pages 1 of 12

Our Lord Who did the Ox command
To kneel to Judah’s King,
He binds His frost upon the land,
To ripen it for spring;
To ripen it for spring, good sirs,
According to His Word-
Which well must be, as you can see
And who shall judge the Lord?

When we poor fenners skate the ice,
Or shiver on the wold,
We hear the cry of a single tree
That breaks her heart in the cold
That breaks her heart in the cold, good sirs,
And rendeth by the board-
Which well must be, as you can see
And who shall judge the Lord?

Her wood is craized and little worth
Excepting as to burn,
So we may warm and make our mirth
Until the Spring return;
Until the Spring return, good sirs,
With marish all abroad
Which well must be, as you can see:
And who shall judge the Lord?

God bless the master of this house
And all that sleep therein
And guard the fens from pyrat folk
And save us from all sin!
To walk in charity, good sirs,
As well we may afford
Which shall befriend our later end,
Accounting to the Lord.

–Old Lincolnshire (?) Carol

FROM the little hill near Bloemfontein Old Fort you command ninety miles of country towards Kimberley; and when Kimberley besieged uses her searchlight you can see the wheeling beam as clearly as Israel saw the Pillar of Flame. If you are loyal you ascend the hill singing with your friends, and gloat over the ringed city. If you are disloyal you creep up without music, lie down among the boulders, hidden from the police, and whisper to fellow-disloyalists: ‘Kimberley’s all right.’

Allen, of the Bloemfontein Banner, though he did not gloat, was loyal. He had sailed to Cape Town from Edinburgh forty years ago, a master-printer moved suddenly to take up the missionary work which in those days was Scotland’s special field. There he met the Kaffir; saw through him with keen eyes, and, it is to be suspected, saw through the missionary; for he backslid to the stick and the case on an early upcountry paper. Then he married a Dutch girl — a connection of President Brand, and well-to-do. She led him across the Orange to a fat, lazy land full of cattle, slaves, and game; for the Free State ‘farmers’ had not yet discovered the European skin-market.

He farmed a little on his wife’s property; shot many a head of buck; went to Kimberley when De Beers was ‘Colesberg Kopje’; lost money in diamond mining, but made it helping to print the first paper on the fields; lost his wife of typhoid, refused more matrimony, and rediscovered his old love in the office of the young Bloemfontein Banner.

He was convinced that unless you treated Kaffirs much as the Dutch treated them, they were worthless; but he could not bring himself to the treatment which came so easily even to his adored Katie. Wherefore, he exchanged his farm for a little tin-roofed house on the outskirts of Bloemfontein, grew the roses of that favoured land, and for a few languid hours daily condescended to the Banner press-room.

It was an idyllic life, that began — after he had looked to his roses — with the little stroll through the broad streets where all Bloemfontein nodded friendlily; that led, with many street-corner conversations, across the market-square to his worn stool in the long, low Banner office. Here he crooned over the stick till lunch-time, locked up the page with old-fashioned wooden quoins, told the Kaffirs to pull a proof, corrected it, tolerant of many misprints (forty years in the Free State wear down Edinburgh standards), told another Kaffir to start the rheumatic old engine that temperately revolved the big press, and loafed out into the market-square.

The linen suit, long yellow beard streaked with white, the brown eyes behind the brass spectacles, the black velvet smoking-cap, and the green carpet-slippers were as well known in the square as the market building itself. When men saw the corner of Allen’s shoulder prop the corner of the chemist’s shop, where they sell Dutch and English medicines, they knew the Banner would be selling on the streets in ten minutes. When he shuffled between the ox-wagons, the bentwood pipe purring in his beard, Bloemfontein knew that Allen went to his roses and his evening’s levee in the veranda. His wife’s relations were many, and of exceeding friendliness. A few, nieces chiefly, were good-looking, and Allen’s home offered an excellent base for large young women from small villages, who came to shop in the capital. One or other of them would house-keep for him the year round, and all Katie’s kin were superb cooks.

As head of the Banner’s press-room, Allen was supposed to be well-informed politically, and on occasion would speak a good word for a backward advertiser. His levees were attended by English shopkeepers, farmers who, at their wives’ bidding, had stayed over to shop, and the small fry of casual stationmasters, guards, telegraphists, and subordinate civil servants. Then he would spread his slippered feet on the veranda rail, drink coffee, and, as a burgher of forty years’ standing, would expound the whole duty of the Free State, which was to keep itself to itself, and ‘chastise the Hollander.

In later years the Banner troubled him a little. He had seen it change from a leisurely medium for meditations on cattle-raising, reports of sermons, rifle meetings, and the sins of local officials, all padded with easy clippings out of English and Cape Town papers, to a purposeful, malignant daily under control of a German whose eyes, Allen said, were too close together, and whose aim in life seemed to be ridicule of the English.

Now Allen had no special love for the English, of whom there were many in Bloemfontein. He had seen them beaten in ’81, and though at the time he tried to explain what the resources of England were, had seen them stay beaten before all his world. They irritated him in some of their manifestations as an over-pernickety breed who would not when they first arrived think at the standard ox-wagon pace of two and a half miles an hour. But the sun and the soft airs, the lazy black labour, and the much talk by the wayside soon wheeled them into line.

What need, then, to worry and taunt them as did Bergmann? — for none, having once drunk of the Orange River, would return to stoepless, umbrellaed, unhallowed, competitive days in dirt at elbow-push of hungry equals.

English folk might be strangers in the land, but who, if you came to that, were the Bergmanns, the Enselins, the Hoffmanns, the Badenhorsts, the Sauers, and a hundred others? Moreover, Bergmann, when he was not prying into folk’s ancestry, had helped to found a thing called the Bond, and, by the same token, had been publicly rapped over the knuckles for it by none other than Allen’s uncle-in-law, the great Sir John Brand, who had written a letter that made Bergmann furious.

Allen agreed with his uncle-in-law. His vision did not extend much farther than a ford across the Orange River and a Dutch girl’s face under her cap, smiling at him as he clumsily whacked the oxen till they came up panting and wet-flanked into this, the land of his peace. For years Allen felt that Bergmann of the narrow eyes and the inveterate hate would trouble their large quiet, but — but he was accustomed to his seat in the Banner office, and his hands, itching for the type, drew him there daily. His tongue alone was unshackled by custom, and here the Scot in him died hard.

‘I’m a student o’ political economy myself,’ he said one evening, in the face of a most wonderful sunset. ‘An’ I’ve obsairved from my visits to Pretoria that the Hollander is a swine. He’s like the teredo in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. (There ought to be a copy of it in the office. Chambers is out of date.) Aye, Elsie’ — this to his wife’s second cousin, a lady with Pretoria graces —’I know ye marrit one, an’ ye can e’en tell him when ye go home my opeenion of his nationality. The Hollander’s the curse of the Transvaal. What for? Because the Transvaal’s eegnorant. The Hollander edges in, an’ edges in, an’ takes the tickets an’ runs the machinery o’ State. My word, if I trusted your Gert, Elsie, that’s the most eegnorant job—composer ever foaled, tho’ I took him for the sake o’ the family, an’ he’s some kin to Mrs. Bergmann too—I say, if I let your Gert order the new type, whaur’d I be? Preceesely whaur the Transvaal’ll be before many years.’

He emptied his cup and went on.

page 2

‘We must keep the Hollander out o’ here. With our system o’ education—an’ for that we must thank old Brand, my Katie’s uncle—they’ve precious little chance at our public offices. But they’ll try, an’ what they cannot wreck, they’ll ruin. There’s over-much runnin’ to and fro o’ Hollanders these days between Pretoria an’ here.’

No one cared to speak out in Aunt Elsie’s presence but three or four women of old Free State stock murmured assent. Time was when the Free State; better born and better educated, had been roughly looked up to by the unshorn Transvaal. Now the Transvaalers had grown rich beyond the wildest hopes of the Free State, and, if possible, ruder. In a hundred ways—principally by the Hollanders—it was borne in upon the Free State that she must take the second place in a new order. The Pretoria women, too, shopped at Johannesburg; and when one visited them they flaunted their crockery and their curtains in their sisters’ faces. Husbands grew rich in Pretoria. ‘Hollanders go away when they have made the money,’ one of the company hinted. ‘They are not good sons of the soil. Now, if we had not been cheated out of our diamond mines we should have been rich in the Free State too.’

‘Yes, but we know how to spend it when it is made,’ said Aunt Elsie, flushing angrily. ‘We do not count each lump of sugar in the coffee. And our funerals! You should just see! I had four new black silk dresses this year when the typhoid was so bad. At the back of our house’ — she leaned forward impressively, bulging in her French corsets — ‘there is a heap this high’ — she lifted an arm — ‘of empty tins. All tinned things. Our English servant is so wasteful.’

‘Ye’ve just hit it, Elsie. It’s the tins do the mischief. Ye’ve never had more than the rudiments of airth-scratchin’ — I’ll not call it farmin’—up yonder, but ye’re bywith that even. Last time I went to Groblaars after the buck, the whole deestrict was livin’ on options fra’ the minin’ companies—options an’ State grants. They’d done with the last pretence o’ farmin’ tobacco, mealies an’ all. They’d not put their hand to a single leevin’ thing, as I set here, except to order tinned goods fra’ Johannesburg — tinned things an’ sweeties. Ah, the tins!’

‘That is why you have so much typhoid,’ said the wife of a Bloemfontein saddler — an Old Colony girl, and shook her fingers daintily above the bowl of peach conserve.

‘They’ll pay for their tinned things. They’ll have Hollanders. Bergmann’s gone to his account, and I’ve naught to say of him. Mrs. Bergmann owns the Banner an’ his picture’s in the press-room. I asked him once if he wished to make the Free State a warld power. Almighty! The man was angry!’ ‘He only wrote the truth about the English. Bergmann was a verree great man. He started the Bond. He was a true patriot,’ said Aunt Elsie.

‘Ay. Verra like your husband in Pretoria, Elsie.’ ‘It is because you’re English in your heart. All you Uitlanders are alike.’

‘Take notice here, Elsie.’ Allen wagged a type-blackened forefinger across the table. ‘Bergmann picked up that talk about Uitlanders when he helped make the Bond that’s the curse of Africa; though Brand, my Katie’s uncle, told him he was sowin’ seeds o’ dissension where none should exist. He’s talked Uitlander, an’ I’ve set it up for him in Dutch an’ English. Pretoria picked Uitlander up from Bergmann, because you’re no’ clever enough in Pretoria to do more than steal — you Hollanders. Pour you another cup o’ coffee an’ stop fiddlin’ with your bonnet-strings, Elsie. Twenty year now — I mind the time there was none of it — you’ve been crying “Uitlander this, Uitlander that,” till you’re fair poisoned with it. There were no Uitlanders till Bergmann and the Bond that was his master, as he was mine, an’ Pretoria created them an’ stirred ’em up. Ye’ve heard o’ Frankenstein’s monster? It’s a common slip ye’re warned against in Edinburgh, not to let a contributor call him Frankenstein, an’ was a shillin’ fine in Blackwood’s. Well, we’ll let that pass. Ye’ve been at great pains to make a Frankenstein’s -‘

‘Ah, you always talk so sillee, uncle. I do not understand.’ ‘Ye will, Elsie — ye will. I’m foreman o’ the Banner press-room, an’ Mrs. Bergmann’s employee, because I just love the sound o’ the type, an’ I’m a burgher o’ forty years to boot — that’s more than most o’ them are. An’ I love my country. Wait a while, Elsie. Ye’ll see the end o’ what I’ve set up the beginning of.’

Young Dessauer, Mrs. Bergmann’s second cousin, now editor of the Banner, was doing his best to out-Herod his deceased uncle, whose portrait, in grievous oils, adorned the press-room. He had all the old man’s fluency, and none of his power.

Allen remembered — he had a long memory — the first time he had set up the phrases, ‘our Nation’ (upper case N), ‘the Afrikander Nationality,’ and the necessity for closer union.’ Now, it seemed, he composed little else.

Young Dessauer spent half his time in company of Hollanders from Pretoria — smooth-faced Continentals in black Albert coats and white linen—who spoke all tongues except honest Taal, and visited the President eternally. The compositors of the Banner talked much of the import of the leading articles that appeared after these interviews.

‘I’ve only one opeenion,’ said Allen, correcting proofs by the window: ‘if we go on as we’re gaun, we cut our own throats, neither more nor less. We need no dealin’s wi’ the Transvaal.’ This, of course, was duly reported to Dessauer, who spoke to Allen before the men. Said Allen, pushing up his spectacles: ‘It’s no odds to me if you dismiss me this day – except I’m thinkin’ you’ll find very few duplicates of Allen on the premises when ye want to make up the paper.’

‘That is not thee point,’ said young Dessauer, pulling up his collar. ‘You are no true son of the soil if you talk treason in this way. And in this office!’

‘And when did your father trek across the Orange?’ said Allen. ‘Fifteen years after me! He outspanned at my Katie’s door in the big drouth, an’ she took you from your mother’s arms an’ ye puked over the front of her frock. They’d gi’en you a bit o’ biltong to chew, because your mother had no milk, and it wrenched your prood stomach, Dessauer. Well, I’m waitin’ on ye. I was a burgher before ye were breeched. Maybe I’m too old to understand this talk o’ treason ye’re so dooms free with.’

‘I was only saying you have no right to talk so – unpatriotically in this office.’

‘If my country, that I’ve never set foot out of since the ‘Sixties, is to be jockeyed into a war by you an’ the likes o’ you, an’ that old fool that runs about writin’ his name in the girls’ plush autograph albums, I must not talk, eh? ‘Fore God, man, don’t I set up the mischief ye do? I helped Bergmann build his Uitlander bogey that served him so well. What more d’ye want? Ye’ll stop my talkin’ – me, a burgher o’ the Free State that was married to Brand’s niece, and out in Moshesh’s war, and a Blackwood’s man, before your mother met your father! Ye go too fast, Dessauer. This is the Free State—yet. We’ll wait till the Transvaal have annexed us before we shut our mouths. Lock up the telegraph page!’

Said Mrs. Bergmann of the placid face and the white hair when this rebellion was reported: ‘Yes — yes, nephew, he is no good in the politick, but he knows more about the paper than even I do. You know nothing, nephew, and he is cheap. Later on, when when things are different, we can teach him.’

page 3

The summer of that year was a sad time for the stranger in Bloemfontein. Thicker and thicker grew the press of agitated Hollanders at the President house; wilder and wilder grew Dessauer’s lead and blacker grew Allen’s face. Through many weeks he had heard nothing but appeals to God the Mauser — had set up fathoms of it — had seen advertisements give place to Government proclamations, and had wondered who paid for them.

Strangers from the North accused him of Uitlander sympathies in the market-square; his compositors were insubordinate, and old friends cut him in the street with ostentation. To be fair, these same friends would come by twilight among the roses, and in whispers ask what the Free State expected to gain from the war, and why — this in the smallest of whispers — the burghers had not been more freely consulted in the matter.

‘It’s too late to ask now. Ye’ve never read Carlyle’s French Revolution. I have. You’d not understand if I explained, but we’ve been denouncin’ each other for lack o’ patriotism till we’re just afraid to speak our own minds,’ he answered. ‘So, ye’ll note, the State has been sold for a handful of Transvaal tobacco — and we’ll not get the tobacco. We’ve asked the Hollander to put foot on our neck an’ he’s done it. He’ll bring in the Transvaaler that’s been livin’ on other people these past ten years. He’ll not reform now. Did ye note that Transvaal commando that’s camped behind the station? So long as they can lift cattle on the border they’ll leave us alone. If they come back they’ll take our stock. Mark my word! If we win we’ll be annexed by the Transvaal. If we lose—’

‘But you must not say that England will win, uncle,’ said the second Pretoria niece in charge, with a coquettish flirt of the head. ‘That would be traitorous. Look how we beat England in the last war!’

‘I’m saying nothing but that we’ll be annexed by the Transvaal. We’re annexed already, an’ not a man of us lifted his voice. They’ll strip us hoof, horn, an’ hide. Here endeth the Free State!’ He turned up the empty coffee-cup with a chuckle.

‘I’ll have to pay for this, but the truth’s never economical.’

In default of pony, horse, and bridle, they commandeered Allen to the tune of 450 sterling, and a field-cornet of old acquaintance tried to improve the occasion by a few remarks on treason. ‘Ye’re a fool,’ said Allen. ‘I know how much of a fool ye are, an’ that’s more even than your mother knows. Ye’re not a fool on your own account, which would be sense of a sort. Ye’re a Hollander’s fool sold like a Kaffir. An’ ye may tell whom ye please. Now, if ye’ll pack awa’ wi’ your folly on Niekirk’s best pony, which I see ye’ve stole for your own ends, I’ll e’en go to office an’ set up young Dessauer’s notion o’ the Free State as a Warld-Power.’

A few days later, Aunt Elsie came down from Pretoria on a visit, and explained how a field-cornet, her own nephew, had taken from her farm near Bloemfontein three yoke of bullocks after, for due consideration, he had promised to spare them.

‘That’s the beginnin’ o’t,’ said Allen grimly. ‘Hoof, horn, an’ hide, I think I said, Elsie?’ ‘How do I know what you said?’ she answered pettishly. ‘He gave me no commando—note. He drove them off the farm. He should have taken old Kok’s who is rich.’

‘But he’s gaun to marry Annette Kok after the war,’ Allen grinned.

‘Oh, that is it—is it? — the rascal! But what should I do? My husband is so busy — so busy at Pretoria—’ ‘No? He’ll not have gone on commando then?’ ‘And my brother, he is with Cronje. And my other brother, he is with Botha, and they will not write to me. They are so busy shooting rooineks— ‘and I want my oxen back. Here am I — an official’s wife — and they take my oxen, look you!’

‘Why don’t ye write to Botha or Cronje? — maybe they’ll listen. You’re the third woman o’ our kin that’s come to me to-day complainin’ o’ just this kind o’ trouble. An’ we’re only at the beginnin’!

‘Oh, but the war will be over in a few weeks. You think! Look how we have shot them everywhere. There are not enough more men in England to come. My husband says so.’

‘Elsie, woman, ye don’t know what war means nor I either. But we’ll know before the end. And,’ he added irrelevantly, ‘ye’ve not even seen Edinburgh.’

The commandos went southward in trains — Free Staters and Transvaalers together, each boasting against the other what they would do with the rooineks. It was rumoured that the Old Colony had risen even to the sea; that the Bond had thrown off the mask and established a Federal Government in Cape Town, and that the Queen of England had refused to sign the declaration of war.

Men returned by scores from Colesberg and the South on the easily granted furlough of those early days, and, laughing, said there was no need to fight — their friends across the border were doing it all for them. Here and there a man had been wounded, but the game went beyond all expectation.

Kimberley was cut off from help; Mafeking hung like a ripe plum ready to drop at a touch; Ladysmith was, incidentally, surrounded while the commandos swept towards the sea. Molteno, Middleburg, Aliwal North, Burghersdorp, Hopetown, Barkly West — they gave the well-known tale of the districts — were up and out; and the others behind them only waited till the Federal commandos should come through.

‘An’ I’m no’ fond o’ the word Federal,’ said Allen, as he set it up. ‘It’s the last step after annexation, instead o’ the first to it.’

The wounded arrived from Belmont (a few of them — the rest were placed in outlying hospitals) and Graspan and Modder. Allen did not quite understand the drift of the telegrams describing these events. Many, who till then had written regularly to their wives, ceased, and though the authorities explained that they were busy, the women felt uneasy. Moreover, there was a rumour — they learned it from a Transvaal commando going South and forgetting to pay for chickens — that the Free Staters had not done so well at Modder.

Then came the week of joy — Colenso, Stormberg, and Magersfontein in three blinding flashes. The Federals could hardly believe their luck — seventeen guns (it was thirty by the time the news reached Bloemfontein), 4000 killed, wounded, and prisoners! Surely the English would now see the error of the cruel war that they had forced upon a God-fearing race. The Banner said so, demanding indemnities and annexations by the irreducible minimum.

