"Everybody ought to at a time like this."
Of course, with such ignorance you can't argue, any more than you could
with Rice, when he swore that he'd give up his home and family gladly in
exchange for the heavenly joy of putting a bayonet through a German
officer. It wasn't the spirit of war, and I told him so, and he called
me "von Travers," and said that as I was going to be a soldier, he
hoped, for the sake of the United Kingdom in general, there would be no
war while I was in command of anybody.
Gradually there got to be a bit of feeling in the air, and we gave out
that we stood for tactics and strategy and brain-power, and Rice and his
lot gave out that they stood for hacking their way through. And as for
strategy, they had the cheek to say that, if it came to actual battle,
the Fourth would back its strategy against the Sixth every time. It was
a sort of challenge, in fact, and rested chiefly on their complete
ignorance of what strategy really meant.
When I asked Mitchell who were the strategists of the Fourth, he gave it
away by saying--
"Me and Pegram."
Well, he and Pegram were merely cunning--nothing more. Mitchell was a
good mathematician, and in money matters he excelled on a low plane;
while Pegram was admitted to be a master in the art of cribbing, but no
other. His bent of mind had been attracted to the subject of cribbing
from the first, and while I hated him, and knew that he could never come
to much good, I was bound to admit the stories told about his cribbing
exploits showed great ingenuity combined with nerve. By a bitter irony,
theology was his best subject, but only thanks to the possession of a
Bible one inch square. He had found it when doing Christmas shopping
with his aunt, who was his only relation, owing to his being an orphan,
and when he asked her to buy it for him as one of his Christmas
presents, she did so with pleasure and surprise, little dreaming of what
was passing in his mind. I never saw the book, nor wished to see it,
but Briggs, who did, told me it contained everything, only in such
frightfully small print that you wanted a magnifying glass to read it.
Needless to say, Pegram had the magnifying glass. And, thus armed, he
naturally did Scripture papers second to none. He also manipulated a
catapult for the benefit of his friends in the Lower Fourth, of whom he
had a great many, and with this instrument, such was his delicacy of
aim, he could send answers to questions in an examination through the
air to other chaps, in the shape of paper pillets. He could also hurl
insults in this way, or, in fact, anything. Once he actually fired his
Bible across three rows of forms to Abbott. It flew through the air and
fell at Abbott's feet, who instantly put one on it. But Brown, who was
the master in command on the occasion, looked up at the critical moment
and saw a strange object passing through the air. Only he failed to
mark it down.
"What was that?" said Brown to Rice, who sat three chaps off Abbott.
"A moth, I think, sir," said Rice.
"Extraordinary time for a moth to be flying," said Brown.
"Very, sir," said Rice.
"Don't let it occur again, anyway," said Brown, who never investigated
anything, but always ordered that it shouldn't occur again.
"No, sir," said Rice.
Then Abbott bent down to scratch his ankle, and all was well.
And this Pegram was supposed to have strategy as good as ours!
I never thought a real chance of a conflict would come, but it actually
did in a most unexpected manner just before the holidays. The weather
turned cold for a week, and then, after about three frosts, we had a big
snow, and in about a day and a night there was nearly a foot of it.
And, walking through the West Wood with Blades, I pointed out that the
sand-pit, under the edge of the fir trees, would be a very fine spot for
a battle on a small scale.