling us out." So very quietly, but
very firmly, with Corder again winking at me in perfect delight, Knudsen
took over corporal and squad, and managed us in an undertone from his
position of number two. He kept the squad together, told the corporal
when to spread it out, and that innocent person willingly gave himself
into Knudsen's hands. We had plenty to do in a series of

(_Bugle and whistle. Off for afternoon drill.--Now at 3.24 P.M. after
learning to pitch shelter tents_)

imaginary attacks, sometimes in showers, and we steaming in our ponchos
or shivering without them, ploughing through the wet bushes or throwing
ourselves flat in them. Then, from whatever positions we found ourselves
in, we had to "simulate firing" at an enemy until my neck was lame from
trying to hold my head up, and my elbows were sore from their rough
lodgings. The corporal was perfectly docile, and Knudsen even hooked his
fingers in the back of the