‘We’re lyin’ too much,’ thought Allen, toying with the tweezers ‘I’ve no supersteetious reverence for truth, but this is sheer waste. H’m! The English are fightin’ us wi’ native troops. Are they? It’s no’ likely.

page 4

‘They’re floggin’ prisoners an’ burnin’ an’ ravishin’ broadcast? No. That’s no’ likely either. Conteenuous black type tires the eye.’

He went on with his copy. ‘We’ve blown the guts out of a Highland Brigade; wiped up half a regiment o’ North Countrymen; an’ got all the guns o’ Buller’s brigade. I’m thinkin’ it’s no good policy to offend Scotland.’ He paused for a moment, penetrated with a new idea.

‘Fore God, it’s war! If we lose we’ll not get what the Transvaal got in ’61. It’s either us or Scotland — an’ that means all England. I wish we had some news o’ what they’re sendin’ by way of an army. They’re a dour folk, the Englishry, when they’re wrought to it.’

But that information was denied to the Bloemfontein Banner — whatever they might have known at Pretoria. Now and again a rumour broke through of a bay crowded with ships, of lines congested with troops, of a horrible silence of preparation, broken by words of caution from more far-seeing Bond friends in Cape Town. But no harm, so far, had befallen the Free State.

The men at the Front were all well – the field-cornets said so. They wrote little, but they fought with magnificent skill; never losing more than a score at the outside, and those, curiously, men of few kin. For visible sign of their success Bloemfontein could see the prisoners, and, better still, Kimberley searchlight whirling, whisking, and appealing. They made good jokes, men and maidens together, after dark, on the hill by the Old Fort, and the police, always armed, grinned tolerantly.

Thither, as was his custom in these later days, Allen with a lantern to guide his old feet among the rocks. The rumours troubled him. Young Dessauer’s face when he filled out the telegrams did not accord with their joyful news. Officials talked fluently and uneasily, but their eyes had not the inward light of victory, and, above all, people were forbidden to go down to the railway-station and speak to the English prisoners.

The Stormberg captives, the men taken round Colesberg, the two companies forgotten in a retirement, and neatly caught while waiting to entrain, were entirely sullen and uncommunicative, or uttered foolish threats of vengeance; but the later varieties, gathered here and there to the westward, and sent under escort of a northern commando to wait their turn for the up-country trains, spoke in another key. They were not grateful for small attentions. They asked for accommodation as by right, and begged their guards to be civil while yet chance offered.

The effect of this loose talk was counteracted by over-much official explanation, and it disturbed Allen’s mind. Telegrams came and went, commandos passed by day and night, firing out of the carriage windows in honour of Bloemfontein, and closed ambulance trains went northward. Nothing was constant except the flare from Kimberley—sometimes lifted like appealing arm, sometimes falling like a column, often broken as with horrible mirth.

‘See! See!’ said a girl, sitting on a camp-stool or hill. ‘Now Rhodes is hungry! He shakes his finger’

‘Oh, no,’ said the boy with her. ‘He is asking Cronje to stop firing while he eats his horse.’

‘I wish we could hear the guns.’

‘It is too far,’ said the boy. ‘Did you see Cronje’s big gun go across from here? It was a fine rooinek-shooter. My brother’ — he puffed his cigarette proudly — ‘Is in the States Artillery.’ ‘I like the little buk-buk guns best,’ the girl replied. She opened a basket and ate a sandwich, brushing away the crumbs from her Sunday frock.

‘I think I can hear guns,’ she said and clapped her hands.

‘That’s only thunder on the veldt,’ said Allen, coming up behind her. ‘Good evening, Ada Frick.’ ‘Oah ! Is that you, Mister Allen? You have come to see how your friends over there get on? They are having—ah—how do you Uitlanders say it? — a hot time in the town to-night.’

The boy, annoyed at an interrupted flirtation, passed over to a Johannesburg policeman squatted in the shadow. Bloemfontein was then policed in large part from Johannesburg; and Bloemfontein did not like it.

‘There is old Allen,’ he said. ‘You know about him? He is a traitor.’

‘Get out — go down,’ the man shouted. ‘Yes, you with the white beard. You have no business here, you old rebel. Keep with the other Uitlanders!’

‘Are you a Portugee, or a Hollander, or a Dane, or what?’ Allen replied. ‘You can’t talk the Taal.’ As a matter of fact he was a young German, rather in request at certain Bloemfontein tea-parties. He replied: ‘Go away. We know all about you. You’ve come up here to signal to Kimberley with that lantern.’ Allen laughed aloud. ‘Then if you know that much, you may know I marrit President Brand’s niece. I’ve not been reckoned a traitor for some few years. But we’re all traitors now.’

‘Huh!’ said the girl, with a giggle. ‘We all know that the Brand people were not true sons of the soil. That is not a good family to belong to, these times.’

Allen was used to personal insult — who had never known a hard word till six months ago — but the reflection on his Katie’s kin cut him to the bone.

‘At any rate,’ he began, but bit off the sentence. After all, it was no fault of the girl’s that she was tainted with native blood. A Frick — and all the earth that had eyes knew whence the Fricks had drawn their black hair crisping at the temple and the purplish moons at the base of their finger-nails — a Bloemfontein Frick, of too-patent ancestry, had derided Brand, whose statue stands at the head of the town!

He stumbled downward, raging, pursued by the laughter of the little company. ‘Brand no son of the soil — Brand! An’ a Zarp — a Johannesburger — to tell me I’m a traitor! I’ve never hoped the English ‘ud win, but I hope it now — I hope it now! The damned, ungrateful half-breeds.’ There was a light in the Banner press-room as he passed.

‘More proclamations,’ he said bitterly. ‘They keep the job side busy these days. Maybe young Dessauer thinks he’ll be made Secretary o’ State if he does not press for the bill. What’s here, Gert?’ he asked at the door.

‘The proclamation,’ Gert grinned; and Allen watched his hands above the case.

‘That’s no English you’re setting up. What is it?’ ‘Basuto,’ said Gert. ‘The Proclamation.’ Evidently the youngster had private information, denied to his superior.

page 5

Allen’s heart stood still. He had heard wild threats that, before long, the Basutos would be formally invited to rise against the English, but in Bloemfontein that talk was coldly received. They had, of course, employed Kaffirs to hold horses, dig trenches, bring up food and ammunition, in extreme cases to cover an advance, and always to haul guns. But no responsible man contemplated openly putting the war on a direct black and white basis, calling upon the black to rise against the white. Much of the fighting had, of design, been pitched between Zululand and Basutoland, that the two races from their hills might learn which was the power to be feared. That and the raiding of weak tribes was entirely fair, since all the world knew the English were using black troops from India and committing every horror.

But Allen, who set up young Dessauer’s telegrams, and had talked to a few prisoners since October, did his own thinking by the composing-table, while Gert set Basuto in English type — all n’s and m’s. Admitting the charges against the English, the risk to the Federals from their own allies would be … Allen thought of the outlying farms and shuddered. Then the shame of it struck him across the face. He did not believe in the Dutch treatment of the black; but that the black should be called in as an equal in this game — called in by bribes and sweet words — was a matter unbelievable. ‘An’ Brand was no true son o’ the soil, Miss Frick!’

He mopped his forehead. ‘First Bergmann an’ the Bond; then the Transvaal an’ the Hollanders; an’ then the Basutos. We’re doin’ well! We’re comin’ on! We’re gaun beggin’ to the Basutos. If they rise — but why did they not rise before? They canna expect a Magersfontein every week o’ the year. They’ve a bitter score against us. What good ‘ud their help be? … But if the English are usin’ Gurkhas, why haven’t the English used Basutos? ‘Fore God, I’d shoulder rifle to-morrow if they did! They’ve had time enough. What’s holdin’ them? . . . Oh, some one will go to Hell for this.’

Gert pulled a proof on the roller-press. Mechanically Allen pulled another, driving the types almost through the cheap pulpy paper, and stuck it on an old job file. He relit his pipe and turned out to think. A man on horseback, his ankle rudely bandaged, crossed the empty market-square gabbling to a policeman.

‘It stinks, it stinks, it stinks!’ he cried thickly. ‘Everything stinks. I have asked a hundred times for clean water. Get it.’

‘Come back to the hospital! He has got fever. He has just run out from the hospital,’ the policeman explained to Allen in the starlight, overlooking the fact that hospital patients are not, as a rule, booted, spurred, and plastered with dry mud.

‘Hospital !’ The man reined up sharply. ‘That is a lie. I have come from Hell — from Cronje’s head-laager, in Hell. They have all the guns in the world there, big and little — little and big. But they all stink. Cronje led us into Hell! I came out on my belly when the guns stopped.’

‘Yes, yes. It will be all clean in hospital. You are waking the people. Come!’

The fevered wretch’s face puckered with terror. ‘You will only take me into another laager! Let me go. I will run! Tell me where to ride! For God’s sake, where shall I ride? The veldt is alive with them, they are coming out of the ground. They are round the laager! Listen! Buk—buk—buk—buk,’ he quacked horribly, imitating the sound of a pom-pom; then, wrenching his horse free, fled at a gallop across the stale dust.

‘Run! run! run!’ The shouts died away by the railway-station.

‘What is it?’ some one called from a hotel veranda. ‘A typhoid man escaped from the hospital,’ the policeman answered.

‘But what did he say about Cronje ?’ another voice demanded.

‘Oh, he wanted to go and help Cronje shoot rooineks —a true patriot, even when he has fever.’ The policeman mounted and cantered after his patriot.

‘It does not coincide with the telegrams. The man’s right. It all stinks—o’ lies,’ thought Allen. When he reached his roses, the Free State was poorer by the loss of one burgher.

Next day he set up telegrams describing a large capture of mules by Cronje. The wire came from Pretoria. That afternoon Miss Frick complained pettishly that the police would not let people go up the Old Fort Hill to watch Kimberley light.

Then came by, very drunk, and this was remarkable, Andrew Morgan, usually of irreproachable habits, who had wool interests in the town, and till that hour had walked discreetly. His tie was under one ear his hat was battered out of shape, and his merry legs strayed all whither over the pavement. He sat on the steps of the post office, smiling at the police and the women, who expected telegrams from their men.

“Shay, you bloomin’ Dutchmen,’ he hiccupped. ‘Kimberlish relieved! No! You don’t ‘rest me for talkin’ dispeckfully your dam’ oxsh-wag’n Government. Bobbsh comin’ here! Bombard whole boilin’! G’way, you nasty ugly Zarp! Ev’rybody Bloemfontein knowsh me! Given up wool-bushnesh. Housh agent now. Take any man’s housh while he goes temp’rily Pretoria. What offersh? Yah !’

He resigned himself smiling to the embraces of the agitated Zarps; but his words, coming on the heels of many whispers, curdled the crowd as rennet curdles milk, and they drew together discussing and surmising between the ox-carts and the ammunition-wagons.

Forty-eight hours before he would have been a bold man who had dared doubt in public that Kimberley was all their own. Now people more or less faced the notion.

‘What do you think, Mr. Allen?’ said one of the two or three hundred Koopmans of the district. ‘You see all the telegrams.’

‘I think what I thought from the beginnin’. We’ve listened to lies too long to care for truth. But at the same time no one likes bein’ lied to less than a liar.’

‘Allen, you’re an Uitlander at heart.’ It was the old taunt—from a German this time.

‘I’m a Free Stater: but it will be pairfectly surprisin’ the number o’ people that’ll find they’ve always held Uitlander sympathies—before long.’

‘They have not the men—they have not the men! All our predikants say so,’ cried a farmer of a far north-eastern district.

‘And there are all the Powers of Europe, too, France and Russia. They will never allow such things. But I wish my man would write.’ This was the wife of a French photographer. ‘No. All Europe is against them.’

page 6

‘We’ll see,’ said an English bank employee. ‘When they come —’

‘When they come. But they will never come. Be careful!’

The bank clerk laughed. ‘I told you from the beginning that they would come. And they will come. They will come here: and they will go on to Pretoria. We told you from the first.’

‘They will not if you Free Staters fight, instead of running away,’ shouted a wounded man of the Vryheid commando, and his hairy fellows applauded. ‘You have good houses and plenty of cattle — you will not fight for them. You know the English will take them all — all — all!’

‘You showed them the way,’ Allen interrupted in the Taal. Many voices agreed; for the northern commandos had a keen eye for cattle, and did not always distinguish between the disloyal Dutch across the border and the agitatedly loyal Free Stater on the hither side.

‘Then you should fight. If you don’t fight, our President says it will be the worse for you. Almighty! My father did not get his farm by sitting still. No! He shot the black-stuff off it first, then he enjoyed God’s blessing. Go you and do likewise. The northern commandos are taking all the weight of the war.’

‘But it’s all in our country,’ said Allen, as the man swung himself on to his pony. ‘Ye’ve forgotten that little matter—they haven’t forgotten it by Jagersfontein.’

‘You were right, Allen,’ old Van Zoelen, that had been a member of the Raad, growled in his beard. ‘We are much annexed by the Transvaal already. I said it would be so.’

As far as one can find out, this day was the beginning of the Bad Time in Bloemfontein. No two souls agree in any one account of it. It is said that Kruger came down from the North and, with Steyn, went westward, direct to Poplar Grove. It is said he did no such thing: that the first news came in from a broken commando of Transvaalers who had been peppered in the open from three consecutive kopjes by hidden infantry, and, seeing that the rooineks were not fighting fair, had come away. This, again, is denied by the Transvaalers, who assert that Kruger himself attempted to check a fleeing Free State commando after Poplar Grove, and even threatened to order his Johannesburg police to fire upon them. The Free Staters — some of them — admit that they told the President that if he gave such an order they would return the fire.

Then, they say, began systematic cattle-lifting on the part of some Transvaalers who had escaped from Cronje’s laager and headed for the Vaal, driving everything with a hide on it before them. Then, they say, began the trouble with the foreign commandos — a matter now forgotten. And all this while there was no certain knowledge of any one thing under Heaven except that somewhere to the westward lay an Army!

Bloemfontein did not know what an Army was like, but her sons told her. She agreed — it was curious how quickly the crowds decided this — to disregard the wonderful telegrams of the Banner, who said that France, Russia, and Germany were in arms against England. Certainly, no true patriot could fail to believe that France, Russia, and Germany would in the end rescue a poor and pious State. But the question before Bloemfontein, who counted her distance from the Army in miles, was —would the Army bombard the city — as the city had sent men to bombard Kimberley, Mafeking, and Ladysmith? Also — this was not spoken above the breath — how soon could some sort of compromise be patched up which would remove these excellent Transvaal commandos — to fight, of course, fifty or a hundred miles farther on, but to fight and steal elsewhere?

Men poured in from the southern border with word that something very like another Army was forming in those parts. They told tales of a new brand of Englishry from across the water, who lay out all day with a pillow-case full of cartridges, quite happy if they bagged — that was their horrible word — two or three patriots in eight hours. Oh, yes, there were scores of victories to report — but they always fell to the other commando. Of course, the foreign Powers—

‘But the Army is here,’ said Bloemfontein sourly at last, watching President Kruger drive to the railway station. That was the time when Kaffir boys laughed at the Dutch women who tried to give them orders; when men thrust the keys of their houses upon strangers with English names, and begged them to look after their villas while they went North for a little; when young Kennedy, of the Royal Souvenirs, wounded and a prisoner in hospital, kissed the nun in the presence of the Sister-Superior, and all three laughed; when a Dutch predikant came by night to Mallett of the Wesleyan Church, and, weeping with rage, said he would burn his Bible if God forgot the Free State; when Joyce, at the saddler’s shop, made the seventeen-foot Union Jack in a back chamber in ten hours; when the Fricks of all colours sat up in dreary assembly burning papers whose discovery might have damaged the health of Papa Frick; when seats in the Pretoria train sold at a premium, and the English of the town found their advice much sought after.

‘Do — do you think they will bombard us?’ asked Mrs. Zandt humbly of the thirteen-year-old daughter of the bank employee. She had come to borrow a Union Jack from the girl’s mother. ‘I’m afraid we shan’t,’ said the child, remembering many insults from the Zandt brood. ‘I am afraid it is like what my father says.’

‘Oh, what did your dear father say:’ Mrs. Zandt clasped her hands. ‘He says you will take out the keys to Us on a tea-tray when we come for them. I am sorry you will not be shelled—’

‘Hush, dear,’ said her mother, entering, ‘you mustn’t talk like that to Mrs. Zandt.’

‘I don’t care! She laughed when I told her about Uncle Tom being shelled in Kimberley. Now she comes to borrow the Flag.’

‘But they are so close — so verree close! My God! My God! Did all my people die for this, Mrs. Pardrew?’ Mrs. Zandt collapsed weeping on the sofa.

‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs. Pardrew. ‘I don’t know whether my brother is alive, yet. Oh, go away! Don’t cry here! You Dutch are so clumsy. What did you want to interfere in the war at all for, you sillies?’

Little Jenny Pardrew’s father spoke true. They gave up the keys decked with tricolour ribbons at the bidding of a solitary civilian first into Bloemfontein from no higher motive, he says, than to get rooms at the Club. They waved many Union Jacks, and those who could not go North discovered that their hearts had ever beaten for progress and reform.

Somewhere on the veldt ran one President babbling of foreign intervention. Behind him, more to be feared, was another threatening death to all who bowed the knee to the invader. North and East the Transvaal commandos were drawing off with Free State cattle because, their commandant said, the Free Staters were cowards.

Bloemfontein — and now she began to see why — had only a few wounded English prisoners in her. The bulk were at Pretoria — good hostages against evil treatment should that Army… It was impossible that the Army could reach Pretoria. But the Army was here — in the town and outside the town — a vast clay-coloured ring. Bloemfontein rose after a wakeful night, climbed the hill by the Fort, and looked down upon the tentless legions. They were wet, silent, and sulky — sulky even to Papa Frick, more English than the English, smirking across the green veldt, proud if he could catch the eye of the humblest ‘Officier.’

page 7

‘Well, they’ve come,’ said Allen, slipping off his coat in the press-room. He had gone out to watch the entry of the troops and had seen the beginnings of an ugly Kaffir riot put down by the strong hand. This did not look as if the English had employed natives in the war. The press-room was empty; the gas-engine was cold, and the Kaffirs sat impudently on the composing-table. Allen nodded at Bergmann’s portrait.

‘It’s a peety you’re not alive, old man! Ye’ve done well for my country. If there’s knowledge or device beyond the grave ye must be wrigglin’ now…. What’ll we have in hand for today? ‘Fore God, there’s no paper, o’ course. Gone like rats, all of them.’

Said a voice in Dessauer’s room: ‘You see the situation, madam. I’m only a special correspondent, but I have authority to inform you —er— that we, that is the Army, take over the paper. At least, the office, and the type, and the men. The name will not be continued.’

‘I see,’ said Mrs. Bergmann. ‘I suppose it is all right. My editor has, unfortunately, gone away. He will come back when Bloemfontein is reoccupied. But now, of course, you are masters here. I suppose I can take away my private papers. I had come here for that. You see, we did not expect you here so soon.’

Vincent, of the Universal Press Agency, did not say that he had thrashed an exhausted pony down the street for the very purpose of forestalling Bergmann’s widow. This was one of the occasions when the British Army had condescended to act on information received. ‘I am afraid you —ah— cannot. An officer of the Staff will be here in a few minutes to seal everything.’ Mrs. Bergmann turned white, and bit her lip. ‘So there is nothing further. It would only be putting you out to ask you to stay here.’ ‘I see,’ said Mrs. Bergmann, and rose up, her hands saintlily folded, the mirror of affliction. ‘If you will be good enough to send here as many of the compositors and so on as may be in the town I should be very much obliged. We’re anxious to print a little proclamation. The men will be paid their regular wages.’

Vincent entered the press-room, rubbing his hands joyously, and confronted Allen in green carpet-slippers, velvet smoking-cap, faded beard, brass spectacles and all. ‘Hullo! What are you doing here;’ ‘Just waitin’ for orders. I’m foreman.’ Vincent glanced about with suspicion. A large and dusty man dropped from his horse and staggered in stiffly. It was the chief correspondent of the Transatlantic Syndicate. ‘Hullo, Corbett! We’ve commandeered the Banner, lock, stock, and barrel—by order. You’re on the staff, too — by my order.’

