precise moment. Besides, there was a faint possibility that some chatty
corporal might have carried the news of my bath thus far along the line,
and they might be partially prepared for this unexpected visitor.
Suddenly, like another flash, came the quick, quaint challenge,--

"Halt! Who's go dar?"

"F-f-friend with the c-c-countersign," retorted I, with chilly, but
conciliatory energy, rising at full length out of the shallow water, to
show myself a man and a brother.

"Ac-vance, friend, and give de countersign," responded the literal
soldier, who at such a time would have accosted a spirit of light or
goblin damned with no other formula.

I advanced and gave it, he recognizing my voice at once. And then and
there, as I stood, a dripping ghost, beneath the trees before him, the
unconscionable fellow, wishing to exhaust upon me the utmost resources
of military hospitality, deliberately _presented arms_.

Now a soldier on picquet, or at night, usually presents arms to nobody;
but a sentinel on camp-guard by day is expected to perform that ceremony
to anything in human shape that has two rows of buttons. Here was a
human shape, but so utterly buttonless that it exhibited not even a rag
to which a button could by any earthly possibility be appended,
buttonless even potentially; and my blameless Ethiopian presented arms
to even this. Where, then, are the theories of Carlyle, the axioms of
"Sartor Resartus," the inability of humanity to conceive "a naked Duke
of Windlestraw addressing a naked House of Lords?" Cautioning my
adherent, however, as to the proprieties suitable for such occasions