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THERE had been rather a long sitting at Lodge ‘Faith and Works,’ 5837 E.C., that warm April night. Three initiations and two raisings, each conducted with the spaciousness and particularity that our Lodge prides itself upon, made the Brethren a little silent, and the strains of certain music had not yet lifted from them.‘There are two pieces that ought to be barred for ever,’ said a Brother as we were sitting down to the ‘banquet.’ ‘“Last Post” is the other.’‘I can just stand “Last Post.” It’s “Tipperary” breaks me,’ another replied. ‘But I expect every one carries his own firing-irons inside him.’

I turned to look. It was a sponsor for one of our newly raised Brethren—a fat man with a fish-like and vacant face, but evidently prosperous. We introduced ourselves as we took our places. His name was Bevin, and he had a chicken farm near Chalfont St. Giles, whence he supplied, on yearly contract, two or three high-class London hotels. He was also, he said, on the edge of launching out into herb-growing.

‘There’s a demand for herbs,’ said he; ‘but it all depends upon your connections with the wholesale dealers. We ain’t systematic enough. The French do it much better, especially in those mountains on the Swiss an’ Italian sides. They use more herbal remedies than we do. Our patent-medicine business has killed that with us. But there’s a demand still, if your connections are sound. I’m going in for it.’

A large, well-groomed Brother across the table (his name was Pole, and he seemed some sort of professional man) struck in with a detailed account of a hollow behind a destroyed village near Thiepval, where, for no ascertainable reason, a certain rather scarce herb had sprung up by the acre, he said, out of the overturned earth.

‘Only you’ve got to poke among the weeds to find it, and there’s any quantity of bombs an’ stuff knockin’ about there still. They haven’t cleaned it up yet.’

‘Last time I saw the place,’ said Bevin, ‘I thought it ’ud be that way till Judgment Day. You know how it lay in that dip under that beet-factory. I saw it bombed up level in two days—into brick-dust mainly. They were huntin’ for St. Firmin Dump.’ He took a sandwich and munched slowly, wiping his face, for the night was close.

‘Ye-es,’ said Pole. ‘The trouble is there hasn’t been any judgment taken or executed. That’s why the world is where it is now. We didn’t need anything but justice—afterwards. Not gettin’ that, the bottom fell out of things, naturally.’

‘That’s how I look at it too,’ Bevin replied. ‘We didn’t want all that talk afterwards—we only wanted justice. What I say is, there must be a right and a wrong to things. It can’t all be kiss-an’-make-friends, no matter what you do.’

A thin, dark brother on my left, who had been attending to a cold pork pie (there are no pork pies to equal ours, which are home-made), suddenly lifted his long head, in which a pale blue glass eye swivelled insanely.

‘Well,’ he said slowly. ‘My motto is “Never again.” Ne-ver again for me.’

‘Same here—till next time,’ said Pole, across the table. ‘You’re from Sydney, ain’t you?’

‘How d’you know?’ was the short answer

‘You spoke.’ The other smiled. So did Bevin, who added: ‘I know how your push talk, well enough. Have you started that Republic of yours down under yet?’

‘No. But we’re goin’ to. Then you’ll see.’

‘Carry on. No one’s hindering,’ Bevin pursued.

The Australian scowled. ‘No. We know they ain’t. And—and—that’s what makes us all so crazy angry with you.’ He threw back his head and laughed the spleen out of him. ‘What can you do with an Empire that—that don’t care what you do?’

‘I’ve heard that before,’ Bevin laughed, and his fat sides shook. ‘Oh, I know your push inside-out.’ .

‘When did you come across us? My name’s Orton—no relation to the Tichborne one.’

‘Gallip’li—dead mostly. My battalion began there. We only lost half.’

‘Lucky! They gambled us away in two days. ’Member the hospital on the beach?’ asked asked Orton.

‘Yes. An’ the man without the face—preaching,’ said Bevin, sitting up a little.

‘Till he died,’ said the Australian, his voice lowered.

‘And afterwards,’ Bevin added, lower still.

‘Christ! Were you there that night?’

Bevin nodded. The Australian choked off something he was going to say, as a Brother on his left claimed him. I heard them talk horses, while Bevin developed his herb-growing projects with the well-groomed Brother opposite.

At the end of the banquet, when pipes were drawn, the Australian addressed himself to Bevin, across me, and as the company re-arranged itself, we three came to anchor in the big anteroom where the best prints are hung. Here our Brother across the table joined us, and moored alongside.

The Australian was full of racial grievances, as must be in a young country; alternating between complaints that his people had not been appreciated enough in England, or too fulsomely complimented by an hysterical Press.

‘No-o,’ Pole drawled, after a while. ‘You’re altogether wrong. We hadn’t time to notice anything—we were all too busy fightin’ for our lives. What your crowd down under are suffering from is growing-pains. You’ll get over ’em in three hundred years or so—if you’re allowed to last so long.’

‘Who’s going to stoush us?’ Orton asked fiercely.

This turned the talk again to larger issues and possibilities—delivered on both sides straight from the shoulder without malice or heat, between bursts of song from round the piano at the far end. Bevin and I sat out, watching.

‘Well, I don’t understand these matters,’ said Bevin at last. ‘But I’d hate to have one of your crowd have it in for me for anything.’

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‘Would you? Why?’ Orton pierced him with his pale, artificial eye.

‘Well, you’re a trifle—what’s the word?—vindictive?—spiteful? At least, that’s what I’ve found. I expect it comes from drinking stewed tea with your meat four times a day,’ said Bevin. ‘No! I’d hate to have an Australian after me for anything in particular.’

Out of this came his tale—somewhat in this shape:

It opened with an Australian of the name of Hickmot or Hickmer—Bevin called him both—who, finding his battalion completely expended at Gallipoli, had joined up with what stood of Bevin’s battalion, and had there remained, unrebuked and unnoticed. The point that Bevin laboured was that his man had never seen a table-cloth, a china plate, or a dozen white people together till, in his thirtieth year, he had walked for two months to Brisbane to join up. Pole found this hard to believe.

‘But it’s true,’ Bevin insisted. ‘This chap was born an’ bred among the black fellers, as they call ’em, two hundred miles from the nearest town, four hundred miles from a railway, an’ ten thousand from the grace o’ God—out in Queensland near some desert.’

‘Why, of course. We come out of everywhere,’ said Orton. ‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘Yes—but—— Look here! From the time that this man Hickmot was twelve years old he’d ridden, driven—what’s the word?—conducted sheep for his father for thousands of miles on end, an’ months at a time, alone with these black fellers that you daren’t show the back of your neck to—else they knock your head in. That was all that he’d ever done till he joined up. He—he—didn’t belong to anything m the world, you understand. And he didn’t strike other men as being a—a human being.’

‘Why? He was a Queensland drover. They’re all right,’ Orton explained.

‘I dare say; but—well, a man notices another man, don’t he? You’d notice if there was a man standing or sitting or lyin’ near you, wouldn’t you? So’d any one. But you’d never notice Hickmot. His bein’ anywhere about wouldn’t stay in your mind. He just didn’t draw attention any more than anything else that happened to be about. Have you got it?’

‘Wasn’t he any use at his job?’ Pole inquired.

‘I’ve nothing against him that way, an’ I’m—I was his platoon sergeant. He wouldn’t volunteer specially for any doings, but he’d slip out with the party and he’d slip back with what was left of ’em. No one noticed him, and he never opened his mouth about any doings. You’d think a man who had lived the way he’d lived among black fellers an’ sheep would be noticeable enough in an English battalion, wouldn’t you?’

‘It teaches ’em to lie close; but you seem to have noticed him,’ Orton interposed, with a little suspicion.

‘Not at the time—but afterwards. If he was noticeable it was on account of his unnoticeability—same way you’d notice there not being an extra step at the bottom of the staircase when you thought there was.’

‘Ye-es,’ Pole said suddenly. ‘It’s the eternal mystery of personality. “God before Whom ever lie bare——” Some people can occlude their personality like turning off a tap. I beg your pardon. Carry on!’

‘Granted,’ said Bevin. ‘I think I catch your drift. I used to think I was a student of human nature before I joined up.’

‘What was your job—before?’ Orton asked.

‘Oh, I was the young blood of the village. Goal-keeper in our soccer team, secretary of the local cricket and rifle—oh, lor’!—clubs. Yes, an’ village theatricals. My father was the chemist in the village. How I did talk! What I did know!’ He beamed upon us all.

‘I don’t mind hearing you talk,’ said Orton, lying back in his chair. ‘You’re a little different from some of ’em. What happened to this dam’ drover of yours?’

‘He was with our push for the rest of the war—an’ I don’t think he ever sprung a dozen words at one time. With his upbringing, you see, there wasn’t any subject that any man knew about he could open up on. He kept quiet, and mixed with his backgrounds. If there was a lump of dirt, or a hole in the ground, or what was—was left after anythin’ had happened, it would be Hickmot. That was all he wanted to be.’

‘A camouflager?’ Orton suggested.

‘You have it! He was the complete camouflager all through. That’s him to a dot. Look here! He hadn’t even a nickname in his platoon! And then a friend of mine from our village, of the name of Vigors, came out with a draft. Bert Vigors. As a matter of fact, I was engaged to his sister. And Bert hadn’t been with us a week before they called him “The Grief.” His father was an oldish man, a market-gardener—high-class vegetables, bit o’ glass, an’—an’ all the rest of it. Do you know anything about that particular business?’

‘Not much, I’m afraid,’ said Pole, ‘except that glass is expensive, and one’s man always sells the cut flowers.’

‘Then you do know something about it. It is. Bert was the old man’s only son, an’—I don’t blame him—he’d done his damnedest to get exempted—for the sake of the business, you understand. But he caught it all right. The tribunal wasn’t takin’ any the day he went up. Bert was for it, with a few remarks from the patriotic old was-sers on the bench. Our county paper had ’em all.’

‘That’s the thing that made one really want the Hun in England for a week or two,’ said Pole.

‘Mwor osee! The same tribunal, havin’ copped Bert, gave unconditional exemption to the opposition shop—a man called Margetts, in the market-garden business, which he’d established since the war, with his two sons who, every one in the village knew, had been pushed into the business to save their damned hides. But Margetts had a good lawyer to advise him. The whole case was frank and above-board to a degree—our county paper had it all in, too. Agricultural producevital necessity; the plough mightier than the sword; an’ those ducks on the bench, who had turned down Bert, noddin’ and smilin’ at Margetts, all full of his cabbage and green peas. What happened? The usual. Vigors’ business—he’s sixty-eight, with asthma—goes smash, and Margetts and Co. double theirs. So, then, that was Bert’s grievance, an’ he joined us full of it. That’s why they called him “The Grief.” Knowing the facts, I was with him; but being his sergeant, I had to check him, because grievances are catchin’, and three or four men with ’em make Companies—er—sticky. Luckily Bert wasn’t handy with his pen. He had to cork up his grievance mostly till he came across Hickmot, an’ Gord in Heaven knows what brought those two together. No! As y’were. I’m wrong about God! I always am. It was Sheep. Bert knew’s much about sheep as I do—an’ that’s Canterbury lamb—but he’d let

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Hickmot talk about ’em for hours, in return for Hickmot listenin’ to his grievance. Hickmot ’ud talk sheep—the one created thing he’d ever open up on—an’ Bert ’ud talk his grievance while they was waiting to go over the top. I’ve heard ’em again an’ again, and, of course, I encouraged ’em. Now, look here! Hickmot hadn’t seen an English house or a field or a road or—or anything any civ’lised man is used to in all his life! Sheep an’ blacks! Market-gardens an’ glass an’ exemption-tribunals! An’ the men’s teeth chatterin’ behind their masks between rum-issue an’ zero. Oh, there was fun in Hell those days, wasn’t there, boys?’

‘Sure! Oh, sure!’ Orton chuckled, and Pole echoed him.

‘Look here! When we were lying up somewhere among those forsaken chicken-camps back o’ Doullens, I found Hickmot making mud-pies in a farmyard an’ Bert lookin’ on. He’d made a model of our village according to Bert’s description of it. He’d preserved it in his head through all those weeks an’ weeks o’ Bert’s yap; an’ he’d coughed it all up—Margetts’ house and gardens, old Mr. Vigors’ ditto; both pubs; my father’s shop, everything that he’d been told by Bert done out to scale in mud, with bits o’ brick and stick. Haig ought to have seen it; but as his sergeant I had to check him for misusin’ his winkle-pin on dirt. ‘Come to think of it, a man who runs about uninhabited countries, with sheep, for a livin’ must have gifts for mappin’ and scalin’ things somehow or other, or he’d be dead. I never saw anything like it—all out o’ what Bert had told him by word of mouth. An’ the next time we went up the line Hickmot copped it in the leg just in front of me.’

‘Finish?’ I asked.

‘Oh, no. Only beginnin’. That was in December, somethin’ or other, ’16. In Jan’ry Vigors copped it for keeps. I buried him—snowin’ blind it was—an’ before we’d got him under the whole show was crumped. I wanted to bury him again just to spite ’em (I’m a spiteful man by nature), but the party wasn’t takin’ any more—even if they could have found it. But, you see, we had buried him all right, which is what they want at home, and I wrote the usual trimmin’s about the chaplain an’ the full service, an’ what his captain had said about Bert bein’ recommended for a pip, an’ the irreparable loss an’ so on. That was in Jan’ry ’17. In Feb’ry some time or other I got saved. My speciality had come to be bombin’s and night-doings. Very pleasant for a young free man, but—there’s a limit to what you can stand. It takes all men differently. Noise was what started me, at last. I’d got just up to the edge—wonderin’ when I’d crack an’ how many of our men I’d do in if it came on me while we were busy. I had that nice taste in the mouth and the nice temperature they call trench-fever, an’—I had to feel inside my head for the meanin’ of every order I gave or was responsible for executin’. You know!’

‘We do. Go on!’ said Pole in a tone that made Orton look at him.

‘So, you see, the bettin’ was even on my drawin’ a V.C. or getting Number Umpty rest-camp or—a firing party before breakfast. But Gord saved me. (I made friends with Him the last two years of the war. The others went off too quick.) They wanted a bomb in’-instructor for the training-battalion at home, an’ He put it into their silly hearts to indent for me. It took ’em five minutes to make me understand I was saved. Then I vomited, an’ then I cried. You know!’ The fat face of Bevin had changed and grown drawn, even as he spoke; and his hands tugged as though to tighten an imaginary belt.

‘I was never keen on bombin’ myself,’ said Pole. ‘But bomb in’-instruction’s murder!’

‘I don’t deny it’s a shade risky, specially when they take the pin out an’ start shakin’ it, same as the Chinks used to do in the woods at Beauty, when they were cuttin’ ’em down. But you live like a home defence Brigadier, besides week-end leaf. As a matter o’ fact, I married Bert’s sister soon’s I could after I got the billet, an’ I used to lie in our bed thinkin’ of the old crowd on the Somme an’—feelin’ what a swine I was. Of course, I earned two V.C.’s a week behind the traverse in the exercise of my ord’nary duties, but that isn’t the same thing. An’ yet I’d only joined up because—because I couldn’t dam’ well help it.’

‘An’ what about your Queenslander?’ the Australian asked.

‘Too de sweet! Pronto! We got a letter in May from a Brighton hospital matron, sayin’ that one of the name of Hickmer was anxious for news o’ me, previous to proceedin’ to Roehampton for initiation into his new leg. Of course, we applied for him by return. Bert had written about him to his sister—my missus—every time he wrote at all; an’ any pal o’ Bert’s—well, you know what the ladies are like. I warned her about his peculiarities. She wouldn’t believe till she saw him. He was just the same. You’d ha’ thought he’d show up in England like a fresh stiff on snow—but you never noticed him. You never heard him; and if he didn’t want to be seen he wasn’t there. He just joined up with his background. I knew he could do that with men; but how in Hell, seein’ how curious women are, he could camouflage with the ladies—my wife an’ my mother to wit—beats me! He’d feed the chickens for us; he’d stand on his one leg—it was off above the knee—and saw wood for us. He’d run—I mean he’d hop—errands for Mrs. B, or mother; our dog worshipped him from the start, though I never saw him throw a word to him; and—yet he didn’t take any place anywhere. You’ve seen a rabbit—you’ve seen a pheasant—hidin’ in a ditch? ’Put your hand on it sometimes before it moved, haven’t you? Well, that was Hickmot—with two women in the house crazy to find out—find out—anything about him that made him human. You know what women are! He stayed with us a fortnight. He left us on a Sat’day to go to Roehampton to try his leg. On Friday he came over to the bombin’ ground—not saym’ anything, as usual—to watch me instruct my Suicide Club, which was only half an hour’s run by rail from our village. He had his overcoat on, an’ as soon as he reached the place it was mafeesh with him, as usual. Rabbit-trick again! You never noticed him. He sat in the bomb-proof behind the pit where the duds accumulate till it’s time to explode ’em. Naturally, that’s strictly forbidden to the public. So he went there, an’ no one noticed him. When he’d had enough of watchin’, he hopped off home to feed our chickens for the last time.’

‘Then how did you know all about it?’ Orton said.

‘Because I saw him come into the place just as I was goin’ down into the trench. Then he slipped my memory till my train went back. But it would have made no difference what our arrangements were. If Hickmer didn’t choose to be noticed, he wasn’t noticed. Just for curiosity’s sake I asked some o’ the Staff Sergeants whether they’d seen him on the ground. Not one—not one single one had—or could tell me what he was like. An’, Sat’day noon, he went off to Roehampton. We saw him into the train ourselves, with the lunch Mrs. B. had put up for him—a one-legged man an’ his crutch, in regulation blue, khaki warm an’ kit-bag. Takin’ everything together, per’aps he’d spoken as many as twenty times in the thirteen days he’d been with us. I’m givin’ it you straight as it happened. An’ now—look here!—this is what did happen.

‘Between two and three that Sunday morning—dark an’ blowin’ from the north—I was woke up by an explosion an’ people shoutin’ “Raid!” The first bang fetched ’em out like worms after rain. There was another some minutes afterwards, an’ me an’ a Sergeant in the Shropshires on leaf told ’em all to take cover. They did. There was a devil of a long wait an’ there was a third pop. Everybody, includin’ me, heard aeroplanes. I didn’t notice till afterwards that——’

Bevin paused.

‘What?’ said Orton.

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‘Oh, I noticed a heap of things afterwards. What we noticed first—the Shropshire Sergeant an’ me—was a rick well alight back o’ Margetts’ house, an’, with that north wind, blowin’ straight on to another rick o’ Margetts’. It went up all of a whoosh. The next thing we saw by the light of it was Margetts’ house with a bomb-hole in the roof and the rafters leanin’ sideways like—like they always lean on such occasions. So we ran there, and the first thing we met was Margetts in his split-tailed nightie callin’ on his mother an’ damnin’ his wife. A man always does that when he’s cross. Have you noticed? Mrs. Margetts was in her nightie too, remindin’ Margetts that he hadn’t completed his rick insurance. An’ that’s a woman’s lovin’ care all over. Behind them was their eldest son, in trousers an’ slippers, nursin’ his arm an’ callin’ for the doctor. They went through us howlin’ like flammemwerfer casualties—right up the street to the surgery.

‘Well, there wasn’t anything to do except let the show burn out. We hadn’t any means of extinguishing conflagrations. Some of ’em fiddled with buckets, an’ some of ’em tried to get out some o’ Margetts’ sticks, but his younger son kept shoutin’, “Don’t! Don’t! It’ll be stole! It’ll be stole!” So it burned instead, till the roof came down, top of all—a little, cheap, dirty villa, In reel life one whizz-bang would have shifted it; but in our civil village it looked that damned important and particular you wouldn’t believe. We couldn’t get round to Margetts’ stable because of the two ricks alight, but we found some one had opened the door early an’ the horses was in Margetts’ new vegetable piece down the hill which he’d hired off old Vigors to extend his business with. I love the way a horse always looks after his own belly—same as a Gunner. They went to grazin’ down the carrots and onions till young Margetts ran to turn ’em out, an’ then they got in among the glass frames an’ cut themselves. Oh, we had a regular Russian night of it, everybody givin’ advice an’ fallin’ over each other. When it got light we saw the damage. House, two ricks an’ stable mafeesh; the big glasshouse with every pane smashed and the furnace-end of it blown clean out. All the horses an’ about fifteen head o’ cattle—butcher’s stores from the next field—feeding in the new vegetable piece. It was a fair clean-up from end to end—house, furniture, fittin’s, plant, an’ all the early crops.’

‘Was there any other damage in the village?’ I asked.

‘I’m coming to it—the curious part—but I wouldn’t call it damage. I was renting a field then for my chickens off the Merecroft Estate. It’s accommodation-land, an’ there was a wet ditch at the bottom that I had wanted for ever so long to dam up to make a swim-hole for Mrs. Bevin’s ducks.’

‘Ah!’ said Orton, half turning in his chair, all in one piece.

‘S’pose I was allowed? Not me. Their Agent came down on me for tamperin’ with the Estate’s drainage arrangements. An’ all I wanted was to bring the bank down where the ditch narrows—a couple of cartloads of dirt would have held the water back for half-a-dozen yards—not more than that, an’ I could have made a little spill-way over the top with three boards-same as in trenches. Well, the first bomb—the one that woke me up—had done my work for me better than I could. It had dropped just under the hollow of the bank an’ brought it all down in a fair landslide. I’d got my swim-hole for Mrs. Bevin’s ducks, an’ I didn’t see how the Estate could kick at the Act o’ God, d’you?’

‘And Hickmot?’ said Orton, grinning.

‘Hold on! There was a Parish Council meetin’ to demand reprisals, of course, an’ there was the policeman an’ me pokin’ about among the ruins till the Explosives Expert came down in his motor car at three p.m. Monday, an’ he meets all the Margetts off their rockers, howlin’ in the surgery, an’ he sees my swim-hole fillin’ up to the brim.’

