page 1 of 6

AS the Three Musketeers share their silver, tobacco, and liquor together, as they protect each other in barracks or camp, and as they rejoice together over the joy of one, so do they divide their sorrows. When Ortheris’s irrepressible tongue has brought him into cells for a season, or Learoyd has run amok through his kit and accoutrements, or Mulvaney has indulged in strong waters, and under their influence reproved his Commanding Officer, you can see the trouble in the faces of the untouched two. And the rest of the Regiment know that comment or jest is unsafe. Generally the three avoid Orderly-Room and the Corner Shop that follows, leaving both to the young bloods who have not sown their wild oats; but there are occasions——For instance, Ortheris was sitting on the drawbridge of the main gate of Fort Amara, with his hands in his pockets and his pipe, bowl down, in his mouth. Learoyd was lying at full length on the turf of the glacis, kicking his heels in the air, and I came round the corner and asked for Mulvaney.

Ortheris spat into the Ditch and shook his head. ‘No good seein’ ’im now,’ said Ortheris; ‘’e’s a bloomin’ camel. Listen.’

I heard on the flags of the veranda opposite to the cells, which are close to the Guard-Room, a measured step that I could have identified out of the tramp of an army. There were twenty paces crescendo, a pause, and then twenty diminuendo.

‘That’s ’im,’ said Ortheris; ‘my Gawd, that’s ’im! All for a bloomin’ button you could see your face in an’ a bit o’ lip that a bloomin’ Harkangel would ’a’ guv back.’

Mulvaney was doing pack-drill–was compelled, that is to say, to walk up and down for certain hours in full marching order, with rifle, bayonet, ammunition, knapsack, and overcoat. And his offence was being dirty on parade! I nearly fell into the Fort Ditch with astonishment and wrath, for Mulvaney is the smartest man that ever mounted guard, and would as soon think of turning out uncleanly as of dispensing with his trousers.

‘Who was the Sergeant that checked him,’ I asked.

‘Mullins, o’ course,’ said Ortheris. ‘There ain’t no other man would whip ’im on the peg so. But Mullins ain’t a man. ’E’s a dirty little pig scraper, that’s wot ’e is.’

‘What did Mulvaney say? He’s not the make of man to take that quietly.’

‘Say! Bin better for ’im if ’e’d shut ’is mouth. Lord, ’ow we laughed! “Sargint,” ’e sez, “ye say I’m dirty. Well,” sez ’e, “when your wife lets you blow your own nose for yourself, perhaps you’ll know wot dirt is. You’re himperfec’ly eddicated, Sargint,” sez ’e, an’ then we fell in. But after p’rade, ’e was up an’ Mullins was swearin’ ’imself black in the face at Ord’ly-Room that Mulvaney ’ad called ’im a swine an’ Lord knows wot all. You know Mullins. ’E’ll ’ave ’is ’ead broke in one o’ these days. ’E’s too big a bloomin’ liar for ord’nary consumption. “Three hours’ can an’ kit,” sez the Colonel; “not for bein’ dirty on p’rade, but for ’avin’ said somethin’ to Mullins, tho’ I do not believe,” sez ’e, “you said wot ’e said you said.” An’ Mulvaney fell away sayin’ nothin’. You know ’e never speaks to the Colonel for fear o’ gettin’ ’imself fresh copped.’

Mullins, a very young and very much married Sergeant, whose manners were partly the result of innate depravity and partly of imperfectly digested Board School, came over the bridge, and most rudely asked Ortheris what he was doing.

‘Me?’ said Ortheris. ‘Ow! I’m waiting for my C’mission. Seed it comin’ along yit?’

Mullins turned purple and passed on. There was the sound of a gentle chuckle from the glacis where Learoyd lay.

‘’E expects to get his C’mission some day,’ explained Ortheris. ‘Gawd ’elp the Mess that ’ave to put their ’ands into the same kiddy as ’im! Wot time d’you make it, sir? Fower! Mulvaney’ll be out in ’arf an hour. You don’t want to buy a dorg, sir, do you? A pup you can trust—’arf Rampur by the Colonel’s grey’ound.’

‘Ortheris,’ I answered sternly, for I knew what was in his mind, ‘do you mean to say that——’

‘I didn’t mean to arx money o’ you, any’ow,’ said Ortheris. ‘I’d ’a’ sold you the dorg good an’ cheap, but—but—I know Mulvaney’ll want somethin’ after we’ve walked ’im orf, an’ I ain’t got nothin’, nor ’e ’asn’t neither. I’d sooner sell you the dorg, sir. ’Strewth I would!’

A shadow fell on the drawbridge, and Ortheris began to rise into the air, lifted by a huge hand upon his collar.

‘Onnything but t’ braass,’ said Learoyd quietly, as he held the Londoner over the Ditch. ‘Onnything but t’ braass, Orth’ris, ma son! Ah’ve got one rupee eight annas ma own.’ He showed two coins, and replaced Ortheris on the drawbridge rail.

‘Very good,’ I said; ‘where are you going to?’

‘Goin’ to walk ’im orf w’en ’e comes out—two miles or three or fower,’ said Ortheris.

The footsteps within ceased. I heard the dull thud of a knapsack falling on a bedstead, followed by the rattle of arms. Ten minutes later, Mulvaney, faultlessly dressed, his lips tight and his face as black as a thunderstorm, stalked into the sunshine on the drawbridge. Learoyd and Ortheris sprang from my side and closed in upon him, both leaning towards him as horses lean upon the pole. In an instant they had disappeared down the sunken road to the cantonments, and I was left alone. Mulvaney had not seen fit to recognise me; so I knew that his trouble must be heavy upon him.

I climbed one of the bastions and watched the figures of the Three Musketeers grow smaller and smaller across the plain. They were walking as fast as they could put foot to the ground, and their heads were bowed. They fetched a great compass round the parade-ground, skirted the Cavalry lines, and vanished in the belt of trees that fringes the low land by the river.

I followed slowly, and sighted them—dusty, sweating, but still keeping up their long, swinging tramp—on the river bank. They crashed through the Forest Reserve, headed towards the Bridge of Boats, and presently established themselves on the bow of one of the pontoons. I rode cautiously till I saw three puffs of white smoke rise and die out in the clear evening air, and knew that peace had come again. At the bridge-head they waved me forward with gestures of welcome.

‘Tie up your ’orse,’ shouted Ortheris, ‘an’ come on, sir. We’re all goin’ ’ome in this ’ere bloomin’ boat.’

From the bridge-head to the Forest Officer’s bungalow is but a step. The mess-man was there, and would see that a man held my horse. Did the Sahib require aught else—a peg, or beer? Ritchie Sahib had left half-a-dozen bottles of the latter, but since the Sahib was a friend of Ritchie Sahib, and he, the mess-man, was a poor man——

I gave my order quietly, and returned to the bridge. Mulvaney had taken off his boots, and was dabbling his toes in the water; Learoyd was lying on his back on the pontoon; and Ortheris was pretending to row with a big bamboo.

page 2

‘I’m an ould fool,’ said Mulvaney reflectively, ‘dhraggin’ you two out here bekaze I was undher the Black Dog—sulkin’ like a child. Me that was sodgerin’ when Mullins, an’ be damned to him, was shquealin’ on a counterpin for five shillin’ a week—an’ that not paid! Bhoys, I’ve tuk you five miles out av natural pivarsity. Phew!’

‘Wot’s the odds as long as you’re ’appy?’ said Ortheris, applying himself afresh to the bamboo. ‘As well ’ere as anywhere else.’

Learoyd held up a rupee and an eight-anna bit, and shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Five miles from t’ Canteen, all along o’ Mulvaaney’s blaasted pride.’

‘I know ut,’ said Mulvaney penitently. ‘Why will ye come wid me? An’ yet I wud be mortial sorry av ye did not—any time—though I am ould enough to know betther. But I will do penance. I will take a dhrink av wather.’

Ortheris squeaked shrilly. The butler of the Forest bungalow was standing near the railings with a basket, uncertain how to clamber down to the pontoon.

‘Might ’a’ know’d you’d ’a’ got liquor out o’ bloomin’ desert, sir,’ said Ortheris gracefully to me. Then to the mess-man: ‘Easy with them there bottles. They’re worth their weight in gold. Jock, ye long-armed beggar, get out o’ that an’ hike ’em down.’

Learoyd had the basket on the pontoon in an instant, and the Three Musketeers gathered round it with dry lips. They drank my health in due and ancient form, and thereafter tobacco tasted sweeter than ever. They absorbed all the beer, and disposed themselves in picturesque attitudes to admire the setting sun—no man speaking for a while.

Mulvaney’s head dropped upon his chest, and we thought that he was asleep.

‘What on earth did you come so far for?’ I whispered to Ortheris.

‘To walk ’im orf, o’ course. When, ’e’s been checked we allus walks ’im orf. ’E ain’t fit to be spoke to those times—nor ’e ain’t fit to leave alone neither. So we takes ’im till ’e is.’

Mulvaney raised his head, and stared straight into the sunset. ‘I had my rifle,’ said he dreamily, ‘an’ I had my bay’nit, an’ Mullins came round the corner, an’ he looked in my face an’ grinned dishpiteful. “You can’t blow your own nose,” sez he. Now, I cannot tell fwhat Mullins’s expayrience may ha’ been, but, Mother av God, he was nearer to his death that minut’ than I have iver been to mine—and that’s less than the thicknuss av a hair!’

‘Yes,’ said Ortheris calmly, ‘you’d look fine with all your buttons took orf, an’ the Band in front o’ you, walkin’ roun’ slow time. We’re both front-rank men, me an’ Jock, when the Rig’ment’s in ’ollow square. Bloomin’ fine you’d look. “The Lord giveth an’ the Lord taketh awai,—Heasy with that there drop!—Blessed be the naime o’ the Lord.”’ He gulped in a quaint and suggestive fashion.

‘Mullins! What’s Mullins?’ said Learoyd slowly. ‘Ah’d taake a coomp’ny o’ Mullinses—ma hand behind me. Sitha, Mulvaaney, don’t be a fool.’

‘You were not checked for fwhat you did not do, an’ made a mock av afther. ’Twas for less than that the Tyrone wud ha’ sent O’Hara to Hell, instid av lettin’ him go by his own choosin’, whin Rafferty shot him,’ retorted Mulvaney.

‘And who stopped the Tyrone from doing it?’ I asked.

‘This ould fool who’s sorry he did not shtick that pig Mullins.’ His head dropped again. When he raised it he shivered and put his hands on the shoulders of his two companions.

‘Ye’ve walked the Divil out av me, bhoys,’ said he.

Ortheris shot out the red-hot dottle of his pipe on the back of the hairy fist. ‘They say ’Ell’s ’otter than that,’ said he, as Mulvaney swore aloud. ‘You be warned so. Look yonder!’—he pointed across the river to a ruined temple—‘Me an’ you an’ ’im’—he indicated me by a jerk of his head—‘was there one day when Hi made a bloomin’ show o’ myself. You an’ ’im stopped me doin’ such—an’ Hi was on’y wishful for to desert. You are makin’ a bigger bloomin’ show o’ yourself now.’

‘Don’t mind him, Mulvaney,’ I said; ‘Dinah Shadd won’t let you hang yourself yet awhile, and you don’t intend to try it either. Let’s hear about the Tyrone and O’Hara. Rafferty shot him for fooling with his wife. What happened before that?’

‘There’s no fool like an ould fool. Ye know ye can do anythin’ wid me whin I’m talkin’. Did I say I wud like to cut Mullins’s liver out? I deny the imputashin, for fear that Orth’ris here wud report me—Ah! You wud tip me into the river, wud you? Set quiet, little man. Anyways, Mullins is not worth the throuble av an extry p’rade, an’ I will trate him wid outrajis contimpt. The Tyrone an’ O’Hara! O’Hara an’ the Tyrone, begad! Ould days are hard to bring back into the mouth, but they’re always inside the head.’

Followed a long pause.

‘O’Hara was a Divil. Though I saved him, for the honour av the Rig’mint, from his death that time, I say it now. He was a Divil—a long, bould, black-haired Divil.’

‘Which way?’ asked Ortheris. ‘Wimmen.’

‘Then I know another.’

‘Not more than in reason, if you mane me, ye warped walkin’-shtick. I have been young, an’ for why shud I not have tuk what I cud? Did I iver, whin I was Corp’ril, use the rise av my rank—wan step an’ that taken away, more’s the sorrow an’ the fault av me!—to prosecute nefarious inthrigues, as O’Hara did? Did I, whin I was Corp’ril, lay my spite upon a man an’ make his life a dog’s life from day to day? Did I lie, as O’Hara lied, till the young wans in the Tyrone turned white wid the fear av the Judgment av God killin’ thim all in a lump, as ut killed the woman at Devizes? I did not! I have sinned my sins an’ I have made my confesshin, an’ Father Victor knows the worst av me. O’Hara was tuk, before he cud spake, on Rafferty’s door stip, an’ no man knows the worst av him. But this much I know!

‘The Tyrone was recruited any fashion in the ould days. A draf’ from Connemara—a draf’ from Portsmouth—a draf’ from Kerry, an’ that was a blazin’ bad draf’—here, there, and ivrywhere—but the large av thim was Irish—Black Irish. Now there are Irish an’ Irish. The good are good as the best, but the bad are wurrse than the wurrst. ’Tis this way. They clog together in pieces as fast as thieves, an’ no wan knows fwhat they will do till wan turns informer an’ the gang is bruk. But ut begins agin, a day later, meetin’ in holes an’ corners an’ swearin’ bloody oaths an’ shtickin’ a man in the back an’ runnin’ away, an’ thin waitin’ for the blood-money on the reward papers—to see if ut’s worth enough. Those are the Black Irish, an’ ’tis they that bring dishgrace upon the name av Ireland, an’ thim I wud kill—as I nearly killed wan wanst.

page 3

‘But to reshume. My room—’twas before I was married—was wid twelve av the scum av the earth—the pickin’s av the gutther—mane men that wud neither laugh nor talk nor yet get dhrunk as a man shud. They thried some av their dog’s thricks on me, but I dhrew a line round my cot, an’ the man that thransgressed ut wint into hospital for three days good.

‘O’Hara had put his spite on the room—he was my Colour-Sargint—an’ nothing cud we do to plaze him. I was younger than I am now, an’ I tuk fwhat I got in the way av dhressing-down and punishmint-dhrill wid me tongue in me cheek. But it was diff’rint wid the others, an’ why I cannot say, excipt that some men are borrun mane an’ go to dhirty murther where a fist is more than enough. Afther a whoile, they changed their chune to me an’ was desp’rit frien’ly—all twelve av thim cursin’ O’Hara in chorus.

‘“ Eyah!” sez I, “O’Hara’s a divil and I’m not for denyin’ ut, but is he the only man in the wurruld? Let him go. He’ll get tired av findin’ our kit foul an’ our ’coutrements on properly kep’.”

‘“We will not let him go,” sez they.

‘“Thin take him,” sez I, “an’ a dashed poor yield you will get for your throuble.”

‘“Is he not misconductin’ himsilf wid Slimmy’s wife?” sez another.

‘“She’s common to the Rig’mint,” sez I. “Fwhat has made ye this partic’lar on a suddint?”

‘“Has he not put his spite on the roomful av us? Can we do anythin’ that he will not check us for?” sez another.

‘“That’s thrue,” sez I.

‘“Will ye not help us to do aught,” sez another—“a big bould man like you? “

‘“I will break his head upon his shoulthers av he puts hand on me,” sez I. “ I will give him the lie av he says that I’m dhirty, an’ I wud not mind duckin’ him in the Artillery troughs if ut was not that I’m thryin’ for me shtripes.”

‘“Is that all ye will do?” sez another. “Have ye no more spunk than that, ye blood-dhrawn calf?”

‘“Blood-dhrawn I may be,” says I, gettin’ back to my cot an’ makin’ my line round ut; “but ye know that the man who comes acrost this mark will be more blood-dhrawn than me. No man gives me the name in my mouth,” I sez. “Ondhersthand, I will have no part wid you in anythin’ ye do, nor will I raise my fist to my shuperior. Is any wan comin’ on.” sez I.

‘They made no move, tho’ I gave thim full time, but stud growlin’ an’ snarlin’ together at wan ind av the room. I tuk up my cap and wint out to Canteen, thinkin’ no little av mesilf, an’ there I grew most ondacintly dhrunk in my legs. My head was all reasonable.

‘“Houligan,” I sez to a man in E Comp’ny that was by way av bein’ a frind av mine; “I’m overtuk from the belt down. Do you give me the touch av your shoulther to presarve me formashin an’ march me acrost the ground into the high grass. I’ll sleep ut off there,” sez I; an’ Houligan—he’s dead now, but good he was whoile he lasted—walked wid me, givin’ me the touch whin I wint wide, ontil we came to the high grass, an’, my faith, sky an’ earth was fair rowlin’ undher me. I made for where the grass was thickust, an’ there I slep’ off my liquor wid an aisy conscience. I did not desire to come on the books too frequint; my characther havin’ been shpotless for the good half av a year.

‘Whin I roused, the dhrink was dyin’ out in me, an’ I felt as though a she-cat had littered in me mouth. I had not learned to hould my liquor wid comfort in thim days. ’Tis little betther I am now. “I will get Houligan to pour a bucket over my head,” thinks I, an’ I wud ha’ risen, but I heard some wan say: “Mulvaney can take the blame av ut for the backslidin’ hound he is.”

“Oho!” sez I, an’ me head ringing like a guard-room gong: “fwhat is the blame that this young man must take to oblige Tim Vulmea?” For ’twas Tim Vulmea that shpoke.

I turned on me belly an’ crawled through the grass, a bit at a time, to where the spache came from. There was the twelve av my room sittin’ down in a little patch, the dhry grass wavin’ above their heads an’ the sin av black murther in their hearts. I put the stuff aside to get clear view.

‘“Fwhat’s that?” sez wan man, jumpin’ up.

‘“A dog,” says Vulmea. “You’re a nice hand to this job! As I said, Mulvaney will take the blame—av ut comes to a pinch.”

‘“’Tis harrd to swear a man’s life away,” sez a young wan.

‘“Thank ye for that,” thinks I. “Now, fwhat the divil are you paragins conthrivin’ agin’ me?”

‘“’Tis as aisy as dhrinkin’ your quart,” sez Vulmea. “At sivin or thereon, O’Hara will come acrost to the Married Quarters, goin’ to call on Slimmy’s wife, the swine! Wan av us ’ll pass the wurrud to the room an’ we shtart the divil an’ all av a shine—laughin’ an’ crackin’ on an’ t’rowin’ our boots about. Thin O’Hara will come to give us the ordher to be quiet, the more by token bekaze the room lamp will be knocked over in the larkin’. He will take the straight road to the ind door where there’s the lamp in the veranda, an’ that’ll bring him clear agin’ the light as he shtands. He will not be able to look into the dhark. Wan av us will loose off, an’ a close shot ut will be, an’ shame to the man that misses. ’Twill be Mulvaney’s rifle, she that is at the head av the rack—there’s no mishtakin’ that long-shtocked, cross-eyed bitch even in the dhark.”

‘The thief misnamed my ould firin’-piece out av jealousy—I was pershuaded av that—an’ ut made me more angry than all.

‘But Vulmea goes on: “O’Hara will dhrop, an’ by the time the light’s lit agin, there’ll be some six av us on the chest av Mulvaney, cryin’ murther an’ rape. Mulvaney’s cot is near the ind door, an’ the shmokin’ rifle will be lyin’ undher him whin we’ve knocked him over. We know, an’ all the Rig’mint knows, that Mulvaney has given O’Hara more lip than any man av us. Will there be any doubt at the Coort-Martial? Wud twelve honust sodger-bhoys swear away the life av a dear, quiet, swate-timpered man such as is Mulvaney—wid his line av pipe-clay roun’ his cot, threatenin’ us wid murther av we overshtepped ut, as we can truthful testify?”

“Mary, Mother av Mercy!” thinks I to mesilf; “ut is this to have an unruly mimber an’ fistes fit to use! The hounds!”

The big dhrops ran down my face, for I was wake wid the liquor an’ had not the full av my wits about me. I laid sthill an’ heard thim workin’ thimsilves up to swear me life away by tellin’ tales av ivry time I had put my mark on wan or another; an’, my faith, they was few that was not so dishtinguished. ’Twas all in the way av fair fight, though, for niver did I raise my hand excipt whin they had provoked me to ut.

page 4

‘“’Tis all well,” sez wan av thim, “but who’s to do this shootin’?”

‘“Fwhat matther?” sez Vulmea. “’Tis Mulvaney will do that—at the Coort-Martial.”

‘“He will so,” sez the man, “ but whose hand is put to the thrigger—”

‘“Who’ll do ut?” sez Vulmea, lookin’ round, but divil a man answered. They began to dishpute till Kiss, that was always playin’ Shpoil Five, sez: “Thry the kyards!” Wid that he opind his tunic an’ tuk out the greasy palammers, an’ they all fell in wid the notion.

‘“Deal on!” sez Vulmea, wid a big rattlin’ oath, “an’ the Black Curse av Shielygh come to the man that will not do his jooty as the kyards say. Amin!”

‘“Black Jack is the masther,” sez Kiss, dealin’. Black Jack, sorr, I shud expaytiate to you, is the Ace av Shpades which from time immimorial has been intimately connect wid battle, murther, an’ suddin death.

‘Wanst Kiss dealt, an’ there was no sign, but the men was whoite wid the workin’s av their sowls. Twice Kiss dealt, an’ there was a grey shine on their cheeks like the mess av an egg. Three times Kiss dealt, an’ they was blue. “Have ye not lost him?” sez Vulmea, wipin’ the sweat on him; “let’s ha’ done quick!” “Quick ut is,” sez Kiss, throwin’ him the kyard; an’ ut fell face up on his knee—Black Jack!

‘Thin they all cackled wid laughin’. “Jooty thrippence,” sez wan av thim, “an’ damned cheap at that price!” But I cud see they all dhrew a little away from Vulmea an’ lef’ him sittin’ playin’ wid the kyard. Vulmea sez no wurrud for a whoile but licked his lips—cat-ways. Thin he threw up his head an’ made the men swear by ivry oath known to stand by him not alone in the room but at the, Coort-Martial that was to set on me! He tould off five av the biggest to stretch me on my cot whin the shot was fired, an’ another man he tould off to put out the light, an’ yet another to load my rifle. He wud not do that himsilf; an’ that was quare, for ’twas but a little thing considherin’.

‘Thin they swore over agin that they wud not bethray wan another, an’ crep’ out av the grass in diff’rint ways, two by two. A mercy ut was that they did not come on me. I was sick wid fear in the pit av me stummick—sick, sick, sick! Afther they was all gone, I wint back to Canteen an’ called for a quart to put a thought in me. Vulmea was there, dhrinkin’ heavy, an’ politeful to me beyond reason. “Fwhat will I do?—fwhat will I do?” thinks I to mesilf whin Vulmea wint away.

‘Prisintly the Arm’rer-Sargint comes in stiffin’ an’ crackin’ on, not plazed wid any wan, bekaze the Martini-Henry bein’ new to the Rig’mint in those days we used to play the mischief wid her arrangemints. ’Twas a long time before I cud get out av the way av thryin’ to pull back the backsight an’ turnin’ her over afther firin’—as if she was a Snider.

‘“Fwhat tailor-men do they give me to work wid?” sez the Arm’rer-Sargint. “Here’s Hogan, his nose flat as a table, laid by for a week, an’ ivry Comp’ny sendin’ their arrums in knocked to small shivreens.”

‘“Fwhat’s wrong wid Hogan, Sargint?” sez I.

‘“Wrong!” sez the Arm’rer-Sargint; “I showed him, as though I had been his mother, the way av shtrippin’ a ’Tini, an’ he shtrup her clane an’ aisy. I tould him to put her to agin an’ fire a blank into the blow-pit to show how the dhirt hung on the groovin’. He did that, but he did not put in the pin av the fallin’-block, an’ av coorse whin he fired he was strook by the block jumpin’ clear. Well for him ’twas but a blank—a full charge wud ha’ cut his eye out.”

‘I looked a thrifle wiser than a boiled sheep’s head. “How’s that, Sargint?” sez I.

‘“This way, ye blundherin’ man, an’ don’t you be doin’ ut,” sez he. Wid that he shows me a Waster action—the breech av her all cut away to show the inside—an’ so plazed he was to grumble that he dimonsthrated fwhat Hogan had done twice over. “An’ that comes av not knowin’ the wepping you’re provided wid,” sez he.

‘“Thank ye, Sargint,” sez I; “I will come to you agin for further informashin.”

‘“Ye will not,” sez he. “Kape your clanin’rod away from the breech-pin or you will get into throuble.”

‘I wint outside an’ I cud ha’ danced wid delight for the grandeur av ut. “They will load my rifle, good luck to thim, whoile I’m away,” thinks I, and back I wint to the Canteen to give thim their clear chanst.

