"There goes the worst of them," he said. "It'll take the best, and then,
please God, it'll stop." The Sergeants were silent till one said: "It couldn't
be him!" and all knew of whom Travis was thinking.
Bobby Wick stormed through the tents of his Company, rallying, rebuking
mildly, as is consistent with the Regulations, chaffing the faint-hearted:
haling the sound into the watery sunlight when there was a break in the
weather, and bidding them be of good cheer for their trouble was nearly at an
end; scuttling on his dun pony round the outskirts of the camp and heading
back men who, with the innate perversity of British soldier's, were always
wandering into infected villages, or drinking deeply from rain-flooded
marshes; comforting the panic-stricken with rude speech, and more than once
tending the dying who had no friends--the men without "townies"; organizing,
with banjos and burned cork, Sing-songs which should allow the talent of the
Regiment full play; and generally, as he explained, "playing the giddy garden-
goat all round."
"You're worth half a dozen of us, Bobby," said Revere in a moment of
enthusiasm. "How the devil do you keep it up?"
Bobby made no answer, but had Revere looked into the breast-pocket of his coat
he might have seen there a sheaf of badly-written letters which perhaps
accounted for the power that possessed the boy.
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