‘What did he say?’ Pole inquired.

‘He sized it up at once. (He had to get back to dine in town that evening.) He said all the evidence proved that it was a lucky shot on the part of one isolated Hun ’plane gom’ home, an’ we weren’t to take it to heart. I don’t know that anybody but the Margetts did. He said they must have used incendiary bombs of a new type—which he’d suspected for a long time. I don’t think the man was any worse than God intended him to be. I don’t reelly. But the Shropshire Sergeant said——’

‘And what did you think?’ I interrupted.

‘I didn’t think. I knew by then. I’m not a Sherlock Holmes; but havin’ chucked ’em an’ chucked ’em back and kicked ’em out of the light an’ slept with ’em for two years, an’ makin’ my livin’ out of them at that time, I could recognise the fuse of a Mills bomb when I found it. I found all three of ’em. ’Curious about that second in Margetts’ glasshouse. Hickmot mus’ have raked the ashes out of the furnace, popped it in, an’ shut the furnace door. It operated all right. Not one livin’ pane left in the putty, and all the brickwork spread round the yard in streaks. Just like that St. Firmin village we were talking about.’

‘But how d’you account for young what’s—hisname gettin’ his arm broken?’ said Pole.

‘Crutch!’ said Bevin. ‘If you or me had taken on that night’s doin’s, with one leg, we’d have hopped and sweated from one flank to another an’ been caught half-way between. Hickmot didn’t. I’m as sure as I’m sittin’ here that he did his doings quiet and comfortable at his full height—he was over six feet—and no one noticed him. This is the way I see it. He fixed the swim-hole for Mrs. Bevin’s ducks first. We used to talk over our own affairs in front of him, of course, and he knew just what she wanted in the way of a pond. So he went and made it at his leisure. Then he prob’ly went over to Margetts’ and lit the first rack, knowin’ that the wind ’ud do the rest. When young Margetts saw the light of it an’ came out to look, Hickmot would have taken post at the back-door an’ dropped the young swine with his crutch, same as we used to drop Huns comin’ out of a dug-out. You know how they blink at the light? Then he must have walked off an’ opened Margetts’ stable door to save the horses. They’d be more to him than any man’s life. Then he prob’ly chucked one bomb on top o’ Margetts’ roof, havin’ seen that the first rick had caught the second and that the whole house was bound to go. D’you get me?’

‘Then why did he waste his bomb on the house?’ said Orton. His glass eye seemed as triumphant as his real one.

‘For camouflage, of course. He was camouflagin’ an air-raid. When the Margetts piled out of their place into the street, he prob’ly attended to the glasshouse, because that would be Margetts’ chief means o’ business. After that—I think so, because otherwise I don’t see where all those extra cattle came from that we found in the vegetable piece—he must have walked off an’ rounded up all the butcher’s beasts in the next medder, an’ driven ’em there to help the horses. And when he’d finished everything he’d set out to do, I’ll lay my life an’ kit he curled up like a bloomin’ wombat not fifty yards away from the whole flamin’ show—an’ let us run round him. An’ when he’d had his sleep out, he went up to Roehampton Monday mornin’ by some tram that he’d decided upon in his own mind weeks an’ weeks before.’

‘Did he know all the trains then?’ said Pole.

‘Ask me another. I only know that if he wanted to get from any place to another without bein’ noticed, he did it.’

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‘And the bombs? He got ’em from you, of course,’ Pole went on.

‘What do you think? He was an hour in the park watchin’ me instruct, sittin’, as I remember, in the bomb-proof by the dud-hole, in his overcoat. He got ’em all right. He took neither more nor less than he wanted; an’ I’ve told you what he did with ’em—one—two—an’ three.’

‘’Ever see him afterwards?’ said Orton.

‘Yes. ’Saw him at Brighton when I went down there with the missus, not a month after he’d been broken in to his Roehampton leg. You know how the boys used to sit all along Brighton front in their blues, an’ jump every time the coal was bein’ delivered to the hotels behind them? I barged into him opposite the Old Ship, an’ I told him about our air-raid. I told him how Margetts had gone off his rocker an’ walked about starin’ at the sky an’ holdin’ reprisal-meetin’s all by himself; an’ how old Mr. Vigors had bought in what he’d left—tho’ of course I said what was left—o’ Margetts’ business; an’ how well my swim-hole for the ducks was doin’. It didn’t interest him. He didn’t want to come over to stay with us any more, either. We were a long, long way back in his past. You could see that. He wanted to get back with his new leg, to his own God-forsaken sheep-walk an’ his black fellers in Queensland. I expect he’s done it now, an’ no one has noticed him. But, by Gord! He did leak a little at the end. He did that much! When we was waitin’ for the tram to the station, I said how grateful I was to Fritz for moppin’ up Margetts an’ makin’ our swim-hole all in one night. Mrs. B. seconded the motion. We couldn’t have done less. Well, then Hickmot said, speakin’ in his queer way, as if English words were all new to him: “Ah, go on an’ bail up in Hell,” he says. “Bert was my friend.” That was all. I’ve given it you just as it happened, word for word. I’d hate to have an Australian have it in for me for anything I’d done to his friend. Mark you, I don’t say there’s anything wrong with you Australians, Brother Orton. I only say they ain’t like us or any one else that I know.’

‘Well, do you want us to be?’ said Orton.

‘No, no. It takes all sorts to make a world, as the sayin’ is. And now’—Bevin pulled out his gold watch—‘if I don’t make a move of it I’ll miss my last train.’

‘Let her go,’ said Orton serenely. ‘You’ve done some lorry-hoppin’ in your time, haven’t you—Sergeant?’

‘When I was two an’ a half stone lighter, Digger,’ Bevin smiled in reply.

‘Well, I’ll run you out home before sun-up. I’m a haulage-contractor now—London and Oxford. There’s an empty of mine ordered to Oxford. We can go round by your place as easy as not. She’s lyin’ out Vauxhall-way.’

‘My Gord ! An’ see the sun rise again! ’Haven’t seen him since I can’t remember when,’ said Bevin, chuckling. ‘Oh, there was fun sometimes in Hell, wasn’t there, Australia?’; and again his hands went down to tighten the belt that was missing.

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WHEN that sloop known to have been in the West Indies trade for a century had been repaired by Mr. Randolph of Stephano’s Island, there arose between him and her owner, Mr. Gladstone Gallop, a deep-draught pilot, Admiral (retired) Lord Heatleigh, and Mr. Winter Vergil, R.N. (also retired), the question how she would best sail. This could only be settled on trial trips of the above Committee, ably assisted by Lil, Mr. Randolph’s mongrel fox-terrier, and, sometimes, the Commander of the H.M.S. Bulleana, who was the Admiral’s nephew.

Lil had been slid into a locker to keep dry till they reached easier water. The others lay aft watching the breadths of the all-coloured seas. Mr. Gallop at the tiller, which had replaced the wheel, said as little as possible, but condescended, before that company, to make his boat show off among the reefs and passages of coral where his business and delight lay.

Mr. Vergil, not for the first time, justified himself to the Commander for his handling of the great Parrot Problem, which has been told elsewhere. The Commander tactfully agreed with the main principle that—man, beast, or bird—discipline must be preserved in the Service; and that, so far, Mr. Vergil had done right in disrating, by cutting off her tail-feathers, Josephine, alias Jemmy Reader, the West African parrot . . . .

He himself had known a dog—his own dog, in fact—almost born, and altogether brought up, in a destroyer, who had not only been rated and disrated, but also re-rated and promoted, completely understanding the while what had happened, and why.

‘Come out and listen,’ said Mr. Randolph, reaching into the locker. ‘This’ll do you good.’ Lil came out, limp over his hand, and braced herself against the snap and jerk of a sudden rip which Mr. Gallop was cutting across. He had stood in to show the Admiral Gallop’s Island whose original grantees had freed their Carib slaves more than a hundred years ago. These had naturally taken their owners’ family name; so that now there were many Gallops—gentle, straight-haired men of substance and ancestry, with manners to match, and instinct, beyond all knowledge, of their home waters—from Panama, that is, to Pernambuco.

The Commander told a tale of an ancient destroyer on the China station which, with three others of equal seniority, had been hurried over to the East Coast of England when the Navy called up her veterans for the War. How Malachi—Michael, Mike, or Mickey—throve aboard the old Makee-do, on whose books he was rated as ‘Pup,’ and learned to climb oily steel ladders by hooking his fore-feet over the rungs. How he was used as a tippet round his master’s neck on the bridge of cold nights. How he had his own special area, on deck by the raft, sacred to his private concerns, and never did anything one hair’s-breadth outside it. How he possessed an officers’ steward of the name of Furze, his devoted champion and trumpeter through the little flotilla which worked together on convoy and escort duties in the North Sea. Then the wastage of war began to tell and . . . The Commander turned to the Admiral.

‘They dished me out a new Volunteer sub for First Lieutenant—a youngster of nineteen—with a hand on him like a ham and a voice like a pneumatic riveter, though he couldn’t pronounce “r” to save himself. I found him sitting on the wardroom table with his cap on, scratching his leg. He said to me, “Well, old top, and what’s the big idea for to-mowwow’s agony?” I told him—and a bit more. He wasn’t upset. He was really grateful for a hint how things were run on “big ships” as he called ’em. (Makee-do was three hundred ton, I think.) He’d served in Coastal Motor Boats retrieving corpses off the Cornish coast. He told me his skipper was a vet who called the swells “fuwwows” and thought he ought to keep between ’em. His name was Eustace Cyril Chidden; and his papa was a sugar-refiner . . . .’

Surprise was here expressed in various quarters; Mr. Winter Vergil adding a few remarks on the decadence of the New Navy.

‘No,’ said the Commander. ‘The “old top” business had nothing to do with it. He just didn’t know—that was all. But Mike took to him at once.

‘Well, we were booted out, one night later, on special duty. No marks or lights of course—raining, and confused seas. As soon as I’d made an offing, I ordered him to take the bridge. Cyril trots up, his boots greased, the complete N.O. Mike and I stood by in the chart-room. Pretty soon, he told off old Shide, our Torpedo Coxswain, for being a quarter-point off his course. (He was, too; but he wasn’t pleased.) A bit later, Cyril ships his steam-riveter voice and tells him he’s all over the card, and if he does it again he’ll be “welieved.” It went on like this the whole trick; Michael and me waiting for Shide to mutiny. When Shide came off, I asked him what he thought we’d drawn. “Either a dud or a diamond,” says Shide. “There’s no middle way with that muster.” That gave me the notion that Cyril might be worth kicking. So we all had a hack at him. He liked it. He did, indeed! He said it was so “intewesting” because Makee-do “steered like a witch,” and no one ever dreamed of trying to steer C.M.B.’s. They must have been bloody pirates in that trade, too. He was used to knocking men about to make ’em attend. He threatened a stay-maker’s apprentice (they were pushing all sorts of shore-muckings at us) for imitating his lisp. It was smoothed over, but the man made the most of it. He was a Bolshie before we knew what to call ’em. He kicked Michael once when he thought no one was looking, but Furze saw, and the blighter got his head cut on a hatch-coaming. That didn’t make him any sweeter.’

A twenty-thousand-ton liner, full of thirsty passengers, passed them on the horizon. Mr. Gallop gave her name and that of the pilot in charge, with some scandal as to her weakness at certain speeds and turns.

‘Not so good a sea-boat as her!’ He pointed at a square-faced tug—or but little larger—punching dazzle-white wedges out of indigo-blue. The Admiral stood up and pronounced her a North Sea mine-sweeper.

‘’Was. ’Ferry-boat now,’ said Mr. Gallop. ‘’Never been stopped by weather since ten years.’

The Commander shuddered aloud, as the old thing shovelled her way along. ‘But she sleeps dry,’ he said. ‘We lived in a foot of water. Our decks leaked like anything. We had to shore our bulkheads with broomsticks practically every other trip. Most of our people weren’t broke to the life, and it made ’em sticky. I had to tighten things up.’

The Admiral and Mr. Vergil nodded.

‘Then, one day, Chidden came to me and said there was some feeling on the lower deck because Mike was still rated as “Pup” after all his sea-time. He thought our people would like him being promoted to Dog. I asked who’d given ’em the notion. “Me,” says Cyril. “I think it’ll help de-louse ’em mowally.” Of course I instructed him to go to Hell and mind his own job. Then I notified that Mike was to be borne on the ship’s books as Able Dog Malachi. I was on the bridge when the watches were told of it. They cheered. Fo’c’sle afloat; galley-fire missing as usual; but they cheered. That’s the Lower Deck.’

Mr. Vergil rubbed hands in assent.

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‘Did Mike know, Mr. Randolph? He did. He used to sniff forrard to see what the men’s dinners were going to be. If he approved, he went and patronised ’em. If he didn’t, he came to the wardroom for sharks and Worcester sauce. He was a great free-fooder. But—the day he was promoted Dog—he trotted round all messes and threw his little weight about like an Admiral’s inspection—Uncle. (He wasn’t larger than Lil, there.) Next time we were in for boiler-clean, I got him a brass collar engraved with his name and rating. I swear it was the only bit of bright work in the North Sea all the War. They fought to polish it. Oh, Malachi was a great Able Dog, those days, but he never forgot his decencies . . . .’

Mr. Randolph here drew Lil’s attention to this.

‘Well, and then our Bolshie-bird oozed about saying that a ship where men were treated like dogs and vice versa was no catch. Quite true, if correct; but it spreads despondency and attracts the baser elements. You see?’

‘Anything’s an excuse when they are hanging in the wind,’ said Mr. Vergil. ‘And what might you have had for the standing-part of your tackle?’

‘You know as well as I do, Vergil. The old crowd—Gunner, Chief Engineer, Cook, Chief Stoker, and Torpedo Cox. But, no denyin’, we were hellish uncomfy. Those old thirty-knotters had no bows or freeboard to speak of, and no officers’ quarters. (Sleep with your Gunner’s socks in your mouth, and so on.) You remember ’em, sir?’ The Admiral did—when the century was young—and some pirate-hunting behind muddy islands. Mr. Gallop drank it in. His war experiences had ranged no further than the Falklands, which he had visited as one of the prize-crew of a German sailing-ship picked up Patagonia-way and sent south under charge of a modern sub-lieutenant who had not the haziest notion how to get the canvas off a barque in full career for vertical cliffs. He told the tale. Mr. Randolph, who had heard it before, brought out a meal sent by Mrs. Vergil. Mr. Gallop laid the sloop on a slant where she could look after herself while they ate. Lil earned her share by showing off her few small tricks.

‘Mongrels are always smartest,’ said Mr. Randolph half defiantly.

‘Don’t call ’em mongrels.’ The Commander tweaked Lil’s impudent little ear. ‘Mike was a bit that way. Call ’em “mixed.” There’s a difference.’

The tiger-lily flush inherited from his ancestors on the mainland flared a little through the brown of Mr. Gallop’s cheek. ‘Right,’ said he. ‘There’s a heap differ ’twixt mongrel and mixed.’

And in due time, so far as Time was on those beryl floors, they came back to the Commander’s tale.

It covered increasing discomforts and disgusts, varied by escapes from being blown out of water by their own side in fog; affairs with submarines; arguments with pig-headed convoy-captains, and endless toil to maintain Makee-do abreast of her work which the growing ignorance and lowering morale of the new drafts made harder.

‘The only one of us who kept his tail up was Able Dog Malachi. He was an asset, let alone being my tippet on watch. I used to button his front and hind legs into my coat, with two turns of my comforter over all. Did he like it? He had to. It was his station in action. But he had his enemies. I’ve told you what a refined person he was. Well, one day, a buzz went round that he had defiled His Majesty’s quarterdeck. Furze reported it to me, and, as he said, “Beggin’ your pardon, it might as well have been any of us, sir, as him.” I asked the little fellow what he had to say for himself; confronting him with the circumstantial evidence of course. He was very offended. I knew it by the way he stiffened next time I took him for tippet. Chidden was sure there had been some dirty work somewhere; but he thought a Court of Inquiry might do good and settle one or two other things that were loose in the ship. One party wanted Mike disrated on the evidence. They were the——’

‘I know ’em,’ sighed Mr. Vergil; his eyes piercing the years behind him. ‘The other lot wanted to find out the man who had tampered with the—the circumstantial evidence and pitch him into the ditch. At that particular time, we were escorting mine-sweepers—every one a bit jumpy. I saw what Chidden was driving at, but I wasn’t sure our crowd here were mariners enough to take the inquiry seriously. Chidden swore they were. He’d been through the Crystal Palace training himself. Then I said, “Make it so. I waive my rights as the dog’s owner. Discipline’s discipline, tell ’em; and it may be a counter-irritant.”

‘The trouble was there had been a fog, on the morning of the crime, that you couldn’t spit through; so no one had seen anything. Naturally, Mike sculled about as he pleased; but his regular routine—he slept with me and Chidden in the wardroom—was to take off from our stomachs about three bells in the morning watch (half-past five) and trot up topside to attend to himself in his own place. But the evidence, you see, was found near the bandstand—the after six-pounder; and accused was incapable of testifying on his own behalf . . . . Well, that Court of Inquiry had it up and down and thort-ships all the time we were covering the minesweepers. It was a foul area; rather too close to Fritz’s coast. We only drew seven feet, so we were more or less safe. Our supporting cruisers lay on the edge of the area. Fritz had messed that up months before, and lots of his warts—mines—had broke loose and were bobbing about; and then our specialists had swept it, and laid down areas of their own, and so on. Any other time all hands would have been looking out for loose mines. (They have horns that nod at you in a sickly-friendly-frisky way when they roll.) But, while Mike’s inquiry was on, all hands were too worked-up over it to spare an eye outboard . . . . Oh, Mike knew, Mr. Randolph. Make no mistake. He knew he was in for trouble. The Prosecution were too crafty for him. They stuck to the evidence—the locus in quo and so on . . . . Sentence? Disrating to Pup again, which carried loss of badge-of-rank—his collar. Furze took it off, and Mickey licked his hand and Furze wept like Peter . . . . Then Mickey hoicked himself up to the bridge to tell me about it, and I made much of him. He was a distressed little dog. You know how they snuffle and snuggle up when they feel hurt.’

Though the question was to Mr. Randolph, all hands answered it.

‘Then our people went to dinner with this crime on their consciences. Those who felt that way had got in on me through Michael.’

‘Why did you make ’em the chance?’ the Admiral demanded keenly.

‘To divide the sheep from the goats, sir. It was time. . . . Well, we were second in the line—How-come and Fan-kwai next astern and Hop-hell, our flagship, leading. Withers was our Senior Officer. We called him “Joss” because he was always so infernally lucky. It was flat calm with patches of fog, and our sweepers finished on time. While we were escorting ’em back to our cruisers, Joss picked up some wireless buzz about a submarine spotted from the air, surfacing over to the north-east-probably recharging. He detached How-come and Fan-kwai to go on with our sweepers, while him and me went-look-see. We dodged in and out of fog-patches—two-mile visibility one minute and blind as a bandage the next-then a bit of zincy sun like a photograph—and so on. Well, breaking out of one of these patches we saw a submarine recharging-hatches open, and a man on deck—not a mile off our port quarter. We swung to ram and, as he came broadside on to us, I saw Hop-hell slip a mouldie—fire a torpedo—at him, and my Gunner naturally followed suit. By the mercy o’ God, they both streaked ahead and astern him,

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because the chap on deck began waving an open brolly at us like an old maid hailing a bus. That fetched us up sliding on our tails, as you might say. Then he said, “What do you silly bastards think you’re doin’?” (He was Conolly, and some of his crowd had told us, ashore, that the brolly was his private code. That’s why we didn’t fire on sight, sir.—“Red” Conolly, not “Black.”) He told us he’d gone pretty close inshore on spec the night before and had been hunted a bit and had to lie doggo, and he’d heard three or four big ships go over him. He told us where that was, and we stood by till he’d finished recharging and we gave him his position and he sculled off. He said it was hellish thick over towards the coast, but there seemed to be something doing there. So we proceeded, on the tip Conolly gave us . . . . Oh, wait a minute! Joss’s Gunner prided himself on carrying all the silhouettes of Fritz’s navy in his fat head, and he had sworn that Conolly’s craft was the duplicate of some dam U-boat. Hence his shot. I believe Joss pretty well skinned him for it, but that didn’t alter the fact we’d only one mouldie apiece left to carry on with . . . .

‘Presently Joss fetched a sharp sheer to port, and I saw his bow-wave throw off something that looked like the horns of a mine; but they were only three or four hock bottles. We don’t drink hock much at sea.’

Mr. Randolph and Mr. Gallop smiled. There are few liquors that the inhabitants of Stephano’s Island do not know—bottled, barrelled, or quite loose.

The Commander continued.

‘Then Joss told me to come alongside and hold his hand, because he felt nervous.’

The Commander here explained how, with a proper arrangement of fenders, a trusty Torpedo Cox at the wheel, and not too much roll on, destroyers of certain types can run side by side close enough for their captains to talk even confidentially to each other. He ended, ‘We used to slam those old dowagers about like sampans.’

‘You youngsters always think you discovered navigation,’ said the Admiral. ‘Where did you steal your fenders from?’

‘That was Chidden’s pigeon in port, sir. He was the biggest thief bar three in the Service. C.M.B.’s are a bad school . . . . So, then, we proceeded—bridge to bridge—chinning all comfy. Joss said those hock bottles and the big ships walking over Conolly interested him strangely. It was shoaling and we more or less made out the set of the tide. We didn’t chuck anything overboard, though; and just about sunset in a clear patch we passed another covey of hock bottles. Mike spotted them first. He used to poke his little nose up under my chin if he thought I was missing anything. Then it got blind-thick, as Conolly said it would, and there was an ungodly amount of gibber on the wireless. Joss said it sounded like a Fritz tip-and-run raid somewhere and we might come in handy if the fog held. (You couldn’t see the deck from the bridge.) He said I’d better hand him over my surviving mouldie because he was going to slip ’em himself hence-forward, and back his own luck. My tubes were nothing to write home about, anyhow. So we passed the thing over, and proceeded. We cut down to bare steerage-way at last (you couldn’t see your hand before your face by then) and we listened. You listen better in fog.’