‘The Canteen was fillip’ wid men at the ind av the day. I made feign to be far gone in dhrink, an’, wan by wan, all my roomful came in wid Vulmea. I wint away, walkin’ thick an’ heavy, but not so thick an’ heavy that any wan cud ha’ tuk me. Sure an’ thrue, there was a kyartridge gone from my pouch an’ lyin’ snug in my rifle. I was hot wid rage agin’ them all, and I worried the bullet out wid me teeth as fast as I cud, the room bein’ empty. Then I tuk my boot an’ the clanin’-rod and knocked out the pin av the fallin’block. Oh, ’twas music whin that pin rowled on the flure! I put ut into my pouch an’ shtuck a dab av dhirt on the holes in the plate, puttin’ the fallin’-block back. “That’ll do your business, Vulmea,” sez I, lyin’ aisy on me cot. “Come an’ sit on me chest, the whole room av you, an’ I will take you to me bosom for the biggest divils that iver cheated halter.” I wud have no mercy on Vulmea. His eye or his life—little I cared

‘At dusk they came back, the twelve av thim, an’ they had all been dhrinkin’. I was shammin’ sleep on the cot. Wan man wint outside in the veranda. Whin he whishtled they began to rage roun’ the room an’ carry on tremenjus. But I niver want to hear men laugh as they did—sky-larkin’ too! ’Twas like mad jackals.

‘“Shtop that blasted noise!” sez O’Hara in the dark, an’ pop goes the room lamp. I cud hear O’Hara runnin’ up an’ the rattlin’ av my rifle in the rack an’ the men breathin’ heavy as they stud roun’ my cot. I cud see O’Hara in the light av the veranda lamp, an’ thin I heard the crack av my rifle. She cried loud, poor darlint, bein’ mishandled. Next minut’ five men were houldin’ me down. “Go aisy,” I sez; “fwhat’s ut all about?”

‘Thin Vulmea, on the flure, raised a howl you cud hear from wan ind av cantonmints to the other. “I’m dead, I’m butchered, I’m blind!” sez he. “Saints have mercy on my sinful sowl! Sind for Father Constant! Oh, sind for Father Constant an’ let me go clane!” By that I knew he was not so dead as I cud ha’ wished.

‘O’Hara picks up the lamp in the veranda wid a hand as stiddy as a rest. “Fwhat damned dog’s thrick is this av yours?” sez he, and turns the light on Tim Vulmea that was shwimmin’ in blood from top to toe. The fallin’-block had sprung free behin’ a full charge av powther—good care I tuk to bite down the brass afther takin’ out the bullet, that there might be somethin’ to give ut full worth-an’ had cut Tim from the lip to the corner av the right eye, lavin’ the eyelid in tatthers, an’ so up an’ along by the forehead to the hair. ’Twas more av a rakin’ plough, if you will ondhersthand, than a clane cut; an’ niver did I see a man bleed as Vulmea did. The dhrink an’ the stew that he was in pumped the blood strong. The minut’ the men sittin’ on my chest heard O’Hara spakin’ they scatthered each wan to his cot, an’ cried out very politeful: “Fwhat is ut, Sargint?”

page 5

‘“Fwhat is ut!” sez O’Hara, shakin’ Tim. “Well an’ good do you know fwhat ut is, ye skulkin’ ditch-lurkin’ dogs! Get a dooli, an’ take this whimperin’ scutt away. There will be more heard av ut than any av you will care for.”

‘Vulmea sat up rockin’ his head in his hand an’ moanin’ for Father Constant.

‘“Be done!” sez O’Hara, dhraggin’ him up by the hair. “You’re none so dead that you cannot go fifteen years for thryin’ to shoot me.”

‘“I did not,” sez Vulmea; “I was shootin’ mesilf.”

‘“That’s quare,” sez O’Hara, “for the front av my jackut is black wid your powther.” He tuk up the rifle that was still warm an’ began to laugh. “I’ll make your life Hell to you,” sez he, “for attempted murther an’ kapin’ your rifle onproperly. You’ll be hanged first an’ thin put undher stoppages for four fifteen. The rifle’s done for,” sez he.

‘“Why, ’tis my rifle!” sez I, comin’ up to look. “Vulmea, ye divil, fwhat were you doin’ wid her—answer me that?”

‘“’Lave me alone,” sez Vulmea; “I’m dyin’!”

‘“I’ll wait till you’re betther,” sez I, “an’ thin we two will talk ut out umbrageous.”

‘O’Hara pitched Tim into the dooli, none too tinder, but all the bhoys kep’ by their cots, which was not the sign av innocint men. I was huntin’ ivrywhere for my fallin’-block, but not findin’ ut at all. I niver found ut.

‘“Now fwhat will I do?” sez O’Hara, swinging the veranda light in his hand an’ lookin’ down the room. I had hate and contimpt av O’Hara an’ I have now, dead tho’ he is, but for all that will I say he was a brave man. He is baskin’ in Purgathory this tide, but I wish he cud hear that, whin he stud lookin’ down the room an’ the bhoys shivered before the eye av him, I knew him for a brave man an’ I liked him so.

‘“Fwhat will I do?” sez O’Hara agin, an’ we heard the voice av a woman low an’ sof’ in the veranda. ’Twas Slimmy’s wife, come over at the shot, sittin’ on wan av the benches an’ scarce able to walk.

‘“0 Denny!—Denny, dear,” sez she, “have they kilt you?”

‘O’Hara looked down the room agin an’ showed his teeth to the gum. Thin he spat on the flure.

‘“You’re not worth ut,” sez he. “Light that lamp, ye dogs,” an’ wid that he turned away, an’ I saw him walkin’ off wid Slimmy’s wife; she thryin’ to wipe off the powther-black on the front av his jackut wid her handkerchief. “A brave man you are,” thinks I—“a brave man an’ a bad woman.”

‘No wan said a wurrud for a time. They was all ashamed, past spache.

‘“Fwhat d’you think he will do?” sez wan av thim at last. “He knows we’re all in ut.”

‘“Are we so?” sez I from my cot. “The man that sez that to me will be hurt. I do not know,” sez I, “fwhat ondherhand divilmint you have conthrived, but by fwhat I’ve seen I know that you cannot commit murther wid another man’s rifle—such shakin’ cowards you are. I’m goin’ to slape,” I sez, “an’ you can blow my head off whoile I lay.” I did not slape, though, for a long time. Can ye wonder?

‘Next morn the news was through all the Rig’mint, an’ there was nothin’ that the men did not tell. O’Hara reports, fair an’ aisy, that Vulmea was come to grief through tamperin’ wid his rifle in barricks, all for to show the mechanism. An’, by my sowl, he had the impart’nince to say that he was on the shpot at the time an’ cud certify that ut was an accidint! You might ha’ knocked my roomful down wid a straw whin they heard that. ’Twas lucky for thim that the bhoys were always thryin’ to find out how the new rifle was made, an’ a lot av thim had come up for aisin’ the pull by shtickin’ bits av grass an’ such in the part av the lock that showed near the thrigger. The first issues of the ’Tinis was not covered in, an’ I mesilf have aised the pull av mine time an’ agin. A light pull is ten points on the range to me.

‘“I will not have this foolishness!” sez the Colonel. “I will twist the tail off Vulmea!” sez he; but whin he saw him, all tied up an’ groanin’ in hospital, he changed his will. “Make him an early convalescint,” sez he to the Doctor, an’ Vulmea was made so for a warnin’. His big bloody bandages an’ face puckered up to wan side did more to kape the bhoys from messin’ wid the insides av their rifles than any punishmint.

‘O’Hara gave no reason for fwhat he’d said, an’ all my roomful were too glad to ask, tho’ he put his spite upon thim more wearin’ than before. Wan day, howiver, he tuk me apart very polite, for he cud be that at his choosin’.

‘“You’re a good sodger, tho’ you’re a damned insolint man,” sez he.

‘“Fair wurruds, Sargint,” sez I, “or I may be insolint agin.”

‘“’Tis not like you,” sez he, “to lave your rifle in the rack widout the breech-pin, for widout the breech-pin she was whin Vulmea fired. I shud ha’ found the break av ut in the eyes av the holes, else,” he sez.

‘“Sargint,” sez I, “fwhat wud your life ha’ been worth av the breech-pin had been in place, for, on my sowl, my life wud be worth just as much to me av I tould you whether ut was or was not? Be thankful the bullet was not there,” I sez.

‘“That’s thrue,” sez he, pulling his moustache; “but I do not believe that you, for all your lip, were in that business.”

‘“Sargint,” sez I, “I cud hammer the life out av a man in ten minut’s wid my fistes if that man dishplazed me; for I am a good sodger, an’ I will be threated as such, an’ whoile my fistes are my own they’re strong enough for all the work I have to do. They do not fly back towards me!” ’sez I, lookin’ him betune the eyes.

‘“You’re a good man,” sez he, lookin’ me betune the eyes—an’ oh, he was a gran’-built man to see!—“you’re a good man,” he sez, “an’ I cud wish, for the pure frolic av ut, that I was not a Sargint, or that you were not a Privit; an’ you will think me no coward whin I say this thing.”

‘“I do not,” sez I. “I saw you whin Vulmea mishandled the rifle. But, Sargint,” I sez, “take the wurrud from me now, spakin’ as man to man wid the shtripes off, tho’ ’tis little right I have to talk, me bein’ fwhat I am by natur’. This time ye tuk no harm, an’ next time ye may not, but, in the ind, so sure as Slimmy’s wife came into the veranda, so sure will ye take harm—an’ bad harm. Have thought, Sargint,” sez I. “Is ut worth ut?”

page 6

‘“Ye’re a bould man,” sez he, breathin’ harrd. “A very bould man. But I am a bould man tu. Do you go your ways, Privit Mulvaney, an’ I will go mine.”

‘We had no further spache thin or afther, but, wan by another, he drafted the twelve av my room out into other rooms an’ got thim spread among the Comp’nies, for they was not a good breed to live together, an’ the Comp’ny Orf’cers saw ut. They wud ha’ shot me in the night av they had known fwhat I knew; but that they did not.

‘An’, in the ind, as I said, O’Hara met his death from Rafferty for foolin’ wid his wife. He wint his own way too well—Eyah, too well! Shtraight to that affair, widout turnin’ to the right or to the lef’, he wint, an’ may the Lord have mercy on his sowl. Amin!’

‘’Ear! ’ear!’ said Ortheris, pointing the moral with a wave of his pipe. ‘An’ this is ’im ’oo would be a bloomin’ Vulmea all for the sake of Mullins an’ a bloomin’ button! Mullins never went after a woman in his life. Mrs. Mullins, she saw ’im one day——’

‘Ortheris,’ I said hastily, for the romances of Private Ortheris are all too daring for publication, ‘look at the sun. It’s a quarter past six!’

‘Oh, Lord! Three-quarters of an hour for five an’ a ’arf miles! We’ll ’ave to run like Jimmy O.’

The Three Musketeers clambered on to the bridge, and departed hastily in the direction of the cantonment road. When I overtook them I offered them two stirrups and a tail, which they accepted enthusiastically. Ortheris held the tail, and in this manner we trotted steadily through the shadows by an unfrequented road.

At the turn into the cantonments we heard carriage wheels. It was the Colonel’s barouche, and in it sat the Colonel’s wife and daughter. I caught a suppressed chuckle, and my beast sprang forward with a lighter step.

The Three Musketeers had vanished into the night.

page 1 of 4

THE weather door of the smoking-room had been left open to the North Atlantic fog, as the big liner rolled and lifted, whistling to warn the fishing-fleet.

“That Cheyne boy’s the biggest nuisance aboard,” said a man in a frieze overcoat, shutting the door with a bang. “He isn’t wanted here. He’s too fresh.”

A white-haired German reached for a sandwich, and grunted between bites: “I know der breed. Ameriga is full of dot kind. I deli you you should imbort ropes’ ends free under your dariff.”

“Pshaw! There isn’t any real harm to him. He’s more to be pitied than anything,” a man from New York drawled, as he lay at full length along the cushions under the wet skylight. “They’ve dragged him around from hotel to hotel ever since he was a kid. I was talking to his mother this morning. She’s a lovely lady, but she don’t pretend to manage him. He’s going to Europe to finish his education.”

“Education isn’t begun yet.” This was a Philadelphian, curled up in a corner. “That boy gets two hundred a month pocket-money, he told me. He isn’t sixteen either.”

“Railroads, his father, aind’t it’?” said the German.

“Yep. That and mines and lumber and shipping. Built one place at San Diego, the old man has; another at Los Angeles; owns half a dozen railroads, half the lumber on the Pacific slope, and lets his wife spend the money,” the Philadelphian went on lazily. “The West don’t suit her, she says. She just tracks around with the boy and her nerves, trying to find out what’ll amuse him, I guess. Florida, Adirondacks, Lakewood, Hot Springs, New York, and round again. He isn’t much more than a second-hand hotel clerk now. When he’s finished in Europe he’ll be a holy terror.”

“What’s the matter with the old man attending to him personally’?” said a voice from the frieze ulster.

“Old man’s piling up the rocks. ‘Don’t want to be disturbed, I guess. He’ll find out his error a few years from now. ’Pity, because there’s a heap of good in the boy if you could get at it.”

“Mit a rope’s end; mit a rope’s end!” growled the German.

Once more the door banged, and a slight, slim-built boy perhaps fifteen years old, a half-smoked cigarette hanging from one corner of his mouth, leaned in over the high footway. His pasty yellow complexion did not show well on a person of his years, and his look was a mixture of irresolution, bravado, and very cheap smartness. He was dressed in a cherry-coloured blazer, knickerbockers, red stockings, and bicycle shoes, with a red flannel cap at the back of the head. After whistling between his teeth, as he eyed the company, he said in a loud, high voice: “Say, it’s thick outside. You can hear the fish-boats squawking all around us. Say, wouldn’t it be great if we ran down one?”

“Shut the door, Harvey,” said the New Yorker. “Shut the door and stay outside. You’re not wanted here.”

“Who’ll stop me?” he answered deliberately. “Did you pay for my passage, Mister Martin? ’Guess I’ve as good right here as the next man.”

He picked up some dice from a checker-board and began throwing, right hand against left.

“Say, gen’elmen, this is deader’n mud. Can’t we make a game of poker between us?”

There was no answer, and he puffed his cigarette, swung his legs, and drummed on the table with rather dirty fingers. Then he pulled out a roll of bills as if to count them.

“How’s your mamma this afternoon?” a man said. “I didn’t see her at lunch.”

“In her state-room, I guess. She’s ’most always sick on the ocean. I’m going to give the stewardess fifteen dollars for looking after her. I don’t go down more’n I can avoid. It makes me feel mysterious to pass that butler’s-pantry place. Say, this is the first time I’ve been on the ocean.”

“Oh, don’t apologise, Harvey.”

“Who’s apologising? This is the first time I’ve crossed the ocean, gen’elmen, and, except the first day, I haven’t been sick one little bit. No, sir!” He brought down his fist with a triumphant bang, wetted his finger, and went on counting the bills.

“Oh, you’re a high-grade machine, with the writing in plain sight,” the Philadelphian yawned. “You’ll blossom into a credit to your country if you don’t take care.”

“I know it. I’m an American—first, last, and all the time. I’ll show ’em that when I strike Europe. Pif! My cig’s out. I can’t smoke the truck the steward sells. Any gen’elman got a real Turkish cig on him?”

The chief engineer entered for a moment, red, smiling, and wet. “Say, Mac,” cried Harvey, cheerfully, “how are we hitting it?”

“Vara much in the ordinary way,” was the grave reply. “The young are as polite as ever to their elders, an’ their elders are e’en tryin’ to appreciate it.”

A low chuckle came from a corner. The German opened his cigar-case and handed a skinny black cigar to Harvey.

“Dot is der broper apparatus to smoke, my young friendt,” he said. “You vill dry it? Yes? Den you vill be efer so happy.”

Harvey lit the unlovely thing with a flourish: he felt that he was getting on in grown-up society.

“It would take more’n this to keel me over,” he said, ignorant that he was lighting that terrible article, a Wheeling “stogie.”

“Dot we shall bresently see,” said the German. “Where are we now, Mr. Mactonal?”

“Just there or thereabouts, Mr. Schaefer,” said the engineer. “We’ll be on the Grand Bank to-night; but in a general way o’ speakin’, we’re all among the fishing-fleet now. We’ve shaved three dories an’ near skelped the boom off a Frenchman since noon, an’ that’s close sailin’, ye may say.”

“You like my cigar, eh?” the German asked, for Harvey’s eyes were full of tears.

page 2

“Fine, full flavour,” he answered through shut teeth. “Guess we’ve slowed down a little, haven’t we? I’ll skip out and see what the log says.”

“I might if I vhas you,” said the German.

Harvey staggered over the wet decks to the nearest rail. He was very unhappy; but he saw the deck-steward lashing chairs together, and, since he had boasted before the man that he was never seasick, his pride made him go aft to the second-saloon deck at the stern, which was finished in a turtle-back. The deck was deserted, and he crawled to the extreme end of it, near the flagpole. There he doubled up in limp agony, for the Wheeling “stogie” joined with the surge and jar of the screw to sieve out his soul. His head swelled; sparks of fire danced before his eyes; his body seemed to lose weight, while his heels wavered in the breeze. He was fainting from seasickness, and a roll of the ship tilted him over the rail on to the smooth lip of the turtle-back. Then a low, grey mother-wave swung out of the fog, tucked Harvey under one arm, so to speak, and pulled him off and away to leeward; the great green closed over him, and he went quietly to sleep.

He was roused by the sound of a dinner-horn such as they used to blow at a summer-school he had once attended in the Adirondacks. Slowly he remembered that he was Harvey Cheyne, drowned and dead in mid-ocean, but was too weak to fit things together. A new smell filled his nostrils; wet and clammy chills ran down his back, and he was helplessly full of salt water. When he opened his eyes, he perceived that he was still on the top of the sea, for it was running round him in silver-coloured hills, and he was lying on a pile of half-dead fish, looking at a broad human back clothed in a blue jersey.

“It’s no good,” thought the boy. “I’m dead, sure enough, and this thing is in charge.”

He groaned, and the figure turned its head, showing a pair of little gold rings half hidden in curly black hair.

“Aha! You feel some pretty well now’?” it said. “Lie still so: we trim better.”

With a swift jerk he sculled the flickering boat-head on to a foamless sea that lifted her twenty full feet, only to slide her into a glassy pit beyond. But this mountain-climbing did not interrupt blue-jersey’s talk. “Fine good job, I say, that I catch you. Eh, wha-at? Better good job, I say, your boat not catch me. How you come to fall out?”

“I was sick,” said Harvey; “sick, and couldn’t help it.”

“Just in time I blow my horn, and your boat she yaw a little. Then I see you come all down. Eh, wha-at? I think you are cut into baits by the screw, but you dreeft—dreeft to me, and I make a big fish of you. So you shall not die this time.”

“Where am I?” said Harvey, who could not see that life was particularly safe where he lay.

“You are with me in the dory—Manuel my name, and I come from schooner “We’re Here” of Gloucester. I live to Gloucester. By-and-by we get supper. Eh, wha-at?”

He seemed to have two pairs of hands and a head of cast-iron, for, not content with blowing through a big conch-shell, he must needs stand up to it, swaying with the sway of the flat-bottomed dory, and send a grinding, thuttering shriek through the fog. How long this entertainment lasted, Harvey could not remember, for he lay back terrified at the sight of the smoking swells. He fancied he heard a gun and a horn and shouting. Something bigger than the dory, but quite as lively, loomed alongside. Several voices talked at once; he was dropped into a dark, heaving hole, where men in oilskins gave him a hot drink and took off his clothes, and he fell asleep.

When he waked he listened for the first breakfast-bell on the steamer, wondering why his state-room had grown so small. Turning, he looked into a narrow, triangular cave, lit by a lamp hung against a huge square beam. A three-cornered table within arm’s reach ran from the angle of the bows to the foremast. At the after end, behind a well-used Plymouth stove, sat a boy about his own age, with a flat red face and a pair of twinkling grey eyes. He was dressed in a blue jersey and high rubber boots. Several pairs of the same sort of foot-wear, an old cap, and some worn-out woolen socks lay on the floor, and black and yellow oilskins swayed to and fro beside the bunks. The place was packed as full of smells as a bale is of cotton. The oilskins had a peculiarly thick flavour of their own which made a sort of background to the smells of fried fish, burnt grease, paint, pepper, and stale tobacco; but these, again, were all hooped together by one encircling smell of ship and salt water. Harvey saw with disgust that there were no sheets on his bed-place. He was lying on a piece of dingy ticking full of lumps and nubbles. Then, too, the boat’s motion was not that of a steamer. She was neither sliding nor rolling, but rather wriggling herself about in a silly, aimless way, like a colt at the end of a halter. Water-noises ran by close to his ear, and beams creaked and whined about him. All these things made him grunt despairingly and think of his mother.

“Feelin’ better?” said the boy, with a grin. “Hev some coffee?” He brought a tin cup full, and sweetened it with molasses.

“Isn’t there milk?” said Harvey, looking round the dark double tier of bunks as if he expected to find a cow there.

“Well, no,” said the boy. “Ner there ain’t likely to be till ’baout mid-September. ’Tain’t bad coffee. I made it.”

Harvey drank in silence, and the boy handed him a plate full of pieces of crisp fried pork, which he ate ravenously.

“I’ve dried your clothes. Guess they’ve shrunk some,” said the boy. “They ain’t our style much none of ’em. Twist round an’ see ef you’re hurt any.”

Harvey stretched himself in every direction, but could not report any injuries.

“That’s good,” the boy said heartily. “Fix yerself an’ go on deck. Dad wants to see you. I’m his son,—Dan, they call me,—an’ I’m cook’s helper an’ everything else aboard that’s too dirty for the men. There ain’t no boy here ’cep’ me sence Otto went overboard—an’ he was only a Dutchy, an’ twenty year old at that. How’d you come to fall off in a dead flat ca’am?”

“’Twasn’t a calm,” said Harvey, sulkily. “It was a gale, and I was seasick. ’Guess I must have rolled over the rail.”

“There was a little common swell yes’day an’ last night,” said the boy. “But ef thet’s your notion of a gale—” He whistled. “You’ll know more ’fore you’re through. Hurry! Dad’s waitin’.”

Like many other unfortunate young people, Harvey had never in all his life received a direct order—never, at least, without long, and sometimes tearful, explanations of the advantages of obedience and the reasons for the request. Mrs. Cheyne lived in fear of breaking his spirit, which, perhaps, was the reason that she herself walked on the edge of nervous prostration. He could not see why he should be expected to hurry for any man’s pleasure, and said so. “Your dad can come down here if he’s so anxious to talk to me. I want him to take me to New York right away. It’ll pay him.”

page 3

Dan opened his eyes, as the size and beauty of this joke dawned on him. “Say, dad!” he shouted up the fo’c’sle hatch, “he says you kin slip down an’ see him ef you’re anxious that way. ’Hear, dad?”

The answer came back in the deepest voice Harvey had ever heard from a human chest: “Quit foolin’, Dan, and send him to me.”

Dan sniggered, and threw Harvey his warped bicycle shoes. There was something in the tones on the deck that made the boy dissemble his extreme rage and console himself with the thought of gradually unfolding the tale of his own and his father’s wealth on the voyage home. This rescue would certainly make him a hero among his friends for life. He hoisted himself on deck up a perpendicular ladder, and stumbled aft, over a score of obstructions, to where a small, thick-set, clean-shaven man with grey eyebrows sat on a step that led up to the quarter-deck. The swell had passed in the night, leaving a long, oily sea, dotted round the horizon with the sails of a dozen fishing-boats. Between them lay little black specks, showing where the dories were out fishing. The schooner, with a triangular riding-sail on the mainmast, played easily at anchor, and except for the man by the cabin-roof—“house” they call it—she was deserted.

“Mornin’—good afternoon, I should say. You’ve nigh slep’ the clock around, young feller,” was the greeting.

“Mornin’,” said Harvey. He did not like being called “young feller”; and, as one rescued from drowning, expected sympathy. His mother suffered agonies whenever he got his feet wet; but this mariner did not seem excited.

“Naow let’s hear all abaout it. It’s quite providential, first an’ last, fer all concerned. What might be your name? Where from (we mistrust it’s Noo York), an’ where baound (we mistrust it’s Europe)?”

Harvey gave his name, the name of the steamer, and a short history of the accident, winding up with a demand to be taken back immediately to New York, where his father would pay anything any one chose to name.

“H’m,” said the shaven man, quite unmoved by the end of Harvey’s speech. “I can’t say we think special of any man, or boy even, that falls overboard from that kind o’ packet in a flat ca’am. Least of all when his excuse is thet he’s seasick.”

“Excuse!” cried Harvey. “D’you suppose I’d fall overboard into your dirty little boat for fun?”

“Not knowin’ what your notions o’ fun may be, I can’t rightly say, young feller. But if I was you, I wouldn’t call the boat which, under Providence, was the means o’ savin’ ye, names. In the first place, it’s blame irreligious. In the second, it’s annoyin’ to my feelin’s—an’ I’m Disko Troop o’ the “We’re Here” o’ Gloucester, which you don’t seem rightly to know.”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” said Harvey. “I’m grateful enough for being saved and all that, of course; but I want you to understand that the sooner you take me back to New York the better it’ll pay you.”

“Meanin’—haow?” Troop raised one shaggy eyebrow over a suspiciously mild blue eye.