‘I’ve got to describe the entry, my son. They’ve cut us down to two hundred and fifty words.’ ‘Nothing but official wires going tonight, Corbett. The Censor told me so. Hold the fort here while I go up to Government House and get the Little Man’s proclamation for Brother Boer. He wants it printed in today’s paper. He told me to organise a newspaper staff. You’re on it.’ ‘Today’s paper? Say, this is history,’ said Corbett, with deep relish. ‘We’re making it. The Syndicate can wait. I’ll hold the fort.’

‘No one is to touch anything till Daubeny comes down. He’ll seal up all the private papers of the office. I’ve broken the news to Mrs. Bergmann, and she don’t like it. Lend me your pony and I’ll appoint you editor.’ Vincent stumbled out and galloped away. Corbett moved over to the file of the Banner as it lay by the window.

‘H’m,’ he said, critically scanning the previous day’s issue. ‘I guess this will be about the sharpest curve any paper’s ever swung. Did you —’ he looked at Allen with a smile — ‘did you believe any of this stuff about our men burning and ravishing and being forced to fight under fire of their own guns?’ ‘My business was to set it up,’ said Allen impassively, though his heart beat hard. ‘Ain’t you English?’

‘I’m a burgher of the Free State since Eighteen Fifty odd. But — I was born in Scotland. You’ll be an American?’

‘Yes, I’m an American. What do you think of your war?’

‘Just about what you’d think if ye’d seen the country ye loved an’ lived in clean thrown away by a fool and a liar. That’s the little an’ the long o’t. Tell me now,’ Allen went on huskily, ‘what truth is there in that’ — he nodded toward the open file —’that the English used native Indian troops against us?’

‘Oh, it’s only a lie just as big as any of the others about the fifteen thousand Russians at Sand River, or the invasion of London, or your three killed and five wounded, or anything else. Have you been fed on that stuff since the war?’ Corbett looked out of window at a widow in black. ‘Poor devils! Poor devils!’

The woman entered — not that pious widow of saintly habit who had gone away ten minutes before, but a virago unchained. Gert and four compositors followed her. In the offing, alert, uneasy, expectant, hung a small crowd of black and half-breed boys who in time of peace hawked the Banner. They watched with open mouths.

‘We have come,’ she shrieked, ‘for some private letters of — of my dead husband. If you are anything like what they call an English gentleman.

Corbett’s smooth face lit with the blandest of smiles. ‘Well, madam, as Eugene Field said of himself, I was livin’ in a tree when I was caught. I’m only a semi-civilised American. If you wish to appeal to my finer instincts, they perished long ago in the stress of this campaign. But if you will indicate in what manner—’

‘Oh, you silly, talking fool. Do you know who I am? I am his widow.’ She pointed to the picture on the wall.

‘Was he killed in this war?’ said Corbett. ‘You have my sincerest—’

‘No! No! No! I want some papers from this office. Gert, go to the office and get them.’

Corbett rolled one eye at the young Dutchman.

‘Mister Gert?’ he said. ‘Happy to make your acquaintance. This places the affair on a different footing. May I ask —umm— where you come in?’

‘Compositor,’ said Gert of the black finger-nails without stirring.

‘Then I’m afraid the lady will be likely to lose a comp if you act on her instructions. Nothing in the office must be touched till the arrival of—’

‘I tell you in three weeks you will be driven out of Bloemfontein and shot to pieces! I tell you there will not be a rooinek left in the country! I tell you I will remember this when you go to prison for the winter! It will be cold in the iron sheds. You will see! Let me take away my private letters. You only want money. You can sell all the rest—’

page 8

‘Hullo!’ said the Honourable Wilfred Daubeny, Captain on the Staff of the Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief, torn by Vincent from his first fair meal in three weeks. He was as filthy as the rest of the Army. In one hand he held a stick of aventurine sealing-wax, and in the other a cheap glass seal of French manufacture, representing a dove with an olive-branch over the legend ‘Amour’ — all fished out of a Presidential pen-tray.

‘Thank God!’ said Corbett fervently. ‘This gentleman, madam, will be only too happy to talk to you in the office — over yonder. Have you brought the proclamation, Vincent? We must set it up at once. Go on, Daubeny, you’ll like her.’

He indicated the office at the far end of the press-room and wiped his brow. ‘For undiluted craziness, Vincent, your war lays over our Cuban business. I can’t say more than that.’

Vincent produced a printed sheet and paused, screwing up his short-sighted blue eyes. ‘How the deuce does one commandeer a paper?’ said he.

‘There’s no precedent, if that’s what’s troubling you,’ said Corbett. ‘The English are unhappy without precedents, I know. Let me try. Mister Gert & Co.! In the name of God and the Constitution of the United States — beg pardon, Vincent. I forgot it wasn’t my war. Oh, yes. There’s a foreman — so there is. What’s your name?’

‘Allen.’

‘That’s a good start,’ said Vincent. ‘Now, Mr. Allen, set up this proclamation quick. It’s for today.’ ‘Have you any preferences about type?’ said Vincent. ‘Here have I been a journalist all my life, and I don’t know one type from another, Corbett.’

‘There’s Grady outside,’ said the American. ‘He’s been in the business. Appoint him to the staff at once. Hi, Grady ! You’re appointed sub-editor of the Bloemfontein Despatch. Come in and sub-edit.’

‘I was looking for you,’ said Grady of the Unlimited Wire, dismounting. ‘Did you try to produce a paper without me? You’re a lot of penny-a-liners. Not a bad plant either.’ He sniffed round the office critically.

‘When you’ve quite done your professional antics perhaps you’ll help us bring out this dam’ conciliatory proclamation,’ said Vincent. ‘Bobs wants it thrown broadcast at Brother Boer as soon as possible. It won’t enlighten Brother Boer, but it will please Bobbins.’

‘Leave me alone. I’m thinking.’ Then to Allen, who was sorting the copy into takes, ‘Just use your old advertisements and any standing matter you’ve got.

‘It’s no’ just likely to suit the present situation. It’s sayin’ that ye used natives fra’ Injia against us.’

‘We didn’t,’ said Grady. ‘Personally, I think it was a great mistake. A few Pathans would have done you a lot of good — but we happen to be a silly people. No, the standing matter is probably useless. Got any old ads. —stereo matter?’

‘There’s the National Museum notice — an’ here’s a Vereeniging coal advertisement,’ said Allen. ‘But they’ve commandeered all the coal there; an’ it’s a far cry to Vereeniging.’ ‘Never mind,’ said Corbett, sitting on the table. ‘We’ll be at Vereeniging soon, and the National Museum’s the one place I’ve always wanted to see. Look among the stereos.’ ‘Good old stereos!’ said Vincent, turning over a pile of plated slabs. “‘The natural food for a babe is mother’s milk.” My God! D’you remember those kids at Kimberley after the relief, Grady, an’ the row of babies’ graves?’

‘Yes,’ Grady answered, with a sudden ferocity. He had been five months in the field. ‘And the refugee trains, too! Here, you’ — to Allen, who jumped at the change of tone. ‘Lord Roberts’s proclamation goes, in English and Dutch, on the front page. Fill in the rest with old advertisements. Bring me a proof when you’ve done. You’re responsible that the thing looks decent, and don’t you try to play any tricks on us.’ ‘I’m not in the habit o’ shirkin’ my work,’ said Allen stoutly.

‘I’m sick of it,’ Grady went on. ‘Kimberley and Ladysmith had to stand it, and Mafeking’s standing it now, but the minute these things get the worst of it they bang up a Union Jack and Bobs fawns on ’em, simply fawns on ’em! Look at this proclamation. He’ll be sorry for it before he’s done. I know the Dutch.’

Here the Honourable Wilfred Daubeny came out of Dessauer’s office sucking a burnt thumb.

‘She’s a lunatic — an absolute ravin’ lunatic,’ he said; ‘an’ this beastly stuff has dropped all over me. Must I seal everything here? There isn’t much wax left, and’ — he looked round the office — ‘what’s the idea of the operations?’

‘Steyn’s forgotten to take away about a ton of most interesting documents from his house,’ said Vincent. ‘I saw the Intelligence Department looking almost intelligent over it this afternoon. Perhaps we shall find something nice here.’

Allen was setting up the sentence: ‘The British Government believes that this act of aggression was not committed with the general approval and freewill of a people with whom it has lived in complete amity for so many years.’ He glanced at the portrait of the late Mr. Bergmann, thought of the Basuto proclamation, and groaned.

‘Any truth in the yarn that they’ve found a lot of cipher telegrams between Cape Town and Pretoria up at Steyn’s place?’ said Vincent.

‘I believe so,’ said Grady, ‘but it was nothing compromising. It never is, worse luck! How’s that proclamation coming on? Be quick there!’

‘I think you’d better seal the door of the office when we’ve done, Daubeny,’ said Vincent. ‘Ritson, of the Intelligence, will be down tomorrow to search the place.’

‘They’d climb in through the windows if they wanted to take anything away,’ said Grady, jerking a thumb at Gert.

‘Then Daubeny will put on a sentry till Ritson has done. One sentry for tonight on toast, Daubeny, Please. What the deuce do all these little nigger-boys want to look in at the windows for?’

‘All right. Must I stay here till you’ve done? I’m awfully hungry.’

‘You’ve no eye for history and the drama. Here we are commandeering the whole plant and outfit of a flourishing daily paper — it’s never happened before — in the heart of a captured city at eight hours’ notice, and you prefer to eat,’ said Corbett.

‘We’ll be merciful. Proof’s almost ready,’ Grady replied, as Allen slid the takes into position. ‘I don’t know Dutch, but if I find out you’ve put any hanky-panky misprints into the Dutch version, friend, you’ll hear about it.’

page 9

‘Man — man,’ said Allen suddenly, his mouth quivering under his beard, ‘I’m a — I’m a Free State burgher.’ ‘Is that any recommendation?’ ‘An’ — an’ I was one o’ Blackwood’s men once. D’ye think I’d cheat in a professional matter?’ Now Grady had been close friend of Hawke, who was crippled for life under cover of the white flag on the southern border. He answered that he had no belief whatever in anything alive within the bounds of the two States.

The forms were locked up; Allen for the first time in years started the gas-engine with his own hand, and the new-christened Bloemfontein Despatch slapped and slid through the presses.

‘No lack of paper,’ said Grady, looking at the huge block of damp sheets. ‘I wonder how many lies they’ve worked off on Brother Boer since the war began. Your men’ — he addressed himself to Allen ‘will come here tomorrow at nine on the usual wages, every man of them. By the way, how d’you sell your dam’ paper?’

‘Oh, they’ve some little native boys that usually cry it. They’ll be waiting outside. Our regular subscribers are most likely on commando.’

‘Splendid! Corbett, old man, run out and stop that buck-wagon. We’ll send a batch of papers up to Government House to please the Little Man. What d’you say to issuing the first number of the new regime gratis to the populace?’

‘No,’ said Vincent. ‘That would look as if we were anxious to obtrude Bobs’ views on ’em. Charge the old rates. Here! I’ll help fold the papers. Come on, Daubeny! Make the comps work too. Shove the papers out on the pavement, and let the nigger-boys fight for ’em. Run, you little devils! A ticky apiece is the price, and no reduction.’

‘It’s History! It’s Drama! And we’re right in the middle of the stage!’ cried Corbett on his knees among the folded papers. ‘Where under the sun did those kids spring from? It’s like New York. Here you are, sonny. Remember, it’s Despatch, not Banner today.’

‘Yes, Baas. Despatch,’ said a half-naked imp, clasping his bundle to his bosom. ‘I know Anglish.’

‘Go ahead then! Six cen—threepence a copy: no reduction. Who says the Kaffir is not in the van of progress? Listen to ’em, boys! Just listen to ’em!’

‘Despaatch! Bloemfontein Bannaar! Paaper ! Paaper ! Bloemfontein Despaatch!’ Then, high and shrill, the voice of a small Dutchling: ‘Lord Rabbat’s Proclamation! Onlee one ticky! Bannaar!’

They cut across the crowd in the market-square like minnows in an aquarium; they yelled before the shuttered shops of those who feared looting; they burst through knots of soldiers; they importuned unhappy burghers on the pavement; they dodged under the wheels of ambulances; lone pickets penetrated dusty side-streets, or invaded the back-gardens of closed houses from the Raadzaal to the railway-station. The English had come, and the day of the Amabuna had ended. Wherefore, they vehemently proclaimed the news of their race’s deliverance, while the Honourable Wilfred Daubeny, with the last of the sealing-wax, sealed the press-room doors.

Allen mechanically sought his corner by the chemist’s shop, but in the roaring come-and-go of khaki there was no peace. He saw the English, and they were many, rejoicing as men rejoice who say ‘I told you so,’ and see their words come true. He saw the extremists sullen in the side-streets, each heartening his fellow with prophecies of the Federals’ return. He heard the new ‘loyalists’ extra—loud tones raised to catch the ear of the passing soldier; and black-clad women weeping in the verandas. But these wept only for their sons and their husbands.

Here and there were the older men known to Allen since the days of Mosheshe’s war, hunters once, farmers and wool-growers now, who had not believed in closer union with the Transvaal — who had seen their words overborne first by the Hollander and next by the Hollander-infected burgher; who had still to watch the ruin of their beloved land—knowing the ruin was irretrievable. Theirs was the greater pain.

‘We’ve done well — we’ve done well,’ said Allen brokenly, to Van Zoelen, whom he found staring through the shut gates of the Raadzaal, at the head of the town.

‘We have done well,’ said the old man. ‘I spoke against it in my place there’ — he pointed to the doors on which the English had not thought it worth while to put a sentry. ‘You heard me?’

‘God help us, Van Zoelen! That was a year ago! Given away for a handful of Boer tobacco, I said…. Think you they’ll ever catch him?’

‘No. He is away. He has done it all — all — all! He will get away. He and that other will get away! Martens was right. It is good to burn our Bibles these days. God has forgotten the Free State. They drove off all my cattle at Wonderhoek before they went North. They called my son a coward. They sjamboked my black-stuff, and then they rode away to—fight on their own border! If ever again I break bread with a Transvaaler—’

He leaned his head against the railings and tugged at his long beard. ‘We owe them more than we can ever pay for sure,’ said Allen, and went on to his roses. Walking with bent head, past the abandoned houses of old-time tea-parties, and the leisurely, shirt-sleeved, sluttish life of forty good years, he cannoned into a uniform.

‘I beg your pardon,’ said he.

‘I’m sure I beg yours.’ Allen glanced at the face. A photograph of it cut from an illustrated paper was pasted in an obscure corner of the press-room.

‘You’re General McKaye?’ he said.

‘They say so. Is there anything I can do for you?’

‘Tell me now, did ye, or did ye not, use native troops fra’ Injia against us?’

‘Of course not, man.’

‘You’ll be a Highlander?’ The tone implied the rest. ‘I’m tellin’ you,’ said the General, with an equal simplicity.

‘Then, in God’s name, who kept the Basutos off us?’

‘Lagden, of course, an’ a dooms hard job it was. Where’ll you be from in the Old Country?’

page 10

‘Me? I’m a burgher of the Free State.’

The houses on either side were empty; hastily barricaded with corrugated iron that could be kicked in by a child. Some bunches of keys lay on his tea-table in the veranda with notes from the late owners. His wife’s niece had gone three days before, leaving a black girl to see to the house.

Across the broad street with its patches of grass, a family of English sat out in their garden, drinking tea — not coffee — under the shadow of the Union Jack. A fat old woman in black walked aimlessly from one side of the way to the other, sobbing and waving black-gloved hands.

For the rest, the street was deserted, but through the hot air came the deep hum of many thousands encamped within rifle-shot. The little breezes were heavy with the smell of men and oxen and horses, and under the red flare of the sunset the veldt for miles and miles heaved and crawled with transport wagons.

A man on a spent horse rounded the corner. He kept the exact centre of the road — his rifle across his arm — sure signs he belonged to a Colonial corps.

‘Will ye drink a cup o’ coffee?’ cried Allen.

‘Will I? Try me.’ He slipped from his beast and pushed through the heavy-scented rose-bushes with a creaking of leather accoutrements. ‘Who are you?’

The soft gentle drawl betrayed the son of the Old Colony, even if the modelling of the forehead and the base of the nose had been overlooked.

‘I’m a burgher of the Free State,’ said Allen.

The boy — he was little older, for all his ten or twelve fights — dropped into the Taal at once, found a chair and stretched his legs on the rail. The muzzle of his rifle canted carelessly towards Allen’s chest, and his hand played with the trigger-guard.

‘Have you been out on commando, uncle?’ he asked deferentially.

‘No, I am a printer here.’

‘So? Let me feel your trigger-finger. That’s right. It is all soft inside. There was an old man at Colesberg very like you. I fired at him for half a day, but he was clever. A good shot, too. So now it is all done — eh? You think your Presidents will come back?’

Allen shook his head as he passed over the full cup.

‘They all say that. I hope they will try again. We have not shot enough of you to make you soft yet.’

‘They said here you used natives from India to fight us.’

‘Almighty! I wish we had. The English stood up too much and got killed. They were fools! We could have managed Stormberg without fifty dead men. And — Paardeberg too.’

‘Then you did not use natives?’

‘Of course not. We are not so stupid as you, to play black against white. Uncle, there is a very bad time coming for the burghers when your Kaffirs get free from the gun-teams. You boasted too much. One should never boast before black-stuff. Either do or not do, but don’t talk and not do.’

‘You did not use natives from India, then;’ Allen repeated heavily.

‘What fools you Dutch are! You believe anything your predikants tell you. Here is our Army. Go and look at it. You were quick enough to kodak our dead on the Natal side, and to sell them in the shops. If there had been natives you could have kodaked them. That is just like you Dutch — at one time so clever with your guns and your pom-poms, and then just Dutch.’

‘I was born a Scotsman,’ Allen half-whispered to himself.

‘Ah, but you are Dutch at heart, though. I believe that black-stuff are only black; and I think the English troops are spoiling them altogether. We shall never get the black-stuff to work for us again till they are well thrashed; but I don’t believe they are only monkies. Yon do, uncle, and you have dealt that way with them. That is why there will be trouble, I think, before we can stop it. Eh?’

‘I never thought that. I did not believe in the way we treat black-stuff. It is wrong.’

‘Oh, that is what you say now the game is up. Go over to Tabanchu and tell it to the Basutos. Tell it to the Swazis. Tell it to the Zulus. There is trouble coming from there for us, uncle — not to count all the black-stuff that the Zarps used to rob on the goldfields.’ He lit his pipe and admired his spurs for a moment. ‘You were friendly with any of the Government men here, uncle? You heard them talk?’ ‘I have heard a great deal of talk.’

‘Of course…. The President has carried off most of his letters with him — eh? It is a pity. The Imperial Staff are searching the house now. If they had let us Colonials in we should have known where to look.’

‘What do you want, then?’ Allen spoke listlessly; he was very tired. ‘Ah, now you talk well, uncle. You speak like an upright burgher.’ The boy laid his hand almost caressingly on Allen’s knee.

‘You see that the game is up. They all lied to you. Now you can speak the truth. Look!’ He fumbled in his belt and drew out half a handful of English gold. ‘I am “Wirt” Trollip’s son. You have heard of him? He is not a poor man, eh? I can give you this. My father sent me on commando — with the corps, I mean — not poor. But he can give you twice as much again and nobody will know.’

‘What for?’

‘For anything that you care to tell me that you know about the ammunition that came up from Kapstaad before the war. Oh, I don’t mean all the stuff that came up to Bloemfontein, but the big load that went up from Cape Town, and was kept at Belmont by our Government’s order at the end of August.’

page 11

‘I know nothing about it.’

The boy laughed and jingled the sovereigns. ‘You have forgotten, uncle. We know now, of course, why you wanted the ammunition kept at Belmont. It was very useful, and you were very slim. But do you know if any letters were sent from our Government at Kapstaad about it — the ammunition at Belmont to your President here? Oh! I do not expect you saw the letters — but there must have been some joke about it in the market-square. It was so very convenient for you — the Belmont ammunition.’

