He was a wild man, and thought I was, and every time I moved his automatic moved with me.

It was as though he were following me with a spotlight.

My foot was badly cut across the instep and I was altogether forlorn and disreputable.

So, in order to look less like a tramp when I met the general, I bound up the foot, and, always with one eye on the sentry, and moving very slowly, shaved and put on dry things.

From the interest the sentry showed it seemed evident he never had taken a bath himself, nor had seen any one else take one, and he was not quite easy in his mind that he ought to allow it.
He seemed to consider it a kind of suicide.