“Dollars and cents,” said Harvey, delighted to think that he was making an impression. “Cold dollars and cents.” He thrust a hand into a pocket, and threw out his stomach a little, which was his way of being grand. “You’ve done the best day’s work you ever did in your life when you pulled me in. I’m all the son Harvey Cheyne has.”

“He’s bin favoured,” said Disko, drily.

“And if you don’t know who Harvey Cheyne is, you don’t know much—that’s all. Now turn her around and let’s hurry.”

Harvey had a notion that the greater part of America was filled with people discussing and envying his father’s dollars.

“Mebbe I do, an’ mebbe I don’t. Take a reef in your stummick, young feller. It’s full o’ my vittles.”

Harvey heard a chuckle from Dan, who was pretending to be busy by the stump-foremast, and the blood rushed to his face. “We’ll pay for that too,” he said. “When do you suppose we shall get to New York?”

“I don’t use Noo York any. Ner Boston. We may see Eastern Point abaout September; an’ your pa—I’m real sorry I hain’t heerd tell of him—may give me ten dollars efter all your talk. Then o’ course he mayn’t.”

“Ten dollars! Why, see here, I—” Harvey dived into his pocket for the wad of bills. All he brought up was a soggy packet of cigarettes.

“Not lawful currency, an’ bad for the lungs. Heave ’em overboard, young feller, and try ag’in.”

“It’s been stolen!” cried Harvey, hotly.

“You’ll hev to wait till you see your pa to reward me, then?”

“A hundred and thirty-four dollars—all stolen,” said Harvey, hunting wildly through his pockets. “Give them back.”

A curious change flitted across old Troop’s hard face. “What might you have been doin’ at your time o’ life with one hundred an’ thirty-four dollrs, young feller?”

“It was part of my pocket-money—for a month.” This Harvey thought would be a knockdown blow, and it was—indirectly.

“Oh! One hundred and thirty-four dollars is only part of his pocket-money—for one month only! You don’t remember hittin’ anything when you fell over, do you? Crack ag’in’ a stanchion, le’s say. Old man Hasken o’ the “East Wind””—Troop seemed to be talking to himself—“he tripped on a hatch an’ butted the mainmast with his head—hardish. ’Baout three weeks afterwards, old man Hasken he would hev it that the “East Wind” was a commerce-destroyin’ man-o’-war, so he declared war on Sable Island because it was Bridish, an’ the shoals run aout too far. They sewed him up in a bed-bag, his head an’ feet appearin’, fer the rest o’ the trip, an’ now he’s to home in Essex playin’ with little rag dolls.”

Harvey choked with rage, but Troop went on consolingly: “We’re sorry fer you. We’re very sorry fer you—an’ so young. We won’t say no more abaout the money, I guess.”

“’Course you won’t. You stole it.”

page 4

“Suit yourself. We stole it ef it’s any comfort to you. Naow, abaout goin’ back. Allowin’ we could do it, which we can’t, you ain’t in no fit state to go back to your home, an’ we’ve jest come on to the Banks, workin’ fer our bread. We don’t see the ha’af of a hundred dollars a month, let alone pocket-money; an’ with good luck we’ll be ashore again somewheres abaout the first weeks o’ September.”

“But—but it’s May now, and I can’t stay here doin’ nothing just because you want to fish. I can’t, I tell you!”

“Right an’ jest; jest an’ right. No one asks you to do nothin’. There’s a heap as you can do, for Otto he went overboard on Le Have. I mistrust he lost his grip in a gale we f’und there. Anyways, he never come back to deny it. You’ve turned up, plain, plumb providential for all concerned. I mistrust, though, there’s ruther few things you kin do. Ain’t thet so?”

“I can make it lively for you and your crowd when we get ashore,” said Harvey, with a vicious nod, murmuring vague threats about “piracy,” at which Troop almost—not quite—smiled.

“Excep’ talk. I’d forgot that. You ain’t asked to talk more’n you’ve a mind to aboard the “We’re Here”. Keep your eyes open, an’ help Dan to do ez he’s bid, an’ sechlike, an’ I’ll give you—you ain’t wuth it, but I’ll give—ten an’ a ha’af a month; say thirty-five at the end o’ the trip. A little work will ease up your head, an’ you kin tell us all abaout your dad an’ your ma n’ your money efterwards.”

“She’s on the steamer,” said Harvey, his eyes fill-with tears. “Take me to New York at once.”

“Poor woman—poor woman! When she has you back she’ll forgit it all, though. There’s eight of us on the “We’re Here”, an’ ef we went back naow—it’s more’n a thousand mile—we’d lose the season. The men they wouldn’t hev it, allowin’ I was agreeable.”

“But my father would make it all right.”

“He’d try. I don’t doubt he’d try,” said Troop; “but a whole season’s catch is eight men’s bread; an’ you’ll be better in your health when you see him in the fall. Go forward an’ help Dan. It’s ten an’ a ha’af a month, ez I said, an’, o’ course, all f’und, same ez the rest o’ us.”

“Do you mean I’m to clean pots and pans and things?” said Harvey.

“An’ other things. You’ve no call to shout, young feller.”

“I won’t! My father will give you enough to buy this dirty little fish-kettle”—Harvey stamped on the deck—“ten times over, if you take me to New York safe; and—and—you’re in a hundred and thirty by me, anyway.”

“Ha-ow?” said Troop, the iron face darkening.

“How? You know how, well enough. On top of all that, you want me to do menial work”—Harvey was very proud of that adjective—“till the Fall. I tell you I will not. You hear?”

Troop regarded the top of the mainmast with deep interest for a while, as Harvey harangued fiercely all around him.

“Hsh!” he said at last. “I’m figurin’ out my responsibilities in my own mind. It’s a matter o’ jedgment.”

Dan Stole up and plucked Harvey by the elbow. “Don’t go to tamperin’ with dad any more,” he pleaded. “You’ve called him a thief two or three times over, an’ he don’t take that from any livin’ bein’.”

“I won’t!” Harvey almost shrieked, disregarding the advice; and still Troop meditated.

“Seems kinder unneighbourly,” he said at last, his eye travelling down to Harvey. “I don’t blame you, not a mite, young feller, nor you won’t blame me when the bile’s out o’ your systim. ’Be sure you sense what I say? Ten an’ a ha’af fer second boy on the schooner—an’ all f’und—fer to teach you an’ fer the sake o’ your health. Yes or no?”

“No!” said Harvey. “Take me back to New York or I’ll see you—”

He did not exactly remember what followed. He was lying in the scuppers, holding on to a nose that bled, while Troop looked down on him serenely.

“Dan,” he said to his son, “I was sot ag’in’ this young feller when I first saw him, on account o’ hasty jedgments. Never you be led astray by hasty jedgments, Dan. Naow I’m sorry for him, because he’s clear distracted in his upper works. He ain’t responsible fer the names he’s give me, nor fer his other statements nor fer jumpin’ overboard, which I’m abaout ha’af convinced he did. You be gentle with him, Dan, ’r I’ll give you twice what I’ve give him. Them hemmeridges clears the head. Let him sluice it off!”—Troop went down solemnly into the cabin, where he and the older men bunked, leaving Dan to comfort the luckless heir to thirty millions.

page 1 of 9

IN SUMMER all right-minded boys built huts in the furze-hill behind the College—little lairs whittled out of the heart of the prickly bushes, full of stumps, odd root-ends, and spikes, but, since they were strictly forbidden, palaces of delight. And for the fifth summer in succession, Stalky, M‘Turk, and Beetle (this was before they reached the dignity of a study) had built like beavers a place of retreat and meditation, where they smoked.Now there was nothing in their characters, as known to Mr. Prout, their house-master, at all commanding respect; nor did Foxy, the subtle red-haired school Sergeant, trust them. His business was to wear tennis-shoes, carry binoculars, and swoop hawk-like upon evil boys. Had he taken the field alone, that hut would have been raided, for Foxy knew the manners of his quarry; but Providence moved Mr. Prout, whose schoolname, derived from the size of his feet, was Hoofer, to investigate on his own account; and it was the cautious Stalky who found the track of his pugs on the very floor of their lair one peaceful afternoon when Stalky would fain have forgotten Prout and his works in a volume of Surtees and a new briar-wood pipe. Crusoe, at sight of the foot-print, did not act more swiftly than Stalky. He removed the pipes, swept up all loose match-ends, and departed to warn Beetle and M‘Turk.

But it was characteristic of the boy that he did not approach his allies till he had met and conferred with little Hartopp, President of the Natural History Society, an institution which Stalky held in contempt. Hartopp was more than surprised when the boy meekly, as he knew how, begged to propose himself, Beetle, and M‘Turk as candidates; confessed to a long-smothered interest in first-flowerings, early butterflies, and new arrivals, and volunteered, if Mr. Hartopp saw fit, to enter on the new life at once. Being a master, Hartopp was suspicious; but he was also an enthusiast, and his gentle little soul had been galled by chance-heard remarks from the three, and specially Beetle. So he was gracious to that repentant sinner, and entered the three names in his book.

Then, and not till then, did Stalky seek Beetle and M‘Turk in their house form-room. They were stowing away books for a quiet afternoon in the furze, which they called the ‘wuzzy.’

‘All up,’ said Stalky serenely. ‘I spotted Heffy’s fairy feet round our hut after dinner. ‘Blessing they’re so big.’

‘Con-found! Did you hide our pipes?’ said Beetle.

‘Oh no. Left ’em in the middle of the hut, of course. What a blind ass you are, Beetle! D’you think nobody thinks but yourself? Well, we can’t use the hut any more. Hoofer will be watchin’ it.’

‘“Bother! Likewise blow!”’ said M‘Turk thoughtfully, unpacking the volumes with which his chest was cased. The boys carried their libraries between their belt and their collar. ‘Nice job! This means we’re under suspicion for the rest of the term.’

‘Why? All that Heffy has found is a hut. He and Foxy will watch it. It’s nothing to do with us; only we mustn’t be seen that way for a bit.’

‘Yes, and where else are we to go?’ said Beetle. ‘You chose that place, too—an’—an’ I wanted to read this afternoon.’

Stalky sat on a desk drumming his heels on the form.

‘You’re a despondin’ brute, Beetle. Sometimes I think I shall have to drop you altogether. Did you ever know your Uncle Stalky forget you yet? His rebus infectis—after I’d seen Heffy’s man-tracks marchin’ round our hut, I found little Hartopp—destricto ense—wavin’ a butterfly-net. I conciliated Hartopp. ’Told him that you’d read papers to the Bug-hunters if he’d let you join, Beetle. ’Told him you liked butterflies, Turkey. Anyhow, I soothed the Hartoffles, and we’re Bug-hunters now.’

‘What’s the good of that?’ said Beetle.

‘Oh, Turkey, kick him!’

In the interests of science, bounds were largely relaxed for the members of the Natural History Society. They could wander, if they kept clear of all houses, practically where they chose; Mr. Hartopp holding himself responsible for their good conduct.

Beetle began to see this as M‘Turk began the kicking.

‘I’m an ass, Stalky!’ he said, guarding the afflicted part. ‘Pax, Turkey. I’m an ass.’

‘Don’t stop, Turkey. Isn’t your Uncle Stalky a great man?’

‘Great man,’ said Beetle.

‘All the same, bug-huntin’s a filthy business,’ said M‘Turk. ‘How the deuce does one begin?’

‘This way,’ said Stalky, turning to some fags’ lockers behind him. Fags are dabs at Natural History. ‘Here’s young Braybrooke’s botany-case.’ He flung out a tangle of decayed roots and adjusted the slide. ‘’Gives one no end of a professional air, I think. Here’s Clay Minor’s geological hammer. Beetle can carry that. Turkey, you’d better covet a butterfly-net from somewhere.’

‘I’m blowed if I do,’ said M‘Turk simply, with immense feeling. ‘Beetle, give me the hammer.’

‘All right. I’m not proud. Chuck us down that net on top of the lockers, Stalky.’

‘That’s all right. It’s a collapsible jamboree, too. Beastly luxurious dogs these fags are. Built like a fishin’-rod. ’Pon my sainted Sam, but we look the complete Bug-hunters! Now, listen to your Uncle Stalky! We’re goin’ along the cliffs after butterflies. Very few chaps come there. We’re goin’ to leg it, too. You’d better leave your book behind.’

‘Not much!’ said Beetle firmly. ‘I’m not goin’ to be done out of my fun for a lot of filthy butterflies.’

‘Then you’ll sweat horrid. You’d better carry my Jorrocks. ’Twon’t make you any hotter.’

They all sweated; for Stalky led them at a smart trot west away along the cliffs under the furzehills, crossing combe after gorsy combe. They took no heed to flying rabbits or fluttering fritillaries, and all that Turkey said of geology was utterly unquotable.

‘Are we going to Clovelly?’ he puffed at last, and they flung themselves down on the short, springy turf between the drone of the sea below and the light summer wind among the inland trees. They were looking into a combe half full of old, high furze in gay bloom that ran up to a fringe of brambles and a dense wood of mixed timber and hollies. It was as though one-half the combe were filled with golden fire to the cliff’s edge. The side nearest to them was open grass, and fairly bristled with notice-boards.

‘Fee-rocious old cove, this,’ said Stalky, reading the nearest. ‘“Prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law. G.M. Dabney, Col., J.P.,” an’ all the rest of it. ‘Don’t seem to me that any chap in his senses would trespass here, does it?’

page 2

‘You’ve got to prove damage ’fore you can prosecute for anything! ‘Can’t prosecute for trespass,’ said M‘Turk, whose father held many acres in Ireland. ‘That’s all rot!’

‘’Glad of that, ’cause this looks like what we wanted. Not straight across, Beetle, you blind lunatic! Any one could stop us half a mile off. This way; and furl up your beastly butterfly-net.’

Beetle disconnected the ring, thrust the net into a pocket, shut up the handle to a two-foot stave, and slid the cane-ring round his waist. Stalky led inland to the wood, which was, perhaps, a quarter of a mile from the sea, and reached the fringe of the brambles.

‘Now we can get straight down through the furze, and never show up at all,’ said the tactician. ‘Beetle, go ahead and explore. Snf! Snf! Beastly stink of fox somewhere!’

On all fours, save when he clung to his spectacles, Beetle wormed into the gorse, and presently announced between grunts of pain that he had found a very fair fox-track. This was well for Beetle, since Stalky pinched him a tergo. Down that tunnel they crawled. It was evidently a highway for the inhabitants of the combe; and, to their inexpressible joy, ended, at the very edge of the cliff, in a few square feet of dry turf walled and roofed with impenetrable gorse.

‘By gum! There isn’t a single thing to do except lie down,’ said Stalky, returning a knife to his pocket. ‘Look here!’

He parted the tough stems before him, and it was as a window opened on a far view of Lundy, and the deep sea sluggishly nosing the pebbles a couple of hundred feet below. They could hear young jackdaws squawking on the ledges, the hiss and jabber of a nest of hawks somewhere out of sight; and, with great deliberation, Stalky spat on to the back of a young rabbit sunning himself far down where only a cliff-rabbit could have found foot-hold. Great gray and black gulls screamed against the jackdaws; the heavy-scented acres of bloom round them were alive with low-nesting birds, singing or silent as the shadow of the wheeling hawks passed and returned; and on the naked turf across the combe rabbits thumped and frolicked.

‘Whew! What a place! Talk of natural history; this is it,’ said Stalky, filling himself a pipe. ‘Isn’t it scrumptious? Good old sea!’ He spat again approvingly, and was silent.

M‘Turk and Beetle had taken out their books and were lying on their stomachs, chin in hand. The sea snored and gurgled; the birds, scattered for the moment by these new animals, returned to their businesses, and the boys read on in the rich, warm sleepy silence.

‘Hullo, here’s a keeper,’ said Stalky, shutting Handley Cross cautiously, and peering through the jungle. A man with a gun appeared on the sky-line to the east. ‘Confound him, he’s going to sit down!’

‘He’d swear we were poachin’ too,’ said Beetle. ‘What’s the good of pheasants’ eggs? They’re always addled.’

‘’Might as well get up to the wood, I think,’ said Stalky. ‘We don’t want G.M. Dabney, Col., J.P., to be bothered about us so soon. Up the wuzzy and keep quiet! He may have followed us, you know.’

Beetle was already far up the tunnel. They heard him gasp indescribably: there was the crash of a heavy body leaping through the furze.

‘Aie! yeou little red rascal. I see yeou!’ The keeper threw the gun to his shoulder, and fired both barrels in their direction. The pellets dusted the dry stems round them as a big fox plunged between Stalky’s legs and ran over the cliff-edge.

They said nothing till they reached the wood, torn, dishevelled, hot, but unseen.

‘Narrow squeak,’ said Stalky. ‘I’ll swear some of the pellets went through my hair.’

‘Did you see him?’ said Beetle. ‘I almost put my hand on him. Wasn’t he a wopper! Didn’t he stink! Hullo, Turkey, what’s the matter? Are you hit?’

M‘Turk’s lean face had turned pearly white; his mouth, generally half open, was tight shut, and his eyes blazed. They had never seen him like this save once in a sad time of civil war.

‘Do you know that that was just as bad as murder?’ he said, in a grating voice, as he brushed prickles from his head.

‘Well, he didn’t hit us,’ said Stalky. ‘I think it was rather a lark. Here, where are you going?’

‘I’m going up to the house, if there is one,’ said M‘Turk, pushing through the hollies. ‘I am going to tell this Colonel Dabney.’

‘Are you crazy? He’ll swear it served us jolly well right. He’ll report us. It’ll be a public lickin’. Oh, Turkey, don’t be an ass! Think of us!’

‘You fool!’ said M‘Turk, turning savagely.

‘D’you suppose I’m thinkin’ of us. It’s the keeper.’

‘He’s cracked,’ said Beetle miserably, as they followed. Indeed, this was a new Turkey—a haughty, angular, nose-lifted Turkey—whom they accompanied through a shrubbery on to a lawn, where a white-whiskered old gentleman with a cleek was alternately putting and blaspheming vigorously.

‘Are you Colonel Dabney?’ M‘Turk began in this new creaking voice of his.

‘I—I am, and’—his eyes travelled up and down the boy—‘who—what the devil d’you want? Ye’ve been disturbing my pheasants. Don’t attempt to deny it. Ye needn’t laugh at it. (M‘Turk’s not too lovely features had twisted themselves into a horrible sneer at the word ‘pheasant.’) You’ve been bird’s-nesting. You needn’t hide your hat. I can see that you belong to the College. Don’t attempt to deny it. Ye do! Your name and number at once, sir. Ye want to speak to me—Eh? You saw my notice-boards? ’Must have. Don’t attempt to deny it. Ye did! Damnable! Oh, damnable!’

He choked with emotion. M‘Turk’s heel tapped the lawn and he stuttered a little—two sure signs that he was losing his temper. But why should he, the offender, be angry?

‘Lo-look here, sir. Do—do you shoot foxes? Because, if you don’t, your keeper does. We’ve seen him! I do-don’t care what you call us—but it’s an awful thing. It’s the ruin of good feelin’ among neighbours. A ma-man ought to say once and for all how he stands about preservin’. It’s worse than murder, because there’s no legal remedy.’ M‘Turk was quoting confusedly from his father, while the old gentleman made noises in his throat.

page 3

‘Do you know who I am?’ he gurgled at last; Stalky and Beetle quaking.

‘No, sorr, nor do I care if ye belonged to the Castle itself. Answer me now, as one gentleman to another. Do ye shoot foxes or do ye not?’

And four years before Stalky and Beetle had carefully kicked M‘Turk out of his Irish dialect! Assuredly he had gone mad or taken a sunstroke, and as assuredly he would be slain—once by the old gentleman and once by the Head. A public licking for the three was the least they could expect. Yet—if their eyes and ears were to be trusted—the old gentleman had collapsed. It might be a lull before the storm, but—

‘I do not.’ He was still gurgling.

‘Then you must sack your keeper. He’s not fit to live in the same county with a God-fearin’ fox. An’ a vixen, too—at this time o’ year!’

‘Did ye come up on purpose to tell me this?’

‘Of course I did, ye silly man,’ with a stamp of the foot. ‘Would you not have done as much for me if you’d seen that thing happen on my land, now?’

Forgotten—forgotten was the College and the decency due to elders! M‘Turk was treading again the barren purple mountains of the rainy West coast, where in his holidays he was viceroy of four thousand naked acres, only son of a three-hundred-year-old house, lord of a crazy fishing-boat, and the idol of his father’s shiftless tenantry. It was the landed man speaking to his equal—deep calling to deep—and the old gentleman acknowledged the cry.

‘I apologise,’ said he. ‘I apologise unreservedly—to you, and to the Old Country. Now, will you be good enough to tell me your story?’

‘We were in your combe,’ M‘Turk began, and he told his tale alternately as a schoolboy, and, when the iniquity of the thing overcame him, as an indignant squire; concluding: ‘So you see he must be in the habit of it. I—we—one never wants to accuse a neighbour’s man; but I took the liberty in this case—’

‘I see. Quite so. For a reason ye had. Infamous—oh, infamous!’ The two had fallen into step beside each other on the lawn, and Colonel Dabney was talking as one man to another. ‘This comes of promoting a fisherman—a fisherman—from his lobster-pots. It’s enough to ruin the reputation of an archangel. Don’t attempt to deny it. It is! Your father has brought you up well. He has. I’d much like the pleasure of his acquaintance. Very much, indeed. And these young gentlemen? English they are. Don’t attempt to deny it. They came up with you, too? Extraordinary! Extraordinary, now! In the present state of education I shouldn’t have thought any three boys would be well enough grounded. . . . But out of the mouths of—No—no! Not that by any odds. Don’t attempt to deny it. Ye’re not! Sherry always catches me under the liver, but—beer, now? Eh? What d’you say to beer, and something to eat? It’s long since I was a boy—abominable nuisances; but exceptions prove the rule. And a vixen, too!’

They were fed on the terrace by a gray-haired housekeeper. Stalky and Beetle merely ate, but M‘Turk with bright eyes continued a free and lofty discourse; and ever the old gentleman treated him as a brother.

‘My dear man, of course ye can come again. Did I not say exceptions prove the rule? The lower combe? Man, dear, anywhere ye please, so long as you do not disturb my pheasants. The two are not incompatible. Don’t attempt to deny it. They’re not! I’ll never allow another gun, though. Come and go as ye please. I’ll not see you, and ye needn’t see me. Ye’ve been well brought up. Another glass of beer, now? I tell you a fisherman he was and a fisherman he shall be to-night again. He shall! ’Wish I could drown him. I’ll convoy you to the Lodge. My people are not precisely—ah—broke to boy, but they’ll know you again.’

He dismissed them with many compliments by the high Lodge gate in the split-oak park palings and they stood still; even Stalky, who had played second, not to say a dumb, fiddle, regarding M‘Turk as one from another world. The two glasses of strong home-brewed had brought a melancholy upon the boy, for, slowly strolling with his hands in his pockets, he crooned:—

Under other circumstances Stalky and Beetle would have fallen upon him, for that song was barred utterly—anathema—the sin of witchcraft. But seeing what he had wrought, they danced round him in silence, waiting till it pleased him to touch earth.

The tea-bell rang when they were still half a mile from College. M‘Turk shivered and came out of dreams. The glory of his holiday estate had left him. He was a Colleger of the College, speaking English once more.

‘Turkey, it was immense!’ said Stalky generously. ‘I didn’t know you had it in you. You’ve got us a hut for the rest of the term, where we simply can’t be collared. Fids! Fids! Oh, fids! I gloat! Hear me gloat!’

They spun wildly on their heels, jodelling after the accepted manner of a ‘gloat,’ which is not unremotely allied to the primitive man’s song of triumph, and dropped down the hill by the path from the gasometer just in time to meet their housemaster, who had spent the afternoon watching their abandoned hut in the ‘wuzzy.’

Unluckily, all Mr. Prout’s imagination leaned to the darker side of life, and he looked on those young-eyed cherubims most sourly. Boys that he understood attended house-matches and could be accounted for at any moment. But he had heard M‘Turk openly deride cricket—even house-matches; Beetle’s views on the honour of the house he knew were incendiary; and he could never tell when the soft and smiling Stalky was laughing at him. Consequently—since human nature is what it is— those boys had been doing wrong somewhere. He hoped it was nothing very serious, but . . .

‘Ti-ra-la-la-i-tu! I gloat! Hear me!’ Stalky, still on his heels, whirled like a dancing dervish to the dining-hall.

‘Ti-ra-la-la-i-tu! I gloat! Hear me!’ Beetle spun behind him with outstretched arms.

‘Ti-ra-la-la-i-tu! I gloat! Hear me!’ M‘Turk’s voice cracked.

Now was there or was there not a distinct flavour of beer as they shot past Mr. Prout?

He was unlucky in that his conscience as a house-master impelled him to consult his associates. Had he taken his pipe and his troubles to Little Hartopp’s rooms he would, perhaps, have been saved confusion, for Hartopp believed in boys, and knew something about them. His fate led him to King, a fellow house-master, no friend of his, but a zealous hater of Stalky & Co.

‘Ah-haa!’ said King, rubbing his hands when the tale was told. ‘Curious! Now my house never dream of doing these things.’

page 4

‘But you see I’ve no proof, exactly.’

