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The Man Who Was

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The Earth gave up her dead that tide,
Into our camp he came,
And said his say, and went his way,
And left our hearts aflame.

Keep tally—on the gun-butt score
    The vengeance we must take,
When God shall bring full reckoning,
    For our dead comrade’s sake.
(Ballad)

LET IT BE clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person till he tucks in his shirt. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only when he insists upon being treated as the most easterly of western peoples instead of the most westerly of easterns that he becomes a racial anomaly extremely difficult to handle. The host never knows which side of his nature is going to turn up next.Dirkovitch was a Russian—a Russian of the Russians—who appeared to get his bread by serving the Czar as an officer in a Cossack regiment, and corresponding for a Russian newspaper with a name that was never twice alike. He was a handsome young Oriental, fond of wandering through unexplored portions of the earth, and he arrived in India from nowhere in particular. At least no living man could ascertain whether it was by way of Balkh, Badakshan, Chitral, Beluchistan, or Nepaul, or anywhere else. The Indian Government, being in an unusually affable mood, gave orders that he was to be civilly treated and shown everything that was to be seen. So he drifted, talking bad English and worse French, from one city to another, till he foregathered with Her Majesty’s White Hussars in the city of Peshawur, which stands at the mouth of that narrow swordcut in the hills that men call the Khyber Pass. He was undoubtedly an officer, and he was decorated after the manner of the Russians with little enamelled crosses, and he could talk, and (though this has nothing to do with his merits) he had been given up as a hopeless task, or cask, by the Black Tyrone, who individually and collectively, with hot whiskey and honey, mulled brandy, and mixed spirits of every kind, had striven in all hospitality to make him drunk. And when the Black Tyrone, who are exclusively Irish, fail to disturb the peace of head of a foreigner—that foreigner is certain to be a superior man.The White Hussars were as conscientious in choosing their wine as in charging the enemy. All that they possessed, including some wondrous brandy, was placed at the absolute disposition of Dirkovitch, and he enjoyed himself hugely—even more than among the Black Tyrones.

But he remained distressingly European through it all. The White Hussars were “My dear true friends,” “Fellow-soldiers glorious,” and “Brothers inseparable.” He would unburden himself by the hour on the glorious future that awaited the combined arms of England and Russia when their hearts and their territories should run side by side, and the great mission of civilising Asia should begin. That was unsatisfactory, because Asia is not going to be civilised after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old. You cannot reform a lady of many lovers, and Asia has been insatiable in her flirtations aforetime. She will never attend Sunday-school or learn to vote save with swords for tickets.

Dirkovitch knew this as well as any one else, but it suited him to talk special-correspondently and to make himself as genial as he could. Now and then he volunteered a little, a very little, information about his own sotnia of Cossacks, left apparently to look after themselves somewhere at the back of beyond. He had done rough work in Central Asia, and had seen rather more help-yourself fighting than most men of his years. But he was careful never to betray his superiority, and more than careful to praise on all occasions the appearance, drill, uniform, and organisation of Her Majesty’s White Hussars. And indeed they were a regiment to be admired. When Lady Durgan, widow of the late Sir John Durgan, arrived in their station, and after a short time had been proposed to by every single man at mess, she put the public sentiment very neatly when she explained that they were all so nice that unless she could marry them all, including the colonel and some majors already married, she was not going to content herself with one hussar. Wherefore she wedded a little man in a rifle regiment, being by nature contradictious; and the White Hussars were going to wear crape on their arms, but compromised by attending the wedding in full force, and lining the aisle with unutterable reproach. She had jilted them all—from Basset-Holmer the senior captain to little Mildred the junior subaltern, who could have given her four thousand a year and a title.

 

The only persons who did not share the general regard for the White Hussars were a few thousand gentlemen of Jewish extraction who lived across the border, and answered to the name of Pathan. They had once met the regiment officially and for something less than twenty minutes, but the interview, which was complicated with many casualties, had filled them with prejudice. They even called the White Hussars children of the devil and sons of persons whom it would be perfectly impossible to meet in decent society. Yet they were not above making their aversion fill their money-belts. The regiment possessed carbines—beautiful Martini-Henry carbines that would lob a bullet into an enemy’s camp at one thousand yards, and were even handier than the long rifle. Therefore they were coveted all along the border, and since demand inevitably breeds supply, they were supplied at the risk of life and limb for exactly their weight in coined silver—seven and one half pounds’ weight of rupees, or sixteen pounds sterling reckoning the rupee at par. They were stolen at night by snaky-haired thieves who crawled on their stomachs under the nose of the sentries; they disappeared mysteriously from locked arm-racks, and in the hot weather, when all the barrack doors and windows were open, they vanished like puffs of their own smoke. The border people desired them for family vendettas and contingencies. But in the long cold nights of the northern Indian winter they were stolen most extensively. The traffic of murder was liveliest among the hills at that season, and prices ruled high. The regimental guards were first doubled and then trebled. A trooper does not much care if he loses a weapon—Government must make it good—but he deeply resents the loss of his sleep. The regiment grew very angry, and one rifle-thief bears the visible marks of their anger upon him to this hour. That incident stopped the burglaries for a time, and the guards were reduced accordingly, and the regiment devoted itself to polo with unexpected results; for it beat by two goals to one that very terrible polo corps the Lushkar Light Horse, though the latter had four ponies apiece for a short hour’s fight, as well as a native officer who played like a lambent flame across the ground.

They gave a dinner to celebrate the event. The Lushkar team came, and Dirkovitch came, in the fullest full uniform of a Cossack officer, which is as full as a dressing-gown, and was introduced to the Lushkars, and opened his eyes as he regarded. They were lighter men than the Hussars, and they carried themselves with the swing that is the peculiar right of the Punjab Frontier Force and all Irregular Horse. Like everything else in the Service it has to be learnt, but, unlike many things, it is never forgotten, and remains on the body till death.

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The great beam-roofed mess-room of the White Hussars was a sight to be remembered. All the mess plate was out on the long table—the same table that had served up the bodies of five officers after a forgotten fight long and long ago—the dingy, battered standards faced the door of entrance, clumps of winter-roses lay between the silver candlesticks, and the portraits of eminent officers deceased looked down on their successors from between the heads of sambhur, nilghai, markhor, and, pride of all the mess, two grinning snow-leopards that had cost Basset-Holmer four months’ leave that he might have spent in England, instead of on the road to Thibet and the daily risk of his life by ledge, snow-slide, and grassy slope.

The servants in spotless white muslin and the crest of their regiments on the brow of their turbans waited behind their masters, who were clad in the scarlet and gold of the White Hussars, and the cream and silver of the Lushkar Light Horse. Dirkovitch’s dull green uniform was the only dark spot at the board, but his big onyx eyes made up for it. He was fraternising effusively with the captain of the Lushkar team, who was wondering how many of Dirkovitch’s Cossacks his own dark wiry down-countrymen could account for in a fair charge. But one does not speak of these things openly.

The talk rose higher and higher, and the regimental band played between the courses, as is the immemorial custom, till all tongues ceased for a moment with the removal of the dinner-slips and the first toast of obligation, when an officer rising said, “Mr. Vice, the Queen,” and little Mildred from the bottom of the table answered, “The Queen, God bless her,” and the big spurs clanked as the big men heaved themselves up and drank the Queen upon whose pay they were falsely supposed to settle their mess-bills. That Sacrament of the Mess never grows old, and never ceases to bring a lump into the throat of the listener wherever he be by sea or by land. Dirkovitch rose with his “brothers glorious,” but he could not understand. No-one but an officer can tell what the toast means; and the bulk have more sentiment than comprehension. Immediately after the little silence that follows on the ceremony there entered the native officer who had played for the Lushkar team. He could not, of course, eat with the mess, but he came in at dessert, all six feet of him, with the blue and silver turban atop, and the big black boots below. The mess rose joyously as he thrust forward the hilt of his sabre in token of fealty for the colonel of the White Hussars to touch, and dropped into a vacant chair amid shouts of: “Rung ho, Hira Singh!” (which being translated means “Go in and win “). “Did I whack you over the knee, old man?” “Ressaidar Sahib, what the devil made you play that kicking pig of a pony in the last ten minutes?” “Shabash, Ressaidar Sahib!” Then the voice of the colonel, “The health of Ressaidar Hira Singh!”

After the shouting had died away Hira Singh rose to reply, for he was the cadet of a royal house, the son of a king’s son, and knew what was due on these occasions. Thus he spoke in the vernacular:—“Colonel Sahib and officers of this regiment. Much honour have you done me. This will I remember. We came down from afar to play you. But we were beaten.” (“No fault of yours, Ressaidar Sahib. Played on our own ground, y’ know. Your ponies were cramped from the railway. Don’t apologise!”) “Therefore perhaps we will come again if it be so ordained.” (“Hear! Hear! Hear, indeed! Bravo! Hsh!”) “Then we will play you afresh” (“Happy to meet you.”) “till there are left no feet upon our ponies. Thus far for sport.” He dropped one hand on his sword-hilt and his eye wandered to Dirkovitch lolling back in his chair. “But if by the will of God there arises any other game which is not the polo game, then be assured, Colonel Sahib and officers, that we will play it out side by side, though they,” again his eye sought Dirkovitch, “though they, I say, have fifty ponies to our one horse.” And with a deep-mouthed Rung ho! that sounded like a musket-butt on flagstones he sat down amid leaping glasses.

Dirkovitch, who had devoted himself steadily to the brandy—the terrible brandy aforementioned—did not understand, nor did the expurgated translations offered to him at all convey the point. Decidedly Hira Singh’s was the speech of the evening, and the clamour might have continued to the dawn had it not been broken by the noise of a shot without that sent every man feeling at his defenseless left side. Then there was a scuffle and a yell of pain.

“Carbine-stealing again!” said the adjutant, calmly sinking back in his chair. “This comes of reducing the guards. I hope the sentries have killed him.”

The feet of armed men pounded on the verandah flags, and it was as though something was being dragged.

“Why don’t they put him in the cells till the morning?” said the colonel testily. “See if they’ve damaged him, sergeant.”

The mess sergeant fled out into the darkness and returned with two troopers and a corporal, all very much perplexed.

“Caught a man stealin’ carbines, sir,” said the corporal. “Leastways ’e was crawlin’ towards the barricks, sir, past the main road sentries, an’ the sentry ’e sez, sir—”

The limp heap of rags upheld by the three men groaned. Never was seen so destitute and demoralised an Afghan. He was turbanless, shoeless, caked with dirt, and all but dead with rough handling. Hira Singh started slightly at the sound of the man’s pain. Dirkovitch took another glass of brandy.

“What does the sentry say?” said the colonel.

“Sez ’e speaks English, sir,” said the corporal.

“So you brought him into mess instead of handing him over to the sergeant! If he spoke all the Tongues of the Pentecost you’ve no business—”

Again the bundle groaned and muttered. Little Mildred had risen from his place to inspect. He jumped back as though he had been shot.

“Perhaps it would be better, sir, to send the men away,” said he to the colonel, for he was a much privileged subaltern. He put his arms round the rag-bound horror as he spoke, and dropped him into a chair. It may not have been explained that the littleness of Mildred lay in his being six feet four and big in proportion. The corporal seeing that an officer was disposed to look after the capture, and that the colonel’s eye was beginning to blaze, promptly removed himself and his men. The mess was left alone with the carbine-thief, who laid his head on the table and wept bitterly, hopelessly, and inconsolably as little children weep.

Hira Singh leapt to his feet. “Colonel Sahib,” said he, “that man is no Afghan, for they weep Ai! Ai! Nor is he of Hindustan, for they weep Oh! Ho! He weeps after the fashion of the white men, who say Ow! Ow!”

“Now where the dickens did you get that knowledge, Hira Singh?” said the captain of the Lushkar team.

“Hear him!” said Hira Singh simply, pointing at the crumpled figure that wept as though it would never cease.

“He said, ‘My God!’” said little Mildred. “I heard him say it.”

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The colonel and the mess-room looked at the man in silence. It is a horrible thing to hear a man cry. A woman can sob from the top—of her palate, or her lips, or anywhere else, but a man must cry from his diaphragm, and it rends him to pieces.

“Poor devil!” said the colonel, coughing tremendously. “We ought to send him to hospital. He’s been man-handled.”

Now the adjutant loved his carbines. They were to him as his grandchildren, the men standing in the first place. He grunted rebelliously: “I can understand an Afghan stealing, because he’s built that way. But I can’t understand his crying. That makes it worse.”

The brandy must have affected Dirkovitch, for he lay back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. There was nothing special in the ceiling beyond a shadow as of a huge black coffin. Owing to some peculiarity in the construction of the mess-room, this shadow was always thrown when the candles were lighted. It never disturbed the digestion of the White Hussars. They were in fact rather proud of it.

“Is he going to cry all night?” said the colonel, “or are we supposed to sit up with little Mildred’s guest until he feels better?”

The man in the chair threw up his head and stared at the mess. “Oh, my God!” he said, and every soul in the mess rose to his feet. Then the Lushkar captain did a deed for which he ought to have been given the Victoria Cross—distinguished gallantry in a fight against overwhelming curiosity. He picked up his team with his eyes as the hostess picks up the ladies at the opportune moment, and pausing only by the colonel’s chair to say, “This isn’t our affair, you know, sir,” led them into the verandah and the gardens. Hira Singh was the last to go, and he looked at Dirkovitch. But Dirkovitch had departed into a brandy-paradise of his own. His lips moved without sound and he was studying the coffin on the ceiling.

“White—white all over,” said Basset-Holmer, the adjutant. “What a pernicious renegade he must be! I wonder where he came from?”

The colonel shook the man gently by the arm, and “Who are you?” said he.

There was no answer. The man stared round the mess-room and smiled in the colonel’s face. Little Mildred, who was always more of a woman than a man till “Boot and saddle” was sounded, repeated the question in a voice that would have drawn confidences from a geyser. The man only smiled. Dirkovitch at the far end of the table slid gently from his chair to the floor. No son of Adam in this present imperfect world can mix the Hussars’ champagne with the Hussars’ brandy by five and eight glasses of each without remembering the pit whence he was digged and descending thither. The band began to play the tune with which the White Hussars from the date of their formation have concluded all their functions. They would sooner be disbanded than abandon that tune; it is a part of their system. The man straightened himself in his chair and drummed on the table with his fingers.

“I don’t see why we should entertain lunatics,” said the colonel. “Call a guard and send him off to the cells. We’ll look into the business in the morning. Give him a glass of wine first, though.”

Little Mildred filled a sherry-glass with the brandy and thrust it over to the man. He drank, and the tune rose louder, and he straightened himself yet more. Then he put out his long-taloned hands to a piece of plate opposite and fingered it lovingly. There was a mystery connected with that piece of plate, in the shape of a spring which converted what was a seven-branched candlestick, three springs on each side and one in the middle, into a sort of wheel-spoke candelabrum. He found the spring, pressed it, and laughed weakly. He rose from his chair and inspected a picture on the wall, then moved on to another picture, the mess watching him without a word. When he came to the mantelpiece he shook his head and seemed distressed. A piece of plate representing a mounted hussar in full uniform caught his eye. He pointed to it, and then to the mantelpiece with inquiry in his eyes.

“What is it—Oh, what is it?” said little Mildred. Then as a mother might speak to a child, “That is a horse. Yes, a horse.”

Very slowly came the answer in a thick, passionless guttural—“ Yes, I—have seen. But—where is the horse?”

You could have heard the hearts of the mess beating as the men drew back to give the stranger full room in his wanderings. There was no question of calling the guard.

Again he spoke—very slowly, “Where is our horse?”

There is but one horse in the White Hussars, and his portrait hangs outside the door of the mess-room. He is the piebald drum- horse, the king of the regimental band, that served the regiment for seven-and-thirty years, and in the end was shot for old age. Half the mess tore the thing down from its place and thrust it into the man’s hands. He placed it above the mantelpiece, it clattered on the ledge as his poor hands dropped it, and he staggered towards the bottom of the table, falling into Mildred’s chair. Then all the men spoke to one another something after this fashion, “The drum-horse hasn’t hung over the mantelpiece since ‘67.” “How does he know?” “Mildred, go and speak to him again.” “Colonel, what are you going to do?” “Oh, dry up, and give the poor devil a chance to pull himself together.” “It isn’t possible anyhow. The man’s a lunatic.”

Little Mildred stood at the colonel’s side, talking in his ear. “Will you be good enough to take your seats please, gentlemen!” he said, and the mess dropped into the chairs. Only Dirkovitch’s seat, next to little Mildred’s, was blank, and little Mildred himself had found Hira Singh’s place. The wide-eyed mess-sergeant filled the glasses in dead silence. Once more the colonel rose, but his hand shook, and the port spilled on the table as he looked straight at the man in little Mildred’s chair and said hoarsely, “Mr. Vice, the Queen.” There was a little pause, but the man sprung to his feet and answered without hesitation, “The Queen, God bless her!” and as he emptied the thin glass he snapped the shank between his fingers.

Long and long ago, when the Empress of India was a young woman, and there were no unclean ideals in the land, it was the custom of a few messes to drink the Queen’s toast in broken glass, to the vast delight of the mess-contractors. The custom is now dead, because there is nothing to break anything for, except now and again the word of a Government, and that has been broken already.

“That settles it,” said the colonel, with a gasp. “He’s not a sergeant. What in the world is he?”

The entire mess echoed the word, and the volley of questions would have scared any man. It was no wonder that the ragged, filthy invader could only smile and shake his head.

From under the table, calm and smiling, rose Dirkovitch, who had been roused from healthful slumber by feet upon his body. By the side of the man he rose, and the man shrieked and grovelled. It was a horrible sight, coming so swiftly upon the pride and glory of the toast that had brought the strayed wits together.

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Dirkovitch made no offer to raise him, but little Mildred heaved him up in an instant. It is not good that a gentleman who can answer to the Queen’s toast should lie at the feet of a subaltern of Cossacks.

The hasty action tore the wretch’s upper clothing nearly to the waist, and his body was seamed with dry black scars. There is only one weapon in the world that cuts in parallel lines, and it is neither the cane nor the cat. Dirkovitch saw the marks, and the pupils of his eyes dilated. Also his face changed. He said something that sounded like Shto ve takete, and the man fawning answered, Chetyre.

“What’s that?” said everybody together.

“His number. That is number four, you know.” Dirkovitch spoke very thickly.

“What has a Queen’s officer to do with a qualified number?” said the Colonel, and an unpleasant growl ran round the table.

“How can I tell?” said the affable Oriental with a sweet smile. “He is a—how you have it?—escape—run-a-way, from over there.” He nodded towards the darkness of the night.

“Speak to him if he’ll answer you, and speak to him gently,” said little Mildred, settling the man in a chair. It seemed most improper to all present that Dirkovitch should sip brandy as he talked in purring, spitting Russian to the creature who answered so feebly and with such evident dread. But since Dirkovitch appeared to understand, no one said a word. All breathed heavily, leaning forward, in the long gaps of the conversation. The next time that they have no engagements on hand the White Hussars intend to go to St. Petersburg in a body to learn Russian.

“He does not know how many years ago,” said Dirkovitch, facing the mess, “but he says it was very long ago in a war. I think that there was an accident. He says he was of this glorious and distinguished regiment in the war.”

“The rolls! The rolls! Holmer, get the rolls!” said little Mildred, and the adjutant dashed off bare-headed to the orderly- room, where the muster-rolls of the regiment were kept. He returned just in time to hear Dirkovitch conclude, “Therefore, my dear friends, I am most sorry to say there was an accident which would have been reparable if he had apologised to that our colonel, which he had insulted.”

Then followed another growl which the colonel tried to beat down. The mess was in no mood just then to weigh insults to Russian colonels.

“He does not remember, but I think that there was an accident, and so he was not exchanged among the prisoners, but he was sent to another place—how do you say?—the country. So, he says, he came here. He does not know how he came. Eh? He was at Chepany,”—the man caught the word, nodded, and shivered,—“at Zhigansk and Irkutsk. I cannot understand how he escaped. He says, too, that he was in the forests for many years, but how many years he has forgotten—that with many things. It was an accident; done because he did not apologise to that our colonel. Ah!”

Instead of echoing Dirkovitch’s sigh of regret, it is sad to record that the White Hussars livelily exhibited un-Christian delight and other emotions, hardly restrained by their sense of hospitality. Holmer flung the frayed and yellow regimental rolls on the table, and the men flung themselves at these.

“Steady! Fifty-six—fifty-five—fifty-four,” said Holmer. “Here we are. ‘Lieutenant Austin Limmason. Missing.’ That was before Sebastopol. What an infernal shame! Insulted one of their colonels, and was quietly shipped off. Thirty years of his life wiped out.”

“But he never apologised. Said he’d see him damned first,” chorused the mess.

“Poor chap! I suppose he never had the chance afterwards. How did he come here?” said the colonel.

The dingy heap in the chair could give no answer.

“Do you know who you are?”

It laughed weakly.

“Do you know that you are Limmason—Lieutenant Limmason of the White Hussars?”

Swiftly as a shot came the answer, in a slightly surprised tone, “Yes, I’m—Limmason, of course.” The light died out in his eyes, and the man collapsed, watching every motion of Dirkovitch with terror. A flight from Siberia may fix a few elementary facts in the mind, but it does not seem to lead to continuity of thought. The man could not explain how, like a homing pigeon, he had found his way to his own old mess again. Of what he had suffered or seen he knew nothing. He cringed before Dirkovitch as instinctively as he had pressed the spring of the candlestick, sought the picture of the drum-horse, and answered to the toast of the Queen. The rest was a blank that the dreaded Russian tongue could only in part remove. His head bowed on his breast, and he giggled and cowered alternately.

The devil that lived in the brandy prompted Dirkovitch at this extremely inopportune moment to make a speech. He rose, swaying slightly, gripped the table-edge, while his eyes glowed like opals, and began:

“Fellow-soldiers glorious—true friends and hospitables. It was an accident, and deplorable—most deplorable.” Here he smiled sweetly all round the mess. “But you will think of this little, little thing. So little, is it not? The Czar! Posh! I slap my fingers—I snap my fingers at him. Do I believe in him? No! But in us Slav who has done nothing, him I believe. Seventy—how much—millions peoples that have done nothing—not one thing. Posh! Napoleon was an episode.” He banged a hand on the table. “Hear you, old peoples, we have done nothing in the world—out here. All our work is to do; and it shall be done, old peoples. Get a-way!” He waved his hand imperiously, and pointed to the man. “You see him. He is not good to see. He was just one little—oh, so little—accident, that no one remembered. Now he is—That! So will you be, brother soldiers so brave so will you be. But you will never come back. You will all go where he is gone, or”—he pointed to the great coffin-shadow on the ceiling, and muttering, “Seventy millions—get a-way, you old peoples,” fell asleep.

“Sweet, and to the point,” said little Mildred. “What’s the use of getting wroth? Let’s make this poor devil comfortable.”

But that was a matter suddenly and swiftly taken from the loving hands of the White Hussars. The lieutenant had returned only to go away again three days later, when the wail of the Dead March, and the tramp of the squadrons, told the wondering Station, who saw no gap in the mess-table, that an officer of the regiment had resigned his new-found commission.

And Dirkovitch, bland, supple, and always genial, went away too by a night train. Little Mildred and another man saw him off, for he was the guest of the mess, and even had he smitten the colonel with the open hand, the law of that mess allowed no relaxation of hospitality.

“Good-bye, Dirkovitch, and a pleasant journey,” said little Mildred.

“Au revoir,” said the Russian.

“Indeed! But we thought you were going home?”

“Yes, but I will come again. My dear friends, is that road shut?” He pointed to where the North Star burned over the Khyber Pass.

“By Jove! I forgot. Of course. Happy to meet you, old man, any time you like. Got everything you want? Cheroots, ice, bedding? That’s all right. Well, au revoir, Dirkovitch.”

“Um,” said the other man, as the tail-lights of the train grew small. “Of—all—the—unmitigated!”

Little Mildred answered nothing, but watched the North Star and hummed a selection from recent Simla burlesque that had much delighted the White Hussars. It ran—

I’m sorry for Mister Bluebeard,
I’m sorry to cause him pain;
But a terrible spree there’s sure to be
When he comes back again.

The Manner of Men

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‘If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts.’— I COR. XV. 32.

HER cinnabar-tinted topsail, nicking the hot blue horizon, showed she was a Spanish wheat-boat hours before she reached Marseilles mole. There, her mainsail brailed itself, a spritsail broke out forward, and a handy driver aft; and she threaded her way through the shipping to her berth at the quay as quietly as a veiled woman slips through a bazaar. The blare of her horns told her name to the port. An elderly hook-nosed Inspector came aboard to see if her cargo had suffered in the run from the South, and the senior ship-cat purred round her captain’s legs as the after-hatch was opened.

‘If the rest is like this—’ the Inspector sniffed—‘you had better run out again to the mole and dump it.’

‘That’s nothing,’ the captain replied. ‘All Spanish wheat heats a little. They reap it very dry.’

‘’Pity you don’t keep it so, then. What would you call that—crop or pasture?’

The Inspector pointed downwards. The grain was in bulk, and deck-leakage, combined with warm weather, had sprouted it here and there in sickly green films.

‘So much the better,’ said the captain brazenly. ‘That makes it waterproof. Pare off the top two inches, and the rest is as sweet as a nut.’

‘I told that lie, too, when I was your age. And how does she happen to be loaded?’

The young Spaniard flushed, but kept his temper.

‘She happens to be ballasted, under my eye, on lead-pigs and bagged copper-ores.’

‘I don’t know that they much care for verdigris in their dole-bread at Rome. But—you were saying?’

‘I was trying to tell you that the bins happen to be grain-tight, two-inch chestnut, floored and sided with hides.’

‘Meaning dressed African leathers on your private account?’

‘What has that got to do with you? We discharge at Port of Rome, not here.’

‘So your papers show. And what might you have stowed in the wings of her?’

‘Oh, apes! Circumcised apes—just like you!’

‘Young monkey! Well, if you are not above taking an old ape’s advice, next time you happen to top off with wool and screw in more bales than are good for her, get your ship undergirt before you sail. I know it doesn’t look smart coming into Port of Rome, but it ’ll save your decks from lifting worse than they are.’

There was no denying that the planking and waterways round the after-hatch had lifted a little. The captain lost his temper.

‘I know your breed!’ he stormed. ‘You promenade the quays all summer at Caesar’s expense, jamming your Jew-bow into everybody’s business; and when the norther blows, you squat over your brazier and let us skippers hang in the wind for a week!’

‘You have it! Just that sort of a man am I now,’ the other answered. ‘That’ll do, the quarter-hatch!’

As he lifted his hand the falling sleeve showed the broad gold armlet with the triple vertical gouges which is only worn by master mariners who have used all three seas—Middle, Western, and Eastern.

‘Gods!’ the captain saluted. ‘ I thought you were——’

‘A Jew, of course. Haven’t you used Eastern ports long enough to know a Red Sidonian when you see one?’

‘Mine the fault—yours be the pardon, my father!’ said the Spaniard impetuously. ‘Her topsides are a trifle strained. There was a three days’ blow coming up. I meant to have had her undergirt off the Islands, but hawsers slow a ship so—and one hates to spoil a good run.’

‘To whom do you say it?’ The Inspector looked the young man over between horny sun and salt creased eyelids like a brooding pelican. ‘But if you care to get up your girt-hawsers to-morrow, I can find men to put ’em overside. It’s no work for open sea. Now! Main-hatch, there! . . . I thought so. She’ll need another girt abaft the foremast.’ He motioned to one of his staff, who hurried up the quay to where the port Guard-boat basked at her mooring-ring. She was a stoutly-built, single-banker, eleven a side, with a short punching ram; her duty being to stop riots in harbour and piracy along the coast.

‘Who commands her?’ the captain asked.

‘An old shipmate of mine, Sulinus—a River man. We’ll get his opinion.’

In the Mediterranean (Nile keeping always her name) there is but one river—that shifty-mouthed Danube, where she works through her deltas into the Black Sea. Up went the young man’s eyebrows.

‘Is he any kin to a Sulinor of Tomi, who used to be in the flesh-traffic—and a Free Trader? My uncle has told me of him. He calls him Mango.’

‘That man. He was my second in the wheat-trade my last five voyages, after the Euxine grew too hot to hold him. But he’s in the Fleet now. . . You know your ship best. Where do you think the after-girts ought to come?’

The captain was explaining, when a huge dishfaced Dacian, in short naval cuirass, rolled up the gangplank, carefully saluting the bust of Caesar on the poop, and asked the captain’s name.

‘Baeticus, for choice,’ was the answer.

They all laughed, for the sea, which Rome mans with foreigners, washes out many shore-names.

‘My trouble is this ’ Baeticus began, and they went into committee, which lasted a full hour. At the end, he led them to the poop, where an awning had been stretched, and wines set out with fruits and sweet shore water.

They drank to the Gods of the Sea, Trade, and Good Fortune, spilling those small cups overside, and then settled at ease.

‘Girting’s an all-day job, if it’s done properly,’ said the Inspector. ‘Can you spare a real working-party by dawn to-morrow, Mango?’

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‘But surely—for you, Red.’

‘I’m thinking of the wheat,’ said Quabil curtly. He did not like nicknames so early.

‘Full meals and drinks,’ the Spanish captain put in.

‘Good! Don’t return ’em too full. By the way’—Sulinor lifted a level cup—‘where do you get this liquor, Spaniard?’

‘From our Islands (the Balearics). Is it to your taste?’

‘It is.’ The big man unclasped his gorget in solemn preparation.

Their talk ran professionally, for though each end of the Mediterranean scoffs at the other, both unite to mock landward, wooden-headed Rome and her stiff-jointed officials.

Sulinor told a tale of taking the Prefect of the Port, on a breezy day, to Forum Julii, to see a lady, and of his lamentable condition when landed.

‘Yes,’ Quabil sneered. ‘Rome’s mistress of the world—as far as the foreshore.’

‘If Caesar ever came on patrol with me,’ said Sulinor, ‘he might understand there was such a thing as the Fleet.’

‘Then he’d officer it with well-born young Romans,’ said Quabil. ‘Be grateful you are left alone. You are the last man in the world to want to see Caesar.’

‘Except one,’ said Sulinor, and he and Quabil laughed.

‘What’s the joke?’ the Spaniard asked. Sulinor explained.