‘Joke?’

‘Oh, not now, of course. The joke is ours now, but — I will give you ten or twenty of these if you can remember any man who talked about that ammunition waiting for you at Belmont. The first we knew about it was when it was said in our Raad at Kapstaad that the ammunition had been stopped at Belmont, by our Government’s order. You must have known much more here … and … they do not let us Colonials look for letters in the proper places. What is the matter, uncle?’

Allen leaned forward with his face in his hands, and rocked to and fro. The boy patted him on the back. ‘It is not the little fish we want to catch,’ said he, ‘it’s the big ones — kabeljous in our own water. If Frick were given a scare he might tell, but he is selling things to the troops. My father knows him. Come, uncle. The game is up. Tell me what you know. Nothing will happen. Why are you crying? I am not going to shoot you.’

‘Hurt me? How could ye? — How?’ Allen recovered himself in English. ‘I can tell ye nothing, but — why should I feel hurt? We’ve earned it fairly. Only — only let me alone, child. Mind the step there, and don’t hurt my roses.’

The newly created staff of the Despatch pranced joyously outside the press-room’s sealed door till such time as Captain Ritson, of the Intelligence Department, should enter upon his search.

They counted sixty-seven pitched battles among the three of them and skirmishes innumerable. It was their business to run without ceasing from strife to strife at a rumour, in constant peril of death, imprisonment, disease, — and the wrath of criticised Brigadiers; seeing all things, foreseeing all things, fording all things, riding all things, proving all things, holding fast to the Wire.

Three continents waited on their words for the truth; and in their hands lay the reputation of every combatant officer. But they took it lightly—from the snubbings of the excited Aide-de-Camp, who does not understand how a newspaperman can be a human being, to the high-pitched blasphemies of a semi-delirious General trying to curse his command out of a trap into which, against all warning, he proudly marches in close order. Refreshed after sleep on a real bed, and meals at a table, they were saying what they thought of the campaign in language no Press Censor would have countersigned.

‘And, by the way, I’ve done a bully leader for today,’ said Corbett. “Tisn’t often an American can lay down the law to a British annexation. Let it go in, Vincent. It’s your war, but it’s my fun.’

‘Never!’ Grady struck an attitude. ‘We don’t conquer States for the Transatlantic Syndicate to slop over.’

‘Did you do a leader, then?’ Vincent asked pointedly. ‘Me? Are you mad or drunk? I went to bed — between sheets — at nine last night,’ the fat Grady replied. ‘Then Corbett gets it. I swear I’m not going to do leaders. They’ve given me about ten columns of camp and brigade orders. I rely on those. Mustn’t spoil the public too early.’

‘There’s my friend from Blackwood’s.’ Corbett spied Allen at the head of his little band of compositors coming round the corner.

‘See here, Mr. Allen, I’ve a most important leader I want you to set up at once. I’m sorry it’s written in pencil, but — ‘Mornin’, Ritson.’ The officer of the Intelligence Department cantered up. ‘Break in Daubeny’s seals and let’s get to work. We want today’s paper to be a beauty.’

‘All right. I’ll do the searching in half an hour, and then you can go on.’ Ritson of the Intelligence passed into Dessauer’s office with Grady and Corbett. Allen, in the unswept press-room, looked forlorn and very old. Vincent, quick to notice, gave him a most human ‘Good morning!’

‘Thank ye. What’ll they be lookin’ for there?’ ‘Oh, documents of sorts,’ Vincent answered. ‘I — I think I could show you one, maybe,’ he whispered by the hand-press under Bergmann’s picture. ‘Which one d’you mean?’ said Vincent quickly. ‘A — well, it’s not in English.’ He had lain awake all night in a chair thinking his way to this end. Gert and the others were scrubbing yesterday’s type before releasing it. ‘It’s here.’ His face worked with an agony hidden from the other.

‘I see. Thank you.’

‘No thanks to me. I’m a burgher of the Free State — I’ve worked here since ‘Seventy-five, but I’m not tryin’ — I’m not tryin’ to justify myself — only it’s all wrong — to me.’

He hung with half-opened mouth on Vincent’s next action. Would the man jingle sovereigns at him as the Colonial had done?

Vincent stepped into the editorial room, where the Intelligence officer was examining Dessauer’s old bills, and gave him the news.

‘He seems rather a decent old chap. I daresay you could make something out of him. He’s horribly scared of something.’

‘Thanks,’ said Captain Ritson. ‘I expected this. I’ll settle it at once.’

He rose, walked down the composing-room to where Allen, surrounded by Gert and the others, dealt copy of Corbett’s leader under a running fire of instructions from the American.

‘Why, I’d ha’ died,’ said Corbett delightedly, ‘sooner than let an Englishman write the first leader of a commandeered Cuba paper. The way you English miss your chances is stupefying! Are you through yet, Ritson?’

‘I hear,’ said Ritson, looking directly at Allen, that you can tell us where there is a copy of the proclamation in Basuto which was set up in this office. You will give it to me at once.’ Allen turned towards Vincent like a hunted dog. This was ten thousand times worse than any offer of money. Gert, Mrs. Bergmann’s pet employee, stood within arm’s reach of him; the others, his subordinates, even closer. One cannot deny a quarter of a century of habit, use, and dear custom easily — in a loud voice before one’s yoke-fellows.

page 12

In less time than the lifting of an eyebrow, Grady and Corbett, trained to the mastery of situations, had comprehended this last — the pity, the horror, and the loneliness of it. Moreover, Corbett had caught a sidelight in Gert’s eye which did not promise well for the old man. Ritson, clean-shaven and precise under his Staff cap, waited for the answer.

‘What are ye talkin’ about?’ said Allen, running a dry tongue over a drier lip. The merciless sun hit full on his face.

‘It’s no use trying to lie. I mean the Basuto proclamation.’

‘Look here, Ritson,’ said Corbett. ‘We don’t mind your searching the whole office, but we do object to your searching our men when we’re trying to make their work. Mister Gert — happy to meet you again. Mister Gert! —looks rather guilty. Besides he’s not a good comp. Take him into the machinery-room and shoot him. Run along, Gert.’

The face of the black-nailed Dutchman turned a cheerful grey-green. He was as ignorant of the etiquette of a conquering army — as that army itself.

‘Of course, he doesn’t know,’ said Vincent. ‘If Dessauer had any sense he’d have taken it with him.

How’s your leader coming on, Mr. Allen?’

‘I’ve just sorted it, sir. We’ll have it set in twenty minutes — if —if I may go on with my work.’ The yellow-veined hand on the justifying-table shook. Bergmann from the wall above the door seemed to be enjoying his woe.

‘Look out for Gert!’ said Grady to Ritson. ‘He’s edging off. A thorough quick search is the only thing, now that they’ve got the alarm. We’ll all help.’ He flung open the doors of a hanging cupboard with a crash, and broke up the little crowd.

‘That’s it,’ said Corbett. ‘Come here, Gert, with me. We’ll investigate the composing-room. Don’t be afraid. You shan’t be shot till you’ve set up my leader.’

Grady, telegraphed to by Corbett, tucked two compositors under his wing, and motioned other two to follow Ritson. Vincent called Allen by eye.

“Fore God,’ said the old man, trembling from head to foot and backing into the machinery-room. ‘How could — how was I to up an’ tell him there before them all? They were my subordinates! Could ye expect me to? He didn’t know what it meant.’

‘Hsh ! It’s all right,’ said Vincent tenderly. Then raising his voice: ‘Mr. Allen, what have we in hand of old matter?’ The others, shepherded by Grady, passed into the composing-room. ‘Get it now,’ said Vincent. Allen motioned to an old file of mixed job and proof-slips in a case-cabinet on the floor-level of the machinery and fouled with dust. ‘The fourth from the bottom, I think,’ he whispered. ‘Ye’ll no mind if—if I sit down for a minute…. I’ve no wish to curry favour — but you needn’t believe that.’

The proof was found, slipped off, and into Vincent’s pocket, and the file kicked back out of sight. Allen sat heavily on the wreck of a bottomless chair, and drummed on the arms with his knuckles.

‘Ye — ye did not use the natives fra’ Injia against us. . . . How could I up an’ tell him there before Gert? … I’m — I’m not as young as I was an’ . . . there’s a power o’ thinkin’ involved … after twenty-five years…. But by all the rules, it’s perfectly damnable. Ye’ll admit that, sir?’

Vincent could not quite see the drift of the last remark, but echoed it at a venture. ‘Don’t think about it. We’ll go on with today’s make-up.’

They entered the composing-room together.

‘I can’t find anything,’ said Ritson, and Allen winced at the voice.

Half an hour later the staff’ of the Bloemfontein Despatch fell to work in Dessauer’s office with much laughter and more zeal.

‘Did Ritson get it after all?’ said Grady of a sudden. ‘He did,’ said Vincent, and told the tale from beginning to end.

‘Fellow-citizens!’ Corbett rose ponderously in his place. ‘I wish to say something right here. I love you all — God bless you! But I want to point out that for comprehensive, consistent, glass-eyed, bottle-bellied, frozen-headed folly, you English beat all God’s suffering earth! Vincent is the King’s Fool — the Imperial Ass. He has a scoop under his hand which — which — why, there isn’t an adjective in the English language—’

‘”Our glorious common heritage”‘; don’t forget that, old man,’ Vincent chuckled.

‘Yes, but you’re the asses who graze on that common! I won’t try to describe Vincent’s scoop. Suffice it to say, as Grady always cables, he chucks that scoop away. Not with both hands merely, but with his teeth and his toe-nails, and the sweat of his brow, he climbs kopjes to thrust the scoop into the hands of the most effete, paralytic, and bung-eyed Government the century has produced! And what will that Government do with it? It will say: “Here is another link in the chain of evidence!” Then it will take and bury that proclamation in a sarcophagus lest anybody should accidentally find it out. It’ll get up in the middle of the night and dig one out of solid granite with its own thick head. That proclamation should have been facsimiled in every paper in the universe. No! Your Government will put it away in a Blue Book, which will come out a year or two after Steyn is a virtuous Amsterdammer or — yes, I accept the amendment, Grady — we’re as big fools as you are almost — a citizen of Hoboken. Nobody will read it. Nobody will know about it, and then the English will wonder why they’re misunderstood! Hullo! Come in !’

‘I’ve a darned good mind to distribute your leader,’ said Vincent. ‘But you’re quite right, Corbett. We are the biggest fools unhung. What is it, Mr. Allen?’

‘I wanted to let you gentlemen understand that I did — what I did just now as an individual. It’s o’ no earthly importance to anyone but myself — anything connected wi’ me. I know that. But ye’ll understand … I’m not for takin’ any oath of allegiance, or sayin’ I’m glad to see you here, or hangin’ out a Union Jack, or any o’ that—like.’

Grady’s eyebrows drew together — the vision of poor Hawke bleeding from the volley under the white flag was always with him. He would have spoken, but Vincent raised his hand. Allen clung to the edge of the thin plank door.

‘Tak’ it or leave it, as you will. God judge me, if He’s not forgotten us — We deserve it…. But I did it as a Burgher of the Free State!’

page 1 of 5

LONG and long ago, when Devadatta was King of Benares, I wrote some tales concerning Strickland of the Punjab Police (who married Miss Youghal), and Adam, his son. Strickland has finished his Indian Service, and lives now at a place in England called Weston-super-Mare, where his wife plays the organ in one of the churches. Semi-occasionally he comes up to London, and occasionally his wife makes him visit his friends. Otherwise he plays golf and follows the harriers for his figure’s sake.If you remember that Infant who told a tale to Eustace Cleever the novelist, you will remember that he became a baronet with a vast estate. He has, owing to cookery, a little lost his figure, but he never loses his friends. I have found a wing of his house turned into a hospital for sick men, and there I once spent a week in the company of two dismal nurses and a specialist in “Sprue.” Another time the place was full of schoolboys—sons of Anglo-Indians whom the Infant had collected for the holidays, and they nearly broke his keeper’s heart.

But my last visit was better. The Infant called me up by wire, and I fell into the arms of a friend of mine, Colonel A.L. Corkran, so that the years departed from us, and we praised Allah, who had not yet terminated the Delights, nor separated the Companions.

Said Corkran, when he had explained how it felt to command a native Infantry regiment on the border: “The Stricks are coming for to-night-with their boy.”

“I remember him. The little fellow I wrote a story about,” I said. “Is he in the Service?”

“No. Strick got him into the Centro-Euro-Africa Protectorate. He’s Assistant-Commissioner at Dupe—wherever that is. Somaliland, ain’t it, Stalky?” asked the Infant.

Stalky puffed out his nostrils scornfully. “You’re only three thousand miles out. Look at the atlas.”

“Anyhow, he’s as rotten full of fever as the rest of you,” said the Infant, at length on the big divan. “And he’s bringing a native servant with him. Stalky be an athlete, and tell Ipps to put him in the stable room.”

“Why? Is he a Yao—like the fellow Wade brought here—when your housekeeper had fits?” Stalky often visits the Infant, and has seen some odd things.

“No. He’s one of old Strickland’s Punjabi policemen—and quite European—I believe.”

“Hooray! Haven’t talked Punjabi for three months—and a Punjabi from Central Africa ought to be amusin’.”

We heard the chuff of the motor in the porch, and the first to enter was Agnes Strickland, whom the Infant makes no secret of adoring.

He is devoted, in a fat man’s placid way, to at least eight designing women; but she nursed him once through a bad bout of Peshawur fever, and when she is in the house, it is more than all hers.

“You didn’t send rugs enough,” she began. “Adam might have taken a chill.”

“It’s quite warm in the tonneau. Why did you let him ride in front? “

“Because he wanted to,” she replied, with the mother’s smile, and we were introduced to the shadow of a young man leaning heavily on the shoulder of a bearded Punjabi Mohammedan.

“That is all that came home of him,” said his father to me. There was nothing in it of the child with whom I had journeyed to Dalhousie centuries since.”

“And what is this uniform?” Stalky asked of Imam Din, the servant, who came to attention on the marble floor.

“The uniform of the Protectorate troops, Sahib. Though I am the Little Sahib’s body-servant, it is not seemly for us white men to be attended by folk dressed altogether as servants.”

“And—and you white men wait at table on horseback?” Stalky pointed to the man’s spurs.

“These I added for the sake of honour when I came to England,” said Imam Din Adam smiled the ghost of a little smile that I began to remember, and we put him on the big couch for refreshments. Stalky asked him how much leave he had, and he said “Six months.”

“But he’ll take another six on medical certificate,” said Agnes anxiously. Adam knit his brows.

“You don’t want to—eh? I know. Wonder what my second in command is doing.” Stalky tugged his moustache, and fell to thinking of his Sikhs.

“Ah!” said the Infant. “I’ve only a few thousand pheasants to look after. Come along and dress for dinner. We’re just ourselves. What flower is your honour’s ladyship commanding for the table?”

“Just ourselves?” she said, looking at the crotons in the great hall. “Then let’s have marigolds the little cemetery ones.”

So it was ordered.

Now, marigolds to us mean hot weather, discomfort, parting, and death. That smell in our nostrils, and Adam’s servant in waiting, we naturally fell back more and more on the old slang, recalling at each glass those who had gone before. We did not sit at the big table, but in the bay window overlooking the park, where they were carting the last of the hay. When twilight fell we would not have candles, but waited for the moon, and continued our talk in the dusk that makes one remember.

Young Adam was not interested in our past except where it had touched his future. I think his mother held his hand beneath the table. Imam Din—shoeless, out of respect to the floors—brought him his medicine, poured it drop by drop, and asked for orders.

“Wait to take him to his cot when he grows weary,” said his mother, and Imam Din retired into the shadow by the ancestral portraits.

“Now what d’you expect to get out of your country?” the Infant asked, when—our India laid aside we talked Adam’s Africa. It roused him at once.

“Rubber—nuts—gums—and so on,” he said. “But our real future is cotton. I grew fifty acres of it last year in my District.”

page 2

“My District!” said his father. “Hear him, Mummy!”

“I did though! I wish I could show you the sample. Some Manchester chaps said it was as good as any Sea Island cotton on the market.”

“But what made you a cotton-planter, my son?” she asked.

“My Chief said every man ought to have a shouk (a hobby) of sorts, and he took the trouble to ride a day out of his way to show me a belt of black soil that was just the thing for cotton.”

“Ah! What was your Chief like?” Stalky asked, in his silkiest tones.

“The best man alive—absolutely. He lets you blow your own nose yourself. The people call him”—Adam jerked out some heathen phrase—“that means the Man with the Stone Eyes, you know.”

“I’m glad of that. Because I’ve heard from other quarters” Stalky’s sentence burned like a slow match, but the explosion was not long delayed. “Other quarters!” Adam threw out a thin hand. “Every dog has his fleas. If you listen to them, of course!” The shake of his head was as I remembered it among his father’s policemen twenty years before, and his mother’s eyes shining through the dusk called on me to adore it. I kicked Stalky on the shin. One must not mock a young man’s first love or loyalty.

A lump of raw cotton appeared on the table.

“I thought there might be a need. Therefore I packed it between our shirts,” said the voice of Imam Din.

“Does he know as much English as that?” cried the Infant, who had forgotten his East.

We all admired the cotton for Adam’s sake, and, indeed, it was very long and glossy.

“It’s—it’s only an experiment,” he said. “We’re such awful paupers we can’t even pay for a mailcart in my District. We use a biscuit-box on two bicycle wheels. I only got the money for that”—he patted the stuff—“by a pure fluke.”

“How much did it cost?” asked Strickland.

“With seed and machinery—about two hundred pounds. I had the labour done by cannibals.”

“That sounds promising.” Stalky reached for a fresh cigarette.

“No, thank you,” said Agnes. “I’ve been at Weston-super-Mare a little too long for cannibals. I’ll go to the music-room and try over next Sunday’s hymns.”

She lifted the boy’s hand lightly to her lips, and tripped across the acres of glimmering floor to the music-room that had been the Infant’s ancestors’ banqueting hall. Her grey and silver dress disappeared under the musicians’ gallery; two electrics broke out, and she stood backed against the lines of gilded pipes.

“There’s an abominable self-playing attachment here!” she called.

“Me!” the Infant answered, his napkin on his shoulder. “That’s how I play Parsifal.”

“I prefer the direct expression. Take it away, Ipps.”

We heard old Ipps skating obediently all over the floor.

“Now for the direct expression,” said Stalky, and moved on the Burgundy recommended by the faculty to enrich fever-thinned blood.

“It’s nothing much. Only the belt of cotton-soil my chief showed me ran right into the Sheshaheli country. We haven’t been able to prove cannibalism against that tribe in the courts; but when a Sheshaheli offers you four pounds of woman’s breast, tattoo marks and all, skewered up in a plantain leaf before breakfast, you—”

“Naturally burn the villages before lunch,” said Stalky.

Adam shook his head. “No troops,” he sighed. “I told my Chief about it, and he said we must wait till they chopped a white man. He advised me if ever I felt like it not to commit a—a barren felo de se, but to let the Sheshaheli do it. Then he could report, and then we could mop ’em up!”

“Most immoral! That’s how we got—” Stalky quoted the name of a province won by just such a sacrifice.

“Yes, but the beasts dominated one end of my cotton-belt like anything. They chivied me out of it when I went to take soil for analysis—me and Imam Din.”

“Sahib! Is there a need?” The voice came out of the darkness, and the eyes shone over Adam’s shoulder ere it ceased.

“None. The name was taken in talk.” Adam abolished him with a turn of the finger. “I couldn’t make a casus belli of it just then, because my Chief had taken all the troops to hammer a gang of slave kings up north. Did you ever hear of our war against Ibn Makarrah? He precious nearly lost us the Protectorate at one time, though he’s an ally of ours now.”

“Wasn’t he rather a pernicious brute, even as they go?” said Stalky. “Wade told me about him last year.”

“Well, his nickname all through the country was ‘The Merciful,’ and he didn’t get that for nothing. None of our people ever breathed his proper name. They said ‘He’ or ‘That One,’ and they didn’t say it aloud, either. He fought us for eight months.”

“I remember. There was a paragraph about it in one of the papers,” I said.

