The sirdar's oath Author:Bertram Mitford Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: aspiring to anything beyond the average in its achievement, and was not lacking in ideas nor in some originality in the expression of the same. As he sat fini... more »shing his after-breakfast cheroot in the club smoking-room there entered two of his brethren-in-arms of the night before. "There you are, Raynier, old chap. That's all right. Why didn't you roll up at the Peculiar after the fun? We were all there— Steele and Waring were doosid uneasy about you—thought you'd come to grief, that's why we thought we'd look in early and make sure you hadn't." " Early ? " "Why, yes. It's only eleven. But I say, you jolly old cuckoo. You have got a damaged figurehead." " Yes, it's a bore," pronounced Raynier, pushing the bell, to order "pegs." "And the worst of it is I've got to go down to the country this afternoon — to an eminently respectable vicarage, too." " Remedy's easy. Don't go." " That's no remedy at all. I must." " Stick a patch over the eye, then." " But he can't stick a patch over his head as well," said the other. "You two chaps have come off with hardly a scratch," said Raynier—"and yet you were just as much in the thick of it as I was." " So we were. But I say, Raynier, I believe it's a judgment on a staid old buffer like you for ' mafeking' around with a lot of lively sparks like us. Ha—ha—that wasn't bad, I say, don'tcherknow. ' Mafeking!' See it ? Ah—ha—ha!" "Oh, go away. It's an outrage. At how many people's hands have you courted destruction by firing that on them this morning ? " " Not many. But it's awfully good, eh, old sportsman ? Why I invented it." "Then you deserve death," returned Raynier. "Oh, Grice, take him away, and drown him, will you ; but stay—let him have his ' peg' first—since here it comes." "Anyone know what became...« less