‘But it doesn’t give you your bearings,’ said Mr. Gallop earnestly.

‘True. Then you fancy you hear things—like we did. Then Mike began poking up under my chin again. He didn’t imagine things. I passed the word to Joss, and a minute or two after, we heard voices—they sounded miles away. Joss said, “That’s the hock-bottler. He’s hunting his home channel. I hope he’s too bothered to worry about us; but if this stuff lifts we’ll wish we were Conolly.” I buttoned Mike well in to me bosom and took an extra turn of my comforter round him, and those ghastly voices started again—up in the air this time, and all down my neck. Then something big went astern, both screws—then ahead dead slow—then shut off. Joss whispered, “He’s atop of us!” I said, “Not yet. Mike’s winding .. him to starboard!” The little chap had his head out of my comforter again, sniffin’ and poking my chin . . . . And then, by God! the blighter slid up behind us to starboard. We couldn’t see him. We felt him take what wind there was, and we smelt him—hot and sour. He was passing soundings to the bridge, by voice. I suppose he thought he was practically at home. Joss whispered, “Go ahead and cuddle him till you hear me yap. Then amuse him. I shall slip my second by the flare of his batteries while he’s trying to strafe you.” So he faded off to port and I went ahead slow—oh, perishing slow! Shide swore afterwards that he made out the loom of the brute’s stern just in time to save his starboard propeller. That was when my heart stopped working. Then I heard my port fenders squeak like wet cork along his side, and there we were cuddling the hock-bottler! If you lie close enough to anything big he can’t theoretically depress his guns enough to get you.’

Mr. Gallop smiled again. He had known that game played in miniature by a motor-launch off the Bahamas under the flaring bows of a foreign preventive boat.

‘. . . ’Funny to lie up against a big ship eaves-dropping that way. We could hear her fans and engine-room bells going, and some poor devil with a deuce of a cough. I don’t know how long it lasted, but, all that awful while, Fritz went on with his housekeeping overhead. I’d sent Shide aft to the relieving tackles—I had an idea the wheel might go—and put Chidden on the twelve-pounder on the bridge. My Gunner had the forward six-pounders, and I kept Makee-do cuddling our friend. Then I heard Joss yap once, and then the devil of a clang. He’d got his first shot home. We got in three rounds of the twelve, and the sixes cut into her naked skin at-oh, fifteen feet it must have been. Then we all dived aft. (My ewe-torpedo wouldn’t have been any use anyhow. The head would have hit her side before the tail was out of the tube.) She woke up and blazed off all starboard batteries, but she couldn’t depress to hit us. The blast of ’em was enough, though. It knocked us deaf and sick and silly. It pushed my bridge and the twelve-pounder over to starboard in a heap, like a set of fire-irons, and it opened up the top of the forward funnel and flared it out like a tulip. She put another salvo over us that winded us again. Mind you, we couldn’t hear that! We felt it. Then we were jarred sideways—a sort of cow-kick, and I thought it was finish. Then there was a sort of ripping woolly feel—not a noise—in the air, and I saw the haze of a big gun’s flash streaking up overhead at abou’ thirty degrees. It occurred to me that she was rolling away from us and it was time to stand clear. So we went astern a bit. And that haze was the only sight I got of her from first to last! . . . After a while, we felt about to take stock of the trouble. Our bridge-wreckage was listing us a good deal to starboard: the funnel spewed smoke all over the shop and some of the stays were cut; wireless smashed; compasses crazy of course; raft and all loose fittings lifted overboard; hatches and such-like strained or jammed and the deck leaking a shade more than usual. But no casualties. A few ratings cut and bruised by being chucked against things, and, of course, general bleeding from the nose and ears. But—funny thing—we all shook like palsy. That lasted longest. We all went about shouting and shaking. Shock, I suppose.’

‘And Mike?’ Mr. Randolph asked.

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‘Oh, he was all right. He had his teeth well into my comforter throughout. ’First thing after action, he hopped down to the wardroom and lapped up pints. Then he tried to dig the gas taste out of his mouth with his paws. Then he wanted to attend to himself, but he found all his private area gone west with the other unsecured gadgets. He was very indignant and told Furze about it. Furze bellows into my ear, “That’s proof it couldn’t have been him on the quarterdeck, sir, because, if ever any one was justified in being promiscuous, now would be the time. But ’e’s as dainty as a duchess.” . . . Laugh away!—It wasn’t any laughing matter for Don Miguel.’

‘—I beg his pardon! How did you settle his daintiness?’ said the Admiral.

‘I gave him special leave to be promiscuous, and just because I laughed he growled like a young tiger . . . . You mayn’t believe what comes next, but it’s fact. Five minutes later, the whole ship was going over Mike’s court-martial once again. They were digging out like beavers to repair damage, and chinning at the top of their voices. And a year—no—six months before, half of ’em were Crystal Palace naval exhibits!’

‘Same with shanghaied hands,’ said Mr. Gallop, putting her about with a nudge of his shoulder on the tiller and some almost imperceptible touch on a sheet. The wind was rising.

‘. . . I ran out of that fog at last like running out of a tunnel. I worked my way off shore, more or less by soundings, till I picked up a star to go home by. Arguin’ that Joss ’ud do about the same, I waited for him while we went on cutting away what was left of the bridge and restaying the funnel. It was flat calm still; the coast-fog lying all along like cliffs as far as you could see. ’Dramatic, too, because, when the light came, Joss shot out of the fog three or four miles away and hared down to us clearing his hawsers for a tow. We did look rather a dung-barge. I signalled we were all right and good for thirteen knots, which was one dam lie . . . . Well . . . so then we proceeded line-ahead, and Joss sat on his depth-charge-rack aft, semaphoring all about it to me on my fo’c’sle-head. He had landed the hock-bottler to port with his first shot. His second—it touched off her forward magazine—was my borrowed one; but he reported it as “a torpedo from the deck of my Second in Command!” She was showing a blaze through the fog then, so it was a sitting shot—at about a hundred yards, he thought. He never saw any more of her than I did, but he smelt a lot of burnt cork. She might have been some old craft packed with cork like a life-boat for a tip-and-run raid. We never knew.’

Even in that short time the wind and the purpose of the waves had strengthened.

‘All right,’ said Mr. Gallop. ‘Nothin’ due ’fore to-morrow.’ But Mr. Randolph, under sailing-orders from Mrs. Vergil, had the oilskins out ere the sloop lay down to it in earnest. ‘Then—after that?’ said he.

‘Well, then we proceeded; Joss flag-wagging me his news, and all hands busy on our funnel and minor running-repairs, but all arguin’ Mike’s case hotter than ever. And all of us shaking.’

‘Where was Mike?’ Mr. Randolph asked as a cut wave-top slashed across the deck.

‘Doing tippet for me on the fo’c’sle, and telling me about his great deeds. He never barked, but he could chin like a Peke. Then Joss changed course. I thought it might be mines, but having no bridge I had no command of sight. Then we passed a torpedo-bearded man lolling in a life-belt, with his head on his arms, squinting at us—like a drunk at a pub . . . . Dead? Quite. . . . You never can tell how the lower deck’ll take anything. They stared at it and our Cook said it looked saucy. That was all. Then Furze screeched: “But for the grace o’ God that might be bloody-all of us!” And he carried on with that bit of the Marriage Service—“I ree-quire an’ charge you as ye shall answer at the Day of Judgment, which blinkin’ hound of you tampered with the evidence re Malachi. Remember that beggar out in the wet is listenin’.” ’Sounds silly, but it gave me the creeps at the time. I heard the Bolshie say that a joke was a joke if took in the right spirit. Then there was a bit of a mix-up round the funnel, but of course I was busy swapping yarns with Joss. When I went aft—I didn’t hurry—our Chief Stoker was standing over Furze, while Chidden and Shide were fending off a small crowd who were lusting for the Bolshie’s blood. (He had a punch, too, Cywil.) It looked to me—but I couldn’t have sworn to it—that the Chief Stoker scraped up a knife with his foot and hoofed it overboard.’

‘Knife!’ the shocked Admiral interrupted.

‘A wardroom knife, sir, with a ground edge on it. Furze had been a Leicester Square waiter or pimp or something, for ten years, and he’d contracted foreign habits. By the time I took care to reach the working-party, they were carrying on like marionettes, because they hadn’t got over their shakes, you see . . . . I didn’t do anything. I didn’t expect the two men Chidden had biffed ’ud complain of him as long as the Bolshie was alive; and our Chief Stoker had mopped up any awkward evidence against Furze. All things considered, I felt rather sorry for the Bolshie . . . . Chidden came to me in the wardroom afterwards, and said the man had asked to be “segwegated” for his own safety. Oh yes!—he’d owned up to tampering with the evidence. I said I couldn’t well crime the swine for blackening a dog’s character; but I’d reinstate and promote Michael, and the lower deck might draw their own conclusions. “Then they’ll kill the Bolshie,” says the young ’un. “No,” I said, “C.M.B.’s don’t know everything, Cywil. They’ll put the fear of death on him, but they won’t scupper him. What’s he doing now?” “Weconstwucting Mike’s pwivate awea, with Shide and Furze standing over him gwinding their teeth.” “Then he’s safe,” I said. “I’ll send Mike up to see if it suits him. But what about Dawkins and Pratt?” Those were the two men Cyril had laid out while the Chief Stoker was quenching the engine-room ratings. They didn’t love the Bolshie either. “Full of beans and blackmail!” he says. “I told ’em I’d saved ’em fwom being hung, but they want a sardine-supper for all hands when we get in.”’

‘But what’s a Chief Stoker doin’ on the upper deck?’ said Mr. Vergil peevishly, as he humped his back against a solid douche.

‘Preserving discipline. Ours could mend anything from the wardroom clock to the stove, and he’d make a sailor of anything on legs—same as you used to, Mr. Vergil. . . . Well, and so we proceeded, and when Chidden reported the “awea” fit for use I sent Mike up to test it.’

‘Did Mike know?’ said Mr. Randolph.

‘Don’t ask me what he did or didn’t, or you might call me a liar. The Bolshie apologised to Malachi publicly, after Chidden gave out that I’d promoted him to Warrant Dog “for conspicuous gallantwy in action and giving valuable information as to enemy’s whaiwabouts in course of same.” So Furze put his collar on again, and gave the Bolshie his name and rating.’

The Commander quoted it—self-explanatory indeed, but not such as the meanest in His Majesty’s Service would care to answer to even for one day.

‘It went through the whole flotilla.’ The Commander repeated it, while the others laughed those gross laughs women find so incomprehensible.

‘Did he stay on?’ said Mr. Vergil. ‘Because I knew a stoker in the old Minotaur who cut his throat for half as much as that. It takes ’em funny sometimes.’

‘He stayed with us all right; but he experienced a change of heart, Mr. Vergil.’

‘I’ve seen such in my time,’ said the Ancient.

The Admiral nodded to himself. Mr. Gallop at the tiller half rose as he peered under the foresail, preparatory to taking a short-cut where the coral gives no more second chance than a tiger’s paw. In half an hour they were through that channel. In an hour, they had passed the huge liner tied up and discharging her thirsty passengers opposite the liquor-shops that face the quay. Some, who could not suffer the four and a half minutes’ walk to the nearest hotel, had already run in and come out tearing the wrappings off the whisky bottles they had bought. Mr. Gallop held on to the bottom of the harbour and fetched up with a sliding curtsey beneath the mangroves by the boat-shed . . . .

‘I don’t know whether I’ve given you quite the right idea about my people,’ said the Commander at the end. ‘I used to tell ’em they were the foulest collection of sweeps ever forked up on the beach. In some ways they were. But I don’t want you to make any mistake. When it came to a pinch they were the salt of the earth—the very salt of God’s earth—blast ’em and bless ’em. Not that it matters much now. We’ve got no Navy.’

[a short tale]

THE man from Manila held the floor. “Much care had made him very lean and pale and hollow-eyed.” Added to which he smoked the cigars of his own country, and they were bad for the constitution. He foisted his Stinkadores Magnificosas and his Cuspidores Imperiallissimos upon all who would accept them, and wondered that the recipients of his bounty turned away and were sad. “There is nothing,” said he, “like a Manila cigar.” And the pink pyjamas and blue pyjamas and the spotted green pyjamas, all fluttering gracefully in the morning breeze, vowed that there was not and never would be.

“Do the Spaniards smoke these vile brands to any extent?” asked the Young Gentleman travelling for Pleasure as he inspected a fresh box of Oysters of the East. “Smoke ’em!” said the man from Manila; “they do nothing else day and night.” “Ah!” said the Young Gentleman travelling for Pleasure, in the low voice of one who has received mortal injury, “that accounts for the administration of the country being what it is. After a man has tried a couple of these things he would be ready for any crime.”

The man from Manila took no heed of the insult. “I knew a case once,” said he, “when a cigar saved a man from the sin of burglary and landed him in quod for five years.” “Was he trying to kill the man who gave him the cigar?” said the Young Gentleman travelling for Pleasure. “No, it was this way: My firm’s godowns stand close to a creek. That is to say, the creek washes one face of them, and there are a few things in those godowns that might be useful to a man, such as piece-goods and cotton prints—perhaps five thousand dollars’ worth. I happened to be walking through the place one day when, for a miracle, I was not smoking. That was two years ago.” “Great Cæsar! then he has been smoking ever since!” murmured the Young Gentleman travelling for Pleasure.

“Was not smoking,” continued the man from Manila. “I had no business in the godowns. They were a short cut to my house. When half-way through them I fancied I saw a little curl of smoke rising from behind one of the bales. We stack our bales on low saddles, much as ricks are stacked in England. My first notion was to yell. I object to fire in godowns on principle. It is expensive, whatever the insurance may do. Luckily I sniffed before I shouted, and I sniffed good tobacco smoke.” “And this was in Manila, you say?” interrupted the Young Gentleman travelling for Pleasure.

“Yes, in the only place in the world where you get good tobacco. I knew we had no bales of the weed in stock, and I suspected that a man who got behind print bales to finish his cigar might be worth looking up. I walked between the bales till I reached the smoke. It was coming from the ground under one of the saddles. That’s enough, I thought, and I went away to get a couple of the Guarda Civile—policemen, in fact. I knew if there was anything to be extracted from my friend the bobbies would do it. A Spanish policeman carries in the day-time nothing more than a six-shooter and machete, a dirk. At night he adorns himself with a repeating rifle, which he fires on the slightest provocation. Well, when the policemen arrived, they poked my friend out of his hiding-place with their dirks, hauled him out by the hair, and kicked him round the godown once or twice, just to let him know that he had been discovered. They then began to question him, and under gentle pressure—I thought he would be pulped into a jelly, but a Spanish policeman always knows when to leave oflf—he made a clean breast of the whole business. He was part of a gang, and was to lie in the godown all that night. At twelve o’clock a boat manned by his confederates was to drop down the creek and halt under the godown windows, while he was to hand out our bales. That was their little plan. He had lain there about three hours, and then he began to smoke. I don’t think he noticed what he was doing: smoking is just like breathing to a Spaniard. He could not imderstand how he had betrayed himself and wanted to know whether he had left a leg sticking out imder the saddles. Then the Guarda Civile lambasted him all over again for trifling with the majesty of the law, and removed him after full confession.

“I put one of my own men under a saddle with instructions to hand out print bales to anybody who might ask for them in the course of the night. Meantime the police made their own arrangements, which were very comprehensive.

“At midnight a lumbering old barge, big enough to hold about a himdred bales, came down the creek and pulled up under the godown windows, exactly as if she had been one of my own barges. The eight ruffians in her whistled all the national airs of Manila as a signal to the confederate, then cooling his heels in the lock-up. But my man was ready. He opened the window and held quite a long confab with these second-hand pirates. They were all half-breeds and Roman Catholics, and the way they called upon all the blessed saints to assist them in their work was edifying. My man began tilting out the bales quite as quickly as the confederate would have done. Only he stopped to giggle now and again, and they spat and swore at him like cats. That made him worse, and at last he dropped yelling with laughter over the half door of the godown goods window. Then one boat came up stream and another down stream, and caught the barge stem and stem. Four Guarda Civiles were in each boat; consequently, eight repeating rifles were pointed at the barge, which was very nicely loaded with our bales. The pirates called on the saints more fluently than ever, threw up their hands, and threw themselves on their stomachs. That was the safest attitude, and it gave them the chance of cursing their luck, the barge, the godown, the Guarda Civile, and every saint in the calendar. They cursed the saints most, for the Guarda Civile thumped ’em when their remarks became too personal. We made them put all the bales back again. Then they were handed over to justice and got five years apiece. If they had any dollars they would get out the next day. If they hadn’t, they would serve their full time and no ticket-of-leave allowed. That’s the whole story.”

“And the only case on record,” said the Young Gentleman travelling for Pleasure, “where a Manila cigar was of any use to any one.” The man from Manila lit a fresh Cuspidore and went down to his bath.

PURE VANITY took me over to Agg’s cottage with my new 18-h.p.
Decapod in search of Henry Salt Hinchcliffe, E.R.A. who appreciates good machinery.

‘He’s down the coast with Agg and the cart,’ said Pyecroft, sitting
in the doorway nursing Agg’s baby, who in turn nursed the cat.
‘What’s come to your steam-pinnace that we marooned the bobby with?
Mafeesh? Sold? Well, I pity the buyer, whoever he is; but it don’t
seem to me, in a manner o’ speaking, that this navy-coloured beef-boat
with the turtle-back represents what you might technically call lugshury.’

‘That’s only a body that the makers have sent down. The real
one’s at home: we shall put it on tomorrow. It is all varnish and paint,
like a captain’s galley.’

‘Much more my style,’ said Pyecroft, putting down the baby.
‘Where are you bound?’

‘Just about and about. We’re running trials,’ I replied.

He looked at the dust-covered, lead-painted road-body, with the
single tool-box seat where the tonneau should have been; at Leggatt,
my engineer, attired like a ratcatcher turned groom, and rested his
grave eyes on my disreputable dust-coat, gaiters, and cap.
Then he went indoors, to return in a short time clad in blue
civilian serge and a black bowler.

‘Aren’t there regulations?’ I said. ‘You look like a pilot.’

‘Or a police inspector,’ murmured Leggatt.

‘Decency forbids’, said he, climbing into the back seat, ‘or I
might say somethin’ about coalin’ rig an’ lighters.’

Leggatt turned down a lever, and she flung half a mile of road
behind her with a silky purr.

‘No — not lighters,’ said Pyecroft. ‘She’s a destroyer. She licked
up that last stretch like an Italian eatin’ macaroni.’
He stood up and steadied himself by a pole in the middle of the front
seat which carried the big acetylene lamp.

‘Why, this is like the periscope gadget on the Portsmouth
submarines. Does she dive?’ said he.

‘No, fly!’ I said, and we proved it over a bare upland road (this
was in the days before the numbering of the cars) that brought us
within sight of the summer sea.

Pyecroft pointed automatically to the far line of silver. ‘The beach
is always a good place,’ he said. ‘An’ it’s goin’ to be a warm day.’

So we took the fairest of counties to our bosom for an easy hour;
rocking through deep-hedged hollows where the morning’s coolth still
lingered; electrifying the fine dust of a league of untempered main
road; bathing in the shadows of overarching park timber; slowing
through half-built, liver-coloured suburbs that defiled some exploited
hamlet; speculating in front of wonderful houses all fresh from the
middle parts of Country Life; or shooting a half-vertical hill
from mere delight in the Decapod’s power, but always edging away
towards the good southerly blue.

Among other things, I remember, we discussed the new naval
reforms. Pyecroft’s criticisms would have been worth votes to any Government.
He desired what he called ‘a free gangway from the lower deck to the
admiral’s stern walk’ — the career open to the talents.

‘An’ they’d better begin now,’ he concluded, ‘for to
this complexion will it come at last, ‘Oratio. Three weeks after war breaks out,
the painstakin’ and meritorious admirals will have collapsed, owin’ to
night work and reflecting on their responsibilities to the taxpayer,
takin’ with them seventy-five per cent. of the ambitious but aged captains.
The junior ranks, not carin’ two straws for the taxpayer, an’ sleepin’ where
they can, will survive, in conjunction with the gunner, the boatswain,
an’ similar petty an’ warrant officers, ‘oo will thus be seen commandin’
first, second, an’ third-class cruisers seriatim.’

‘That’s rather a bold prophecy.’

‘Prophecy be blowed!’ said Pyecroft, leaning on the light-pole
and sweeping the landscape with my binoculars, which had slung
themselves round his neck five minutes after our departure. ‘It’s what’s
goin’ to happen.’

‘Meaning you’d take the Channel Fleet into action?’ I suggested.

‘Setteris paribus — the others being out of action. I’d ‘ave a try.’

page 2

‘Hinchcliffe, or the engine-room staff, would be where poor Tom Bowling’s
body was, an’ one man’s orders down the speakin’ tube is very like
another’s. Besides, think o’ the taxpayer’s feelin’s. What ‘ud you say
to me if I came flyin’ back to the beach signallin’ for a commissioned
officer to continue the battle — there bein’ two warrants an’ one carpenter
still survivin’? ‘Tain’t common sense — in the Navy. Hullo! Here’s the
Channel! Bright and beautiful, an’ bloomin’ ‘ard to live with — as usual.’
We had swung over a steep, oak-crowned ridge, and overlooked
a map-like stretch of marsh ruled with roads, ditches, and canals that
ran off into the still noonday haze on either hand. At our feet lay
Wapshare, that was once a port, and even now commanded a few dingy
keels. Southerly, five or six miles across the levels, the sea whitened
faintly on grey-blue shingle spaced with martello towers. As the car
halted for orders, the decent breathing of the Channel was broken
by a far away hiccough out of the heat haze.