‘We had a passenger, our last trip together, who wanted to see Caesar. It cost us our ship and freight. That’s all.’

‘Was he a warlock—a wind-raiser?’

‘Only a Jew philosopher. But he had to see Caesar. He said he had; and he piled up the Eirene on his way.’

‘Be fair,’ said Quabil. ‘I don’t like the Jews—they lie too close to my own hold—but it was Caesar lost me my ship.’ He turned to Baeticus. ‘There was a proclamation, our end of the world, two seasons back, that Caesar wished the Eastern wheat-boats to run through the winter, and he’d guarantee all loss. Did you get it, youngster?’

‘No. Our stuff is all in by September. I wager Caesar never paid you! How late did you start?’

‘I left Alexandria across the bows of the Equinox—well down in the pickle, with Egyptian wheat—half pigeon’s dung—and the usual load of Greek sutlers and their women. The second day out the sou’-wester caught me. I made across it north for the Lycian coast, and slipped into Myra till the wind should let me get back into the regular grain-track again.’

Sailor-fashion, Quabil began to illustrate his voyage with date and olive stones from the table.

‘The wind went into the north, as I knew it would, and I got under way. You remember, Mango? My anchors were apeak when a Lycian patrol threshed in with Rome’s order to us to wait on a Sidon packet with prisoners and officers. Mother of Carthage, I cursed him!’

‘’Shouldn’t swear at Rome’s Fleet. ’Weatherly craft, those Lycian racers! Fast, too. I’ve been hunted by them! ’Never thought I’d command one,’ said Sulinor, half aloud.

‘And now I’m coming to the leak in my decks, young man,’ Quabil eyed Baeticus sternly. ‘Our slant north had strained her, and I should have undergirt her at Myra. Gods know why I didn’t! I set up the chain-staples in the cable-tier for the prisoners. I even had the girt-hawsers on deck—which saved time later; but the thing I should have done, that I did not.’

‘Luck of the Gods!’ Sulinor laughed. ‘It was because our little philosopher wanted to see Caesar in his own way at our expense.’

‘Why did he want to see him?’ said Baeticus.

‘As far as I ever made out from him and the centurion, he wanted to argue with Caesar—about philosophy.’

‘He was a prisoner, then?’

‘A political suspect—with a Jew’s taste for going to law,’ Quabil interrupted. ‘No orders for irons. Oh, a little shrimp of a man, but—but he seemed to take it for granted that he led everywhere. He messed with us.’

‘And he was worth talking to, Red,’ said Sulinor.

‘You thought so; but he had the woman’s trick of taking the tone and colour of whoever he talked to. Now—as I was saying. . .’

There followed another illustrated lecture on the difficulties that beset them after leaving Myra. There was always too much west in the autumn winds, and the Eirene tacked against it as far as Cnidus. Then there came a northerly slant, on which she ran through the Aegean Islands, for the tail of Crete; rounded that, and began tacking up the south coast.

‘Just darning the water again, as we had done from Myra to Cnidus,’ said Quabil ruefully. ‘I daren’t stand out. There was the bone-yard of all the Gulf of Africa under my lee. But at last we worked into Fairhaven—by that cork yonder. Late as it was, I should have taken her on, but I had to call a ship-council as to lying up for the winter. That Rhodian law may have suited open boats and cock-crow coasters, but it’s childish for ocean-traffic.’

‘I never allow it in any command of mine,’ Baeticus spoke quietly. ‘The cowards give the order, and the captain bears the blame.’

Quabil looked at him keenly. Sulinor took advantage of the pause.

‘We were in harbour, you see. So our Greeks tumbled out and voted to stay where we were. It was my business to show them that the place was open to many winds, and that if it came on to blow we should drive ashore.’

‘Then I,’ broke in Quabil, with a large and formidable smile, ‘advised pushing on to Phenike, round the cape, only forty miles across the bay. My mind was that, if I could get her undergirt there, I might later—er—coax them out again on a fair wind, and hit Sicily. But the undergirting came first. She was beginning to talk too much—like me now.’

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Sulinor chafed a wrist with his hand.

‘She was a hard-mouthed old water-bruiser in any sea,’ he murmured.

‘She could lie within six points of any wind,’ Quabil retorted, and hurried on. ‘What made Paul vote with those Greeks? He said we’d be sorry if we left harbour.’

‘Every passenger says that, if a bucketful comes aboard,’ Baeticus observed.

Sulinor refilled his cup, and looked at them over the brim, under brows as candid as a child’s, ere he set it down.

‘Not Paul. He did not know fear. He gave me a dose of my own medicine once. It was a morning watch coming down through the Islands. We had been talking about the cut of our topsail—he was right—it held too much lee wind—and then he went to wash before he prayed. I said to him: “You seem to have both ends and the bight of most things coiled down in your little head, Paul. If it’s a fair question, what is your trade ashore?” And he said: “I’ve been a man-hunter—Gods forgive me; and now that I think The God has forgiven me, I am man-hunting again.” Then he pulled his shirt over his head, and I saw his back. Did you ever see his back, Quabil?’

‘I expect I did—that last morning, when we all stripped; but I don’t remember.’

‘I shan’t forget it! There was good, sound lictor’s work and criss-cross Jew scourgings like gratings; and a stab or two; and, besides those, old dry bites—when they get good hold and rugg you. That showed he must have dealt with the Beasts. So, whatever he’d done, he’d paid for. I was just wondering what he had done, when he said: “No; not your sort of man-hunting.” “It’s your own affair,” I said: “but I shouldn’t care to see Caesar with a back like that. I should hear the Beasts asking for me.” “I may that, too, some day,” he said, and began sluicing himself, and—then—— What’s brought the girls out so early? Oh, I remember!’

There was music up the quay, and a wreathed shore-boat put forth full of Arlesian women. A long-snouted three-banker was hauling from a slip till her trumpets warned the benches to take hold. As they gave way, the hrmph-hrmph of the oars in the oar-ports reminded Sulinor, he said, of an elephant choosing his man in the Circus.

‘She has been here re-masting. They’ve no good rough-tree at Forum Julii,’ Quabil explained to Baeticus. ‘ The girls are singing her out.’

The shallop ranged alongside her, and the banks held water, while a girl’s voice came across the clock-calm harbour-face

‘Ah, would swift ships had never been about the seas to rove!
For then these eyes had never seen nor ever wept their love.
Over the ocean-rim he came—beyond that verge he passed,
And I who never knew his name must mourn him to the last!’
‘And you’d think they meant it,’ said Baeticus, half to himself.

‘That’s a pretty stick,’ was Quabil’s comment as the man-of-war opened the island athwart the harbour. ‘But she’s overmasted by ten foot. A trireme’s only a bird-cage.’

‘’Luck of the Gods I’m not singing in one now,’ Sulinor muttered. They heard the yelp of a bank being speeded up to the short sea-stroke.

‘I wish there was some way to save mainmasts from racking.’ Baeticus looked up at his own, bangled with copper wire.

‘The more reason to undergirt, my son,’ said Quabil. ‘I was going to undergirt that morning at Fairhaven. You remember, Sulinor? I’d given orders to overhaul the hawsers the night before. My fault! Never say “To-morrow.” The Gods hear you. And then the wind came out of the south, mild as milk. All we had to do was to slip round the headland to Phenike—and be safe.’

Baeticus made some small motion, which Quabil noticed, for he stopped.

‘My father,’ the young man spread apologetic palms, ‘is not that lying wind the in-draught of Mount Ida? It comes up with the sun, but later——’

‘You need not tell me! We rounded the cape, our decks like a fair (it was only half a day’s sail), and then, out of Ida’s bosom the full north-easier stamped on us! Run? What else? I needed a lee to clean up in. Clauda was a few miles down wind; but whether the old lady would bear up when she got there, I was not so sure.’

‘She did.’ Sulinor rubbed his wrists again. ‘We were towing our longboat half-full. I steered somewhat that day.’

‘What sail were you showing?’ Baeticus demanded.

‘Nothing—and twice too much at that. But she came round when Sulinor asked her, and we kept her jogging in the lee of the island. I said, didn’t I, that my girt-hawsers were on deck?’

Baeticus nodded. Quabil plunged into his campaign at long and large, telling every shift and device he had employed. ‘It was scanting daylight,’ he wound up, ‘but I daren’t slur the job. Then we streamed our boat alongside, baled her, sweated her up, and secured. You ought to have seen our decks!’

‘’Panic?’ said Baeticus.

‘A little. But the whips were out early. The centurion—Julius—lent us his soldiers.’

‘How did your prisoners behave?’ the young man went on.

Sulinor answered him. ‘Even when a man is being shipped to the Beasts, he does not like drowning in irons. They tried to rive the chain-staples out of her timbers.’

‘I got the main-yard on deck’—this was Quabil. ‘That eased her a little. They stopped yelling after a while, didn’t they?’

‘They did,’ Sulinor replied. ‘Paul went down and told them there was no danger. And they believed him! Those scoundrels believed him! He asked me for the keys of the leg-bars to make them easier. “I’ve been through this sort of thing before,” he said, “but they are new to it down below. Give me the keys.” I told him there was no order for him to have any keys; and I recommended him to line his hold for a week in advance, because we were in the hands of the Gods. “And when are we ever out of them?” he asked. He looked at me like an old gull lounging just astern of one’s taffrail in a full gale. You know that eye, Spaniard?’

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‘Well do I!’

‘By that time’—Quabil took the story again‘ we had drifted out of the lee of Clauda, and our one hope was to run for it and pray we weren’t pooped. None the less, I could have made Sicily with luck. As a gale I have known worse, but the wind never shifted a point, d’ye see? We were flogged along like a tired ox.’

‘Any sights?’ Baeticus asked.

‘For ten days not a blink.’

‘Nearer two weeks,’ Sulinor corrected. ‘We cleared the decks of everything except our groundtackle, and put six hands at the tillers. She seemed to answer her helm—sometimes. Well, it kept me warm for one.’

‘How did your philosopher take it?’

‘Like the gull I spoke of. He was there, but outside it all. You never got on with him, Quabil?’

‘Confessed! I came to be afraid at last. It was not my office to show fear, but I was. He was fearless, although I knew that he knew the peril as well as I. When he saw that trying to—er—cheer me made me angry, he dropped it. ’Like a woman, again. You saw more of him, Mango?’

‘Much. When I was at the rudders he would hop up to the steerage, with the lower-deck ladders lifting and lunging a foot at a time, and the timbers groaning like men beneath the Beasts. We used to talk, hanging on till the roll jerked us into the scuppers. Then we’d begin again. What about? Oh! Kings and Cities and Gods and Caesar. He was sure he’d see Caesar. I told him I had noticed that people who worried Those Up Above’—Sulinor jerked his thumb towards the awning—‘were mostly sent for in a hurry.’

‘Hadn’t you wit to see he never wanted you for yourself, but to get something out of you?’ Quabil snapped.

‘Most Jews are like that—and all Sidonians!’ Sulinor grinned. ‘But what could he have hoped to get from anyone? We were doomed men all. You said it, Red.’

‘Only when I was at my emptiest. Otherwise I knew that with any luck I could have fetched Sicily! But I broke—we broke. Yes, we got ready—you too—for the Wet Prayer.’

‘How does that run with you?’ Baeticus asked, for all men are curious concerning the bride-bed of Death.

‘With us of the River,’ Sulinor volunteered, ‘we say: “I sleep; presently I row again.”’

‘Ah! At our end of the world we cry: “Gods, judge me not as a God, but a man whom the Ocean has broken.”’ Baeticus looked at Quabil, who answered, raising his cup: ‘We Sidonians say, “Mother of Carthage, I return my oar!” But it all comes to the one in the end.’ He wiped his beard, which gave Sulinor his chance to cut in.

‘Yes, we were on the edge of the Prayer when—do you remember, Quabil?—he clawed his way up the ladders and said: “No need to call on what isn’t there. My God sends me sure word that I shall see Caesar. And he has pledged me all your lives to boot. Listen! No man will be lost.” And Quabil said: “But what about my ship?”’ Sulinor grinned again.

‘That’s true. I had forgotten the cursed passengers,’ Quabil confirmed. ‘But he spoke as though my Eirene were a fig-basket. “Oh, she’s bound to go ashore, somewhere,” he said, “but not a life will be lost. Take this from me, the Servant of the One God.” Mad! Mad as a magician on market-day!’

‘No,’ said Sulinor. ‘Madmen see smooth harbours and full meals. I have had to—soothe that sort.’

‘After all,’ said Quabil, ‘he was only saying what had been in my head for a long time. I had no way to judge our drift, but we likely might hit something somewhere. Then he went away to spread his cook-house yarn among the crew. It did no harm, or I should have stopped him.’

Sulinor coughed, and drawled:

‘I don’t see anyone stopping Paul from what he fancied he ought to do. But it was curious that, on the change of watch, I——’

‘No—I!’ said Quabil.

‘Make it so, then, Red. Between us, at any rate, we felt that the sea had changed. There was a trip and a kick to her dance. You know, Spaniard. And then—I will say that, for a man half-dead, Quabil here did well.’

‘I’m a bosun-captain, and not ashamed of it. I went to get a cast of the lead. (Black dark and raining marlinspikes!) The first cast warned me, and I told Sulinor to clear all aft for anchoring by the stern. The next—shoaling like a slip-way—sent me back with all hands, and we dropped both bowers and spare and the stream.’

‘He’d have taken the kedge as well, but I stopped him,’ said Sulinor.

‘I had to stop her! They nearly jerked her stern out, but they held. And everywhere I could peer or hear were breakers, or the noise of tall seas against cliffs. We were trapped! But our people had been starved, soaked, and halfstunned for ten days, and now they were close to a beach. That was enough! They must land on the instant; and was I going to let them drown within reach of safety? Was there panic? I spoke to Julius, and his soldiers (give Rome her due!) schooled them till I could hear my orders again. But on the kiss-of-dawn some of the crew said that Sulinor had told them to lay out the kedge in the long-boat.’

‘I let ’em swing her out,’ Sulinor confessed.

‘I wanted ’em for warnings. But Paul told me his God had promised their lives to him along with ours, and any private sacrifice would spoil the luck. So, as soon as she touched water, I cut the rope before a man could get in. She was ashore—stove—in ten minutes.’

‘Could you make out where you were by then?’ Baeticus asked Quabil.

‘As soon as I saw the people on the beach—yes. They are my sort—a little removed. Phoenicians by blood. It was Malta—one day’s run from Syracuse, where I would have been safe! Yes, Malta and my wheat gruel. Good port-of-discharge, eh?’

They smiled, for Melita may mean ‘mash’ as well as ‘Malta.’

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‘It puddled the sea all round us, while I was trying to get my bearings. But my lids were salt-gummed, and I hiccoughed like a drunkard.’

‘And drunk you most gloriously were, Red, half an hour later!’

‘Praise the Gods—and for once your pet Paul! That little man came to me on the fore-bitts, puffed like a pigeon, and pulled out a breastful of bread, and salt fish, and the wine—the good new wine. ‘Eat,” he said, “and make all your people eat, too. Nothing will come to them except another wetting. They won’t notice that, after they’re full. Don’t worry about your work either,” he said. “You can’t go wrong to-day. You are promised to me.” And then he went off to Sulinor.’

‘He did. He came to me with bread and wine and bacon—good they were! But first he said words over them, and then rubbed his hands with his wet sleeves. I asked him if he were a magician. “Gods forbid!” he said. “I am so poor a soul that I flinch from touching dead pig.” As a Jew, he wouldn’t like pork, naturally. Was that before or after our people broke into the store-room, Red?’

‘Had I time to wait on them?’ Quabil snorted. ‘I know they gutted my stores full-hand, and a double blessing of wine atop. But we all took that—deep. Now this is how we lay.’ Quabil smeared a ragged loop on the table with a wine-wet finger. ‘Reefs—see, my son—and overfalls to leeward here; something that loomed like a point of land on our right there; and, ahead, the blind gut of a bay with a Cyclops surf hammering it. How we had got in was a miracle. Beaching was our only chance, and meantime she was settling like a tired camel. Every foot I could lighten her meant that she’d take ground closer in at the last. I told Julius. He understood. “I’ll keep order,” he said. “Get the passengers to shift the wheat as long as you judge it’s safe.”’

‘Did those Alexandrian achators really work? ‘ said Baeticus.

‘I’ve never seen cargo discharged quicker. It was time. The wind was taking off in gusts, and the rain was putting down the swells. I made out a patch of beach that looked less like death than the rest of the arena, and I decided to drive in on a gust under the spitfire-sprit—and, if she answered her helm before she died on us, to humour her a shade to starboard, where the water looked better. I stayed the foremast; set the spritsail fore and aft, as though we were boarding; told Sulinor to have the rudders down directly he cut the cables; waited till a gust came; squared away the sprit, and drove.’

Sulinor carried on promptly:—

‘I had two hands with axes on each cable, and one on each rudder-lift; and, believe me, when Quabil’s pipe went, both blades were down and turned before the cable-ends had fizzed under! She jumped like a stung cow! She drove. She sheared. I think the swell lifted her, and overran. She came down, and struck aft. Her stern broke off under my toes, and all the guts of her at that end slid out like a man’s paunched by a lion. I jumped forward, and told Quabil there was nothing but small kindlings abaft the quarterhatch, and he shouted: “Never mind! Look how beautifully I’ve laid her!”’

‘I had. What I took for a point of land to starboard, y’see, turned out to be almost a bridge-islet, with a swell of sea ’twixt it and the main. And that meeting-swill, d’you see, surging in as she drove, gave her four or five foot more to cushion on. I’d hit the exact instant.’

‘Luck of the Gods, I think! Then we began to bustle our people over the bows before she went to pieces. You’ll admit Paul was a help there, Red?’

‘I dare say he herded the old judies well enough; but he should have lined up with his own gang.’

‘He did that, too,’ said Sulinor. ‘Some fool of an under-officer had discovered that prisoners must be killed if they look like escaping; and he chose that time and place to put it to Julius—sword drawn. Think of hunting a hundred prisoners to death on those decks! It would have been worse than the Beasts!’

‘But Julius saw—Julius saw it,’ Quabil spoke testily. ‘I heard him tell the man not to be a fool. They couldn’t escape further than the beach.’

‘And how did your philosopher take that?’ said Baeticus.

‘As usual,’ said Sulinor. ‘But, you see, we two had dipped our hands in the same dish for weeks; and, on the River, that makes an obligation between man and man.’

‘In my country also,’ said Baeticus, rather stiffly.

‘So I cleared my dirk—in case I had to argue. Iron always draws iron with me. But he said “Put it back. They are a little scared.” I said “Aren’t you?” “What?” he said; “of being killed, you mean? No. Nothing can touch me till I’ve seen Caesar.” Then he carried on steadying the ironed men (some were slaveringmad) till it was time to unshackle them by fives, and give ’em their chance. The natives made a chain through the surf, and snatched them out breast-high.’

‘Not a life lost! ’Like stepping off a jetty,’ Quabil proclaimed.

‘Not quite. But he had promised no one should drown.’

‘How could they—the way I had laid her—gust and swell and swill together?’

‘And was there any salvage?’

‘Neither stick nor string, my son. We had time to look, too. We stayed on the island till the first spring ship sailed for Port of Rome. They hadn’t finished Ostia breakwater that year.’

‘And, of course, Caesar paid you for your ship?’

‘I made no claim. I saw it would be hopeless; and Julius, who knew Rome, was against any appeal to the authorities. He said that was the mistake Paul was making. And, I suppose, because I did not trouble them, and knew a little about the sea, they offered me the Port Inspectorship here. There’s no money in it—if I were a poor man. Marseilles will never be a port again. Narbo has ruined her for good.’

‘But Marseilles is far from under-Lebanon,’ Baeticus suggested.

‘The further the better. I lost my boy three years ago in Foul Bay, off Berenice, with the Eastern Fleet. He was rather like you about the eyes, too. You and your circumcised apes!’

‘But—honoured one! My master! Admiral!—Father mine—how could I have guessed?’

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The young man leaned forward to the other’s knee in act to kiss it. Quabil made as though to cuff him, but his hand came to rest lightly on the bowed head.

‘Nah! Sit, lad! Sit back. It’s just the thing the Boy would have said himself. You didn’t hear it, Sulinor?’

‘I guessed it had something to do with the likeness as soon as I set eyes on him. You don’t so often go out of your way to help lame ducks.’

‘You can see for yourself she needs undergirting, Mango!’

‘So did that Tyrian tub last month. And you told her she might bear up for Narbo or bilge for all of you! But he shall have his working-party to-morrow, Red.’

Baeticus renewed his thanks. The River man cut him short.

‘Luck of the Gods,’ he said. ‘Five—four—years ago I might have been waiting for you anywhere in the Long Puddle with fifty River men—and no moon.’

Baeticus lifted a moist eye to the slip-hooks on his yardarm, that could hoist and drop weights at a sign.

‘You might have had a pig or two of ballast through your benches coming alongside,’ he said dreamily.

‘And where would my overhead-nettings have been?’ the other chuckled.

‘Blazing—at fifty yards. What are firearrows for?’

‘To fizzle and stink on my wet sea-weed blindages. Try again.’

They were shooting their fingers at each other, like the little boys gambling for olive-stones on the quay beside them.

‘Go on—go on, my son! Don’t let that pirate board,’ cried Quabil.

Baeticus twirled his right hand very loosely at the wrist.

‘In that case,’ he countered, ‘I should have fallen back on my foster-kin—my father’s island horsemen.’

Sulinor threw up an open palm.

‘Take the nuts,’ he said. ‘Tell me, is it true that those infernal Balearic slingers of yours can turn a bull by hitting him on the horns?’

‘On either horn you choose. My father farms near New Carthage. They come over to us for the summer to work. There are ten in my crew now.’

Sulinor hiccoughed and folded his hands magisterially over his stomach.

‘Quite proper. Piracy must be put down! Rome says so. I do so,’ said he.

‘I see,’ the younger man smiled. ‘But tell me, why did you leave the slave—the Euxine trade, O Strategos?’

‘That sea is too like a wine-skin. ’Only one neck. It made mine ache. So I went into the Egyptian run with Quabil here.’

‘But why take service in the Fleet? Surely the Wheat pays better?’

‘I intended to. But I had dysentery at Malta that winter, and Paul looked after me.’

‘Too much muttering and laying-on of hands for me,’ said Quabil; himself muttering about some Thessalian jugglery with a snake on the island.

‘You weren’t sick, Quabil. When I was getting better, and Paul was washing me off once, he asked if my citizenship were in order. He was a citizen himself. Well, it was and it was not. As second of a wheat-ship I was ex officio Roman citizen—for signing bills and so forth. But on the beach, my ship perished, he said I reverted to my original shtay—status—of an extra-provinshal Dacian by a Sich—Sish—Scythian—I think she was—mother. Awkward—what? All the Middle Sea echoes like a public bath if a man is wanted.’

Sulinor reached out again and filled. The wine had touched his huge bulk at last.

‘But, as I was saying, once in the Fleet nowadays one is a Roman with authority—no waiting twenty years for your papers. And Paul said to me: “Serve Caesar. You are not canvas I can cut to advantage at present. But if you serve Caesar you will be obeying at least some sort of law.” He talked as though I were a barbarian. Weak as I was, I could have snapped his back with my bare hands. I told him so. “I don’t doubt it,” he said. “But that is neither here nor there. If you take refuge under Caesar at sea, you may have time to think. Then I may meet you again, and we can go on with our talks. But that is as The God wills. What concerns you now is that, by taking service, you will be free from the fear that has ridden you all your life.”’

‘Was he right?’ asked Baeticus after a silence.

‘He was. I had never spoken to him of it, but he knew it. He knew! Fire—sword—the sea—torture even—one does not think of them too often. But not the Beasts! Aie! Not the Beasts! I fought two dog-wolves for the life on a sand-bar when I was a youngster. Look!’

Sulinor showed his neck and chest.

‘They set the sheep-dogs on Paul at some place or other once—because of his philosophy And he was going to see Caesar—going to see Caesar! And he—he had washed me clean after dysentery!’

‘Mother of Carthage, you never told me that! ‘ said Quabil.

‘Nor should I now, had the wine been weaker.’

 

 


			


				





	

					

				
The Maltese Cat
			

			
			

				


page 1 of 6




THEY had good reason to be proud, and better reason to be afraid, all twelve of them; for, though they had fought their way, game by game, up the teams entered for the polo tournament, they were meeting the Archangels that afternoon in the final match; and the Archangels’ men were playing with half-a-dozen ponies apiece. As the game was divided into six quarters of eight minutes each, that meant a fresh pony after every halt. The Skidars’ team, even supposing there were no accidents, could only supply one pony for every other change; and two to one is heavy odds. Again, as Shiraz, the grey Syrian, pointed out, they were meeting the pink and pick of the polo-ponies of Upper India; ponies that had cost from a thousand rupees each, while they themselves were a cheap lot gathered, often from country carts, by their masters who belonged to a poor but honest native infantry regiment.‘Money means pace and weight,’ said Shiraz, rubbing his black silk nose dolefully along his neat-fitting boot, ‘and by the maxims of the game as I know it——’


‘Ah, but we aren’t playing the maxims,’ said the Maltese Cat. ‘We’re playing the game, and we’ve the great advantage of knowing the game. Just think a stride, Shiraz. We’ve pulled up from bottom to second place in two weeks against all those fellows on the ground here; and that’s because we play with our heads as well as with our feet.’


‘It makes me feel undersized and unhappy all the same,’ said Kittiwynk, a mouse-coloured mare with a red browband and the cleanest pair of legs that ever an aged pony owned. ‘They’ve twice our size, these others.’


Kittiwynk looked at the gathering and sighed. The hard, dusty Umballa polo-ground was lined with thousands of soldiers, black and white, not counting hundreds and hundreds of carriages, and drags, and dog-carts, and ladies with brilliant-coloured parasols, and officers in uniform and out of it, and crowds of natives behind them; and orderlies on camels who had halted to watch the game, instead of carrying letters up and down the station, and native horse-dealers running about on thin-eared Biluchi mares, looking for a chance to sell a few first-class polo ponies. Then there were the ponies of thirty teams that had entered for the Upper India Free For All Cup—nearly every pony of worth and dignity from Mhow to Peshawar, from Allahabad to Multan; prize ponies, Arabs, Syrian, Barb, country bred, Deccanee, Waziri, and Kabul ponies of every colour and shape and temper that you could imagine. Some of them were in mat-roofed stables close to the polo-ground, but most were under saddle while their masters, who had been defeated in the earlier games, trotted in and out and told each other exactly how the game should be played.


It was a glorious sight, and the come-and-go of the little quick hoofs, and the incessant salutations of ponies that had met before on other polo-grounds or racecourses, were enough to drive a four-footed thing wild.


But the Skidars’ team were careful not to know their neighbours, though half the ponies on the ground were anxious to scrape acquaintance with the little fellows that had come from the North, and, so far, had swept the board.


‘Let’s see,’ said a soft, golden-coloured Arab, who had been playing very badly the day before, to the Maltese Cat, ‘didn’t we meet in Abdul Rahman’s stable in Bombay four seasons ago? I won the Paikpattan Cup next season, you may remember.’


‘Not me,’ said the Maltese Cat politely. ‘I was at Malta then, pulling a vegetable cart. I don’t race. I play the game.’


‘O-oh! ‘said the Arab, cocking his tail and swaggering off.


‘Keep yourselves to yourselves,’ said the Maltese Cat to his companions. ‘We don’t want to rub noses with all those goose-rumped halfbreeds of Upper India. When we’ve won this cup they’ll give their shoes to know us.’


‘We shan’t win the cup,’ said Shiraz. ‘How do you feel?’


‘Stale as last night’s feed when a musk-rat has run over it,’ said Polaris, a rather heavy-shouldered grey, and the rest of the team agreed with him.


‘The sooner you forget that the better,’ said the Maltese Cat cheerfully. ‘They’ve finished tiffin in the big tent. We shall be wanted now. If your saddles are not comfy, kick. If your bits aren’t easy, rear, and lets the saises know whether your boots are tight.’


Each pony had his sais, his groom, who lived and ate and slept with the pony, and had betted a great deal more than he could afford on the result of the game. There was no chance of anything going wrong, and, to make sure, each sais was shampooing the legs of his pony to the last minute. Behind the saises sat as many of the Skidars’ regiment as had leave to attend the match—about half the native officers, and a hundred or two dark, black-bearded men with the regimental pipers nervously fingering the big be-ribboned bagpipes. The Skidars were what they call a Pioneer regiment; and the bagpipes made the national music of half the men. The native officers held bundles of polo-sticks, long canehandled mallets, and as the grand-stand filled after lunch they arranged themselves by ones and twos at different points round the ground, so that if a stick were broken the player would not have far to ride for a new one. An impatient British cavalry band struck up ‘If you want to know the time, ask a p’leeceman!’ and the two umpires in light dust-coats danced out on two little excited ponies. The four players of the Archangels’ team followed, and the sight of their beautiful mounts made Shiraz groan again.


‘Wait till we know,’ said the Maltese Cat. ‘Two of ’em are playing in blinkers, and that means they can’t see to get out of the way of their own side, or they may shy at the umpires’ ponies. They’ve all got white web reins that are sure to stretch or slip!’


‘And,’ said Kittiwynk, dancing to take the stiffness out of her, ‘they carry their whips in their hands instead of on their wrists. Hah!’


‘True enough. No man can manage his stick and his reins and his whip that way,’ said the Maltese Cat. ‘I’ve fallen over every square yard of the Malta ground, and I ought to know.’ He quivered his little flea-bitten withers just to show how satisfied he felt; but his heart was not so light. Ever since he had drifted into India on a troopship, taken, with an old rifle, as part payment for a racing debt, the Maltese Cat had played and preached polo to the Skidars’ team on the Skidars’ stony polo-ground. Now a polo-pony is like a poet. If he is born with a love for the game he can be made. The Maltese Cat knew that bamboos grew solely in order that polo-balls might be turned from their roots, that grain was given to ponies to keep them in hard condition, and that ponies were shod to prevent them slipping on a turn. But, besides all these things, he knew every trick and device of the finest game of the world, and for two seasons he had been teaching the others all he knew or guessed.


‘Remember,’ he said for the hundredth time as the riders came up, ‘we must play together, and you must play with your heads. Whatever happens, follow the ball. Who goes out first?’


