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"Ma- Ma- Ma- Ma-" The young man's wholly inadequate chin bobbled like a blob of fat atop a seething stewpot.
"Stop bleating like a damn goat and answer the question!"
"Y- Yes, sir. Mago, sir."
"Mago, eh?" Ha
"Y- Yes, sir. Capital fellow, sir."
"Did I ask you?" Ha
"No, sir, you did not ask me, sir." Deciding that his best bet was to salvage the morning's collected faux pas, Mago smartened up his attitude. "I apologize for having said anything, sir. In future I will not offer any opinion unless in response to a direct question from you or one of my superior officers, sir. I mean, from you or another one of my superior officers, sir, seeing as you are. Superior. And an officer. Of mine. Sir." He stiffened his spine, puffed out his chest, and for some unknown reason clicked his heels together. This latter gesture only succeeded in refreshing the miasma of pachydermal by-product still hanging over his person.
Ha
"Sir, no, sir!" Mago's stomach plummeted with shame under his general's scorn, but he held fast to his snappy pose the way a drowning man might cling to a spar. "My father was a Canaanite, sir, and my mother's family came from Tin Island. Sir!"
"Tin Island?" Ha
"An island in the western seas, sir, beyond the pillars of Hercules and a skosh to the north, famous for its tin mines," one of his lieutenants hastened to explain, sidling up to the general the better to murmur the information with as much discretion as possible. That is to say, not much. Since Mago's unlucky misstep, it seemed as though every man in camp had come forward to see what the to-do was all about. Even some of the elephants were taking an interest from the vantage of their picket lines. "The tribesmen there are said to make excellent warriors. There are rumors that the great Carthaginian navigator, Himilco, once reached those shores, but he found the food so distasteful, the climate so damp, and the behavior of the tribesmen at their ritual ballgames so ghastly, that he determined to leave all future contact with those people to the Greek merchants."
"If that's so, how'd this boy's ma manage to get her a Canaanite husband?" Ha
"Love will find a way?" the lieutenant suggested hopefully.
"Aw, forget it." Ha
"Actually, sir, I was looking for a spot of breakfast."
Ha
"Sir, yes, sir," Mago replied. "If it's at all convenient, sir."
"Well, I'll let you in on a little secret, Maggot: It's not convenient. And d'you know why? 'Cause we don't have anything to serve you boys for breakfast, that's why. What d'you make of that, Maggot?"
Mago was not paying full heed to Ha
Had he been just a smidgen more mindful of his perilous situation, he never would have replied, "Sir, if that's the case, I do believe we're all in a bit of a pickle, eh, sir?"
"A pickle…" Ha
By this time poor Mago was seriously debating the advisability of breaking away from Ha
He got it.
"And all that-" Ha
"S- sir?" Mago's limbs began to tremble, and not from the cold. "I'm very conscious of the honor, sir, but, ah, wh- what exactly is an alimentation officer supposed to do, sir? Specifically?"
"Do?" Ha
"Sir?" the miserable new-made officer whimpered.
"— I really don't like pickles."
Melqartpilles of Tyre heard the sound of wild weeping coming from the lee of one of the larger piles of elephant dung festooning the Carthaginian camp. He had a kindly heart and an inquisitive mind, did Melqartpilles of Tyre, both of which had conspired to contribute to his enforced midnight escape from that very city after the time he'd idly wondered whether a certain nobleman's beautiful daughter were still a virgin and, on discovering that she was, immediately decided it would be unkind not to do something about it.