Teak, a good fellow, is known
to us as Bill Sykes. He has a very pale complexion, and has the most
delightful nose in all the world; it is like a little white potato.
Bill is a good-humored Cockney, and is eternally involved in argument.
He carries a Jew's harp and a mouth-organ, and when not fingering one
he is blowing music-hall tunes out of the other.
Goliath, six foot three of bone and muscle, is a magnificent animal.
The gods forgot little of their old-time cunning in the making of him,
in the forging of his shoulders, massive as a bull's withers, in the
shaping of his limbs, sturdy as pillars of granite and supple as
willows, in the setting of his well-poised head, his heavy jaw, (p. 055)
and muscled neck. But the gods seem to have grown weary of a momentous
masterpiece when they came to the man's eyes, and Goliath wears glasses.
For all that he is a good marksman and, strange to say, he delights in
the trivialities of verse, and carries an earmarked Tennyson about
with him.
Pryor is a pessimist, an artist, a poet, a writer of stories; he
drifted into our little world on the march and is with us still. He
did not like his previous section and applied for a transfer into
ours. He gloats over sunsets, colours, unconventional doings, hopes
that he will never marry a girl with thick ankles, and is certain that
he will never live to see the end of the War. Pryor, Teak, Kore, and
Stoner have never used a razor; they are as beardless as babes.
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