Kittiwynk, Shiraz, Polaris, and a short high little bay fellow with tremendous hocks and no withers worth speaking of (he was called Corks) were being girthed up, and the soldiers in the background stared with all their eyes.


‘I want you men to keep quiet,’ said Lutyens, the captain of the team, ‘and especially not to blow your pipes.’


‘Not if we win, Captain Sahib?’ asked a piper.


page 2


‘If we win, you can do what you please,’ said Lutyens, with a smile, as he slipped the loop of his stick over his wrist, and wheeled to canter to his place. The Archangels’ ponies were a little bit above themselves on account of the many-coloured crowd so close to the ground. Their riders were excellent players, but they were a team of crack players instead of a crack team; and that made all the difference in the world. They honestly meant to play together, but it is very hard for four men, each the best of the team he is picked from, to remember that in polo no brilliancy of hitting or riding makes up for playing alone. Their captain shouted his orders to them by name, and it is a curious thing that if you call his name aloud in public after an Englishman you make him hot and fretty. Lutyens said nothing to his men because it had all been said before. He pulled up Shiraz, for he was playing ‘back,’ to guard the goal. Powell on Polaris was halfback, and Macnamara and Hughes on Corks and Kittiwynk were forwards. The tough bambooroot ball was put into the middle of the ground one hundred and fifty yards from the ends, and Hughes crossed sticks, heads-up, with the captain of the Archangels, who saw fit to play forward, and that is a place from which you cannot easily control the team. The little click as the caneshafts met was heard all over the ground, and then Hughes made some sort of quick wrist-stroke that just dribbled the ball a few yards. Kittiwynk knew that stroke of old, and followed as a cat follows a mouse. While the captain of the Archangels was wrenching his pony round Hughes struck with all his strength, and next instant Kittiwynk was away, Corks following close behind her, their little feet pattering like rain-drops on glass.


‘Pull out to the left,’ said Kittiwynk between her teeth, ‘it’s coming our way, Corks!’


The back and half-back of the Archangels were tearing down on her just as she was within reach of the ball. Hughes leaned forward with a loose rein, and cut it away to the left almost under Kittiwynk’s feet, and it hopped and skipped off to Corks, who saw that, if he were not quick, it would run beyond the boundaries. That long bouncing drive gave the Archangels time to wheel and send three men across the ground to head off Corks. Kittiwynk stayed where she was, for she knew the game. Corks was on the ball half a fraction of a second before the others came up, and Macnamara, with a back-handed stroke, sent it back across the ground to Hughes, who saw the way clear to the Archangels’ goal, and smacked the ball in before any one quite knew what had happened.


‘That’s luck,’ said Corks, as they changed ends. ‘A goal in three minutes for three hits and no riding to speak of.’


‘Don’t know,’ said Polaris. ‘We’ve made, ’em angry too soon. Shouldn’t wonder if they try to rush us off our feet next time.’


‘Keep the ball hanging then,’ said Shiraz. ‘That wears out every pony that isn’t used to it.’


Next time there was no easy galloping across the ground. All the Archangels closed up as one man, but there they stayed, for Corks, Kittiwynk, and Polaris were somewhere on the top of the ball, marking time among the rattling sticks, while Shiraz circled about outside, waiting for a chance.


‘We can do this all day,’ said Polaris, ramming his quarters into the side of another pony. ‘Where do you think you’re shoving to?’


‘I’ll—I’ll be driven in an ekka if I know,’ was the gasping reply, ‘and I’d give a week’s feed to get my blinkers off. I can’t see anything.’


‘The dust is rather bad. Whew! That was one for my off hock. Where’s the ball, Corks?’


‘Under my tail. At least a man’s looking for it there. This is beautiful. They can’t use their sticks, and it’s driving ’em wild. Give old blinkers a push and he’ll go over!’


‘Here, don’t touch me! I can’t see. I’ll—I’ll back out, I think,’ said the pony in blinkers, who knew that if you can’t see all round your head you cannot prop yourself against a shock.


Corks was watching the ball where it lay in the dust close to his near fore with Macnamara’s shortened stick tap-tapping it from time to time. Kittiwynk was edging her way out of the scrimmage, whisking her stump of a tail with nervous excitement.


‘Ho! They’ve got it,’ she snorted. ‘Let me out!’ and she galloped like a rifle-bullet just behind a tall lanky pony of the Archangels, whose rider was swinging up his stick for a stroke.


‘Not to-day, thank you,’ said Hughes, as the blow slid off his raised stick, and Kittiwynk laid her shoulder to the tall pony’s quarters, and shoved him aside just as Lutyens on Shiraz sent the ball where it had come from, and the tall pony went skating and slipping away to the left. Kittiwynk, seeing that Polaris had joined Corks in the chase for the ball up the ground, dropped into Polaris’s place, and then time was called.


The Skidars’ ponies wasted no time in kicking or fuming. They knew each minute’s rest meant so much gain, and trotted off to the rails and their saises, who began to scrape and blanket and rub them at once.


‘Whew!’ said Corks, stiffening up to get all the tickle out of the big vulcanite scraper. ‘If we were playing pony for pony we’d bend those Archangels double in half an hour. But they’ll bring out fresh ones and fresh ones, and fresh ones after that—you see.’


‘Who cares?’ said Polaris. ‘We’ve drawn first blood. Is my hock swelling?’


‘Looks puffy,’ said Corks. ‘You must have had rather a wipe. Don’t let it stiffen. You’ll be wanted again in half an hour.’


‘What’s the game like?’ said the Maltese Cat.


‘Ground’s like your shoe, except where they’ve put too much water on it,’ said Kittiwynk. ‘Then it’s slippery. Don’t play in the centre. There’s a bog there. I don’t know how their next four are going to behave, but we kept the ball hanging and made ’em lather for nothing. Who goes out? Two Arabs and a couple of countrybreds! That’s bad. What a comfort it is to wash your mouth out!’


Kitty was talking with the neck of a leather-covered soda-water bottle between her teeth and trying to look over her withers at the same time. This gave her a very coquettish air.


‘What’s bad?’ said Gray Dawn, giving to the girth and admiring his well-set shoulders.


‘You Arabs can’t gallop fast enough to keep yourselves warm—that’s what Kitty means,’ said Polaris, limping to show that his hock needed attention. ‘Are you playing “back,” Gray Dawn?’


page 3




‘Looks like it,’ said Gray Dawn, as Lutyens swung himself up. Powell mounted the Rabbit, a plain bay countrybred much like Corks, but with mulish ears. Macnamara took Faiz Ullah, a handy short-backed little red Arab with a long tail, and Hughes mounted Benami, an old and sullen brown beast, who stood over in front more than a polo pony should.


‘Benami looks like business,’ said Shiraz. ‘How’s your temper, Ben?’ The old campaigner hobbled off without answering, and the Maltese Cat looked at the new Archangel. ponies prancing about on the ground. They were four beautiful blacks, and they saddled big enough and strong enough to eat the Skidars’ team and gallop away with the meal inside them.


‘Blinkers again,’ said the Maltese Cat. ‘Good enough!’


‘They’re chargers—cavalry chargers! ‘said Kittiwynk indignantly. ‘They’ll never see thirteen-three again.’


‘They’ve all been fairly measured and they’ve all got their certificates,’ said the Maltese Cat, ‘or they wouldn’t be here. We must take things as they come along, and keep our eyes on the ball.’


The game began, but this time the Skidars were penned to their own end of the ground, and the watching ponies did not approve of that.


‘Faiz Ullah is shirking, as usual,’ said Polaris, with a scornful grunt.


‘Faiz Ullah is eating whip,’ said Corks. They could hear the leather-thonged polo-quirt lacing the little fellow’s well-rounded barrel. Then the Rabbit’s shrill neigh came across the ground., ‘I can’t do all the work,’ he cried.


‘Play the game, don’t talk,’ the Maltese Cat whickered; and all the ponies wriggled with excitement, and the soldiers and the grooms gripped the railings and shouted. A black pony with blinkers had singled out old Benami, and was interfering with him in every possible way. They could see Benami shaking his head up and down and flapping his underlip.


‘There’ll be a fall in a minute,’ said Polaris. ‘Benami is getting stuffy.’


The game flickered up and down between goal-post and goal-post, and the black ponies were getting more confident as they felt they had the legs of the others. The ball was hit out of a little scrimmage, and Benami and the Rabbit followed it; Faiz Ullah only too glad to be quiet for an instant.


The blinkered black pony came up like a hawk, with two of his own side behind him, and Benami’s eye glittered as he raced. The question was which pony should make way for the other; each rider was perfectly willing to risk a fall in a good cause. The black who had been driven nearly crazy by his blinkers trusted to his weight and his temper; But Benami knew how to apply his weight and how to keep his temper. They met, and there was a cloud of dust. The black was lying on his side with all the breath knocked out of his body. The Rabbit was a hundred yards up the ground with the ball, and Benami was sitting down. He had slid nearly ten yards, but he had had his revenge, and sat cracking his nostrils till the black pony rose.


‘That’s what you get for interfering. Do you want any more?’ said Benami, and he plunged into the game. Nothing was done because Faiz Ullah would not gallop, though Macnamara beat him whenever he could spare a second. The fall of the black pony had impressed his companions tremendously, and so the Archangels could not profit by Faiz Ullah’s bad behaviour.


But as the Maltese Cat said, when time was called and the four came back blowing and dripping, Faiz Ullah ought to have been kicked all round Umballa. If he did not behave better next time, the Maltese Cat promised to pull out his Arab tail by the root and eat it.


There was no time to talk, for the third four were ordered out.


The third quarter of a game is generally the hottest, for each side thinks that the others must be pumped; and most of the winning play in a game is made about that time.


Lutyens took over the Maltese Cat with a pat and a hug, for Lutyens valued him more than anything else in the world. Powell had Shikast, a little grey rat with no pedigree and no manners outside polo; Macnamara mounted Bamboo, the largest of the team, and Hughes took Who’s Who, alias The Animal. He was supposed to have Australian blood in his veins, but he looked like a clothes-horse, and you could whack him on the legs with an iron crow bar without hurting him.


They went out to meet the very flower of the Archangels’ team, and when Who’s Who saw their elegantly booted legs and their beautiful satiny skins he grinned a grin through his light, well-worn bridle.


‘My word!’ said Who’s Who. ‘We must give ’em a little football. Those gentlemen need a rubbing down.’


‘No biting,’ said the Maltese Cat warningly, for once or twice in his career Who’s Who had been known to forget himself in that way.


‘Who said anything about biting? I’m not playing tiddlywinks. I’m playing the game.’


The Archangels came down like a wolf on the fold, for they were tired of football and they wanted polo. They got it more and more. Just after the game began, Lutyens hit a ball that was coming towards him rapidly, and it rose in the air, as a ball sometimes will, with the whirr of a frightened partridge. Shikast heard, but could not see it for the minute, though he looked everywhere and up into the air as the Maltese Cat had, taught him. When he saw it ahead and overhead, he went forward with Powell as fast as he could put foot to ground. It was then that Powell, a quiet and level-headed man as a rule, became inspired and played a stroke that sometimes comes off successfully on a quiet afternoon of long practice. He took his stick in both hands, and standing up in his stirrups, swiped at the ball in the air, Munipore fashion. There was one second of paralysed astonishment, and then all four sides of the ground went up in a yell of applause and delight as the ball flew true (you could see the amazed Archangels ducking in their saddles to get out of the line of flight, and looking at it with open mouths), and the regimental pipes of the Skidars squealed from the railings as long as the pipers had breath.


Shikast heard the stroke; but he heard the head of the stick fly off at the same time. Nine hundred and ninety-nine ponies out of a thousand would have gone tearing on after the ball with a useless player pulling at their heads, but Powell knew him, and he knew Powell; and the instant he felt Powell’s right leg shift a trifle on the saddleflap he headed to the boundary, where a native officer was frantically waving a new stick. Before the, shouts had ended Powell was armed again.


page 4




Once before in his life the Maltese Cat had heard that very same stroke played off his own back, and had profited by the confusion it made. This time he acted on experience, and leaving Bamboo to guard the goal in case of accidents, came through the others like a flash, head and tail low, Lutyens standing up to ease him—swept on and on before the other side knew what was the matter, and nearly pitched on his head between the Archangels’ goal-posts as Lutyens tipped the ball in after a straight scurry of a hundred and fifty yards. If there was one thing more than another upon which the Maltese Cat prided himself it was on this quick, streaking kind of run half across the ground. He did not believe in taking balls round the field unless you were clearly over-matched. After this they gave the Archangels five minutes’ football, and an expensive fast pony hates football because it rumples his temper.


Who’s Who showed himself even better than Polaris in this game. He did not permit any wriggling away, but bored joyfully into the scrimmage as if he had his nose in a feed-box, and were looking for something nice. Little Shikast jumped on the ball the minute it got clear, and every time an Archangel pony followed it he found Shikast standing over it asking what was the matter.


‘If we can live through this quarter,’ said the Maltese Cat, ‘I shan’t care. Don’t take it out of yourselves. Let them do the lathering.’


So the ponies, as their riders explained afterwards, ‘shut up.’ The Archangels kept them tied fast in front of their goal, but it cost the Archangels’ ponies all that was left of their tempers; and ponies began to kick, and men began to repeat compliments, and they chopped at the legs of Who’s Who, and he set his teeth and stayed where he was, and the dust stood up like a tree over the scrimmage till that hot quarter ended.


They found the ponies very excited and confident when they went to their saises; and the Maltese Cat had to warn them that the worst of the game was coming.


‘Now we are all going in for the second time,’ said he, ‘and they are trotting out fresh ponies. You’ll think you can gallop, but you’ll find you can’t; and then you’ll be sorry.’


‘But two goals to nothing is a halter-long lead,’ said Kittiwynk prancing.


‘How long does it take to get a goal?’ the Maltese Cat answered. ‘For pity sake, don’t run away with the notion that the game is half-won just because we happen to be in luck now. They’ll ride you into the grand-stand if they can; you must not give ’em a chance. Follow the ball.’


‘Football, as usual?’ said Polaris. ‘My hock’s half as big as a nose-bag.’


‘Don’t let them have a look at the ball if you can help it. Now leave me alone. I must get all the rest I can before the last quarter.’


He hung down his head and let all his muscles go slack; Shikast, Bamboo, and Who’s Who copying his example.


‘Better not watch the game,’ he said. ‘We aren’t playing, and we shall only take it out of ourselves if we grow anxious. Look at the ground and pretend it’s fly-time.’


They did their best, but it was hard advice to follow. The hoofs were drumming and the sticks were rattling all up and down the ground, and yells of applause from the English troops told that the Archangels were pressing the Skidars hard. The native soldiers behind the ponies groaned and grunted, and said things in undertones, and presently they heard a long-drawn shout and a clatter of hurrahs!


‘One to the Archangels,’ said Shikast, without raising his head. ‘Time’s nearly up. Oh, my sire and dam!’


‘Faiz Ullah,’ said the Maltese Cat, ‘if you don’t play to the last nail in your shoes this time, I’ll kick you on the ground before all the other ponies.’


‘I’ll do my best when my time comes,’ said the little Arab sturdily.


The saises looked at each other gravely as they rubbed their ponies’ legs. This was the first time when long purses began to tell, and everybody knew it. Kittiwynk and the others came back with the sweat dripping over their hoofs and their tails telling sad stories.


‘They’re better than we are,’ said Shiraz. ‘I knew how it would be.’


‘Shut your big head,’ said the Maltese Cat; ‘we’ve one goal to the good yet.’


‘Yes, but it’s two Arabs and two countrybreds to play now,’ said Corks. ‘Faiz Ullah, remember!’ He spoke in a biting voice.


As Lutyens mounted Gray Dawn he looked at his men, and they did not look pretty. They were covered with dust and sweat in streaks. Their yellow boots were almost black, their wrists were red and lumpy, and their eyes seemed two inches deep in their heads, but the expression in the eyes was satisfactory.


‘Did you take anything at tiffin?’ said Lutyens, and the team shook their heads. They were too dry to talk.


‘All right. The Archangels did. They are worse pumped than we are.’


‘They’ve got the better ponies,’ said Powell. ‘I shan’t be sorry when this business is over.’


That fifth quarter was a sad one in every way. Faiz Ullah played like a little red demon; and the Rabbit seemed to be everywhere at once, and Benami rode straight at anything and everything that came in his way, while the umpires on their ponies wheeled like gulls outside the shifting game. But the Archangels had the better mounts—they had kept their racers till late in the game—and never allowed the Skidars to play football. They hit the ball up and down the width of the ground till Benami and the rest were outpaced.. Then they went forward, and time and again Lutyens and Gray Dawn were just, and only just, able to send the ball away with a long splitting backhander. Gray Dawn forgot that he was an Arab; and turned from gray to blue as he galloped. Indeed, he forgot too well, for he did not keep his eyes on the ground as an Arab should, but stuck out his nose and scuttled for the dear honour of the game. They had watered the ground once or twice between the quarters, and a careless waterman had emptied the last of his skinful all in one place near the Skidars’ goal. It was close to the end of play, and for the tenth time Gray Dawn was bolting after a ball when his near hind foot slipped on the greasy mud and he rolled over and over, pitching Lutyens just clear of the goal-post; and the triumphant Archangels made their goal. Then time was called—two goals all; but Lutyens had to be helped up, and Gray Dawn rose with his near hind leg strained somewhere.


‘What’s the damage?’ said Powell, his arm round Lutyens.


page 5




‘Collar-bone, of course,’ said Lutyens between his teeth. It was the third time he had broken it in two years, and it hurt him.


Powell and the others whistled. ‘Game’s up,’ said Hughes.


‘Hold on. We’ve five good minutes yet, and it isn’t my right hand,’ said Lutyens. ‘We’ll stick it out.’


‘I say,’ said the captain of the Archangels, trotting up. ‘Are you hurt, Lutyens? We’ll wait if you care to put in a substitute. I wish—I mean—the fact is, you fellows deserve this game if any team does. Wish we could give you a man or some of our ponies—or something.’


‘You’re awfully good, but we’ll play it to a finish, I think.’


The captain of the Archangels stared for a little, ‘That’s not half bad,’ he said, and went back to his own side, while Lutyens borrowed a scarf from one of his native officers and made a sling of it. Then an Archangel galloped up with a big bath-sponge and advised Lutyens to put it under his arm-pit to ease his shoulder, and between them they tied up his left arm scientifically, and one of the native officers leaped forward with four long glasses that fizzed and bubbled.


The team looked at Lutyens piteously, and he nodded. It was the last quarter, and nothing would matter after that. They drank out the dark golden drink, and wiped their moustaches, and things looked more hopeful.


The Maltese Cat had put his nose into the front of Lutyens’ shirt, and was trying to say how sorry he was.


‘He knows,’ said Lutyens, proudly. ‘The beggar knows. I’ve played him without a bridle before now—for fun.’


‘It’s no fun now,’ said Powell. ‘But we haven’t a decent substitute.’


‘No, said Lutyens. ‘It’s the last quarter, and we’ve got to make our goal and win. I’ll trust the Cat.’


‘If you fall this time you’ll suffer a little,’ said Macnamara.


‘I’ll trust the Cat,’ said Lutyens.


‘You hear that?’ said the Maltese Cat proudly to the others. ‘It’s worth while playing polo for ten years to have that said of you. Now then, my sons, come along. We’ll kick up a little bit, just to show the Archangels this team haven’t suffered.’


And, sure enough, as they went on to the ground the Maltese Cat, after satisfying himself that Lutyens was home in the saddle, kicked out three or four times, and Lutyens laughed. The reins were caught up anyhow in the tips of his strapped hand, and he never pretended to rely on them. He knew the Cat would answer to the least pressure of the leg, and by way of showing off—for his shoulder hurt him very much—he bent the little fellow in a close figure-of-eight in and out between the goal-posts. There was a roar from the native officers and men, who dearly loved a piece of dugabashi (horse-trick work), as they called it, and the pipes very quietly and scornfully droned out the first bars of a common bazaar-tune called ‘Freshly Fresh and Newly New,’ just as a warning to the other, regiments that the Skidars were fit. All the natives laughed.


‘And now,’ said the Cat, as they took their place, ‘remember that this is the last quarter, and follow the ball!’


‘Don’t need to be told,’ said Who’s Who.


‘Let me go on. All those people on all four sides will begin to crowd in just as they did at Malta. You’ll hear people calling out, and moving forward and being pushed back, and that is going to make the Archangel ponies very unhappy. But if a ball is struck to the boundary, you go after it, and let the people get out of your way. I went over the pole of a four-in-hand once, and picked a game out of the dust by it. Back me up when I run, and follow the ball.’


There was a sort of an all-round sound of sympathy and wonder as the last quarter opened, and then there began exactly what the Maltese Cat had foreseen. People crowded in close to the boundaries, and the Archangels’ ponies kept looking sideways at the narrowing space. If you know how a man feels to be cramped at tennis—not because he wants to run out of the court, but because he likes to know that he can at a pinch—you will guess. how ponies must feel when they are playing in a box of human beings.


‘I’ll bend some of those men if I can get away,’ said Who’s Who, as he rocketed behind the ball; and Bamboo nodded without speaking. They were playing the last ounce in them, and the Maltese Cat had left the goal undefended to join them. Lutyens gave him every order that he could to bring him back, but this was the first time in his career that the little wise gray had ever played polo on his own responsibility, and he was going to make the most of it.


‘What are you doing here?’ said Hughes, as the Cat crossed in front of him and rode off an Archangel.


‘The Cat’s in charge—mind the goal!’shouted Lutyens, and bowing forward hit the ball full, and followed on, forcing the Archangels towards their own goal.


‘No football,’ said the Cat. ‘Keep the ball by the boundaries and cramp ’em. Play open order and drive ’em to the boundaries.’


Across and across the ground in big diagonals flew the ball, and whenever it came to a flying rush and a stroke close to the boundaries the Archangel ponies moved stiffly. They did not care to go headlong at a wall of men and carriages, though if the ground had been open they could have turned on a sixpence.


‘Wriggle her up the sides,’ said the Cat. ‘Keep her close to the crowd. They hate the carriages. Shikast, keep her up this side.’


Shikast with Powell lay left and right behind the uneasy scuffle of an open scrimmage, and every time the ball was hit away Shikast galloped on it at such an angle that Powell was forced to hit it towards the boundary; and when the crowd had been driven away from that side, Lutyens would send the ball over to the other, and Shikast would slide desperately after it till his friends came down to help. It was billiards, and no football, this time—billiards in a corner pocket; and the cues were not well chalked.


‘If they get us out in the middle of the ground they’ll walk away from us. Dribble her along the sides,’ cried the Cat.


So they dribbled all along the boundary, where a pony could not come on their right-hand side; and the Archangels were furious, and the umpires had to neglect the game to shout at the people to get back, and several blundering mounted policemen tried to restore order, all close to the scrimmage, and the nerves of the Archangels’ ponies stretched and broke like cobwebs.


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Five or six times an Archangel hit the ball up into the middle of the ground, and each time the watchful Shikast gave Powell his chance to send it back, and after each return, when the dust had settled, men could see that the Skidars had gained a few yards.


Every now and again there were shouts of ‘’Side! Off side!’ from the spectators; but the teams were too busy to care, and the umpires had all they could do to keep their maddened ponies clear of the scuffle.


At last Lutyens missed a short easy stroke, and the Skidars had to fly back helter-skelter to protect their own goal, Shikast leading. Powell stopped the ball with a backhander when it was not fifty yards from the goal-posts, and Shikast spun round with a wrench that nearly hoisted Powell out of his saddle.


‘Now’s our last chance,’ said the Cat, wheeling like a cockchafer on a pin. ‘We’ve got to ride it out. Come along.’


Lutyens felt the little chap take a deep breath, and, as it were, crouch under his rider. The ball was hopping towards the right-hand boundary, an Archangel riding for it with both spurs and a whip; but neither spur nor whip would make his pony stretch himself as he neared the crowd. The Maltese Cat glided under his very nose, picking up his hind legs sharp, for there was not a foot to spare between his quarters and the other pony’s bit. It was as neat an exhibition as fancy figureskating. Lutyens hit with all the strength he had left, but the stick slipped a little in his hand, and the ball flew off to the left instead of keeping close to the boundary. Who’s Who was far across the ground, thinking hard as he galloped. He repeated, stride for stride, the Cat’s manœuvres, with another Archangel pony, nipping the ball away from under his bridle, and clearing his opponent by half a fraction of an inch, for Who’s Who was clumsy behind. Then he drove away towards the right as the Maltese Cat came up from the left; and Bamboo held a middle course exactly between them. The three were making a sort of Government-broad-arrow-shaped attack; and there was only the Archangels’ back to guard the goal; but immediately behind them were three Archangels racing all they knew, and mixed up with them was Powell, sending Shikast along on what he felt was their last hope. It takes a very good man to stand up to the rush of seven crazy ponies in the last quarter of a cup game, when men are riding with their necks for sale, and the ponies are delirious. The Archangels’ back missed his stroke, and pulled aside just in time to let the rush go by. Bamboo and Who’s Who shortened stride to give the Maltese Cat room, and Lutyens got the goal with a clean, smooth, smacking stroke that was heard all over the field. But there was no stopping the ponies. They poured through the goal-posts in one mixed mob, winners and losers together, for the pace had been terrific. The Maltese Cat knew by experience what would. happen, and, to save Lutyens, turned to the right with one last effort that strained a back-sinew beyond hope of repair. As he did so he heard the right-hand goal-post crack as a pony cannoned, into it crack, splinter, and fall like a mast. It had been sawed three parts through in case of accidents, but it upset the pony nevertheless, and he blundered into another, who blundered into the left-hand post, and then there was confusion and dust and wood. Bamboo was lying on the ground, seeing stars; an Archangel pony rolled beside him, breathless and angry; Shikast had sat down dog-fashion to avoid falling over the others, and was sliding along on his little bobtail in a cloud of dust; and Powell was sitting on the ground, hammering with his stick and trying to cheer. All the others were shouting at the top of what was left of their voices, and the men who had been spilt were shouting too. As soon as the people saw no one was hurt, ten thousand native and English shouted, and clapped and yelled, and before any one could stop them the pipers of the Skidars broke on to the ground, with all the native officers and men behind them, and marched up and down, playing a wild northern tune called ‘Zakhme Bagãn,’ and through the insolent blaring of the pipes and the high-pitched native yells you could hear the Archangels’ band hammering, ‘For they are all jolly good fellows,’ and then reproachfully to the losing team, ‘Ooh, Kafoozalum! Kafoozalum! Kafoozalum!’


Besides all these things and many more, there was a Commander-in-Chief, and an Inspector-General of Cavalry, and the principal veterinary officer in all India, standing on the top of a regimental coach, yelling like school-boys; and brigadiers and colonels and commissioners, and hundreds of pretty ladies joined the chorus. But the Maltese Cat stood with his head down, wondering how many legs were left to him; and Lutyens watched the men and ponies pick themselves out of the wreck of the two goal-posts, and he patted the Cat very tenderly.


‘I say,’ said the captain of the Archangels, spitting a pebble out of his mouth, ‘will you take three thousand for that pony-as he stands?’


‘No, thank you. I’ve an idea he’s saved my life,’ said Lutyens, getting off and lying down at full length. Both teams were on the ground too, waving their boots in the air, and coughing and drawing deep breaths, as the saises ran up to take away the ponies, and an officious water-carrier sprinkled the players with dirty water till they sat up.


‘My Aunt!’ said Powell, rubbing his back and looking at the stumps of the goal-posts, ‘that was a game!’


They played it over again, every stroke of it, that night at the big dinner, when the Free-for-All Cup was filled and passed down the table, and emptied and filled again, and everybody made most eloquent speeches. About two in the morning, when there might have been some singing, a wise little, plain little, gray little head looked in through the open door.


‘Hurrah! Bring him in,’ said the Archangels; and his sais, who was very happy indeed, patted the Maltese Cat on the flank, and he limped in to the blaze of light and the glittering uniforms, looking for Lutyens. He was used to messes, and men’s bedrooms, and places where ponies are not usually encouraged, and in his youth had jumped on and off a mess-table for a bet. So he behaved himself very politely, and ate bread dipped in salt, and was petted all round the table, moving gingerly; and they drank his health, because he had done more to win the Cup than any man or horse on the ground.


That was glory and honour enough for the rest of his days, and the Maltese Cat did not complain much when his veterinary surgeon said that he would be no good for polo any more. When Lutyens married, his wife did not allow him to play, so he was forced to be an umpire; and his pony on these occasions was a flea-bitten gray with a neat polo-tail, lame all round, but desperately quick on his feet, and, as everybody knew, Past Pluperfect Prestissimo Player of the Game.



			


				





	

					

				
A Madonna of the Trenches
			

			
			

				
••WW1 TRENCH WARFARE




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SEEING how many unstable ex-soldiers came to the Lodge of Instruction (attached to Faith and Works E.C. 5837*) in the years after the war, the wonder is there was not more trouble from Brethren whom sudden meetings with old comrades jerked back into their still raw past. But our round, torpedo-bearded local Doctor—Brother Keede, Senior Warden—always stood ready to deal with hysteria before it got out of hand; and when I examined Brethren unknown or imperfectly vouched for on the Masonic side, I passed on to him anything that seemed doubtful. He had had his experience as medical officer of a South London Battalion, during the last two years of the war; and, naturally, often found friends and acquaintances among the visitors.Brother C. Strangwick, a young, tallish, new-made Brother, hailed from some South London Lodge. His papers and his answers were above suspicion, but his red-rimmed eyes had a puzzled glare that might mean nerves. So I introduced him particularly to Keede, who discovered in him a Headquarters Orderly of his old Battalion, congratulated him on his return to fitness—he had been discharged for some infirmity or other—and plunged at once into Somme memories. ‘I hope I did right, Keede,’ I said when we were robing before Lodge.


‘Oh, quite. He reminded me that I had him under my hands at Sampoux in ’Eighteen, when he went to bits. He was a Runner.’


‘Was it shock?’ I asked.


‘Of sorts—but not what he wanted me to think it was. No, he wasn’t shamming. He had jumps to the limit—but he played up to mislead me about the reason of ’em . . . . Well, if we could stop patients from lying, medicine would be too easy, I suppose.’


