The Complete McAuslan by George MacDonald Fraser

amidships. The padre simply cried: ‘The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!’ and danced on, but the M.O. had to be carried to the rear and his place taken by the second-in-command, who was six feet four and a danger in traffic.
    The Eightsome was even faster, but not so hazardous, and when it was over we would have a breather while the Adjutant, a lanky Englishman who was transformed by pipe music to a kind of Fred Astaire, danced a ‘ragged trousers’ and the cooks and mess waiters came through to watch and join in the gradually mounting rumble of stamping and applause. He was the clumsiest creature in everyday walking and moving, but out there, with his fair hair falling over his face and his shirt hanging open, he was like thistledown on the air; he could have left Nijinsky frozen against the cushion.
    The pipe-sergeant loved him, and the pipe-sergeant had skipped nimbly off with prizes uncounted at gatherings and games all over Scotland. He was a tiny, india-rubber man, one of your technically perfect dancers who had performed before crowned heads, viceroys, ambassadors, ‘and all sorts of wog presidents and the like of that’. It was to mollify him that the Colonel would encourage the Adjutant to perform, for the pipe-sergeant disliked ‘wild’ dancing of the Strip the Willow variety, and while we were on the floor he would stand with his mouth primly pursed and his glengarry pulled down, glancing occasionally at the Colonel and sniffing.
    ‘What’s up, pipe-sarnt,’ the Colonel would say, ‘too slow for you?’
    ‘Slow?’ the pipe-sergeant would say. ‘Fine you know, sir, it’s not too slow for me. It’s a godless stramash is what it is, and shouldn’t be allowed. Look at the unfortunate Mr Cameron, the condition of him; he doesn’t know whether it’s Tuesday or breakfast.’
    ‘They love it; anyway, you don’t want them dancing like a bunch of old women.’
    ‘No, not like old women, but chust like proper Highlandmen. There is a form, and a time, and a one-two-three, and a one-two-three, and thank God it’s done and here’s the lovely Adjutant.’
    ‘Well, don’t worry,’ said the Colonel, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘You get ’em twice a week in the mornings to show them how it ought to be done.’
    This was so. On Tuesdays and Thursdays batmen would rouse officers with malicious satisfaction at 5.30, and we would stumble down, bleary and unshaven, to the M.T. sheds, where the pipe-sergeant would be waiting, skipping in the cold to put us through our session of practice dancing. He was in his element, bounding about in his laced pumps, squeaking at us while the piper played and we galumphed through our eightsomes and foursomes. Unlovely we were, but the pipe-sergeant was lost in the music and the mists of time, emerging from time to time to rebuke, encourage and commend.
    ‘Ah, the fine sound,’ he would cry, pirouetting among us. ‘And a one, two, three, and a one, two, three. And there we are, Captain MacAlpine, going grand, going capital! One, two, three and oh, observe the fine feet of Captain MacAlpine! He springs like a startled ewe, he does! And a one, two, three, Mr Elphinstone-Hamilton, and a pas-de-bas, and, yes, Mr Cameron, once again. But now a one, two, three, four, Mr Cameron, and a one, two, three, four, and the rocking-step. Come to me, Mr Cameron, like a full-rigged ship. But, oh, dear God, the horns of the deer! Boldly, proudly, that’s the style of the masterful Mr Cameron; his caber feidh is wonderful, it is fit to frighten Napoleon.’
    He and Ninette de Valois would have got on a fair treat. The Colonel would sometimes loaf down, with his greatcoat over his pyjamas, and lean on his cromach, smoking and smiling quietly. And the pipe-sergeant, carried away, would skip all the harder and direct his running commentary at his audience of one.
    ‘And a one, two, three, good morning to you, sir, see the fine dancing, and especially of Captain MacAlpine! One, two,