‘Big guns at Lydd,’ said Pyecroft. ‘They’ll have some triflin’ errors
due to mirage this forenoon. Well, I handle such things for a livin’.
We needn’t go there. What’s yonder — three points on the port bow.
between those towers?’

He pointed to a batch of tall-chimneyed buildings at the very edge
of the wavering beach.

‘I believe it has something to do with making concrete blocks
for some big Admiralty works down the coast,’ I answered.

‘A thirsty job with the lime flyin’ an’ the heat strikin’ off the
shingle. What a lot of ‘ard work one misses on leaf! It looks cooler
below here,’ he said, and waved a hand.

We slid into Wapshare, which, where the jerry builder has left
it alone, precisely resembles an illustration in a mediaeval missal.
Skirting the shade of its grey flint walls, we found ourselves on a
wharf above a doubtful-minded tidal river and a Poole schooner —
she was called the Esther Grant — surrounded by barges of
fireclay for the local potteries.

‘All asleep,’ said Pyecroft, ‘like a West India port. Let’s go down
the river. There’s a sort of road on one side — out where that barge
is lyin’.’

We trundled along a line of wooden offices, crackling in the heat,
seeing here and there a shirt-sleeved clerk. Then a policeman stopped us.

‘Can’t come any further,’ he said. ‘This is Admiralty ground,
and that’s an explosives barge yonder.’ He glanced curiously at
Pyecroft and the severe outlines of my car.

‘That nothin’. I know all about the Admiralty — at least, they
know all about me.’

‘Perhaps if you told me —’ the policeman began.

‘But I don’t think I’ll inspect stores today.’ Pyecroft leaned back
and folded his arms royally. ‘What are your instructions? Repeat ’em
in a smart and lifelike manner.’

‘To allow nobody beyond this barrier,’ the policeman began
obediently, ‘unless certain that he is a duly authorised agent of the
Admiralty.’

‘That’s me. I’ve been one for eighteen years.’

‘To allow no communication of any kind, wines, spirits, or tobacco,
from any quarter to the barge, and to see that the watchman does not
come ashore till properly relieved, after searchin’ the relief for wine,
tobacco, spirits or matches.’

Pyecroft nodded with slow approval.

‘I’ve heard it come quicker off the tongue in — in other quarters,
but that will do. I’m not a martinet, thank ‘Eaven. Now let us inspect
‘im from a safe distance.’

He turned the binoculars on the lonely barge a quarter of a mile
away, where a man sat under a coachman’s umbrella holding his head
in his hands.

‘If I was any judge,’ he said, ‘I’d say that our friend yonder
was recoverin’ from the effects of what I’ve heard called a bosky
beano.’

‘Oh, no, sir,’ said the policeman hurriedly —’at least, nothing to
signify. ‘E ‘asn’t got a drop now. He’s only the watchman.’

‘He’s taken two large laps out o’ that bucket beside ‘im since
I’ve had ‘im under observation. It is now,’ he unshackled a huge watch,
‘eleven twenty-seven. The prima facie evidence is that ‘e got that
grievous mouth last night about two a.m. What’s in the barge?
Shells?’ he said, turning to the half-petrified policeman.

page 3

‘No. No ammunition comes here, sir. It’s only
the Admiralty dynamite for the works down the coast. Sixteen tons with
fuses — waitin’ for the Government tug to tow ’em round when the tide makes.
He isn’t the regular crew. He’s one of the watchmen. He’s relieved
at four.’

‘But where’s his red flags?’ said Pyecroft suddenly. ‘A powder
barge ought to ‘ave two.’

‘Why, they aren’t there!’ said the policeman, as though he
observed the deficiency for the first time.

‘H’m,’ said Pyecroft. ‘They must ‘ave been the banner he fought
under last night, or else he pawned ’em for drink.’ He passed me the
binoculars. ‘There he dives again! One imperial quart o’ warmish
water an’ sixteen ton o’ dynamite to sober up on — in this ‘eat. Give
me cells any day.’

‘You — you won’t report it, sir, will you? He’s only the watchman
— not a regular ‘and,’ the policeman urged.

I saw Leggatt’s shoulders shake. Pyecroft wrapped himself up in
his virtue.

‘I have not yet been officially informed there’s anything to report,’
he answered ponderously. ‘The man’s present and correct. You’ve
searched ‘im?’

‘That I assure you I ‘ave,’ said the policeman.

‘Then there’s no evidence he ain’t drinkin’ for a cure — or a bet.
I don’t believe in seein’ too much; an’ speakin’ as one man to another,
from the soles o’ my feet upwards I pity the beggar!’

The policeman expanded like one blue lotus of the Nile.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’ve seen the miserablest man in Wapshare.
‘E can’t drink nor smoke. I’m the next, because I can’t either — on my
beat. I was ‘opin’ when I saw you, you’d exceed the legal limit —’

‘That isn’t necessary, is it?’ I said.

”Tis with me. I ‘ave a conscience. Then I’d ‘ave to stop you, and
then — so I thought till I saw who you was — you’d ‘ave to bribe me.’

‘What’s it like at the ‘Fuggle Hop’? ‘I demanded. We were very
hot where we stood. The policeman looked irresolutely at Pyecroft,
who naturally echoed the sentiments.

‘Not so good as at the ‘ ‘Astings Smack’, if I might be allowed,’
and alluring to brighter realms, the policeman himself led the way back.

‘He takes you for some sort of inspector,’ I said.

‘Haven’t I answered ‘is expectations?’ Pyecroft retorted. ‘Where’d
you find another Johnty ‘ud let ‘im drink on ‘is beat?’

‘It’s the boots.’ said Leggatt. ‘The boots and those tight blue clothes.’

It was very good at the ‘Hastings Smack.’ The policeman took
his standing, but we withdrew with ours and some lunch (summer pubs
are full of flies) to the shade of a deserted coal-wharf by the Poole
schooner.

‘This is what I call a happy ship an’ a good commission,’ said
Pyecroft, brushing away the crumbs. ‘Last time we motored together,
we ‘ad zebras an’ kangaroos, if I remember right. ‘Ere we ‘ave, as the
poet so truly sings —

‘Beef when you are hungry,
Beer when you are dry,
Bed when you are sleepy,
An’ ‘eaven when you die.’

Three more mugs will just do it.’

The potboy brought four, and a mariner with them — a vast and
voluminous man all covered with china clay, whose voice was as the
rolling of hogsheads over planking.

‘Have you seen my mate?’ he thundered.

‘No,’ said Pyecroft above the half-raised mug. ‘What might your
Number One have been doin’ recently?’

‘Drink—desertion—refusal o’ lawful orders, an’ committin’
barratry with a public barge. Put that in your pipe an’ smoke it. I see
you’re a man o’ principles. I may as well tell you here an’ now — or
now an’ ‘ere, as I should rather say — that I’m a Baptist; but if you
was to tell me that God ever made a human man in Cardiff, I’d — I’d —
I’d dissent from your principles. Attend to me! The Welsh ‘appened
at the change of watch when the Devil took charge o’ the West coast.
That was when the Welsh ‘appened. I hope none o’ you gentlemen are
Welsh, because I can’t dissent from my principles.’

page 4

None of us were Welsh at that hour.

‘He seems a gay bird, your mate,’ said Pyecroft.

‘If I wasn’t a Baptist, an’ he wasn’t my cousin, besides bein’ part
owner of the Esther Grant (it comes to ‘im with a legacy), I’d say he
was a red-‘eaded, skim-milk-eyed, freckle-jawed, stern-first-talkin’,
Cardiff booze-hound. That’s just what I’d say o’ Llewellyn. Attend to
me! I paid five pounds for him at Falmouth only last winter for compound
assault or fracture or whatever it was; an’ all ‘e can do to show ‘is
gratitude is to go an’ commit barratry with a public barge.’

‘He would,’ said Pyecroft, but this crime was new to me, and I
asked eagerly for particulars.

‘I gave him ‘is orders last night when ‘e couldn’t ‘ave been more
than moist. Last night I told ‘im to take a barge o’ clay to the potteries
‘ere. Potteries — one barge. ‘E might ‘ave got drunk afterwards. I’d ‘ave
said nothing — it’s against my principles — but ‘e couldn’t lay ‘is course
even that far. They come to me this mornin’ from the potteries — look —’
he pulled out papers, a dozen, from several pockets and waved them —
‘they wrote me an’ they telephoned me at the wharf askin’ where that
barge was, because she was missin’. Now, I ask you gentlemen, do
I look as if I kept barges up my back? ‘E’d committed barratry clear
enough, ‘adn’t ‘e?’

‘Plain as a pikestaff,’ said Pyecroft.

‘That bein’ so, I want to know where my legal liability for the
missin’ barge comes in?’

‘Just what I’d ha’ thought,’ said Pyecroft.

‘Besides, ’tisn’t as if I used their pottery, either.’

There are times when I despair of training Leggatt to my needs.
At this point he got up and fled choking.

‘When I catch Master Llewellyn, I’ve my own bill to settle, too.
He’s broken the ‘eart of a baker’s dozen of my whisky. You’d never
be drinkin’ cold beer ‘ere if ‘e ‘adn’t. You’d be on the Esther Grant
quite ‘appy by now. Four bottles ‘e went off with ! Four bottles for a
hymn-singin’, ‘arp-strummin’, passive-resistin’ Non-conformist who talks
a non-commercial language to ‘is wife! But I ain’t goin’ to pander to
‘is family any more. If you run across ‘im, tell ‘im that I’ll knock ‘is
red ‘ead flush with ‘is shoulders. Tell ‘im I’ll pay fifteen pounds for
‘im this time. ‘E’ll know what I mean. A red ‘eaded, goat-shanked,
saucer-eared, fig-nosed, banana-skinned, Cardiff booze-hound answerin’
to the name o’ Llewellyn. You can’t miss ‘im. ‘Ave you got it all down?’

‘Every word,’ I said.

The policeman entered the shed, followed by Leggatt, and I closed
the notebook I was using so shamelessly.

‘Excuse me,’ said the policeman, addressing the audience at large,
‘but a gentleman outside wants to speak to the owner of the car.’

‘I can testify in their behalf,’ said the mariner. ‘Blow ‘igh, blow
low or sugared by his mate, Captain Arthur Dudeney’ll testify in your
be’alf unless it ‘appens to be a Welshman. The Welsh ‘appened at the
change o’ watch when the Devil’.

‘Drop it, you fool! It’s young Mr. Voss,’ the policeman murmured.

‘Be it so. So be it. But remember barratry’s the offence, which
must be brought ‘ome to Master Llewellyn.’

Captain Dudeney sat down,
and we went out to face a tall young man in grey trousers, frock-coat
with gardenia in buttonhole, and a new top-hat, furiously biting his nails.

‘I beg your pardon, but I’m Mr. Voss, of Norden and Voss — the
cement works. They’ve telephoned me that the works have stopped.
I can’t make out why. I sent for a cab, but it would take me nearly an
hour — and I’m in a particular hurry — so, seein’ your motor — I thought
perhaps —’

‘Certainly,’ I said. ‘Won’t you get in and tell us where you want
to go?

‘Those big works on the beach have stopped since nine o’clock.
It’s only five miles away — but it’s very inconvenient for me.’ He pointed
across the shimmering levels of the marsh as Leggatt wound her up.

‘It’s no good,’ said Pyecroft, climbing in beside me on the narrow
back seat. ‘We two go out ‘and in ‘and, like the Babes in the Wood,
both funnels smoking gently, for a coastwise cruise of inspection, an’
sooner or later we find ourselves manœvrin’ with strange an’ ‘ostile fleets,
till our bearin’s are red ‘ot an’ our superstructure’s shot away. There’s
a ju-ju on us somewhere. Well, it won’t be zebras this time!’

page 5

We jumped out on a dead-level, dead-straight road, flanked by a
canal on one side and a deep marsh ditch on the other, whose perspective
ended in the cement-works and the shingle ridge behind.

‘Oh, be quick! I want to get back,’ said Mr. Voss, and that was
an unfortunate remark to make to Leggatt, who has records.

Conversation was blown out of our mouths; Mr. Voss had just
time to save his hat. Pyecroft stood up (he was used to destroyers) by the
lamp-pole and raked the landscape with my binoculars. The marsh
cattle fled from us with stiff tails. The canal streaked past like blue tape,
the inshore landmarks — coast-house and church-spire—opened, closed,
and stepped aside on the low hills, and the cement works enlarged
themselves as under a nearing lens. Leggatt slowed at last, for the latter
end of the road was badly loosed by traffic.

‘The steam-mixer has stopped!’ panted Mr. Voss. ‘We ought to
hear it from here.’ There was certainly no sound of working machinery.
‘And where are all the men?’ he cried.

A few hundred yards further on, the canal broadened into a little
basin immediately on the front of the machinery-shed. The road, worse
at each revolution, ran on between two tin sheds, and ended, so far
as we could see, in the shingle of the beach.

‘Slow! Dead slow! said Pyecroft to Leggatt, ‘we don’t yet know
the accommodation of the port nor the disposition of the natives.’

The machine-shed doors were wide open. We could see a vista
of boiler-furnaces, each with a pile of fuming ashes in front of it, and
the outlines of arrested wheels and belting. A man on a barge in the
middle of the basin waved a friendly hand.

I felt Pyecroft start and recover himself.

‘Come on,’ said the man, taking the pipe out of his teeth. ‘Don’t
you be shy.’

‘What’s the matter?’ said Mr. Voss, standing up. ‘Where are
my men?

‘Playing. I’ve ordered a general strike in Europe, Asia, Africa and
America.’

He relit his pipe composedly with a fusee.

‘Who the deuce are you?’ Mr. Voss was angry.

‘Johannes Stephanus Paulus Kruger,’ was the answer. Pyecroft
chuckled.

‘Man’s mad.’ Mr. Voss bit his lip.

A breath of hot wind off the corrugated iron rippled the face of
the basin and lifted out two very dingy but perfectly distinct red flags,
one at each end of the barge.

‘Go on! It’s a powder-barge,’ said Mr. Voss, sitting down heavily.

Leggatt asserts that he acted automatically. All I know is that
he must have whirled the car forward between the two sheds and up the
shingle ridge behind; for when I had cleared my dry throat, we had
topped the bank, hung for a fraction on the crest, and amid a roar of
pebbles (the seaward side was steep) slid down on to hard sand in the
face of the untroubled Channel and a mob of acutely interested men.
They looked like a bathing-party. Most of them were barefoot and wore
dripping shirts tied round their necks. All were very, very red over as
much of them as I could see.

‘What’s the matter?’ cried Mr. Voss, while they surged round
the car.

This was a general invitation, accepted as such, and Mr. Voss
waved his white hands.

‘Why were you so unusual bloomin’ precipitate?’ said Pyecroft
to Leggatt under cover of the riot. ‘You very nearly threw us out.’

‘I’m not fond o’ powder. Besides, it’s a new car,’ Leggatt replied.

‘Didn’t you see ‘oo the joker was, then?’ Pyecroft asked.

‘Friend o’ yours?’ Leggatt asked. The clamour round us grew.

‘No — but a friend of Captain Dudeney’s, if I’m not mistook. ‘E
‘ad all the marks of it. But, to please you, we’ll take soundings. Mr.
Voss seems to be sufferin’ from ‘is mutinous crew, so to put it.’

At that moment Mr. Voss turned an anxious glance on the
tight-buttoned blue coat and the hard, squarish hat.

page 6

‘Stop!’ said Pyecroft. The voice was new to me and to the others.
It checked the tumult as the bottom checks the roaring anchor-chain.

‘You with the stiff neck, two paces to the front and begin!’

‘It’s an Inspector,’ someone whispered. ‘Mr. Voss ‘as brought
the Police.’ And the mob came to hand like cooing doves.

‘Look at my blisters!’ said Pyecroft’s chosen. He stood up in coaly
trousers, the towel that should have supported them waving wet round
his peeled shoulders. ‘You’d ‘ave a neck, too, if you’d been lying out on
the shingle since nine like a bloomin’ dotterel. An’ I’m a fair man by nature.’

‘Stow your nature!’ said Pyecroft. ‘Make your report, or I’ll
disrate you!’

The man rubbed his neck uneasily. ‘We found ‘im ‘ere when we
come. We ‘eard what ‘e ‘ad: we saw ‘ow ‘e was: an’ we bloomin’ well
‘ooked it,’ he said.

Now, I consider that almost perfect art; but the crowd growled at the
baldness thereof, and the blistered man went on.

‘So’d you, if a beggar called ‘imself Mabon an’ lit all ‘is pipes with
fusees settin’ on top o’ sixteen tons of Admiralty dynamite. Ain’t that
what he done ever since nine? It’s all very well for you, but why didn’t
you come sooner an’ ‘elp us?’

‘Stop!’ said Pyecroft. ‘We don’t want any of your antitheseses
Where’s the chief petty — where’s the fireman?

A black-bearded giant stood forth. He, too, was stripped to the
waist, and it had done him little good.

‘Now, what about the dynamite?’ Pyecroft’s throne was the back
seat of my car. Mr. Voss, the gardenia already wilted in the heat, made
no attempt to interfere: we could see that his soul leaned heavily on the
stranger. The giant lifted shy eyes.

‘We found him here when we came to work. He said he had sixteen
tons of dynamite with fuses; and when he wasn’t drinkin’, he was lightin’
his pipe with fusees and throwin’ ’em about.’

‘Continuous?’ said Pyecroft.

‘All the time.’ This with the indescribable rising inflection of the
county.

Leggatt and I exchanged glances with Pyecroft.

‘That sort o’ stuff ain’t issued in duplicate,’ he said to me.

‘Any more than petrol. You have to have a receipt,’ Leggatt
assented. ‘An’ I do think ‘is hair was red, but I didn’t look long.’

‘Which only bears out my original argument when you slung us
over the ridge, Mr. Leggatt. You’ve been too precipitous,’ said Pyecroft.

‘What’s the good o’ talkin’?’ said the blistered man. ‘We saw
‘om ‘e was: we ‘eard what ‘e ‘ad; an’ we ‘ooked it. I’ve told you once.’

‘Go on,’ said Pyecroft to the giant. ‘Sixteen tons with fuses.
Most upsettin’, you might say.’

‘When he said he was going to blow a corner off England, I ordered
the men out of the works while we drew fires. Jernigan drew the fires,
Mr. Voss.’

‘Yes, I did,’ the blistered man cried. ‘We ‘ad ninety pounds steam,
an’ I know Number Four boiler; but Duncan ‘ere ‘e got me the time to
draw ’em.’ The crowd clapped.

”E ‘asn’t told you ‘arf. ‘E put ‘is ‘ands behind ‘is back an’ ‘e sung
‘ymns to that beggar in the barge all through breakfast-time. It’s as true
as I’m standing ‘ere. ‘E sung ‘A Few More Years Shall Roll’ right on
the edge of the basin, with the beggar throwin’ live fusees about regardless
all the time. Else I couldn’t ‘ave drawn the fires, Mr. Voss.’

”Ighly commendable, Mr. Duncan,’ said Pyecroft, as though it
were his right to praise or blame, and the crowd clapped again.

‘How did you get to the telephone to send me the message?’ said
Mr. Voss.

‘On ‘is ‘ands an’ knees over the shingle.’ There was no suppressing
the blistered man. ‘While Mr. Mabon was ‘oldin ‘an I’Stifford by ‘imself.’

“I — what?’ said Pyecroft.

‘I’Stifford. They ‘ave ’em in Bethesda. I’ve worked there. A Welsh
concert like.”

‘Oh, ‘e’s Welsh, then?’

page 7

Pyecroft fixed Leggatt with an accusing left eyeball.

‘You’ve only to listen to ‘im. ‘E’s seldom quiet. ‘Ark now.’ The
blistered man held up his hand.

The tide crept lazily in little flashes over the sand. A becalmed
fishing-boat’s crew stood up to look at our assembly, and certain gulls
wheeled and made mock of us. East and west the ridge shook in the
heat; the martello-towers flatting into buns or shooting into spires as the
oily streaks of air shifted. We stood about the car as shipwrecked,
mariners in the illustration gather round the long-boat, and seldom were
any sailors more peeled and puffed and salt-scurfed.

A thin voice floated over the ridge in high falsetto quavers. It was
certainly not English.

‘That’s ‘ow they sing at Bethesda on a Sunday,’ said the blistered
man. ‘I wish ‘e was there now. This’ll all come off in frills-like,
to-morrow,’ he pulled at his whitening nose.

‘And the more you go into the water, the more it seems to sting
you coming out,’ said another drearily. ‘You’d better ‘ave a wet
‘andkerchief round your ‘ead, Mr. Voss.’

“Hark the tramp of Saxon foemen,
Saxon spearmen, Saxon bowmen—
Be they knight or be they yeomen—”

the unseen voice went on, in clipped English.

‘If I had a cousin like that, I’d have drowned ‘im long ago,’ said
Pyecroft half to himself.

‘Drownin’s too good for ‘im. We’ve been ‘ere since nine cookin’
like ostrich eggs. Baines, run an’ wet a ‘andkerchief for Mr. Voss.’ It
was the blistered man again. Duncan stood moodily apart chewing his
beard.

‘Thank you. Oh, thank you!’ said Mr. Voss. ‘The machinery
cost thirty thousand, and it’s a quarter of a million contract.’ He turned
to Pyecroft as he knotted the dripping handkerchief round his brows
under the radiant hat.

‘Tactically, Mr. Mabon Kruger’s position is irreproachable,’
Pyecroft replied. ‘Or, to put it coarsely, there’s no getting at the
beggar with a brick for instance?’