I noticed that, after Lodge-working, Keede gave him a seat a couple of rows in front of us, that he might enjoy a lecture on the Orientation of King Solomon’s Temple, which an earnest Brother thought would be a nice interlude between Labour and the high tea that we called our ‘Banquet.’ Even helped by tobacco it was a dreary performance. About half-way through, Strangwick, who had been fidgeting and twitching for some minutes, rose, drove back his chair grinding across the tesselated floor, and yelped ‘Oh, My Aunt! I can’t stand this any longer.’ Under cover of a general laugh of assent he brushed past us and stumbled towards the door.


‘I thought so!’ Keede whispered to me. ‘Come along!’ We overtook him in the passage, crowing hysterically and wringing his hands. Keede led him into the Tyler’s Room, a small office where we stored odds and ends of regalia and furniture, and locked the door.


‘I’m—I’m all right,’ the boy began, piteously.


‘’Course you are.’ Keede opened a small cupboard which I had seen called upon before, mixed sal volatile and water in a graduated glass, and, as Strangwick drank, pushed him gently on to an old sofa. ‘There,’ he went on. ‘It’s nothing to write home about. I’ve seen you ten times worse. I expect our talk has brought things back.’


He hooked up a chair behind him with one foot, held the patient’s hands in his own, and sat down. The chair creaked.


‘Don’t!’ Strangwick squealed. ‘I can’t stand it! There’s nothing on earth creaks like they do! And—and when it thaws we—we’ve got to slap ’em back with a spa-ade ! ’Remember those Frenchmen’s little boots under the duckboards? . . . What’ll I do? What’ll I do about it?’


Some one knocked at the door, to know if all were well.


‘Oh, quite, thanks!’ said Keede over his shoulder. ‘But I shall need this room awhile. Draw the curtains, please.’


We heard the rings of the hangings that drape the passage from Lodge to Banquet Room click along their poles, and what sound there had been, of feet and voices, was shut off.


Strangwick, retching impotently, complained of the frozen dead who creak in the frost.


‘He’s playing up still,’ Keede whispered. ‘That’s not his real trouble—any more than ’twas last time.’


‘But surely,’ I replied, ‘men get those things on the brain pretty badly. ‘Remember in October——’


‘This chap hasn’t, though. I wonder what’s really helling him. What are you thinking of?’ said Keede peremptorily.


‘French End an’ Butcher’s Row,’ Strangwick muttered.


‘Yes, there were a few there. But suppose we face Bogey instead of giving him best every time.’ Keede turned towards me with a hint in his eye that I was to play up to his leads.


‘What was the trouble with French End?’ I opened at a venture.


‘It was a bit by Sampoux, that we had taken over from the French. They’re tough, but you wouldn’t call ’em tidy as a nation. They had faced both sides of it with dead to keep the mud back. All those trenches were like gruel in a thaw. Our people had to do the same sort of thing—elsewhere; but Butcher’s Row in French End was the—er—show-piece. Luckily, we pinched a salient from Jerry just then, an’ straightened things out—so we didn’t need to use the Row after November. You remember, Strangwick?’


‘My God, yes! When the Buckboard-slats were missin’ you’d tread on ’em, an’ they’d creak.’


‘They’re bound to. Like leather,’ said Keede. ‘It gets on one’s nerves a bit, but——’


‘Nerves? It’s real! It’s real!’ Strangwick gulped.


‘But at your time of life, it’ll all fall behind you in a year or so. I’ll give you another sip of—paregoric, an’ we’ll face it quietly. Shall we?’


Keede opened his cupboard again and administered a carefully dropped dark dose of something that was not sal volatile. ‘This’ll settle you in a few minutes,’ he explained. ‘Lie still, an’ don’t talk unless you feel like it.’


He faced me, fingering his beard.


‘Ye-es. Butcher’s Row wasn’t pretty,’ he volunteered. ‘Seeing Strangwick here, has brought it all back to me again. ’Funny thing! We had a Platoon Sergeant of Number Two—what the deuce was his name?—an elderly bird who must have lied like a patriot to get out to the front at his age; but he was a first-class Non-Com., and the last person, you’d think, to make mistakes. Well, he was due for a fortnight’s home leave in January, ’Eighteen. You were at B.H.Q. then, Strangwick, weren’t you?’


page 2


‘Yes. I was Orderly. It was January twenty-first’; Strangwick spoke with a thickish tongue, and his eyes burned. Whatever drug it was, had taken hold.


‘About then,’ Keede said. ‘Well, this Sergeant, instead of coming down from the trenches the regular way an’ joinin’ Battalion Details after dark, an’ takin’ that funny little train for Arras, thinks he’ll warm himself first. So he gets into a dug-out, in Butcher’s Row, that used to be an old French dressing-station, and fugs up between a couple of braziers of pure charcoal! As luck ’ud have it, that was the only dug-out with an inside door opening inwards—some French anti-gas fitting, I expect—and, by what we could make out, the door must have swung to while he was warming. Anyhow, he didn’t turn up at the train. There was a search at once. We couldn’t afford to waste Platoon Sergeants. We found him in the morning. He’d got his gas all right. A machine-gunner reported him, didn’t he, Strangwick?’


‘No, Sir. Corporal Grant—o’ the Trench Mortars.’


‘So it was. Yes, Grant—the man with that little wen on his neck. ’Nothing wrong with your memory, at any rate. What was the Sergeant’s name?’


‘Godsoe—John Godsoe,’ Strangwick answered.


‘Yes, that was it. I had to see him next mornin’—frozen stiff between the two braziers—and not a scrap of private papers on him. That was the only thing that made me think it mightn’t have been—quite an accident.’


Strangwick’s relaxing face set, and he threw back at once to the Orderly Room manner.


‘I give my evidence—at the time—to you, sir. He passed—overtook me, I should say—comin’ down from supports, after I’d warned him for leaf. I thought he was goin’ through Parrot Trench as usual; but ’e must ’ave turned off into French End where the old bombed barricade was.’


‘Yes. I remember now. You were the last man to see him alive. That was on the twenty-first of January, you say? Now, when was it that Dearlove and Billings brought you to me—clean out of your head?’ . . . Keede dropped his hand, in the style of magazine detectives, on Strangwick’s shoulder. The boy looked at him with cloudy wonder, and muttered: ‘I was took to you on the evenin’ of the twenty-fourth of January. But you don’t think I did him in, do you?’


I could not help smiling at Keede’s discomfiture; but he recovered himself. ‘Then what the dickens was on your mind that evening—before I gave you the hypodermic?’


‘The—the things in Butcher’s Row. They kept on comin’ over me. You’ve seen me like this before, sir.’


‘But I knew that it was a lie. You’d no more got stiffs on the brain then than you have now. You’ve got something, but you’re hiding it.’


‘’Ow do you know, Doctor?’ Strangwick whimpered.


‘D’you remember what you said to me, when Dearlove and Billings were holding you down that evening?’


‘About the things in Butcher’s Row?’


‘Oh, no! You spun me a lot of stuff about corpses creaking; but you let yourself go in the middle of it—when you pushed that telegram at me. What did you mean, f’rinstance, by asking what advantage it was for you to fight beasts of officers if the dead didn’t rise?’


‘Did I say “Beasts of Officers”?’


‘You did. It’s out of the Burial Service.’


‘I suppose, then, I must have heard it. As a matter of fact, I ’ave.’ Strangwick shuddered extravagantly.


‘Probably. And there’s another thing—that hymn you were shouting till I put you under. It was something about Mercy and Love. ’Remember it?’


‘I’ll try,’ said the boy obediently, and began to paraphrase, as nearly as possible thus: ‘“Whatever a man may say in his heart unto the Lord, yea, verily I say unto you—Gawd hath shown man, again and again, marvellous mercy an’—an’ somethin’ or other love.”’ He screwed up his eyes and shook.


‘Now where did you get that from?’ Keede insisted.


‘From Godsoe—on the twenty-first Jan . . . . ’Ow could I tell what ’e meant to do?’ he burst out in a high, unnatural key—‘Any more than I knew she was dead.’


‘Who was dead?’ said Keede.


‘Me Auntie Armine.’


‘The one the telegram came to you about, at Sampoux, that you wanted me to explain—the one that you were talking of in the passage out here just now when you began: “O Auntie,” and changed it to “O Gawd,” when I collared you?’


‘That’s her! I haven’t a chance with you, Doctor. I didn’t know there was anything wrong with those braziers. How could I? We’re always usin’ ’em. Honest to God, I thought at first go-off he might wish to warm himself before the leaf-train. I—I didn’t know Uncle John meant to start—’ouse-keepin’.’ He laughed horribly, and then the dry tears came.


Keede waited for them to pass in sobs and hiccoughs before he continued: ‘Why? Was Godsoe your Uncle?’


‘No,’ said Strangwick, his head between his hands. ‘Only we’d known him ever since we were born. Dad ’ad known him before that. He lived almost next street to us. Him an’ Dad an’ Ma an’—an’ the rest had always been friends. So we called him Uncle—like children do.’


‘What sort of man was he?’


‘One o’ the best, sir. ’Pensioned Sergeant with a little money left him—quite independent—and very superior. They had a sittin’-room full o’ Indian curios that him and his wife used to let sister an’ me see when we’d been good.’


page 3




‘Wasn’t he rather old to join up?’


‘That made no odds to him. He joined up as Sergeant Instructor at the first go-off, an’ when the Battalion was ready he got ’imself sent along. He wangled me into ’is Platoon when I went out—early in ’Seventeen. Because Ma wanted it, I suppose.’


‘I’d no notion you knew him that well,’ was Keede’s comment.


‘Oh, it made no odds to him. He ’ad no pets in the Platoon, but ’e’d write ’ome to Ma about me an’ all the doin’s. You see’—Strangwick stirred uneasily on the sofa—‘we’d known him all our lives—lived in the next street an’ all . . . . An’ him well over fifty. Oh dear me! Oh dear me! What a bloody mix-up things are, when one’s as young as me!’ he wailed of a sudden.


But Keede held him to the point. ‘He wrote to your Mother about you?’


‘Yes. Ma’s eyes had gone bad followin’ on air-raids. ’Blood-vessels broke behind ’em from sittin’ in cellars an’ bein’ sick. She had to ’ave ’er letters read to her by Auntie. Now I think of it, that was the only thing that you might have called anything at all——’


‘Was that the Aunt that died, and that you got the wire about?’ Keede drove on.


‘Yes—Auntie Armine—Ma’s younger sister, an’ she nearer fifty than forty. What a mix-up! An’ if I’d been asked any time about it, I’d ’ave sworn there wasn’t a single sol’tary item concernin’ her that everybody didn’t know an’ hadn’t known all along. No more conceal to her doin’s than—than so much shop-front. She’d looked after sister an’ me, when needful—whoopin’ cough an’ measles just the same as Ma. We was in an’ out of her house like rabbits. You see, Uncle Armine is a cabinet-maker, an’ second-’and furniture, an’ we liked playin’ with the things. She ’ad no children, and when the war came, she said she was glad of it. But she never talked much of her feelin’s. She kept herself to herself, you understand.’ He stared most earnestly at us to help out our understandings.


‘What was she like?’ Keede inquired.


‘A biggish woman, an’ had been ’andsome, I believe, but, bein’ used to her, we two didn’t notice much—except, per’aps, for one thing. Ma called her ’er proper name, which was Bella; but Sis an’ me always called ’er Auntie Armine. See?’


‘What for?’


‘We thought it sounded more like her—like somethin’ movin’ slow, in armour.’


‘Oh! And she read your letters to your mother, did she?’


‘Every time the post came in she’d slip across the road from opposite an’ read ’em. An’—an’ I’ll go bail for it that that was all there was to it for as far back as I remember. Was I to swing to-morrow, I’d go bail for that! ’Tisn’t fair of ’em to ’ave unloaded it all on me, because—because—if the dead do rise, why, what in ’ell becomes of me an’ all I’ve believed all me life? I want to know that! I—I——’


But Keede would not be put off. ‘Did the Sergeant give you away at all in his letters?’ he demanded, very quietly.


‘There was nothin’ to give away—we was too busy—but his letters about me were a great comfort to Ma. I’m no good at writin’. I saved it all up for my leafs. I got me fourteen days every six months an’ one over . . . . I was luckier than most, that way.’


‘And when you came home, used you to bring ’em news about the Sergeant?’ said Keede.


‘I expect I must have; but I didn’t think much of it at the time. I was took up with me own affairs—naturally. Uncle John always wrote to me once each leaf, tellin’ me what was doin’ an’ what I was li’ble to expect on return, an’ Ma ’ud ’ave that read to her. Then o’ course I had to slip over to his wife an’ pass her the news. An’ then there was the young lady that I’d thought of marryin’ if I came through. We’d got as far as pricin’ things in the windows together.’


‘And you didn’t marry her—after all?’


Another tremor shook the boy. ‘No!’ he cried. ‘’Fore it ended, I knew what reel things reelly mean! I—I never dreamed such things could be! . . . An’ she nearer fifty than forty an’ me own Aunt! . . . But there wasn’t a sign nor a hint from first to last, so ’ow could I tell? Don’t you see it? All she said to me after me Christmas leaf in’ ’18, when I come to say good-bye—all Auntie Armine said to me was: “You’ll be seein’ Mister Godsoe soon?” “Too soon for my likings,” I says. “ Well then, tell ’im from me,” she says, “ that I expect to be through with my little trouble by the twenty-first of next month, an’ I’m dyin’ to see him as soon as possible after that date.”’


‘What sort of trouble was it?’ Keede turned professional at once.


‘She’d ’ad a bit of a gatherin’ in ’er breast, I believe. But she never talked of ’er body much to any one.’


‘’ see,’ said Keede. ‘And she said to you?’


Strangwick repeated: ‘“Tell Uncle John I hope to be finished of my drawback by the twenty-first, an’ I’m dying to see ’im as soon as ’e can after that date.” An’ then she says, laughin’: “But you’ve a head like a sieve. I’ll write it down, an’ you can give it him when you see ’im.” So she wrote it on a bit o’ paper an’ I kissed ’er good-bye—I was always her favourite, you see—an’ I went back to Sampoux. The thing hardly stayed in my mind at all, d’you see. But the next time I was up in the front line—I was a Runner, d’ye see—our platoon was in North Bay Trench an’ I was up with a message to the Trench Mortar there that Corporal Grant was in charge of. Followin’ on receipt of it, he borrowed a couple of men off the platoon, to slue ’er round or somethin’. I give Uncle John Auntie Armine’s paper, an’ I give Grant a fag, an’ we warmed up a bit over a brazier. Then Grant says to me: “I don’t like it”; an’ he jerks ’is thumb at Uncle John in the bay studyin’ Auntie’s message. Well, you know, sir, you had to speak to Grant about ’is way of prophesyin’ things—after Rankine shot himself with the Very light.’


‘I did,’ said Keede, and he explained to me ‘Grant had the Second Sight—confound him! It upset the men. I was glad when he got pipped. What happened after that, Strangwick?’


‘Grant whispers to me: “Look, you damned Englishman. ’E’s for it.” Uncle John was leanin’ up against the bay, an’ hummin’ that hymn I was tryin’ to tell you just now. He looked different all of a sudden—as if ’e’d got shaved. I don’t know anything of these things, but I cautioned Grant as to his style of speakin’, if an officer ’ad ’eard him, an’ I went on. Passin’ Uncle John in the bay, ’e nods an’ smiles, which he didn’t often, an’ he says, pocketin’ the paper “This suits me. I’m for leaf on the twenty-first, too.”’


page 4




‘He said that to you, did he?’ said Keede.


‘Precisely the same as passin’ the time o’ day. O’ course I returned the agreeable about hopin’ he’d get it, an’ in due course I returned to ’Eadquarters. The thing ’ardly stayed in my mind a minute. That was the eleventh January—three days after I’d come back from leaf. You remember, sir, there wasn’t anythin’ doin’ either side round Sampoux the first part o’ the month. Jerry was gettin’ ready for his March Push, an’ as long as he kept quiet, we didn’t want to poke ’im up.’


‘I remember that,’ said Keede. ‘But what about the Sergeant?’


‘I must have met him, on an’ off, I expect, goin’ up an’ down, through the ensuin’ days, but it didn’t stay in me mind. Why needed it? And on the twenty-first Jan., his name was on the leaf-paper when I went up to warn the leaf-men. I noticed that, o’ course. Now that very afternoon Jerry ’ad been tryin’ a new trench-mortar, an’ before our ’Eavies could out it, he’d got a stinker into a bay an’ mopped up ’alf a dozen. They were bringin’ ’em down when I went up to the supports, an’ that blocked Little Parrot, same as it always did. You remember, sir?’


‘Rather! And there was that big machine-gun behind the Half-House waiting for you if you got out,’ said Keede.


‘I remembered that too. But it was just on dark an’ the fog was comin’ off the Canal, so I hopped out of Little Parrot an’ cut across the open to where those four dead Warwicks are heaped up. But the fog turned me round, an’ the next thing I knew I was knee-over in that old ’alf-trench that runs west o’ Little Parrot into French End. I dropped into it—almost atop o’ the machine-gun platform by the side o’ the old sugar boiler an’ the two Zoo-ave skel’tons. That gave me my bearin’s, an’ so I went through French End, all up those missin’ Buckboards, into Butcher’s Row where the poy-looz was laid in six deep each side, an’ stuffed under the Buckboards. It had froze tight, an’ the drippin’s had stopped, an’ the creakin’s had begun.’


‘Did that really worry you at the time?’ Keede asked.


‘No,’ said the boy with professional scorn. ‘If a Runner starts noticin’ such things he’d better chuck. In the middle of the Row, just before the old dressin’-station you referred to, sir, it come over me that somethin’ ahead on the Buckboards was just like Auntie Armine, waitin’ beside the door; an’ I thought to meself ’ow truly comic it would be if she could be dumped where I was then. In ’alf a second I saw it was only the dark an’ some rags o’ gas-screen, ’angin’ on a bit of board, ’ad played me the trick. So I went on up to the supports an’ warned the leaf-men there, includin’ Uncle John. Then I went up Rake Alley to warn ’em in the front line. I didn’t hurry because I didn’t want to get there till Jerry ’ad quieted down a bit. Well, then a Company Relief dropped in—an’ the officer got the wind up over some lights on the flank, an’ tied ’em into knots, an’ I ’ad to hunt up me leaf-men all over the blinkin’ shop. What with one thing an’ another, it must ’ave been ’alf-past eight before I got back to the supports. There I run across Uncle John, scrapm’ mud off himself, havin’ shaved—quite the dandy. He asked about the Arras train, an’ I said, if Jerry was quiet, it might be ten o’clock. “Good!” says ’e. “I’ll come with you.” So we started back down the old trench that used to run across Halnaker, back of the support dug-outs. You know, sir.’


Keede nodded.


‘Then Uncle John says something to me about seein’ Ma an’ the rest of ’em in a few days, an’ had I any messages for ’em? Gawd knows what made me do it, but I told ’im to tell Auntie Armine I never expected to see anything like her up in our part of the world. And while I told him I laughed. That’s the last time I ’ave laughed.” Oh—you’ve seen ’er, ’ave you? says he, quite natural-like. Then I told ’im about the sand-bags an’ rags in the dark, playin’ the trick. “Very likely,” says he, brushin’ the mud off his putties. By this time, we’d got to the corner where the old barricade into French End was—before they bombed it down, sir. He turns right an’ climbs across it. “No, thanks,” says I. “I’ve been there once this evenin’.” But he wasn’t attendin’ to me. He felt behind the rubbish an’ bones just inside the barricade, an’ when he straightened up, he had a full brazier in each hand.


‘“Come on, Clem,” he says, an’ he very rarely give me me own name. “You aren’t afraid, are you?” he says. “It’s just as short, an’ if Jerry starts up again he won’t waste stuff here. He knows it’s abandoned.” “Who’s afraid now?” I says. “Me for one,” says he. “I don’t want my leaf spoiled at the last minute.” Then ’e wheels round an’ speaks that bit you said come out o’ the Burial Service.’


For some reason Keede repeated it in full, slowly: ‘If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not?’


‘That’s it,’ said Strangwick. ‘So we went down French End together—everything froze up an’ quiet, except for their creakin’s. I remember thinkin’——’ his eyes began to flicker.


‘Don’t think. Tell what happened,’ Keede ordered.


‘Oh! Beg y’ pardon! He went on with his braziers, hummin’ his hymn, down Butcher’s Row. Just before we got to the old dressin’station he stops and sets ’em down an’ says “Where did you say she was, Clem? Me eyes ain’t as good as they used to be.”


‘“In ’er bed at ’ome,” I says. “Come on down. It’s perishin’ cold, an’ I’m not due for leaf.”


‘“Well, I am,” ’e says. “I am. . . .” An’ then—’give you me word I didn’t recognise the voice—he stretches out ‘is neck a bit, in a way ’e ’ad, an’ he says: “Why, Bella!” ’e says. “Oh, Bella!” ’e says. “Thank Gawd!” ’e says. Just like that! An’ then I saw—I tell you I saw—Auntie Armine herself standin’ by the old dressin’station door where first I’d thought I’d seen her. He was lookin’ at ’er an’ she was lookin’ at him. I saw it, an’ me soul turned over inside me because—because it knocked out everything I’d believed in. I ’ad nothin’ to lay ’old of, d’ye see? An’ ’e was lookin’ at ’er as though he could ’ave et ’er, an’ she was lookin’ at ’im the same way, out of ’er eyes. Then he says: “Why, Bella,” ’e says, “this must be only the second time we’ve been alone together in all these years.” An’ I saw ’er half hold out her arms to ’im in that perishin’ cold. An’ she nearer fifty than forty an’ me own Aunt! You can shop me for a lunatic to-morrow, but I saw it—I saw ’er answerin’ to his spoken word . . . Then ’e made a snatch to unsling ’is rifle. Then ’e cuts ’is hand away saying: “No! Don’t tempt me, Bella. We’ve all Eternity ahead of us. An hour or two won’t make any odds.” Then he picks up the braziers an’ goes on to the dug-out door. He’d finished with me. He pours petrol on ’em, an’ lights it with a match, an’ carries ’em inside, flarin’. All that time Auntie Armine stood with ’er arms out—an’ a look in ’er face! I didn’t know such things was or could be! Then he comes out an’ says: “Come in, my dear”; an’ she stoops an’ goes into the dug-out with that look on her face—that look on her face! An’ then ’e shuts the door from inside an’ starts wedgin’ it up. So ’elp me Gawd, I saw an’ ’eard all these things with my own eyes an’ ears!’


He repeated his oath several times. After a long pause Keede asked him if he recalled what happened next.


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‘It was a bit of a mix-up, for me, from then on. I must have carried on—they told me I did, but—but I was—I felt a—a long way inside of meself, like—if you’ve ever had that feelin’. I wasn’t rightly on the spot at all. They woke me up sometime next morning, because ’e ’adn’t showed up at the train; an’ some one had seen him with me. I wasn’t ’alf cross-examined by all an’ sundry till dinner-time.


‘Then, I think, I volunteered for Dearlove, who ’ad a sore toe, for a front-line message. I had to keep movin’, you see, because I hadn’t anything to hold on to. Whilst up there, Grant informed me how he’d found Uncle John with the door wedged an’ sand-bags stuffed in the cracks. I hadn’t waited for that. The knockin’ when ’e wedged up was enough for me. ’Like Dad’s coffin.’


‘No one told me the door had been wedged.’ Keede spoke severely.


‘No need to black a dead man’s name, sir.’


‘What made Grant go to Butcher’s Row?’


‘Because he’d noticed Uncle John had been pinchin’ charcoal for a week past an’ layin’ it up behind the old barricade there. So when the ’unt began, he went that way straight as a string, an’ when he saw the door shut, he knew. He told me he picked the sand-bags out of the cracks an’ shoved ’is hand through and shifted the wedges before any one come along. It looked all right. You said yourself, sir, the door must ’ave blown to.’


‘Grant knew what Godsoe meant, then?’ Keede snapped.


‘Grant knew Godsoe was for it; an’ nothin’ earthly could ’elp or ’inder. He told me so.’


‘And then what did you do?’


‘I expect I must ’ave kept on carryin’ on, till Headquarters give me that wire from Ma—about Auntie Armine dyin’.’


‘When had your Aunt died?’


‘On the mornin’ of the twenty-first. The mornin’ of the 21st! That tore it, d’ye see? As long as I could think, I had kep’ tellin’ myself it was like those things you lectured about at Arras when we was billeted in the cellars—the Angels of Mons, and so on. But that wire tore it.’


‘Oh! Hallucinations! I remember. And that wire tore it?’ said Keede.


‘Yes! You see’—he half lifted himself off the sofa—‘there wasn’t a single gor-dam thing left abidin’ for me to take hold of, here or hereafter. If the dead do rise—and I saw ’em—why—why, anything can ’appen. Don’t you understand?’


He was on his feet now, gesticulating stiffly.


‘For I saw ’er,’ he repeated. ‘I saw ’im an’ ’er—she dead since mornin’ time, an’ he killin’ ’imself before my livin’ eyes so’s to carry on with ’er for all Eternity—an’ she ’oldin’ out ’er arms for it! I want to know where I’m at! Look ’ere, you two—why stand we in jeopardy every hour?’


‘God knows,’ said Keede to himself.


‘Hadn’t we better ring for some one?’ I suggested. ‘He’ll go off the handle in a second.’


‘No, he won’t. It’s the last kick-up before it takes hold. I know how the stuff works. Hul-lo!’


Strangwick, his hands behind his back and his eyes set, gave tongue in the strained, cracked voice of a boy reciting. ‘Not twice in the world shall the Gods do thus,’ he cried again and again.


‘And I’m damned if it’s goin’ to be even once for me!’ he went on with sudden insane fury. ‘I don’t care whether we ’ave been pricin’ things in the windows . . . . Let ’er sue if she likes! She don’t know what reel things mean. I do—I’ve ’ad occasion to notice ’em . . . . No, I tell you! I’ll ’ave ’em when I want ’em, an’ be done with ’em; but not till I see that look on a face . . . that look. . . . I’m not takin’ any. The reel thing’s life an’ death. It begins at death, d’ye see. She can’t understand . . . . Oh, go on an’ push off to Hell, you an’ your lawyers. I’m fed up with it—fed up!’


He stopped as abruptly as he had started, and the drawn face broke back to its natural irresolute lines. Keede, holding both his hands, led him back to the sofa, where he dropped like a wet towel, took out some flamboyant robe from a press, and drew it neatly over him.


‘Ye-es. That’s the real thing at last,’ said Keede. ‘Now he’s got it off his mind he’ll sleep. By the way, who introduced him?’


‘Shall I go and find out?’ I suggested.


‘Yes; and you might ask him to come here. There’s no need for us to stand to all night.’


So I went to the Banquet, which was in full swing, and was seized by an elderly, precise Brother from a South London Lodge, who followed me, concerned and apologetic. Keede soon put him at his ease.


‘The boy’s had trouble,’ our visitor explained. ‘I’m most mortified he should have performed his bad turn here. I thought he’d put it be’ind him.’


‘I expect talking about old days with me brought it all back,’ said Keede. ‘It does sometimes.’


‘Maybe! Maybe! But over and above that, Clem’s had post-war trouble, too.’


‘Can’t he get a job? He oughtn’t to let that weigh on him, at his time of life,’ said Keede cheerily.


‘’Tisn’t that—he’s provided for—but ’—he coughed confidentially behind his dry hand—‘as a matter of fact, Worshipful Sir, he’s—he’s implicated for the present in a little breach of promise action.’


‘Ah! That’s a different thing,’ said Keede.


‘Yes. That’s his reel trouble. No reason given, you understand. The young lady in every way suitable, an’ she’d make him a good little wife too, if I’m any judge. But he says she ain’t his ideel or something. ’No getting at what’s in young people’s minds these days, is there?’


‘I’m afraid there isn’t,’ said Keede. ‘But he’s all right now. He’ll sleep. You sit by him, and when he wakes, take him home quietly . . . . Oh, we’re used to men getting a little upset here. You’ve nothing to thank us for, Brother—Brother——’


‘Armine,’ said the old gentleman. ‘He’s my nephew by marriage.’


‘That’s all that’s wanted!’ said Keede.


Brother Armine looked a little puzzled. Keede hastened to explain. ‘As I was saying, all he wants now is to be kept quiet till he wakes.’



			


				





	

					

				
The Madness of Private Ortheris
			

			
			

				
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Oh! Where would I be when my froat was dry?

Oh! Where would I be when the bullets fly?

Oh! Where would I be when I come to die?

Why,

Somewheres anigh my chum.

If ’e’s liquor ’e’ll give me some,

If I’m dyin’ ’e’ll ’old my ’ead,

An’ ’e’ll write ’em ’Ome when I’m dead.—

Gawd send us a trusty chum!

Barrack Room Ballad.


MY friends Mulvaney and Ortheris had gone on a shooting-expedition for one day. Learoyd was still in hospital, recovering from fever picked up in Burma. They sent me an invitation to join them, and were genuinely pained when I brought beer—almost enough beer to satisfy two Privates of the Line . . . and Me.


‘’Twasn’t for that we bid you welkim, Sorr,’ said Mulvaney sulkily. ‘’Twas for the pleasure av your comp’ny.


Ortheris came to the rescue with—‘Well, ’e won’t be none the worse for bringin’ liquor with ’im. We ain’t a file o’ Dooks. We’re bloomin’ Tommies, ye cantankris Hirishman; an’ ’eye’s your very good ’ealth!’


We shot all the forenoon, and killed two pariah-dogs, four green parrots, sitting, one kite by the burning-ghaut, one snake flying, one mud-turtle, and eight crows. Game was plentiful. Then we sat down to tiffin—‘bull-mate an’ bran-bread,’ Mulvaney called it—by the side of the river, and took pot shots at the crocodiles in the intervals of cutting up the food with our only pocket-knife. Then we drank up all the beer, and threw the bottles into the water and fired at them. After that, we eased belts and stretched ourselves on the warm sand and smoked. We were too lazy to continue shooting.


Ortheris heaved a big sigh, as he lay on his stomach with his head between his fists. Then he swore quietly into the blue sky.


‘Fwhat’s that for?’ said Mulvaney. ‘Have ye not drunk enough?’


‘Tott’nim Court Road, an’ a gal I fancied there. Wot’s the good of sodgerin’?’