“We broke him, though. No—the slavers don’t come our way, because our men have the reputation of dying too much, the first month after they’re captured. That knocks down profits, you see.”

“What about your charming friends, the Sheshahelis?” said the Infant.

page 3

“There’s no market for Sheshaheli. People would as soon buy crocodiles. I believe, before we annexed the country, Ibn Makarrah dropped down on ’em once—to train his young men—and simply hewed ’em in pieces. The bulk of my people are agriculturists just the right stamp for cotton-growers. What’s Mother playing?—‘Once in royal’?”

The organ that had been crooning as happily as a woman over her babe restored, steadied to a tune.

“Magnificent! Oh, magnificent! “ said the Infant loyally. I had never heard him sing but once, and then, though it was early in the tolerant morning, his mess had rolled him into a lotus pond.

“How did you get your cannibals to work for you?” asked Strickland.

“They got converted to civilization after my Chief smashed Ibn Makarrah—just at the time I wanted ’em. You see my Chief had promised me in writing that if I could scrape up a surplus he would not bag it for his roads this time, but I might have it for my cotton game. I only needed two hundred pounds. Our revenues didn’t run to it.”

“What is your revenue?” Stalky asked in the vernacular.

“With hut-tax, traders’ game and mining licenses, not more than fourteen thousand rupees; every penny of it ear-marked months ahead.” Adam sighed.

“Also there is a fine for dogs straying in the Sahib’s camp. Last year it exceeded three rupees,” Imam Din said quietly.

“Well, I thought that was fair. They howled so. We were rather strict on fines. I worked up my native clerk—Bulaki Ram—to a ferocious pitch of enthusiasm. He used to calculate the profits of our cotton-scheme to three points of decimals, after office. I tell you I envied your magistrates here hauling money out of motorists every week I had managed to make our ordinary revenue and expenditure just about meet, and I was crazy to get the odd two hundred pounds for my cotton. That sort of thing grows on a chap when he’s alone—and talks aloud!”

“Hul-lo! Have you been there already?” the father said, and Adam nodded.

“Yes. Used to spout what I could remember of ‘Marmion’ to a tree, sir. Well then my luck turned. One evening an English-speaking nigger came in towing a corpse by the feet. (You get used to little things like that.) He said he’d found it, and please would I identify, because if it was one of Ibn Makarrah’s men there might be a reward. It was an old Mohammedan, with a strong dash of Arab—a smallboned, bald-headed chap, and I was just wondering how it had kept so well in our climate when it sneezed. You ought to have seen the nigger! He fetched a howl and bolted like—like the dog in ‘Tom Sawyer,’ when he sat on the what’s-its-name beetle. He yelped as he ran, and the corpse went on sneezing. I could see it had been sarkied. (That’s a sort of gum-poison, pater, which attacks the nerve centres. Our chief medical officer is writing a monograph about it.) So Imam Din and I emptied out the corpse one time, with my shaving soap and trade gunpowder, and hot water.

“I’d seen a case of sarkie before; so when the skin peeled off his feet, and he stopped sneezing, I knew he’d live. He was bad, though; lay like a log for a week while Imam Din and I massaged the paralysis out of him. Then he told us he was a Hajji—had been three times to Mecca—come in from French Africa, and that he’d met the nigger by the wayside—just like a case of thuggee, in India—and the nigger had poisoned him. That seemed reasonable enough by what I knew of Coast niggers.”

“You believed him?” said his father keenly.

“There was no reason I shouldn’t. The nigger never came back, and the old man stayed with me for two months,” Adam returned. “You know what the best type of a Mohammedan gentleman can be, pater? He was that.”

“None finer, none finer,” was the answer.

“Except a Sikh,” Stalky grunted.

“He’d been to Bombay; he knew French Africa inside out; he could quote poetry and the Koran all day long. He played chess—you don’t know what that meant to me—like a master. We used to talk about the regeneration of Turkey and the Sheik-ul-Islam between moves. Oh, everything under the sun we talked about! He was awfully open-minded. He believed in slavery, of course, but he quite saw that it would have to die out. That’s why he agreed with me about developing the resources of the district by cotton-growing, you know.”

“You talked of that too?” said Strickland.

“Rather. We discussed it for hours. You don’t know what it meant to me. A wonderful man. Imam Din, was not our Hajji marvellous?”

“Most marvellous! It was all through the Hajji that we found the money for our cotton-play.” Imam Din had moved, I fancy, behind Strickland’s chair.

“Yes. It must have been dead against his convictions too. He brought me news when I was down with fever at Dupe that one of Ibn Makarrah’s men was parading through my District with a bunch of slaves—in the Fork!”

“What’s the matter with the Fork, that you can’t abide it?” said Stalky. Adam’s voice had risen at the last word.

“Local etiquette, sir,” he replied, too earnest to notice Stalky’s atrocious pun. “If a slaver runs slaves through British territory he ought to pretend that they’re his servants. Hawkin’ ’em about in the Fork—the forked stick that you put round their necks, you know—is insolence—same as not backing your topsails in the old days. Besides, it unsettles the District.”

“I thought you said slavers didn’t come your way,” I put in.

“They don’t. But my Chief was smoking ’em out of the North all that season, and they were bolting into French territory any road they could find. My orders were to take no notice so long as they circulated, but open slave-dealing in the Fork, was too much. I couldn’t go myself, so I told a couple of our Makalali police and Imam Din to make talk with the gentleman one time. It was rather risky, and it might have been expensive, but it turned up trumps. They were back in a few days with the slaver (he didn’t show fight) and a whole crowd of witnesses, and we tried him in my bedroom, and fined him properly. Just to show you how demoralized the brute must have been (Arabs often go dotty after a defeat), he’d snapped up four or five utterly useless Sheshaheli, and was offering ’em to all and sundry along the road. Why, he offered ’em to you, didn’t he, Imam Din?”

“I was witness that he offered man-eaters’ for sale,” said Imam Din.

page 4

“Luckily for my cotton-scheme, that landed, him both ways. You see, he had slaved and exposed slaves for sale in British territory. That meant the double fine if I could get it out of him.”

“What was his defence?” said Strickland, late of the Punjab Police.

“As far as I remember—but I had a temperature of 104 degrees at the time—he’d mistaken the meridians of longitude. Thought he was in French territory. Said he’d never do it again, if we’d let him off with a fine. I could have shaken hands with the brute for that. He paid up cash like a motorist and went off one time.”

“Did you see him?”

“Ye-es. Didn’t I, Imam Din?”

“Assuredly the Sahib both saw and spoke to the slaver. And the Sahib also made a speech to the man-eaters when he freed them, and they swore to supply him with labour for all his cotton-play. The Sahib leaned on his own servant’s shoulder the while.”

“I remember something of that. I remember Bulaki Ram giving me the papers to sign, and I distinctly remember him locking up the money in the safe—two hundred and ten beautiful English sovereigns. You don’t know what that meant to me! I believe it cured my fever; and as soon as I could, I staggered off with the Hajji to interview the Sheshaheli about labour. Then I found out why they had been so keen to work! It wasn’t gratitude. Their big village had been hit by lightning and burned out a week or two before, and they lay flat in rows around me asking me for a job. I gave it ’em.”

“And so you were very happy?” His mother had stolen up behind us. “You liked your cotton, dear?” She tidied the lump away.

“By Jove, I was happy!” Adam yawned. “Now if any one,” he looked at the Infant, “cares to put a little money into the scheme, it’ll be the making of my District. I can’t give you figures, sir, but I assure—”

“You’ll take your arsenic, and Imam Din’ll take you up to bed, and I’ll come and tuck you in.”

Agnes leaned forward, her rounded elbows on his shoulders, hands joined across his dark hair, and “Isn’t he a darling?” she said to us, with just the same heart-rending lift to the left eyebrow and the same break of her voice as sent Strickland mad among the horses in the year ’84. We were quiet when they were gone. We waited till Imam Din returned to us from above and coughed at the door, as only dark-hearted Asia can.

“Now,” said Strickland, “tell us what truly befell, son of my servant.”

“All befell as our Sahib has said. Only—only there was an arrangement—a little arrangement on account of his cotton-play.”

“Tell! Sit! I beg your pardon, Infant,” said Strickland.

But the Infant had already made the sign, and we heard Imam Din hunker down on the floor: One gets little out of the East at attention.

“When the fever came on our Sahib in our roofed house at Dupe,” he began, “the Hajji listened intently to his talk. He expected the names of women; though I had already told him that Our virtue was beyond belief or compare, and that Our sole desire was this cotton-play. Being at last convinced, the Hajji breathed on our Sahib’s forehead, to sink into his brain news concerning a slave-dealer in his district who had made a mock of the law. Sahib,” Imam Din turned to Strickland, “our Sahib answered to those false words as a horse of blood answers to the spur. He sat up. He issued orders for the apprehension of the slave-dealer. Then he fell back. Then we left him.”

“Alone—servant of my son, and son of my servant?” said his father.

“There was an old woman which belonged to the Hajji. She had come in with the Hajji’s money-belt. The Hajji told her that if our Sahib died, she would die with him. And truly our Sahib had given me orders to depart.”

“Being mad with fever—eh?”

“What could we do, Sahib? This cotton-play was his heart’s desire. He talked of it in his fever. Therefore it was his heart’s desire that the Hajji went to fetch. Doubtless the Hajji could have given him money enough out of hand for ten cottonplays; but in this respect also our Sahib’s virtue was beyond belief or compare. Great Ones do not exchange moneys. Therefore the Hajji said—and I helped with my counsel—that we must make arrangements to get the money in all respects conformable with the English Law. It was great trouble to us, but—the Law is the Law. And the Hajji showed the old woman the knife by which she would die if our Sahib died. So I accompanied the Hajji.”

“Knowing who he was?” said Strickland.

“No! Fearing the man. A virtue went out from him overbearing the virtue of lesser persons. The Hajji told Bulaki Ram the clerk to occupy the seat of government at Dupe till our return. Bulaki Ram feared the Hajji, because the Hajji had often gloatingly appraised his skill in figures at five thousand rupees upon any slave-block. The Hajji then said to me: ‘Come, and we will make the man-eaters play the cotton-game for my delight’s delight’ The Hajji loved our Sahib with the love of a father for his son, of a saved for his saviour, of a Great One for a Great One. But I said: ‘We cannot go to that Sheshaheli place without a hundred rifles. We have here five.’ The Hajji said: ‘I have untied as knot in my head-handkerchief which will be more to us than a thousand.’ I saw that he had so loosed it that it lay flagwise on his shoulder. Then I knew that he was a Great One with virtue in him.

“We came to the highlands of the Sheshaheli on the dawn of the second day—about the time of the stirring of the cold wind. The Hajji walked delicately across the open place where their filth is, and scratched upon the gate which was shut. When it opened I saw the man-eaters lying on their cots under the eaves of the huts. They rolled off: they rose up, one behind the other the length of the street, and the fear on their faces was as leaves whitening to a breeze. The Hajji stood in the gate guarding his skirts from defilement. The Hajji said: ‘I am here once again. Give me six and yoke up.’ They zealously then pushed to us with poles six, and yoked them with a heavy tree. The Hajji then said: “Fetch fire from the morning hearth, and come to windward.’ The wind is strong on those headlands at sunrise, so when each had emptied his crock of fire in front of that which was before him, the broadside of the town roared into flame, and all went. The Hajji then said: ‘At the end of a time there will come here the white man ye once chased for sport. He will demand labour to plant such and such stuff. Ye are that labour, and your spawn after you.’ They said, lifting their heads a very little from the edge of the ashes: ‘ We are that labour, and our spawn after us.’ The Hajji said: ‘What is also my name?’ They said: ‘Thy name is also The Merciful’ The Hajji said: ‘Praise then my mercy’; and while they did this, the Hajji walked away, I following.”

page 5

The Infant made some noise in his throat, and reached for more Burgundy.

“About noon one of our six fell dead. Fright only frights Sahib! None had—none could—touch him. Since they were in pairs, and the other of the Fork was mad and sang foolishly, we waited for some heathen to do what was needful. There came at last Angari men with goats. The Hajji said: ‘What do ye see? They said: ‘Oh, our Lord, we neither see nor hear.’ The Hajji said: ‘But I command ye to see and to hear and to say.’ They said: ‘Oh, our Lord, it is to our commanded eyes as though slaves stood in a Fork.’ The Hajji said: ‘So testify before the officer who waits you in the town of Dupe.’ They said: ‘What shall come to us after?’ The Hajji said: ‘The just reward for the informer. But if ye do not testify, then a punishment which shall cause birds, to fall from the trees in terror and monkeys to scream for pity.’ Hearing this, the Angari men hastened to Dupe. The Hajji then said to me: ‘Are those things sufficient to establish our case, or must I drive in a village full?’ I said that three witnesses amply established any case, but as yet, I said, the Hajji had not offered his slaves for sale. It is true, as our Sahib said just now, there is one fine for catching slaves, and yet another for making to sell them. And it was the double fine that we needed, Sahib, for our Sahib’s cotton-play. We had fore-arranged all this with Bulaki Ram, who knows the English Law, and, I thought the Hajji remembered, but he grew angry, and cried out: ‘O God, Refuge of the Afflicted, must I, who am what I am, peddle this’ dog’s meat by the roadside to gain his delight for my heart’s delight?” None the less, he admitted it was the English Law, and so he offered me the six—five—in a small voice, with an averted head. The Sheshaheli do not smell of sour milk as heathen should. They smell like leopards, Sahib. This is because they eat men.”

“Maybe,” said Strickland. “But where were thy wits? One witness is not sufficient to establish the fact of a sale.”

“What could we do, Sahib? There was the Hajji’s reputation to consider. We could not have called in a heathen witness for such a thing. And, moreover, the Sahib forgets that the defendant himself was making this case. He would not contest his own evidence. Otherwise, I know the law of evidence well enough.

“So then we went to Dupe, and while Bulaki Ram waited among the Angari men, ‘I ran to see our Sahib in bed. His eyes were very bright, and his mouth was full of upside-down orders, but the old woman had not loosened her hair for death. The Hajji said: ‘Be quick with my trial. I am not Job!’ The Hajji was a learned man. We made the trial swiftly to a sound of soothing voices round the bed. Yet—yet, because no man can be sure whether a Sahib of that blood sees, or does not see, we made it strictly in the manner of the forms of the English Law. Only the witnesses and the slaves and the prisoner we kept without for his nose’s sake.”

“Then he did not see the prisoner?” said Strickland.

“I stood by to shackle up an Angari in case he should demand it, but by God’s favour he was too far fevered to ask for one. It is quite true he signed the papers. It is quite true he saw the money put away in the safe—two hundred and ten English pounds and it is quite true that the gold wrought on him as a strong cure. But as to his seeing the prisoner, and having speech with the man-eaters—the Hajji breathed all that on his forehead to sink into his sick brain. A little, as ye have heard, has remained . . . . Ah, but when the fever broke, and our Sahib called for the fine-book, and the thin little picture-books from Europe with the pictures of ploughs and hoes, and cotton mills—ah, then he laughed as he used to laugh, Sahib. It was his heart’s desire, this cotton-play. The Hajji loved him, as who does not? It was a little, little arrangement, Sahib, of which—is it necessary to tell all the world?”

“And when didst thou know who the Hajji was?” said Strickland.

“Not for a certainty till he and our Sahib had returned from their visit to the Sheshaheli country. It is quite true as our Sahib says, the man-eaters lay, flat around his feet, and asked for spades to cultivate cotton. That very night, when I was cooking the dinner, the Hajji said to me: ‘I go to my own place, though God knows whether the Man with the Stone Eyes have left me an ox, a slave, or a woman.’ I said: ‘Thou art then That One?’ The Hajji said: ‘I am ten thousand rupees reward into thy hand. Shall we make another law-case and get more cotton machines for the boy?’ I said: ‘What dog am I to do this? May God prolong thy life a thousand years!’ The Hajji said: ‘Who has seen to-morrow? God has given me as it were a son in my old age, and I praise Him. See that the breed is not lost!’

“He walked then from the cooking-place to our Sahib’s office-table under the tree, where our Sahib held in his hand a blue envelope of Service newly come in by runner from the North. At this, fearing evil news for the Hajji, I would have restrained him, but he said: ‘We be both Great Ones. Neither of us will fail.’ Our Sahib looked up to invite the Hajji to approach before he opened the letter, but the Hajji stood off till our Sahib had well opened and well read the letter. Then the Hajji said: ‘Is it permitted to say farewell?’ Our Sahib stabbed the letter on the file with a deep and joyful breath and cried a welcome. The Hajji said: ‘I go to my own place,’ and he loosed from his neck a chained heart of ambergris set in soft gold and held it forth. Our Sahib snatched it swiftly in the closed fist, down turned, and said ‘If thy name be written hereon, it is needless, for a name is already engraved on my heart.’ The Hajji said: ‘And on mine also is a name engraved; but there is no name on the amulet.’ The Hajji stooped to our Sahib’s feet, but our Sahib raised and embraced him, and the Hajji covered his mouth with his shoulder-cloth, because it worked, and so he went away.”

“And what order was in the Service letter?” Stalky murmured.

“Only an order for our Sahib to write a report on some new cattle sickness. But all orders come in the same make of envelope. We could not tell what order it might have been.”

“When he opened the letter—my son—made he no sign? A cough? An oath?” Strickland asked.

“None, Sahib. I watched his hands. They did not shake. Afterward he wiped his face, but he was sweating before from the heat.”

“Did he know? Did he know who the Hajji was?” said the Infant in English.

“I am a poor man. Who can say what a Sahib of that get knows or does not know? But the Hajji is right. The breed should not be lost. It is not very hot for little children in Dupe, and as regards nurses, my sister’s cousin at Jull—”

“H’m! That is the boy’s own concern. I wonder if his Chief ever knew?” said Strickland.

“Assuredly,” said Imam Din. “On the night before our Sahib went down to the sea, the Great Sahib—the Man with the Stone Eyes—dined with him in his camp, I being in charge of the table. They talked a long while and the Great Sahib said: ‘What didst thou think of That One?’ (We do not say Ibn Makarrah yonder.) Our Sahib said: ‘Which one?’ The Great Sahib said: ‘That One which taught thy man-eaters to grow cotton for thee. He was in thy District three months to my certain knowledge, and I looked by every runner that thou wouldst send me in his head.’ Our Sahib said: ‘If his head had been needed, another man should have been appointed to govern my District, for he was my friend.’ The Great Sahib laughed and said: ‘If I had needed a lesser man in thy place be sure I would have sent him, as, if I had needed the head of That One, be sure I would have sent men to bring it to me. But tell me now, by what means didst thou twist him to thy use and our profit in this cotton-play?’ Our Sahib said: ‘By God, I did not use that man in any fashion whatever. He was my friend.’ The Great Sahib said: ‘ ’Toh Vac! (Bosh!) Tell!’ Our Sahib shook his head as he does—as he did when a child—and they looked at each other like sword-play men in the ring at a fair. The Great Sahib dropped his eyes first and he said: ‘So be it. I should perhaps have answered thus in my youth. No matter. I have made treaty with That One as an ally of the State. Some day he shall tell me the tale.’ Then I brought in fresh coffee, and they ceased. But I do not think That One will tell the Great Sahib more than our Sahib told him.”

“Wherefore?” I asked.

“Because they are both Great Ones, and I have observed in my life that Great Ones employ words very little between each other in their dealings; still less when they speak to a third concerning those dealings. Also they profit by silence . . . . Now I think that the mother has come down from the room, and I will go rub his feet till he sleeps.”

His ears had caught Agnes’s step at the stair-head and presently she passed us on her way to the music room humming the Magnificat.

THE Boers had wrecked the three centre spans and blown huge pieces out of the stone piers. The wreckage lay adrift in the dirty water, and a section of the British Army was now picking up the pieces. A pontoon bridge had been thrown across the river. You reached it by way of a steep sandy track through the scrub; and on the north bank met a steeper, sandier scarp that climbed out past the haunches of the bridge under the edge of a rocky embankment. Till the temporary railway-trestle was finished, this plunge and that scramble were the only path into the Orange Free State. Hither came McManus, head of the Corporate Equatorial Bank of South Africa, on urgent business. He had been summoned to Bloemfontein by the Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief, who, with the High Commissioner, was then striving to disentangle some finances which President Steyn had dropped. In his inner pocket lay a pass calling on all officers, civil and military, to assist and expedite R. L. McManus, Esq., by every means in their power; for the State had need of him. And his time — which meant other people’s money as well as his own — was valuable.