‘I ain’t goin’ to ‘eave bricks at a dynamite barge, for one,’ said the
blistered man, and this seemed the general opinion.

‘Nonsense!’ I began. ‘Why, there’s no earthly chance—’

‘Not if you want it to go off,’ said Pyecroft hurriedly. ”You can fair
chew dynamite then; but if it’s any object with you to delay ignition,
a friendly nod will fetch her smilin’. I ought to know somethin’ about it.’

‘Presently,’ said Duncan, the foreman, with great simplicity, ‘he’ll
have to sleep, an’ I’ll go out to him. I’ll wait till then.’

‘No, you don’t!’ cried many voices. ‘Not till you’ve ‘ad a drink
an’ a feed an’ a sleep … Don’t talk fulish, Duncan. Go an’ wet yer
‘ead.’

‘He made me sing hymns,’ Duncan went on in the same flat voice.

‘That won’t ‘elp you when you’re bein’ ‘ung at Lewes. . . Don’t
be fulish, Duncan,’ the voices replied, and a man behind me muttered:
‘I’ve seen ‘im take an’ throw a fireman from the furnace door to the
canal — eight yards. We measured it. No, no, Duncan.’

I thanked fortune that my little plan of dramatically revealing all
to the crowd had been dismissed on a nod from Pyecroft, the reader of
souls, who had seen it in my silly eye.

‘No,’ he said aloud, answering me and none other. ‘I ain’t slept
with a few thousand men in hammocks for twenty years without knowin’
their nature. Mr. Mabon Kruger is in the fairway and has to be shifted;
but whatever ‘e’s done, let us remember that ‘e’s given us a day off.’

‘Off be sugared!’ said the blistered man. ‘On — on a bloomin’
gridiron! If you’d come to the beach when we did, you wouldn’t be so
nasty just to the beggar. You talk a lot, but what we want to know is
what you’re going to do?’

”Ear! ‘ear!’ said the crowd, ‘that’s what we want to know.
Go and shift ‘im yourself.’

Pyecroft bit back a weighty reproof.

‘Wind her up, Mr. Leggatt,’ he said, ‘and ram ‘er at the first
lowest place in the ridge. You men fall in an’ push behind if she checks.’

page 8

‘What’s that for? You ain’t never —’

‘We’re goin’ to shift ‘im. All you’ve got to do is to ‘elp the car
over the ridge an’ then take cover. You talk too much.’ He swung out of
the car, and Leggatt mounted. The churn of the machinery drowned Mr. Voss’s
protests, but as the car drew away along the sands westerly,
followed by the men, he said to Pyecroft: ‘But — but suppose you annoy
him? He may blow up the works. Ha — hadn’t we better wait?’

‘With him chuckin’ fusees about every minute? Certainly not.
Come along!’ He started at a trot towards the shingle ridge which
Leggatt was already charging.

‘Would you mind,’ Mr. Voss panted, ‘telling me who you are?
‘Pyecroft looked at him reproachfully and he continued: ‘I can see that
you’re in a responsible position, but … I’d like to know.’

‘You’re right. I hold a position of some responsibility under the
Admiralty. That’s Admiralty dynamite, ain’t it?’

‘Yes, but I don’t understand how it came here.’

‘Nor I. But someone will be hung for it. You can make your mind
quite easy about that. That explains everything, don’t it? The plain
facts of the case is that someone has blundered, an’ ‘ence there’s not a
minute to be lost. Don’t you see?’ He edged towards the car on the
top of the ridge, Mr. Voss clinging to his manly hand.

‘But, suppose —’ said Mr. Voss. ‘The risks are frightful.’

‘They are. You know ‘ow it is with the horrors. If he catches sight
o’ one o’ your men, ‘e’s as like as not to touch off all the fireworks, under
the impression that ‘e’s bein’ bombarded. Keep ’em down on the beach
well under cover while we try to coax ‘im. You know ‘ow it is with the
horrors.’

‘No, I don’t,’ said Mr. Voss with a sudden fury. ‘Confound it
all, I’m going to be married today!’

‘I’d postpone it if I was you,’ Pyecroft returned. ‘But that explains
much, as you might say.’

‘We want to say —’ the blistered man clutched Pyecroft’s leg as
he mounted. I took the back seat, none regarding.

‘I’ll ‘ear all the evidence pro and con tomorrow. Go back to the
beach! Don’t you move for an hour! We may ‘ave to coax ‘im!’ he
shouted. ‘Get back and wait! Let ‘er go, Leggatt!’

We plunged down the shingle to the pebble-speckled turf at the
back of the sheds. Leggatt doubled with mirth, steering most vilely.
The crowd retired behind the ridge.

‘Whew!’ said Pyecroft, unbuttoning his jacket. ‘Another minute
and that bridegroom in the four-point-seven hat would have made me
almost a liar.’

‘Stop!’ I said, as Leggatt leaned forward helpless on the tiller;
but Pyecroft continued: ”Ere’s three solitary unknown strangers
committin’ a piece of blindin’ heroism besides which Casablanca is obsolete;
an’ all the cement-mixer can think o’ saying is: ”Oo are you?’ Or
words to that effect. He must ‘ave wanted me to give ‘im my card.’

‘I wonder what he thinks,’ I said, as we ran between the sheds to
the basin.

‘The machinery cost thirty thousand pounds, ‘e says. ‘E’s sweatin’
blood to that amount every minute. He ain’t thinkin’ of his bride.’

An empty whisky bottle broke like a shell before our wheels. We
had come between the sheds within effective range of the man on the
barge.

‘Good hand at description, Captain Dudeney is,’ said Pyecroft
critically, never moving a muscle. ‘Fig-nose — saucer-ear, freckle-jaw —
all present an’ correct. What a cousin! Perishin’ ‘Eavens Above! What
a cousin! Good afternoon, Mr. Llewellyn! So here’s where you’ve ‘id
after stealing Captain Dudeney’s whisky, is it?’

‘What? What?’ the man capered the full length of the barge, a
bottle in either hand. ‘The old ram! Me hide? Me? No. indeed — what
for? What have I done to be ashamed of?’ He rubbed his broken nose
furiously.

‘If that’s what the Captain paid five pounds for, he got the value
of his money, so to speak,’ said Pyecroft, and raising his voice: ‘All
right. Goodbye. I’ll tell your cousin I’ve seen you, but you’re afraid to
come back.’

The answer I take it was in Welsh.

page 9

‘He told me to tell you that next time he’ll pay fifteen pounds for
you, besides knocking your red head flush with your shoulders.
Goodbye, Llewellyn.’

I had barely time to avoid a hissing coil of rope hurled at my feet.

‘He said thatt!’ the man screamed. ‘Catch! Pull! Haul! The old ram!
No, indeed. You shall not go away. I will have him preached of
in chapel. I will bring the bottles. I will show him how! My hair red!
Fetch me away! My cousin!’

‘Unmoor, then, and we’ll tow you!’ Pyecroft hauled on the rope.
‘It’s easier than I thought,’ he said to me. ‘I remember a Welsh
fireman in the Sycophant ‘oo got drunk on Boaz Island, an’ the only way
we could coax ‘im off the reef, where numerous sharks were anticipatin’
‘im, was by urgin’ ‘im to fight the captain.’

The barge bumped at our feet, and Pyecroft leaped aboard.

I seemed to see some sort of demonstrative greeting between the
two — a hug or a pat on the back, perhaps. And then Llewellyn sat in
the stern, lacking only the label for despatch as a neatly corded mummy.

‘Quacks like a duck. All that’s pure Welsh,’ said Pyecroft. ‘But
I don’t think it ‘ud do you an’ me any good in a manner o’ Speakin’
even if translated.’

”Ere! Look out!’ said Leggatt. ‘You’ll pull the rear axle out o’
her.’

‘You don’t know anythin’ about movin’ bodies. I don’t know much
— yet. We can but essay.’ Pyecroft was on his knees tying expert knots
round the rear axle. I had never seen motorcars applied to canal traffic
before, and so stood deaf to Leggatt’s highly technical appeals.

‘Go ahead slow and take care the tow don’t foul the port tyre. A
towin’ piece an’ bollards is what we really need. One never knows what
one’ll pick up on inspection tours like ours.’

‘Why, she goes!’ said Leggatt over his shoulder, as the barge
drew after the car.

‘Like a roseleaf on a stream,’ said Pyecroft at the tiller. ‘Jump in!
Kindly increase speed to fifty-seven revolutions, an’ the barge an’ its
lethal cargo will show you what she can do. Look ‘ere, Mr. Llewellyn,
you ain’t with your wife now, an’ your non-commercial language don’t appeal.
If you’ve anything on your mind, sing it in a low voice.
We’re runnin’ trials. Sixty-seven revolutions, if you please, Mr. Leggatt.’

I have the honour to report here that an 18-h.p. Decapod petrol
motor can haul a barge of x tons capacity down a straight canal at the
rate of knots; but that the wash and consequent erosion of the banks
is somewhat marked. The Welshman lay still. Pyecroft was at the tiller,
the delighted Leggatt was stealing extra knots out of her. Our wash
roared behind us — a foot high from bank to bank. I sat in the bows
crying ‘Port!’ or ‘Starboard!’ as guileless fancy led, and rejoiced
in this my one life.

The cement works grew small behind us — small and very still.

‘They have not yet resoomed,’ said Pyecroft. ‘I take it they
hardly anticipated such prompt action on the part o’ the relievin’ column.
A little more, Mr. Leggatt, if you please.’

‘It’s all very, very beautiful,’ I cooed, for the heat of the day was
past and Llewellyn had fallen asleep; ‘but aren’t we making rather a
wash? There’s a lump as big as Beachy Head just fallen in behind us.”

‘We ‘ave, so to speak, dragged the bowels out of three miles of
‘er,’ Pyecroft admitted. ‘Let’s hope it’s Mr. Voss’s canal. That bakin’
bridegroom owes us a lot. A little more, Mr. Hinchcliffe — or Leggatt, I
should say. We’re creepin’ up to twelve.’

‘People — comin’ from Wapshare — four of ’em!’ cried Leggatt who
from the high car seat could see along the road.

Pyecroft passed me the tiller as he unslung the binoculars to look.
None but Pyecrofts should steer barges at P. and O. speeds. In that brief
second, just as he said ‘Captain Dudeney!’ the barge’s nose ran with
ferocity feet deep into the mud; and as I hopefully waggled the tiller,
her stern flourished across the water and stuck even deeper on the
opposite bank. Our wash bottled up by this sudden barricade leaped
aboard in a low, muddy wave that broke all over our Mr. Llewellyn.

‘Who’s that dish-washer at the wheel?’ he gurgled.

‘You may well ask,’ said Pyecroft, with professional sympathy.

‘Relieve him at once. I’ll show him how.’ He sat up in his bonds
rolling blinded eyes.

page 10

Pyecroft lifted him, laid his two hands, freed as far as the elbows,
on the tiller, to which he clung fervently, and bellowed in his ear:
‘Down! Hard down for your life. You’ll be ashore in a minute.
Don’t abandon the ship!’

We withdrew over the bows to dry land. I felt I need not apologise
to Leggatt, for, after all, it was my own car that I had brought up with
so round a turn. The barge seemed well at rest.

‘They’ll ‘ave to dig ‘er out — unless they care to blow ‘er up’ said
Pyecroft, climbing into the seat. ‘But all the same, that Man of ‘Arlech
‘as the feelin’s of a sailor. Meet ‘er ! Meet ‘er as she scends! You’ll
roll the sticks out of her if you don’t!’ he shouted in farewell.

We left Mr. Llewellyn clawing off a verdant lee shore, and this the
more readily because Captain Dudeney and three friends were running
towards us. But they passed us, with eyes only for the barge, as though
we had been ghosts. Captain Dudeney roared like all the bulls of the
marshes. I will never allow Leggatt to drive for any distance with his
chin over his shoulder, so we stopped anew.

The Welshman still steered, but when his cousin’s challenge came
down the wind, he forsook all and, with fettered feet, crawled like a
parrot on a perch to meet him. Like a parrot, too, he screamed and
pointed at us.

We saw the five faces all pink in the westering sun; the Welshman
was urging them to the chase.

‘Ungrateful blighter! After we’ve saved ‘im from being killed at
the cement works,’ said Pyecroft. ‘Home’s the port for me. There’s too
much intricate explanation necessary on this coast. Let’s navigate.’ …
Ten minutes later we were three miles from Wapshare and two
hundred feet above it, commanding the map-like stretch of marsh ruled
with roads, ditches, and canals that, etc.

One canal seemed to be blocked by a barge drawn across it, and
here five dots clustered, separated, rejoined, and gyrated for a full
twenty minutes ere they seemed satisfied to go home. Anon (we were all
fighting for the binoculars) a stream of dots poured from the cement
works and moved — oh, so slowly! — along the white road till they reached
the barge. Here they scattered and did not rejoin for a great space upon
the other side; resembling in this respect a column of ants whose march
has been broken by a drop of spilt kerosene.

‘Amen! Amen!’ said Emanuel Pyecroft, bareheaded in the gloom
of an oak hanger. ‘This day hasn’t been one of the worst of ’em, either,
in a manner o’ speakin’. I’ll come tomorrow incognito an’ ‘elp pick up
the pieces. Because there will be lots of ’em, as one might anticipate.’

The morrow sent me visitors — young, fair, and infernally curious.
They had heard much of the beauties of Wapshare, which, where the
suburban builder has left it alone, it precisely resembles. And though
I praised half the rest of England, Wapshare they would see. The car’s new,
mirror-like body—scarlet and claret with gold lines—looked as
spruce as Leggatt in his French smock, and I flatter myself that my own
costume, also Parisian, which included nickel-plated goggles with
flesh-coloured flaps on the cheek-bones and a severely classic leather hat,
was completely of the road.

My guests were delighted with their trip.

‘We had such a perfect day,’ they explained at tea. ‘There was
a delightful wedding coming out of that old church up that cobbled
street — don’t you remember? And just below it by that place where the
ships anchored there was quite a riot. We saw it all from that upper road
by that old tower — hundreds and hundreds of men throwing coal at a
little ship that was trying to go to sea. Oh, yes, and a most fascinating
man with the wonderful eyes who touched his hat so respectfully (all
sailors are dears) — he told us all about it.’

‘What did he say?’ someone asked.

‘He said it wasn’t anything to what it had been. He said we ought
to have been there at noon when he came — before the poor little ship
got away from the wharf. He said they nearly called out the Militia. I
should like to have seen that. Oh, and do you remember that big,
black-bearded man at the very edge of the wharf who kept on throwing
coal at the ship and shouting all the time we watched?’

‘What had the little ship done?’

‘The coastguard said that he was a stranger in these parts and
didn’t quite know. Oh, yes, and then the chauffeur swallowed a fly and
choked. But it was a simply perfect day.’

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.

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‘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.

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‘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.

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‘“’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?”

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‘“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.

[a short tale]

ALMONDS and raisins, Sahib? Grapes from Kabul? Or a pony of the rarest if the Sahib will only come with me. He is thirteen-three, Sahib, plays polo, goes in a cart, carries a lady and—Holy Kurshed and the Blessed Imams, it is the Sahib himself! My heart is made fat and my eye glad. May you never be tired! As is cold water in the Tirah, so is the sight of a friend in a far place And what do you in this accursed land? South of Delhi, Sahib, you know the saying—‘Rats are the men and trulls the women.’ It was an order? Ahoo! An order is an order till one is strong enough to disobey. O my brother, O my friend, we have met in an auspicious hour! Is all well in the heart and the body and the house? In a lucky day have we two come together again.I am to go with you? Your favour is great. Will there be picket-room in the compound? I have three horses and the bundles and the horseboy. Moreover, remember that the police here hold me a horse-thief. What do these Lowland bastards know of horse-thieves? Do you remember that time in Peshawur when Kamal hammered on the gates of Jumrud—mountebank that he was—and lifted the Colonel’s horses all in one night? Kamal is dead now, but his nephew has taken up the matter, and there will be more horses a-missing if the Khyber Levies do not look to it.

The Peace of God and the favour of His Prophet be upon this house and all that is in it I Shafiz Ullah, rope the mottled mare under the tree and draw water. The horses can stand in the sun, but double the felts over the loins. Nay, my friend, do not trouble to look them over. They are to sell to the Officer-fools who know so many things of the horse. The mare is heavy in foal; the grey is a devil unlicked; and the dun—but you know the trick of the peg. When they are sold I go back to Pubbi, or, it may be, the Valley of Peshawur.

O friend of my heart, it is good to see you again. I have been bowing and lying all day to the Officer-Sahibs in respect to those horses; and my mouth is dry for straight talk. Auggrh! Before a meal tobacco is good. Do not join me, for we are not in our own country. Sit in the veranda and I will spread my cloth here. But first I will drink. In the name of God returning thanks, thrice! This is sweet water, indeed—sweet as the water of Sheoran when it comes from the snows.

They are all well and pleased in the North—Khoda Baksh and the others. Yar Khan has come down with the horses from Kurdistan—six-and thirty head only, and a full half pack-ponies—and has said openly in the Kashmir Serai that you English should send guns and blow the Amir into Hell. There are fifteen tolls now on the Kabul road; and at Dakka, when he thought he was clear, Yar Khan was stripped of all his Balkh stallions by the Governor! This is a great injustice, and Yar Khan is hot with rage. And of the others: Mahbub Ali is still at Pubbi, writing God knows what. Tugluq Khan is in jail for the business of the Kohat Police Post. Faiz Beg came down from Ismail-ki-Dhera with a Bokhariot belt for thee, my brother, at the closing of the year, but none knew whither thou hadst gone: there was no news left behind. The Cousins have taken a new run near Pakpattan to breed mules for the Government carts, and there is a story in the Bazar of a priest. Oho! Such a salt tale! Listen——

Sahib, why do you ask that? My clothes are fouled because of the dust on the road. My eyes are sad because of the glare of the sun. My feet are swollen because I have washed them in bitter water, and my cheeks are hollow because the food here is bad. Fire burn your money! What do I want with it? I am rich. I thought you were my friend. But you are like the others—a Sahib. Is a man sad? Give him money, say the Sahibs. Is he dishonoured? Give him money, say the Sahibs. Hath he a wrong upon his head? Give him money, say the Sahibs. Such are the Sahibs, and such art thou—even thou.

Nay, do not look at the feet of the dun. Pity it is that I ever taught you to know the legs of a horse. Footsore? Be it so. What of that? The roads are hard. And the mare footsore? She bears a double burden, Sahib.

And now, I pray you, give me permission to depart. Great favour and honour has the Sahib done me, and graciously has he shown his belief that the horses are stolen. Will it please him to send me to the Thana? To call a sweeper and have me led away by one of these lizard-men? I am the Sahib’s friend. I have drunk water in the shadow of his house, and he has blackened my face. Remains there anything more to do? Will the Sahib give me eight annas to make smooth the injury and—complete the insult——?

Forgive me, my brother. I knew not—I know not now—what I say. Yes, I lied to you! I will put dust on my head—and I am an Afridi! The horses have been marched footsore from the Valley to this place, and my eyes are dim, and my body aches for the want of sleep, and my heart is dried up with sorrow and shame. But as it was my shame, so by God the Dispenser of Justice—by Allah-al-Mumit!—it shall be my own revenge

We have spoken together with naked hearts before this, and our hands have dipped into the same dish, and thou hast been to me as a brother. Therefore I pay thee back with lies and ingratitude—as a Pathan. Listen now! When the grief of the soul is too heavy for endurance it may be a little eased by speech; and, moreover, the mind of a true man is as a well, and the pebble of confession dropped therein sinks and is no more seen. From the Valley have I come on foot, league by league, with a fire in my chest like the fire of the Pit. And why? Hast thou, then, so quickly forgotten our customs, among this folk who sell their wives and their daughters for silver? Come back with me to the North and be among men once more. Come back, when this matter is accomplished and I call for thee! The bloom of the peach-orchards is upon all the Valley, and here is only dust and a great stink. There is a pleasant wind among the mulberry trees, and the streams are bright with snow-water, and the caravans go up and the caravans go down, and a hundred fires sparkle in the gut of the Pass, and tent-peg answers hammer-nose, and pack-horse squeals to pack-horse across the drift-smoke of the evening. It is good in the North now. Come back with me. Let us return to our own people! Come

Whence is my sorrow? Does a man tear out his heart and make fritters thereof over a slow fire for aught other than a woman? Do not laugh, friend of mine, for your time will also be. A woman of the Abazai was she, and I took her to wife to staunch the feud between our village and the men of Ghor. I am no longer young? The lime has touched my beard? True. I had no need of the wedding? Nay, but I loved her. What saith Rahman? ‘Into whose heart Love enters, there is Folly and naught else. By a glance of the eye she hath blinded thee; and by the eyelids and the fringe of the eyelids taken thee into the captivity without ransom, and naught else.’ Dost thou remember that song at the sheep-roasting in the Pindi camp among the Uzbegs of the Amir?

The Abazai are dogs and their women the servants of sin. There was a lover of her own people, but of that her father told me naught. My friend, curse for me in your prayers, as I curse at each praying from the Fakr to the Isha, the name of Daoud Shah, Abazai, whose head is still upon his neck, whose hands are still upon his wrists, who has done me dishonour, who has made my name a laughing-stock among the women of Little Malikand.