‘Orth’’ris, me son,’ said Mulvaney hastily, ‘’tis more than likely you’ve got throuble in your inside wid the beer. I feel that way mesilf when my liver gets rusty.’


Ortheris went on slowly, not heeding the interruption—


‘I’m a Tommy—a bloomin’, eight-anna, dog-stealin’ Tommy, with a number instead of a decent name. Wot’s the good o’ me? If I ’ad a stayed of ’Ome, I might a married that gal and a kep’ a little shorp in the ’Ammersmith ’Igh.—“S. Orth’ris, Prac-ti-cal Taxi-dermist.” With a stuff’ fox, like they ’as in the Haylesbury Dairies, in the winder, an’ a little case of blue and yaller glass-heyes, an’ a little wife to call “shorp!” “shorp!” when the door-bell rung. As it his, I’m on’y a Tommy—a Bloomin’, Gawdforsaken, Beer-swillin’ Tommy. “Rest on your harms—’versed Stan’ at—hease; ’Shun. ’Verse—harms. Right an’ lef’—tarrn. Slow—march. ’Alt—front. Rest on your harms—’versed. With blank-cartridge—’load.” An’ that’s the end o’ me.’ He was quoting fragments from Funeral Parties’ Orders.


‘Stop ut!’ shouted Mulvaney. ‘Whin you’ve fired into nothin’ as often as me, over a better man than yoursilf, you will not make a mock av thim orders. ’Tis worse than whistlin’ the Dead March in barricks. An’ you full as a tick, an’ the sun cool, an’ all an’ all! I take shame for you. You’re no better than a Pagin—you an’ your firin’-parties an’ your glass-eyes. Won’t you stop ut, Sorr?’


What could I do? Could I tell Ortheris anything that he did not know of the pleasures of his life? I was not a Chaplain nor a Subaltern, and Ortheris had a right to speak as he thought fit.


‘Let him run, Mulvaney,’ I said. ‘It’s the beer.’


‘No! ’Tisn’t the beer,’ said Mulvaney. ‘I know fwhat’s comin’. He’s tuk this way now an’ agin, an’ it’s bad—it’s bad—for I’m fond av the bhoy.’


Indeed, Mulvaney seemed needlessly anxious; but I knew that he looked after Ortheris in a fatherly way.


‘Let me talk, let me talk,’ said Ortheris dreamily. ‘D’you stop your parrit screamin’ of a ’ot day, when the cage is a-cookin’ ’is pore little pink toes orf, Mulvaney?’


‘Pink toes! D’ye mane to say you’ve pink toes undher your bullswools, ye blandanderin’,’—Mulvaney gathered himself together for a terrific denunciation—‘school-misthress? Pink toes! How much Bass wid the label did that ravin’ child dhrink?’


‘Tain’t Bass,’ said Ortheris. ‘It’s a bitterer beer nor that. It’s ‘’ome-sickness!’


‘Hark to him! An’ he goin’ Home in the Sherapis in the inside av four months!’


‘I don’t care. It’s all one to me. ’Ow d’you know I ain’t ’fraid o’ dyin’ ’fore I gets my discharge paipers?’ He recommenced, in a sing-song voice, the Orders.


I had never seen this side of Ortheris’ character before, but evidently Mulvaney had, and attached serious importance to it. While Ortheris babbled, with his head on his arms, Mulvaney whispered to me—


‘He’s always tuk this way whin he’s been checked overmuch by the childher they make Sarjints nowadays. That an’ havin’ nothin’ to do. I can’t make ut out anyways.’


‘Well, what does it matter? Let him talk himself through.’


Ortheris began singing a parody of ‘The Ramrod Corps,’ full of cheerful allusions to battle, murder, and sudden death. He looked out across the river as he sang; and his face was quite strange to me. Mulvaney caught me by the elbow to ensure attention.


page 2


‘Matther? It matthers everything! ’Tis some sort av fit that’s on him. I’ve seen ut. ’Twill hould him all this night, an’ in the middle av it he’ll get out av his cot an’ go rakin’ in the rack for his ’coutremints. Thin he’ll come over to me an’ say, “I’m goin’ to Bombay. Answer for me in the mornin’.” Thin me an’ him will fight as we’ve done before—him to go an’ me to hould him—an’ so we’ll both come on the books for disturbin’ in barricks. I’’ve belted him, an’ I’ve bruk his head, an’ I’ve talked to him, but ’tis no manner av use whin the fit’s on him. He’s as good a bhoy as ever stepped whin his mind’s clear. I know fwhat’s comin’, though, this night in barricks. Lord send he doesn’t loose on me whin I rise to knock him down. ’Tis that that’s in my mind day an’ night.’


This put the case in a much less pleasant light, and fully accounted for Mulvaney’s anxiety. He seemed to be trying to coax Ortheris out of the fit; for he shouted down the bank where the boy was lying—


‘Listen now, you wid the “pore pink toes” an’ the glass eyes! Did you shwim the Irriwaddy at night, behin’ me, as a bhoy shud; or were you hidin’ under a bed, as you was at Ahmid Kheyl?’


This was at once a gross insult and a direct lie, and Mulvaney meant it to bring on a fight. But Ortheris seemed shut up in some sort of trance. He answered slowly, without a sign of irritation, in the same cadenced voice as he had used for his firing-party orders—


‘Hi swum the Irriwaddy in the night, as you know, for to take the town of Lungtungpen, nakid an’ without fear. Hand where I was at Ahmed Kheyl you know, and four bloomin’ Pathans know too. But that was summat to do, an’ I didn’t think o’ dyin’. Now I’m sick to go ’Ome—go ’Ome—go ’Ome! No, I ain’t mammysick, because my uncle brung me up, but I’m sick for London again; sick for the sounds of ’er, an’ the sights of ’er, and the stinks of ’er; orange-peel and hasphalte an’ gas comin’ in over Vaux’all Bridge. Sick for the rail goin’ down to Box ’Ill, with your gal on your knee an’ a new clay pipe in your face. That, an’ the Stran’ lights where you knows ev’ry one, an’ the Copper that takes you up is a old friend that tuk you up before, when you was a little, smitchy boy lying loose ’tween the Temple an’ the Dark Harches. No bloomin’ guard-mountin’, no bloomin’ rotten-stone, nor khaki, an’ yourself your own master with a gal to take an’ see the Humaners practisin’ a-hookin’ dead corpses out of the Serpentine o’ Sundays. An’ I lef’ all that for to serve the Widder beyond the seas, where there ain’t no women and there ain’t no liquor worth ’avin’, and there ain’t nothin’ to see, nor do, nor say, nor feel, nor think. Lord love you, Stanley Orth’ris, but you’re a bigger bloomin’ fool than the rest o’ the reg’ment and Mulvaney wired together! There’s the Widder sittin,’ at ’Ome with a gold crownd on ’er ’ead; and ’ere am Hi, Stanley Orth’ris, the Widder’s property, a rottin’ FOOL!’


His voice rose at the end of the sentence, and he wound up with a six-shot Anglo-Vernacular oath. Mulvaney said nothing, but looked at me as if he expected that I could bring peace to poor Ortheris’ troubled brain.


I remembered once at Rawal Pindi having seen a man, nearly mad with drink, sobered by being made a fool of. Some regiments may know what I mean. I hoped that we might slake off Ortheris in the same way, though he was perfectly sober. So I said—


‘What’s the use of grousing there, and speaking against The Widow?’


‘I didn’t!’ said Ortheris. ‘S’elp me Gawd, I never said a word agin ’er, an’ I wouldn’t—not if I was to desert this minute!’


Here was my opening. ‘Well, you meant to, anyhow. What’s the use of cracking-on for nothing? Would you slip it now if you got the chance?’


‘On’y try me!’ said Ortheris, jumping to his feet as if he had been stung.


Mulvaney jumped too. ‘Fwhat are you going to do?’ said he.


‘Help Ortheris down to Bombay or Karachi, whichever he likes. You can report that he separated from you before tiffin, and left his gun on the bank here!’


‘I’m to report that—am I?’ said Mulvaney slowly. ‘Very well. If Orth’ris manes to desert now, and will desert now, an’ you, Sorr, who have been a frind to me an’ to him, will help him to ut, I, Terence Mulvaney, on my oath which I’ve never bruk yet, will report as you say. But——’ here he stepped up to Ortheris, and shook the stock of the fowling-piece in his face—eyour fistes help you, Stanley Orth’ris, if ever I come across you agin!’


‘I don’t care!’ said Ortheris. ‘I’’m sick o’ this dorg’s life. Give me a chanst. Don’t play with me. Le’ me go!’


‘Strip,’ said I, ‘and change with me, and then I’ll tell you what to do.’


I hoped that the absurdity of this would check Ortheris; but he had kicked off his ammunition-boots and got rid of his tunic almost before I had loosed my shirt-collar. Mulvaney gripped me by the arm—


‘The fit’s on him: the fit’s workin’ on him still! By my Honour and Sowl, we shall be accessiry to a desartion yet. Only, twenty-eight days, as you say, Sorr, or fifty-six, but think o’ the shame—the black shame to him an’ me!’ I had never seen Mulvaney so excited.


But Ortheris was quite calm, and, as soon as he had exchanged clothes with me, and I stood up a Private of the Line, he said shortly, ‘Now! Come on. What nex’? D’ye mean fair. What must I do to get out o’ this ’ere a-Hell?’


I told him that, if he would wait for two or three hours near the river, I would ride into the Station and come back with one hundred rupees. He would, with that money in his pocket, walk to the nearest side-station on the line, about five miles away, and would there take a first-class ticket for Karachi. Knowing that he had no money on him when he went out shooting, his regiment would not immediately wire to the seaports, but would hunt for him in the native villages near the river. Further, no one would think of seeking a deserter in a first-class carriage. At Karachi he was to buy white clothes and ship, if he could, on a cargo-steamer.


Here he broke in. If I helped him to Karachi he would arrange all the rest. Then I ordered him to wait where he was until it was dark enough for me to ride into the Station without my dress being noticed. Now God in His wisdom has made the heart of the British Soldier, who is very often an unlicked ruffian, as soft as the heart of a little child, in order that he may believe in and follow his officers into tight and nasty places. He does not so readily come to believe in a ‘civilian,’ but, when he does, he believes implicitly and like a dog. I had had the honour of the friendship of Private Ortheris, at intervals, for more than three years, and we had dealt with each other as man by man. Consequently, he considered that all my words were true, and not spoken lightly.


page 3




Mulvaney and I left him in the high grass near the river-bank, and went away, still keeping to the high grass, towards my horse. The shirt scratched me horribly.


We waited nearly two hours for the dusk to fall and allow me to ride off. We spoke of Ortheris in whispers, and strained our ears to catch any sound from the spot where we had left him. But we heard nothing except the wind in the plume-grass.


‘I’ve bruk his head,’ said Mulvaney earnestly, ‘time an’ agin. I’ve nearly kilt him wid the belt, an’ yet I can’t knock thim fits out av his soft head. No! An’ he’s not soft, for he’s reasonable an’ likely by natur’. Fwhat is ut? Is ut his breedin’ which is nothin’, or his edukashin which he niver got? You that think ye know things, answer me that.’


But I found no answer. I was wondering how long Ortheris, on the bank of the river, would hold out, and whether I should be forced to help him to desert, as I had given my word.


Just as the dusk shut down and, with a very heavy heart, I was beginning to saddle up my horse, we heard wild shouts from the river.


The devils had departed from Private Stanley Ortheris, No. 22639, B Company. The loneliness, the dusk, and the waiting had driven them out as I had hoped. We set off at the double and found him plunging about wildly through the grass, with his coat off—my coat off, I mean. He was calling for us like a madman.


When we reached him he was dripping with perspiration, and trembling like a startled horse. We had great difficulty in soothing him. He complained that he was in civilian kit, and wanted to tear my clothes off his body. I ordered him to strip, and we made a second exchange as quickly as possible.


The rasp of his own ‘grayback’ shirt and the squeak of his boots seemed to bring him to himself. He put his hands before his eyes and said—


‘Wot was it? I ain’t mad, I ain’t sunstrook, an’ I’ve bin an’ gone an’ said, an’ bin an’ gone an’ done . . . Wot ’ave I bin an’ done?’


‘Fwhat have you done?’ said Mulvaney. ‘You’ve dishgraced yourself—though that’s no matter. You’ve dishgraced B Comp’ny, an’ worst av all, you’ve dishgraced Me! Me that taught you how for to walk abroad like a man—whin you was a dhirty little, fish-backed little, whimperin’ little recruity. As you are now, Stanley Orth’ris!’


Ortheris said nothing for a while. Then he unslung his belt, heavy with the badges of half a dozen regiments that his own had lain with, and handed it over to Mulvaney.


‘I’m too little for to mill you, Mulvaney,’ said he, ‘an’ you’ve strook me before; but you can take an’ cut me in two with this ’ere if you like.’


Mulvaney turned to me.


‘Lave me to talk to him, Sorr,’ said Mulvaney.


I left, and on my way home thought a good deal over Ortheris in particular, and my friend Private Thomas Atkins whom I love, in general.


But I could not come to any conclusion of any kind whatever.

			


				





	

					

				
The Lost Legion
			

			
			

				


page 1 of 4




WHEN the Indian Mutiny broke out, and a little time before the siege of Delhi, a regiment of Native Irregular Horse was stationed at Peshawur on the frontier of India. That regiment caught what John Lawrence called at the time ‘the prevalent mania,’ and would have thrown in its lot with the mutineers had it been allowed to do so. The chance never came, for, as the regiment swept off down south, it was headed up by a remnant of an English corps into the hills of Afghanistan, and there the newly-conquered tribesmen turned against it as wolves turn against buck. It was hunted for the sake of its arms and accoutrements from hill to hill, from ravine to ravine, up and down the dried beds of rivers and round the shoulders of bluffs, till it disappeared as water sinks in the sand—this officerless, rebel regiment. The only trace left of its existence to-day is a nominal roll drawn up in neat round hand and countersigned by an officer who called himself ‘Adjutant, late——Irregular Cavalry.’ The paper is yellow with years and dirt, but on the back of it you can still read a pencil note by John Lawrence, to this effect: ‘See that the two native officers who remained loyal are not deprived of their estates.—J. L.’ Of six hundred and fifty sabres only two stood strain, and John Lawrence in the midst of all the agony of the first months of the Mutiny found time to think about their merits.That was more that thirty years ago, and the tribesmen across the Afghan border who helped to annihilate the regiment are now old men. Sometimes a graybeard speaks of his share in the massacre. ‘They came,’ he will say, ‘across the border, very proud, calling upon us to rise and kill the English, and go down to the sack of Delhi. But we who had just been conquered by the same English knew that they were over bold, and that the Government could account easily for those down-country dogs. This Hindustani regiment, therefore, we treated with fair words, and kept standing in one place till the redcoats came after them very hot and angry. Then this regiment ran forward a little more into our hills to avoid the wrath of the English, and we lay upon their flanks watching from the sides of the hills till we were well assured that their path was lost behind them. Then we came down, for we desired their clothes, and their bridles, and their rifles, and their boots—more especially their boots. That was a great killing—done slowly.’ Here the old man will rub his nose, and shake his long snaky locks, and lick his bearded lips, and grin till the yellow tooth-stumps show. ‘Yes, we killed them because we needed their gear, and we knew that their lives had been forfeited to God on account of their sin—the sin of treachery to the salt which they had eaten. They rode up and down the valleys, stumbling and rocking in their saddles, and howling for mercy. We drove them slowly like cattle till they were all assembled in one place, the flat wide valley of Sheor Kôt. Many had died from want of water, but there still were many left, and they could not make any stand. We went among them, pulling them down with our hands two at a time, and our boys killed them who were new to the sword. My share of the plunder was such and such—so many guns, and so many saddles. The guns were good in those days. Now we steal the Government rifles, and despise smooth barrels. Yes, beyond doubt we wiped that regiment from off the face of the earth, and even the memory of the deed is now dying. But men say——’


At At this point the tale would stop abruptly, and it was impossible to find out what men said across the border. The Afghans were always a secretive race, and vastly preferred doing something wicked to saying anything at all. They would be quiet and well-behaved for months, till one night, without word or warning, they would rush a police-post, cut the throats of a constable or two, dash through a village, carry away three or four women, and withdraw, in the red glare of burning thatch, driving the cattle and goats before them to their own desolate hills. The Indian Government would become almost tearful on these occasions. First it would say, ‘Please be good and we’ll forgive you.’ The tribe concerned in the latest depredation would collectively put its thumb to its nose and answer rudely. Then the Government would say: ‘Hadn’t you better pay up a little money for those few corpses you left behind you the other night?’ Here the tribe would temporise, and lie and bully, and some of the younger men, merely to show contempt of authority, would raid another police-post and fire into some frontier mud fort, and, if lucky, kill a real English officer. Then the Government would say: ‘Observe; if you really persist in this line of conduct you will be hurt.’ If the tribe knew exactly what was going on in India, it would apologise or be rude, according as it learned whether the Government was busy with other things, or able to devote its full attention to their performances. Some of the tribes knew to one corpse how far to go. Others became excited, lost their heads, and told the Government to come on. With sorrow and tears, and one eye on the British taxpayer at home, who insisted on regarding these exercises as brutal wars of annexation, the Government would prepare an expensive little field-brigade and some guns, and send all up into the hills to chase the wicked tribe out of the valleys, where the corn grew, into the hill-tops where there was nothing to eat. The tribe would turn out in full strength and enjoy the campaign, for they knew that their women would never be touched, that their wounded would be nursed, not mutilated, and that as soon as each man’s bag of corn was spent they could surrender and palaver with the English General as though they had been a real enemy. Afterwards, years afterwards, they would pay the blood-money, driblet by driblet, to the Government and tell their children how they had slain the redcoats by thousands. The only drawback to this kind of picnic-war was the weakness of the redcoats for solemnly blowing up with powder their fortified towers and keeps. This the tribes always considered mean.


Chief among the leaders of the smaller tribes—the little clans who knew to a penny the expense of moving white troops against them—was a priest-bandit-chief whom we will call the Gulla Kutta Mullah. His enthusiasm for border murder as an art was almost dignified. He would cut down a mail-runner from pure wantonness, or bombard a mud fort with rifle fire when he knew that our men needed to sleep. In his leisure moments he would go on circuit among his neighbours, and try to incite other tribes to devilry. Also, he kept a kind of hotel for fellow-outlaws in his own village, which lay in a valley called Bersund. Any respectable murderer on that section of the frontier was sure to lie up at Bersund, for it was reckoned an exceedingly safe place. The sole entry to it ran through a narrow gorge which could be converted into a death-trap in five minutes. It was surrounded by high hills, reckoned inaccessible to all save born mountaineers, and here the Gulla Kutta Mullah lived in great state, the head of a colony of mud and stone huts, and in each mud but hung some portion of a red uniform and the plunder of dead men. The Government particularly wished for his capture, and once invited him formally to come out and be hanged on account of a few of the murders in which he had taken a direct part. He replied:—


‘I am only twenty miles, as the crow flies, from your border. Come and fetch me.’


‘Some day we will come,’ said the Government, ‘and hanged you will be.’


The Gulla Kutta Mullah let the matter from his mind. He knew that the patience of the Government was as long as a summer day; but he did not realise that its arm was as long as a winter night. Months afterwards, when there was peace on the border, and all India was quiet, the Indian Government turned in its sleep and remembered the Gulla Kutta Mullah at Bersund with his thirteen outlaws. The movement against him of one single regiment—which the telegrams would have translated as war—would have been highly impolitic. This was a time for silence and speed, and, above all, absence of bloodshed.


You must know that all along the north-west frontier of India there is spread a force of some thirty thousand foot and horse, whose duty it is quietly and unostentatiously to shepherd the tribes in front of them. They move up and down, and down and up, from one desolate little post to another; they are ready to take the field at ten minutes’ notice; they are always half in and half out of a difficulty somewhere along the monotonous line; their lives are as hard as their own muscles, and the papers never say anything about them. It was from this force that the Government picked its men.


page 2


One night at a station where the mounted Night Patrol fire as they challenge, and the wheat rolls in great blue-green waves under our cold northern moon, the officers were playing billiards in the mud-walled club-house, when orders came to them that they were to go on parade at once for a night-drill. They grumbled, and went to turn out their men—a hundred English troops, let us say, two hundred Goorkhas, and about a hundred cavalry of the finest native cavalry in the world.


When they were on the parade-ground, it was explained to them in whispers that they must set off at once across the hills to Bersund. The English troops were to post themselves round the hills at the side of the valley; the Goorkhas would command the gorge and the death-trap, and the cavalry would fetch a long march round and get to the back of the circle of hills, whence, if there were any difficulty, they could charge down on the Mullah’s men. But orders were very strict that there should be no fighting and no noise. They were to return in the morning with every round of ammunition intact, and the Mullah and the thirteen outlaws bound in their midst. If they were successful, no one would know or care anything about their work; but failure meant probably a small border war, in which the Gulla Kutta Mullah would pose as a popular leader against a big bullying power, instead of a common border murderer.


Then there was silence, broken only by the clicking of the compass needles and snapping of watch-cases, as the heads of columns compared bearings and made appointments for the rendezvous. Five minutes later the parade-ground was empty; the green coats of the Goorkhas and the overcoats of the English troops had faded into the darkness, and the cavalry were cantering away in the face of a blinding drizzle.


What the Goorkhas and the English did will be seen later on. The heavy work lay with the horses, for they had to go far and pick their way clear of habitations. Many of the troopers were natives of that part of the world, ready and anxious to fight against their kin, and some of the officers had made private and unofficial excursions into those hills before. They crossed the border, found a dried river bed, cantered up that, walked through a stony gorge, risked crossing a low hill under cover of the darkness, skirted another hill, leaving their hoof-marks deep in some ploughed ground, felt their way along another watercourse, ran over the neck of a spur, praying that no one would hear their horses grunting, and so worked on in the rain and the darkness, till they had left Bersund and its crater of hills a little behind them, and to the left, and it was time to swing round. The ascent commanding the back of Bersund was steep, and they halted to draw breath in a broad level valley below the height. That is to say, the men reined up, but the horses, blown as they were, refused to halt. There was unchristian language, the worse for being delivered in a whisper, and you heard the saddles squeaking in the darkness as the horses plunged.


The subaltern at the rear of one troop turned in his saddle and said very softly:—


‘Carter, what the blessed heavens are you doing at the rear? Bring your men up, man.’


There was no answer, till a trooper replied:—


‘Carter Sahib is forward—not there. There is nothing behind us.’


‘There is,’ said the subaltern. ‘The squadron’s walking on its own tail.’


Then the Major in command moved down to the rear swearing softly and asking for the blood of Lieutenant Halley—the subaltern who had just spoken.


‘Look after your rearguard,’ said the Major. ‘Some of your infernal thieves have got lost. They’re at the head of the squadron, and you’re a several kinds of idiot.’


‘Shall I tell off my men, sir?’ said the subaltern sulkily, for he was feeling wet and cold.


‘Tell ’em off!’ said the Major. ‘Whip ’em off, by Gad! You’re squandering them all over the place. There’s a troop behind you now!’


‘So I was thinking,’ said the subaltern calmly. ‘I have all my men here, sir. Better speak to Carter.’


‘Carter Sahib sends salaam and wants to know why the regiment is stopping,’ said a trooper to Lieutenant Halley.


‘Where under heaven is Carter?’ said the Major.


‘Forward with his troop,’ was the answer.


‘Are we walking in a ring, then, or are we the centre of a blessed brigade?’ said the Major.


By this time there was silence all along the column. The horses were still; but, through the drive of the fine rain, men could hear the feet of many horses moving over stony ground.


‘We’re being stalked,’ said Lieutenant Halley.


‘They’ve no horses here. Besides they’d have fired before this,’ said the Major. ‘It’s—it’s villagers’ ponies.’


‘Then our horses would have neighed and spoilt the attack long ago. They must have been near us for half an hour,’ said the subaltern.


‘Queer that we can’t smell the horses,’ said the Major, damping his finger and rubbing it on his nose as he sniffed up wind.


‘Well, it’s a bad start,’ said the subaltern, shaking the wet from his overcoat. ‘What shall we do, sir?’


‘Get on,’ said the Major. ‘We shall catch it to-night.’


The column moved forward very gingerly for a few paces. Then there was an oath, a shower of blue sparks as shod hooves crashed on small stones, and a man rolled over with a jangle of accoutrements that would have waked the dead.


‘Now we’ve gone and done it,’ said Lieutenant Halley. ‘All the hillside awake, and all the hillside to climb in the face of musketry-fire. This comes of trying to do night-hawk work.’


page 3




The trembling trooper picked himself up, and tried to explain that his horse had fallen over one of the little cairns that are built of loose stones on the spot where a man has been murdered. There was no need for reasons. The Major’s big Australian charger blundered next, and the column came to a halt in what seemed to be a very graveyard of little cairns all about two feet high. The manoeuvres of the squadron are not reported. Men said that it felt like mounted quadrilles without training and without the music; but at last the horses, breaking rank and choosing their own way, walked clear of the cairns, till every man of the squadron re-formed and drew rein a few yards up the slope of the hill. Then, according to Lieutenant Halley, there was another scene very like the one which has been described. The Major and Carter insisted that all the men had not joined rank, and that there were more of them in the rear clicking and blundering among the dead men’s cairns. Lieutenant Halley told off his own troopers again and resigned himself to wait. Later on be told me:—


‘I didn’t much know, and I didn’t much care what was going on. The row of that trooper falling ought to have scared half the country, and I would take my oath that we were being stalked by a full regiment in the rear, and they were making row enough to rouse all Afghanistan. I sat tight, but nothing happened.’


The mysterious part of the night’s work was the silence on the hillside. Everybody knew that the Gulla Kutta Mullah had his outpost huts on the reverse side of the hill, and everybody expected by the time that the Major had sworn himself into a state of quiet that the watchmen there would open fire. When nothing occurred, they said that the gusts of the rain had deadened the sound of the horses, and thanked Providence. At last the Major satisfied himself (a) that he had left no one behind among the cairns, and (b) that he was not being taken in the rear by a large and powerful body of cavalry. The men’s tempers were thoroughly spoiled, the horses were lathered and unquiet, and one and all prayed for the daylight.


They set themselves to climb up the hill, each man leading his mount carefully. Before they had covered the lower slopes or the breastplates had begun to tighten, a thunderstorm came up behind, rolling across the low hills and drowning any noise less than that of cannon. The first flash of the lightning showed the bare ribs of the ascent, the hillcrest standing steely blue against the black sky, the little falling lines of the rain, and, a few yards to their left flank, an Afghan watch-tower, two-storied, built of stone, and entered by a ladder from the upper story. The ladder was up, and a man with a rifle was leaning from the window. The darkness and the thunder rolled down in an instant, and, when the lull followed, a voice from the watch-tower cried, ‘Who goes there?’


The cavalry were very quiet, but each man gripped his carbine and stood beside his horse. Again the voice called, ‘Who goes there?’ and in a louder key, ‘O, brothers, give the alarm!’ Now, every man in the cavalry would have died in his long boots sooner than have asked for quarter; but it is a fact that the answer to the second call was a long wail of ‘Marf karo! Marf karo!’ which means, ‘Have mercy! Have mercy!’ It came from the climbing regiment.


The cavalry stood dumbfoundered, till the big troopers had time to whisper one to another ‘Mir Khan, was that thy voice? Abdullah, didst thou call?’ Lieutenant Halley stood beside his charger and waited. So long as no firing was going on he was content. Another flash of lightning showed the horses with heaving flanks and nodding heads, the men, white eye-balled, glaring beside them, and the stone watch-tower to the left. This time there was no head at the window, and the rude iron-clamped shutter that could turn a rifle bullet was closed.


‘Go on, men,’ said the Major. ‘Get up to the top at any rate.’ The squadron toiled forward, the horses wagging their tails and the men pulling at the bridles, the stones rolling down the hillside and the sparks flying. Lieutenant Halley declares that he never heard a squadron make so much noise in his life. They scrambled up, he said, as though each horse had eight legs and a spare horse to follow him. Even then there was no sound from the watch-tower, and the men stopped exhausted on the ridge that overlooked the pit of darkness in which the village of Bersund lay. Girths were loosed, curb-chains shifted, and saddles adjusted, and the men dropped down among the stones. Whatever might happen now, they had the upper ground of any attack.


The thunder ceased, and with it the rain, and the soft thick darkness of a winter night before the dawn covered them all. Except for the sound of falling water among the ravines below, everything was still. They heard the shutter of the watch-tower below them thrown back with a clang, and the voice of the watcher calling: ‘Oh, Hafiz Ullah!’


The echoes took up the call, ‘La-la-la!’ And an answer came from the watch-tower hidden round the curve of the hill, ‘What is it, Shahbaz Khan?’


Shahbaz Khan replied in the high-pitched voice of the mountaineer: ‘Hast thou seen?’


The answer came back: ‘Yes. God deliver us from all evil spirits!’


There was a pause, and then: ‘Hafiz Ullah, I am alone! Come to me!’


‘Shahbaz Khan, I am alone also; but I dare not leave my post!’


‘That is a lie; thou art afraid.’


A longer pause followed, and then: ‘I am afraid. Be silent! They are below us still. Pray to God and sleep.’


The troopers listened and wondered, for they could not understand what save earth and stone could lie below the watch-towers.


Shahbaz Khan began to call again: ‘They are below us. I can see them. For the pity of God come over to me, Hafiz Ullah ! My father slew ten of them. Come over!’


Hafiz Ullah answered in a very loud voice, ‘Mine was guiltless. Hear, ye Men of the Night, neither my father nor my blood had any part in that sin. Bear thou thy own punishment, Shahbaz Khan.’


‘Oh, some one ought to stop those two chaps crowing away like cocks there,’ said Lieutenant Halley, shivering under his rock.


He had hardly turned round to expose a new side of him to the rain before a bearded, long-locked, evil-smelling Afghan rushed up the hill, and tumbled into his arms. Halley sat upon him, and thrust as much of a sword-hilt as could be spared down the man’s gullet. ‘If you cry out, I kill you,’ he said cheerfully.


The man was beyond any expression of terror. He lay and quaked, grunting. When Halley took the sword-hilt from between his teeth, he was still inarticulate, but clung to Halley’s arm, feeling it from elbow to wrist.


‘The Rissala! The dead Rissala!’ he gasped. ‘It is down there!’


