‘Well, never mind ’im now,’ said Martlow. ‘I’m feelin’ a bit peckish. Let’s eat the chicken, and then we shan’t ’ave to carry it about.’

‘We can save the cake for tea,’ said Shem. ‘I suppose they only sent the bread to fill up the box, but it will come in useful with the chicken.’

‘Open the chicken, then,’ said Bourne; ‘and cut some bread, Martlow.’

Martlow, however, was too interested in watching Shem opening the tin to turn to the loaf immediately. He waited until he saw the carved fowl, set in pale, quivering jelly.

‘Looks all right,’ he said, and grabbed the loaf.

It was fast in the box, and needed a bit of effort to pull it out.

‘Bloody fine packers!’ said Martlow; ‘they don’t care ’ow …

He gave a wrench, and it came up by the end he grasped: the other end, as soon as it was released from the pressure of the box, fell off, and a bottle with a white capsule over the cork slid out and would have fallen to the floor, but that Shem caught it.

‘Well, you can fuck me!’ exclaimed the astonished Martlow.

‘Here, hide it, hide it quick!’ said the excited Shem. ‘There’d be no end of a bloody row if they got to know your friends were sending you bottles o’ Scotch. Bloody fine packers! I should think they were! They’ve scooped out nearly all the crumb. We’ll have to eat dry crust with the chicken. Here, open it quick; and let’s all have a tot, and then put the rest away in your pack.’

‘Shem,’ said Bourne earnestly, ‘if I ever get a Victoria Cross I shall send it to Bartlett as a souvenir.’

‘You don’t want to go lookin’ for no Victoria Crosses,’ said Martlow in a didactic vein, ‘you want to be bloody careful you don’t get a wooden cross instead.’

They gave the bones of the chicken to a dog in the yard, so that nothing of it was wasted; and the empty tin they threw into a pit dug for the purpose in a bit of field behind the yard. Shem poured some more whisky into Bourne’s cooker, the lid of which fitted quite tight. That would be good in their tea, he said, as he corked the bottle and, folding it in the skirt of Bourne’s overcoat, concealed it in his pack. Then, each smoking a Russian cigarette, they awaited placidly the return of Corporal Hamley from his arduous duties.

Corporal Hamley was rather like Sergeant Tozer in build, a lean, raw-boned man; but of a dark complexion, where the other man was fair and ruddy; and of a softer nature, where the other, if reflective and sensible, was still hard and sharp. The corporal, too, just because he was a little weaker than Sergeant Tozer, was inclined to be influenced by what he may have heard of a man’s character before he had sufficient experience to form an opinion about him for himself. Someone had evidently prejudiced him against Bourne and Shem. When the new men fell in for his inspection outside the stable, he was inclined to single the two of them out from the rest, by looking at them fixedly, while he delivered to the squad a little homily on the whole duty of man. There being only billets for four men in the stables, he divided the parade arbitrarily into two, and Martlow, Shem, and Bourne, with a big dark man called Humphreys, were sent off to other billets about a hundred and fifty yards away down a by-road, where there were some more orderlies and some snipers. It was inconvenient being so far away from the rest of their section.