The Complete McAuslan. George Fraser MacDonald

      Now the second rank, and I was opposite McAuslan. The R.S.M. and C.S.M. had done their best, but I was thankful the spectators were a hundred yards away. His face was grimy, his boots were dull, his shirt and kilt appeared to have been slept in. When I got behind him I noticed his bayonet: there was a ring of rust between blade and sheath.

      “Easy, MacAuslan,” I said, and, God forgive me; “You’re looking fine.”

      We marched back, the R.S.M. and I, gave them port arms, and marched forward again. I made a pretence of looking at the rifles, which were held up for inspection, but no more than a glance, until we came to the second row. As I passed McAuslan—his rifle looked as though it had been at the bottom of the Monkland Canal for a month—I heard the R.S.M. make a noise. If you think there is no such thing as a yelp and whisper combined, there is.

      I looked, and nearly passed out. At port arms the rifle bolt is drawn back, exposing the magazine, and McAuslan’s magazine had gleaming brass rounds in it. How he had managed this I still don’t know, but there he was, with a loaded rifle, mounting guard at Edinburgh Castle. For a vivid moment the thought that he was going to assassinate royalty crossed my mind; then I realised, with mounting horror, that the guard’s next manoeuvre was to “ease springs”, which involves working the bolt and finally pressing the trigger, which in McAuslan’s case would mean scattering .303 cartridges all over the place and probably blowing someone’s head off.

      But nothing is too much for an R.S.M. Deftly he reached over, detached McAuslan’s magazine, and conjured it out of sight. Then we were marching back to our places, and I was just breathing again when I was aware of a curious sensation at my right hip.

      You know how it is—not a pain, or even a touch, but just a feeling, as though something has been taken away. I felt, rather than heard, a slight snap, and instinctively clapped my right fist to my hip. There was a movement that was not the motion of marching; and for a few seconds I knew real, paralysing terror. One of my kilt buckles, wrenched in the hurry of dressing, had given way. There was a second one, of course, but was it fastened properly? I knew, with horrifying certainty, that if I removed my fist that vast, silent crowd would be treated to the edifying sight of a Highland officer marching in his shirt-tail, while his kilt collapsed in ruins about his ankles. In that moment I really wanted to die.

      I halted, turned, and shouted my orders, and then paced off to the side to take the salute. I was marching with right arm akimbo, and the military in the crowd must be wondering and whispering. I halted and turned, bringing my fist into my kidneys and clutching with my thumb; the guard came marching past, throwing on the style in their relief (McAuslan was swinging left arm and left leg together in fine abandon); their heads snapped round in salute—which I didn’t return—and they had vanished into the gateway.

      I was alone, with the worst to come. I had to turn again, march to the edge of the crowd in front of the General Officer—with royalty beside him—salute, and march off again. But I couldn’t salute! My saluting hand was holding up my nether garments, and if I removed it I should go down in history as the Man Whose Kilt Fell off in Front of Royalty At Edinburgh Castle.

      It wouldn’t do. Similarly, I could not march off without acknowledging royalty and saluting. What do you do in this case? I shall tell you. You turn smartly about, arm akimbo—it gives a Rupert of Hentzau touch, anyway—march up to the saluting base, salute left-handed, turn about, and March off through the Castle gateway, dead casual, like Caesar at Pharsalia.

      In the guard room was pandemonium. McAuslan, unseen by me, had dropped his rifle in the gateway, the R.S.M. had caught it, McAuslan had turned round and asked for it back, the R.S.M. had almost thrown him into the guard room, and the corporal, a sensitive soul, had done a brief faint.