of the night the flame and glow from the
second parallel seemed to bite a hole; and as its brightness grew, it
drew the attention of the gunners of the Malakoff, who banged at it
sulkily from time to time. But the reckless contingent under Paddy's
leadership had already clambered to the open and were making a muddy way
in the darkness towards the Turkish camp.

Down in the trench the fire grew to a rich and splendid glow, and one
or two of the favoured of fortune, who owned pipes and tobacco, plucked
bright embers from it, and, nestling under the shelter of the wall,
sucked away at their comfort with simple animal noises of satisfaction.

'I say, Bill,' says one, 'was you ever Hingry before you seen this
Gawd-forsaken Crimea?'

'Lor' love yer,' says the man questioned, 'I was born hungry, and I've
been hungry ever since. But if the Honourable Paddy finds that 'og,
and I get hold of a hind leg of him, I won't complain before to-morrow
midnight.'

The fire glowed with a richer and a richer light, and men of hospitable
minds wiped their half-smoked clays on the inside crook of a coated
elbow and passed on luxury and refreshment to less-favoured neighbours.
It was a time for comradeship, if only for the fact that it was
Christmas Eve, and coming fast towards Christmas morning. But the
thought of the slain porker was in all men's minds, and made them
expansive and generous and reserved by turns. Boom! said the gun from
the Redoubt, and the earth spluttered between the collar of Sergeant
Polson's jacket and his neck, and dribbled comfortlessly down his back,
colder than any charity he had known of: lately-frozen earth, half
thawed, with wet snow on the top of it, and a sulky boom behind to add a
threat to its cold sting.

After long waiting, a voice in ecstatic laughter, and surely the voice
of the Honourable Paddy, Shuffling footsteps in the dark, and the
hungriest of the whole crowd in the trench climbing to peer into the
blackness; a youth who has not yet finished growing, and who finds the
irregularity of meals a cruel thing.

'I'd like to know,' says the Honourable Mr. Erroll cheerfully, 'who
trusted those infernal Russians with a gun? They'll be hurting somebody
by and by, if they're not careful. But here's the pig, boys, and there's
nobody but poor little Ahmed Bey the worse for us. I knocked him on the
head from behind, and we'll be none the worse friends to-morrow.'

Bang, and bang, and bang! sounded the guns