I went into Hindustan at the end of two months—to Cherat. I was gone twelve days only; but I had said that I would be fifteen days absent. This I did to try her, for it is written: ‘Trust not the incapable.’ Coming up the gorge alone in the falling of the light, I heard the voice of a man singing at the door of my house; and it was the voice of Daoud Shah, and the song that he sang was ‘Dray wara yow dee’—‘All three are one.’ It was as though a heel-rope had been slipped round my heart and all the Devils were drawing it tight past endurance. I crept silently up the hill-road, but the fuse of my matchlock was wetted with the rain, and I could not slay Daoud Shah from afar. Moreover, it was in my mind to kill the woman also. Thus he sang, sitting outside my house, and, anon, the woman opened the door, and I came nearer, crawling on my belly among the rocks. I had only my to my hand. But a stone slipped under my foot, and the two looked down the hillside, and he, leaving his matchlock, fled from my anger, because he was afraid for the life that was in him. But the woman moved not till I stood in front of her, crying: ‘O woman, what is this that thou hast done?’ And she, void of fear, though she knew my thought, laughed, saying: ‘It is a little thing. I loved him, and thou art a dog and cattlethief coming by night. Strike!’ And I, being still blinded by her beauty, for, O my friend, the women of the Abazai are very fair, said: ‘Hast thou no fear?’ And she answered: ‘None—but only the fear that I do not die.’ Then said I ‘Have no fear.’ And she bowed her head, and I smote it off at the neck-bone so that it leaped between my feet. Thereafter the rage of our people came upon me, and I hacked off the breasts, that the men of Little Malikand might know the crime, and cast the body into the watercourse that flows to the Kabul River. Dray wara yow dee! Dray wara yow dee! The body without the head, the soul without light, and my own darkling heart—all three are one—all three are one!

That night, making no halt, I went to Ghor and demanded news of Daoud Shah. Men said ‘He is gone to Pubbi for horses. What wouldst thou of him? There is peace between the villages.’ I made answer: ‘Ay! The peace of treachery and the love that the Devil Atala bore to Gurel.’ So I fired thrice into the tower-gate and laughed and went my way.

In those hours, brother and friend of my heart’s heart, the moon and the stars were as blood above me, and in my mouth was the taste of dry earth. Also, I broke no bread, and my drink was the rain of the valley of Ghor upon my face.

At Pubbi I found Mahbub Ali, the writer, sitting upon his charpoy, and gave up my arms according to your Law. But I was not grieved, for it was in my heart that I should kill Daoud Shah with my bare hands thus—as a man strips a bunch of raisins. Mahbub Ali said: ‘Daoud Shah has even now gone hot-foot to Peshawur, and he will pick up his horses upon the road to Delhi, for it is said that the Bombay Tramway Company are buying horses there by the truckload; eight horses to the truck.’ And that was a true saying.

Then I saw that the hunting would be no little thing, for the man was gone into your borders to save himself against my wrath. And shall he save himself so? Am I not alive? Though he run northward to the Dora and the snow, or southerly to the Black Water, I will follow him, as a lover follows the footsteps of his mistress, and coming upon him I will take him tenderly—Aho! so tenderly!—in my arms, saying: ‘Well hast thou done and well shalt thou be repaid.’ And out of that embrace Daoud Shah shall not go forth with the breath in his nostrils. Auggrh! Where is the pitcher? I am as thirsty as a mother mare in the first month.

Your Law! What is your Law to me? When the horses fight on the runs do they regard the boundary pillars; or do the kites of Ali Musjid forbear because the carrion lies under the shadow of the Ghor Kuttri? The matter began across the Border. It shall finish where God pleases. Here; in my own country; or in Hell. All three are one.

Listen now, sharer of the sorrow of my heart, and I will tell of the hunting. I followed to Peshawur from Pubbi, and I went to and fro about the streets of Peshawur like a houseless dog, seeking for my enemy. Once I thought that I saw him washing his mouth in the conduit in the big square, but when I came up he was gone. It may be that it was he, and, seeing my face, he had fled.

A girl of the bazar said that he would go to Nowshera. I said: ‘O heart’s heart, does Daoud Shah visit thee?’ And she said: ‘Even so.’ I said: ‘I would fain see him, for we be friends parted for two years. Hide me, I pray, here in the shadow of the window-shutter, and I will wait for his coming.’ And the girl said: ‘O Pathan, look into my eyes! ‘ And I turned, leaning upon her breast, and looked into her eyes, swearing that I spoke the very Truth of God. But she answered ‘Never friend waited friend with such eyes. Lie to God and the Prophet, but to a woman ye cannot lie. Get hence! There shall no harm befall Daoud Shah by cause of me.’

I would have strangled that girl but for the fear of your Police; and thus the hunting would have come to naught. Therefore I only laughed and departed, and she leaned over the window-bar in the night and mocked me down the street. Her name is Jamun. When I have made my account with the man I will return to Peshawur and—her lovers shall desire her no more for her beauty’s sake. She shall not be Jamun, but Ak, the cripple among trees. Ho! ho! Ak shall she be!

At Peshawur I bought the horses and grapes, and the almonds and dried fruits, that the reason of my wanderings might be open to the Government, and that there might be no hindrance upon the road. But when I came to Nowshera he was gone; and I knew not where to go. I stayed one day at Nowshera, and in the night a Voice spoke in my ears as I slept among the horses. All night it flew round my head and would not cease from whispering. I was upon my belly, sleeping as the Devils sleep, and it may have been that the Voice was the voice of a Devil. It said: ‘Go south, and thou shalt come upon Daoud Shah.’ Listen, my brother and chiefest among friends—listen! Is the tale a long one? Think how it was long to me. I have trodden every league of the road from Pubbi to this place; and from Nowshera my guide was only the Voice and the lust of vengeance.

To the Uttock I went, but that was no hindrance to me. Ho! ho! A man may turn the word twice, even in his trouble. The Uttock was no uttock [obstacle] to me; and I heard the Voice above the noise of the waters beating on the big rock, saying: ‘Go to the right.’ So I went to Pindigheb, and in those days my sleep was taken from me utterly, and the head of the woman of the Abazai was before me night and day, even as it had fallen between my feet. Dray wara yow dee! Dray wara yow dee! Fire, ashes, and my couch, all three are one—all three are one!

Now I was far from the winter path of the dealers who had gone to Sialkot, and so south by the rail and the Big Road to the line of cantonments; but there was a Sahib in camp at Pindigheb who bought from me a white mare at a good price, and told me that one Daoud Shah had passed to Shahpur with horses. Then I saw that the warning of the Voice was true, and made swift to come to the Salt Hills. The Jhelum was in flood, but I could not wait, and, in the crossing, a bay stallion was washed down and drowned. Herein was God hard to me—not in respect of the beast, of that I had no care—but in this snatching. While I was upon the right bank urging the horses into the water, Daoud Shah was upon the left; for—Alghias! Alghias!—the hoofs of my mare scattered the hot ashes of his fires when we came up the hither bank in the light of morning. But he had fled. His feet were made swift by the terror of Death. And I went south from Shahpur as the kite flies. I dared not turn aside lest I should miss my vengeance—which is my right. From Shahpur I skirted by the Jhelum, for I thought that he would avoid the Desert of the Rechna. But, presently, at Sahiwal, I turned away upon the road to Jhang, Samundri, and Gugera, till, upon a night, the mottled mare breasted the fence of the rail that runs to Montgomery. And that place was Okara, and the head of the woman of the Abazai lay upon the sand between my feet.

Thence I went to Fazilka, and they said that I was mad to bring starved horses there. The Voice was with me, and I was not mad, but only wearied, because I could not find Daoud Shah. It was written that I should not find him at Rania nor Bahadurgarh, and I came into Delhi from the west, and there also I found him not. My friend, I have seen many strange things in my wanderings. I have seen the Devils rioting across the Rechna as the stallions riot in spring. I have heard the Djinns calling to each other from holes in the sand, and I have seen them pass before my face. There are no Devils, say the Sahibs? They are very wise, but they do not know all things about Devils or—horses. Ho! ho! I say to you who are laughing at my misery, that I have seen the Devils at high noon whooping and leaping on the shoals of the Chenab. And was I afraid? My brother, when the desire of a man is set upon one thing alone, he fears neither God nor Man nor Devil. If my vengeance failed, I would splinter the Gates of Paradise with the butt of my gun, or I would cut my way into Hell with my knife, and I would call upon Those who Govern there for the body of Daoud Shah. What love so deep as hate?

Do not speak. I know the thought in your heart. Is the white of this eye clouded? How does the blood beat at the wrist? There is no madness in my flesh, but only the vehemence of the desire that has eaten me up. Listen!

South of Delhi I knew not the country at all. Therefore I cannot say where I went, but I passed through many cities. I knew only that it was laid upon me to go south. When the horses could march no more, I threw myself upon the earth and waited till the day. There was no sleep with me in that journeying; and that was a heavy burden. Dost thou know, brother of mine, the evil of wakefulness that cannot break—when the bones are sore for lack of sleep, and the skin of the temples twitches with weariness, and yet—there is no sleep—there is no sleep? Dray wara yow dee! Dray wara yow dee! The eye of the Sun, the eye of the Moon, and my own unrestful eyes—all three are one—all three are one!

There was a city the name whereof I have forgotten, and there the Voice called all night. That was ten days ago. It has cheated me afresh.

I have come hither from a place called Hamirpur, and, behold, it is my Fate that I should meet with thee to my comfort, and the increase of friendship. This is a good omen. By the joy of looking upon thy face the weariness has gone from my feet, and the sorrow of my so long travel is forgotten. Also my heart is peaceful; for I know that the end is near.

It may be that I shall find Daoud Shah in this city going northward, since a Hillman will ever head back to his Hills when the spring warns. And shall he see those hills of our country? Surely I shall overtake him! Surely my vengeance is safe! Surely God hath him in the hollow of His hand against my claiming! There shall no harm befall Daoud Shah till I come; for I would fain kill him quick and whole with the life sticking firm in his body. A pomegranate is sweetest when the cloves break away unwilling from the rind. Let it be in the daytime, that I may see his face, and my delight may be crowned.

And when I have accomplished the matter and my Honour is made clean, I shall return thanks unto God, the Holder of the Scales of the Law, and I shall sleep. From the night, through the day, and into the night again I shall sleep; and no dream shall trouble me.

And now, O my brother, the tale is all told. Ahi! Ahi! Alghias! Ahi!

[a short tale]

“THE old cat’s tumbled down the ventilator, sir, and he’s swearing away under the fumace-door in the stoke-hole,” said the second officer to the Captain of the Whanghoa, “Now what in thunder was Erastasius doing at the mouth of the ventilator? It’s four feet from the ground and painted red at that. Any of the children been amusing themselves with him, d’you think? I wouldn’t have Erastasius disturbed in his inside for all the gold in the treasury,” said the Captain. “Tell some one to bring him up, and handle him delicately, for he’s not a quiet beast.”

In three minutes a bucket appeared on deck. It was covered with a wooden lid. “Think he have make die this time,” said the Chinese sailor who carried the coffin, with a grin, “Catchee him topside coals—no open eye—no spit—no sclatchee my. Have got bucket, allee same, and make tight. See!”

He dived his bare arm mider the lid, but withdrew it with a yell, dropping the bucket at the same time. “Hya! Can do. Maskee dlop down—masky spilum coal. Have catchee my light there.”

Blood was trickling from his elbow. He moved aft, while the bucket, mysteriously worked by hidden force, trundled to and fro across the decks, swearing aloud.

Emerged finally Erastasius, tom-cat and grandfather-in-chief of the Whanghoa— a gaunt brindled beast, lacking one ear, with every hair on his body armed and erect. He was patched with coal-dust, very stiff and sore all over, and very anxious to take the world into his confidence as to his wrongs. For this reason he did not run when he was clear of the bucket, but sitting on his hunkers regarded the Captain, as who would say: “You hold a master’s certificate and call yourself a seaman, and yet you allow this sort of thing on your boat”

“Guess I must apologise, old man,” said the Captain gravely. “Those ventilators are a little too broad in the beam for a passenger of your build. What made you walk down it? Not a rat, eh? You’re too well fed to trouble of rats. Drink was it.”

Erastasius turned his back on the Captain. He was a tailless Japanese cat, and the abruptness of his termination gave him a specially brusque appearance.

“Shouldn’t wonder if the old man hasn’t been stealing something and was getting away from the galley. He’s the biggest reprobate that ever shipped—and that’s saying something. No, he isn’t my property exactly. I’ve got a notion that he owns the ship. Gathered that from the way he goes round after six bells to see the lights out. The chief engineer says he built the engines. Anyway, the old man sits in the engine-room and sort of keeps an eye on the boilers. He was on the ship before I joined her—that’s seven years ago, when we were running up and down and around about the China Seas.”

Erastasius, his back to the company, was busied in cleaning his disarranged fur. The ventilator incident had hurt his feelings sorely.

“He knows we are talking about him,” continued the Captain. “He’s a responsible kind o’ critter. That’s natural when you come to think that he has saved a quarter of a million dollars. At present his wants are few—guess he would like a netting over those ventilators first thing—but someday he’ll begin to live up to his capital.’

“Saved a quarter of a million dollars! What securities did he invest ’em in?” said a man from Foochow.

Here, in this bottom. He saved the Whanghoa with a full cargo of tea, silk and opium, and thirteen thousand dollars in bar silver. Yes; that’s about the extent of the old man’s savings. I commanded. The old man was the rescuer, and I was more than grateful to him ’cause it was my darned folly that nearly bought us into trouble. I was new to these waters, new to the Chinaman and his facinating little ways, being a New England man by raising. Erstasius was raised by the Devil. That’s who his sire was. Never ran across his dam. Ran across a forsaken sea, though, in the Whanghoa, a little to the north-east of this, with eight hundred steerage passengers, all Chinamen, for various and undenominated ports. Had the pleasure of sending eighteen of ’em into the water. Yes, that’s so isn’t it old man?”

Earstasius finished licking himself and mewed affirmatively.

“Yes, we carried four white officers—a Westerner, two Vermont men, and myself. There were ten Americans, a couple of Danes and a half-caste knocking around the ship, and the crew were Chinese, but most of ’em good Chinese. Only good Chinese I ever met. We had our steerage passengers ’tween decks. Most of ’em lay around and played dominoes or smoked opium. We had bad weather at the start, and the steerage were powerful sick. I judged they would have no insides to them when the weather lifted, so I didn’t put any guards on them. Wanted all my men to work the ship. Engines rotten as Congress, and under sail half the time. Next time I carry Chinese steerage trash I’ll hire a Gatling and mount it on the ’tween-decks hatch.

“We were fooling about between islands— about a himdred and fifty thousand islands all wrapped up in fog. When the fog laid the wind, the engines broke down. One of the passengers—we carried no ladies that journey—came to me one evening. ‘I calculate there’s a conspiracy ’tween-decks,’ he said. ‘Those pigtails are talking together. No good ever came of pigtails talking. I’m from ’Frisco. I authoritate on these matters.’ ‘Not on this ship,’ I said: ‘I’ve no use for duplicate authority.’ ‘You’ll be homesick after nine this time to-morrow,’ he said and quit. I guess he told the other passengers his notions.

“Erastasius shared my cabin in general. I didn’t care to dispute with a cat that went heeled the way he did. That particular night when I came down he was not inclined for repose. When I shut the door he scrabbled till I let him out. When he was out he scrabbled to come back. When he was back, he jumped all round the shanty yowling. I stroked him, and the sparks irrigated his back as if ’twas the smoke-stack of a river steamer. ‘I’11 get you a wife, old man,’ I said, ‘next voyage. It is no good for you to be alone with me.’ ‘Whoopee, yoopee-yaw-aw-aw,’ said Erastasius. ‘Let me get out of this.’ I looked him square between the eyes to fix the place where I’d come down with a boot-heel (he was getting monotonous), and as I looked I saw the animal was just possessed with deadly fear —human fear—crawling, shaking fear. It crept out of the green of his eyes and crept over me in billowing waves—each wave colder than the last. ‘Unburden your mind, Erastasius,’ I said. ‘What’s going to happen?’ ‘Wheepee-yeepee-ya-ya-ya-woop,’ said Erastasius, backing to the door and scratching.

“I quit my cabin sweating big drops, and somehow my hand shut on my six-shooter. The grip of the handle soothes a man when he is afraid. I heard the whole ship ’tween-decks rustling under me like all the woods of Maine when the wind’s up. The lamp over the ’tween-decks was out. The steerage watchman was lying on the groimd, and the whole hive of Celestials were on the tramp—soft-footed hounds. A lantern came down the alleyway. Behind it was the passenger that had spoken to me, and all the rest of the crowd, except the half-caste.

“‘Are you homesick any now?’ said my passenger. The ’tween-decks woke up with a yell at the light, and some one fired up the hatch-way. Then we began our share of the fun— the ten passengers and I. Eleven six-shooters. That cleared the first rush of the pigtails, but we continued firing on principle, working our way down the steps. No one came down from the spar-deck to assist, though I heard considerable of a trampling. The pigtails below were growling like cats. I heard the look-out man shout, ‘Junk on the port bow,’ and the bell ring in the engine-room for full speed ahead. Then we struck something, and there was a yell inside and outside the ship that would have lifted your hair out. When the outside yell stopped, our pigtails were on their faces. ‘Run down a junk,’ said my passenger—‘their junk.’ He loosed three shots into the steerage on the strength of it. I went up on deck when things were quiet below. Some one had run our Dahlgren signal-gun forward and pointed it to the break of the fo’c’sle. There was the balance of a war junk—three spars and a head or two on the water, and the first mate keeping his watch in regular style.

“‘What is your share?’ he said. ‘We’ve smashed up a junk that tried to foul us. Seems to have affected the feelings of your friends below. Guess they wanted to make connection.’ ‘It is made,’ said I, ‘on the Glassy Sea. Where’s the watch?’ ‘In the fo’c’sle. The half-caste is sitting on the signal-gun smoking his cigar. The watch are speculatin’ whether he’ll stick the business-end of it in the touch-hole or continue smoking. I gather that gun is not empty.’ ‘Send ‘em down below to wash decks. Tell the quartermaster to go through their boxes while they are away. They may have implements.’

“The watch went below to clean things up. There were eighteen stiff uns and fourteen with holes through their systems. Some died, some survived. I did not keep particular count. The balance I roped up, and it employed most of our spare rigging. When we touched port there was a picnic among the hangmen. Seems that Erastasius had been yowling down the cabins all night before he came to me, and kept the passengers alive. The man that spoke to me said the old man’s eyes were awful to look at. He was dying to tell his fear, but couldn’t. When the passengers came forward with the light, the half-caste quit for topside and got the quartermaster to load the signal-gun with handspikes and bring it forward in case the fo’c’sle wished to assist in the row. That was the best half-caste I ever met. But the fo’c’sle didn’t assist. They were sick. So were the men below—horror-sick. That was the way the old man saved the Whanghoa.’

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THE only important society in existence to-day is the E.C.F.—the Eclectic but Comprehensive Fraternity for the Perpetuation of Gratitude towards Lesser Lights. Its founders were William Lemming, of Lemming and Orton, print-sellers; Alexander Hay McKnight, of Ellis and McKnight, provision-merchants; Robert Keede, M.R.C.P., physician, surgeon, and accoucheur; Lewis Holroyd Burges, tobacconist and cigar importer—all of the South Eastern postal districts—and its zealous, hard-working, but unappreciated Secretary. The meetings are usually at Mr. Lemming’s little place in Berkshire, where he raises pigs.I had been out of England for awhile, missing several dinners, but was able to attend a summer one with none present but ourselves; several red mullets in paper; a few green peas and ducklings; an arrangement of cockscombs with olives, and capers as large as cherries; strawberries and cream; some 1903 Chateau la Tour; and that locked cabinet of cigars to which only Burges has the key.

It was at the hour when men most gracefully curvet abroad on their hobbies, and after McKnight had been complaining of systematic pilfering in his three big shops, that Burges told us how an illustrious English astrologer called Lily had once erected a horoscope to discover the whereabouts of a parcel of stolen fish. The stars led him straight to it and the thief and, incidentally, into a breeze with a lady over ‘seven Portugal onions’ also gone adrift, but not included in the periscope. Then we wondered why detective-story writers so seldom use astrology to help out the local Sherlock Holmes; how many illegitimate children that great original had begotten in magazine form; and so drifted on to murder at large. Keede, whose profession gives him advantages, illustrated the subject.

‘I wish I could do a decent detective story,’ I said at last. ‘I never get further than the corpse.’

‘Corpses are foul things,’ Lemming mused aloud. ‘I wonder what sort of a corpse I shall make.’

‘You’ll never know,’ the gentle, silver-haired Burges replied. ‘You won’t even know you’re dead till you look in the glass and see no reflection. An old woman told me that once at Barnet Horse Fair—and I couldn’t have been more than seven at the time.’

We were quiet for a few minutes, while the Altar of the Lesser Lights, which is also our cigar-lighter, came into use. The single burner atop, representing gratitude towards Lesser Lights in general, was of course lit. Whenever gratitude towards a named Lesser Light is put forward and proven, one or more of the nine burners round the base can be thrown into action by pulling its pretty silver draw-chain.

‘What will you do for me,’ said Keede, puffing, ‘if I give you an absolutely true detective yarn?’

‘If I can make anything of it,’ I replied, ‘I’ll finish the Millar Gift.’

This meant the cataloguing of a mass of Masonic pamphlets (1832-59), bequeathed by a Brother to Lodge Faith and Works 5836 E.C.—a job which Keede and I, being on the Library Committee, had together shirked for months.

‘Promise you won’t doctor it if you use it?’ said Keede.

‘And for goodness’ sake don’t bring me in any more than you can help,’ said Lemming.

No practitioner ever comprehends another practitioner’s methods; but a promise was given, a bargain struck; and the tale runs here substantially as it was told.