‘No; the Rissala, the very much alive Rissala. It is up here,’ said Halley, unshipping his wateringbridle, and fastening the man’s hands. ‘Why were you in the towers so foolish as to let us pass?’


page 4




‘The valley is full of the dead,’ said the Afghan. ‘It is better to fall into the hands of the English than the hands of the dead. They march to and fro below there. I saw them in the lightning.’


He recovered his composure after a little, and whispering, because Halley’s pistol was at his stomach, said: ‘What is this? There is no war between us now, and the Mullah will kill me for not seeing you pass!’


‘Rest easy,’ said Halley; ‘we are coming to kill the Mullah, if God please. His teeth have grown too long. No harm will come to thee unless the daylight shows thee as a face which is desired by the gallows for crime done. But what of the dead regiment?’


‘I only kill within my own border,’ said the man, immensely relieved. ‘The Dead Regiment is below. The men must have passed through it on their journey—four hundred dead on horses, stumbling among their own graves, among the little heaps—dead men all, whom we slew.’


‘Whew!’ said Halley. ‘That accounts for my cursing Carter and the Major cursing me. Four hundred sabres, eh? No wonder we thought there were a few extra men in the troop. Kurruk Shah,’ he whispered to a grizzled native officer that lay within a few feet of him, ‘hast thou heard anything of a dead Rissala in these hills?’


‘Assuredly,’ said Kurruk Shah with a grim chuckle. ‘Otherwise, why did I, who have served the Queen for seven-and-twenty years, and killed many hill-dogs, shout aloud for quarter when the lightning revealed us to the watch-towers? When I was a young man I saw the killing in the valley of Sheor-Kot there at our feet, and I know the tale that grew up therefrom. But how can the ghosts of unbelievers, prevail against us who are of the Faith? Strap that dog’s hands a little tighter, Sahib. An Afghan is like an eel.’


‘But a dead Rissala,’ said Halley, jerking his captive’s wrist. ‘That is foolish talk, Kurruk Shah. The dead are dead. Hold still, sag.’ The Afghan wriggled.


‘The dead are dead, and for that reason they walk at night. What need to talk? We be men; we have our eyes and ears. Thou canst both see and hear them, down the hillside,’ said Kurruk Shah composedly.


Halley stared and listened long and intently. The valley was full of stifled noises, as every valley must be at night; but whether he saw or heard more than was natural Halley alone knows, and he does not choose to speak on the subject.


At last, and just before the dawn, a green rocket shot up from the far side of the valley of Bersund, at the head of the gorge, to show that the Goorkhas were in position. A red light from the infantry at left and right answered it, and the cavalry burnt a white flare. Afghans in winter are late sleepers, and it was not till full day that the Gulla Kutta Mullah’s men began to straggle from their huts, rubbing their eyes. They saw men in green, and red, and brown uniforms, leaning on their arms, neatly arranged all round the crater of the village of Bersund, in a cordon that not even a wolf could have broken. They rubbed their eyes the more when a pink-faced young man, who was not even in the Army, but represented the Political Department, tripped down the hillside with two orderlies, rapped at the door of the Gulla Kutta Mullah’s house, and told him quietly to step out and be tied up for safe transport. That same young man passed on through the huts, tapping here one cateran and there another lightly with his cane; and as each was pointed out, so he was tied up, staring hopelessly at the crowned heights around where the English soldiers looked down with incurious eyes. Only the Mullah tried to carry it off with curses and high words, till a soldier who was tying his hands said:—


‘None o’ your lip!’ Why didn’t you come out when you was ordered, instead o’ keepin’ us awake all night? You’re no better than my own barrack-sweeper, you white-’eaded old polyanthus! Kim up!’


Half an hour later the troops had gone away with the Mullah and his thirteen friends. The dazed villagers were looking ruefully at a pile of broken muskets and snapped swords, and wondering how in the world they had come so to miscalculate the forbearance of the Indian Government.


It was a very neat little affair, neatly carried out, and the men concerned were unofficially thanked for their services.


Yet it seems to me that much credit is also due to another regiment whose name did not appear in the brigade orders, and whose very existence is in danger of being forgotten.



			


				





	

					

				
Little Tobrah
			

			
			

				


[a short tale]


‘PRISONER’S head did not reach to the top of the dock,’ as the English newspapers say. This case, however, was not reported because nobody cared by so much as a hempen rope for the life or death of Little Tobrah. The assessors in the red court-house sat upon him all through the long hot afternoon, and whenever they asked him a question he salaamed and whined. Their verdict was that the evidence was inconclusive, and the Judge concurred. It was true that the dead body of Little Tobrah’s sister had been found at the bottom of the well, and Little Tobrah was the only human being within a half mile radius at the time; but the child might have fallen in by accident. Therefore Little Tobrah was acquitted, and told to go where he pleased. This permission was not so generous as it sounds, for he had nowhere to go to, nothing in particular to eat, and nothing whatever to wear.He trotted into the court-compound, and sat upon the well-kerb, wondering whether an unsuccessful dive into the black water below would end in a forced voyage across the other Black Water. A groom put down an emptied nose-bag on the bricks, and Little Tobrah, being hungry, set himself to scrape out what wet grain the horse had overlooked.


‘O Thief—and but newly set free from the terror of the Law! Come along!’ said the groom, and Little Tobrah was led by the ear to a large and fat Englishman, who heard the tale of the theft.


‘Hah!’ said the Englishman three times (only he said a stronger word). ‘Put him into the net and take him home.’ So Little Tobrah was thrown into the net of the cart, and, nothing doubting that he should be stuck like a pig, was driven to the Englishman’s house. ‘Hah!’ said the Englishman as before. ‘Wet grain, by Jove! Feed the little beggar, some of you, and we’ll make a riding-boy of him! See? Wet grain, good Lord!’


‘Give an account of yourself,’ said the Head of the Grooms to Little Tobrah after the meal had been eaten, and the servants lay at ease in their quarters behind the house. ‘You are not of the groom caste, unless it be for the stomach’s sake. How came you into the court, and why? Answer, little devil’s spawn!’


‘There was not enough to eat,’ said Little Tobrah calmly. ‘This is a good place.’


‘Talk straight talk,’ said the Head Groom, ‘or I will make you clean out the stable of that large red stallion who bites like a camel.’


‘We be Telis, oil-pressers,’ said Little Tobrah, scratching his toes in the dust. ‘We were Telis—my father, my mother, my brother, the elder by four years, myself, and the sister.’


‘She who was found dead in the well?’ said one who had heard something of the trail.


‘Even so,’ said Little Tobrah gravely. ‘She who was found dead in the well. It befell upon a time, which is not in my memory, that the sickness came to the village where our oil-press stood, and first my sister was smitten as to her eyes, and went without sight, for it was mata—the small-pox. Thereafter, my father and my mother died of that same sickness, so we were alone—my brother who had twelve years, I who had eight, and the sister who could not see. Yet were there the bullock and the oil-press remaining, and we made shift to press the oil as before. But Surjun Dass, the grain-seller, cheated us in his dealings; and it was always a stubborn bullock to drive. We put marigold flowers for the Gods upon the neck of the bullock, and upon the great grinding-beam that rose through the roof; but we gained nothing thereby, and Surjun Dass was a hard man.’


‘Bapri-bap,’ muttered the grooms’ wives, ‘to cheat a child so! But we know what the bunnia-folk are, sisters.’


‘The press was an old press, and we were not strong men—my brother and I; nor could we fix the neck of the beam firmly in the shackle.’


‘Nay, indeed,’ said the gorgeously-clad wife of the Head Groom, joining the circle. ‘That is a strong man’s work. When I was a maid in my father’s house—’


‘Peace, woman,’ said the Head Groom. ‘Go on, boy.’


‘It is nothing,’ said Little Tobrah. ‘The big beam tore down the roof upon a day which is not in my memory, and with the roof fell much of the hinder wall, and both together upon our bullock, whose back was broken. Thus we had neither home, nor press, nor bullock—my brother, myself, and the sister who was blind. We went crying away from that place, hand-in-hand, across the fields; and our money was seven annas and six pie. There was a famine in the land. I do not know the name of the land. So, on a night when we were sleeping, my brother took the five annas that remained to us and ran away. I do not know whither he went. The curse of my father be upon him. But I and the sister begged food in the villages, and there was none to give. Only all men said—“Go to the Englishmen and they will give.” I did not know what the Englishmen were; but they said that they were white, living in tents. I went forward; but I cannot say whither I went, and there was no more food for myself or the sister. And upon a hot night, she weeping and calling for food, we came to a well, and I bade her sit upon the kerb, and thrust her in, for, in truth, she could not see; and it is better to die than to starve.’


‘Ai! Ahi!’ wailed the grooms’ wives in chorus; ‘he thrust her in, for it is better to die than to starve!’


‘I would have thrown myself in also, but that she was not dead and called to me from the bottom of the well, and I was afraid and ran. And one came out of the crops saying that I had killed her and defiled the well, and they took me before an Englishman, white and terrible, living in a tent, and me he sent here. But there were no witnesses, and it is better to die than to starve. She, furthermore, could not see with her eyes, and was but a little child.’


‘Was but a little child,’ echoed the Head Groom’s wife. ‘But who art thou, weak as a fowl and small as a day-old colt, what art thou?’


‘I who was empty am now full,’ said Little Tobrah, stretching himself upon the dust. ‘And I would sleep.’


The groom’s wife spread a cloth over him while Little Tobrah slept the sleep of the just.



			


				





	

					

				
A Little Prep.
			

			
			

				
page 1 of 7




“Qui procul hinc—the legend’s writ,

    The frontier grave is far away;

Qui ante diem periit,

    Sed miles, sed pro patriâ.

 (NEWBOLT)


THE Easter term was but a month old when Stettson major, a day-boy, contracted diphtheria, and the Head was very angry. He decreed a new and narrower set of bounds—the infection had been traced to an out-lying farmhouse—urged the prefects severely to lick all trespassers, and promised extra attentions from his own hand. There were no words bad enough for Stettson major, quarantined at his mother’s house, who had lowered the school-average of health. This he said in the gymnasium after prayers. Then he wrote some two hundred letters to as many anxious parents and guardians, and bade the school carry on. The trouble did not spread, but, one night, a dog-cart drove to the Head’s door, and in the morning the Head had gone, leaving all things in charge of Mr. King, senior house-master. The Head often ran up to town, where the school devoutly believed he bribed officials for early proofs of the Army Examination papers; but this absence was unusually prolonged.


‘Downy old bird!’ said Stalky to the allies, one wet afternoon, in the study. ‘He must have gone on a bend an’ been locked up, under a false name.’


‘What for?’ Beetle entered joyously into the libel.


‘Forty shillin’s or a month for hackin’ the chucker-out of the Pavvy on the shins. Bates always has a spree when he goes to town. ’Wish he was back, though. I’m about sick o’ King’s “whips an’ scorpions” an’ lectures on public-school spirit—yah!—and scholarship!’


‘“Crass an’ materialised brutality of the middle-classes—readin’ solely for marks. Not a scholar in the whole school,”’ M‘Turk quoted, pensively boring holes in the mantelpiece with a hot poker.


‘That’s rather a sickly way of spending an afternoon. ’Stinks, too. Let’s come out an’ smoke. Here’s a treat.’ Stalky held up a long Indian cheroot. ‘’Bagged it from my pater last holidays. I’m a bit shy of it, though; it’s heftier than a pipe. We’ll smoke it palaver-fashion. Hand it round, eh? Let’s lie up behind the old harrow on the Monkey-farm Road.’


‘Out of bounds. Bounds beastly strict these days, too. Besides, we shall cat.’ Beetle sniffed the cheroot critically. ‘It’s a regular Pomposo Stinkadore


‘You can; I shan’t. What d’you say, Turkey?’


‘Oh, may’s well, I s’pose.’


‘Chuck on your cap, then. It’s two to one, Beetle. Hout you come!’


They saw a group of boys by the notice-board in the corridor; little Foxy, the school sergeant, among them.


‘More bounds, I expect,’ said Stalky. ‘Hullo, Foxibus, who are you in mournin’ for?’ There was a broad band of crape round Foxy’s arm.


‘He was in my old regiment,’ said Foxy, jerking his head towards the notices, where a newspaper cutting was thumb-tacked between call-over lists.


‘By gum!’ quoth Stalky, uncovering as he read. ‘It’s old Duncan—Fat-Sow Duncan—killed on duty at something or other Kotal. “Rallyin’ his men with conspicuous gallantry.” He would, of course. “The body was recovered.” That’s all right. they cut ’em up sometimes, don’t they, Foxy?’


‘Horrid,’ said the sergeant briefly.


‘Poor old Fat-Sow! I was a fag when he left. How many does that make to us, Foxy?’


‘Mr. Duncan, he is the ninth. He came here when he was no bigger than little Grey tertius. My old regiment, too. Yiss, nine to us, Mr. Corkran, up to date.’


The boys went out into the wet, walking swiftly.


‘’Wonder how it feels—to be shot and all that,’ said Stalky, as they splashed down a lane. ‘Where did it happen, Beetle?’


‘Oh, out in India somewhere. We’re always rowin’ there. But look here, Stalky, what is the good o’ sittin’ under a hedge an’ cattin’? It’s be-eastly cold. It’s be-eastly wet, and we’ll be collared as sure as a gun.’


‘Shut up! Did you ever know your Uncle Stalky get you into a mess yet?’ Like many other leaders, Stalky did not dwell on past defeats.


They pushed through a dripping hedge, landed among water-logged clods, and sat down on a rust-coated harrow. The cheroot burned with sputterings of saltpetre. They smoked it gingerly, each passing to the other between closed forefinger and thumb.


‘Good job we hadn’t one apiece, ain’t it?’ said Stalky, shivering through set teeth. To prove his words he immediately laid all before them, and they followed his example. . . .


‘I told you,’ moaned Beetle, sweating clammy drops. ‘Oh, Stalky, you are a fool!’


‘Fe cat, tu cat, il cat. Nous cattons!’ M‘Turk handed up his contribution and lay hopelessly on the cold iron.


‘Something’s wrong with the beastly thing. I say, Beetle, have you been droppin’ ink on it?’


But Beetle was in no case to answer. Limp and empty, they sprawled across the harrow, the rust marking their ulsters in red squares and the abandoned cheroot-end reeking under their very cold noses. Then—they had heard nothing—the Head himself stood before them—the Head who should have been in town bribing examiners—the Head fantastically attired in old tweeds and a deer-stalker!


‘Ah,’ he said, fingering his moustache. ‘Very good. I might have guessed who it was. You will go back to the College and give my compliments to Mr. King and ask him to give you an extra-special licking. You will then do me five hundred lines. I shall be back to-morrow. Five hundred lines by five o’clock to-morrow. You are also gated for a week. This is not exactly the time for breaking bounds. Extra-special, please.’


page 2


He disappeared over the hedge as lightly as he had come. There was a murmur of women’s voices in the deep lane.


‘Oh, you Prooshian brute!’ said M‘Turk as the voices died away. ‘Stalky, it’s all your silly fault.’


‘Kill him! Kill him!’ gasped Beetle.


‘I ca-an’t. I’m going to cat again . . . I don’t mind that, but King ‘ll gloat over us horrid. Extraspecial, ooh!’


Stalky made no answer—not even a soft one. They went to College and received that for which they had been sent. King enjoyed himself most thoroughly, for by virtue of their seniority the boys were exempt from his hand, save under special order. Luckily, he was no expert in the gentle art.


‘“Strange, how desire both outrun performance,”’ said Beetle irreverently, quoting from some Shakespeare play that they were cramming that term. They regained their study and settled down to the imposition.


‘You’re quite right, Beetle.’ Stalky spoke in silky and propitiating tones. ‘Now if the Head had sent us up to a prefect, we’d have got something to remember!’


‘Look here,’ M‘Turk began with cold venom, ‘we aren’t going to row you about this business, because it’s too bad for a row; but we want you to understand you’re jolly well excommunicated, Stalky. You’re a plain ass.’


‘How was I to know that the Head ’ud collar us? What was he doin’ in those ghastly clothes, too?’


‘Don’t try to raise a side-issue,’ Beetle grunted severely.


‘Well, it was all Stettson major’s fault. If he hadn’t gone an’ got diphtheria ’twouldn’t have happened. But don’t you think it rather rummy—the Head droppin’ on us that way?’


‘Shut up! You’re dead!’ said Beetle. ‘We’ve chopped your spurs off your beastly heels. We’ve cocked your shield upside down, and—and I don’t think you ought to be allowed to brew for a month.


‘Oh, stop jawin’ at me. I want——’


‘Stop? Why—why, we’re gated for a week.’ M‘Turk almost howled as the agony of the situation overcame him. ‘A lickin’ from King, five hundred lines, and a gating. D’you expect us to kiss you, Stalky, you beast?’


‘Drop rottin’ for a minute. I want to find out about the Head bein’ where he was.’


‘Well, you have. You found him quite well and fit. Found him making love to Stettson major’s mother. That was her in the lane—I heard her. And so we were ordered a licking before a day-boy’s mother. Bony old window, too,’ said M‘Turk. ‘Anything else you’d like to find out?’


‘I don’t care. I swear I’ll get even with him some day,’ Stalky growled.


‘’Looks like it,’ said M‘Turk. ‘Extra-special, week’s gatin’ and five hundred . . . and now you’re goin’ to row about it! ‘Help scrag him, Beetle!’ Stalky had thrown his Virgil at them.


The Head returned next day without explantion, to find the lines waiting for him and the school a little relaxed under Mr. King’s viceroyalty. Mr. King had been talking at and round and over the boys’ heads, in a lofty and promiscuous style, of public-school spirit and the traditions of ancient seats; for he always improved an occasion. Beyond waking in two hundred and fifty young hearts a lively hatred of all other foundations, he accomplished little—so little, indeed, that when, two days after the Head’s return, he chanced to come across Stalky & Co., gated but ever resourceful, playing marbles in the corridor, he said that he was not surprised—not in the least surprised. This was what he had expected from persons of their morale.


‘But there isn’t any rule against marbles, sir. Very interestin’ game,’ said Beetle, his knees white with chalk and dust. Then he received two hundred lines for insolence, besides an order to go to the nearest prefect for judgment and slaughter.


This is what happened behind the closed doors of Flint’s study, and Flint was then Head of the Games:—


‘Oh, I say, Flint. King has sent me to you for playin’ marbles in the corridor an’ shoutin’ “alley tor” an’ “knuckle down.”’


‘What does he suppose I have to do with that?’ was the answer.


‘Dunno. Well?’ Beetle grinned wickedly. ‘What am I to tell him? He’s rather wrathy about it.’


‘If the Head chooses to put a notice in the corridor forbiddin’ marbles, I can do something; but I can’t move on a house-master’s report. He knows that as well as I do.’


The sense of this oracle Beetle conveyed, all unsweetened, to King, who hastened to interview Flint.


Now Flint had been seven and a half years at the College, counting six months with a London crammer, from whose roof he had returned, homesick, to the Head for the final Army polish. There were four or five other seniors who had gone through much the same mill, not to mention boys, rejected by other establishments on account of a certain overwhelmingness, whom the Head had wrought into very fair shape. It was not a Sixth to be handled without gloves, as King found.


‘Am I to understand it is your intention to allow board-school games under your study windows, Flint? If so, I can only say——’ He said much, and Flint listened politely.


‘Well, sir, if the Head sees fit to call a prefects’ meeting we are bound to take the matter up. But the tradition of the school is that the prefects can’t move in any matter affecting the whole school without the Head’s direct order.’


Much more was then delivered, both sides a little losing their temper.


After tea, at an informal gathering of prefects in his study, Flint related the adventure.


‘He’s been playin’ for this for a week, and now he’s got it. You know as well as I do that if he hadn’t been gassing at us the way he has, that young devil Beetle wouldn’t have dreamed of marbles.’


‘We know that,’ said Perowne, ‘but that isn’t the question. On Flint’s showin’ King has called the prefects names enough to justify a first-class row. Crammers’ rejections, ill-regulated hobble-de-hoys, wasn’t it? Now it’s impossible for prefects——’


‘Rot,’ said Flint. ‘King’s the best classical cram we’ve got; and ’Tisn’t fair to bother the Head with a row. He’s up to his eyes with extra-tu. and Army work as it is. Besides, as I told King, we aren’t a public school. We’re a limited liability company payin’ four per cent. My father’s a shareholder, too.’


page 3




‘What’s that got to do with it?’ said Venner, a red-headed boy of nineteen.


‘Well, seems to me that we should be interferin’ with ourselves. We’ve got to get into the Army or—get out, haven’t we? King’s hired by the Council to teach us. All the rest’s flumdiddle. Can’t you see?’


It might have been because he felt the air was a little thunderous that the Head took his after-dinner cheroot to Flint’s study; but he so often began an evening in a prefect’s room that nobody suspected when he drifted in politely, after the knocks that etiquette demanded.


‘Prefects’ meeting?’ A cock of one wise eyebrow.


‘Not exactly, sir; we’re just talking things over. Won’t you take the easy chair?’


‘Thanks. Luxurious infants, you are.’ He dropped into Flint’s big half-couch and puffed for a while in silence. ‘Well, since you’re all here, I may confess that I’m the mute with the bowstring.’


The young faces grew serious. The phrase meant that certain of their number would be withdrawn from all further games for extra-tuition. It might also mean future success at Sandhurst; but it was present ruin for the First Fifteen.


‘Yes, I’ve come for my pound of flesh. I ought to have had you out before the Exeter match; but it’s our sacred duty to beat Exeter.’


‘Isn’t the Old Boys’ match sacred, too, sir?’ said Perowne. The Old Boys’ match was the event of the Easter term.


‘We’ll hope they aren’t in training. Now for the list. First I want Flint. It’s the Euclid that does it. You must work deductions with me. Perowne, extra mechanical drawing. Dawson goes to Mr. King for extra Latin, and Venner to me for German. Have I damaged the First Fifteen much?’ He smiled sweetly.


‘Ruined it, I’m afraid, sir,’ said Flint. ‘Can’t you let us off till the end of the term?’


‘Impossible. It will be a tight squeeze for Sandhurst this year.’


‘And all to be cut up by those vile Afghans, too,’ said Dawson. ‘’Wouldn’t think there’d be so much competition, would you?’


‘Oh, that reminds me. Crandall is coming down with the Old Boys—I’ve asked twenty of them, but we shan’t get more than a weak team. I don’t know whether he’ll be much use, though. He was rather knocked about, recovering poor old Duncan’s body.’


‘Crandall major—the Gunner?’ Perowne asked.


‘No, the minor—”Toffee” Crandall—in a native infantry regiment. He was almost before your time, Perowne.’


‘The papers didn’t say anything about him. We read about Fat-Sow, of course. What’s Crandall done, sir?’


‘I’ve brought over an Indian paper that his mother sent me. It was rather a—hefty, I think you say—piece of work. Shall I read it?’


The Head knew how to read. When he had finished the quarter-column of close type everybody thanked him politely.


‘Good for the old Coll.!’ said Perowne. ‘Pity he wasn’t in time to save Fat-Sow, though. That’s nine to us, isn’t it, in the last three years?’


‘Yes . . . And I took old Duncan off all games for extra-tu. five years ago this term,’ said the Head. ‘By the way, who do you hand over the Games to, Flint?’


‘Haven’t thought yet. Who’d you recommend, sir?’


‘No, thank you. I’ve heard it casually hinted behind my back that the Prooshian Bates is a downy bird, but he isn’t going to make himself responsible for a new Head of the Games. Settle it among yourselves. Good-night.’


‘And that’s the man,’ said Flint, when the door shut, ‘that you want to bother with a dame’s school row.’


‘I was only pullin’ your fat leg,’ Perowne returned hastily. ‘You’re so easy to draw, Flint.’


‘Well, never mind that. The Head’s knocked the First Fifteen to bits, and we’ve got to pick up the pieces, or the Old Boys will have a walk-over. Let’s promote all the Second Fifteen and make Big Side play up. There’s heaps of talent somewhere that we can polish up between now and the match.’


The case was represented so urgently to the school that even Stalky and M‘Turk, who affected to despise football, played one Big-Side game seriously. They were forthwith promoted ere their ardour had time to cool, and the dignity of their Caps demanded that they should keep some show of virtue. The match-team was worked at least four days out of seven, and the school saw hope ahead.


With the last week of the term the Old Boys began to arrive, and their welcome was nicely proportioned to their worth. Gentlemen cadets from Sandhurst and Woolwich, who had only left a year ago, but who carried enormous side, were greeted with a cheerful ‘Hullo! What’s the Shop like?’ from those who had shared their studies. Militia subalterns had more consideration, but it was understood they were not precisely of the true metal. Recreants who, failing for the Army, had gone into business or banks were received for old sake’s sake, but in no way made too much of. But when the real subalterns, officers and gentlemen full-blown—who had been to the ends of the earth and back again and so carried no side—came on the scene strolling about with the Head, the school divided right and left in admiring silence. And when one laid hands on Flint, even upon the Head of the Games, crying, ‘Good Heavens! What do you mean by growing in this way? You were a beastly little fag when I left,’ visible halos encircled Flint. They would walk to and fro in the corridor with the little red school-sergeant, telling news of old regiments; they would burst into form-rooms sniffing the well-remembered smells of ink and whitewash; they would find nephews and cousins in the lower forms and present them with enormous wealth; or they would invade the gymnasium and make Foxy show off the new stock on the bars.


Chiefly, though, they talked with the Head, who was father-confessor and agent-general to them all; for what they shouted in their unthinking youth, they proved in their thoughtless manhood—to wit, that the Prooshian Bates was ’a downy bird.’ Young blood who had stumbled into an entanglement with a pastry-cook’s daughter at Plymouth; experience who had come into a small legacy but mistrusted lawyers; ambition halting at cross-roads, anxious to take the one that would lead him farthest; extravagance pursued by the money-lender; arrogance in the thick of a regimental row—each carried his trouble to the Head; and Chiron showed him, in language quite unfit for little boys, a quiet and safe way round, out, or under. So they overflowed his house, smoked his cigars, and drank his health as they had drunk it all the earth over when two or three of the old school had foregathered.


page 4




‘Don’t stop smoking for a minute,’ said the Head. ‘The more you’re out of training the better for us. I’ve demoralised the First Fifteen with extra-tu.’


‘Ah, but we’re a scratch lot. Have you told ’em we shall need a substitute even if Crandall can play?’ said a Lieutenant of Engineers with the D.S.O. to his credit.


‘He wrote me he’d play, so he can’t have been much hurt. He’s coming down to-morrow morning.’


‘Crandall minor that was, and brought off poor Duncan’s body?’ The Head nodded. ‘Where are you going to put him? We’ve turned you out of house and home already, Head Sahib.’ This was a Squadron-Commander of Bengal Lancers, home on leave.


‘I’m afraid he’ll have to go up to his old dormitory. You know old boys can claim that privilege. Yes, I think leetle Crandall minor must bed down there once more.’


‘Bates Sahib’—a Gunner flung a heavy arm round the Head’s neck—‘you’ve got something up your sleeve. Confess! I know that twinkle.’


‘Can’t you see, you cuckoo?’ a Submarine Miner interrupted. ‘Crandall goes up to the dormitory as an object-lesson, for moral effect and so forth. Isn’t that true, Head Sahib?’


‘It is. You know too much, Purvis. I licked you for that in ‘79.’


‘You did, sir, and it’s my private belief you chalked the cane.’


‘N-no. But I’ve a very straight eye. Perhaps that misled you.


That opened the flood-gates of fresh memories, and they all told tales out of school.


When Crandall minor that was—Lieutenant R. Crandall of an ordinary Indian regiment—arrived from Exeter on the morning of the match, he was cheered along the whole front of the College, for the prefects had repeated the sense of that which the Head had read them in Flint’s study. When Prout’s house understood that he would claim his Old Boy’s right to a bed for one night, Beetle ran into King’s house next door and executed a public ‘gloat’ up and down the enemy’s big form-room, departing in a haze of ink-pots.


‘What d’you take any notice of these rotters for?’ said Stalky, playing substitute for the Old Boys, magnificent in black jersey, white knickers, and black stockings. ‘I talked to him up in the dormitory when he was changin’. Pulled his sweater down for him. He’s cut about all over the arms—horrid purply ones. He’s goin’ to tell us about it to-night. I asked him to when I was lacin’ his boots.’


‘Well, you have got cheek,’ said Beetle enviously.


‘Slipped out before I thought. But he wasn’t a bit angry. He’s no end of a chap. I swear I’m goin’ to play up like beans. Tell Turkey!’


The technique of that match belongs to a bygone age. Scrimmages were tight and enduring; hacking was direct and to the purpose; and round the scrimmage stood the school, crying, ‘Put down your heads and shove!’ Toward the end everybody lost all sense of decency, and mothers of day-boys too close to the touch-line heard language not included in the bills. No one was actually carried off the field, but both sides felt happier when time was called, and Beetle helped Stalky and M‘Turk into their overcoats. The two had met in the many-legged heart of things, and as Stalky said, had ‘done each other proud.’ As they swaggered woodenly behind the teams—substitutes do not rank as equals of hairy men—they passed a pony-carriage near the wall, and a husky voice cried, ‘Well played. Oh, played indeed!’ It was Stettson major, white-cheeked and hollow-eyed, who had fought his way to the ground under escort of an impatient coachman.


‘Hullo, Stettson,’ said Stalky, checking. ‘Is it safe to come near you yet?’


‘Oh yes. I’m all right. They wouldn’t let me out before, but I had to come to the match. Your mouth looks pretty plummy.’


‘Turkey trod on it accidental-done-a-purpose. Well, I’m glad you’re better, because we owe you something. You and your membranes got us into a sweet mess, young man.’


‘I heard of that,’ said the boy, giggling. ‘The Head told me.’


‘Dooce he did! When?’


‘Oh, come on up to Coll. My shin ‘ll stiffen if we stay jawin’ here.’


‘Shut up, Turkey. I want to find out about this. Well?’


‘He was stayin’ at our house all the time I was ill.’


‘What for? Neglectin’ the Coll. that way? ’Thought he was in town.’


‘I was off my head, you know, and they said I kept on callin’ for him.’


‘Cheek! You’re only a day-boy.’


‘He came just the same, and he about saved my life. I was all bunged up one night—just goin’ to croak, the doctor said—and they stuck a tube or somethin’ in my throat, and the Head sucked out the stuff.’