McManus was not used to passes. As a rule of thirty years, few people interfered with his uprisings or downsittings. He was known to remotest Dutch farmers as an institution representing an institution, from the edge of the Kalahari desert to the outskirts of Portuguese territory — from Salisbury, where they lend money on mortgage, to the Cape Flats, where they foreclose on villa property. His grizzled head held most intimate knowledge of South Africa’s finances for the last quarter of a century; and his word, when they importuned him to speak, was law alike to speculative Bond or Progressive Ministries. Cape Town knew that he had been called up to Bloemfontein and flashed the news to Natal and Kimberley; nor need we for an instant doubt that Pretoria knew it within twelve hours of his departure from the coast. The Corporate Equatorial had been chased out of Bloemfontein with bad words early in the war. Its return signified more than an army corps victorious.

McManus, his Secretary, and half-a-dozen fellow-travellers came in a desolate evening to the southern end of Folly Bridge. A simple race of God-fearing herdsmen had been there before them. The platform, after three days’ vehement cleansing, still reeked of putrid onions, stable litter, and the remnants of bloody sheepskins. They had defiled the corners of every room they had lived in, as dirty little boys defile abandoned houses. They had removed everything save the door-locks, and had left in exchange a portrait in crayon on the wall of one ‘Chamerlain at Modder’, which represented an eye-glassed person dangling at a rope’s end.

‘My word! ‘said a New Zealand doctor, hoping to join his countrymen in the big camps to the North, ‘this is a lovely land to fight over! When do you suppose we go on to Bloemfontein?’

‘I’d give something to know why McManus is going up,’ said the Captain of a troop of Colonial Horse, returning from a Karoo hospital.

‘Who’s McManus?’ said the New Zealander.

‘Good Lord!’ the South African replied, aghast at his ignorance. ‘He’s McManus. He’s in the carriage now. You’ll see he won’t get out. He’s got all his skoff with him. He’ll have a decent dinner — soda-water too.’

The Colonial had been picked up out of the tangled Colesberg kopjes, where soda-water was scarce.

‘I’m going up with the Little Man’s private letters.’ This was an officer late of the Bengal Army.’ That ought to be good for a reserved compartment in a cattle-truck. Wonder how long we’ll have to wait.’ He stumbled forth, grasping the Commander-in-Chief’s private mail-bag. The noises of a full camp filled their ears, but the station was void and black.

‘There must be a Railway Staff Officer somewhere,’ a young and brisk Gunner murmured.’ Let’s find him. Isn’t that a light at the end of the platform? Phew! How the place stinks! ‘

They formed an untidy little procession, and, falling over sleeping men and stray baggage, found at last a bare room, lighted with three candles in beer-bottles, and somewhat over-furnished with two men, both in khaki—one of them very angry.

‘But — but — confound it all,’ said the latter. ‘How did it come to be broached, Guard?’

‘I don’t know, sir. My business is to report it to you. One case of whisky with the top smashed in, and a bottle gone between here an’ Arundel. They’re always doin’ it along the line, sir. I think it’s those dam’ Irregular Corps.’

Yes, that’s all very fine, but how did it come to be broached? Well, never mind — never mind. I shall report it, of course.’

‘Report it!’ whispered a Sapper, with documents for the Intelligence Department. ‘They’ve been looting the Staff’s Reserve baggage down the line. A lot they’ll care for one bottle o’ whisky missing.’

‘What can I do for you, gentlemen,’ said the Railway Staff Officer, when the train Guard had withdrawn.

‘We want to know how we can get on to Bloemfontein.’

‘Not another train till to-morrow night. You’ll have to wait till then.’ The R.S.O. drummed merrily on the table.

It meant a check of twenty-four hours, and someone said so.

‘It isn’t my fault,’ said the R.S.O. I assure you it would give me the greatest pleasure personally to shoot rubbish up the line, but I have my orders; and I’ve nothing more to do with it. I’ve noticed that every man who comes up thinks his business is the one thing I’ve got to attend to, and that the whole Army will go to pieces if he isn’t sent to the Front at once, but — Hullo! What do these Kaffirs want? Been out of the camp without a pass?’

Four Kaffirs were thrust into the room, and the company departed, leaving the R.S.O. to execute justice according to his own lights and those in the beer-bottles.

‘My word’ said the New Zealander. ‘But we didn’t make a fuss about not going up, did we Why was he so stuffy? Who is that man?’

‘He has been here precisely nine days,’ said a dry voice in the darkness. ‘Nine whole days in Africa. He has his orders. We’ll hear a lot about those orders before we leave. Now let’s see if we can whack up something to eat.’

‘Get a light first,’ said the Gunner. ‘If we could find some oil, we’d light the lamps in our carriage. Morgan, go an’ unscrew the lamps an’ bring ’em out here. I’ll look for oil. Hi.’ (This to a shadow that passed). ‘Where do you keep your lamp-oil?’

‘In the lamp-room, of course. I’m the Station-master,’ was the fretful reply.

page 2

‘I beg your pardon. You must be awfully hard-worked. Don’t bother. We’ll get it.’

‘Thank you, sir. Yes, we’re working twenty hours a day. There’s the oil. I’ll strike a match, and you can get the cork out of — ‘ ‘No, you won’t! Chuck that match away. I’d sooner waste your oil than set myself alight, Morgan. Bring the lamps here. I’ll fill ’em.’

‘One of the lamps ain’t empty at all.’ Morgan’s voice came across the siding with a rising snarl. ‘It’s full. It’s trickling all down my cuff.’

‘Never mind. Bring what’s left. We must see to eat.’

The lamps were filled and lit rough-handedly; and plate by plate, and tin by tin, with jack-knives for tin-openers, a meal was dragged together.

The Railway Staff Officer suggested that it should be eaten in his room, and there enlarged on the duties and responsibilities of his office. But the company were tired. Moreover, R.S.O.’s were old birds to them. They knew not fewer than eighty of the breed, and some had been R.S.O.s themselves.

‘I think,’ said the New Zealand doctor, skewering cold tinned herring on a pocket-knife, ‘before I talked about shooting rubbish up the line, I’d try to burn a little of the muck that’s lying about the station. Sweeping isn’t any earthly good.’

‘Oh, that department is probably in charge of the Officer Commanding the Royal Engine-eahs,’ said the Colonial Captain, with a short dry laugh. He had served since the outbreak of the war, and counted thirteen engagements to his credit.

‘A little of the lamp-oil we wasted and a match would do wonders,’ the New Zealander insisted.

‘Don’t presume to dictate to the Army,’ an Imperial Officer said, proudly. ‘I’ll back an R.S.O. against anyone except’ — he looked across the table — ‘a Sapper.’

‘We’re learning. I swear we are learning.’ The young Engineer flushed. ‘We aren’t such fools as we were. The Colonials have taught us a lot. Take that Railway Pioneer Corps that’s laying down the new line on the north bank, for instance.’

‘Yes,’ the Colonial Captain grunted. ‘They’re the pick of the Rand — all mine-managers and machinists and engineers and boiler-makers. They’re working double shifts to finish the track, because they want to get home to Johannesburg. Yes, I know about them.’ Again he laughed unpleasantly.

‘What?’ the New Zealander asked.

‘Oh, the usual thing. They worked day and night, and, of course, they wanted more than Service rations, so their commandant, Phil Tenbroek — he’s a big mine-manager when he’s at home — bought a lot of Bovril and pea-meal, and made soup of it, and served it out to ’em at night. You can see their flare-lamps across the river now, if you look. Day and night they work. Well, the authorities found he’d spent five whole pounds Government money, and they told him he wasn’t to do it. Mind you, that’s now — now — now — when every day — what am I talking of? — every hour’s work means several thousands of pounds saved. Yes, they told him the expenditure was unauthorised.’

‘And then?’ said the young Sapper uneasily.

‘Oh, then. You know Phil Tenbroek. At least I do. Phil sent a wire to Port Elizabeth on his own hook for fifty pounds’ worth of Bovril and pea-meal. He paid out of his pocket, of course; but Philly wants to get back to the Rand as soon as possible, and, it seemed to him the sooner the new line was laid the better. And they’d have crippled the whole Corps — the best engineers in the world — for a fiver! Nice tale, isn’t it? True, too. Look at their flare-lamps! They work.’

Far away across the dark to the northward of the formless country ran a line of fire-dots. The Railway Pioneer Corps were at work on the new track that was to connect with the temporary trestle-bridge. A dull boom came up the gorge between the kopjes.

Blasting away the wreckage,’ the Colonial explained. ‘Risky work at night, but Phil told ’em he was in a hurry. Oh, Philly Tenbroek is a man. I bet he hasn’t taken off his clothes for a week.’

Morning, hot and sultry, put out the flare-lamps on the north of the river, and brought in a train-load of troops from the South to be added to the acres of dusty tentage around Folly Bridge. The travellers, including McManus, had seen men and guns and buck-wagons, doctors, dust and wounded — stony hills and scrub-strewn downs — a few hundred times before. It pleased them better to observe the R.S.O. as he faced the tenth day of his official life. The four Kaffirs had been disposed of, but he was still troubled about the broached whisky, and much annoyed by the eccentricities of lunatic civilians, who, solely for the jest of it, wished to know when they could get goods up to Bloemfontein. The big railway junction thirty miles behind him was also a nuisance. It complained of a congested goods-yard, and desired him to take trucks. Now, his desire was to keep his end of the line neat and open, and, so far, he had succeeded. He drew attention with pride to the long empty sidings, which he had ‘saved,’ though he did not exactly specify the purpose of his economies. There were far too many people, he said, anxious to go to Bloemfontein. Officers, of course, if their passes were in perfect order, might be allowed; but these idle civilians, he was free to say, annoyed him. They simply had no conception of military matters, and they never seemed to think a man had orders. However, he had his orders, and he meant to carry them out. What otherwise was the sense of orders? He paused very often for a reply. The station in the warm, close air stank to heaven.

‘Well, that’s all right,’ said the New Zealander, ‘but when I was quite finished with my orders, it seems to me I’d have another shot at the rubbish about here. My word! Look at all that unemployed labour in the camp! ‘

There were not fewer than two thousand men under the dusty hills. Some of them were being drilled.

McManus went for a walk through the mimosa bushes to look at the late bridge. It had cost a hundred thousand pounds, and somebody would have to account for the breakage. That, indirectly, was McManus’s department.

‘Have you seen McManus?’ cried a private of the Railway Pioneer Corps, as he rode up to the Colonial Captain sitting in the window of what had been Folly Bridge refreshment-room. ‘I’ve seen him. He looks as if he’d just come out of Adderley Street.’

‘Did you speak to him?’

‘No, but I wanted to ask him who he expects is going to pay for the bridge.’

page 3

‘You will — on the Rand — after the war,’ the Captain drawled.

‘That’s what I supposed, but I wish to goodness McManus could work out some scheme of compensation that ‘ud hit the Transvaal hard.’

‘So do I — but the war expenses will have to be paid by the Rand just the same.’

‘That’s rather hard on us — working as volunteers to mend what the Boers have broken, and then to have the bill sent in to us at the end. McManus lent me two thousand once on stands I had in Johannesburg. I paid him before the war. Wish I hadn’t now. Well, I must go on. S’long.’

At four in the afternoon, a train was made up at Folly Bridge. Into this marched the passengers and their baggage, and at that hour appeared the R.S.O. to satisfy himself that all passes were in order and to issue a ukase.

‘You will be turned back at the other side of the river by the R.S.O. there if your passes are not countersigned by the Station Commandant here,’ he said, smiling.

‘The deuce! When was that order issued?’ the Colonial Captain demanded.

‘It isn’t my fault. I’ve only got my orders, and —’ ‘Yes, yes, we know all that, but where is the Station Commandant?’

‘I don’t know. He was about here this morning, but he left after lunch.’

‘No, you wouldn’t,’ reflectively from a corner of the carriage.

‘Well, I hope you’ll get across all right, but I tell you now that unless your passes are countersigned by Smith, Station Commandant, you won’t be able to get across even if you were Kitchener himself.’

‘I’d give a month — I’d give three months’ pay to have K. on this platform now — and we’d see,’ said the officer with the Little Man’s letters.

‘I’m only giving you my orders —’

‘And you don’t know where Smith is?’

‘No.’

‘And you expect us to hunt him all around the camp, do you? We’ve been seventeen—twenty-two—hours on this blasted onion-heap, and you and Smith between you have only just discovered —’

‘Well, it isn’t my fault, I’m only —’

‘You ought to keep Smith on the premises then.’

‘That has nothing to do with me. I should recommend you to go out and look for him.’

‘Oh, I’ve no interest in the matter. I’m only going up with the Little Man’s private mail. Here’s the bag. I don’t care. If I’m stopped on the other side, it’s your look-out. I’m sure the Little Man would be quite pleased.’

‘Oh, there’s McManus,’ said the Colonial Captain, looking out of the window. ‘I suppose he’s hunting Smith. D’you think they’ll stop McManus if his pass isn’t countersigned by Smith?’

‘Who’s McManus?’ A giggle of deep delight interrupted the R.S.O. ‘Oh, that civilian! ‘Pon my word, you’d think Bloemfontein was Piccadilly. They’re all wanting to go up there.’

‘Thank you,’ said the Colonial. ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to be turned back on the other side. Perhaps if we say we couldn’t find Smith they’ll forgive us.’

‘Well, I’m only giving you my word —’

The train rolled out nearly half a mile and halted in a deep cutting. The passengers stepped out over-ankles into the sand that slid under their feet, and their baggage followed them. A gaggle of Kaffirs marched away with bags and bedding-rolls, and the company followed depressedly. They expected to be met on the other side by a train from the North, which in God’s good time would go back to Bloemfontein.

‘But—but what do they want to stop in the middle of a cutting for?’ said the New Zealander. ‘I wouldn’t have minded walking a hundred yards on the level back there. They might have made a decent platform. I believe I’ve twisted my ankle climbing up the bank.’

‘Oh, this isn’t a patch to what it is on t’other side,’ said an officer on the bridge works. And they walked and they walked till they reached the pontoon, a hundred feet below. McManus’s face seemed a little set as it were — set, but in no wise greatly troubled.

‘Did McManus find Smith?’ said the Colonial, as they climbed the desperate north bank down which buck-wagons were sliding in billows of dust. Here again fifty men’s labour for two days would have greatly smoothed the road.

‘He said he didn’t,’ his companion replied.

‘Glory!’ said the Colonial, and, hopping over a boulder, fell into a bush. A hundred feet of river-bank through deep sand at the end of a mile walk is not easy to cover ; and it was a dewy-browed detachment that broke through the scrub and landed, panting, among the rocks at the gangers’ hut on the north side of the bridge. But the R.S.O. who received them there was cool and utterly calm. He wished to know whether their passes were in order, and a delicious awe fell on the company.

McManus climbed the slope into the Orange Free State easily and dispassionately, his lower jaw protruding, perhaps, one-sixteenth of an inch beyond its normal clinch. The travellers made a little semicircle about the R.S.O.—the R.S.O. of the North Bank of Folly Bridge- about him and about McManus, of the Corporate Equatorial Bank. It was heavenly weather. There was no accommodation of any sort of description, for the gangers’ hut was occupied by military telegraphers.

‘May I trouble you for your pass, please?’

page 4

McManus produced it clumsily. He was more accustomed to demand than to supply documents of identification.

‘Yes — yes — this seems all right’— the company winked as with one eyelid —’ but I don’t see that it has been countersigned by Smith.’

‘Captain Smith was in his bath, when I went to him at Folly Bridge at three forty-five. He sent a verbal message that it would be all right — so far as I understood through the door at the time.’

‘I am afraid I can’t help that.’ The R.S.O. paused uneasily. McManus in grey tweeds, black bowler, and immaculate white collar, gave him not the slightest help.

‘This pass is no good.’ The sentence came out in a rush.

‘Indeed?’ There was a meekness about McManus and a silence on the little knot of bystanders that would have warned any other than an imported Imperial alien that that kopje was occupied in force.

‘No. You’ll have to go back across the river to get Smith’s signature. I can’t let you up on that pass.’ This very cheerfully.

Whole hierarchies had signed it. Lions and unicorns ramped on the top of it. It appealed, as has been said, to earth, fire, and water — to horseflesh, steam, and steel, and all in command thereof, to forward with speed and courtesy R. L. McManus to Bloemfontein; but it lacked the signature of Smith — that Smith who was then towelling himself two miles away.

‘I must go back?’ McManus’s clear eye travelled down the rocky slope behind him to the far pontoon and the further south bank, where a few soldiery, pink as prawns, and at that distance not much larger, were bathing; climbed the wooded bank beyond, and rested with disfavour on the domino-small houses of Folly Bridge.

‘Yes—go back, of course, and get Smith to sign it.’

A lesser man would have said: ‘I’ll see you damned first,’ but McManus was in no sense small. His face did not even flush. He turned away slowly, as though the matter had no further interest, and the R.S.O. dealt with the other passes. To be precise, not one carried the magic signature of Smith. The officer in charge of the Little Man’s private mail almost implored the R.S.O. to stop him for twenty-four hours because he wished to learn whether there was any truth in the current Army legend that under no circumstances would the Little Man swear. The officer in charge of the Staff’s mail followed suit. He had two bags of official correspondence for the Staff, and there were Generals among them who could swear. He, too, prayed to be turned back. The officer with the new maps for the Intelligence Department joined in his entreaties.

‘After all,’ said one cheerily, as they sat down on their bedding- rolls in the gathering dusk, ‘what does it matter, old man? You’re bound to be Stellenbosched in three days.’

Now Stellenbosch is not a name to use lightly, for there go the men who have not done quite so well; and the R.S.O.’s face clouded as he asked for an explanation.

‘Haven’t you stopped McManus?’ said an officer, who knew his man.

‘Who’s McManus?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry — never mind — you’ll find out before Tuesday.’

‘The only person I’ve stopped was that civilian who hadn’t had his pass signed by Smith. I can’t accept a verbal message across the Orange River.’

‘Quite right. You’ll be getting all your message on the wire from Bloemfontein in a little while. I wouldn’t be in your shoes for a trifle.’

‘I don’t think McManus minds much, though,’ the Colonial Captain struck in soothingly. ‘I spoke to him just now. He says he is going on.’

‘I’ll take dashed good care he doesn’t,’ said the R.S.O., exploding. This was something he could understand.

‘Yes — he’s going on in the train when she comes in — so you’ll have another chance, you see. If you stop him, I suppose he will go back to Cape Town, and he’ll tell the Little Man why. He’s rather busy, and he won’t be able to come up again.’

‘But — confound it all — does he expect the whole blessed Orange Free State to wait on his business?’

‘It would be a bad job if it didn’t — just now. He’s the head of the Corporate Equatorial Banking Corporation, and he has been called up to Bloemfontein rather urgently to put the finances of the place straight. He isn’t going up to start a hotel there, you know.’

Somebody lit a pipe; and in the hush you could hear the great river running through the dry hills. A far-away voice on the construction- engine backed close up to the bridge called to someone under a staging.

‘McManus going up to Bloemfontein to-night?’

‘Ye—es.’

‘That means business — thank God.’

‘Why—y?’

‘Why?’Cause they don’t care one scarlet weir for the whole Army — the Boers don’t. They reckon they can get them withdrawn if they win the game in London, but reopenin’ the Bank at Bloemfontein means business. That’s why. It teaches the Dutch more than twenty battles. Wonder they don’t try to cut the line and nab him to-night.’

The silence by the gangers’ hut continued unbroken for twenty puffs.

‘And he did wait outside Smith’s door, while Smith was washing — because I saw him. I wouldn’t have done it,’ said an Imperial Officer slowly,’ but I suppose he wished to see what sort of fools we can be when we go in for war.’

