He was
mobbed by the infuriated soldiery, who closed round but did not
kill him, for he fought his way to shelter, flying for the life.
Mulcahy could have wept with pure joy and thankfulness. The very
prisoners in the guard-room were shaking the bars of their cells
and howling like wild beasts, and from every barrack poured the
booming as of a big war-drum.
Mulcahy hastened to his own barrack. He could hardly hear himself
speak. Eighty men were pounding with fist and heel the tables and
trestles - eighty men, flushed with mutiny, stripped to their
shirt sleeves, their knapsacks half-packed for the march to the
sea, made the two-inch boards thunder again as they chanted, to a
tune that Mulcahy knew well, the Sacred War Song of the Mavericks-
Listen in the north, my boys, there's trouble on the wind;
Tramp o' Cossack hooves in front, gray great-coats behind,
Trouble on the Frontier of a most amazin' kind,
Trouble on the waters o' the Oxus!
Then, as the table broke under the furious accompaniment -
Hurrah! hurrah! it's north by west we go;
Hurrah! hurrah! the chance we wanted so;
Let 'em hear the chorus from Umballa to Moscow,
As we go marchin' to the Kremling.
"Mother of all the saints in bliss and all the devils in cinders,
where's my fine new sock widout the heel?" howled Horse Egan,
ransacking everybody's valise but his own.
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