‘Proof? With the egregious Beetle! As if one wanted it! I suppose it is not impossible for the Sergeant to supply it? Foxy is considered at least a match for any evasive boy in my house. Of course they were smoking and drinking somewhere. That type of boy always does. They think it manly.’

‘But they’ve no following in the school, and they are distinctly—er—brutal to their juniors,’ said Prout, who had from a distance seen Beetle return, with interest, his butterfly-net to a tearful fag.

‘Ah! They consider themselves superior to ordinary delights. Self-sufficient little animals! There’s something in M‘Turk’s Hibernian sneer that would make me a little annoyed. And they are so careful to avoid all overt acts, too. It’s sheer calculated insolence. I am strongly opposed, as you know, to interfering with another man’s house; but they need a lesson, Prout. They need a sharp lesson, if only to bring down their over-weening self-conceit. Were I you, I should devote myself for a week to their little performances. Boys of that order—I may flatter myself, but I think I know boys—don’t join the Bug-hunters for love. Tell the Sergeant to keep his eye open; and, of course, in my peregrinations I may casually keep mine open too.’

‘Ti-ra-la-la-i-tu! I gloat! Hear me!’ far down the corridor.

‘Disgusting!’ said King. ‘Where do they pick up these obscene noises? One sharp lesson is what they want.’

The boys did not concern themselves with lessons for the next few days. They had all Colonel Dabney’s estate to play with, and they explored it with the stealth of Red Indians and the accuracy of burglars. They could enter either by the Lodge-gates on the upper road—they were careful to ingratiate themselves with the Lodge-keeper and his wife—drop down into the combe, and return along the cliffs; or they could begin at the combe, and climb up into the road.

They were careful not to cross the Colonel’s path—he had served his turn, and they would not out-wear their welcome—nor did they show up on the sky-line when they could move in cover. The shelter of the gorse by the cliff-edge was their chosen retreat. Beetle christened it the Pleasant Isle of Aves, for the peace and the shelter of it; and here, pipes and tobacco once cachéd in a convenient ledge an arm’s length down the cliff, their position was legally unassailable.

For, observe, Colonel Dabney had not invited them to enter his house. Therefore, they did not need to ask specific leave to go visiting; and school rules were strict on that point. He had merely thrown open his grounds to them; and, since they were lawful Bug-hunters, their extended bounds ran up to his notice-boards in the combe and his Lodge-gates on the hill.

They were amazed at their own virtue.

‘And even if it wasn’t,’ said Stalky, flat on his back, staring into the blue. ‘Even suppose we were miles out of bounds, no one could get at us through this wuzzy, unless he knew the tunnel. Isn’t this better than lyin’ up just behind the Coll.—in a blue funk every time we had a smoke? Isn’t your Uncle Stalky——?’

‘No,’ said Beetle—he was stretched at the edge of the cliff thoughtfully spitting. ‘We’ve got to thank Turkey for this. Turkey is the Great Man. Turkey, dear, you’re distressing Heffles.’

‘Gloomy old ass!’ said M‘Turk, deep in a book.

‘They’ve got us under suspicion,’ said Stalky. ‘Hoophats is so suspicious somehow; and Foxy always makes every stalk he does a sort of—sort of—’

‘Scalp,’ said Beetle. ‘Foxy’s a giddy Chingangook.’

‘Poor Foxy,’ said Stalky. ‘He’s goin’ to catch us one of these days. ’Said to me in the Gym last night, “I’ve got my eye on you, Mister Corkran. I’m only warning you for your good.” Then I said, “Well, you jolly well take it off again, or you’ll get into trouble. I’m only warnin’ you for your good.” Foxy was wrath.’

‘Yes, but it’s only fair sport for Foxy,’ said Beetle. ‘It’s Hefflelinga that has the evil mind. ’Shouldn’t wonder if he thought we got tight.’

‘I never got squiffy but once—that was in the holidays,’ said Stalky reflectively; ‘an’ it made me horrid sick. ’Pon my sacred Sam, though, it’s enough to drive a man to drink, havin’ an animal like Hoof for house-master.’

‘If we attended the matches an’ yelled, “Well hit, sir,” an’ stood on one leg an’ grinned every time Heffy said, “So ho, my sons. Is it thus?” an’ said, “Yes, sir,” an’ “No, sir,’ ‘an’ “Oh, sir,” an’ “Please, sir,” like a lot o’ filthy fa-ags, Heffy ’ud think no end of us,” said M‘Turk, with a sneer.

‘’Too late to begin that.’

‘It’s all right. The Hefflelinga means well. But he is an ass. And we show him that we think he’s an ass. An’ so Heffy don’t love us. ’Told me last night after prayers that he was in loco parentis,’ Beetle grunted.

‘The deuce he did!’ cried Stalky. ‘That means he’s maturin’ something unusual dam’ mean. ‘Last time he told me that he gave me three hundred lines for dancin’ the cachuca in Number Ten dormitory. Loco parentis, by gum! But what’s the odds, as long as you’re ’appy? We’re all right.’

They were, and their very rightness puzzled Prout, King, and the Sergeant. Boys with bad consciences show it. They slink out past the Fives Court in haste, and smile nervously when questioned. They return, disordered, in bare time to save a call-over. They nod and wink and giggle one to the other, scattering at the approach of a master. But Stalky and his allies had long out-lived these manifestations of youth. They strolled forth unconcernedly, and returned, in excellent shape, after a light refreshment of strawberries and cream at the Lodge.

The Lodge-keeper had been promoted to keeper, vice the murderous fisherman, and his wife made much of the boys. The man, too, gave them a squirrel, which they presented to the Natural History Society; thereby checkmating little Hartopp, who wished to know what they were doing for Science. Foxy faithfully worked some deep Devon lanes behind a lonely cross-roads inn; and it was curious that Prout and King, members of Common-room seldom friendly, walked together in the same direction—that is to say, north-east. Now, the Pleasant Isle of Aves lay due south-west.

‘They’re deep—day-vilish deep,’ said Stalky. ‘Why are they drawin’ those covers?’

page 5

‘Me,’ said Beetle sweetly. ‘I asked Foxy if he had ever tasted the beer there. That was enough for Foxy, and it cheered him up a little. He and Heffy were sniffin’ round our old hut so long I thought they’d like a change.’

‘Well, it can’t last for ever,’ said Stalky. ‘Heffy’s bankin’ up like a thunder-cloud, an’ King goes rubbin’ his beastly hands, an’ grinnin’ like a hyena. It’s shockin’ demoralisin’ for King. He’ll burst some day.’

That day came a little sooner than they expected—came when the Sergeant, whose duty it was to collect defaulters, did not attend an afternoon call-over.

‘Tired of pubs, eh? He’s gone up to the top of hill with his binoculars to spot us,’ said Stalky. ‘Wonder he didn’t think of that before. Did you see old Heffy cock his eye at us when we answered our names? Heffy’s in it, too. Ti-ra-la-la-i-tu! I gloat! Hear me! Come on!’

‘Aves?’ said Beetle.

‘Of course, but I’m not smokin’ aujourd’hui. Parce que je jolly well pense that we’ll be suivi. We’ll go along the cliffs, slow, an’ give Foxy lots of time to parallel us up above.’

They strolled towards the swimming-baths, and presently overtook King.

‘Oh, don’t let me interrupt you,’ he said. ‘Engaged in scientific pursuits, of course? I trust you will enjoy yourselves, my young friends?’

‘You see!’ said Stalky, when they were out of ear-shot. ‘He can’t keep a secret. He’s followin’ to cut off our line of retreat. He’ll wait at the baths till Heffy comes along. They’ve tried every blessed place except along the cliffs, and now they think they’ve bottled us. No need to hurry.’

They walked leisurely over the combes till they reached the line of notice-boards.

‘Listen a shake. Foxy’s up wind comin’ down hill like beans. When you hear him move in the bushes, go straight across to Aves. They want to catch us flagrante delicto.’

They dived into the gorse at right angles to the tunnel, openly crossing the grass, and lay still in Aves.

‘What did I tell you?’ Stalky carefully put away the pipes and tobacco. The Sergeant, out of breath, was leaning against the fence, raking the furze with his binoculars, but he might as well have tried to see through a sand-bag. Anon, Prout and King appeared behind him. They conferred.

‘Aha! Foxy don’t like the notice-boards, and he don’t like the prickles either. Now we’ll cut up the tunnel and go to the Lodge. Hullo! They’ve sent Foxy into cover.’

The Sergeant was waist-deep in crackling, swaying furze, his ears filled with the noise of his own progress. The boys reached the shelter of the wood and looked down through a belt of hollies.

‘Hellish noise!’ said Stalky critically. ‘’Don’t think Colonel Dabney will like it. I move we go up to the Lodge and get something to eat. We might as well see the fun out.’

Suddenly the keeper passed them at a trot.

‘Who’m they to combe-bottom for Lard’s sake? Master’ll be crazy,’ he said.

‘Poachers simly,’ Stalky replied in the broad Devon that was the boy’s langue de guerre.

‘I’ll poach ’em to raights!’ He dropped into the funnel-like combe, which presently began to fill with noises, notably King’s voice crying, ‘Go on, Sergeant! Leave him alone, you, sir. He is executing my orders.’

‘Who’m yeou to give arders here, gingy whiskers? Yeou come up to the master. Come out o’ that wuzzy! (This is to the Sergeant.) Yiss, I reckon us knows the boys yeou’m after. They’ve tu long ears an’ vuzzy bellies, an’ you nippies they in yeour pockets when they’m dead. Come on up to master! He’ll boy yeou all you’m a mind to. Yeou other folk bide your side fence.’

‘Explain to the proprietor. You can explain, Sergeant,’ shouted King. Evidently the Sergeant had surrendered to the major force.

Beetle lay at full length on the turf behind the Lodge literally biting the earth in spasms of joy.

Stalky kicked him upright. There was nothing of levity about Stalky or M‘Turk save a stray muscle twitching on the cheek.

They tapped at the Lodge door, where they were always welcome.

‘Come yeou right in an’ set down, my little dearrs,’ said the woman. ‘They’ll niver touch my man. He’ll poach ’em to rights. Iss fai! Fresh berries an’ cream. Us Dartymoor folk niver forgit their friends. But them Bidevor poachers, they’ve no hem to their garments. Sugar? My man he’ve digged a badger for yeou, my dearrs. ’Tis in the linhay in a box.’

‘Us’ll take un with us when we’m finished here. I reckon yeou’m busy. We’ll bide here an’—’tis washin’ day with yeou, simly,’ said Stalky. ‘We’m no company to make all vitty for. Niver yeou mind us. Yiss. There’s plenty cream.’

The woman withdrew, wiping her pink hands on her apron, and left them in the parlour. There was a scuffle of feet on the gravel outside the heavily-leaded diamond panes, and then the voice of Colonel Dabney, something clearer than a bugle.

‘Ye can read? You’ve eyes in your head? Don’t attempt to deny it. Ye have!’

Beetle snatched a crochet-work antimacassar from the shiny horsehair sofa, stuffed it into his mouth, and rolled out of sight.

‘You saw my notice-boards. Your duty? Curse your impudence, sir. Your duty was to keep off my grounds. Talk of duty to me! Why—why—why, ye misbegotten poacher, ye’ll be teaching me my A B C next! Roarin’ like a bull in the bushes down there! Boys? Boys? Boys? Keep your boys at home, then! I’m not responsible for your boys! But I don’t believe it—I don’t believe a word of it. Ye’ve a furtive look in your eye—a furtive, sneakin’, poachin’ look in your eye, that ’ud ruin the reputation of an archangel! Don’t attempt to deny it! Ye have! A sergeant? More shame to you, then, an’ the worst bargain Her Majesty ever made! A sergeant, to run about the country poachin’—on your pension! Damnable! Oh, damnable! But I’ll be considerate. I’ll be merciful. By gad, I’ll be the very essence o’ humanity! Did ye, or did ye not, see my notice-boards? Don’t attempt to deny it! Ye did. Silence, Sergeant!’

page 6

Twenty-one years in the army had left their mark on Foxy. He obeyed.

‘Now. March!’

The high Lodge-gate shut with a clang. ‘My duty! A sergeant to tell me my duty!’ puffed Colonel Dabney. ‘Good Lard! more sergeants!’

‘It’s King! It’s King!’ gulped Stalky, his head on the horsehair pillow. M‘Turk was eating the rag-carpet before the speckles hearth, and the sofa heaved to the emotions of Beetle. Through the thick glass the figures without showed blue, distorted, and menacing.

‘I—I protest against this outrage.’ King had evidently been running up hill. ‘The man was entirely within his duty. Let—let me give you my card.’

‘He’s in flannels!’ Stalky buried his head again.

‘Unfortunately—most unfortunately—I have not one with me, but my name is King, sir, a housemaster of the College, and you will find me prepared—fully prepared—to answer for this man’s action. We’ve seen three——’

‘Did ye see my notice-boards?’

‘I admit we did; but under the circumstances——’

‘I stand in loco parentis.’ Prout’s deep voice was added to the discussion. They could hear him pant.

‘F’what?’ Colonel Dabney was growing more and more Irish.

‘I’m responsible for the boys under my charge.’

‘Ye are, are ye? Then all I can say is that ye set them a very bad example—a dam’ bad example, if I may say so. I do not own your boys. I’ve not seen your boys, an’ I tell you that if there was a boy grinnin’ in every bush on the place still ye’ve no shadow of a right here, comin’ up from the combe that way, an’ frightenin’ everything in it. Don’t attempt to deny it. Ye did. Ye should have come to the Lodge an’ seen me like Christians, instead of chasin’ your dam’ boys through the length and breadth of my covers. In loco parentis ye are? We’ll, I’ve not forgotten my Latin either, an’ I’ll say to you: ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes.’ If the masters trespass, how can we blame the boys?’

‘But if I could speak to you privately,’ said Prout.

‘I’ll have nothing private with you! Ye can be as private as ye please on the other side o’ that gate, an’—I wish ye a very good afternoon.’

A second time the gate clanged. They waited till Colonel Dabney had returned to the house, and fell into one another’s arms, crowing for breath.

‘Oh, my Soul! Oh, my King! Oh, my Heffy! Oh, my Foxy! Zeal, all zeal, Mr. Simple.’ Stalky wiped his eyes. ‘Oh! Oh! Oh!—“I did boil the exciseman!” We must get out of this or we’ll be late for tea.’

‘Ge—ge—get the badger and make little Hartopp happy. Ma—ma—make ’em all happy,’ sobbed M‘Turk, groping for the door and kicking the prostrate Beetle before him.

They found the beast in an evil-smelling box, left two half-crowns for payment, and staggered home. Only the badger grunted most marvellous like Colonel Dabney, and they dropped him twice or thrice with shrieks of helpless laughter. They were but imperfectly recovered when Foxy met them by the Fives Court with word that they were to go up to their dormitory and wait till sent for.

‘Well, take this box to Mr. Hartopp’s rooms, then. We’ve done something for the Natural History Society, at any rate,’ said Beetle.

‘’Fraid that won’t save you, young gen’elmen,’ Foxy answered, in an awful voice. He was sorely ruffled in his mind.

‘All sereno, Foxibus.’ Stalky had reached the extreme stage of hiccups. ‘We—we’ll never desert you, Foxy. Hounds choppin’ foxes in cover is more a proof of vice, ain’t it? . . . No, you’re right. I’m—I’m not quite well.’

‘They’ve gone a bit too far this time,’ Foxy thought to himself. ‘Very far gone, I’d say, excep’ there was no smell of liquor. An’ yet it isn’t like ’em—somehow. King and Prout they ’ad their dressin’-down same as me. That’s one comfort.’

‘Now, we must pull up,’ said Stalky, rising from the bed on which he had thrown himself. ‘We’re injured innocence—as usual. We don’t know what we’ve been sent up here for, do we?’

‘No explanation. Deprived of tea. Public disgrace before the house,’ said M‘Turk, whose eyes were running over. ‘It’s dam’ serious.’

‘Well, hold on, till King loses his temper,’ said Beetle. ‘He’s a libellous old rip, an’ he’ll be in a ravin’ paddy-wack. Prout’s too beastly cautious. Keep your eye on King, and, if he gives us a chance, appeal to the Head. That always makes ’em sick.’

They were summoned to their house-master’s study, King and Foxy supporting Prout, and Foxy had three canes under his arm. King leered triumphantly, for there were tears, undried tears of mirth, on the boys’ cheeks. Then the examination began.

Yes, they had walked along the cliffs. Yes, they had entered Colonel Dabney’s grounds. Yes, they had seen the notice-boards (at this point Beetle sputtered hysterically). For what purpose had they entered Colonel Dabney’s grounds? ‘Well, sir, there was a badger.’

Here King, who loathed the Natural History Society because he did not like Hartopp, could no longer be restrained. He begged them not to add mendacity to open insolence. ‘But the badger was in Mr. Hartopp’s rooms, sir.’ The Sergeant had kindly taken it up for them. That disposed of the badger, and the temporary check brought King’s temper to boiling-point. They could hear his foot on the floor while Prout prepared his lumbering inquiries. They had settled into their stride now. Their eyes ceased to sparkle; their faces were blank; their hands hung beside them without a twitch. They were learning, at the expense of a fellow-countryman, the lesson of their race, which is to put away all emotion and entrap the alien at the proper time.

page 7

So far good. King was importing himself more freely into the trial, being vengeful where Prout was grieved. They knew the penalties of trespassing? With a fine show of irresolution, Stalky admitted that he had gathered some information vaguely bearing on this head, but he thought——The sentence was dragged out to the uttermost: Stalky did not wish to play his trump with such an opponent. Mr. King desired no buts, nor was he interested in Stalky’s evasions. They, on the other hand, might be interested in his poor views. Boys who crept—who sneaked—who lurked—out of bounds, even the generous bounds of the Natural History Society, which they had falsely joined as a cloak for their misdeeds—their vices—their villainies—their immoralities——

‘He’ll break cover in a minute,’ said Stalky to himself. ‘Then we’ll run into him before he gets away.’

Such boys, scabrous boys, moral lepers—the current of his words was carrying King off his feet—evil-speakers, liars, slow-bellies—yea, incipient drunkards. . . .

He was merely working up to a peroration, and the boys knew it; but M‘Turk cut through the frothing sentence, the others echoing:

‘I appeal to the Head, sir.’

‘I appeal to the Head, sir.’

‘I appeal to the Head, sir.’

It was their unquestioned right. Drunkenness meant expulsion after a public flogging. They had been accused of it. The case was the Head’s, and the Head’s alone.

‘Thou hast appealed unto Cæsar: unto Cæsar shalt thou go.’ They had heard that sentence once or twice before in their careers. ‘None the less,’ said King uneasily, ‘you would be better advised to abide by our decision, my young friends.’

‘Are we allowed to associate with the rest of the school till we see the Head, sir?’ said M‘Turk to his house-master, disregarding King. This at once lifted the situation to its loftiest plane. Moreover it meant no work, for moral leprosy was strictly quarantined, and the Head never executed judgment till twenty-four cold hours later.

‘Well—er—if you persist in your defiant attitude,’ said King, with a loving look at the canes under Foxy’s arm. ‘There is no alternative.’

Ten minutes later the news was over the whole school. Stalky & Co. had fallen at last—fallen by drink. They had been drinking. They had returned blind-drunk from a hut. They were even now lying hopelessly intoxicated on the dormitory floor. A few bold spirits crept up to look, and received boots.

‘We’ve got him—got him on the Caudine Toasting-fork!’ said Stalky, after those hints were taken. ‘King’ll have to prove his charges up to the giddy hilt.’

‘Too much ticklee, him bust,’ Beetle quoted from a book of his reading. ‘Didn’t I say he’d go pop if we lat un bide?’

‘No prep., either, O ye incipient drunkards,’ said M‘Turk, ‘and it’s trig night, too. Hullo! Here’s our dear friend Foxy. More tortures, Foxibus?’

‘I’ve brought you something to eat, young gentlemen,’ said the Sergeant from behind a crowded tray. Their wars had ever been waged without malice, and a suspicion floated in Foxy’s mind that boys who allowed themselves to be tracked so easily might, perhaps, hold something in reserve. Foxy had served through the Mutiny, when early and accurate information was worth much.

‘I—I noticed you ’adn’t ’ad anything to eat, an’ I spoke to Gumbly, an’ he said you wasn’t exactly cut off from supplies. So I brought up this. It’s your potted ’am tin, ain’t it, Mr. Corkran?’

‘Why, Foxibus, you’re a brick,’ said Stalky. ‘I didn’t think you had this much—what’s the word, Beetle?’

‘Bowels,’ Beetle replied promptly. ‘Thank you, Sergeant. That’s young Carter’s potted ham, though.’

‘There was a C on it. I thought it was Mr. Corkran’s. This is a very serious business, young gentlemen. That’s what it is. I didn’t know, perhaps, but there might be something on your side which you hadn’t said to Mr. King or Mr. Prout, maybe.’

‘There is. Heaps, Foxibus.’ This from Stalky through a full mouth.

‘Then you see, if that was the case, it seemed to me I might represent it, quiet so to say, to the ’Ead when he asks me about it. I’ve got to take ’im the charges to-night, an’—it looks bad on the face of it.’

‘’Trocious bad, Foxy. Twenty-seven cuts in the Gym before all the school, and public expulsion. “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is ragin’,”’ quoth Beetle.

‘It’s nothin’ to make fun of, young gentlemen. I ’ave to go to the ’Ead with the charges. An’—an’ you mayn’t be aware, per’aps, that I was followin’ you this afternoon; havin’ my suspicions.’

‘Did ye see the notice-boards?’ croaked M‘Turk, in the very brogue of Colonel Dabney.

‘Ye’ve eyes in your head. Don’t attempt to deny it. Ye did!’ said Beetle.

‘A Sergeant! To run about poachin’ on your pension! Damnable! Oh, damnable!’ said Stalky, without pity.

‘Good Lord!’ said the Sergeant, sitting heavily upon a bed. ‘Where—where the devil was you? I might ha’ known it was a do—somewhere.’

‘Oh, you clever maniac!’ Stalky resumed. ‘We mayn’t be aware you were followin’ us this afternoon, mayn’t we? ‘Thought you were stalkin’ us, eh? Why, we led you bung into it, of course. Colonel Dabney—don’t you think he’s a nice man, Foxy?—Colonel Dabney’s our pet particular friend. We’ve been goin’ there for weeks and weeks. He invited us. You and your duty! Curse your duty, sir! Your duty was to keep off his covers.’

‘You’ll never be able to hold up your head again, Foxy. The fags ’ll hoot at you,’ said Beetle. ‘Think of your giddy prestige!’

The Sergeant was thinking—hard.

‘Look ’ere, young gentlemen,’ he said earnestly.

page 8

‘You aren’t surely ever goin’ to tell, are you? Wasn’t Mr. Prout and Mr. King in—in it too?’

‘Foxibusculus, they was. They was—singular horrid. Caught it worse than you. We heard every word of it. You got off easy, considerin’. If I’d been Dabney I swear I’d ha’ quodded you. I think I’ll suggest it to him to-morrow.’

‘An’ it’s all goin’ up to the ’Ead. Oh, Good Lord!’

‘Every giddy word of it, my Chingangook,’ said Beetle, dancing. ‘Why shouldn’t it? We’ve done nothing wrong. We ain’t poachers. We didn’t cut about blastin’ the characters of poor, innocent boys—saying they were drunk.’

‘That I didn’t,’ said Foxy. ‘I—I only said that you be’aved uncommon odd when you come back with that badger. Mr. King may have taken the wrong hint from that.’

‘’Course he did; an’ he’ll jolly well shove all the blame on you when he finds out he’s wrong. We know King, if you don’t. I’m ashamed of you. You ain’t fit to be a Sergeant,’ said M‘Turk.

‘Not with three thorough-goin’ young devils like you, I ain’t. I’ve been had. I’ve been ambuscaded. Horse, foot, an’ guns, I’ve been had, an’—an’ there’ll be no holdin’ the junior forms after this. M’rover, the ’Ead will send me with a note to Colonel Dabney to ask if what you say about bein’ invited was true.’

‘Then you’d better go in by the Lodge-gates this time, instead of chasin’ your dam’ boys—oh, that was the Epistle to King—so it was. We-ell, Foxy?’ Stalky put his chin on his hands and regarded the victim with deep delight.

‘Ti-ra-la-la-i-tu! I gloat! Hear me!’ said M‘Turk. ‘Foxy brought us tea when we were moral lepers. Foxy has a heart. Foxy has been in the Army, too.’

‘I wish I’d ha’ had you in my company, young gentlemen,’ said the Sergeant from the depths of his heart; ‘I’d ha’ given you something.’

‘Silence at drum-head court-martial,’ M‘Turk went on. ‘I’m advocate for the prisoner; and, besides, this is much too good to tell all the other brutes in the Coll. They’d never understand. They play cricket, and say, “Yes, sir,” and “Oh, sir,” and “No, sir.”’

‘Never mind that. Go ahead,’ said Stalky.

‘Well, Foxy’s a good little chap when he does not esteem himself so as to be clever.’

‘“Take not out your ‘ounds on a werry windy day,”’ Stalky struck in. ‘I don’t care if you let him off.’

