* * * * *

BEASTS ROYAL.

VI.

KING GEORGE’S DALMATIAN.  A.D. 1823.

  Yellow wheels and red wheels, and wheels that squeak and roar,
    Big buttons, brown wigs, and many capes of buff ... 
  Someone’s bound for Sussex, in a coach-and-four;
    And, when the long whips crack,
    Running at the back
  Barks the swift Dalmatian, whose spots are seven-score.

  White dust and grey dust, fleeting tree and tower,
    Brass horns and copper horns, blowing loud and bluff ... 
  Someone’s bound for Sussex, at eleven miles an hour;
    And, when the long horns blow,
    From the wheels below
  Barks the swift Dalmatian, tongued like an apple-flower.

  Big domes and little domes, donkey-carts that jog,
    High stocks and low pumps and admirable snuff ... 
  Someone strolls at Brighton, not very much incog.;
    And, panting on the grass,
    In his collar bossed with brass,
  Lies the swift Dalmatian, the KING’s plum-pudding dog.

* * * * *

CAMOUFLAGE CONVERSATION.

It came as a shock to the Brigade Major that the brigade on his left had omitted to let him know the time of their projected raid that night.  It came as a shock all the more because it was the General himself who first noticed the omission, and it is a golden rule for Brigade Majors that they should always be the first to think of things.

“Ring ’em up and ask,” said the General.  “Don’t, of course, mention the word ‘raid’ on the telephone.  Call it—­um—­ah, oh, call it anything you like so long as they understand what you mean.”

At times, to the casual eavesdropper, strange things must appear to be going on in the British lines.  It must be a matter of surprise, to such a one, that the British troops can think it worth their while to inform each other at midnight that “Two Emperors of Pongo have become attached to Annie Laurie.”  Nor would it appear that any military object would be served in passing on the chatty piece of information that “there will be no party for Windsor to-morrow.”  This habit of calling things and places as they most emphatically are not is but a concession, of course, to the habits of the infamous Hun, who rightly or wrongly is supposed to overhear everything one says within a mile of the line.

Thinking in the vernacular proper to people who keep the little knowledge they have to themselves, the Brigade Major grasped the hated telephone in the left hand and prepared to say a few words (also in the vernacular) to his fellow Staff Officer a mile away.

“Hullo!” Br-rr—­Crick-crick.  “Hullo, Signals!  Give me S-Salmon.”

“Salmon?  You’re through, Sir,” boomed a voice apparently within a foot of his ear.

“OO!” An earsplitting crack was followed by a mosquito-like voice singing in the wilderness.