‘Ugh! ‘Shot if I would!’


‘He ought to have got diphtheria himself, the doctor said. So he stayed on at our house instead of going back. I’d ha’ croaked in another twenty minutes, the doctor says.’


Here the coachman, being under orders, whipped up and nearly ran over the three.


‘My Hat!’ said Beetle. ‘That’s pretty average heroic.’


‘Pretty average!’ M‘Turk’s knee in the small of his back cannoned him into Stalky, who punted him back. ‘You ought to be hung!’


‘And the Head ought to get the V.C.,’ said Stalky. ‘Why, he might have been dead and buried by now. But he wasn’t. But he didn’t. Ho! ho! He just nipped through the hedge like a lusty old blackbird. Extra-special, five hundred lines, an’ gated for a week—all sereno!’


page 5




‘I’ve read o’ somethin’ like that in a book,’ said Beetle. ‘Gummy, what a chap! Just think of it!’


‘I’m thinking,’ said M‘Turk; and he delivered a wild Irish yell that made the team turn round.


‘Shut your fat mouth,’ said Stalky, dancing with impatience. ‘Leave it to your Uncle Stalky, and he’ll have the Head on toast. If you say a word, Beetle, till I give you leave, I swear I’ll slay you. Habeo Capitem crinibus minimis. I’ve got him by the short hairs! Now look as if nothing had happened.’


There was no need of guile. The school was too busy cheering the drawn match. It hung round the lavatories regardless of muddy boots while the team washed. It cheered Crandall minor whenever it caught sight of him, and it cheered more wildly than ever after prayers, because the Old Boys in evening dress, openly twirling their moustaches, attended, and instead of standing with the masters, ranged themselves along the wall immediately before the prefects; and the Head called them over, too—majors, minors, and tertiuses, after their old names.


‘Yes, it’s all very fine,’ he said to his guests after dinner, ‘but the boys are getting a little out of hand. There will be trouble and sorrow later, I’m afraid. You’d better turn in early, Crandall. The dormitory will be sitting up for you. I don’t know to what dizzy heights you may climb in your profession, but I do know you’ll never get such absolute adoration as you’re getting now.’


‘Confound the adoration. I want to finish my cigar, sir.’


‘It’s all pure gold. Go where glory waits, Crandall—minor.’


The setting of that apotheosis was a ten-bed attic dormitory, communicating through doorless openings with three others. The gas flickered over the raw pine wash-stands. There was an incessant whistling of draughts, and outside the naked windows the sea beat on the Pebbleridge.


‘Same old bed—same old mattress, I believe,’ said Crandall, yawning. ‘Same old everything. Oh, but I’m lame! I’d no notion you chaps could play like this.’ He caressed a battered shin. ‘You’ve given us all something to remember you by.’


It needed a few minutes to put them at their ease; and, in some way they could not understand, they were more easy when Crandall turned round and said his prayers—a ceremony he had neglected for some years.


‘Oh, I am sorry. I’ve forgotten to put out the gas.’


‘Please don’t bother,’ said the prefect of the dormitory. ‘Worthington does that.’


A nightgowned twelve-year-old, who had been waiting to show off, leaped from his bed to the bracket and back again, by way of a washstand.


‘How d’you manage when he’s asleep?’ said Crandall, chuckling.


‘Shove a cold cleek down his neck.’


‘It was a wet sponge when I was junior in the dormitory. . . . Hullo! What’s happening?’


The darkness had filled with whispers, the sound of trailing rugs, bare feet on bare boards, protests, giggles, and threats such as:


‘Be quiet, you ass! . . . Squattez-vous on the floor, then! . . . I swear you aren’t going to sit on my bed! . . . Mind the tooth-glass,’ etc.


‘Sta—Corkran said,’ the prefect began, his tone showing his sense of Stalky’s insolence, ‘that perhaps you’d tell us about that business with Duncan’s body.’


‘Yes—yes—yes,’ ran the keen whispers. ‘Tell us.’


‘There’s nothing to tell. What on earth are you chaps hoppin’ about in the cold for?’


‘Never mind us,’ said the voices. ‘Tell about Fat-Sow.’


So Crandall turned on his pillow and spoke to the generation he could not see.


‘Well, about three months ago he was commanding a treasure-guard—a cart full of rupees to pay troops with—five thousand rupees in silver. He was comin’ to a place called Fort Pearson, near Kalabagh.’


‘I was born there,’ squeaked a small fag. ‘It was called after my uncle.’


‘Shut up—you and your uncle! Never mind him, Crandall.’


‘Well, ne’er mind. The Afridis found out that this treasure was on the move, and they ambushed the whole show a couple of miles before he got to the fort, and cut up the escort. Duncan was wounded, and the escort hooked it. There weren’t more than twenty Sepoys all told, and there were any amount of Afridis. As things turned out, I was in charge at Fort Pearson. Fact was, I’d heard the firing and was just going to see about it, when Duncan’s men came up. So we all turned back together. They told me something about an officer, but I couldn’t get the hang of things till I saw a chap under the wheels of the cart out in the open, propped up on one arm, blazing away with a revolver. You see, the escort had abandoned the cart, and the Afridis—they’re an awfully suspicious gang—thought the retreat was a trap—sort of draw, you know—and the cart was the bait. So they had left poor old Duncan alone. ’Minute they spotted how few we were, it was a race across the flat who should reach old Duncan first. We ran, and they ran, and we won, and after a little hackin’ about they pulled off. I never knew it was one of us till I was right on top of him. There are heaps of Duncans in the service, and of course the name didn’t remind me. He wasn’t changed at all hardly. He’d been shot through the lungs, poor old man, and he was pretty thirsty. I gave him a drink and sat down beside him, and—funny thing, too—he said, “Hullo, Toffee!” and I said, “Hullo, Fat-Sow! hope you aren’t hurt,” or something of the kind. But he died in a minute or two—never lifted his head off my knees. . . . I say, you chaps out there will get your death of cold. Better go to bed.’


‘All right. In a minute. But your cuts—your cuts. How did you get wounded?’


‘That was when we were taking the body back to the Fort. They came on again, and there was a bit of a scrimmage.’


‘Did you kill any one?’


‘Yes. Shouldn’t wonder. Good-night.’


page 6




‘Good-night. Thank you, Crandall. Thanks awf’ly, Crandall. Good-night.’


The unseen crowds withdrew. His own dormitory rustled into bed and lay silent for a while.


‘I say, Crandall’—Stalky’s voice was tuned to a wholly foreign reverence.


‘Well, what?’


‘Suppose a chap found another chap croaking with diphtheria—all bunged up with it—and they stuck a tube in his throat and the chap sucked the stuff out, what would you say?’


‘Um,’ said Crandall reflectively. ‘I’ve only heard of one case, and that was a doctor. He did it for a woman.’


‘Oh, this wasn’t a woman. It was only a boy.’


‘Makes it all the finer, then. It’s about the bravest thing a man can do. Why?’


‘Oh, I heard of a chap doin’ it. That’s all.’


‘Then he’s a brave man.’


‘Would you funk it?’


‘Ra-ather. Anybody would. Fancy dying of diphtheria in cold blood.’


‘Well—ah! Er! Look here!’ The sentence ended in a grunt, for Stalky had leaped out of bed and with M‘Turk was sitting on the head of Beetle, who would have sprung the mine there and then.


Next day, which was the last of the term and given up to a few wholly unimportant examinations, began with wrath and war. Mr. King had discovered that nearly all his house—it lay, as you know, next door but one to Prout’s in the long range of buildings—had unlocked the doors between the dormitories and had gone in to listen to a story told by Crandall. He went to the Head, clamorous, injured, appealing; for he never approved of allowing so-called young men of the world to contaminate the morals of boyhood. ‘Very good,’ said the Head. He would attend to it.


‘Well, I’m awf’ly sorry,’ said Crandall guiltily. ‘I don’t think I told ’em anything they oughtn’t to hear. Don’t let them get into trouble on my account.’


‘Tck!’ the Head answered, with the ghost of a wink. ‘It isn’t the boys that make trouble; it’s the masters. However, Prout and King don’t approve of dormitory gatherings on this scale, and one must back up the house-masters. Moreover, it’s hopeless to punish two houses only, so late in the term. We must be fair and include everybody. Let’s see. They have a holiday task for the Easters, which, of course, none of them will ever look at. We will give the whole school, except prefects and study-boys, regular prep. to-night; and the Common-room will have to supply a master to take it. We must be fair to all.’


‘Prep. on the last night of the term. Whew!’ said Crandall, thinking of his own wild youth. ‘I fancy there will be larks.’


The school, frolicking among packed trunks, whooping down the corridor, and ‘gloating’ in form-rooms, received the news with amazement and rage. No school in the world did prep. on the last night of the term. This thing was monstrous, tyrannical, subversive of law, religion, and morality. They would go into the form-rooms, and they would take their degraded holiday task with them, but—here they smiled and speculated what manner of man the Common-room would send up against them. The lot fell on Mason, credulous and enthusiastic, who loved youth. No other master was anxious to take that ‘prep.,’ for the school lacked the steadying influence of tradition; and men accustomed to the ordered routine of ancient foundations found it occasionally insubordinate. The four long form-rooms, in which all below the rank of study-boys worked, received him with thunders of applause. Ere he had coughed twice they favoured him with a metrical summary of the marriage-laws of Great Britain, as recorded by the High Priest of the Israelites and commented on by the leader of the host. The lower forms reminded him that it was the last day, and that therefore he must ‘take it all in play.’ When he dashed off to rebuke them, the Lower Fourth and Upper Third began with one accord to be sick, loudly and realistically. Mr. Mason tried, of all vain things under heaven, to argue with them, and a bold soul at a back desk bade him ‘take fifty lines for not ’olding up ’is ’and before speaking.’ As one who prided himself upon the precision of his English this cut Mason to the quick, and while he was trying to discover the offender, the Upper and Lower Second, three form-rooms away, turned out the gas and threw ink-pots. It was a pleasant and stimulating ‘prep.’ The study-boys and prefects heard the echoes of it far off, and the Common-room at dessert smiled.


Stalky waited, watch in hand, till half-past eight.


‘If it goes on much longer the Head will come up,’ said he. ‘We’ll tell the studies first, and then the form-rooms. Look sharp!’


He allowed no time for Beetle to be dramatic or M‘Turk to drawl. They poured into study after study, told their tale, and went again so soon as they saw they were understood, waiting for no comment; while the noise of that unholy ‘prep.’ grew and deepened. By the door of Flint’s study they met Mason flying towards the corridor.


‘He’s gone to fetch the Head. Hurry up! Come on!’


They broke into Number Twelve form-room abreast and panting.


‘The Head! The Head! The Head!’ That call stilled the tumult for a minute, and Stalky leaping to a desk shouted, ‘He went and sucked the diphtheria stuff out of Stettson major’s throat when we thought he was in town. Stop rotting, you asses! Stettson major would have croaked if the Head hadn’t done it. The Head might have died himself. Crandall says it’s the bravest thing any livin’ man can do, and’—his voice cracked—‘the Head don’t know we know!’


M‘Turk and Beetle, jumping from desk to desk, drove the news home among the junior forms. There was a pause, and then, Mason behind him, the Head entered. It was in the established order of things that no boy should speak or move under his eye. He expected the hush of awe. He was received with cheers—steady, ceaseless cheering. Being a wise man he went away, and the forms were silent and a little frightened.


‘It’s all right,’ said Stalky. ‘He can’t do much. ’Tisn’t as if you’d pulled the desks up like we did when old Carleton took prep. once. Keep it up! Hear ’em cheering in the studies!’ He rocketed out with a yell, to find Flint and the prefects lifting the roof off the corridor.


page 7




When the Head of a limited liability company, paying four per cent., is cheered on his saintly way to prayers, not only by four form-rooms of boys waiting punishment, but by his trusted prefects, he can either ask for an explanation or go his road with dignity, while the senior housemaster glares like an excited cat and points out to a white and trembling mathematical master that certain methods—not his, thank God—usually produce certain results. Out of delicacy the Old Boys did not attend that call-over; and it was to the school drawn up in the gymnasium that the Head spoke icily.


‘It is not often that I do not understand you; but I confess I do not to-night. Some of you, after your idiotic performances at prep., seem to think me a fit person to cheer. I am going to show you that I am not.’


Crash—crash—crash—came the triple cheer that disproved it, and the Head glowered under the gas.


‘That is enough. You will gain nothing. The little boys (the Lower School did not like that form of address) will do me three hundred lines apiece in the holidays. I shall take no further notice of them. The Upper School will do me one thousand lines apiece in the holidays, to be shown up the evening of the day they come back. And further——’


‘Gummy, what a glutton!’ Stalky whispered.


‘For your behaviour towards Mr. Mason I intend to lick the whole of the Upper School to-morrow when I give you your journey-money. This will include the three study-boys I found dancing on the form-room desks when I came up. Prefects will stay after call-over.’


The school filed out in silence, but gathered in groups by the gymnasium door waiting what might befall.


‘And now, Flint,’ said the Head, ‘will you be good enough to give me some explanation of your conduct?’


‘Well, sir,’ said Flint desperately, ’if you save a chap’s life at the risk of your own when he’s dyin’ of diphtheria, and the Coll. finds it out, whawhat can you expect, sir?’


‘Um, I see. Then that noise was not meant for—ah, cheek. I can connive at immorality, but I cannot stand impudence. However, it does not excuse their insolence to Mr. Mason. I’ll forgo the lines this once, remember; but the lickings hold good.’


When this news was made public, the school, lost in wonder and admiration, gasped at the Head as he went to his house. Here was a man to be reverenced. On the rare occasions when he caned he did it very scientifically, and the execution of a hundred boys would be epic—immense.


‘It’s all right, Head Sahib. We know,’ said Crandall, as the Head slipped off his gown with a grunt in his smoking-room. ‘I found out just now from our substitute. He was gettin’ my opinion of your performance last night in the dormitory. I didn’t know then that it was you he was talkin’ about. Crafty young animal. Freckled chap with eyes—Corkran, I think his name is.’


‘Oh, I know him, thank you,’ said the Head; and reflectively, ‘Ye-es, I should have included them even if I hadn’t seen ’em.’


‘If the old Coll. weren’t a little above themselves already, we’d chair you down the corridor,’ said the Engineer. ‘Oh, Bates, how could you? You might have caught it yourself, and where would we have been then?’


‘I always knew you were worth twenty of us any day. Now I’m sure of it,’ said the Squadron Commander, looking round for contradictions.


‘He isn’t fit to manage a school, though. Promise you’ll never do it again, Bates Sahib. We—we can’t go away comfy in our minds if you take these risks,’ said the Gunner.


‘Bates Sahib, you aren’t ever goin’ to cane the whole Upper School, are you?’ said Crandall.


‘I can connive at immorality, as I said, but I can’t stand impudence. Mason’s lot is quite hard enough even when I back him. Besides, the men at the golf-club heard them singing “Aaron and Moses.” I shall have complaints about that from the parents of day-boys. Decency must be preserved.’


‘We’re coming to help,’ said all the guests.


The Upper School were caned one after the other, their overcoats over their arms, the brakes waiting in the road below to take them to the station, their journey-money on the table. The Head began with Stalky, M‘Turk, and Beetle. He dealt faithfully by them.


‘And here’s your journey-money. Good-bye, and pleasant holidays.’


‘Good-bye. Thank you, sir. Good-bye.’


They shook hands.


‘Desire don’t outrun performance—much—this mornin’. We got the cream of it,’ said Stalky. ‘Now wait till a few chaps come out, and we’ll really cheer him.’


‘Don’t wait on our account, please,’ said Crandall, speaking for the Old Boys. ‘We’re going to begin now.’


It was very well so long as the cheering was confined to the corridor, but when it spread to the gymnasium, when the boys awaiting their turn cheered, the Head gave it up in despair, and the remnant flung themselves upon him to shake hands.


Then they seriously devoted themselves to cheering till the brakes were hustled off the premises in dumb show.


‘Didn’t I say I’d get even with him?’ said Stalky on the box-seat, as they swung into the narrow Northam street. ‘Now all together—takin’ time from your Uncle Stalky:


 It’s a way we have in the Army,

It’s a way we have in the Navy,

It’s a way we have in the Public Schools,

        Which nobody can deny!’

			


				





	

					

				
A Little More Beef
			

			
			

				


[a short tale]


“A LITTLE more beef, please!’ said the fat man with the grey whiskers and the spattered waistcoat. “You can’t eat too much o’ good beef—not even when the prices are going up hoof over hock.” And he settled himself down to load in a fresh cargo.


Now, this is how the fat man had come by his meal. One thousand miles away, a red Texan steer was preparing to go to bed for the night in the company of his fellows—myriads of his fellows. From dawn till late dusk he had loafed across the leagues of grass and grunted savagely as each mouthful proved to his mind that grass was not what he had known it in his youth. But the steer was wrong. That summer had brought great drought to Montana and Northern Dakota. The cattle feed was withering day by day, and the more prudent stock owners had written to the East for manufactured provender. Only the little cactus that grows with the grasses appeared to enjoy itself. The cattle certainly did not; and the cowboys from the very beginning of spring had used language considered profane even for the cowboy. What their ponies said has never been recorded. The ponies had the worst time of all, and at each nightly camp whispered to each other their longings for the winter, when they would be turned out on the freezing ranges—galled from wither to croup, but riderless—thank Heaven, riderless. On these various miseries the sun looked down impartial. His business was to cake the ground and ruin the grasses.


The cattle—the acres of huddled cattle—were restless. In the first place, they were forced to scatter for graze; and in the second, the heat told on their tempers and made them prod each other with their long horns. In the heart of the herd you would have thought men were fighting with single-sticks. On the outskirts, posted at quarter-mile intervals, sat the cowboys on their ponies, the brims of their hats tilted over their sun-skinned noses, their feet out of the big brown-leather hooded stirrups, and their hands gripping the horn of the heavy saddle to keep themselves from falling on to the ground—asleep. A cowboy can sleep at full gallop; on the other hand, he can keep awake also at full gallop for eight and forty hours and wear down six unamiable bronchos in the process.


Lafe Parmalee; Shwink, the German who could not ride but had a blind affection for cattle from the branding-yard to the butcher’s block; Michigan, so called because he said he came from California but spoke not the Califomian tongue; Jim from San Diego, to distinguish him from other Jims, and The Corpse, were the outposts of the herd. The Corpse had won his name from a statement, made in the fulness of much McBrayer whisky, that he had once been a graduate of Corpus Christi. He spoke truth, but to the wrong audience. The inhabitants of the Elite Saloon, after several attempts to get the hang of the name, dubbed the speaker The Corpse, and as long as he cinched a broncho or jingled a spur within four hundred miles of Livingston—yea, far in the south, even to the unexplored borders of the sheep-eater Indians—he was known by that unlovely name. How he had passed from college to cattle no man knew, and, according to the etiquette of the West, no man asked. He was not by any means a tenderfoot—had no unmanly weakness for washing, did not in the least object to appearing at the wild and wonderful reunions held nightly in “Miss Minnie’s parlour,’’ whose flaring advertisement did not in the least disturb the proprieties of Wachoma Junction, and, in common with his associates, was, when drunk, ready to shoot at anything or anybody. He was not proud. He had condescended to take in hand and educate a young and promising Chicago drummer, who by evil fate had wandered into that wilderness, where all his cunning was of no account; and from that youth’s quivering hand—outstretched by command—had shot away the top of a wineglass. The Corpse was recognised in the freemasonry of the craft as “one of the C.M.R.’s boys, and tough at that.”


The C.M.R. controlled much cattle, and their slaughter-houses in Chicago bubbled the blood of beeves all day long. Their salt-beef fed the sailor on the sea, and their iced, best firsts, the housekeeper in the London suburbs. Not even the firm knew how many cowboys they employed, but all the firm knew that on the fourteenth day of July their stockyards at Wachoma Junction were to be filled with two thousand head of cattle, ready for immediate shipment to Chicago while prices yet ruled high, and before the grass had withered utterly. Lafe, Michigan, Jim, The Corpse and the others knew this too, and were heartily glad of it, because they would be paid up in Chicago for their half-year’s work, and would then do their best towards painting that town in purest vermilion. They would get drunk; they would gamble, and would otherwise enjoy themselves till they were broke; and then they would hire out again.


The sun dropped behind the rolling hills; and the cattle halted for the night, cheered and cooled by a little wandering breeze. The red steer’s mother had been caught in a hailstorm five years ago. Till she went the way of all cow-flesh she missed no opportunity of telling her son to beware of the hot day and the cold wind that does not know its own mind. “When it blows five ways at once,” said she, “and makes your horns feel creepy, get away, my son. Follow the time-honoured instinct of our tribe, and run. I ran”—she looked ruefully at the scars on her side—“but that was in a barbwire country, and it hurt me. None the less, run.” The red steer chewed his cud, and the little wind out of the darkness played round his horns—all five ways at once. The cowboys lifted up their voices in unmelodious song, that the cattle might know where they were, and began slowly walking round the recumbent herd. “Do anybody’s horns feel creepy?” queried the red steer of his neighbours. “My mother told me”—and he repeated the tale, to the edification of the yearlings and the three-year olds breathing heavily at his side.


The song of the cowboys rose higher. The cattle bowed their heads. Their men were at hand. They were safe. Something had happened to the quiet stars. They were dying out one by one and the wind was freshening. “Bless my hoofs!” muttered a yearling, “my horns are beginning to feel creepy.” Softly the red steer lifted himself from the ground. “Come away,” quoth he to the yearling. “Come away to the outskirts, and we’ll move. My mother said . . . ” The innocent fool followed, and a white heifer saw them move. Being a woman she naturally bellowed “Timber wolves!” and ran forward blindly into a dun steer dreaming over clover. Followed the thunder of cattle rising to their feet, and the triple crack of a whip. The little wind had dropped for a moment, only to fall on the herd with a shriek and a few stinging drops of hail, that stung as keenly as the whips. The herd broke into a trot, a canter, and then a mad gallop. Black fear was behind them, black night in front. They headed into the night, bellowing with terror; and at their side rode the men with the whips. The ponies grunted as they felt the raking spurs. They knew that, an all-night gallop lay before them, and woe betide the luckless cayuse that stumbled in that ride. Then fell the hail—blinding and choking and flogging in one and the same stroke. The herd opened like a fan. The red steer headed a contingent he knew not whither. A man with a whip rode at his right flank. Behind him the lightning showed a field of glimmering horns, and of muzzles flecked with foam; a field of red terror-strained eyes and shaggy frontlets. The man looked back also, and his terror was greater than that of the beasts. The herd had surrounded him in the darkness. His salvation lay in the legs of Whisky Peat—and Whisky Peat knew it— knew it until an unseen gopher hole received his near forefoot as he strained every nerve—in the heart of the flying herd, with the red steer at his flanks. Then, being only an over-worked cayuse. Whisky Peat fell, and the red steer fancied that there was something soft on the ground.


.     .     .     .     .


It was Michigan, Jim and Lafe who at last brought the herd to a standstill as the dawn was breaking. “What’s come to The Corpse?” quoth Lafe. Jim loosened the girths of his quivering pony and made answer slowly: “Onless I’m a blamed fool, the gentleman is now livin’ up to his durned appellation ’bout fifteen miles back—what there is of him and the cayuse.” “Let’s go and look,” said Lafe, shuddering slightly, for the morning air, you must understand, was raw. “Let’s go to—a much hotter place than Texas,” responded Jim. “Get the steers to the Junction first. Guess what’s left of The Corpse will keep.”


And it did. And that was how the fat man in Chicago got his beef. It belonged to the red steer.



			


				





	

					

				
Little Foxes
			

			
			

				


page 1 of 8




A FOX came out of his earth on the banks of the Great River Gihon, which waters Ethiopia. He saw a white man riding through the dry dhurra-stalks, and, that his destiny might be fulfilled, barked at him. The rider drew rein among the villagers round his stirrup.


“What,” said he, “is that?”


“That,” said the Sheikh of the village, “is a fox, O Excellency Our Governor.”


“It is not, then, a jackal?”


“No jackal, but Abu Hussein the father of cunning.”


“Also,” the white man spoke half aloud, “I am Mudir of this Province.”


“It is true,” they cried. “Ya, Saart el Mudir” (O Excellency Our Governor).


The Great River Gihon, well used to the moods of kings, slid between his mile-wide banks toward the sea, while the Governor praised God in a loud and searching cry never before heard by the river.


When he had lowered his right forefinger from behind his right ear, the villagers talked to him of their crops—barley, dhurrah, millet, onions, and the like. The Governor stood in his stirrups. North he looked up a strip of green cultivation a few hundred yards wide that lay like a carpet between the river and the tawny line of the desert. Sixty miles that strip stretched before him, and as many behind. At every half-mile a groaning water-wheel lifted the soft water from the river to the crops by way of a mud-built aqueduct. A foot or so wide was the water-channel; five foot or more high was the bank on which it ran, and its base was broad in proportion. Abu Hussein, misnamed the Father of Cunning, drank from the river below his earth, and his shadow was long in the low sun. He could not understand the loud cry which the Governor had cried.


The Sheikh of the village spoke of the crops from which the rulers of all lands draw revenue; but the Governor’s eyes were fixed, between his horse’s ears, on the nearest water-channel.


“Very like a ditch in Ireland,” he murmured, and smiled, dreaming of a razor-topped bank in distant Kildare.


Encouraged by that smile, the Sheikh continued. “When crops fail it is necessary to remit taxation. Then it is a good thing, O Excellency Our Governor, that you come and see the crops which have failed, and discover that we have not lied.”


“Assuredly.” The Governor shortened his reins. The horse cantered on, rose at the embankment of the water-channel, changed leg cleverly on top, and hopped down in a cloud of golden dust.


Abu Hussein from his earth watched with interest. He had never before seen such things.


“Assuredly,” the Governor repeated, and came back by the way he had gone. “It is always best to see for one’s self.”


An ancient and still bullet-speckled stern-wheel steamer, with a barge lashed to her side, came round the river bend. She whistled to tell the Governor his dinner was ready, and the horse, seeing his fodder piled on the barge, whinnied back.


“Moreover,” the Sheikh added, “in the days of the Oppression the Emirs and their creatures dispossessed many people of their lands. All up and down the river our people are waiting to return to their lawful fields.”


“Judges have been appointed to settle that matter,” said the Governor. “They will presently come in steamers and hear the witnesses.”


“Wherefore? Did the Judges kill the Emirs? We would rather be judged by the men who executed God’s judgment on the Emirs. We would rather abide by your decision, O Excellency Our Governor.”


The Governor nodded. It was a year since he had seen the Emirs stretched close and still round the reddened sheepskin where lay El Mahdi, the Prophet of God. Now there remained no trace of their dominion except the old steamer, once part of a Dervish flotilla, which was his house and office. She sidled into the shore, lowered a plank, and the Governor followed his horse aboard.


Lights burned on her till late, dully reflected in the river that tugged at her mooring-ropes. The Governor read, not for the first time, the administration reports of one John Jorrocks, M.F.H.


“We shall need,” he said suddenly to his Inspector, “about ten couple. I’ll get ’em when I go home. You’ll be Whip, Baker?”


The Inspector, who was not yet twenty-five, signified his assent in the usual manner, while Abu Hussein barked at the vast desert moon.


“Ha!” said the Governor, coming out in his pyjamas, “we’ll be giving you capivi in another three months, my friend.”




.     .     .     .     .




It was four, as a matter of fact, ere a steamer with a melodious bargeful of hounds anchored at that landing. The Inspector leaped down among them, and the homesick wanderers received him as a brother.


“Everybody fed ’em everything on board ship, but they’re real dainty hounds at bottom,” the Governor explained. “That’s Royal you’ve got hold of—the pick of the bunch—and the bitch that’s got, hold of you—she’s a little excited—is May Queen. Merriman, out of Cottesmore Maudlin, you know.”


“I know. ’Grand old bitch with the tan eyebrows,”’ the Inspector cooed. “Oh, Ben! I shall take an interest in life now. Hark to ’em! O hark!”


Abu Hussein, under the high bank, went about his night’s work. An eddy carried his scent to the barge, and three villages heard the crash of music that followed. Even then Abu Hussein did not know better than to bark in reply.


“Well, what about my Province?” the Governor asked.


“Not so bad,” the Inspector answered, with Royal’s head between his knees. “Of course, all the villages want remission of taxes, but, as far as I can see, the whole country’s stinkin’ with foxes. Our trouble will be choppin’ ’em in cover. I’ve got a list of the only villages entitled to any remission. What d’you call this flat-sided, blue-mottled beast with the jowl?”


“Beagle-boy. I have my doubts about him. Do you think we can get two days a week?”


page 2


“Easy; and as many byes as you please. The Sheikh of this village here tells me that his barley has failed, and he wants a fifty per cent remission.”


“We’ll begin with him to-morrow, and look at his crops as we go. Nothing like personal supervision,” said the Governor.


They began at sunrise. The pack flew off the barge in every direction, and, after gambols, dug like terriers at Abu Hussein’s many earths. Then they drank themselves pot-bellied on Gihon water while the Governor and the Inspector chastised them with whips. Scorpions were added; for May Queen nosed one, and was removed to the barge lamenting. Mystery (a puppy, alas!) met a snake, and the blue-mottled Beagle-boy (never a dainty hound) ate that which he should have passed by. Only Royal, of the Belvoir tan head and the sad, discerning eyes, made any attempt to uphold the honour of England before the watching village.


“You can’t expect everything,” said the Governor after breakfast.


“We got it, though—everything except foxes. Have you seen May Queen’s nose?” said the Inspector.


“And Mystery’s dead. We’ll keep ’em coupled next time till we get well in among the crops. I say, what a babbling body-snatcher that Beagle-boy is! Ought to be drowned!”


“They bury people so damn casual hereabouts. Give him another chance,” the Inspector pleaded, not knowing that he should live to repent most bitterly.


“Talkin’ of chances,” said the Governor, “this Sheikh lies about his barley bein’ a failure. If it’s high enough to hide a hound at this time of year, it’s all right. And he wants a fifty per cent remission, you said?”


“You didn’t go on past the melon patch where I tried to turn Wanderer. It’s all burned up from there on to the desert. His other water-wheel has broken down, too,” the Inspector replied.