‘Nor me,’ said Beetle. ‘Heffy is my only joy—Heffy and King.’

‘I ’ad to do it,’ said the Sergeant plaintively.

‘Right O! Led away by bad companions in the execution of his duty, or—or words to that effect. You’re dismissed with a reprimand, Foxy. We won’t tell about you. I swear we won’t,’ M‘Turk concluded. ‘Bad for the discipline of the school. Horrid bad.’

‘Well,’ said the Sergeant, gathering up the tea-things, ‘knowin’ what I know o’ the young dev—gentlemen of the College, I’m very glad to ’ear it. But what am I to tell the ’Ead?’

‘Anything you jolly well please, Foxy. We aren’t the criminals.’

To say that the Head was annoyed when the Sergeant appeared after dinner with the day’s crime-sheet would be putting it mildly.

‘Corkran, M‘Turk, & Co., I see. Bounds as usual. Hullo! What the deuce is this? Suspicion of drinking. Whose charge?’

‘Mr. King’s, sir. I caught ’em out of bounds, sir: at least that was ’ow it looked. But there’s a lot be’ind, sir.’ The Sergeant was evidently troubled.

‘Go on,’ said the Head. ‘Let us have your version.’

He and the Sergeant had dealt with each other for some seven years; and the Head knew that Mr. King’s statements depended very largely on Mr. King’s temper.

‘I thought they were out of bounds along the cliffs. But it come out they wasn’t, sir. I saw them go into Colonel Dabney’s woods, and—Mr. King and Mr. Prout come along—and—the fact was, sir, we was mistook for poachers by Colonel Dabney’s people—Mr. King and Mr. Prout and me. There were some words, sir, on both sides. The young gentlemen slipped ’ome somehow, and they seemed ’ighly humorous, sir. Mr. King was mistook by Colonel Dabney himself—Colonel Dabney bein’ strict. Then they preferred to come straight to you, sir, on account of what—what Mr. King may ’ave said about their ‘abits afterwards in Mr. Prout’s study. I only said they was ’ighly humorous, laughin’ an’ gigglin’, an’ a bit above ’emselves. They’ve since told me, sir, in a humorous way, that they was invited by Colonel Dabney to go into ’is woods.’

‘I see. They didn’t tell their house-master that, of course.’

‘They took up Mr. King on appeal just as soon as he spoke about their—’abits. Put in the appeal at once, sir, an’ asked to be sent to the dormitory waitin’ for you. I’ve since gathered, sir, in their humorous way, sir, that some ’ow or other they’ve ’eard about every word Colonel Dabney said to Mr. King and Mr. Prout when he mistook ’em for poachers. I—I might ha’ known when they led me on so that they ’eld the inner line of communications. It’s—it’s a plain do, sir, if you ask me; an’ they’re gloatin’ over it in the dormitory.’

The Head saw—saw even to the uttermost farthing—and his mouth twitched a little under his moustache.

‘Send them to me at once, Sergeant. This case needn’t wait over.’

‘Good evening,’ said he when the three appeared under escort. ‘I want your undivided attention for a few minutes. You’ve known me for five years, and I’ve known you for—twenty-five. I think we understand one another perfectly. I am now going to pay you a tremendous compliment. (The brown one, please, Sergeant. Thanks. You needn’t wait.) I’m going to execute you without rhyme, Beetle, or reason. I know you went to Colonel Dabney’s covers because you were invited. I’m not even going to send the Sergeant with a note to ask if your statement is true; because I am convinced that, on this occasion, you have adhered strictly to the truth. I know, too, that you were not drinking. (You can take off that virtuous expression, M‘Turk, or I shall begin to fear you don’t understand me.) There is not a flaw in any of your characters. And that is why I am going to perpetrate a howling injustice. Your reputations have been injured, haven’t they? You have been disgraced before the house, haven’t you? You have a peculiarly keen regard for the honour of your house, haven’t you? Well, now I am going to lick you.’

page 9

Six apiece was their portion upon that word.

‘And this, I think’—the Head replaced the cane, and flung the written charge into the waste-paper basket—‘covers the situation. When you find a variation from the normal—this will be useful to you in later life—always meet him in an abnormal way. And that reminds me. There are a pile of paper-backs on that shelf. You can borrow them if you put them back. I don’t think they’ll take any harm from being read in the open. They smell of tobacco rather. You will go to prep. this evening as usual. Good-night,’ said that amazing man.

‘Good-night, and thank you, sir.’

‘I swear I’ll pray for the Head to-night,’ said Beetle. ‘Those last two cuts were just flicks on my collar. There’s a Monte Cristo in that lower shelf. I saw it. Bags I, next time we go to Aves!’

‘Dearr man!’ said M‘Turk. ‘No gating. No impots. No beastly questions. All settled. Hullo! what’s King goin’ in to him for—King and Prout?’

Whatever the nature of that interview, it did not improve either King’s or Prout’s ruffled plumes, for, when they came out of the Head’s house, six eyes noted that the one was red and blue with emotion as to his nose, and that the other was sweating profusely. That sight compensated them amply for the Imperial Jaw with which they were favoured by the two. It seems—and who so astonished as they?—that they had held back material facts; that they were guilty both of suppressio veri and suggestio falsi (well-known gods against whom they often offended); further, that they were malignant in their dispositions, untrustworthy in their characters, pernicious and revolutionary in their influences, abandoned to the devils of wilfulness, pride, and a most intolerable conceit. Ninthly, and lastly, they were to have a care and to be very careful.

They were careful, as only boys can be when there is a hurt to be inflicted. They waited through one suffocating week till Prout and King were their royal selves again; waited till there was a house-match—their own house, too—in which Prout was taking part; waited, further, till he had buckled on his pads in the pavilion and stood ready to go forth. King was scoring at the window, and the three sat on a bench without.

Said Stalky to Beetle: ‘I say, Beetle, quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ said Beetle. ‘I’ll have nothin’ private with you. Ye can be as private as ye please the other end of the bench; and I wish ye a very good afternoon.’

M‘Turk yawned.

‘Well, ye should ha’ come up to the lodge like Christians instead o’ chasin’ your—a-hem—boys through the length an’ breadth of my covers. I think these house-matches are all rot. Let’s go over to Colonel Dabney’s an’ see if he’s collared any more poachers.’

That afternoon there was joy in Aves.

page 1 of 4

ONCE upon a time there was a King who lived on the road to Thibet, very many miles in the Himalayas. His Kingdom was eleven thousand feet above the sea and exactly four miles square; but most of the miles stood on end owing to the nature of the country. His revenues were rather less than four hundred pounds yearly, and they were expended in the maintenance of one elephant and a standing army of five men. He was tributary to the Indian Government, who allowed him certain sums for keeping a section of the Himalaya-Thibet road in repair. He further increased his revenues by selling timber to the Railway companies; for he would cut the great deodar trees in his one forest, and they fell thundering into the Sutlej river and were swept down to the plains three hundred miles away and became railway-ties.

Now and again this King, whose name does not matter, would mount a ringstraked horse and ride scores of miles to Simla-town to confer with the Lieutenant-Governor on matters of state, or to assure the Viceroy that his sword was at the service of the Queen-Empress. Then the Viceroy would cause a ruffle of drums to be sounded, and the ringstraked horse and the cavalry of the State—two men in tatters—and the herald who bore the silver stick before the King, would trot back to their own place, which lay between the tail of a heaven-climbing glacier and a dark birch-forest.

Now, from such a King, always remembering that he possessed one veritable elephant, and could count his descent for twelve hundred years, I expected, when it was my fate to wander through his dominions, no more than mere license to live.The night had closed in rain, and rolling clouds blotted out the lights of the villages in the valley.

Forty miles away, untouched by cloud or storm, the white shoulder of Donga Pa—the Mountain of the Council of the Gods—upheld the Evening Star. The monkeys sang sorrowfully to each other as they hunted for dry roosts in the fern-wreathed trees, and the last puff of the day-wind brought from the unseen villages the scent of damp wood-smoke, hot cakes, dripping undergrowth, and rotting pine-cones. That is the true smell of the Himalayas, and if once it creeps into the blood of a man, that man will at the last, forgetting all else, return to the hills to die. The clouds closed and the smell went away, and there remained nothing in all the world except chilling white mist and the boom of the Sutlej river racing through the valley below.

A fat-tailed sheep, who did not want to die, bleated piteously at my tent door. He was scuffling with the Prime Minister and the Director-General of Public Education, and he was a royal gift to me and my camp servants. I expressed my thanks suitably, and asked if I might have audience of the King. The Prime Minister readjusted his turban, which had fallen off in the struggle, and assured me that the King would be very pleased to see me. Therefore I despatched two bottles as a foretaste, and when the sheep had entered upon another incarnation went to the King’s Palace through the wet. He had sent his army to escort me, but the army stayed to talk with my cook. Soldiers are very much alike all the world over.

The Palace was a four-roomed, and white-washed mud and timber-house, the finest in all the hills for a day’s journey. The King was dressed in a purple velvet jacket, white muslin trousers, and a saffron—yellow turban of price. He gave me audience in a little carpeted room opening off the palace courtyard which was occupied by the Elephant of State. The great beast was sheeted and anchored from trunk to tail, and the curve of his back stood out grandly against the mist.

The Prime Minister and the Director-General of Public Education were present to introduce me, but all the court had been dismissed, lest the two bottles aforesaid should corrupt their morals. The King cast a wreath of heavy-scented flowers round my neck as I bowed, and inquired how my honoured presence had the felicity to be. I said that through seeing his auspicious countenance the mists of the night had turned into sunshine, and that by reason of his beneficent sheep his good deeds would be remembered by the Gods. He said that since I had set my magnificent foot in his Kingdom the crops would probably yield seventy per cent more than the average. I said that the fame of the King had reached to the four corners of the earth, and that the nations gnashed their teeth when they heard daily of the glories of his realm and the wisdom of his moon-like Prime Minister and lotus-like Director-General of Public Education.

Then we sat down on clean white cushions, and I was at the King’s right hand. Three minutes later he was telling me that the state of the maize crop was something disgraceful, and that the Railway companies would not pay him enough for his timber. The talk shifted to and fro with the bottles, and we discussed very many stately things, and the King became confidential on the subject of Government generally. Most of all he dwelt on the shortcomings of one of his subjects, who, from all I could gather, had been paralyzing the executive.

“In the old days,” said the King, “I could have ordered the Elephant yonder to trample him to death. Now I must e’en send him seventy miles across the hills to be tried, and his keep would be upon the State. The Elephant eats everything.”

“What be the man’s crimes, Rajah Sahib?” said I.

“Firstly, he is an outlander and no man of mine own people. Secondly, since of my favour I gave him land upon his first coming, he refuses to pay revenue. Am I not the lord of the earth, above and below, entitled by right and custom to one-eighth of the crop? Yet this devil, establishing himself, refuses to pay a single tax; and he brings a poisonous spawn of babes.”

“Cast him into jail,” I said.

“Sahib,” the King answered, shifting a little on the cushions, “once and only once in these forty years sickness came upon me so that I was not able to go abroad. In that hour I made a vow to my God that I would never again cut man or woman from the light of the sun and the air of God; for I perceived the nature of the punishment. How can I break my vow? Were it only the lopping of a hand or a foot I should not delay. But even that is impossible now that the English have rule. One or another of my people”—he looked obliquely at the Director-General of Public Education—“would at once write a letter to the Viceroy, and perhaps I should be deprived of my ruffle of drums.”

He unscrewed the mouthpiece of his silver water-pipe, fitted a plain amber mouthpiece, and passed his pipe to me. “Not content with refusing revenue,” he continued, “this outlander refuses also the begar” (this was the corvée or forced labour on the roads) “and stirs my people up to the like treason. Yet he is, when he wills, an expert log-snatcher. There is none better or bolder among my people to clear a block of the river when the logs stick fast.”

page 2

“But he worships strange Gods,” said the Prime Minister deferentially.

“For that I have no concern,” said the King, who was as tolerant as Akbar in matters of belief. “To each man his own God and the fire or Mother Earth for us all at last. It is the rebellion that offends me.”

“The King has an army”, I suggested. “Has not the King burned the man’s house and left him naked to the night dews?”

“Nay, a hut is a hut, and it holds the life of a man. But once, I sent my army against him when his excuses became wearisome. of their heads he brake three across the top with a stick. The other two men ran away. Also the guns would not shoot.”

I had seen the equipment of the infantry. One-third of it was an old muzzle-loading fowling-piece, with a ragged rust-hole where the nipples should have been, one-third a wire-bound match-lock with a worm-eaten stock, and one-third a four-bore flint duck-gun without a flint.

“But it is to be remembered,” said the King, reaching out for the bottle, “that he is a very expert log-snatcher and a man of a merry face. What shall I do to him, Sahib?”

This was interesting. The timid hill-folk would as soon have refused taxes to their King as revenues to their Gods.

“If it be the King’s permission,” I said, “I will not strike my tents till the third day and I will see this man. The mercy of the King is God-like, and rebellion is like unto the sin of witchcraft. Moreover, both the bottles and another be empty.”

“You have my leave to go,” said the King.

Next morning a crier went through the State proclaiming that there was a log-jam on the river and that it behoved all loyal subjects to remove it. The people poured down from their villages to the moist, warm valley of poppy-fields; and the King and I went with them. Hundreds of dressed deodar-logs had caught on a snag of rock, and the river was bringing down more logs every minute to complete the blockade. The water snarled and wrenched and worried at the timber, and the population of the State began prodding the nearest logs with a pole in the hope of starting a general movement. Then there went up a shout of “Namgay Doola! Namgay Doola!” and a large red-haired villager hurried up, stripping off his clothes as he ran.

“That is he. That is the rebel,” said the King. “Now will the dam be cleared.”

“But why has he red hair?” I asked, since red hair among hill-folks is as common as blue or green.

“He is an outlander,” said the King. “Well done! Oh, well done!”

Namgay Doola had scrambled out on the jam and was clawing out the butt of a log with a rude sort of boat-hook. It slid forward slowly as an alligator moves, three or four others followed it, and the green water spouted through the gaps they had made. Then the villagers howled and shouted and scrambled across the logs, pulling and pushing the obstinate timber, and the red head of Namgay Doola was chief among them all. The logs swayed and chafed and groaned as fresh consignments from upstream battered the now weakening dam. All gave way at last in a smother of foam, racing logs, bobbing black heads and confusion indescribable. The river tossed everything before it. I saw the red head go down with the last remnants of the jam and disappear between the great grinding tree-trunks. It rose close to the bank and blowing like a grampus. Namgay Doola wrung the water out of his eyes and made obeisance to the King. I had time to observe him closely. The virulent redness of his shock head and beard was most startling; and in the thicket of hair wrinkled above high cheek bones shone two very merry blue eyes. He was indeed an outlander, but yet a Thibetan in language, habit, and attire. He spoke the Lepcha dialect with an indescribable softening of the gutturals. It was not so much a lisp as an accent.

“Whence comest thou?” I asked.

“From Thibet.” He pointed across the hills and grinned. That grin went straight to my heart. Mechanically I held out my hand and Namgay Doola shook it. No pure Thibetan would have understood the meaning of the gesture. He went away to look for his clothes, and as he climbed back to his village, I heard a joyous yell that seemed unaccountably familiar. It was the whooping of Namgay Doola.

“You see now,” said the King, “why I would not kill him. He is a bold man among my logs, but,” and he shook his head like a schoolmaster, “I know that before long there will be complaints of him in the court. Let us return to the Palace and do justice.” It was that King”s custom to judge his subjects every day between eleven and three o’clock. I saw him decide equitably in weighty matters of trespass, slander, and a little wife-stealing. Then his brow clouded and he summoned me.

“Again it is Namgay Doola,” he said despairingly. “Not content with refusing revenue on his own part, he has bound half his village by an oath to the like treason. Never before has such a thing befallen me! Nor are my taxes heavy.”

A rabbit-faced villager, with a blush-rose stuck behind his ear, advanced trembling. He had been in the conspiracy, but had told everything and hoped for the King’s favour.

“O King,” said I. “If it be the King’s will let this matter stand over till the morning. Only the Gods can do right swiftly, and it may be that yonder villager has lied.”

“Nay, for I know the nature of Namgay Doola; but since a guest asks let the matter remain. Wilt thou speak harshly to this red-headed outlander. He may listen to thee.”

I made an attempt that very evening, but for the life of me I could not keep my countenance. Namgay Doola grinned persuasively, and began to tell me about a big brown bear in a poppy-field by the river. Would I care to shoot it? I spoke austerely on the sin of conspiracy, and the certainty of punishment. Namgay Doola’s face clouded for a moment. Shortly afterwards he withdrew from my tent, and I heard him singing to himself softly among the pines. The words were unintelligible to me, but the tune, like his liquid insinuating speech, seemed the ghost of something strangely familiar.

page 3

sang Namgay Doola again and again, and I racked my brain for that lost tune. It was not till after dinner that I discovered some-one had cut a square foot of velvet from the centre of my best camera-cloth. This made me so angry that I wandered down the valley in the hope of meeting the big brown bear. I could hear him grunting like a discontented pig in the poppy-field, and I waited shoulder deep in the dew-dripping Indian corn to catch him after his meal. The moon was at full and drew out the rich scent of the tasselled crop. Then I heard the anguished bellow of a Himalayan cow, one of the little black crummies no bigger than Newfoundland dogs. Two shadows that looked like a bear and her cub hurried past me. I was in act to fire when I saw that they had each a brilliant red head. The lesser animal was trailing some rope behind it that left a dark track on the path. They passed within six feet of me, and the shadow of the moonlight lay velvet-black on their faces. Velvet-black was exactly the word, for by all the powers of moonlight they were masked in the velvet of my camera-cloth! I marvelled and went to bed.

Next morning the Kingdom was in uproar. Namgay Doola, men said, had gone forth in the night and with a sharp knife had cut off the tail of a cow belonging to the rabbit-faced villager who had betrayed him. It was sacrilege unspeakable against the Holy Cow. The State desired his blood, but he had retreated into his hut, barricaded the doors and windows with big stones, and defied the world.

The King and I and the Populace approached the hut cautiously. There was no hope of capturing the man without loss of life, for from a hole in the wall projected the muzzle of an extremely well-cared-for gun—the only gun in the State that could shoot. Namgay Doola had narrowly missed a villager just before we came up. The Standing Army stood. It could do no more, for when it advanced pieces of sharp shale flew from the windows. To these were added from time to time showers of scalding water. We saw red heads bobbing up and down in the hut. The family of Namgay Doola were aiding their sire, and bloodcurdling yells of defiance were the only answers to our prayers.

“Never,” said the King, puffing, “has such a thing befallen my State. Next year I will certainly buy a little cannon.” He looked at me imploringly.

“Is there any priest in the Kingdom to whom he will listen?” said I, for a light was beginning to break upon me.

“He worships his own God,” said the Prime Minister. “We can starve him out.”

“Let the white man approach,” said Namgay Doola from within. “All others I will kill. Send me the white man.”

The door was thrown open and I entered the smoky interior of a Thibetan hut crammed with children. And every child had flaming red hair. A raw cow’s-tail lay on the floor, and by its side two pieces of black velvet—my black velvet—rudely hacked into the semblance of masks.

“And what is this shame, Namgay Doola?” said I.

He grinned more winningly than ever. “There is no shame,” said he. “I did but cut off the tail of that man”s cow. He betrayed me. I was minded to shoot him, Sahib. But not to death. Indeed not to death. Only in the legs.”

“And why at all, since it is the custom to pay revenue to the King? Why at all?”

“By the God of my father I cannot tell,” said Namgay Doola.

“And who was thy father?”

“The same that had this gun.” He showed me his weapon—a Tower musket bearing date 1832 and the stamp of the Honourable East India Company.

“And thy father”s name?” said I.

“Timlay Doola,” said he. “At the first, I being then a little child, it is in my mind that he wore a red coat.”

“Of that I have no doubt. But repeat the name of thy father thrice or four times.”

He obeyed, and I understood whence the puzzling accent in his speech came. “Thimla Dhula,” said he excitedly. “To this hour I worship his God.”

“May I see that God?”

“In a little while—at twilight time.”

“Rememberest thou aught of thy father’s speech?”

“It is long ago. But there is one word which he said often. Thus ‘Shun.’ Then I and my brethren stood upon our feet, our hands to our sides. Thus.”

“Even so. And what was thy mother?

“A woman of the hills. We be Lepchas of Darjeeling, but me they call an outlander because my hair is as thou seest.”

The Thibetan woman, his wife, touched him on the arm gently. The long parley outside the fort had lasted far into the day. It was now close upon twilight—the hour of the Angelus. Very solemnly, the red-headed brats rose from the floor and formed a semicircle. Namgay Doola laid his gun against the wall, lighted a little oil lamp, and set it before a recess in the wall. Pulling aside a curtain of dirty cloth he revealed a worn brass crucifix leaning against the helmet-badge of a long forgotten East India regiment.

“Thus did my father,” he said, crossing himself clumsily. The wife and children followed suit. Then all together they struck up the wailing chant that I heard on the hillside—

page 4

I was puzzled no longer. Again and again they crooned as if their hearts would break, their version of the chorus of the Wearing of the Green—

A diabolical inspiration came to me. One of the brats, a boy about eight years old, was watching me as he sang. I pulled out a rupee, held the coin between finger and thumb, and looked—only looked—at the gun against the wall. A grin of brilliant and perfect comprehension overspread the face of the child. Never for an instant stopping the song he held out his hand for the money, and then slid the gun to my hand. I might have shot Namgay Doola as he chanted. But I was satisfied. The blood-instinct of the race held true. Namgay Doola drew the curtain across the recess. Angelus was over.

“Thus my father sang. There was much more, but I have forgotten, and I do not know the purport of these words, but it may be that the God will understand. I am not of this people, and I will not pay revenue.”

“And why?”

Again that soul-compelling grin. “What occupation would be to me between crop and crop? It is better than scaring bears. But these people do not understand.” He picked the masks from the floor, and looked in my face as simply as a child.

“By what road didst thou attain knowledge to make these devilries?” I said, pointing.

“I cannot tell. I am but a Lepcha of Darjeeling, and yet the stuff—”

“Which thou hast stolen.”

“Nay, surely. Did I steal? I desired it so. The stuff—the stuff—what else should I have done with the stuff?” He twisted the velvet between his fingers.

“But the sin of maiming the cow—consider that?”

“That is true; but oh, Sahib, that man betrayed me and I had no thought—but the heifer’s tail waved in the moonlight and I had my knife. What else should I have done? The tail came off ere I was aware. Sahib, thou knowest more than I.”

“That is true,” said I. “Stay within the door. I go to speak to the King.”

The population of the State were ranged on the hillsides. I went forth and spoke to the King.

“O King,” said I. “Touching this man there be two courses open to thy wisdom. Thou canst either hang him from a tree, he and his brood, till there remains no hair that is red within the land.”

“Nay,” said the King. “Why should I hurt the little children?”

They had poured out of the hut door and were making plump obeisance to everybody. Namgay Doola waited with his gun across his arm.

“Or thou canst, discarding the impiety of the cow-maiming, raise him to honour in thy Army. He comes of a race that will not pay revenue. A red flame is in his blood which comes out at the top of his head in that glowing hair. Make him chief of the Army. Give him honour as may befall, and full allowance of work, but look to it, O King, that neither he nor his hold a foot of earth from thee henceforward. Feed him with words and favour, and also liquor from certain bottles that thou knowest of, and he will be a bulwark of defence. But deny him even a tuft of grass for his own. This is the nature that God has given him. Moreover he has brethren—”

The State groaned unanimously.

“But if his brethren come, they will surely fight with each other till they die; or else the one will always give information concerning the other. Shall he be of thy Army, O King? Choose.”

The King bowed his head, and I said, “Come forth, Namgay Doola, and command the King’s Army. Thy name shall no more be Namgay in the mouths of men, but Patsay Doola, for as thou hast said, I know.”

Then Namgay Doola, new christened Patsay Doola, son of Timlay Doola, which is Tim Doolan gone very wrong indeed, clasped the King’s feet, cuffed the standing Army, and hurried in an agony of contrition from temple to temple, making offerings for the sin of cattle maiming.

And the King was so pleased with my perspicacity that he offered to sell me a village for twenty pounds sterling. But I buy no villages in the Himalayas so long as one red head flares between the tail of the heaven-climbing glacier and the dark birch-forest.

I know that breed.

page 1 of 3

We’re goin’ ‘ome, we’re goin’ ‘ome—
Our ship is at the shore,
An’ you mus’ pack your ‘aversack,
For we won’t come back no more.
Ho, don’t you grieve for me,
My lovely Mary Ann,
For I’ll marry you yet on a fourp’ny bit,
As a time expired ma-a-an!
(Barrack-room Ballad)

AN AWFUL thing has happened! My friend, Private Mulvaney, who went home in the Serapis, time-expired, not very long ago, has come back to India as a civilian! It was all Dinah Shadd’s fault. She could not stand the poky little lodgings, and she missed her servant Abdullah more than words could tell. The fact was that the Mulvaneys had been out here too long, and had lost touch of England. Mulvaney knew a contractor on one of the new Central India lines, and wrote to him for some sort of work. The contractor said that if Mulvaney could pay the passage he would give him command of a gang of coolies for old sake’s sake. The pay was eighty-five rupees a month, and Dinah Shadd said that if Terence did not accept she would make his life a “basted purgathory.” Therefore the Mulvaneys came out as “civilians,” which was a great and terrible fall; though Mulvaney tried to disguise it by saying that he was “Ker’nel on the railway line, an’ a consequinshal man.”

