He suffered acutely
many times; suffered till he was heart-sick of his life; but he never
sought to escape the slightest penalty or hardship, and not even Rake
ever heard from him a single syllable of irritation or of self-pity.
Moreover, the war-fire woke in him.
In one shape or another active service was almost always his lot, and
hot, severe campaigning was his first introduction to military life in
Algeria. The latent instinct in him--the instinct that had flashed out
during his lazy, fashionable calm in all moments of danger, in all days
of keen sport; the instinct that had made him fling himself into the
duello with the French boar, and made him mutter to Forest King, "Kill
me if you like, but don't fail me!"--was the instinct of the born
soldier. In peril, in battle, in reckless bravery, in the rush of the
charge and the excitement of the surprise, in the near presence of
death, and in the chase of a foe through a hot African night when both
were armed to the teeth, and one or both must fall when the grapple
came--in all these that old instinct, aroused and unloosed, made him
content; made him think that the life which brought them was worth the
living.
There had always been in him a reckless dare-devilry, which had slept
under the serene, effeminate insouciance of his careless temper and
his pampered habits. It had full rein now, and made him, as the army
affirmed, one of the most intrepid, victorious, and chivalrous lascars
of its fiery ranks.
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