That past autumn, Lemming’s pig-man (who had been sitting up with a delicate lady-Berkshire) discovered, on a wet Sunday dawn in October, the body of a village girl called Ellen Marsh lying on the bank of a deep cutting where the road from the village runs into the London Road. Ellen, it seemed, had many friends with whom she used to make evening appointments, and Channet’s Ash, as the cross-roads were called, from the big ash that overhung them, was one of her well-known trysting-places. The body lay face down at the highest point of a sloping footpath which the village children had trodden out up the bank, and just where that path turned the corner under Channet’s Ash and dropped into the London Road. The pig-man roused the village constable, an ex-soldier called Nicol, who picked up, close to the corpse, a narrow-bladed fern-trowel, its handle wrapped with twine. There were no signs of a struggle, but it had been raining all night. The pig-man then went off to wake up Keede, who was spending the week-end with Lemming. Keede did not disturb his host, Mrs. Lemming being ill at the time, but he and the policeman commandeered a builder’s handcart from some half-built shops down the London Road; wheeled the body to the nearest inn—the Cup o’ Grapes—pushed a car out of a lock-up; took the shove-halfpenny board from the Oddfellows’ Room, and laid the body on it till the regular doctor should arrive.

‘He was out,’ Keede said, ‘so I made an examination on my own. There was no question of assault. She had been dropped by one scientific little jab, just at the base of the skull, by someone who knew his anatomy. That was all. Then Nicol, the Bobby, asked me if I’d care to walk over with him to Jimmy Tigner’s house.’

‘Who was Jimmy Tigner?’ I asked.

‘Ellen’s latest young man—a believing soul. He was assistant at the local tinsmith’s, living with his mother in a cottage down the street. It was seven o’clock then, and not a soul about. Jimmy had to be waked up. He stuck his head out of the window, and Nicol stood in the garden among the cabbages—friendly as all sin—and asked him what he’d been doing the night before, because someone had been knocking Ellen about. Well, there wasn’t much doubt what Jimmy had been up to. He was altogether “the morning after.” He began dressing and talking out of the window at the same time, and said he’d kill any man who touched Ellen.’

‘Hadn’t the policeman cautioned him?’ McKnight demanded.

‘What for? They’re all friends in this village. Then Jimmy said that, on general principles, Ellen deserved anything she might have got. He’d done with her. He told us a few details (some girl must have given her away), but the point he kept coming back to was that they had parted in “high dungeon.” He repeated that a dozen times. Nicol let him run on, and when the boy was quite dressed, he said “Well, you may as well come on up-street an’ look at her. She don’t bear you any malice now.” (Oh, I tell you the War has put an edge on things all round!) Jimmy came down, jumpy as a cat, and, when we were going through the Cup o’ Grapes yard, Nicol unlocked the garage and pushed him in. The face hadn’t been covered either.’

‘Drastic,’ said Burges, shivering.

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‘It was. Jimmy went off the handle at once; and Nicol kept patting him on the back and saying: “That’s all right! I’ll go bail you didn’t do it.” Then Jimmy wanted to know why the deuce he’d been dragged into it. Nicol said “Oh, that’s what the French call a confrontation. But you’re all right.” Then Jimmy went for Nicol. So we got him out of the garage, and gave him a drink, and took him back to his mother. But at the inquest he accounted for every minute of his time. He’d left Ellen under Channet’s Ash, telling her what he thought of her over his shoulder for a quarter of a mile down the lane (that’s what “high dungeon” meant in their language). Luckily two or three of the girls and the bloods of the village had heard ’em. After that, he’d gone to the Cup o’ Grapes, filled himself up, and told everybody his grievances against Ellen till closing-time. The interestin’ thing was that he seemed to be about the only decent boy of the lot.’

‘Then,’ Lemming interrupted, ‘the reporters began looking for clues. They—they behaved like nothing I’ve ever imagined! I was afraid we’d be dragged into it. You see, that wretched Ellen had been our scullery-maid a few months before, and—my wife—as ill as she was. . . . But mercifully that didn’t come out at the inquest.’

‘No’ Keede went on. ‘Nicol steered the thing. He’s related to Ellen. And by the time Jimmy had broken down and wept, and the reporters had got their sensation, it was brought in “person or persons unknown.”’

‘What about the trowel?’ said McKnight, who is a notable gardener.

‘It was a most valuable clue, of course, because it explained the modus operandi. The punch—with the handle, the local doctor said—had been delivered through her back hair, with just enough strength to do the job and no more. I couldn’t have operated more neatly myself. The Police took the trowel, but they couldn’t trace it to anyone, somehow. The main point in the village was that no one who knew her wanted to go into Ellen’s character. She was rather popular, you see. Of course the village was a bit disappointed about Jimmy’s getting off; and when he broke down again at her funeral, it revived suspicion. Then the Huish poisoning case happened up in the North; and the reporters had to run off and take charge of it. What did your pig-man say about ’em, Will?’

‘Oh, Griffiths said: “’Twas Gawd’s own Mercy those young gen’elmen didn’t ’ave ’alf of us ’ung before they left. They were that energetic!”’

‘They were,’ said Keede. ‘That’s why I kept back my evidence.’

‘There was the wife to be considered too,’ said Lemming. ‘She’d never have stood being connected with the thing, even remotely.’

‘I took it upon myself to act upon that belief,’ Keede replied gravely. ‘Well—now for my little bit. I’d come down that Saturday night to spend the week-end with Will here; and I couldn’t get here till late. It was raining hard, and the car skidded badly. Just as I turned off the London Road into the lane under Channet’s Ash, my lights picked up a motor-bike lying against the bank where they found Ellen; and I saw a man bending over a woman up the bank. Naturally one don’t interfere with these little things as a rule; but it occurred to me there might have been a smash. So I called out: “Anything wrong? Can I help?” The man said: “No, thanks. We’re all right,” or words to that effect, and I went on. But the bike’s letters happened to be my own initials, and its number was the year I was born in. I wasn’t likely to forget ’em, you see.’

‘You told the Police?’ said McKnight severely.

‘’Took ’em into my confidence at once, Sandy,’ Keede replied. ‘There was a Sergeant, Sydenham way, that I’d been treating for Salonika fever. I told him I was afraid I’d brushed a motor-bike at night coming up into West Wickham, on one of those blind bends—up the hill, and I’d be glad to know I hadn’t hurt him. He gave me what I wanted in twenty-four hours. The bike belonged to one Henry Wollin—of independent means—livin’ near Mitcham.’

‘But West Wickham isn’t in Berkshire—nor is Mitcham,’ McKnight began.

‘Here’s a funny thing,’ Keede went on, without noticing. ‘Most men and nearly all women commit murder single-handed; but no man likes to go man-hunting alone. Primitive instinct, I suppose. That’s why I lugged Will into the Sherlock Holmes business. You hated too.’

‘I hadn’t recovered from those reporters,’ said Lemming.

‘They were rather energetic. But I persuaded Will that we’d call upon Master Wollin and apologise—as penitent motorists—and we went off to Mitcham in my two-seater. Wollin had a very nice little detached villa down there. The old woman—his housekeeper—who let us in, was West Country, talkin’ as broad as a pat o’ butter. She took us through the hall to Wollin, planting things in his back-garden.’

‘A wonderful little garden for that soil,’ said Lemming, who considers himself an even greater gardener than McKnight, although he keeps two men less.

‘He was a big, strong, darkish chap—middle-aged—wide as a bull between the eyes—no beauty, and evidently had been a very sick man. Will and I apologised to him, and he began to lie at once. He said he’d been at West Wickham at the time (on the night of the murder, you know), and he remembered dodging out of the way of a car. He didn’t seem pleased that we should have picked up his number so promptly. Seeing we were helping him to establish an alibi, he ought to have been, oughtn’t he?’

‘Ye mean,’ said McKnight, suddenly enlightened, ‘that he was committing the murder here in Berkshire on the night that he told you he was in West Wickham, which is in Kent.’

‘Which is in Kent. Thank you. It is. And we went on talking about that West Wickham hill till he mentioned he’d been in the War, and that gave me my chance to talk. And he was an enthusiastic gardener, he said, and that let Will in. It struck us both that he was nervous in a carneying way that didn’t match his build and voice at all. Then we had a drink in his study. Then the fun began. There were four pictures on the wall.’

‘Prints—prints,’ Lemming corrected professionally.

‘’Same thing, aren’t they, Will? Anyhow, you got excited enough over them. At first I thought Will was only playing up. But he was genuine.’

‘So were they,’ Lemming said. ‘Sandy, you remember those four “Apostles” I sold you last Christmas?’

‘I have my counterfoil yet,’ was the dry answer.

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‘What sort of prints were they?’ Burges demanded.

The moonlike face of Alexander McKnight, who collects prints along certain lines, lit with devout rapture. He began checking off on his fingers.

‘The firrst,’ said he, ‘was the draped one of Ray—the greatest o’ them all. Next, yon French print o’ Morrison, when he was with the Duke of Orleans at Blois; third, the Leyden print of Grew in his youth; and, fourth, that wreathed Oxford print of Hales. The whole aapostolic succession of them.’

‘I never knew Morrison laid out links in France,’ I said.

‘Morrison? Links? Links? Did you think those four were gowfers then?’

‘Wasn’t old Tom Morrison a great golfer?’ I ventured.

McKnight turned on me with utter scorn. ‘Those prints—’ he began. ‘But ye’d not understand. They were—we’ll say they were just pictures of some garrdeners I happened to be interested in.’

This was rude of McKnight, but I forgave him because of the excellence of his imported groceries. Keede went on.

‘After Will had talked the usual buyer’s talk, Wollin seemed willin’ to part with ’em, and we arranged we’d call again and complete the deal. Will ’ud do business with a criminal on the drop o’ course. He gave Wollin his card, and we left; Wollin carneying and suckin’ up to us right to the front door. We hadn’t gone a couple of miles when Will found he’d given Wollin his personal card—not his business one—with his private address in Berkshire! The murder about ten days old, and the papers still stinkin’ with it! I think I told you at the time you were a fool, Will?’

‘You did. I never saw how I came to make the mistake. These cards are different sizes too,’ poor Lemming said.

‘No, we were not a success as man-hunters,’ Keede laughed. ‘But Will and I had to call again, of course, to settle the sale. That was a week after. And this time, of course, Wollin—not being as big a fool as Will—had hopped it and left no address. The old lady said he was given to going off for weeks at a time. That hung us up; but to do Will justice, which I don’t often, he saved the situation by his damned commercial instincts. He said he wanted to look at the prints again. The old lady was agreeable—rather forth-comin’ in fact. She let us into the study, had the prints down, and asked if we’d like some tea. While she was getting it, and Will was hanging over the prints, I looked round the room. There was a cupboard, half opened, full of tools, and on top of ’em a new—what did you say it was, Will?—fern-trowel. ’Same pattern as the one Nicol found by Ellen’s head. That gave me a bit of a turn. I’d never done any Sherlockin’ outside my own profession. Then the old lady came back and I made up to her. When I was a sixpenny doctor at Lambeth, half my great success——’

‘Ye can hold that over,’ McKnight observed. ‘The murrder’s what’s interestin’ me.’

‘Wait till your next go of gout. I’ll interest you, Sandy. Well, she expanded (they all do with me), and, like patients, she wanted advice gratis. So I gave it. Then she began talking about Wollin. She’d been his nurse, I fancy. Anyhow, she’d known him all his life, and she said he was full of virtue and sickness She said he’d been wounded and gassed and gangrened in the War, and after that—oh, she worked up to it beautifully—he’d been practically off his head. She called it “fairy-kist.”’

‘That’s pretty—very pretty,’ said Burges.

‘Meanin’ he’d been kissed by the fairies?’ McKnight inquired.

‘It would appear so, Sandy. I’d never heard the word before. ’West Country, I suppose. And she had one of those slow, hypnotic voices, like cream from a jug. Everything she said squared with my own theories up to date. Wollin was on the break of life, and, given wounds, gas, and gangrene just at that crisis, why anything—Jack the Ripperism or religious mania—might come uppermost. I knew that, and the old lady was as good as telling it me over again, and putting up a defence for him in advance. ’Wonderful bit of work. Patients’ relatives are like that sometimes—specially wives.’

‘Yes, but what about Wollin?’ I said.

‘Wait a bit. Will and I went away, and we talked over the fern-trowel and so forth, and we both agreed we ought to release our evidence. There, somehow, we stuck. Man-hunting’s a dirty job. So we compromised. I knew a fellow in the C.I.D., who thought he had a floating kidney, and we decided to put the matter before him and let him take charge. He had to go North, however, and he wrote he could not see us before the Tuesday of next week. This would be four or five weeks after the murder. I came down here again that week-end to stay with Will, and on Saturday night Will and I went to his study to put the finishing touches to our evidence. I was trying to keep my own theory out of it as much as I could. Yes, if you want to know, Jack the Ripper was my notion, and my theory was that my car had frightened the brute off before he could do anything in that line. And then, Will’s housemaid shot into the study with Nicol after her, and Jimmy Tigner after him!’

‘Luckily my wife was up in town at the time,’ said Lemming. ‘They all shouted at once too.’

‘They did! ‘ said Keede. ‘Nicol shouted loudest, though. He was plastered with mud, waving what was left of his helmet, and Jimmy was in hysterics. Nicol yelled:—“Look at me Look at this! It’s all right! Look at me! I’ve got it!” He had got it too! It came out, when they quieted down, that he had been walking with Jimmy in the lane by Channet’s Ash. Hearing a lorry behind ’em—you know what a narrow lane it is—they stepped up on to that path on the bank (I told you about it) that the school-children had made. It was a contractor’s lorry—Higbee and Norton, a local firm—with two girders for some new shops on the London Road. They were deliverin’ late on Saturday evening, so’s the men could start on Monday. Well, these girders had been chucked in anyhow on to a brick lorry with a tail-board. Instead of slopin’ forward they cocked up backwards like a pheasant’s tail, sticking up high and overhanging. They were tied together with a few turns of rope at the far ends. Do you see.’

So far we could see nothing. Keede made it plainer.

‘Nicol said he went up the bank first Jimmy behind him—and after a few steps he found his helmet knocked off. If he’d been a foot higher up the bank his head ’ud have gone. The lorry had skidded on the tar of the London Road, as it turned into it left-handed—her tail swung to the right, and the girders swung with it, just missing braining Nicol up on the bank. The lorry was well in the left-hand gutter when he got his breath again. He went for the driver at once. The man said all the lorries always skidded under Channet’s Ash, when it was wet, because of the camber of the road, and they allowed for it as a regular stunt. And he damned the road authorities, and Nicol for being in the light. Then Jimmy Tigner, Nicol told us, caught on to what it meant, and he climbed into the lorry shouting: “You killed Ellen!” It was all Nicol could do to prevent him choking the fellow there and then; but Nicol didn’t pull him off till Jimmy got it out of the driver that he had been delivering girders the night Ellen was killed. Of course, he hadn’t noticed anything.

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‘Then Nicol came over to Lemming and me to talk it over. I gave Jimmy a bromide and sent him off to his mother. He wasn’t any particular use, except as a witness—and no good after. Then Nicol went over the whole thing again several times, to fix it in our minds. Next morning he and I and Will called on old Higbee before he could get to church. We made him take out the particular lorry implicated, with the same driver, and a duplicate load packed the same way, and demonstrate for us. We kept her stunting half Sunday morning in the rain, and the skid delivered her into the left-hand gutter of the London Road every time she took that corner; and every time her tail with the girders swiped along the bank of that lane like a man topping a golf-ball. And when she did that, there were half-a-dozen paces—not more—along that schoolchildren’s path, that meant sure death to anyone on it at the time. Nicol was just climbing into the danger-zone when he stepped up, but he was a foot too low. The girders only brushed through his hair. We got some laths and stuck ’em in along the path (Jimmy Tigner told us Ellen was five foot three) to test our theory. The last lath was as near as could be to where the pig-man had found the body; and that happened to be the extreme end of the lorry’s skid. ’See what happened? We did. At the end of her skid the lorry’s rear wheels ’ud fetch up every time with a bit of a jar against the bank, and the girders ’ud quiver and lash out a few inches—like a golf-club wigglin’. Ellen must have caught just enough of that little sideway flick, at the base of her skull, to drop her like a pithed ox. We worked it all out on the last lath. The rope wrappings on the end of the damned things saved the skin being broken. Hellish, isn’t it? And then Jimmy Tigner realised that if she had only gone two paces further she’d have been round the corner of the bank and safe. Then it came back to him that she’d stopped talkin’ “in dungeon” rather suddenly, and he hadn’t gone back to see! I spent most of the afternoon sitting with him. He’d been tried too high—too high. I had to sign his certificate a few weeks later. No! He won’t get better.’

We commented according to our natures, and then McKnight said:—‘But—if so—why did Wollin disappear?’

‘That comes next on the agenda, Worshipful Sir. Brother Lemming has not the instincts of the real man-hunter. He felt shy. I had to remind him of the prints before he’d call on Wollin again. We’d allowed our prey ten days to get the news, while the papers were busy explainin’ Ellen’s death, and people were writin’ to ’em and saying they’d nearly been killed by lorries in the same way in other places. Then old Higbee gave Ellen’s people a couple of hundred without prejudice (he wanted to get a higher seat in the Synagogue—the Squire’s pew, I think), and everyone felt that her character had been cleared.’

‘But Wollin?’ McKnight insisted.

‘When Will and I went to call on him he’d come home again. I hadn’t seen him for—let’s see, it must have been going on for a month—but I hardly recognised him. He was burned out—all his wrinkles gashes, and his eyes readjustin’ ’emselves after looking into Hell. One gets to know that kind of glare nowadays. But he was immensely relieved to see us. So was the old lady. If he’d been a dog, he’d have been wagging his tall from the nose down. That was rather embarrassing too, because it wasn’t our fault we hadn’t had him tried for his life. And while we were talking over the prints, he said, quite suddenly: “I don’t blame you! I’d have believed it against myself on the evidence!” That broke the ice with a brick. He told us he’d almost stepped on Ellen’s body that night—dead and stiffening. Then I’d come round the corner and hailed him, and that panicked him. He jumped on his bike and fled, forgetting the trowel. So he’d bought another with some crazy notion of putting the Law off the track. That’s what hangs murderers.

‘When Will and I first called on him, with our fairy-tales about West Wickham, he had fancied he might be under observation, and Will’s mixing up the cards clinched it. . . . So he disappeared. He went down into his own cellar, he said, and waited there, with his revolver, ready to blow his brains out when the warrant came. What a month! Think of it! A cellar and a candle, a file of gardening papers, and a loaded revolver for company! Then I asked why. He said no jury on earth would have believed his explanation of his movements. “Look at it from the prosecution’s point of view,” he said. “Here’s a middle-aged man with a medical record that ’ud account for any loss of controls—and that would mean Broadmoor—fifty or sixty miles from his home in a rainstorm, on the top of a fifteen foot cutting, at night. He leaves behind him, with the girl’s body, the very sort of weapon that might have caused her death. I read about the trowel in the papers. Can’t you see how the thing ’ud be handled?” he said.

‘I asked him then what in the world he really was doing that had to be covered up by suicide. He said he was planting things. I asked if he meant stolen goods. After the trouble we’d given him, Will and I wouldn’t have peached on him for that, would we, Will?’

‘No,’ said Lemming. ‘His face was enough. It was like——’ and he named a picture by an artist called Goya.

‘“Stolen goods be damned,” Wollin said to me. “If you must have it, I was planting out plants from my garden.” What did you say to him then, Will?’

‘I asked him what the plants were, of course,’ said Lemming, and turned to McKnight. ‘They were daffodils, and a sort of red honeysuckle, and a special loosestrife—a hybrid.’ McKnight nodded judicially while Lemming talked incomprehensible horticulture for a minute or two.

‘Gardening isn’t my line,’ Keede broke in, ‘but Will’s questions acted on Master Wollin like a charm. He dropped his suicide talk, and began on gardening. After that it was Will’s operation. I hadn’t a look-in for ten minutes. Then I said: “What’s there to make a fuss about in all this?” Then he turned away from Will and spoke to me, carneying again—like patients do. He began with his medical record—one shrapnel peppering, and one gassing, with gangrene. He had put in about fourteen months in various hospitals, and he was full of medical talkee-talkee. Just like you, Sandy, when you’ve been seeing your damned specialists. And he’d been doped for pain and pinched nerves, till the wonder was he’d ever pulled straight again. He told us that the only thing that had helped him through the War was his love of gardening. He’d been mad keen on it all his life—and even in the worst of the Somme he used to get comfort out of plants and bot’ny, and that sort of stuff. I never did. Well, I saw he was speaking the truth; but next minute he began to hedge. I noticed it, and said something, and then he sweated in rivers. He hadn’t turned a hair over his proposed suicide, but now he sweated till he had to wipe it off his forehead.

‘Then I told him I was something else besides a G.P., and Will was too, if that ’ud make things easier for him. And it did. From then on he told the tale on the Square, in grave distress, you know. At his last hospital he’d been particularly doped, and he fancied that that was where his mind had gone. He told me that he was insane, and had been for more than a year. I asked him not to start on his theories till he’d finished with his symptoms. (You patients are all the same.) He said there were Gotha raids round his hospital, which used to upset the wards. And there was a V.A.D.—she must have been something of a woman, too—who used to read to him and tell him stories to keep him quiet. He liked. ’em because, as far as he remembered, they were all about gardening. But, when he grew better, he began to hear Voices—little whispers at first, growing louder and ending in regular uproars—ordering him to do certain things. He used to lie there shaking with horror, because he funked going mad. He wanted to live and be happy again, in his garden—like the rest of us.

page 5

‘When he was discharged, he said, he left hospital with a whole Army Corps shouting into his ears. The sum and substance of their orders was that he must go out and plant roots and things at large up and down the country-side. Naturally, he suffered a bit, but, after a while, he went back to his house at Mitcham and obeyed orders, because, he said, as long as he was carrying ’em out the Voices stopped. If he knocked off even for a week, he said, they helled him on again. Being a methodical bird, he’d bought a motor-bike and a basket lined with oil-cloth, and he used to skirmish out planting his silly stuff by the wayside, and in coppices and on commons. He’d spy out likely spots by day and attend to ’em after dark. He was working round Channet’s Ash that night, and he’d come out of the meadow, and down the school-children’s path, right on to Ellen’s body. That upset him. I wasn’t worryin’ about Ellen for the moment. I headed him back to his own symptoms. The devil of it was that, left to himself, there was nothing he’d have liked better than this planting job; but the Voices ordering him to do it, scared the soul out of him. Then I asked him if the Voices had worried him much when he was in the cellar with his revolver. He said, comin’ to think of it, that they had not; and I reminded him that there was very little seasickness in the boats when submarines were around.’