He wrote me an invitation, on a tool-indent form, to visit him; and I came down to the funny little “construction” bungalow at the side of the line. Dinah Shadd had planted peas about and about, and nature had spread all manner of green stuff round the place. There was no change in Mulvaney except the change of clothing, which was deplorable, but could not be helped. He was standing upon his trolly, haranguing a gangman, and his shoulders were as well drilled and his big, thick chin was as clean-shaven as ever.

“I’m a civilian now,” said Mulvaney. “Cud you tell that I was iver a martial man? Don’t answer, Sorr, av you’re strainin’ betune a complimint an’ a lie. There’s no houldin’ Dinah Shadd now she’s got a house av her own. Go inside, an’ dhrink tay out av chiny in the drrrrawin’-room, an’ thin we’ll dhrink like Christians undher the tree here. Scutt, ye naygur-folk! There’s a Sahib come to call on me, an’ that’s more than he’ll iver do for you onless you run! Get out, an’ go on pilin’ up the earth, quick, till sundown.”

When we three were comfortably settled under the big sisham in front of the bungalow, and the first rush of questions and answers about Privates Ortheris and Learoyd and old times and places had died away, Mulvaney said, reflectively: “Glory be, there’s no p’rade to-morrow, an’ no bun-headed Corp’ril-bhoy to give you his lip. An’ yit I don’t know. ’Tis harrd to be something ye niver were an’ niver meant to be, an’ all the ould days shut up along wid your papers. Eyah! I’m growin’ rusty, an’ ’tis the will av God that a man mustn’t serve his Quane for time an’ all.”

He helped himself to a fresh peg, and sighed furiously.

“Let your beard grow, Mulvaney,” said I, “and then you won’t be troubled with those notions. You’ll be a real civilian.”

Dinah Shadd had told me in the drawing-room of her desire to coax Mulvaney into letting his beard grow. “’Twas so civilian-like,” said poor Dinah, who hated her husband’s hankering for his old life.

“Dinah Shadd, you’re a dishgrace to an honust, clane-scraped man!” said Mulvaney, without replying to me. “Grow a beard on your own chin, darlint, and lave my razors alone. They’re all that stand betune me and dis-ris-pect-ability. Av I didn’t shave, I wud be torminted wid an outrajis thurrst; for there’s nothin’ so dhryin’ to the throat as a big billy-goat beard waggin’ undher the chin. Ye wudn’t have me dhrink always, Dinah Shadd? By the same token, you’re kapin’ me crool dhry now. Let me look at that whiskey.”

The whiskey was lent and returned, but Dinah Shadd, who had been just as eager as her husband in asking after old friends, rent me with:—

“I take shame for you, Sorr, coming down here—though the Saints know you’re as welkim as the daylight whin you do come—an’ upsettin’ Terence’s head wid your nonsense about—about fwhat’s much betther forgotten. He bein’ a civilian now, an’ you niver was aught else. Can you not let the Arrmy rest? ’Tis not good for Terence.”

I took refuge by Mulvaney, for Dinah Shadd has a temper of her own.

“Let be—let be,” said Mulvaney. “’Tis only wanst in a way I can talk about the ould days.” Then to me—“Ye say Dhrumshticks is well, an’ his lady tu’? I niver knew how I liked the gray garron till I was shut av him an’ Asia.”—“Dhrumshticks” was the nickname of the Colonel commanding Mulvaney’s old regiment.—“ Will you be seein’ him again? You will. Thin tell him”—Mulvaney’s eyes began to twinkle—“tell him wid Privit——”

“Mister, Terence,” interrupted Dinah Shadd.

“Now the Divil an’ all his angils an’ the Firmament av Hiven fly away wid the ‘Mister,’ an’ the sin av makin’ me swear be on your confession, Dinah Shadd! Privit, I tell ye. Wid Privit Mulvaney’s best obedience, that but for me the last time-expired wud be still pullin’ hair on their way to the sea.”

He threw himself back in the chair, chuckled, and was silent.

“Mrs. Mulvaney,” I said, “please take up the whiskey, and don’t let him have it until he has told the story.”

Dinah Shadd dexterously whipped the bottle away, saying at the same time, “’Tis nothing to be proud av,” and thus captured by the enemy, Mulvaney spake:—

“’Twas on Chuseday week. I was behaderin’ round wid the gangs on the ’bankmint—I’ve taught the hoppers how to kape step an’ stop screechin’—whin a head-gangman comes up to me, wid about two inches av shirt-tail hanging round his neck an’ a disthressful light in his oi. ‘Sahib,’ sez he, ‘there’s a reg’mint an’ a half av soldiers up at the junction, knockin’ red cinders out av ivrything an’ ivrybody! They thried to hang me in my cloth,’ he sez, ‘an’ there will be murdher an’ ruin an’ rape in the place before nightfall! They say they’re comin’ down here to wake us up. What will we do wid our women-folk?’

“’Fetch my throlly!” sez I; “my heart’s sick in my ribs for a wink at anything wid the Quane’s uniform on ut. Fetch my throlly, an’ six av the jildiest men, and run me up in shtyle.’”

“He tuk his best coat,” said Dinah Shadd, reproachfully.

“’Twas to do honour to the Widdy. I cud ha’ done no less, Dinah Shadd. You and your digresshins interfere wid the coorse av the narrative. Have you iver considhered fwhat I wud look like wid me head shaved as well as me chin? You bear that in your mind, Dinah darlin’.

“I was throllied up six miles, all to get a shquint at that draf’. I knew ’twas a spring draf’ goin’ home, for there’s no rig’mint hereabouts, more’s the pity.”

“Praise the Virgin!” murmured Dinah Shadd. But Mulvaney did not hear.

page 2

“Whin I was about three-quarters av a mile off the rest-camp, powtherin’ along fit to burrst, I heard the noise av the men, an’, on my sowl, Sorr, I cud catch the voice av Peg Barney bellowin’ like a bison wid the belly-ache. You remimber Peg Barney that was in D Comp’ny—a red, hairy scraun, wid a scar on his jaw? Peg Barney that cleared out the Blue Lights’ Jubilee meetin’ wid the cook-room mop last year?

“Thin I knew ut was a draf’ av the Ould Rig’mint, an’ I was conshumed wid sorrow for the bhoy that was in charge. We was harrd scrapin’s at any time. Did I iver tell you how Horker Kelley wint into clink nakid as Phoebus Apollonius, wid the shirts av the Corp’ril an’ file undher his arrum? An’ he was a moild man! But I’m digresshin’. ’Tis a shame both to the rig’mints and the Arrmy sendin’ down little orf’cer bhoys wid a draf’ av strong men mad wid liquor an’ the chanst av gettin’ shut av India, an’ niver a punishment that’s fit to be given right down an’ away from cantonmints to the dock! ’Tis this nonsinse. Whin I am servin’ my time, I’m undher the Articles av War, an’ can be whipped on the peg for thim. But whin I’ve served my time, I’m a Reserve man, an’ the Articles av War haven’t any hould on me. An orf’cer can’t do anythin’ to a time-expired savin’ confinin’ him to barricks. ’Tis a wise rig’lation, bekaze a time-expired does not have any barricks; bein’ on the move all the time. ’Tis a Solomon av a rig’lation, is that. I wud like to be inthroduced to the man that made ut. ’Tis easier to get colts from a Kibbereen horse-fair into Galway than to take a bad draf’ over ten miles av counthry. Consiquintly that rig’lation—for fear that the men wud be hurt by the little orf’cer bhoy. No matther. The nearer my throlly came to the rest-camp, the woilder was the shine, an’ the louder was the voice of Peg Barney. ‘’Tis good I am here,’ thinks I to mysilf, ‘for Peg alone is employmint for two or three.’ He bein’, I well knew, as copped as a dhrover.

“Faith, that rest-camp was a sight! The tent-ropes was all skew- nosed, an’ the pegs looked as dhrunk as the men—fifty av thim—the scourin’s, an’ rinsin’s, an’ Divil’s lavin’s av the Ould Rig’mint. I tell you, Sorr, they were dhrunker than any men you’ve ever seen in your mortial life. How does a draf’ get dhrunk? How does a frog get fat? They suk ut in through their shkins.

“There was Peg Barney sittin’ on the groun’ in his shirt—wan shoe off an’ wan shoe on—whackin’ a tent-peg over the head wid his boot, an’ singin’ fit to wake the dead. ’Twas no clane song that he sung, though. ’Twas the Divil’s Mass.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Whin a bad egg is shut av the Army, he sings the Divil’s Mass for a good riddance; an’ that manes swearin’ at ivrything from the Commandher-in-Chief down to the Room-Corp’ril, such as you niver in your days heard. Some men can swear so as to make green turf crack! Have you iver heard the Curse in an Orange Lodge? The Divil’s Mass is ten times worse, an’ Peg Barney was singin’ ut, whackin’ the tent-peg on the head wid his boot for each man that he cursed. A powerful big voice had Peg Barney, an’ a hard swearer he was whin sober. I stood forninst him, an’ ’twas not me oi alone that cud tell Peg was dhrunk as a coot.

“‘Good mornin’, Peg,’ I sez, whin he dhrew breath afther dursin’ the Adj’tint-Gen’ral; ‘I’ve put on my best coat to see you, Peg Barney,’ sez I.

“‘Thin take ut off again,’ sez Peg Barney, latherin’ away wid the boot; ‘take ut off an’ dance, ye lousy civilian!’

“Wid that he begins cursin’ ould Dhrumshticks, being so full he dane disrernimbers the Brigade-Major an’ the Judge-Advokit-Gen’ral.

“‘Do you not know me, Peg?’ sez I, though me blood was hot in me wid being called a civilian.”

“An’ him a decent married man!” wailed Dinah Shadd.

“‘I do not,’ sez Peg, ‘but dhrunk or sober I’ll tear the hide off your back wid a shovel whin I’ve stopped singin’.’

“’Say you so, Peg Barney?’ sez I. ‘’Tis clear as mud you’ve forgotten me. I’ll assist your autobiography.’ Wid that I stretched Peg Barney, boot an’ all, an’ wint into the camp. An awful sight ut was!

“‘Where’s the orf’cer in charge av the detachment?’ sez I to Scrub Greene—the manest little worm that ever walked.

“‘There’s no orf’cer, ye ould cook,’ sez Scrub; ‘we’re a bloomin’ Republic.’

“‘Are you that?’ sez I; ‘thin I’m O’Connell the Dictator, an’ by this you will larn to kape a civil tongue in your rag-box.’

“Wid that I stretched Scrub Greene an’ wint to the orf’cer’s tent. ’Twas a new little bhoy—not wan I’d iver seen before. He was sittin’ in his tent, purtendin’ not to ’ave ear av the racket.

“I saluted—but for the life av me I mint to shake hands whin I went in. ’Twas the sword hangin’ on the tent-pole changed my will.

“‘Can’t I help, Sorr?’ sez I; ‘’tis a strong man’s job they’ve given you, an’ you’ll be wantin’ help by sundown.’ He was a bhoy wid bowils, that child, an’ a rale gintleman.

“‘Sit down,’ sez he.

“‘Not before my orf’cer,’ sez I; an’ I tould him fwhat my service was.

“‘I’ve heard av you,’ sez he. ‘You tuk the town av Lungtungpen nakid.’

“‘Faith,’ thinks I, ‘that’s Honour an’ Glory’; for ’twas Lift’nint Brazenose did that job. ‘I’m wid ye, Sorr,’ sez I, ‘if I’m av use. They shud niver ha’ sent you down wid the draf’. Savin’ your presince, Sorr,’ I sez, ‘’tis only Lift’nint Hackerston in the Ould Rig’mint can manage a Home draf’.’

“‘I’ve niver had charge of men like this before,’ sez he, playin’ wid the pens on the table; ‘an’ I see by the Rig’lations——’

“‘Shut your oi to the Rig’lations, Sorr,’ I sez, ‘till the throoper’s into blue wather. By the Rig’lations you’ve got to tuck thim up for the night, or they’ll be runnin’ foul av my coolies an’ makin’ a shiverarium half through the counthry. Can you trust your non-coms, Sorr?’

“‘Yes,’ sez he.

“‘Good,’ sez I; ‘there’ll be throuble before the night. Are you marchin’, Sorr?’

“‘To the next station,’ sez he.

page 3

“‘Betther still,’ sez I; ‘there’ll be big throuble.’

“‘Can’t be too hard on a Home draf,’ sez he; ‘the great thing is to get thim in-ship.’

“‘Faith, you’ve larnt the half av your lesson, Sorr,’ sez I, ‘but av you shtick to the Rig’lations you’ll niver get thim inship at all, at all. Or there won’t be a rag av kit betune thim whin you do.’

“‘Twas a dear little orf’cer bhoy, an’ by way av kapin’ his heart up, I tould him fwhat I saw wanst in a draf in Egypt.”

“What was that, Mulvaney?” said I.

“Sivin an’ fifty men sittin’ on the bank av a canal, laughin’ at a poor little squidgereen av an orf’cer that they’d made wade into the slush an’ pitch things out av the boats for their Lord High Mightinesses. That made me orf’cer bhoy woild wid indignation.

“‘Soft an’ aisy, Sorr,’ sez I; ‘you’ve niver had your draf’ in hannd since you left cantonmints. Wait till the night, an’ your work will be ready to you. Wid your permission, Sorr, I will investigate the camp, an’ talk to me ould frinds. ’Tis no manner av use thryin’ to shtop the divilmint now.’

“Wid that I wint out into the camp an’ inthrojuced mysilf to ivry man sober enough to remimber me. I was some wan in the ould days, an’ the bhoys was glad to see me—all excipt Peg Barney wid a eye like a tomata five days in the bazar, an’ a nose to match. They come round me an’ shuk me, an’ I tould thim I was in privit employ wid an income av me own, an’ a drrrawin’-room fit to bate the Quane’s; an’ wid me lies an’ me shtories an’ nonsinse gin’rally, I kept ’em quiet in wan way an’ another, knockin’ roun’ the camp. ’Twas bad even thin whin I was the Angil av Peace.

“I talked to me ould non-coms—they was sober—an’ betune me an’ thim we wore the draf’ over into their tents at the proper time. The little orf’cer bhoy he comes round, dacint an’ civil-spoken as might be.

“‘Rough quarters, men,’ sez he, ‘but you can’t look to be as comfortable as in barricks. We must make the best av things. I’ve shut my eyes to a dale av dog’s thricks today, an’ now there must be no more av ut.’

“No more we will. Come an’ have a dhrink, me son,’ sez Peg Barney, staggerin’ where he stud. Me little orf’cer bhoy kep’ his timper.

“‘You’re a sulky swine, you are,’ sez Peg Barney, an’ at that the men in the tent began to laugh.

“I tould you me orf’cer bhoy had bowils. He cut Peg Barney as near as might be on the eye that I’d squshed whin we first met. Peg wint spinnin’ acrost the tent.

“Peg him out, Sorr,’ sez I, in a whishper.

“Peg him out!’ sez me orf’cer bhoy, up loud, just as if ’twas battalion p’rade an’ he pickin’ his wurrds from the Sargint.

“The non-coms tuk Peg Barney—a howlin’ handful he was—an’ in three minut’s he was pegged out—chin down, tight-dhrawn—on his stummick, a tent-peg to each arm an’ leg, swearin’ fit to turn a naygur white.

“I tuk a peg an’ jammed ut into his ugly jaw—‘Bite on that, Peg Barney,’ I sez; ‘the night is settin’ frosty, an’ you’ll be wantin’ divarsion before the mornin’. But for the Rig’lations you’d be bitin’ on a bullet now at the thriangles, Peg Barney,’ sez I.

“All the draf’ was out av their tents watchin’ Barney bein’ pegged.

“‘’Tis agin the Rig’lations! He strook him!’ screeches out Scrub Greene, who was always a lawyer; an’ some of the men tuk up the shoutin’.

“‘Peg out that man!’ sez me orf’cer bhoy, niver losin’ his timper; an’ the non-coms wint in and pegged out Scrub Greene by the side av Peg Barney.

“I cud see that the draf’ was comin’ roun’. The men stud not knowin’ fwhat to do.

“‘Get to your tents!’ sez me orf’cer bhoy. ‘Sargint, put a sinthry over these two men.’

“The men wint back into the tents like jackals, an’ the rest av the night there was no noise at all excipt the stip av the sinthry over the two, an’ Scrub Greene blubberin’ like a child. ’Twas a chilly night, an’ faith, ut sobered Peg Barney.

“Just before Revelly, me orf’cer bhoy comes out an’ sez: ‘Loose those men an’ send thim to their tents!’ Scrub Greene wint away widout a word, but Peg Barney, stiff wid the cowld, stud like a sheep, thryin’ to make his orf’cer undherstand he was sorry for playin’ the goat.

“There was no tucker in the draf’ whin ut fell in for the march, an’ divil a wurrd about ‘illegality’ cud I hear.

“I wint to the ould Colour-Sargint and I sez:—‘Let me die in glory,’ sez I. ‘I’ve seen a man this day!’

“‘A man he is,’ sez ould Hother; ‘the draf’s as sick as a herrin’. They’ll all go down to the sea like lambs. That bhoy has the bowils av a cantonmint av Gin’rals.’

“‘Amin,’ sez I, ‘an’ good luck go wid him, wheriver he be, by land or by sea. Let me know how the draf’ gets clear.’

“An’ do you know how they did? That bhoy, so I was tould by letter from Bombay, bully-damned ’em down to the dock, till they cudn’t call their sowls their own. From the time they left me eye till they was ’tween decks, not wan av thim was more than dacintly dhrunk. An’ by the Holy Articles av War, whin they wint aboord they cheered him till they cudn’t spake, an’ that, mark you, has not come about wid a draf’ in the mim’ry av livin’ man! You look to that little orf’cer bhoy. He has bowils. ’Tis not ivry child that wud chuck the Rig’lations to Flanders an’ stretch Peg Barney on a wink from a brokin an’ dilapidated ould carkiss like mysilf. I’d be proud to serve——”

“Terence, you’re a civilian,” said Dinah Shadd warningly.

“So I am—so I am. Is ut likely I wud forget ut? But he was a gran’ bhoy all the same, an’ I’m only a mud-tipper wid a hod on me shoulthers. The whiskey’s in the heel av your hand, Sorr. Wid your good lave we’ll dhrink to the Ould Rig’mint—three fingers—standin’ up!”

And we drank.

page 1 of 4

“KENCH with a long hand, lazy one,” I said to the punkah coolie. “But I am tired,” said the coolie. “Then go to Jehannum and get another man to pull,” I replied, which was rude and, when you come to think of it, unnecessary.

“Happy thought—go to Jehannum!” said a voice at my elbow. I turned and saw, seated on the edge of my bed, a large and luminous Devil. “I’m not afraid,” I said. “You’re an illusion bred by too much tobacco and not enough sleep. If I look at you steadily for a minute you will disappear. You are an ignis fatuus.”

“Fatuous yourself!” answered the Devil blandly. “Do you mean to say you don’t know me?” He shrivelled up to the size of a blob of sediment on the end of a pen, and I recognised my old friend the Devil of Discontent, who lived in the bottom of the inkpot, but emerges half a day after each story has been printed with a host of useless suggestions for its betterment.

“Oh, it’s you, is it?” I said. “You’re not due till next week. Get back to your inkpot.”

“Hush!” said the Devil. “I have an idea.”

“Too late, as usual. I know your ways.”

“No. It’s a perfectly practicable one. Your swearing at the coolie suggested it. Did you ever hear of a man called Dante—ch’armin’ fellow, friend o’ mine?”

‘Dante once prepared to paint a picture, ’ I quoted.

“Yes. Iinspired that notion—but never mind. Are you willing to play Dante to my Virgil? I can’t guarantee a nine-circle Inferno, any more than you can turn out a cantoed epic, but there’s absolutely no risk and—it will run to three columns at least.”

“But what sort of Hell do you own?” I said. I fancied your operations were mostly above ground. You have no jurisdiction over the dead.

“Sainted Leopardi!” rapped the Devil, resuming natural size. “Is that all you know? I’m proprietor of one of the largest Hells in existence—the Limbo of Lost Endeavor, where the souls of all the Characters go.”

“Characters? What Characters?”

“All the characters that are drawn in books, painted in novels, sketched in magazine articles, thumb-nailed in feuilletons or in any way created by anybody and everybody who has had the fortune or misfortune to put his or her writings into print.”

“That sounds like a quotation from a prospectus. What do you herd Characters for? Aren’t there enough souls in the Universe?”

“Who possess souls and who do not? For aught you can prove, man may be soulless and the creatures he writes about immortal. Anyhow, about a hundred years after printing became an established nuisance, the loose Characters used to blow about interplanetary space in legions which interfered with traffic. So they were collected, and their charge became mine by right. Would you care to see them? Your own are there.”

“That decides me. But is it hotter than Northern India?”

“On my Devildom, no. Put your arms round my neck and sit tight. I’m going to dive!”

He plunged from the bed headfirst into the floor. There was a smell of jail-durrie and damp earth; and then fell the black darkness of night.

• • • • •

We stood before a door in a topless wall, from the further side of which came faintly the roar of infemal fires.

“But you said there was no danger!” I cried in an extremity of terror.

“No more there is,” said the Devil. “That’s only the Furnace of First Edition. Will you go on? No other human being has set foot here in the flesh. Let me bring the door to your notice. Pretty design, isn’t it? A joke of the Master’s.”

I shuddered, for the door was nothing more than 8 coffin, the backboard knocked out, set on end in the thickness of the wall. As I hesitated, the silence of space was cut by a sharp, shrill whistle, like that of a live shell, which rapidly grew louder and louder. “Get away from the door,” said the Devil of Discontent quickly. “Here’s a soul coming to its place.” I took refuge under the broad vans of the Devil’s wings. The whistle rose to an earsplitting shriek and a naked soul flashed past me.

“Always the same,” said the Devil quietly. “These little writers are so anxious to reach their reward. H’m, I don’t think he likes his’n, though.” A yell of despair reached my ears and I shuddered afresh. “Who was he?” I asked. “Hack-writer for a pornographic firm in Belgium, exporting to London, you’ll understand presently—and now we’ll go in,” said the Devil. “I must apologise for that creature’s rudeness. He should have stopped at the distance-signal for line-clear. You can hear the souls whistling there now.”

“Are they the souls of men?” I whispered.

“Yes—writer-men. That’s why they are so shrill and querulous. Welcome to the Limbo of Lost Endeavour!”

They passed into a domed hall, more vast than visions could embrace, crowded to its limit by men, women and children. Round the eye of the dome ran, a flickering fire, that terrible quotation from Job: “Oh, that mine enemy had written a book!”

“Neat, isn’t it?” said the Devil, following my glance. “Another joke of the Master’s. Man of Us, y’ know. In the old days we used to put the Characters into a disused circle of Dante’s Inferno, but they grew overcrowded. So Balzac and Théophile Gautier were commissioned to write up this building. It took them three years to complete, and is one of the finest uder earth. Don’t attempt to describe it unless you are quite sure you are equal to Balzac and Gautier in collaboration. “Look at the crowds and tell me what you think of them.”

I looked long and earnestly, and saw that many of the multitude were cripples. They walked on their heels or their toes, or with a list to the right or left. A few of them possessed odd eyes and parti-coloured hair; more threw themselves into absurd and impossible attitudes; and every fourth woman seemed to be weeping.

“Who are these?” I said.

page 2

“Mainly the population of three-volume novels that never reach the six-shilling stage. See that beautiful girl with one grey eye and one brown, and the black and yellow hair? Let her be an awful warning to you how you correct your proofs. She was created by a careless writer a month ago, and he changed all colours in the second volume. So she came here as you see her. There will be trouble when she meets her author. He can’t alter her now, and she says she’ll accept no apology.”

“But when will she meet her author?”

“Not in my department. Do you notice a general air of expectancy among all the Characters? They are waiting for their authors. Look! That explains the system better than I can.”

A lovely maiden, at whose feet I would willingly have fallen and worshipped, detached herself from the crowd and hastened to the door through which I had just come. There was a prolonged whistle without, a soul dashed through the coffin and fell upon her neck. The girl with the parti-coloured hair eyed the couple enviously as they departed arm in arm to the other side of the hall.

“That man,” said the Devil, “wrote one magazine story, of twenty-four pages, ten years ago when he was desperately in love with a flesh and blood woman. He put all his heart into the work, and created the girl you have just seen. The flesh and blood woman married some one else and died—it’s a way they have—but the man has this girl for his very own, and she will everlastingly grow sweeter.”

“Then the Characters are independent?”

“Slightly! Have you never known one of your Characters—even yours—get beyond control as soon as they are made?”

“That’s true. Where are those two happy creatures going?”

“To the Levels. You’ve heard of authors finding their levels? We keep all the Levels here. As each writer enters, he picks up his Characters, or they pick him up, as the case may be, and to the Levels he goes.”