‘And you’ve told him to walk two miles back and two miles here again,’ said the New Zealander, ‘to get Smith’s signature.’

‘And there’s no guarantee Smith won’t be having a hair-cut and shampoo when he reaches there,’ the Colonial Captain added. We knew in Cape Town a week ago that McManus had been called up. But, of course, if he hasn’t got Smith’s signature, that settles it.’

‘What does it matter? Let the brute frolic round the kopjes till Smith’s dry. He’s only the boss of the biggest Bank in the country. Who cares how much they want him at Bloemfontein ? I’d put a guard on him, and march him back in irons, by Jove,’ said a Cavalry Officer. ‘I say, old man, didn’t it ever occur to you to knock off some of the points of these rocks that we’re supposed to sit on? They’re infernally nubbly.’

One by one the stars came out over the hills, and the flare-lamps of the never-sleeping Pioneer Corps puffed and blazed afresh in the river-bed.

Last of all came the train from the North, and when McManus and his Secretary went up to their labelled compartments reserved for them at Bloemfontein, the R.S.O. took no notice.

No more, for that matter, did McManus.

WHEN ALL the Animals lived in Big Nursery, before it was time to go into the Ark, Big Nurse had to brush their hair. She told them to stand still while she did it or it might be the worse for them. So they stood still. The Lion stood still and had his hair brushed into a splendid mane with a blob at the tip of his tail. The Horse stood still, and had his hair brushed into a beautiful mane and a noble tail. The Cow stood still and had her horns polished, too. The Bear stood still and got a Lick and a Promise. They all stood still, except one Animal, and he wouldn’t. He wiggled and kicked sideways at Big Nurse.

Big Nurse told him, over and over again, that he would not make anything by behaving so. But he said he wasn’t going to stand still for anyone, and he wanted his hair to grow all over him. So, at last, Big Nurse washed her hands of him and said: ‘On-your-own-head-be-it-and-all-over-you! ‘So, that Animal went away, and his hair grew and grew — on his own head it was and all over him — all the while that they were waiting to go into the Ark. And the more it grew, the longer, the harder, the harsher, and the pricklier it grew, till, at last, it was all long spines and jabby quills. On his own head it was and all over him, and particularly on his tail! So they called him Porcupine and stood him in the corner till the Ark was ready.

Then they all went into the Ark, two by two; but not one wanted to go in with Porcupine on account of his spines, except one small brother of his called Hedgehog who always stood still to have his hair brushed (he wore it short), and Porcupine hated him.

Their cabin was on the orlop-deck — the lowest — which was reserved for the Nocturnal Mammalia, such as Bats, Badgers, Lemurs, Bandi-coots and Myoptics at large. Noah’s second son, Ham, was in charge there, because he matched the decoration, being dark-complexioned but very wise.

When the lunch-gong sounded, Ham went down with a basketful of potatoes, carrots, small fruits, grapes, onions and green corn for their lunches.

The first Animal that he found was the small Hedgehog Brother, having the time of his life among the blackbeetles. He said to Ham, ‘I doubt if I would go near Porcupine this morning. The motion has upset him and he’s a little fretful.’

Ham said: ‘Dunno anything about that. My job is to feed ’em.’ So he went into Porcupine’s cabin, where Porcupine was taking up all the room in the world in his bunk, and his quills rattling like a loose window in a taxi.

Ham gave him three sweet potatoes, six inches of sugarcane, and two green corn-cobs. When he had finished, Ham said: ‘Don’t you ever say ‘thank-you’ for anything?’ ‘Yes,’ said Porcupine. ‘This is my way of saying it.’ And he swung round and slapped and swished with his tail sideways at Ham’s bare right leg and made it bleed from the ankle to the knee.

Ham hopped up on deck, with his foot in his hand, and found Father Noah at the wheel.

‘What do you want on the bridge at this hour of high noon?’ said Noah.

Ham said, ‘I want a large tin of Ararat biscuits.’

‘For what and what for?’ said Noah.

‘Because something on the orlop-deck thinks he can teach something about porcupines,’ said Ham. ‘I want to show him.’

‘Then why waste biscuits?’ said Noah.

‘Law!’ said Ham. ‘I only done ask for the largest lid offen the largest box of Ararat biscuits on the boat.’

‘Speak to your Mother,’ said Noah. ‘She issues the stores.’

So Ham’s Mother, Mrs. Noah, gave him the largest lid of the very largest box of Ararat biscuits in the Ark as well as some biscuits for himself; and Ham went down to the orlop-deck with the box-lid held low in his dark right hand, so that it covered his dark right leg from the knee to the ankle.

‘Here’s something I forgot,’ said Ham and he held out an Ararat biscuit to Porcupine, and Porcupine ate it quick.

‘Now say ‘Thank-you,’ ‘ said Ham.

‘I will,’ said Porcupine, and he whipped round, swish, with his wicked tail and hit the biscuit-tin. And that did him no good. ‘Try again,’ said Ham, and Porcupine swished and slapped with his tail harder than ever. ‘Try again,’ said Ham. This time the Porcupine swished so hard that his quill-ends jarred on his skin inside him, and some of the quills broke off short.

Then Ham sat down on the other bunk and said, ‘Listen! Just because a man looks a little sunburned and talks a little chuffy, don’t you think you can be fretful with him. I am Ham! The minute that this Dhow touches Mount Ararat, I shall be Emperor of Africa from the Bayuda Bend to the Bight of Benin, and from the Bight of Benin to Dar-es-Salam, and Dar-es-Salam to the Drakensberg, and from the Drakensberg to where the Two Seas meet round the same Cape. I shall be Sultan of Sultans, Paramount Chief of all Indunas, Medicine Men, and Rain-doctors, and specially of the Wunungiri — the Porcupine People — who are waiting for you. You will belong to me! You will live in holes and burrows and old diggings all up and down Africa; and if I ever hear of you being fretful again I will tell my Wunungiri, and they will come down after you underground, and pull you out backwards. I — amm — Hamm!’

Porcupine was so frightened at this that he stopped rattling his quills under the bunk and lay quite still.

Then the small Hedgehog Brother who was under the bunk too, having the time of his life among the blackbeetles there, said: ‘This doesn’t look rosy for me. After all, I’m his brother in a way of speaking, and I suppose I shall have to go along with him underground, and I can’t dig for nuts!’

‘Not in the least,’ said Ham. ‘On his own head it was and all over him, just as Big Nurse said. But you stood still to have your hair brushed. Besides, you aren’t in my caravan. As soon as this old bugga-low (he meant the Ark) touches Ararat, I go South and East with my little lot — Elephants and Lions and things – and Porcupig — and scatter ’em over Africa. You’ll go North and West with one or other of my Brothers (I’ve forgotten which), and you’ll fetch up in a comfy little place called England — all among gardens and box-borders and slugs, where people will be glad to see you. And you will be a lucky little fellow always.’

‘Thank you, Sir,’ said the small Hedgehog Brother. ‘But what about my living underground? That isn’t my line of country.’

‘Not the least need,’ said Ham. And he touched the small Hedgehog Brother with his foot, and Hedgehog curled up — which he had never done before.

‘Now you’ll be able to pick up your own dry-leaf-bedding on your own prickles so as you can lie warm in a hedge from October till April if you like. Nobody will bother you except the gipsies; and you’ll be no treat to any dog.’

‘Thank you, Sir,’ said small Hedgehog Brother, and he uncurled himself and went after more blackbeetles.

And it all happened just as Ham said.

I don’t know how the keepers at the Zoo feed Porcupine but, from that day to this, every keeper that I have ever seen feed a porcupine in Africa, takes care to have the lid of a biscuit-box held low in front of his right leg so that Porcupine can’t get in a swish with his tail at it, after he has had his lunch.

Palaver done set! Go and have your hair brushed!

©The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty

pages 1 of 8

ONE of the many beauties of a democracy is its almost superhuman skill in developing troubles with other countries and finding its honour abraded in the process. A true democracy has a large contempt for all other lands that are governed by Kings and Queens and Emperors; and knows little and thinks less of their internal affairs. All it regards is its own dignity, which is its King, Queen, and Knave. So, sooner or later, its international differences end in the common people, who have no dignity, shouting the common abuse of the street, which also has no dignity, across the seas in order to vindicate their new dignity. The consequences may or may not be war; but the chances do not favour peace.One advantage in living in a civilised land which is really governed lies in the fact that all the Kings and Queens and Emperors of the Continent are closely related by blood or marriage; are, in fact, one large family. A wise head among them knows that what appears to be a studied insult may be no more than some man’s indigestion or woman’s indisposition, to be treated as such, and explained by quiet talk. Again, a popular demonstration, headed by King and Court, may mean nothing more than that so-and-so’s people are out of hand for the minute. When a horse falls to kicking in a hunt-crowd at a gate, the rider does not dismount, but puts his open hand behind him, and the others draw aside. It is so with the rulers of men. In the old days they cured their own and their people’s bad temper with fire and slaughter; but now that the fire is so long of range and the slaughter so large, they do other things; and few among their people guess how much they owe of mere life and money to what the slang of the minute calls ‘puppets’ and ‘luxuries.’

Once upon a time there was a little Power, the half-bankrupt wreck of a once great empire, that lost its temper with England, the whipping-boy of all the world, and behaved, as every one said, most scandalously. But it is not generally known that that Power fought a pitched battle with England and won a glorious victory. The trouble began with the people. Their own misfortunes had been many, and for private rage it is always refreshing to find a vent in public swearing. Their national vanity had been deeply injured, and they thought of their ancient glories and the days when their fleets had first rounded the Cape of Storms, and their own newspapers called upon Camoens and urged them to extravagances. It was the gross, smooth, sleek, lying England that was checking their career of colonial expansion. They assumed at once that their ruler was in league with England, so they cried with great heat that they would forthwith become a Republic and colonially expand themselves as a free people should. This made plain, the people threw stones at the English Consuls and spat at English ladies, and cut off drunken sailors of Our fleet in their ports and hammered them with oars, and made things very unpleasant for tourists at their customs, and threatened awful deaths to the consumptive invalids of Madeira, while the junior officers of the army drank fruit-extracts and entered into most blood-curdling conspiracies against their monarch; all with the object of being a Republic. Now the history of the South American Republics shows that it is not good that Southern Europeans should be also Republicans. They glide too quickly into military despotism; and the propping of men against walls and shooting them in detachments can be arranged much more economically and with less effect on the death-rate by a hide-bound monarchy. Still the performances of the Power as represented by its people were extremely inconvenient. It was the kicking horse in the crowd, and probably the rider explained that he could not check it. So the people enjoyed all the glory of war with none of the risks, and the tourists who were stoned in their travels returned stolidly to England and told the Times that the police arrangements of foreign towns were defective.

This, then, was the state of affairs north the Line. South it was more strained, for there the Powers were at direct issue: England, unable to go back because of the pressure of adventurous children behind her, and the actions of far-away adventurers who would not come to heel, but offering to buy out her rival; and the other Power, lacking men or money, stiff in the conviction that three hundred years of slave-holding and intermingling with the nearest natives gave an inalienable right to hold slaves and issue half-castes to all eternity. They had built no roads. Their towns were rotting under their hands; they had no trade worth the freight of a crazy steamer; and their sovereignty ran almost one musket-shot inland when things were peaceful. For these very reasons they raged all the more, and the things that they said and wrote about the manners and customs of the English would have driven a younger nation to the guns with a long red bill for wounded honour.

It was then that Fate sent down in a twin-screw shallow-draft gunboat, of some 270 tons displacement, designed for the defence of rivers, Lieutenant Harrison Edward Judson, to be known for the future as Bai-Jove-Judson. His type of craft looked exactly like a flat-iron with a match stuck up in the middle; it drew five feet of water or less; carried a four-inch gun forward, which was trained by the ship; and, on account of its persistent rolling, was, to live in, three degrees worse than a torpedo-boat. When Judson was appointed to take charge of the thing on her little trip of six or seven thousand miles southward, his first remark as he went to look her over in dock was, ‘Bai Jove, that topmast wants staying forward!’ The topmast was a stick about as thick as a clothesprop; but the flat-iron was Judson’s first command, and he would not have exchanged his position for second post on the Anson or the Howe. He navigated her, under convoy, tenderly and lovingly to the Cape (the story of the topmast came with him), and he was so absurdly in love with his wallowing wash-tub when he reported himself, that the Admiral of the station thought it would be a pity to kill a new man on her, and allowed Judson to continue in his unenvied rule.

The Admiral visited her once in Simon’s Bay, and she was bad, even for a flat-iron gunboat, strictly designed for river and harbour defence. She sweated clammy drops of dew between decks in spite of a preparation of powdered cork that was sprinkled over her inside paint. She rolled in the long Cape swell like a buoy; her foc’s’le was a dog-kennel; Judson’s cabin was practically under the water-line; not one of her dead-lights could ever be opened; and her compasses, thanks to the influence of the four-inch gun, were a curiosity even among Admiralty compasses. But Bai-Jove-Judson was radiant and enthusiastic. He had even contrived to fill Mr. Davies, the second-class engine-room artificer, who was his chief engineer, with the glow of his passion. The Admiral, who remembered his own first command, when pride forbade him to slack off a single rope on a dewy night, and he had racked his rigging to pieces in consequence, looked at the flat-iron keenly. Her fenders were done all over with white sennit, which was truly, white; her big gun was varnished with a better composition than the Admiralty allowed; the spare sights were cased as carefully as the chronometers; the chocks for spare spars, two of them, were made of four-inch Burma teak carved with dragons’ heads (that was one result of Bai-Jove-Judson’s experiences with the naval brigade in the Burmese war), the bow-anchor was varnished instead of being painted, and there were charts other than the Admiralty scale supplied. The Admiral was well pleased, for he loved a ship’s husband—a man who had a little money of his own and was willing to spend it on his command. Judson looked at him hopefully. He was only a Junior Navigating Lieutenant under eight years’ standing. He might be kept in Simon’s Bay for six months, and his ship at sea was his delight. The dream of his heart was to enliven her dismal official gray with a line of gold-leaf and, perhaps, a little scroll-work at her blunt barge-like bows.

‘There’s nothing like a first command, is there?’ said the Admiral, reading his thoughts. ‘You seem to have rather queer compasses though. Better get them adjusted.’

‘It’s no use, sir,’ said Judson. ‘The gun would throw out the Pole itself. But—but I’ve got the hang of most of the weaknesses.’

‘Will you be good enough to lay that gun over thirty degrees, please?’ The gun was put over. Round and round and round went the needle merrily, and the Admiral whistled.

‘You must have kept close to your convoy?’

page 2

‘Saw her twice between here and Madeira, sir,’ said Judson with a flush, for he resented the slur on his steamship. ‘She’s—she’s a little out of hand now, but she will settle down after a while.’

The Admiral went over the side, according to the rules of the Service, but the Staff-Captain must have told the other men of the squadron in Simon’s Bay, for they one and all made light of the flat-iron for many days. ‘What can you shake out of her, Judson?’ said the Lieutenant of the Mongoose, a real white-painted ram-bow gunboat with quick-firing guns, as he came into the upper verandah of the little naval Club overlooking the dockyard one hot afternoon. It is in that club, as the captains come and go, that you hear all the gossip of all the Seven Seas.

‘Ten point four,’ said Bai-Jove-Judson.

‘Ah! That was on her trial trip. She’s too much by the head now. I told you staying that topmast would throw her out.’

‘You leave my top-hamper alone,’ said Judson, for the joke was beginning to pall on him.

‘Oh, my soul! Listen to him. Juddy’s top-hamper. Keate, have you heard of the flat-iron’s top-hamper? You’re to leave it alone. Commodore Judson’s feelings are hurt.’

Keate was the Torpedo Lieutenant of the big Vortigern, and he despised small things. ‘His tophamper,’ said he slowly. ‘Oh, ah yes, of course. Juddy, there’s a shoal of mullet in the bay, and I think they’re foul of your screws. Better go down, or they’ll carry away something.’

‘I don’t let things carry away as a rule. You see I’ve no Torpedo Lieutenant aboard, thank God.’

Keate within the past week had so managed to bungle the slinging-in of a small torpedo-boat on the Vortigern, that the boat had broken the crutches on which she rested, and was herself being repaired in the dockyard under the Club windows.

‘One for you, Keate. Never mind, Juddy, you’re hereby appointed dockyard-tender for the next three years, and if you’re very good and there’s no sea on, you shall take me round the harbour. Waitabeechee, Commodore. What’ll you take? Vanderhum for the “Cook and the captain bold, And the mate o’ the Nancy brig, And the bo’sun tight” [Juddy, put that cue down or I’ll put you under arrest for insulting the lieutenant of a real ship, “And the midshipmite, And the crew of the captain’s gig.”’

By this time Judson had pinned him in a corner, and was prodding him with the half-butt. The Admiral’s Secretary entered, and saw the scuffle from the door.

‘Ouch! Juddy, I apologise. Take that—er—topmast of yours away! Here’s the man with the bow-string. I wish I were a Staff-captain instead of a bloody lootenant. Sperril sleeps below every night. That’s what makes Sperril tumble home from the waist upwards. Sperril, I defy you to touch me. I’m under orders for Zanzibar. Probably I shall annex it!’

‘Judson, the Admiral wants to see you!’ said the Staff Captain, disregarding the scoffer of the Mongoose.

‘I told you you’d be a dockyard-tender yet, Juddy. A side of fresh beef to-morrow and three dozen snapper on ice. On ice, you understand, Juddy?’

Bai-Jove-Judson and the Staff-Captain went out together.

‘Now, what does the old man want with Judson?’ said Keate from the bar.

‘Don’t know. Juddy’s a damned good fellow, though. I wish to goodness he was on the Mongoose with us.’

The Lieutenant of the Mongoose dropped into a chair and read the mail-papers for an hour. Then he saw Bai-Jove-Judson in the street and shouted to him. Judson’s eyes were very bright, and his figure was held very straight, and he moved joyously. Except for the Lieutenant of the Mongoose, the Club was empty.

‘Juddy, there will be a beautiful row,’ said that young man when he had heard the news delivered in an undertone. ‘You’ll probably have to fight, and yet I can’t see what the old man’s thinking of to——’

‘My orders are not to row under any circumstances,’ said Judson.

‘Go-look-see? That all? When do you go?’

‘To-night if I can. I must go down and see about things. I say, I may want a few men for the day.’

‘Anything on the Mongoose is at your service. There’s my gig come over now. I know that coast, dead, drunk, or asleep, and you’ll need all the knowledge you can get. If it had only been us two together! Come along with me.’

For one whole hour Judson remained closeted in the stern cabin of the Mongoose, listening, poring over chart upon chart and taking notes, and for an hour the marine at the door heard nothing but things like these: ‘Now you’ll have to lie in here if there’s any sea on. That current is ridiculously under-estimated, and it sets west at this season of the year, remember. Their boats never come south of this, see? So it’s no good looking out for them.’ And so on and so forth, while Judson lay at length on the locker by the three-pounder, and smoked and absorbed it all.

Next morning there was no flat-iron in Simon’s Bay; only a little smudge of smoke off Cape Hangklip to show that Mr. Davies, the second-class engine-room artificer, was giving her all she could carry. At the Admiral’s house the ancient and retired bo’sun who had seen many admirals come and go, brought out his paint and brushes and gave a new coat of pure raw pea-green to the two big cannon balls that stood one on each side of the Admiral’s entrance-gate. He felt dimly that great events were stirring.

And the flat-iron, constructed, as has been before said, solely for the defence of rivers, met the great roll off Cape Agulhas and was swept from end to end, and sat upon her twin screws, and leaped as gracefully as a cow in a bog from one sea to another, till Mr. Davies began to fear for the safety of his engines, and the Kroo boys that made the majority of the crew were deathly sick. She ran along a very badly-lighted coast, past bays that were no bays, where ugly flat-topped rocks lay almost level with the water, and very many extraordinary things happened that have nothing to do with the story, but they were all duly logged by Bai-Jove-Judson.