“Very good. We’ll split the difference and allow him twenty-five per cent off. Where’ll we meet to-morrow?”


“There’s some trouble among the villages down the river about their land-titles. It’s good goin’ ground there, too,” the Inspector said.


The next meet, then, was some twenty miles down the river, and the pack were not enlarged till they were fairly among the fields. Abu Hussein was there in force—four of him. Four delirious hunts of four minutes each—four hounds per fox—ended in four earths just above the river. All the village looked on.


“We forgot about the earths. The banks are riddled with ’em. This’ll defeat us,” said the Inspector.


“Wait a moment!” The Governor drew forth a sneezing hound. “I’ve just remembered I’m Governor of these parts.”


“Then turn out a black battalion to stop for us. We’ll need ’em, old man.”


The Governor straightened his back. “Give ear, O people!” he cried. “I make a new Law!”


The villagers closed in. He called:—


“Henceforward I will give one dollar to the man on whose land Abu Hussein is found. And another dollar”—he held up the coin—“to the man on whose land these dogs shall kill him. But to the man on whose land Abu Hussein shall run into a hole such as is this hole, I will give not dollars, but a most unmeasurable beating. Is it understood?”


“Our Excellency,” a man stepped forth, “on my land Abu Hussein was found this morning. Is it not so, brothers?”


None denied. The Governor tossed him over four dollars without a word.


“On my land they all went into their holes,” cried another. “Therefore I must be beaten.”


“Not so. The land is mine, and mine are the beatings.”


This second speaker thrust forward his shoulders already bared, and the villagers shouted.


“Hullo! Two men anxious to be licked? There must be some swindle about the land,” said the Governor. Then in the local vernacular: “What are your rights to the beating?”


As a river-reach changes beneath a slant of the sun, that which had been a scattered mob changed to a court of most ancient justice. The hounds tore and sobbed at Abu Hussein’s hearthstone, all unnoticed among the legs of the witnesses, and Gihon, also accustomed to laws, purred approval.


“You will not wait till the Judges come up the river to settle the dispute?” said the Governor at last.


“No!” shouted all the village save the man who had first asked to be beaten. “We will abide by Our Excellency’s decision. Let Our Excellency turn out the creatures of the Emirs who stole our land in the days of the Oppression.”


“And thou sayest?” the Governor turned to the man who had first asked to be beaten.


“I say I will wait till the wise Judges come down in the steamer. Then I will bring my many witnesses,” he replied.


“He is rich. He will bring many witnesses,” the village Sheikh muttered.


“No need. Thy own mouth condemns thee!” the Governor cried. “No man lawfully entitled to his land would wait one hour before entering upon it. Stand aside!” The man, fell back, and the village jeered him.


The second claimant stooped quickly beneath the lifted hunting-crop. The village rejoiced.


“Oh, Such an one; Son of such an one,” said the Governor, prompted by the Sheikh, “learn, from the day when I send the order, to block up all the holes where Abu Hussein may hide on—thy—land!”


The light flicks ended. The man stood up triumphant. By that accolade had the Supreme Government acknowledged his title before all men.


While the village praised the perspicacity of the Governor, a naked, pock-marked child strode forward to the earth, and stood on one leg, unconcerned as a young stork.


page 3




“Hal” he said, hands behind his back. “This should be blocked up with bundles of dhurra stalks—or, better, bundles of thorns.”


“Better thorns,” said the Governor. “Thick ends innermost.”


The child nodded gravely and squatted on the sand.


“An evil day for thee, Abu Hussein,” he shrilled into the mouth of the earth. “A day of obstacles to thy flagitious returns in the morning.”


“Who is it?” the Governor asked the Sheikh. “It thinks.”


“Farag the Fatherless. His people were slain in the days of the Oppression. The man to whom Our Excellency has awarded the land is, as it were, his maternal uncle.”


“Will it come with me and feed the big dogs?” said the Governor.


The other peering children drew back. “Run!” they cried. “Our Excellency will feed Farag to the big dogs.”


“I will come,” said Farag. “And I will never go.” He threw his arm round Royal’s neck, and the wise beast licked his face.


“Binjamin, by Jove!” the Inspector cried.


“No!” said the Governor. “I believe he has the makings of a James Pigg!”


Farag waved his hand to his uncle, and led Royal on to the barge. The rest of the pack followed.




.     .     .     .     .




Gihon, that had seen many sports, learned to know the Hunt barge well. He met her rounding his bends on grey December dawns to music wild and lamentable as the almost forgotten throb of Dervish drums, when, high above Royal’s tenor bell, sharper even than lying Beagle-boy’s falsetto break, Farag chanted deathless war against Abu Hussein and all his seed. At sunrise the river would shoulder her carefully into her place, and listen to the rush and scutter of the pack fleeing up the gang-plank, and the tramp of the Governor’s Arab behind them. They would pass over the brow into the dewless crops where Gihon, low and shrunken, could only guess what they were about when Abu Hussein flew down the bank to scratch at a stopped earth, and flew back into the barley again. As Farag had foretold, it was evil days for Abu Hussein ere he learned to take the necessary steps and to get away crisply. Sometimes Gihon saw the whole procession of the Hunt silhouetted against the morning-blue, bearing him company for many merry miles. At every half mile the horses and the donkeys jumped the water-channels—up, on, change your leg, and off again like figures in a zoetrope, till they grew small along the line of waterwheels. Then Gibon waited their rustling return through the crops, and took them to rest on his bosom at ten o’clock. While the horses ate, and Farag slept with his head on Royal’s flank, the Governor and his Inspector worked for the good of the Hunt and his Province.


After a little time there was no need to beat any man for neglecting his earths. The steamer’s destination was telegraphed from waterwheel to waterwheel, and the villagers stopped out and put to according. If an earth were overlooked, it meant some dispute as to the ownership of the land, and then and there the Hunt checked and settled it in this wise: The Governor and the Inspector side by side, but the latter half a horse’s length to the rear; both bare-shouldered claimants well in front; the villagers half-mooned behind them, and Farag with the pack, who quite understood the performance, sitting down on the left. Twenty minutes were enough to settle the most complicated case, for, as the Governor said to a judge on the steamer, “One gets at the truth in a hunting-field a heap quicker than in your lawcourts.”


“But when the evidence is conflicting?” the Judge suggested.


“Watch the field. They’ll throw tongue fast enough if you’re running a wrong scent. You’ve never had an appeal from one of my decisions yet.”


The Sheikhs on horseback—the lesser folk on clever donkeys—the children so despised by Farag soon understood that villages which repaired their waterwheels and channels stood highest in the Governor’s favour. He bought their barley, for his horses.


“Channels,” he said, “are necessary that we may all jump them. They are necessary, moreover, for the crops. Let there be many wheels and sound channels—and much good barley.”


“Without money,” replied an aged Sheikh, “there are no waterwheels.”


“I will lend the money,” said the Governor.


“At what interest, O Our Excellency?”


“Take you two of May Queen’s puppies to bring up in your village in such a manner that they do not eat filth, nor lose their hair, nor catch fever from lying in the sun, but become wise hounds.”


“Like Ray-yal—not like Bigglebai?” (Already it was an insult along the River to compare a man to the shifty anthropophagous blue-mottled harrier.)


“Certainly, like Ray-yal—not in the least like Bigglebai. That shall be the interest on the loan. Let the puppies thrive and the waterwheel be built, and I shall be content,” said the Governor.


“The wheel shall be built, but, O Our Excellency, if by God’s favour the pups grow to be well-smelters, not filth-eaters, not unaccustomed to their names, not lawless, who will do them and me justice at the time of judging the young dogs?”


“Hounds, man, hounds! Ha-wands, O Sheikh, we call them in their manhood.”


“The ha-wands when they are judged at the Sha-ho. I have unfriends down the river to whom Our Excellency has also entrusted ha-wands to bring up.”


“Puppies, man! Pah-peaz we call them, O Sheikh, in their childhood.”


“Pah-peat. My enemies may judge my pah-peaz unjustly at the Sha-ho. This must be thought of.”


“I see the obstacle. Hear now! If the new waterwheel is built in a month without oppression, thou, O Sheikh, shalt be named one of the judges to judge the pah-peaz at the Sha-ho. Is it understood?”


page 4




“Understood. We will build the wheel. I and my seed are responsible for the repayment of the loan. Where are my pah-peaz? If they eat fowls, must they on any account eat the feathers?”


“On no account must they eat the feathers. Farag in the barge will tell thee how they are to live.”


There is no instance of any default on the Governor’s personal and unauthorized loans, for which they called him the Father of Waterwheels. But the first puppyshow at the capital needed enormous tact and the presence of a black battalion ostentatiously drilling in the barrack square to prevent trouble after the prize-giving.


But who can chronicle the glories of the Gihon Hunt—or their shames? Who remembers the kill in the market-place, when the Governor bade the assembled sheikhs and warriors observe how the hounds would instantly devour the body of Abu Hussein; but how, when he had scientifically broken it up, the weary pack turned from it in loathing, and Farag wept because he said the world’s face had been blackened? What men who have not yet ridden beyond the sound of any horn recall the midnight run which ended—Beagleboy leading—among tombs; the hasty whip-off, and the oath, taken Abo e bones, to forget the worry? The desert run, when Abu Hussein forsook the cultivation, and made a six-mile point to earth in a desolate khor—when strange armed riders on camels swooped out of a ravine, and instead of giving battle, offered to take the tired hounds home on their beasts. Which they did, and vanished.


Above all, who remembers the death of Royal, when a certain Sheikh wept above the body of the stainless hound as it might have been his son’s—and that day the Hunt rode no more? The badly-kept log-book says little of this, but at the end of their second season (forty-nine brace) appears the dark entry: “New blood badly wanted. They are beginning to listen to beagle-boy.”




.     .     .     .     .




The Inspector attended to the matter when his leave fell due.


“Remember,” said the Governor, “you must get us the best blood in England—real, dainty hounds—expense no object, but don’t trust your own judgment. Present my letters of introduction, and take what they give you.


The Inspector presented his letters in a society where they make much of horses, more of hounds, and are tolerably civil to men who can ride. They passed him from house to house, mounted him according to his merits, and fed him, after five years of goat chop and Worcester sauce, perhaps a thought too richly.


The seat or castle where he made his great coup does not much matter. Four Masters of Foxhounds were at table, and in a mellow hour the Inspector told them stories of the Gihon Hunt. He ended: “Ben said I wasn’t to trust my own judgment about hounds, but I think there ought to be a special tariff for Empire-makers.”


As soon as his hosts could speak, they reassured him on this point.


“And now tell us about your first puppy-show all over again,” said one.


“And about the earth-stoppin’. Was that all Ben’s own invention?” said another.


“Wait a moment,” said a large, clean-shaven man—not an M.F.H.—at the end of the table. “Are your villagers habitually beaten by your Governor when they fail to stop foxes’ holes?”


The tone and the phrase were enough even if, as the Inspector confessed afterwards, the big, blue double-chinned man had not looked so like Beagle-boy. He took him on for the honour of Ethiopia.


“We only hunt twice a week—sometimes three times. I’ve never known a man chastised more than four times a week unless there’s a bye.”


The large loose-lipped man flung his napkin down, came round the table, cast himself into the chair next the Inspector, and leaned forward earnestly, so that he breathed in the Inspector’s face.


“Chastised with what?” he said.


“With the kourbash—on the feet. A kourbash is a strip of old hippo-hide with a sort of keel on it, like the cutting edge of a boar’s tusk. But we use the rounded side for a first offender.”


“And do any consequences follow this sort of thing? For the victim, I mean—not for you?”


“Ve-ry rarely. Let me be fair. I’ve never seen a man die under the lash, but gangrene may set up if the kourbash has been pickled.”


“Pickled in what?” All the table was still and interested.


“In copperas, of course. Didn’t you know that” said the Inspector.


“Thank God I didn’t.” The large man sputtered visibly.


The Inspector wiped his face and grew bolder.


“You mustn’t think we’re careless about our earthstoppers. We’ve a Hunt fund for hot tar. Tar’s a splendid dressing if the toe-nails aren’t beaten off. But huntin’ as large a country as we do, we mayn’t be back at that village for a month, and if the dressings ain’t renewed, and gangrene sets in, often as not you find your man pegging about on his stumps. We’ve a well-known local name for ’em down the river. We call ’em the Mudir’s Cranes. You see, I persuaded the Governor only to bastinado on one foot.”


“On one foot? The Mudir’s Cranes!” The large man turned purple to the top of his bald head. “ Would you mind giving me the local word for Mudir’s Cranes?”


From a too well-stocked memory the Inspector drew one short adhesive word which surprises by itself even unblushing Ethiopia. He spelt it out, saw the large man write it down on his cuff and withdraw. Then the Inspector translated a few of its significations and implications to the four Masters of Foxhounds. He left three days later with eight couple of the best hounds in England—a free and a friendly and an ample gift from four packs to the Gihon Hunt. He had honestly meant to undeceive the large blue mottled man, but somehow forgot about it.


page 5




The new draft marks a new chapter in the Hunt’s history. From an isolated phenomenon in a barge it became a permanent institution with brick-built kennels ashore, and an influence social, political, and administrative, co-terminous with the boundaries of the province. Ben, the Governor, departed to England, where he kept a pack of real dainty hounds, but never ceased to long for the old lawless lot. His successors were ex-officio Masters of the Gihon Hunt, as all Inspectors were Whips. For one reason; Farag, the kennel huntsman, in khaki and puttees, would obey nothing under the rank of an Excellency, and the hounds would obey no one but Farag; for another, the best way of estimating crop returns and revenue was by riding straight to hounds; for a third, though Judges down the river issued signed and sealed land-titles to all lawful owners, yet public opinion along the river never held any such title valid till it had been confirmed, according to precedent, by the Governor’s hunting crop in the hunting field, above the wilfully neglected earth. True, the ceremony had been cut down to three mere taps on the shoulder, but Governors who tried to evade that much found themselves and their office compassed about with a great cloud of witnesses who took up their time with lawsuits and, worse still, neglected the puppies. The older sheikhs, indeed, stood out for the unmeasurable beatings of the old days—the sharper the punishment, they argued, the surer the title; but here the hand of modern progress was against them, and they contented themselves with telling tales of Ben the first Governor, whom they called the Father of Waterwheels, and of that heroic age when men, horses, and hounds were worth following.


This same Modern Progress which brought dog biscuit and brass water-taps to the kennels was at work all over the world. Forces, Activities, and Movements sprang into being, agitated themselves, coalesced, and, in one political avalanche, overwhelmed a bewildered, and not in the least intending it, England. The echoes of the New Era were borne into the Province on the wings of inexplicable cables. The Gihon Hunt read speeches and sentiments, and policies which amazed them, and they thanked God, prematurely, that their Province was too far off, too hot, and too hard worked to be reached by those speakers or their policies. But they, with others, under-estimated the scope and purpose of the New Era.


One by one, the Provinces of the Empire were hauled up and baited, hit and held, lashed under the belly, and forced back on their haunches for the amusement of their new masters in the parish of Westminster. One by one they fell away, sore and angry, to compare stripes with each other at the ends of the uneasy earth. Even so the Gihon Hunt, like Abu Hussein in the old days, did not understand. Then it reached them through the Press that they habitually flogged to death good revenue-paying cultivators who neglected to stop earths; but that the few, the very few who did not die under hippohide whips soaked in copperas, walked about on their gangrenous ankle-bones, and were known in derision as the Mudir’s Cranes. The charges were vouched for in the House of Commons by a Mr. Lethabie Groombride, who had formed a Committee, and was disseminating literature: The Province groaned; the Inspector—now an Inspector of Inspectors—whistled. He had forgotten the gentleman who sputtered in people’s faces.


“He shouldn’t have looked so like Beagle-boy!” was his sole defence when he met the Governor at breakfast on the steamer after a meet.


“You shouldn’t have joked with an animal of that class,” said Peter the Governor. “Look what Farag has brought me!”


It was a pamphlet, signed on behalf of a Committee by a lady secretary, but composed by some person who thoroughly understood the language of the Province. After telling the tale of the beatings, it recommended all the beaten to institute criminal proceedings against their Governor, and, as soon as might be, to rise against English oppression and tyranny. Such documents were new in Ethiopia in those days.


The Inspector read the last half page. “But—but,” he stammered, “this is impossible. White men don’t write this sort of stuff.”


“Don’t they, just?” said the Governor. “They get made Cabinet Ministers for doing it too. I went home last year. I know.”


“It’ll blow over,” said the Inspector weakly.


“Not it. Groombride is coming down here to investigate the matter in a few days.”


“For himself?”


“The Imperial Government’s behind him. Perhaps you’d like to look at my orders.” The Governor laid down an uncoded cable. The whiplash to it ran: “You will afford Mr. Groombride every facility for his inquiry, and will be held responsible that no obstacles are put in his way to the fullest possible examination of any witnesses which he may consider necessary. He will be accompanied by his own interpreter, who must not be tampered with.”


“That’s to me—Governor of the Province!” said Peter the Governor.


“It seems about enough,” the Inspector answered.


Farag, kennel-huntsman, entered the saloon, as was his privilege.


“My uncle, who was beaten by the Father of Waterwheels, would approach, O Excellency,” he said, “and there are others on the bank.”


“Admit,” said the Governor.


There tramped aboard sheikhs and villagers to the number of seventeen. In each man’s hand was a copy of the pamphlet; in each man’s eye terror and uneasiness of the sort that Governors spend and are spent to clear away. Farag’s uncle, now Sheikh of the village, spoke: “It is written in this book, Excellency, that the beatings whereby we hold our lands are all valueless. It is written that every man who received such a beating from the Father of Waterwheels who slow the Emirs, should instantly begin a lawsuit, because the title to his land is not valid.”


“It is so written. We do not wish lawsuits. We wish to hold the land as it was given to us after the days of the Oppression,” they cried.


The Governor glanced at the Inspector. This was serious. To cast doubt on the ownership of land means, in Ethiopia, the letting in of waters, and the getting out of troops.


“Your titles are good,” said the Governor. The Inspector confirmed with a nod.


“Then what is the meaning of these writings which came from down the river where the Judges are?” Farag’s uncle waved his copy. “By whose order are we ordered to slay you, O Excellency Our Governor?”


“It is not written that you are to slay me.”


“Not in those very words, but if we leave an earth unstopped, it is the same as though we wished to save Abu Hussein from the hounds. These writings say: ‘Abolish your rulers.’ How can we abolish except we kill? We hear rumours of one who comes from down the river soon to lead us to kill.”


page 6




“Fools!” said the Governor. “Your titles are good. This is madness!”


“It is so written,” they answered like a pack.


“Listen,” said the Inspector smoothly. “I know who caused the writings to be written and sent. He is a man of a blue-mottled jowl, in aspect like Bigglebai who ate unclean matters. He will come up the river and will give tongue about the beatings.”


“Will he impeach our land-titles? An evil day for him!”


“Go slow, Baker,” the Governor whispered. “They’ll kill him if they get scared about their land.”


“I tell a parable.” The Inspector lit a cigarette. “Declare which of you took to walk the children of Milkmaid?”


“Melik-meid First or Second?” said Farag quickly.


“The second—the one which was lamed by the thorn.”


“No—no. Melik-meid the Second strained her shoulder leaping my water-channel,” a sheikh cried. “Melik-meid the First was lamed by the thorns on the day when Our Excellency fell thrice.”


“True—true. The second Melik-meid’s mate was Malvolio, the pied hound,” said the Inspector.


“I had two of the second Melik-meid’s pups,” said Farag’s uncle. “They died of the madness in their ninth month.”


“And how did they do before they died?” said the Inspector.


“They ran about in the sun, and slavered at the mouth till they died.”


“Wherefore?”


“God knows. He sent the madness. It was no fault of mine.”


“Thy own mouth hath answered thee.” The Inspector laughed. “It is with men as it is with dogs. God afflicts some with a madness. It is no fault of ours if such men run about in the sun and froth at the mouth. The man who is coming will emit spray from his mouth in speaking, and will always edge and push in towards his hearers. When ye see and hear him ye will understand that he is afflicted of God: being mad. He is in God’s hands.”


“But our titles—are our titles to our lands good?” the crowd repeated.


“Your titles are in my hands—they are good,” said the Governor.


“And he who wrote the writings is an afflicted of God?” said Farag’s uncle.


“The Inspector hath said it,” cried the Governor. “Ye will see when the man comes. O sheikhs and men, have we ridden together and walked puppies together, and bought and sold barley for the horses that after these years we should run riot on the scent of a madman—an afflicted of God?”


“But the Hunt pays us to kill mad jackals,” said Farag’s uncle. “And he who questions my titles to my land “


“Aahh! ’Ware riot!” The Governor’s hunting-crop cracked like a three-pounder. “By Allah,” he thundered, “if the afflicted of God come to any harm at your hands, I myself will shoot every hound and every puppy, and the Hunt shall ride no more. On your heads be it. Go in peace, and tell the others.”


“The Hunt shall ride no more,” said Farag’s uncle. “Then how can the land be governed? No—no, O Excellency Our Governor, we will not harm a hair on the head of the afflicted of God. He shall be to us as is Abu Hussein’s wife in the breeding season.”


When they were gone the Governor mopped his forehead.


“We must put a few soldiers in every village this Groombride visits, Baker. Tell ’em to keep out of sight, and have an eye on the villagers. He’s trying ’em rather high.”


“O Excellency,” said the smooth voice of Farag, laying the Field and Country Life square on the table, “is the afflicted of God who resembles Bigglebai one with the man whom the Inspector met in the great house in England, and to whom he told the tale of the Mudir’s Cranes?”


“The same man, Farag,” said the Inspector.


“I have often heard the Inspector tell the tale to Our Excellency at feeding-time in the kennels; but since I am in the Government service I have never told it to my people. May I loose that tale among the villages?”




.     .     .     .     .




The Governor nodded. “No harm,” said he.


The details of Mr. Groombride’s arrival, with his interpreter, whom he proposed should eat with him at the Governor’s table, his allocution to the Governor on the New Movement, and the sins of Imperialism, I purposely omit. At three in the afternoon Mr. Groombride said: “I will go out now and address your victims in this village.”


“Won’t you find it rather hot?” said the Governor. “They generally take a nap till sunset at this time of year.”


Mr. Groombride’s large, loose lips set. “That,” he replied pointedly, “would be enough to decide me. I fear you have not quite mastered your instructions. May I ask you to send for my interpreter? I hope he has not been tampered with by your subordinates.”


He was a yellowish boy called Abdul, who had well eaten and drunk with Farag. The Inspector, by the way, was not present at the meal.


“At whatever risk, I shall go unattended,” said Mr. Groombride. “Your presence would cow them from giving evidence. Abdul, my good friend, would you very kindly open the umbrella?”


He passed up the gang-plank to the village, and with no more prelude than a Salvation Army picket in a Portsmouth slum, cried: “Oh, my brothers!”


page 7




He did not guess how his path had been prepared. The village was widely awake. Farag, in loose, flowing garments, quite unlike a kennel huntsman’s khaki and puttees, leaned against the wall of his uncle’s house. “Come and see the afflicted of God,” he cried musically, “whose face, indeed, resembles that of Bigglebai.”


The village came, and decided that on the whole Farag was right.


“I can’t quite catch what they are saying,” said Mr. Groombride.


“They saying they very much pleased to see you, Sar,” Adbul interpreted.


“Then I do think they might have sent a deputation to the steamer; but I suppose they were frightened of the officials. Tell them not to be frightened, Abdul.”


“He says you are not to be frightened,” Abdul explained. A child here sputtered with laughter. “Refrain from mirth,” Farag cried. “The afflicted of God is the guest of The Excellency Our Governor. We are responsible for every hair of his head.”


“He has none,” a voice spoke. “He has the white and the shining mange.”


“Now tell them what I have come for, Abdul, and please keep the umbrella well up. I think I shall reserve myself for my little vernacular speech at the end.”


“Approach! Look! Listen!” Abdul chanted. “The afflicted of God will now make sport. Presently he will speak in your tongue, and will consume you with mirth. I have been his servant for three weeks. I will tell you about his undergarments and his perfumes for his head.”


He told them at length.


“And didst thou take any of his perfume bottles?” said Farag at the end.


“I am his servant. I took two,” Abdul replied.


“Ask him,” said Farag’s uncle, “what he knows about our land-titles. Ye young men are all alike.” He waved a pamphlet. Mr. Groombride smiled to see how the seed sown in London had borne fruit by Gihon. Lo! All the seniors held copies of the pamphlet.


“He knows less than a buffalo. He told me on the steamer that he was driven out of his own land by Demah-Kerazi which is a devil inhabiting crowds and assemblies,” said Abdul.


“Allah between us and evil!” a woman cackled from the darkness of a hut. “Come in, children, he may have the Evil Eye.”


“No, my aunt,” said Farag. “No afflicted of God has an evil eye. Wait till ye hear his mirth-provoking speech which he will deliver. I have heard it twice from Abdul.”


“They seem very quick to grasp the point. How far have you got, Abdul?”


“All about the beatings, sar. They are highly interested.”


“Don’t forget about the local self-government, and please hold the umbrella over me. It is hopeless to destroy unless one first builds up.”


“He may not have the Evil Eye,” Farag’s uncle grunted, “but his devil led him too certainly to question my land-title. Ask him whether he still doubts my land-title?”


“Or mine, or mine?” cried the elders.


“What odds? He is an afflicted of God,” Farag called. “Remember the tale I told you.”


“Yes, but he is an Englishman, and doubtless of influence, or Our Excellency would not entertain him. Bid the down-country jackass ask him.”


“Sar,” said Abdul, “these people, much fearing they may be turned out of their land in consequence of your remarks. Therefore they ask you to make promise no bad consequences following your visit.”


Mr. Groombride held his breath and turned purple. Then he stamped his foot.


“Tell them,” he cried, “that if a hair of any one of their heads is touched by any official on any account whatever, all England shall ring with it. Good God! What callous oppression! The dark places of the earth are full of cruelty.” He wiped his face, and throwing out his arms cried: “Tell them, oh! tell the poor, serfs not to be afraid of me. Tell them I come to redress their wrongs—not, heaven knows, to add to their burden.”


The long-drawn gurgle of the practised public speaker pleased them much.


“That is how the new water-tap runs out in the kennel,” said Farag. “The Excellency Our Governor entertains him that he may make sport. Make him say the mirth-moving speech.”


“What did he say about my land-titles?” Farag’s uncle was not to be turned.


“He says,” Farag interpreted, “that he desires, nothing better than that you should live on your lands in peace. He talks as though he believed himself to be Governor.”


“Well. We here are all witnesses to what he has said. Now go forward with the sport.” Farag’s uncle smoothed his garments. “How diversely hath Allah made His creatures! On one He bestows strength to slay Emirs; another He causes to go mad and wander in the sun, like the afflicted sons of Melik-meid.”


“Yes, and to emit spray from the mouth, as the Inspector told us. All will happen as the Inspector foretold,” said Farag. “ I have never yet seen the Inspector thrown out during any run.”


“I think,” Abdul plucked at Mr. Groombride’s sleeves, “I think perhaps it is better now, Sar, if you give your fine little native speech. They not understanding English, but much pleased at your condescensions.”


page 8




“Condescensions?” Mr. Groombride spun round. “If they only knew how I felt towards them in my heart! If I could express a tithe of my feelings! I must stay here and learn the language. Hold up the umbrella, Abdull I think my little speech will show them I know something of their vie intime.”


It was a short, simple; carefully learned address, and the accent, supervised by Abdul on the steamer, allowed the hearers to guess its meaning, which was a request to see one of the Mudir’s Cranes; since the desire of the speaker’s life, the object to which he would consecrate his days, was to improve the condition of the Mudir’s Cranes. But first he must behold them with his own eyes. Would, then, his brethren, whom he loved, show him a Mudir’s Crane whom he desired to love?


Once, twice, and again in his peroration he repeated his demand, using always—that they might see he was acquainted with their local argot—using always, I say, the word which the Inspector had given him in England long ago—the short, adhesive word which, by itself, surprises even unblushing Ethiopia.


There are limits to the sublime politeness of an ancient people. A bulky, blue-chinned man in white clothes, his name red-lettered across his lower shirtfront, spluttering from under a green-lined umbrella almost tearful appeals to be introduced to the Unintroducible; naming loudly the Unnameable; dancing, as it seemed, in perverse joy at mere mention of the Unmentionable—found those limits. There was a moment’s hush, and then such mirth as Gihon through his centuries had never heard—a roar like to the roar of his own cataracts in flood. Children cast themselves on the ground, and rolled back and forth cheering and whooping; strong men, their faces hidden in their clothes, swayed in silence, till the agony became insupportable, and they threw up their heads and bayed at the sun; women, mothers and virgins, shrilled shriek upon mounting shriek, and slapped their thighs as it might have been the roll of musketry. When they tried to draw breath, some half-strangled voice would quack out the word, and the riot began afresh. Last to fall was the city-trained Abdul. He held on to the edge of apoplexy, then collapsed, throwing the umbrella from him.


Mr. Groombride should not be judged too harshly. Exercise and strong emotion under a hot sun, the shock of public ingratitude, for the moment rued his spirit. He furled the umbrella, and with it beat the prostrate Abdul, crying that he had been betrayed. In which posture the Inspector, on horseback, followed by the Governor, suddenly found him.




.     .     .     .     .




“That’s all very well,” said the Inspector, when he had taken Abdul’s dramatically dying depositions on the steamer, “but you can’t hammer a native merely because he laughs at you. I see nothing for it but the law to take its course.”


“You might reduce the charge to—er—tampering with an interpreter,” said the Governor. Mr. Groombride was too far gone to be comforted.


“It’s the publicity that I fear,” he wailed. “Is there no possible means of hushing up the affair? You don’t know what a question—a single question in the House means to a man of my position—the ruin of my political career, I assure you.”


“I shouldn’t have imagined it,” said the Governor thoughtfully.


“And, though perhaps I ought not to say it, I am not without honour in my own country—or influence. A word in season, as you know, Your Excellency. It might carry an official far.”


The Governor shuddered.


“Yes, that had to come too,” he said to himself. “Well, look here. If I tell this man of yours to withdraw the charge against you, you can go to Gehenna for aught I care. The only condition I make is that if you write—I suppose that’s part of your business about your travels, you don’t praise me!”


So far Mr. Groombride has loyally adhered to this understanding.