“I should like to see——”

“So you shall, when you come through that door a second time—whistling. I can’t take you there now.”

“Do you keep only the Characters of living scribblers in this hall?”

“We should be crowded out if we didn’t draft them off somehow. Step this way and I’ll take you to the Master. One moment, though. There’s John Ridd with Lorna Doone, and there are Mr. Maliphant and the Bormalacks—clannish folk, those Besant Characters—don’t let the twins talk to you about Literature and Art. Come along. What’s here?”

The white face of Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, broke through the press. “I wish to explain,” said he in a level voice, “that had I been consulted I should never have blown out my brains with the Duchess and all that Poker Flat lot. I wish to add that the only woman I ever loved was the wife of Brown of Calaveras.” He pressed his hand behind him suggestively. “All right, Mr. Oakhurst,” I said hastily; “I believe you.” “Kin you set it right?” he asked, dropping into the Doric of the Gulches. I caught a trigger’s cloth-muffled click. “Just heavens!” I groaned. “Must I be shot for the sake of another man’s Characters?” Oakhurst levelled his revolver at my head, but the weapon was struck up by the hand of < Yuba Bill. “You dumed fooll” said the stage-driver. “Hevn’t I told you no one but a blamed idiot shoots at sight now? Let the galoot go. You kin see by his eyes he’s no party to your matrimonial arrangements.” Oakhurst retired with an irreproachable bow, but in my haste to escape I fell over, his head in a melon and his tame orc under his arm. He spat like a wildcat.

“Manners none, customs beastly,” said the Devil. “We’ll take the Bishop with us. They all respect the Bishop.” And the great Bishop Blougram joined us, calm and smiling, with the news, for my private ear, that Mr. Gigadibs despised him no longer.

We were arrested by a knot of semi-nude Bacchantes kissing a clergyman. The Bishop’s eyes twinkled, and I turned to the Devil for explanation.

“That’s Robert Elsmere—what’s left of him,” said the Devil. “Those are French feuilleton women and scourings of the Opera Comique. He has been lecturing ’em, and they don’t like it.” “He lectured me!” said the Bishop with a bland smile. “He has been a nuisance ever since he came here. By the Holy Law of Proportion, he had the audacity to talk to the Master! Called him a ‘pot-bellied barbarian’! That is why he is walking so stiffly now,” said the DeviL “Listen! Marie Pigeonnier is swearing deathless love to him. On my word, we ought to segregate the French characters entirely. By the way, your regiment came in very handy for Zola’s importations.”

“My regiment?” I said. “How do you mean?”

“You wrote something about the Tyneside Tail-Twisters, just enough to give the outline of the regiment, and of course it came down here—one thousand and eighty strong. I told it off in hollow squares to pen up the Rougon-Macquart series. There they are.” I looked and saw the Tyneside Tail-Twisters ringing an inferno of struggling, shouting, blaspheming men and women in the costumes of the Second Empire. Now and again the shadowy ranks brought down their butts on the toes of the crowd inside the square, and shrieks of pain followed. “You should have indicated your men more clearly; they are hardly up to their work,” said the Devil. “If the Zola tribe increase, I’m afraid I shall have to use up your two companies of the Black Tyrone and two of the Old Regiment.”

“I am proud——” I began.

“Go slow,” said the Devil. “You won’t be half so proud in a little while, and I don’t think much of your regiments, anyway. But they are good enough to fight the French. Can you hear Coupeau raving in the left angle of the square? He used to run about the hall seeing pink snakes, till the children’s story-book Characters protested. Come along!”

Never since Caxton pulled his first proof and made for the world a new and most terrible God of Labour had mortal man such an experience as mine when I followed the Devil of Discontent through the shifting crowds below the motto of the Dome. A few—a very few—of the faces were of old friends, but there were thousands whom I did not recognise. Men in every conceivable attire and of every possible nationality, deformed by intention, or the impotence of creation that could not create—blind, unclean, heroic, mad, sinking under the weight of remorse, or with eyes made splendid by the light of love and fixed endeavour; women fashioned in ignorance and mourning the errors of their creator, life and thought at variance with body and soul; perfect women such as walk rarely upon this earth, and horrors that were women only because they had not sufficient self-control to be fiends; little children, fair as the morning, who put their hands into mine and made most innocent confidences; loathsome, lank-haired infant-saints, curious as to the welfare of my soul, and delightfully mischievous boys, generalled by the irrepressible, who played among murderers, harlots, professional beauties, nuns, Italian bandits and politicians of state.

page 3

The ordered peace of Arthur’s Court was broken up by the incursions of Mr. John Wellington Wells, and Dagonet, the jester, found that his antics drew no attention so long as the “dealer in magic and spells,” taking Tristram’s harp, sang patter-songs to the Round Table; while a Zulu Impi, headed by Allan Quatermain, wheeled and shouted in sham fight for the pleasure of Little Lord Fauntleroy. Every century and every type was jumbled in the confusion of one colossal fancyhall where all the characters were living their parts.

“Aye, look long,” said the Devil. “You will never be able to describe it, and the next time you come you won’t have the chance. Look long, and look at”—Good’s passing with a maiden of the Zu-Vendi must have suggested the idea—“look at their legs,” I looked, and for the second time noticed the lameness that seemed to be almost universal in the Limbo of Lost Endeavour. Brave men and stalwart to all appearance had one leg shorter than the other; some paced a few inches above the floor, never touching it, and others found the greatest difficulty in preserving their feet at all. The stiffness and laboured gait of these thousands was pitiful to witness. I was sorry for them. I told the Devil as much.

“H’m,” said he reflectively, “that’s the world’s work. Rather cockeye, ain’t it? They do everything but stand on their feet. You could improve them, I suppose?” There was an unpleasant sneer in his tone, and I hastened to change the subject.

“I’m tired of walking,” I said. “I want to see some of my own Characters, and go on to the Master, whoever he may be, afterwards.”

“Reflect,” said the Devil. “Are you certain—do you know how many they be?”

“No—but I want to see them. That’s what I came for.”

“Very well. Don’t abuse me if you don’t like the view. There are one-and-fifty of your make up to date, and—it’s rather an appalling thing to be confronted with fifty-one children. However, here’s a special favourite of yours. Go and shake hands with her!”

A limp-jointed, staring-eyed doll was hirpling towards me with a strained smile of recognition. I felt that I knew her only too well—if indeed she were she. “Keep her off. Devil!” I cried, stepping back. “I never made that!” “‘She began to weep and she began to cry. Lord ha’ mercy on me, this is none of I!’ You’re very rude to— Mrs. Hauksbee, and she wants to speak to you,” said the Devil. My face must have betrayed my dismay, for the Devil went on soothingly: “That’s as she is, remember. I knew you wouldn’t like it. Now what will you give if I make her as she ought to be? No, I don’t want your soul, thanks. I have it already, and many others of better quality. Will you, when you write your story, own that I am the best and greatest of all the Devils?” The doll was creeping nearer. “Yes,” I said hurriedly. “Anything you like. Only I can’t stand her in that state.”

“You’ll have to when you come next again. Look! No connection with Jekyll and Hyde!” The Devil pointed a lean and inky finger towards the doll, and lo! radiant, bewitching, with a smile of dainty malice, her high heels clicking on the floor like castanets, advanced Mrs. Hauksbee as I had imagined her in the beginning.

“Ah!” she said. “You are here so soon? Not dead yet? That will come. Meantime, a thousand congratulations. And now, what do you think of me?” She put her hands on her hips, revealed a glimpse of the smallest foot in Simla and hummed: “‘Just look at that—just look at this! And then you’ll see I’m not amiss.’”

“She’ll use exactly the same words when you meet her next time,” said the
Devil warningly, “You dowered her with any amount of vanity, if you left out—— Excuse me a minute! I’ll fetch up the rest of your menagerie.” Cut I was looking at Mrs. Hauksbee.

“Well?” she said. “Am I what you expected?” I forgot the Devil and all his works, forgot that this was not the woman I had made, could only murmur rapturously: “by Jove! You are a beauty.” Then incuatiously: “And you stand on your feet.” “Good heavens!” said Mrs. Hauksbee. “Would you, at my time of life, have me stand on my head?” She folded her arms and looked me up and down. I was grinning imbecilely”the woman was so alive. “Talk,” I said absently; “I want to hear you talk.” “I am not used to being spoken to like a coolie,” she replied. “Never mid,” I said, “that may be right for outsiders, but I made you and I’ve a right——”

“You have a right? You made me? My dear sir, if I didn’t know that we would bore each other so inextinguishable hereafter I should read you an hour’s lecture this instant. You made me! I suppose you will have the audacity to pretend that you understand me—that you ever understoof me. Oh, man, man—foolish man! If only you knew!”

“Is that the person who thinks he understood us, Loo?” drawled a voice at her elbow. The devil had returned with a cloud of witnesses, and it was Mrs. Mallowe who was speaking.

“I’ve touched ’em all up,” said the Devil in an aside. “You couldn’t stand ’em raw. But don’t run away with the notion that they are your work. I show you what they ought to be. You must find out for yourself how to make ’em so.”

“Am I allowed to remodel the batch—up above?” I asked anxiously.

“Litera scripta manet. That’s in the Delectus and Eternity.” He turned round to the semi-circle of Characters: “Ladies and gentlemen, who are all a great deal better than you should be by virtue of my power, let me introduce you to your maker. If you have anything to say to him, you can say it.”

“What insolence!” said Mrs. Hauksbee between her teeth. “This isn’t a Peterhoff drawing-room. I haven’t the slightest intention of being leveed by this person. Polly, come here and we’ll watch the animals go by.” She and Mrs. Mallowe stood at my side. I turned crimson with shame, for it is an awful thing to see one’s Characters in the solid.

“Wal,” said Gilead P. Beck as he passed, “I would not be you at this pre-cise moment of time, not for all the ile in the univarsal airth. No, sirri I thought my dinner-party was soul-shatterin’, but it’s mush—mush and milk—to your circus. Let the good work go on!”

I turned to the company and saw that they were men and women, standing upon their feet as folks should stand. Again I forgot the Devil, who stood apart and sneered. From the distant door of entry I could hear the whistle of arriving souls, from the semi-darkness at the end of the hall came the thunderous roar of the Furnace of First Edition, and everywhere the restless crowds of Characters muttered and rustled like windblown autiunn leaves. But I looked upon my own people and was perfectly content as man could be.

page 4

“I have seen you study a new dress with just such an expression of idiotic beatitude,” whispered Mrs. Mallowe to Mrs. Hauksbee. “Hushl” said the latter. “He thinks he understands.” Then to me: “Please trot them out. Eternity is long enough in all conscience, but that is no reason for wasting it. Pro-ceed, or shall I call them up? Mrs. Vansuythen, Mr. Boult, Mrs. Boult, Captain Kurrel and the Majorl” The European population in Kashima in the Dosehri hills, the actors in the Wayside Comedy, moved towards me; and I saw with delight that they were human. “So you wrote about us?” said Mrs. Boult. “About my confession to my husband aad my hatred of that Vansuythen woman? Did you think that you understood? Are all men such fools?” “That woman is bad form,” said Mrs. Hauksbee, “but she speaks the truth. I wonder what these soldiers have to say,” Gunner Barnabas and Private Shacklock stopped, saluted, and hoped I would take no offence if they gave it as their opinion that I had not “got them down quite right.” I gasped.

A spurred Hussar succeeded, his wife on his arm. It was Captain Gadsby and Minnie, and close behind them swaggered Jack Mafflin, the Brigadier-General in his arms. “Had the cheek to try to describe our life, had you?” said Gadsby carelessly. “Ha-hmm! S’pose he understood, Minnie?” Mrs. Gadsby raised her face to her husband and murmured: “I’m sure he didn’t, Pip,” while Poor Dear Mamma, still in her riding-habit, hissed: “I’m sure he didn’t understand me” And these also went their way.

One after another they filed by—Trewinnard, the pet of his Department; Otis Yeere, lean and lanthomjawed; Crook O’Neil and Bobby Wick arm in arm; Janki Meah, the blind miner in the Jimahari coal fields; Afzul Khan, the policeman; the murderous Fathan horse-dealer, Durga Dass; the bunnia, Boh Da Thone; the dacoit, Dana Da, weaver of false magic; the Leander of the Barhwi ford; Peg Barney, drunk as a coot; Mrs, Delville, the dowd; Dinah Shadd, large, red-cheeked and resolute; Simmons, Slane and Losson; Georgie Porgie and his Burmese helpmate; a shadow in a high collar, who was all that I had ever indicated of the Hawley Boy—the nameless men and women who had trod the Hill of Illusion and lived in the Tents of Eedar, and last, His Majesty the King.

Each one in passing told me the same tale, and the burden thereof was: “You did not understand.” My heart turned sick within me. “Where’s Wee Willie Winkie?” I shouted. “Little children don’t lie.”

A clatter of pony’s feet followed, and the child appeared, habited as on the day he rode into Afghan territory to warn Coppy’s love against the “bad men.” “I’ve been playing,” he sobbed, “playing on ve Levels wiv Jackanapes and Lollo, an’ he says I’m only just borrowed. I’m isn’t borrowed. I’m Willie Wi-inkie! Vere’s Coppy?”

“‘Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings’,“ whispered the Devil, who had drawn nearer. “You know the rest of the proverb. Don’t look as if you were going to be shot in the morning! Here are the last of your gang.”

I turned despairingly to the Three Musketeers, dearest of all my children to me—to Privates Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd. Surely the Three would not turn against me as the others had done! I shook hands with Mulvaney. “Terence, how goes? Are you going to make fun of me, too?” “’Tis not for me to make fun av you, sorr,” said the Irishman, “knowin’ as I du know, fwat good friends we’ve been for the matter av three years.”

“Fower,” said Ortheris, “’twas in the Helanthami barricks, H block, we was become acquaint, an’ ’ere’s thankin’ you kindly for all the beer we’ve drunk twix’ that and now.”

“Four ut is, then,” said Mulvaney. “He an’ Dinah Shadd are your friends, but——” He stood uneasily.

“But what?” I said.

“Savin’ your presence, sorr, an’ it’s more than onwillin’ I am to be hurtin’ you; you did not ondersthand. On my sowl an’ honour, sorr, you did not ondersthand. Come along, you two.”

But Ortheris stayed for a moment to whisper: “It’s Gawd’s own trewth, but there’s this ’ere to think. ’Tain’t the bloomin’ belt that’s wrong, as Peg Barney sez, when he’s up for bein’ dirty on p’rade. ’Tain’t the bloomin’ belt, sir; it’s the bloomin’ pipeclay.” Ere I could seek an explanation he had joined his companions.

“For a private soldier, a singularly shrewd man,” said Mrs. Hauksbee, and she repeated Ortheris’s words. The last drop filled my cup, and I am ashamed to say that I bade her be quiet in a wholly unjustifiable tone. I was rewarded by what would have been a notable lecture on propriety, had I not said to the Devil: “Change that woman to a d—d doll again! Change ’em all back as they were—as they are. I’m sick of them.”

“Poor wretch!” said the Devil of Discontent very quietly. “They are changed.”

The reproof died on Mrs. Hauksbee’s lips, and she moved away marionette-fashion, Mrs. Mallowe trailing after her. I hastened after the remainder of the Characters, and they were changed indeed—even as the Devil had said, who kept at my side.

They limped and stuttered and staggered and mouthed and staggered round me, till I could endure no more.

“So I am the master of this idiotic puppetshow, am I?” I said bitterly, watching Mulvaney trying to come to attention by spasms.

“In saecula saeculorum,” said the Devil, bowing his head; “and you needn’t kick, my dear fellow, because they will concern no one but yourself by the time you whistle up to the door. Stop reviling me and uncover. Here’s the Master!”

Uncover! I would have dropped on my knees, had not the Devil prevented me, at sight of the portly form of Maitre François Rabelais, some time Curé of Meudon. He wore a smoke-stained apron of the colour’s of Gargantua. I made a sign which was duly returned. “An Entered Apprentice in difficulties with his rough ashlar, Worshipful Sir,” explained the Devil. I was too angry to speak.

Said the Master, rubbing his chin: “Are those things yours?” “Even so. Worshipful Sir,” I muttered, praying inwardly that the Characters would at least keep quiet while the Master was near. He touched one or two thoughtfully, put his hand upon my shoulder and started: “By the Great Bells of Notre Dame, you are in the flesh—the warm flesh!—the flesh I quitted so long—ah, so long! And you fret and behave unseemly because of these shadows!s Listen now! I, even I, would give my Three, Panurge, Gargantua and Pantagruel, for one little hour of the life that is in you. And I am the Master!”

But the words gave me no comfort. I could hear Mrs. Mallowe’s joints cracking—or it might have been merely her stays.

“Worshipful Sir, he will not believe that,” said the Devil. “Who live by shadows lust for shadows. Tell him something more to his need.”

The Master grunted contemptuously: “And he is flesh and blood! Know this, then. The First Law is to make them stand upon their feet, and the Second is to make them stand upon their feet, and the Third is to make them stand upon their feet. But, for all that, Trajan is a fisher of frogs.” He passed on, and I could hear him say to himself: “One hour—one minute—of life in the flesh, and I would sell the Great Perhaps thrice over!”

“Well,” said the Devil, “you’ve made the Master angry, seen about all there is to be seen, except the Furnace of First Edition, and, as the Master is in charge of that, I should avoid it. Now you’d better go. You know what you ought to do?”

“I don’t need all Hell——”

“Pardon me. Better men than you have called this Paradise.”

“All Hell, I said, and the Master to tell me what I knew before. What I want to know is how?” “Go and find out,” said the Devil. We turned to the door, and I was aware ihat my Characters had grouped themselves at the exit. “They are going to give you an ovation. Think o’ that, now!” said the Devil. I shuddered and dropped my eyes, while one-and-fifty voices broke into a wailing song, whereof the words, so far as I recollect, ran:

But we brought forth and reared in hours
Of change, alarm, surprise.
What shelter to grow ripe is ours—
What leisure to grow wise?

I ran the gauntlet, narrowly missed collision with an impetuous soul (I hoped he liked his Characters when he tnet them), and flung free into the night, where I should have knocked my head against the stars. But the Devil caught me.

The brain-fever bird was fluting across the grey, dewy lawn, and the punkah had stopped again. “Go to Jehannum and get another man to pull,” I said drowsily. “Exactly,” said a voice from the inkpot.

Now the proof that this story is absolutely true lies in the fact that there will be no other to follow it.

(The Kipling Society presents here Kipling’s work as he
wrote it, but wishes to alert readers that the text below
contains some derogatory and/or offensive language

page 1 of 6

Listen in the north, my boys, there’s trouble on the wind;
Tramp o’ Cossack hooves in front, gray great-coats behind,
Trouble on the Frontier of a most amazin’ kind,
Trouble on the waters o’ the Oxus!

Hurrah! hurrah! it’s north by west we go;
Hurrah! hurrah! the chance we wanted so;
Let ’em hear the chorus from Umballa to Moscow,
As we go marchin’ to the Kremling.

We’ll sound the jubilee, from the centre to the sea,
And Ireland shall be free, says the Shan-van Vogh.

The Saxon in Heaven’s just balance is weighed,
His doom like Belshazzar’s in death has been cast,
And the hand of the venger shall never be stayed
Till his race, faith, and speech are a dream of the past.

St. Mary in Heaven has written the vow
That the land shall not rest till the heretic blood,
From the babe at the breast to the hand at the plough,
Has rolled to the ocean like Shannon in flood!

From the child at the breast to the hand at the plough
Shall roll to the ocean like Shannon in flood!

page 1 of 3

THERE had been a royal dog-fight in the ravine at the back of the rifle-butts, between Learoyd’s Jock and Ortheris’s Blue Rot—both mongrel Rampur hounds, chiefly ribs and teeth. It lasted for twenty happy, howling minutes, and then Blue Rot collapsed and Ortheris paid Learoyd three rupees, and we were all very thirsty. A dog-fight is a most heating entertainment, quite apart from the shouting, because Rampurs fight over a couple of acres of ground. Later, when the sound of belt-badges clicking against the necks of beer-bottles had died away, conversation drifted from dog- to man-fights of all kinds. Humans resemble red deer in some respects. Any talk of fighting seems to wake up a sort of imp in their breasts, and they bell one to the other, exactly like challenging bucks. This is noticeable even in men who consider themselves superior to Privates of the Line. It shows the Refining Influence of Civilisation and the March of Progress.Tale provoked tale, and each tale more beer. Even dreamy Learoyd’s eyes began to brighten, and he unburdened himself of a long history in which a trip to Malham Cove, a girl at Pateley Brigg, a ganger, himself, and a pair of clogs were mixed in a drawling tangle.

‘An’ soa Ah coot’s heead oppen from t’ chin to t’ hair, an’ he was abed for t’ matter o’ a month,’ concluded Learoyd pensively.

Mulvaney came out of a reverie—he was lying down—and flourished his heels in the air. ‘You’re a man, Learoyd,’ said he critically, ‘but you’ve only fought wid men, an’ that’s an ivryday expayrience; but I’ve stud up to a ghost, an’ that was not an ivryday expayrience.’

‘No?’ said Ortheris, throwing a cork at him. ‘You git up an’ address the ’ouse—you an’ yer expayriences. Is it a bigger one nor usual?’

‘’Twas the livin’ truth!’ answered Mulvaney, stretching out a huge arm and catching Ortheris by the collar. ‘Now where are ye, me son? Will ye take the Wurrud av the Lorrd out av my mouth another time?’ He shook him to emphasise the question.

‘No, somethin’ else, though,’ said Ortheris, making a dash at Mulvaney’s pipe, capturing it, and holding it at arm’s length; ‘I’ll chuck it acrost the Ditch if you don’t let me go!’

‘Ye maraudhin’ haythen! ’Tis the only cutty I iver loved. Handle her tinder or I’ll chuck you acrost the nullah. If that poipe was bruk—Ah Give her back to me, sorr!’

Ortheris had passed the treasure to my hand. It was an absolutely perfect clay, as shiny as the black ball at Pool. I took it reverently, but I was firm.

‘Will you tell us about the ghost-fight if I do?’ I said.

‘Is ut the shtory that’s throublin’ you? Av coorse I will. I mint to all along. I was only gettin’ at ut my own way, as Popp Doggie said whin they found him thryin’ to ram a cartridge down the muzzle. Orth’ris, fall away!’

He released the little Londoner, took back his pipe, filled it, and his eyes twinkled. He has the most eloquent eyes of any one that I know.

‘Did I iver tell you,’ he began, ‘that I was wanst the divil av a man?’

‘You did,’ said Learoyd with a childish gravity that made Ortheris yell with laughter, for Mulvaney was always impressing upon us his great merits in the old days.

‘Did I iver tell you,’ Mulvaney continued calmly, ‘that I was wanst more av a divil than I am now?’

‘Mer—ria! You don’t mean it?’ said Ortheris.

‘Whin I was Corp’ril—I was rejuced aftherwards—but, as I say, whin I was Corp’ril, I was the divil av a man.’

He was silent for nearly a minute, while his mind rummaged among old memories and his eye glowed. He bit upon the pipe-stem and charged into his tale.

‘Eyah! They was great times. I’m ould now. Me hide’s wore off in patches; sinthry-go has disconceited me, an’ I’m married tu. But I’ve had my day—I’ve had my day, an’ nothin’ can take away the taste av that! Oh, my time past, whin I put me fut through ivry livin’ wan av the Tin Commandmints betune Revelly and Lights Out, blew the froth off a pewter, wiped me moustache wid the back av me hand, an’ slept on ut all as quiet as a little child! But ut’s over—ut’s over, an’ ’twill niver come back to me; not though I prayed for a week av Sundays. Was there any wan in the Ould Rig’mint to touch Corp’ril Terence Mulvaney whin that same was turned out for sedukshin? I niver met him. Ivry woman that was not a witch was worth the runnin’ afther in those days, an’ ivry man was my dearest frind or—I had stripped to him an’ we knew which was the betther av the tu.

‘Whin I was Corp’ril I wud not ha’ changed wid the Colonel—no, nor yet the Commandherin-Chief. I wud be a Sargint. There was nothin’ I wud not be! Mother av Hivin, look at me! Fwhat am I now?

‘We was quartered in a big cantonmint—’tis no manner av use namin’ names, for ut might give the barricks disreputation—an’ I was the Imperor av the Earth in me own mind, an’ wan or to wimmen thought the same. Small blame to thim. Afther we had lain there a year, Bragin, the Colour-Sargint av E Comp’ny, wint an’ took a wife that was lady’s maid to some big lady in the station. She’s dead now, is Annie Bragin—died in child-bed at Kirpa Tal, or ut may ha’ been Almorah—sivin—nine years gone, an’ Bragin he married agin. But she was a pretty woman whin Bragin inthrojuced her to cantonmint society. She had eyes like the brown av a buttherfly’s wing whin the sun catches ut, an’ a waist no thicker than me arrum, an’ a ,little sof’ button av a mouth I wud ha’ gone through all Asia bristlin’ wid bay’nits to get the kiss av. An’ her hair was as long as the tail av the Colonel’s charger—forgive me mentionin’ that blundherin’ baste in the same mouthful wid Annie Bragin—but ’twas all shpun gowld, an’ time was whin a lock av ut was more than di’monds to me. There was niver pretty woman yet, an’ I’ve had thruck wid a few, cud open the door to Annie Bragin.