‘You’ve forgotten,’ said Lemming, ‘that he stopped fawning as soon as he found out we were on the Square.’

‘He did so,’ Keede assented. ‘And he insisted on our staying to supper, so’s he could tell his symptoms properly. (’Might have been you again, Sandy.) The old lady backed him up. She was clinging to us too, as though we’d done her a favour. And Wollin told us that if he’d been in the dock, he knew he’d have come out with his tale of his Voices and night-plantings, just like the Ancient Mariner; and that would have sent him to Broadmoor. It was Broadmoor, not hanging, that he funked. And so he went on and on about his Voices, and I cross-examined. He said they used to begin with noises in his head like rotten walnuts being smashed; but he fancied that must have been due to the bombs in the raid. I reminded him again that I didn’t want his theories. The Voices were sometimes like his V.A.D.’s, but louder, and they were all mixed up with horrible dope-dreams. For instance, he said, there was a smiling dog that ran after him and licked his face, and the dog had something to do with being able to read gardening books, and that gave him the notion, as he lay abed in hospital, that he had water on the brain, and that that ’ud prevent him from root-gatherin’ an’ obeying his orders.’

‘He used the words “root-gathering.” It’s an unusual combination nowadays,’ said Lemming suddenly. ‘That made me take notice, Sandy.’

Keede held up his hand. ‘No, you don’t, Will! I tell this tale much better than you. Well, then Will cut in, and asked Wollin if he could remember exactly what sort of stuff his V.A.D. had read to him during the raids. He couldn’t; except that it was all about gardening, and it made him feel as if he were in Paradise. Yes, Sandy, he used the word “Paradise.” Then Will asked him if he could give us the precise wording of his orders to plant things. He couldn’t do that either. Then Will said, like a barrister: “I put it to you, that the Voices ordered you to plant things by the wayside for such as have no gardens.” And Will went over it slowly twice. “My God!” said Wollin. “That’s the ipsissima verba.” “Good,” said Will. “Now for your dog. I put it to you that the smiling dog was really a secret friend of yours. What was his colour?” “Dunno,” said Wollin. “It was yellow,” says Will. “A big yellow bullterrier.” Wollin thought a bit and agreed. “When he ran after you,” says Will, “did you ever hear anyone trying to call him off, in a very loud voice?” “Sometimes,” said Wollin. “Better still,” says Will. “Now, I put it to you that that yellow bull-terrier came into a library with a Scotch gardener who said it was a great privilege to be able to consult botanical books.” Wollin thought a bit, and said that those were some of the exact words that were mixed up with his Voices, and his trouble about not being able to read. I shan’t forget his face when he said it, either. My word, he sweated.’

Here Sandy McKnight smiled and nodded across to Lemming, who nodded back as mysteriously as a Freemason or a gardener.

‘All this time,’ Keede continued, ‘Will looked more important than ever I’ve seen him outside of his shop; and he said to Wollin: “Now I’ll tell you the story, Mr. Wollin, that your V.A.D. read or told you. Check me where your memory fails, and I’ll refresh it.” That’s what you said, wasn’t it, Will? And Will began to spin him a long nursery-yarn about some children who planted flowers out in a meadow that wasn’t theirs, so that such as had no gardens might enjoy them; and one of the children called himself an Honest Rootgatherer, and one of ’em had something like water on the brain; and there was an old Squire who owned a smiling yellow bull-terrier that was fond of the children, and he kept his walnuts till they were rotten, and then he smashed ’em all. You ought to have heard Will! He can talk—even when there isn’t money in it.’

‘Mary’s Meadow!’ Sandy’s hand banged the table.

‘Hsh!’ said Burges, enthralled. ‘Go on, Robin.’

‘And Wollin checked it all, with the sweat drying on him—remember, Will?—and he put in his own reminiscences—one about a lilac sun-bonnet, I remember.’

‘Not lilac-marigold. One string of it was canary-colour and one was white.’ McKnight corrected as though this were a matter of life and death.

‘Maybe. And there was a nightingale singing to the Man in the Moon, and an old Herbal—not Gerard’s, or I’d have known it—“Paradise” something. Wollin contributed that sort of stuff all the time, with ten years knocked off his shoulders and a voice like the Town Crier’s. Yes, Sandy, the story was called Mary’s Meadow. It all came back to him—via Will.’

‘And that helped?’ I asked.

‘Well, Keede said slowly, ‘a General Practitioner can’t much believe in the remission of sins, can he? But if that’s possible, I know how a redeemed soul looks. The old lady had pretended to get supper, but she stopped when Will began his yarn, and listened all through. Then Wollin put up his hand, as though he were hearing his dam’ Voices. Then he brushed ’em away, and he dropped his head on the table and wept. My God, how he wept! And then she kissed him, and me. Did she kiss you, Will?’

‘She certainly did not,’ said the scandalised Lemming, who has been completely married for a long while.

‘You missed something. She has a seductive old mouth still. And Wollin wouldn’t let us go—hung on to us like a child. So, after supper, we went over the affair in detail, till all hours. The pain and the dope had made that nursery story stick in one corner of his mind till it took charge—it does sometimes—but all mixed up with bombings and nightmares. As soon as he got the explanation it evaporated like ether and didn’t leave a stink. I sent him to bed full of his own beer, and growing a shade dictatorial. He was a not uncommon cross between a brave bully and an old maid; but a man, right enough, when the pressures were off. The old lady let us out—she didn’t kiss me again, worse luck! She was primitive Stone Age—bless her! She looked on us as a couple of magicians who’s broken the spell on him, she said.’

‘Well, you had,’ said Burges. ‘What did he do afterwards?’

‘’Bought a side-car to his bike, to hold more vegetables—he’ll be had up for poaching or trespassing, some day—and he cuts about the Home Counties planting his stuff as happy as—Oh my soul! What wouldn’t I give to be even one fraction as happy as he is! But, mind you, he’d have committed suicide on the nod if Will and I had had him arrested. We aren’t exactly first-class Sherlocks.’

McKnight was grumbling to himself. ‘Juliaana Horratia Ewing,’ said he. ‘The best, the kindest, the sweetest, the most eenocent tale ever the soul of a woman gied birth to. I may sell tapioca for a living in the suburbs, but I know that. An’ as for those prints o’ mine,’ he turned to me, ‘they were not garrdeners. They were the Four Great British Botanists, an’—an’—I ask your pardon.’

He pulled the draw-chains of all the nine burners round the Altar of the Lesser Lights before we had time to put it to the vote.

[a short tale]

THIS is your English Justice, Protector of the Poor. Look at my back and loins which are beaten with sticks—heavy sticks! I am a poor man, and there is no justice in Courts. There were two of us, and we were born of one birth, but I swear to you that I was born the first, and Ram Dass is the younger by three full breaths. The astrologer said so, and it is written in my horoscope—the horoscope of Durga Dass.

But we were alike—I and my brother, who is a beast without honour—so alike that none knew, together or apart, which was Durga Dass. I am a Mahajun of Pali in Marwar, and an honest man. This is true talk. When we were men, we left our father’s house in Pali, and went to the Punjab, where all the people are mud-heads and sons of asses. We took shop together in Isser Jang—I and my brother—near the big well where the Governor’s camp draws water. But Ram Dass, who is without truth, made quarrel with me, and we were divided. He took his books, and his pots, and his Mark, and became a bunnia—a money-lender—in the long street of Isser Jang, near the gateway of the road that goes to Montgomery. It was not my fault that we pulled each other’s turban. I am a Mahajun of Pali, and I always speak true talk. Ram Dass was the thief and the liar.

Now no man, not even the little children, could at one glance see which was Ram Dass and which was Durga Dass. But all the people of Isser Jang—may they die without sons!—said that we were thieves. They used much bad talk, but I took money on their bedsteads and their cooking-pots, and the standing crop and the calf unborn, from the well in the big square to the gate of the Montgomery road. They were fools, these people—unfit to cut the toe-nails of a Marwari from Pali. I lent money to them all. A little, very little only—here a pice and there a pice. God is my witness that I am a poor man! The money is all with Ram Dass—may his sons turn Christian, and his daughter be a burning fire and a shame in the house from generation to generation! May she die unwed, and be the mother of a multitude of bastards! Let the light go out in the house of Ram Dass, my brother. This I pray daily twice—with offerings and charms.

Thus the trouble began. We divided the town of Isser Jang between us—I and my brother. There was a landholder beyond the gates, living but one short mile out, on the road that leads to Montgomery, and his name was Mohammed Shah, son of a Nawab. He was a great devil and drank wine. So long as there were women in his house, and wine and money for the marriage-feasts, he was merry and wiped his mouth. Ram Dass lent him the money, a lakh or half a lakh—how do I know?—and so long as the money was lent, the landholder cared not what he signed.

The people of Isser Jang were my portion, and the landholder and the out-town were the portion of Ram Dass; for so we had arranged. I was the poor man, for the people of Isser Jang were without wealth. I did what I could, but Ram Dass had only to wait without the door of the landholder’s garden-court, and to lend him the money, taking the bonds from the hand of the steward.

In the autumn of the year after the lending, Ram Dass said to the landholder: ‘Pay me my money,’ but the landholder gave him abuse. But Ram Dass went into the Courts with the papers and the bonds—all correct—and took out decrees against the landholder; and the name of the Government was across the stamps of the decrees. Ram Dass took field by field, and mango-tree by mango-tree, and well by well; putting in his own men—debtors of the out-town of Isser Jang—to cultivate the crops. So he crept up across the land, for he had the papers, and the name of the Government was across the stamps, till his men held the crops for him on all sides of the big white house of the landholder. It was well done; but when the landholder saw these things he was very angry and cursed Ram Dass after the manner of the Mohammedans.

And thus the landholder was angry, but Ram Dass laughed and claimed more fields, as was written upon the bonds. This was in the month of Phagun. I took my horse and went out to speak to the man who makes lac-bangles upon the road that leads to Montgomery, because he owed me a debt. There was in front of me, upon his horse, my brother Ram Dass. And when he saw me he turned aside into the high crops, because there was hatred between us. And I went forward till I came to the orange-bushes by the landholder’s house. The bats were flying, and the evening smoke was low down upon the land. Here met me four men—swashbucklers and Mohammedans—with their faces bound up, laying hold of my horse’s bridle and crying out: ‘This is Ram Dass! Beat!’ Me they beat with their staves—heavy staves bound about with wire at the end, such weapons as those swine of Punjabis use—till, having cried for mercy, I fell down senseless. But these shameless ones still beat me, saying: ‘O Ram Dass, this is your interest—well-weighed and counted into your hand, Ram Dass.’ I cried aloud that I was not Ram Dass, but Durga Dass, his brother, yet they only beat me the more, and when I could make no more outcry they left me. But I saw their faces. There was Elahi Baksh who runs by the side of the landholder’s white horse, and Nur Ali the keeper of the door, and Wajib Ali the very strong cook, and Abdul Latif the messenger—all of the household of the landholder. These things I can swear on the Cow’s Tail if need be, but—Ahi! Ahi!—they have been already sworn, and I am a poor man whose honour is lost.

When these four had gone away laughing, my brother Ram Dass came out of the crops and mourned over me as one dead. But I opened my eyes, and prayed him to get me water. When I had drunk, he carried me on his back, and by byways brought me into the town of Isser Jang. My heart was turned to Ram Dass, my brother, in that hour because of his kindness, and I lost my enmity.

But a snake is a snake till it is dead; and a liar is a liar till the judgment of the Gods takes hold of his heel. I was wrong in that I trusted my brother—the son of my mother.

When we had come to his house and I was a little restored, I told him my tale, and he said ‘Without doubt, it is me whom they would have beaten. But the Law Courts are open, and there is the justice of the Sirkar above all; and to the Law Courts do thou go when this sickness is overpast.’

Now when we two had left Pali in the old years, there fell a famine that ran from Jeysulmir to Gurgaon and touched Gogunda in the south. At that time the sister of my father came away and lived with us in Isser Jang; for a man must above all see that his folk do not die of want. When the quarrel between us twain came about, the sister of my father—a lean she-dog without teeth—said that Ram Dass had the right, and went with him. Into her hands—because she knew medicines and many cures—Ram Dass, my brother, put me faint with the beating, and much bruised even to the pouring of blood from the mouth. When I had two days’ sickness the fever came upon me; and I set aside the fever to the account written in my mind against the landholder.

The Punjabis of Isser Jang are all the sons of Belial and a she-ass, but they are very good witnesses, bearing testimony unshakenly whatever the pleaders may say. I would purchase witnesses by the score, and each man should give evidence, not only against Nur Ali, Wajib Ali, Abdul Latif, and Elahi Baksh, but against the landholder, saying that he upon his white horse had called his men to beat me; and, further, that they had robbed me of two hundred rupees. For the latter testimony, I would remit a little of the debt of the man who sold the lac-bangles, and he should say that he had put the money into my hands, and had seen the robbery from afar, but, being afraid, had run away. This plan I told to my brother Ram Dass; and he said that the arrangement was good, and bade me take comfort and make swift work to be abroad again. My heart was opened to my brother in my sickness, and I told him the names of those whom I would call as witnesses—all men in my debt, but of that the Magistrate Sahib could have no knowledge, nor the landholder. The fever stayed with me, and after the fever I was taken with colic and gripings very terrible. In that day I thought that my end was at hand, but I know now that she who gave me the medicines, the sister of my father—a widow with a widow’s heart—had brought about my second sickness. Ram Dass, my brother, said that my house was shut and locked, and brought me the big door-key and my books, together with all the moneys that were in my house—even the money that was buried under the floor; for I was in great fear lest thieves should break in and dig. I speak true talk; there was but very little money in my house. Perhaps ten rupees—perhaps twenty. How can I tell? God is my witness that I am a poor man.

One night, when I had told Ram Dass all that was in my heart of the lawsuit that I would bring against the landholder, and Ram Dass had said that he had made the arrangements with the witnesses, giving me their names written, I was taken with a new great sickness, and they put me on the bed. When I was a little recovered—I cannot tell how many days afterwards—I made inquiry for Ram Dass, and the sister of my father said that he had gone to Montgomery upon a lawsuit. I took medicine and slept very heavily without waking. When my eyes were opened there was a great stillness in the house of Ram Dass, and none answered when I called—not even the sister of my father. This filled me with fear, for I knew not what had happened.

Taking a stick in my hand, I went out slowly, till I came to the great square by the well, and my heart was hot in me against the landholder because of the pain of every step I took.

I called for Jowar Singh, the carpenter, whose name was first upon the list of those who should bear evidence against the landholder, saying: ‘Are all things ready, and do you know what should be said?’

Jowar Singh answered: ‘What is this, and whence do you come, Durga Dass?’

I said: ‘From my bed, where I have so long lain sick because of the landholder. Where is Ram Dass, my brother, who was to have made the arrangement for the witnesses? Surely you and yours know these things!’

Then Jowar Singh said: ‘What has this to do with us, O Liar? I have borne witness and I have been paid, and the landholder has, by the order of the Court, paid both the five hundred rupees that he robbed from Ram Dass and yet other five hundred because of the great injury he did to your brother.’

The well and the jujube-tree above it and the square of Isser Jang became dark in my eyes, but I leaned on my stick and said: ‘Nay! This is child’s talk and senseless. It was I who suffered at the hands of the landholder, and I am come to make ready the case. Where is my brother Ram Dass?’

But Jowar Singh shook his head, and a woman cried: ‘What lie is here? What quarrel had the landholder with you, bunnia? It is only a shameless one and one without faith who profits by his brother’s smarts. Have these bunnias no bowels?’

I cried again, saying: ‘By the Cow—by the Oath of the Cow, by the Temple of the Blue-throated Mahadeo, I and I only was beaten—beaten to the death! Let your talk be straight, O people of Isser Jang, and I will pay for the witnesses.’ And I tottered where I stood, for the sickness and the pain of the beating were heavy upon me.

Then Ram Narain, who has his carpet spread under the jujube-tree by the well, and writes all letters for the men of the town, came up and said: ‘To-day is the one-and-fortieth day since the beating, and since these six days the case has been judged in the Court, and the Assistant Commissioner Sahib has given it for your brother Ram Dass, allowing the robbery, to which, too, I bore witness, and all things else as the witnesses said. There were many witnesses, and twice Ram Dass became senseless in the Court because of his wounds, and the Stunt Sahib—the baba Stunt Sahib—gave him a chair before all the pleaders. Why do you howl, Durga Dass? These things fell as I have said. Was it not so?’

And Jowar Singh said: ‘That is truth. I was there, and there was a red cushion in the chair.’

And Ram Narain said: ‘Great shame has come upon the landholder because of this judgment, and, fearing his anger, Ram Dass and all his house have gone back to Pali. Ram Dass told us that you also had gone first, the enmity being healed between you, to open a shop in Pali. Indeed, it were well for you that you go even now, for the landholder has sworn that if he catch any one of your house, he will hang him by the heels from the well-beam, and, swinging him to and fro, will beat him with staves till the blood runs from his ears. What I have said in respect to the case is true, as these men here can testify—even to the five hundred rupees.’

I said: ‘Was it five hundred?’ And Kirpa Ram, the Jat, said: ‘Five hundred; for I bore witness also.’

And I groaned, for it had been in my heart to have said two hundred only.

Then a new fear came upon me and my bowels turned to water, and, running swiftly to the house of Ram Dass, I sought for my books and my money in the great wooden chest under my bedstead. There remained nothing—not even a cowrie’s value. All had been taken by the devil who said he was my brother. I went to my own house also and opened the boards of the shutters; but there also was nothing save the rats among the grain-baskets. In that hour my senses left me, and, tearing my clothes, I ran to the well-place, crying out for the justice of the English on my brother Ram Dass, and, in my madness, telling all that the books were lost. When men saw that I would have jumped down the well they believed the truth of my talk, more especially because upon my back and bosom were still the marks of the staves of the landholder.

Jowar Singh the carpenter withstood me, and turning me in his hands—for he is a very strong man—showed the scars upon my body, and bowed down with laughter upon the well-curb. He cried aloud so that all heard him, from the well-square to the Caravanserai of the Pilgrims ‘Oho! The jackals have quarrelled, and the grey one has been caught in the trap. In truth, this man has been grievously beaten, and his brother has taken the money which the Court decreed! Oh, bunnia, this shall be told for years against you! The jackals have quarrelled, and, moreover, the books are burned. O people indebted to Durga Dass—and I know that ye be many—the books are burned!’

Then all Isser Jang took up the cry that the books were burned—Ahi! Ahi! that in my folly I had let that escape my mouth—and they laughed throughout the city. They gave me the abuse of the Punjabi, which is a terrible abuse and very hot; pelting me also with sticks and cow-dung till I fell down and cried for mercy.

Ram Narain, the letter-writer, bade the people cease, for fear that the news should get into Montgomery, and the Policemen might come down to inquire. He said, using many bad words ‘This much mercy will I do to you, Durga Dass, though there was no mercy in your dealings with my sister’s son over the matter of the dun heifer. Has any man a pony on which he sets no store, that this fellow may escape? If the landholder hears that one of the twain (and God knows whether he beat one or both, but this man is certainly beaten) be in the city, there will be a murder done, and then will come the Police, making inquisition into each man’s house and eating the sweet-seller’s stuff all day long.’

Kirpa Ram, the Jat, said: ‘I have a pony very sick. But with beating he can be made to walk for two miles. If he dies, the hide-sellers will have the body.’

Then Chumbo, the hide-seller, said: ‘I will pay three annas for the body, and will walk by this man’s side till such time as the pony dies. If it be more than two miles, I will pay two annas only.’

Kirpa Ram said: ‘Be it so.’ Men brought out the pony, and I asked leave to draw a little water from the well, because I was dried up with fear.

Then Ram Narain said: ‘Here be four annas. God has brought you very low, Durga Dass, and I would not send you away empty, even though the matter of my sister’s son’s dun heifer be an open sore between us. It is a long way to your own country. Go, and if it be so willed, live; but, above all, do not take the pony’s bridle, for that is mine.’

And I went out of Isser Jang amid the laughing of the huge-thighed Jats, and the hide-seller walked by my side waiting for the pony to fall dead. In one mile it died, and being full of fear of the landholder, I ran till I could run no more, and came to this place.

But I swear by the Cow, I swear by all things whereon Hindus and Mohammedans, and even the Sahibs swear, that I, and not my brother, was beaten by the landholder. But the case is shut, and the doors of the Law Courts are shut, and God knows where the baba Stunt Sahib—the mother’s milk is not dry upon his hairless lip—is gone. Ahi! Ahi! I have no witnesses, and the scars will heal, and I am a poor man. But, on my Father’s Soul, on the oath of a Mahajun from Pali, I, and not my brother, I was beaten by the landholder!

What can I do? The Justice of the English is as a great river. Having gone forward, it does not return. Howbeit, do you, Sahib, take a pen and write clearly what I have said, that the Dipty Sahib may see, and reprove the Stunt Sahib, who is a colt yet unlicked by the mare, so young is he. I, and not my brother, was beaten, and he is gone to the west—I do not know where.

But, above all things, write—so that the Sahibs may read, and his disgrace be accomplished—that Ram Dass, my brother, son of Purun Dass, Mahajun of Pali, is a swine and a night-thief, a taker of life, an eater of flesh, a jackal-spawn without beauty, or faith, or cleanliness, or honour!