Ignorance jostled art, and bizarre ran hand in hand with talent, in
all the products of the Chasseurs' extemporized studio; but nowhere
was there ever clumsiness, and everywhere was there an industry,
gay, untiring, accustomed to make the best of the worst; the workers
laughing, chattering, singing, in all good-fellowship, while the fingers
that gave the dead thrust held the carver's chisel, and the eyes that
glared blood-red in the heat of battle twinkled mischievously over the
meerschaum bowl, in whose grinning form some great chief of the Bureau
had just been sculptured in audacious parody.
In the midst sat Rake, tattooing with an eastern skill the skin of a
great lion, that a year before he had killed in single combat in the
heart of Oran, having watched for the beast twelve nights in vain, high
perched on a leafy crest of rock, above a water-course. While he worked
his tongue flew far and fast over the camp slang--the slangs of all
nations came easy to him--in voluble conversation with the Chasseur
next, who was making a fan out of feathers that any Peeress might
have signaled with at the Opera. "Crache-au-nez-d'la-Mort" was in high
popularity with his comrades; and had said but the truth when he averred
that he had never been so happy as under the tricolor. The officers
pronounced him an incurably audacious "pratique"; he was always in
mischief, and the regimental rules he broke through like a terrier
through a gauze net; but they knew that when once the trumpets sounded
Boot and Saddle, this yellow-haired dare-devil of an English fellow
would be worth a score of more orderly soldiers, and that, wherever
his adopted flag was carried, there would he be, first and foremost, in
everything save retreat.
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