‘’Twas in the Cath’lic Chapel I saw her first, me eye rollin’ round as usual to see fwhat was to be seen. “You’re too good for Bragin, me love,” thinks I to mesilf, “but that’s a mistake I can put straight, or me name is not Terence Mulvaney.”

‘Now take me wurrud for ut, you Orth’ris there an’ Learoyd, an’ kape out av the Married Quarters—as I did not. No good iver comes av ut, an’ there’s always the chance av your bein’ found wid your face in the dirt, a long picket in the back av your head, an’ your hands playin’ the fifes on the tread av another man’s doorstep. ’Twas so we found O’Hara, he that Rafferty killed six years gone, whin he wint to his death wid his hair oiled, whistlin’ Larry O’Rourke betune his teeth. Kape out av the Married Quarters, I say, as I did not. ’Tis onwholesim, ’Tis dangerous, an’ ’tis ivrything else that’s bad, but—O my sowl, ’tis swate while ut lasts!

page 2

‘I was always hangin’ about there whin I was off jooty an’ Bragin wasn’t, but niver a swate word beyon’ ordinar’ did I get from Annie Bragin. “’Tis the pervarsity av the sect,” sez I to mesilf, an’ gave me cap another cock on me head an’ straightened me back—’twas the back av a Dhrum-Major in those days—an’ wint off as tho’ I did not care, wid all the wimmen in the Married Quarters laughin’. I was pershuaded—most bhoys are, I’m thinkin’—that no woman born av woman cud stand agin’ me av I hild up me little finger. I had good cause for to think that way—till I met Annie Bragin.

‘Time an’ agin whin I was blandandherin’ in the dusk a man wud go past me as quiet as a cat. “That’s quare,” thinks I, “ for I am, or I shud be, the only man in these parts. Now what divilmint can Annie be up to?” Thin I called myself a blayguard for thinkin’ such things; but I thought thim all the same. An’ that, mark you, is the way av a man.

‘Wan evenin’ I said: “Mrs. Bragin, manin’ no disrespect to you, who is that Corp’ril man”—I had seen the shtripes though I cud niver get sight av his face—“who is that Corp’ril man that comes in always whin I’m goin’ away?”

‘“Mother av God!” sez she, turnin’ as white as my belt; “have you seen him too?”

‘“Seen him!” sez I; “av coorse I have. Did ye wish me not to see him, for”—we were standin’ talkin’ in the dhark, outside the veranda av Bragin’s quarters—“you’d betther tell me to shut me eyes. Onless I’m mistaken, he’s come now.”

An’, sure enough, the Corp’ril man was walkin’ to us, hangin’ his head down as though he was ashamed av himsilf.

‘“Good night, Mrs. Bragin,” sez I, very cool. “’Tis not for me to interfere wid your a-moors; but you might manage some things wid more dacincy. I’m off to Canteen,” I sez.

‘I turned on my heel an’ wint away, swearin’ I wud give that man a dhressin’ that wud shtop him messin’ about the Married Quarters for a month an’ a week. I had not tuk ten paces before Annie Bragin was hangin’ on to my arrum, an’ I cud feel that she was shakin’ all over.

‘“Shtay wid me, Mister Mulvaney,” sez she. “You’re flesh and blood, at the least—are ye not?”

‘“I’m all that,” sez I, an’ my anger wint in a flash. “Will I want to be asked twice, Annie?”

‘Wid that I slipped my arrum round her waist, for, begad, I fancied she had surrindered at discretion, an’ the honours av war were mine.

‘“Fwhat nonsinse is this?” sez she, dhrawin’ hersilf up on the tips av her dear little toes. “Wid the mother’s milk not dhry on your impident mouth! Let go!” she sez.

‘“Did ye not say just now that I was flesh and blood?” sez I. “I have not changed since,” I sez; and I kep’ my arrum where ut was.

‘“Your arrums to yoursilf!” sez she, an’ her eyes sparkild.

‘“Sure, ’tis only human natur’,” sez I; an’ I kep’ my arrum where ut was.

‘“Natur’ or no natur’,” says she, “you take your arrum away or I’ll tell Bragin, an’ he’ll alter the natur’ av your head. Fwhat d’you take me for?” she sez.

‘“A woman,” sez I; “the prettiest in barricks.”

‘“A wife,” sez she. “The straightest in cantonmints!”

‘Wid that I dropped my arrum, fell back to paces, an’ saluted, for I saw that she mint fwhat she said.’

‘Then you know something that some men would give a good deal to be certain of. How could you tell?’ I demanded in the interests of Science.

‘Watch the hand,’ said Mulvaney. ‘Av she shuts her hand tight, thumb down over the knuckle, take up your hat an’ go. You’ll only make a fool av yoursilf av you shtay. But av the hand lies opin on the lap, or av you see her thryin’ to shut ut, an’ she can’t,—go on! She’s not past reasonin’ wid.

‘Well, as I was sayin’, I fell back, saluted, an’ was goin’ away.

‘“Shtay wid me,” she sez. “Look! He’s comin’ agin.”

‘She pointed to the veranda, an’ by the Hoight av Impart’nince, the Corp’ril man was comin’ out av Bragin’s quarters.

‘“He’s done that these five evenin’s past,” sez Annie Bragin. “Oh, fwhat will I do!”

‘“He’ll not do ut agin,” sez I, for I was fightin’ mad.

‘Kape away from a man that has been a thrifle crossed in love till the fever’s died down. He rages like a brute baste.

‘I wint up to the man in the veranda, manin’, as sure as I sit, to knock the life out av him. He slipped into the open. “Fwhat are you doin’ philandherin’ about here, ye scum av the gutter?” sez I polite, to give him his warnin’, for I wanted him ready.

‘He niver lifted his head, but sez, all mournful an’ melancolious, as if he thought I wud be sorry for him: “I can’t find her,” sez he.

‘“My troth,” sez I, “you’ve lived too long—you an’ your seekin’s an’ findin’s in a dacint married woman’s quarters! Hould up your head, ye frozen thief av Genesis,” sez I, “an’ you’ll find all you want an’ more!”

‘But he niver hild up, an’ I let go from the shoulther to where the hair is short over the eyebrows.

‘“That’ll do your business,” sez I, but it nearly did mine instid. I put me bodyweight behind the blow, but I hit nothing at all, an’ near put me shoulther out. The Corp’ril man was not there, an’ Annie Bragin, who had been watchin’ from the veranda, throws up her heels, an’ carries on like a cock whin his neck’s wrung by the dhrummer-bhoy. I wint back to her, for a livin’ woman, an’ a woman like Annie Bragin, is more than a p’rade-groun’ full av ghosts. I’d niver seen a woman faint before, an’ I stud like a shtuck calf, askin’ her whether she was dead, an’ prayin’ her for the love av me, an’ the love av her husband, an’ the love av the Virgin, to opin her blessed eyes agin, an’ callin’ mesilf all the names undher the canopy av Hivin for plaguin’ her wid my miserable a-moors whin I ought to ha’ stud betune her an’ this Corp’ril man that had lost the number av his mess.

page 3

‘I misremimber fwhat nonsinse I said, but I was not so far gone that I cud not hear a fut on the dirt outside. ’Twas Bragin comin’ in, an’ by the same token Annie was comin’ to. I jumped to the far end av the veranda an’ looked as if butther wudn’t melt in my mouth. But Mrs. Quinn, the Quartermaster’s wife that was, had tould Bragin about my hangin’ round Annie.

‘“I’m not plazed wid you, Mulvaney,” sez Bragin, unbucklin’ his sword, for he had been on jooty.

‘“That’s bad hearin’,” I sez, an’ I knew that me pickets were dhriven in. “What for, Sargint?” sez I.

‘“Come outside,” sez he, “an’ I’ll show you why.”

‘“I’m willin’,” I sez; “ but my shtripes are none so ould that I can afford to lose thim. Tell me now, who do I go out wid?” sez I.

‘He was a quick man an’ a just, an’ saw fwhat I wud be afther. “Wid Mrs. Bragin’s husband,” sez he. He might ha’ known by me askin’ that favour that I had done him no wrong.

‘We wint to the back av the arsenal an’ I stripped to him, an’ for ten minut’s ’twas all I cud do to prevent him killin’ himsilf agin’ my fistes. He was mad as a dumb dog—just frothin’ wid rage; but he had no chanst wid me in reach, or learnin’, or anything else.

‘“Will ye hear reason?” sez I, whin his first wind was run out.

‘“Not whoile I can see,” sez he. Wid that I gave him both, one afther the other, smash through the low gyard that he’d been taught whin he was a bhoy, an’ the eyebrow shut down on the cheek-bone like the wing av a sick crow.

‘“Will you hear reason now, brave man?” sez I.

‘“Not whoile I can speak,” sez he, staggerin’ up blind as a stump. I was loath to du ut, but I wint round an’ swung into the jaw side-on an’ shifted ut a half-pace to the lef’.

“’Will ye hear reason now?” sez I. “I can’t keep my timper much longer, an’ ’tis like I will hurt you.”

‘“Not whoile I can stand,” he mumbles out av one corner av his mouth. So I closed an’ threw him—blind, dumb, an’ sick, an’ jammed the jaw straight.

‘“You’re an ould fool, Mister Bragin,” sez I.

‘“You’re a young thafe,” sez he, “an’ you’ve bruk my heart, you an’ Annie betune you!”

‘Thin he began cryin’ like a child as he lay. I was sorry as I had niver been before. ’Tis an awful thing to see a strong man cry.

‘“I’ll swear on the Cross!” sez I.

‘“I care for none av your oaths,” sez he.

‘“Come back to your quarters,” sez I, “an’ if you don’t believe the livin’, begad, you shall listen to the dead,” I sez.

‘I hoisted him an’ tuk him back to his quarters. “Mrs. Bragin,” sez I, “here’s a man that you can cure quicker than me.”

‘“You’ve shamed me before my wife,” he whimpers.

‘“Have I so?” sez I. “By the look on Mrs. Bragin’s face I think I’m for a dhressin’-down worse than I gave you.”

‘An’ I was! Annie Bragin was woild wid indignation. There was not a name that a dacint woman cud use that was not given my way. I’ve had my Colonel walk roun’ me like a cooper roun’ a cask for fifteen minut’s in Ord’ly-Room, bekaze I wint into the Corner Shop an unstrapped lewnatic; but all that I iver tuk from his tongue was ginger-pop to fwhat Annie tould me. An’ that, mark you, is the way av a woman.

‘Whin ut was done for want av breath, an’ Annie was bendin’ over her husband, I sez: “’Tis all thrue, an’ I’m a blayguard an’ you’re an honust woman; but will you tell him av wan service that I did you?”

‘As I finished speakin’ the Corp’ril man came up to the veranda, and Annie Bragin shquealed. The moon was up, an’ we cud see his face.

‘“I can’t find her,” sez the Corp’ril man, an’ wint out like the puff av a candle.

‘“Saints stand betune us an’ evil!” sez Bragin, crossin’ himsilf; “that’s Flahy av the Tyrone.”

‘“Who was he?” I sez, “for he has given me a dale av fightin’ this day.”

‘Bragin tould us that Flahy was a Corp’ril who lost his wife av cholera in those quarters three years gone, an’ wint mad, an’ walked afther they buried him, huntin’ for her.

‘“Well,” sez I to Bragin, “he’s been hookin’ out av Purgathory to kape company wid Mrs. Bragin ivry evenin’ for the last fortnight. You may tell Mrs. Quinn, wid my love, for I know that she’s been talkin’ to you, an’ you’ve been listenin’, that she ought to ondhersthand the differ ’twixt a man an’ a ghost. She’s had three husbands,” sez I, “an’ you’ve got a wife too good for you. Instid av which you lave her to be boddered by ghosts an’—an’ all manner av evil spirruts. I’ll niver go talkin’ in the way av politeness to a man’s wife agin. Good night to you both,” sez I; an’ wid that I wint away, havin’ fought wid woman, man, an’ Divil all in the heart av an hour. By the same token I gave Father Victor wan rupee to say a mass for Flahy’s soul, me havin’ dishcommoded him by shtickin’ my fist into his systim.’

‘Your ideas of politeness seem rather large, Mulvaney,’ I said.

‘That’s as you look at ut,’ said Mulvaney calmly. ‘Annie Bragin niver cared for me. For all that, I did not want to leave anythin’ behin’ me that Bragin cud take hould av to be angry wid her about—whin an honust wurrud cud ha’ cleared all up. There’s nothing like opin-spakin’. Orth’ris, ye scutt, let me put me eye to that bottle, for my throat’s as dhry as whin I thought I wud get a kiss from Annie Bragin. An’ that’s fourteen years gone!

‘Eyah! Cork’s own city an’ the blue sky above ut—an’ the times that was—the times that was!’

An’ when the war began, we chased the bold Afghan,
An’ we made the bloomin’ Ghazi for to flee, boys O!
An’ we marched into Kabul, an’ we tuk the Balar ’Issar,
An’ we taught ’em to respec’ the British Soldier.
Barrack Room Ballad

MULVANEY, Ortheris, and Learoyd are Privates in B Company of a Line Regiment, and personal friends of mine. Collectively, I think, but am not certain, they are the worst men in the regiment so far as genial blackguardism goes.

They told me this story in the Umballa Refreshment Room while we were waiting for an up-train. I supplied the beer. The tale was cheap at a gallon and a half.

All men know Lord Benira Trig. He is a Duke, or an Earl, or something unofficial; also a Peer; also a Globe-trotter. On all three counts, as Ortheris says, ‘’e didn’t deserve no consideration.’ He was out in India for three months collecting materials for a book on ‘Our Eastern Impedimenta,’ and quartering himself upon everybody, like a Cossack in evening-dress.

His particular vice—because he was a Radical, men said—was having garrisons turned out for his inspection. He would then dine with the Officer Commanding, and insult him, across the Mess table, about the appearance of the troops. That was Benira’s way.

He turned out troops once too often. He came to Helanthami Cantonment on a Tuesday. He wished to go shopping in the bazars on Wednesday, and he ‘desired’ the troops to be turned out on a Thursday. On-a-Thursday. The Officer Commanding could not well refuse; for Benira was a Lord. There was an indignation meeting of subalterns in the Mess Room, to call the Colonel pet names.

‘But the rale dimonstrashin,’ said Mulvaney, ‘was in B Comp’ny barrick; we three headin’ it.’

Mulvaney climbed on to the refreshment-bar, settled himself comfortably by the beer, and went on, ‘Whin the row was at ut’s foinest an’ B Comp’ny was fur goin’ out to murther this man Thrigg on the p’rade-groun’, Learoyd here takes up his helmut an’ sez—fwhat was ut ye said ?’

‘Ah said,’ said Learoyd, ‘gie us t’ brass. Tak oop a subscripshun, lads, for to put off t’ p’rade, an’ if t’ p’rade’s not put off, ah’ll gie t’ brass back agean. Thot’s wot ah said. All B Coomp’ny knawed me. Ah took oop a big subscripshun—fower rupees eight annas’twas—an’ ah went oot to turn t’ job over. Mulvaney an’ Orth’ris coom with me.’

‘We three raises the Divil in couples gin’rally,’ explained Mulvaney.

Here Ortheris interrupted. ‘’Ave you read the papers ?’ said he.

‘Sometimes,’ I said.

‘We ’ad read the papers, an’ we put hup a faked decoity, a—a sedukshun.’

‘Abdukshin, ye cockney,’ said Mulvaney.

‘Abdukshun or sedukshun – no great odds. Any ’ow, we arranged to taik an’ put Mister Benhira out o’ the way till Thursday was hover, or ’e too busy to rux ’isself about p’raids. Hi was the man wot said, “ We’ll make a few rupees off o’ the business.”’

‘We hild a Council av War,’ continued Mulvaney, ‘walkin’ roun’ by the Artill’ry Lines. I was Prisidint, Learoyd was Minister av Finance, an’ little Orth’ris here was—’

‘A bloomin’ Bismarck! Hi made the ’ole show pay.’

‘This interferin’ bit av a Benira man,’ said Mulvaney, ‘did the thrick for us himself; for, on me sowl, we hadn’t a notion av what was to come afther the next minut. He was shoppin’ in the bazar on fut. ’Twas dhrawin’ dusk thin, an’ we stud watchin’ the little man hoppin’ in an’ out av the shops, thryin’ to injuce the naygurs to mallum his bat. Prisintly, he sthrols up, his arrums full av thruck, an’ he sez in a consiquinshal way, shticking out his little belly, “Me good men,” sez he, “have ye seen the Kernel’s b’roosh? ”—“B’roosh ?” says Learoyd. “There’s no b’roosh here—nobbut a hekka.” “Fwhat’s that?” sez Thrigg. Learoyd shows him wan down the sthreet, an’ he sez, “How thruly Orientil ! I will ride on a hekka.” I saw thin that our Rigimintal Saint was for givin’ Thrigg over to us neck an’ brisket. I purshued a hekka, an’ I sez to the dhriver-divil, I sez, “Ye black limb, there’s a Sahib comin’ for this hekka. He wants to go jildi to the Padsahi Jhil”—’twas about to moiles away—” to shoot snipe—chirria. You dhrive Jehannum ke marfik, mallum—like Hell? ’Tis no manner av use bukkin’ to the Sahib, bekaze he doesn’t samjao your talk. Av he bolos anything, just you choop and chel. Dekker? Go arsty for the first arder mile from cantonmints. Thin chel, Shaitan ke marfik, an’ the chooper you choops an’ the jildier you chels the better kooshy will that Sahib be; an’ here’s a rupee for ye?”

‘The hekka-man knew there was somethin’ out av the common in the air. He grinned an’ sez, “Bote achee ! I goin’ damn fast.” I prayed that the Kernel’s b’roosh wudn’t arrive till me darlin’ Benira by the grace av God was undher weigh. The little man puts his thruck into the hekka an’ scuttles in like a fat guinea-pig; niver offerin’ us the price av a dhrink for our services in helpin’ him home. “He’s off to the Padsahi jhil,” sez I to the others.’

Ortheris took up the tale—

‘Jist then, little Buldoo kim up,’oo was the son of one of the Artillery grooms—’e would’av made a’evinly newspaper-boy in London, bein’ sharp an’ fly to all manner o’ games.’E’ad bin watchin’ us puttin’ Mister Benhira into’is temporary baroush, an’’e sez, “What’ave you been a doin’ of, Sahibs?” sez’e. Learoyd ’e caught ’im by the ear an ’e sez-’

‘Ah says,’ went on Learoyd, “Young mon, that mon’s gooin’ to have t’ goons out o’ Thursday —to-morrow — an’ thot’s more work for you, young mon. Now, sitha, tak’ a tat an’ a lookri, an’ ride tha domdest to t’ Padsahi Jhil. Cotch thot there hekka, and tell t’ driver iv your lingo thot you’ve coom to tak’ his place. T’ Sahib doesn’t speak t’ bat, an’ he’s a little mon. Drive t’ hekka into t’ Padsahi Jhil into t’ watter. Leave t’ Sahib theer an’ roon hoam ; an’ here’s a rupee for tha.”’

Then Mulvaney and Ortheris spoke together in alternate fragments: Mulvaney leading [You must pick out the two speakers as best you can]—‘He was a knowin’ little divil was Bhuldoo,—’e sez bote achee an’ cuts—wid a wink in his oi—but Hi sez there’s money to be made—an’ I wanted to see the ind av the campaign—so Hi says we’ll double hout to the Padsahi Jhil—an’ save the little man from bein’ dacoited by the murtherin’ Bhuldoo—an’ turn hup like reskooers in a Vic’oria Melodrama—so we doubled for the jhil, an’ prisintly there was the divil av a hurroosh behind us an’ three bhoys on grasscuts’ ponies come by, poundin’ along for the dear life—s’elp me Bob, hif Buldoo ’adn’t raised a rig’lar harmy of decoits—to do the job in shtile. An’ we ran, an’ they ran, shplittin’ with laughin’, till we gets near the jhil—and ’ears sounds of distress floatin’ molloncolly on the hevenin’ hair.’ [Ortheris was growing poetical under the influence of the beer. The duet recommenced: Mulvaney leading again.]

‘Thin we heard Bhuldoo, the dacoit, shoutin’ to the hekka man, an’ wan of the young divils brought his stick down on the top av the hekka-cover, an’ Benira Thrigg inside howled “Murther an’ Death.” Buldoo takes the reins and dhrives like mad for the jhil, havin’ dishpersed the hekka-dhriver—’oo cum up to us an’ ’e sez, sez ’e, “That Sahib’s nigh mad with funk ! Wot devil’s work ’ave you led me into?” —“Hall right,” sez we, “you catch that there pony an’ come along. This Sahib’s been decoited, an’ we’re going to resky ’im !” Says the driver, “Decoits ! Wot decoits? That’s Buldoo the budmash”—“Bhuldoo be shot!” sez we. “’Tis a woild dissolute Pathan frum the hills. There’s about eight av thim coercin’ the Sahib. You remimber that an you’ll get another rupee!” Thin we heard the whop-whop-whop av the hekka turnin’ over, an’ a splash av water an’ the voice av Benira Thrigg callin’ upon God to forgive his sins—an’ Buldoo an’ ’is friends squatterin’ in the water like boys in the Serpentine.’

Here the Three Musketeers retired simultaneously into the beer.

‘Well? What came next?’ said I.

‘Fwhat nex’?’ answered Mulvaney, wiping his mouth. ‘Wud ye let three bould sodger-bhoys lave the ornamint av the House av Lords to be dhrowned an’ dacoited in a jhil? We formed line av quarther-column an’ we discinded upon the inimy. For the better part av tin minutes you could not hear yerself spake. The tattoo was screamin’ in chune wid Benira Thrigg an’ Bhuldoo’s army, an’ the shticks was whistlin’ roun’ the hekka, an’ Orth’ris was beatin’ the hekka-cover wid his fistes, an’ Learoyd yellin’, “Look out for their knives!” an’ me cuttin’ into the dark, right an’ lef’, dishpersin’ arrmy corps av Pathans. Holy Mother av Moses! ’twas more disp’rit than Ahmid Kheyl wid Maiwand thrown in. Afther a while Bhuldoo an’ his bhoys flees. Have ye iver seen a rale live Lord thryin’ to hide his nobility undher a fut an’ a half av brown swamp-wather?’ Tis the livin’ image av a water-carrier’s goatskin wid the shivers. It tuk toime to pershuade me frind Benira he was not disimbowilled : an’ more toime to get out the hekka. The dhriver come up afther the battle, swearin’ he tuk a hand in repulsin’ the inimy. Benira was sick wid the fear. We escorted him back, very slow, to cantonmints, for that an’ the chill to soak into him. It suk ! Glory be to the Rigimintil Saint, but it suk to the marrow av Lord Benira Thrigg !’

Here Ortheris, slowly, with immense pride—‘’E sez, “You har my noble preservers,” sez ’e. “You har a honour to the British Harmy,” sez ’e. With that ’e describes the hawful band of dacoits wot set on ’im. There was about forty of ’em an’ ’e was hoverpowered by numbers, so ’e was ; but ’e never lorst ’is presence of mind, so ’e didn’t. ’E guv the hekka-driver five rupees for ’is noble assistance, an’ ’e said ’e would see to us after ’e ’ad spoken to the Kernul. For we was a honour to the Regiment, we was.’

‘An’ we three,’ said Mulvaney, with a seraphic smile, ‘have dhrawn the par-ti-cu-lar attinshin av Bobs Bahadur more than wanst. But he’s a rale good little man is Bobs. Go on, Orth’ris, my son.’

‘Then we leaves ’im at the Kernul ’s ’ouse, werry sick, an’ we cuts hover to B Comp’ny barrick an’ we sez we ’ave saved Benira from a bloody doom, an’ the chances was agin there bein’ p’raid on Thursday. About ten minutes later come three envelicks, one for each of us. S’elp me Bob, if the old bloke ’adn’t guv us a fiver apiece—sixty-four rupees in the bazar! On Thursday ’e was in ’orspital recoverin’ from ’is sanguinary encounter with a gang of Pathans, an’ B Comp’ny was drinkin’ ’emselves into Clink by squads. So there never was no Thursday p’raid. But the Kernul, when ’e ’eard of our galliant conduct, ’e sez, “Hi know there’s been some devilry somewheres,” sez ’e, “but I can’t bring it ’ome to you three.”’

‘An’ my privit imprisshin is,’ said Mulvaney, getting off the bar and turning his glass upside down, ‘that, av they had known they wudn’t have brought ut home. ’Tis flyin’ in the face, firstly av Nature, secon’ av the Rig’lations, an’ third the will av Terence Mulvaney, to hold p’rades av Thursdays.’

‘Good, ma son!’ said Learoyd ; ‘but, young mon, what’s t’ notebook for?’

‘Let be,’ said Mulvaney; ‘ this time next month we’re in the Sherapis. ’Tis immortial fame the gentleman’s goin’ to give us. But kape it dhark till we’re out av the range av me little frind Bobs Bahadur.’

And I have obeyed Mulvaney’s order.