At last the coast changed and grew green and low and exceedingly muddy, and there were broad rivers whose bars were little islands standing three or four miles out at sea, and Bai-Jove-Judson hugged the shore more closely than ever, remembering what the lieutenant of the Mongoose had told him. Then he found a river full of the smell of fever and mud, with green stuff growing far into its waters, and a current that made the flat-iron gasp and grunt.

page 3

‘We will turn up here,’ said Bai-Jove-Judson, and they turned up accordingly; Mr. Davies wondering what in the world it all meant, and the Kroo boys grinning merrily. Bai-Jove-Judson went forward to the bows, and meditated, staring through the muddy waters. After two hours of rooting through this desolation at an average rate of five miles an hour, his eyes were cheered by the sight of one white buoy in the coffee-hued midstream. The flat-iron crept up to it cautiously, and a leadsman took soundings all round it from a dinghy, while Bai-Jove-Judson smoked and thought, with his head on one side.

‘About seven feet, isn’t there?’ said he. ‘That must be the tail-end of the shoal. There’s four fathom in the fairway. Knock that buoy down with axes. I don’t think it’s picturesque, some how.’ The Kroo men hacked the wooden sides to pieces in three minutes, and the mooring-chain sank with the last splinters of wood. Bai-Jove-Judson laid the flat-iron carefully over the site, while Mr. Davies watched, biting his nails nervously.

‘Can you back her against this current?’ said Bai-Jove-Judson. Mr. Davies could, inch by inch, but only inch by inch, and Bai-Jove-Judson stood in the bows and gazed at various things on the bank as they came into line or opened out. The flat-iron dropped down over the tail of the shoal, exactly where the buoy had been, and backed once more before Bai-Jove-Judson was satisfied. Then they went up-stream for half an hour, put into shoal water by the bank and waited, with a slip-rope on the anchor.

‘’Seems to me,’ said Mr. Davies deferentially, ‘like as if I heard some one a-firing off at intervals, so to say.’

There was beyond doubt a dull mutter in the air.

‘Seems to me,’ said Bai-Jove-Judson, ‘as if I heard a screw. Stand by to slip her moorings.’

Another ten minutes passed and the beat of engines grew plainer. Then round the bend of the river came a remarkably prettily-built white-painted gunboat with a blue and white flag bearing a red boss in the centre.

‘Unshackle abaft the windlass! Stream both buoys! Easy astern. Let go, all!’ The sliprope flew out, the two buoys bobbed in the water to mark where anchor and cable had been left, and the flat-iron waddled out into midstream with the white ensign at her one mast-head.

‘Give her all you can. That thing has the legs of us,’ said Judson. ‘And down we go.’

‘It’s war—bloody war! He’s going to fire,’ said Mr. Davies, looking up through the engine-room hatch.

The white gunboat without a word of explanation fired three guns at the flat-iron, cutting the trees on the banks into green chips. Bai-Jove-Judson was at the wheel, and Mr. Davies and the current helped the boat to an almost respectable degree of speed.

It was an exciting chase, but it did not last for more than five minutes. The white gunboat fired again, and Mr. Davies in his engine-room gave a wild shout.

‘What’s the matter? Hit?’ said Bai-Jove-Judson.

‘No, I’ve just seized of your roos-de-gare. Beg y’ pardon, sir.’

‘Right O! Just the half a fraction of a point more.’ The wheel turned under the steady hand, as Bai-Jove-Judson watched his marks on the bank falling in line swiftly as troops anxious to aid. The flat-iron smelt the shoal-water under her, checked for an instant, and went on. ‘Now we’re over. Come along, you thieves, there!’ said Judson.

The white gunboat, too hurried even to fire, was storming in the wake of the flat-iron, steering as she steered. This was unfortunate, because the lighter craft was dead over the missing buoy.

‘What you do here?’ shouted a voice from the bows.

‘I’m going on. Sit tight. Now you’re arranged for.’

There was a crash and a clatter as the white gunboat’s nose took the shoal, and the brown mud boiled up in oozy circles under her forefoot. Then the current caught her stern on the starboard side and drove her broadside on to the shoal, slowly and gracefully. There she heeled at an undignified angle, and her crew yelled aloud.

‘Neat! Oh, damn neat!’ quoth Mr. Davies, dancing on the engine-room plates, while the Kroo stokers beamed.

The flat-iron turned up-stream again, and passed under the hove-up starboard side of the white gunboat, to be received with howls and imprecations in a strange tongue. The stranded boat, exposed even to her lower strakes, was as defenceless as a turtle on its back, without the advantage of the turtle’s plating. And the one big bluff gun in the bows of the flat-iron was unpleasantly near.

But the captain was valiant and swore mightily. Bai-Jove-Judson took no sort of notice. His business was to go up the river.

‘We will come in a flotilla of boats and ecrazer your vile tricks,’ said the captain, with language that need not be published.

Then said Bai-Jove-Judson, who was a linguist: ‘You stayo where you areo, or I’ll leave a holo in your bottomo that will make you muchos perforatados.’

There was a great deal of mixed language in reply, but Bai-Jove-Judson was out of hearing in a few minutes, and Mr. Davies, himself a man of few words, confided to one of his subordinates that Lieutenant Judson was ‘a most remarkable prompt officer in a way of putting it.’

For two hours the flat-iron pawed madly through the muddy water, and that which had been at first a mutter became a distinct rumble.

‘Was war declared?’ said Mr. Davies, and Bai-Jove-Judson laughed. ‘Then, damn his eyes, he might have spoilt my pretty little engines. There’s war up there, though.’

The next bend brought them full in sight of a small but lively village, built round a white-washed mud house of some pretensions. There were scores and scores of saddle-coloured soldiery in dirty white uniforms running to and fro and shouting round a man in a litter, and on a gentle slope that ran inland for four or five miles something like a brisk battle was raging round a rude stockade. A smell of unburied carcases floated through the air and vexed the sensitive nose of Mr. Davies, who spat over the side.

page 4

‘I want to get this gun on that house,’ said BaiJove-Judson, indicating the superior dwelling over whose flat roof floated the blue and white flag. The little twin-screws kicked up the water exactly as a hen’s legs kick in the dust before she settles down to a bath. The little boat moved uneasily from left to right, backed, yawed again, went ahead, and at last the gray, blunt gun’s nose was. held as straight as a rifle-barrel on the mark indicated. Then Mr. Davies allowed the whistle to, speak as it is not allowed to speak in Her Majesty’s service on account of waste of steam. The soldiery of the village gathered into knots and groups and bunches, and the firing up the hill ceased, and every one except the crew of the flat-iron yelled aloud. Something like an English cheer came down wind.

‘Our chaps in mischief for sure, probably,’ said Mr. Davies. ‘They must have declared war weeks ago, in a kind of way, seems to me.’

‘Hold her steady, you son of a soldier.’ shouted Bai-Jove-Judson, as the muzzle fell off the white house.

Something rang as loudly as a ship’s bell on the forward plates of the flat-iron, something spluttered in the water, and another thing cut a groove in the deck planking an inch in front of Bai-Jove-Judson’s left foot. The saddle-coloured soldiery were firing as the mood took them, and the man in the litter waved a shining sword. The muzzle of the big gun kicked down a fraction as it was laid on the mud wall at the bottom of the house garden. Ten pounds of gunpowder shut up in a hundred pounds of metal was its charge. Three or four yards of the mud wall jumped up a little, as a man jumps when he is caught in the small of the back with a knee-cap, and then fell forward, spreading fan-wise in the fall. The soldiery fired no more that day, and Judson saw an old black woman climb to the flat roof of the house. She fumbled for a time with the flag halliards, then, finding that they were jammed, took off her one garment, which happened to be an Isabella-coloured petticoat, and waved it impatiently. The man in the litter flourished a white handkerchief, and Bai-Jove-Judson grinned. ‘Now we’ll give ’em one up the hill. Round with her, Mr. Davies. Curse the man who invented these floating gun-platforms! When can I pitch in a notice without slaying one of those little devils?’

The side of the slope was speckled with men returning in a disorderly fashion to the river-front. Behind them marched a small but very compact body of men who had filed out of the stockade. These last dragged quick-firing guns with them.

‘Bai Jove, it’s a regular army. I wonder whose,’ said Bai-Jove-Judson, and he waited developments. The descending troops met and mixed with the troops in the village, and, with the litter in the centre, crowded down to the river, till the men with the quick-firing guns came up behind them. Then they divided left and right and the detachment marched through.

‘Heave these damned things over!’ said the leader of the party, and one after another ten little gatlings splashed into the muddy water. The flatiron lay close to the bank.

‘When you’re quite done,’ said Bai-Jove-Judson politely, ‘would you mind telling me what’s the matter? I’m in charge here.’

‘We’re the Pioneers of the General Development Company,’ said the leader. ‘These little bounders have been hammering us in lager for twelve hours, and we’re getting rid of their gatlings. Had to climb out and take them; but they’ve snaffled the lock-actions. Glad to see you.’

‘Any one hurt?’

‘No one killed exactly; but we’re very dry.’

‘Can you hold your men?’

The man turned round and looked at his command with a grin. There were seventy of them, all dusty and unkempt.

‘We shan’t sack this ash-bin, if that’s what you mean. We’re mostly gentlemen here, though we don’t look it.’

‘All right. Send the head of this post, or fort, or village, or whatever it is, aboard, and make what arrangements you can for your men.’

‘We’ll find some barrack accommodation somewhere. Hullo! You in the litter there, go aboard the gunboat.’ The command wheeled round, pushed through the dislocated soldiery, and began to search through the village for spare huts.

The little man in the litter came aboard smiling nervously. He was in the fullest of full uniform, with many yards of gold lace and dangling chains. Also he wore very large spurs; the nearest horse being not more than four hundred miles away. ‘My children,’ said he, facing the silent soldiery, ‘lay aside your arms.’

Most of the men had dropped them already and were sitting down to smoke. ‘Let nothing,’ he added in his own tongue, ‘tempt you to kill these who have sought your protection.’

‘Now,’ said Bai-Jove-Judson, on whom the last remark was lost, ‘will you have the goodness to explain what the deuce you mean by all this nonsense?’

‘It was of a necessitate,’ said the little man. ‘The operations of war are unconformible. I am the Governor and I operate Captain. Be’old my little sword!’

‘Confound your little sword, sir. I don’t want it. You’ve fired on our flag. You’ve been firing at our people here for a week, and I’ve been fired at coming up the river.’

‘Ah! The Guadala. She have misconstrued you for a slaver possibly. How are the Guadala?’

‘Mistook a ship of Her Majesty’s navy for a slaver! You mistake any craft for a slaver. Bai Jove, sir, I’ve a good mind to hang you at the yard-arm!’

There was nothing nearer that terrible spar than the walking-stick in the rack of Judson’s cabin. The Governor, looked at the one mast and smiled a deprecating smile.

‘The position is embarrassment,’ he said. ‘Captain, do you think those illustrious traders burn my capital? My people will give them beer.’

‘Never mind the traders, I want an explanation.’

‘Hum! There are popular uprising in Europe, Captain—in my country.’ His eye wandered aimlessly round the horizon.

‘What has that to do with——’

‘Captain, you are very young. There is still uproariment. But I,’—here he slapped his chest till his epaulets jingled—‘I am loyalist to pits of all my stomachs.’

page 5

‘Go on,’ said Judson, and his mouth quivered.

‘An order arrive to me to establish a custom-houses here, and to collect of the taximent from the traders when she are come here necessarily. That was on account of political understandings with your country and mine. But to that arrangement there was no money also. Not one damn little cowrie! I desire damnably to extend all commercial things, and why? I am loyalist and there is rebellion—yes, I tell you—Republics in my country for to just begin. You do not believe? See some time how it exist. I cannot make this custom-houses and pay so the high-paid officials. The people too in my country they say the King she has no regardance into Honour of her nation. He throw away everything—Gladstone her all, you say, hey?’

‘Yes, that’s what we say,’ said Judson with a grin.

‘Therefore they say, let us be Republics on hot cakes. But I—I am loyalist to all my hands’ ends. Captain, once I was attaché at Mexico. I say the Republics are no good. The peoples have her stomach high. They desire—they desire—Oh, course for the bills.’

‘What on earth is that?’

‘The cock-fight for pay at the gate. You give something, pay for see bloody-row. Do I make my comprehension?’

‘A run for their money—is that what you mean? Gad, you’re a sporting Governor!’

‘So I say. I am loyalist too.’ He smiled more easily. ‘Now how can anything do herself for the customs-houses; but when the Company’s mens she arrives, then a cock-fight for pay-at-gate that is, quite correct. My army he says it will Republic and shoot me off upon walls if I have not give her blood. An army, Captain, are terrible in her angries—especialment when she are not paid. I know too,’ here he laid his hand on Judson’s shoulder, ‘I know too we are old friends. Yes! Badajos, Almeida, Fuentes d’Onor—time ever since; and a little, little cock-fight for pay-at-gate that is good for my King. More sit her tight on throne behind, you see? Now,’ he waved his free hand round the decayed village, ‘I say to my armies, Fight! Fight the Company’s men when she come, but fight not so very strong that you are any dead. It is all in the raporta that I send. But you understand, Captain, we are good friends all the time. Ah! Ciudad Rodrigo, you remember? No? Perhaps your father then? So you see no one are dead, and we fight a fight, and it is all in the raporta, to please the people in our country; and my armies they do not put me against the walls, you see?’

‘Yes; but the Guadala. She fired on us. Was that part of your game, my joker?’

‘The Guadala. Ah! No, I think not. Her captain he is too big fool. But I thought she have gone down the coast. Those your gunboats poke her nose and shove her oar in every place. How is Guadala?’

‘On a shoal. Stuck till I take her off.’

‘There are any deads?’

‘No.’

The Governor drew a breath of deep relief. ‘There are no deads here. So you see none are deads anywhere, and nothing is done. Captain, you talk to the Company’s mens. I think they are not pleased.’

‘Naturally.’

‘They have no senses. I thought to go backwards again they would. I leave her stockade alone all night to let them out, but they stay and come facewards to me, not backwards. They did not know we must conquer much in all these battles, or the King, he is kicked off her throne. Now we have won this battle—this great battle,’ he waved his arms abroad, ‘and I think you will say so that we have won, Captain. You are loyalist also? You would not disturb to the peaceful Europe? Captain, I tell you this. Your Queen she know too. She would not fight her cousin. It is a—a hand-up thing.’

‘What?’

‘Hand-up thing. Jobe you put. How you say?’

‘Put-up job?’

‘Yes. Put-up job. Who is hurt? We win. You lose. All righta!’

Bai-Jove-Judson had been exploding at intervals for the last five minutes. Here he broke down completely and roared aloud.

‘But look here, Governor,’ he said at last, ‘I’ve got to think of other things than your riots in Europe. You’ve fired on our flag.’

‘Captain, if you are me, you would have done how? And also, and also,’ he drew himself up to his full height, ‘we are both brave men of bravest countries. Our honour is the honour of our King,’ here he uncovered, ‘and of our Queen,’ here he bowed low. ‘Now, Captain, you shall shell my palace and I will be your prisoner.’

‘Skittles!’ said Bai-Jove-Judson. ‘I can’t shell that old hencoop.’

‘Then come to dinner. Madeira, she are still to us, and I have of the best she manufac.’

He skipped over the side beaming, and Bai-Jove-Judson went into the cabin to laugh his laugh out. When he had recovered a little he sent Mr. Davies to the head of the Pioneers, the dusty man with the gatlings, and the troops who had abandoned the pursuit of arms watched the disgraceful spectacle of two men reeling with laughter on the quarter-deck of a gunboat.

‘I’ll put my men to build him a custom-house,’ said the head of the Pioneers gasping. ‘We’ll make him one decent road at least. That Governor ought to be knighted. I’m glad now that we didn’t fight ’em in the open, or we’d have killed some of them. So he’s won great battles, has he? Give him the compliments of the victims, and tell him I’m coming to dinner. You haven’t such a thing as a dress-suit, have you? I haven’t seen one for six months.’

That evening there was a dinner in the village—a general and enthusiastic dinner, whose head was in the Governor’s house, and whose tail threshed at large throughout all the streets. The Madeira was everything that the Governor had said, and more, and it was tested against two or three bottles of Bai-Jove-Judson’s best Vanderhum, which is Cape brandy ten years in the bottle, flavoured with orange-peel and spices. Before the coffee was removed (by the lady who had made the flag of truce) the Governor had given the whole of his governorship and its appurtenances, once to Bai-Jove-Judson for services rendered by Judson’s grandfather in the Peninsular War; and once to the head of the Pioneers, in consideration of that gentleman’s good friendship. After the negotiation he retreated for a while into an inner apartment, and there evolved a true and complete account of the defeat of the English arms, which he read with his cocked hat over one eye to Judson and his companion. It was Judson who suggested the sinking of the flat-iron with all hands, and the head of the Pioneers who supplied the list of killed and wounded (not more than two hundred) in his command.

page 6

‘Gentlemen,’ said the Governor from under his cocked hat, ‘the peace of Europe are saved by this raporta. You shall all be Knights of the Golden Hide. She shall go by the Guadala.’

‘Great Heavens!’ said Bai-Jove-Judson, flushed but composed, ‘That reminds me that I’ve left that boat stuck on her broadside down the river. I must go down and soothe the commandante. He’ll be blue with rage. Governor, let us go a sail on the river to cool our heads. A picnic, you understand.’

‘Ya—as: everything I understand. Ho! A picnica ! You are all my prisoner, but I am a good gaoler. We shall picnic on the river, and we shall take all the girls. Come on, my prisoners.’

‘I do hope,’ said the head of the Pioneers, staring from the verandah into the roaring village, ‘that my chaps won’t set the town alight by accident. Hullo! Hullo! A guard of honour for His Excellency, the most illustrious Governor!’

Some thirty men answered the call, made a swaying line upon a more swaying course, and bore the Governor most swayingly of all high in their arms as they staggered down to the river. And the song that they sang bade them, ‘Swing, swing together, their body between their knees’; and they obeyed the words of the song faithfully, except that they were anything but ‘steady from stroke to bow.’ His Excellency the Governor slept on his uneasy litter, and did not wake when the chorus dropped him on the deck of the flat-iron.

‘Good-night and good-bye,’ said the head of the Pioneers to Judson. ‘I’d give you my card if I had it, but I’m so damned drunk I hardly know my own Club. Oh yes! It’s the Travellers. If ever we meet in town, remember me. I must stay here and look after my fellows. We’re all right in the open, now. I s’pose you’ll return the Governor some time. This is a political crisis. Good-night.’

The flat-iron went down-stream through the dark. The Governor slept on deck, and Judson took the wheel, but how he steered, and why he did not run into each bank many times, that officer does not remember. Mr. Davies did not note anything unusual, for there are two ways of taking too much, and Judson was only ward-room, not fo’c’s’le drunk. As the night grew colder the Governor woke up, and expressed a desire for whisky and soda. When that came they were nearly abreast of the stranded Guadala, and His Excellency saluted the flag that he could not see with loyal and patriotic strains.

‘They do not see. They do not hear,’ he cried. ‘Ten thousand saints! They sleep, and I have won battles! Ha!’

He started forward to the gun, which, very naturally, was loaded, pulled the lanyard, and woke the dead night with the roar of the full charge behind a common shell. That shell, mercifully, just missed the stern of the Guadala, and burst on the bank. ‘Now you shall salute your Governor,’ said he, as he heard feet running in all directions within the iron skin. ‘Why you demand so base a quarter? I am here with all my prisoners.’

In the hurly-burly and the general shriek for mercy his reassurances were not heard.

‘Captain,’ said a grave voice from the ship, ‘we have surrendered. Is it the custom of the English to fire on a helpless ship?’

‘Surrendered! Holy Virgin! I go to cut off all their heads. You shall be ate by wild ants—flog and drowned! Throw me a balcony. It is I, the Governor! You shall never surrender. Judson of my soul, ascend her inside, and send me a bed, for I am sleepy; but, oh, I will multiple time kill that captain!’

‘Oh!’ said the voice in the darkness, ‘I begin to comprehend.’ And a rope-ladder was thrown, up which the Governor scrambled, with Judson at his heels.

‘Now we will enjoy executions,’ said the Governor on the deck. ‘All these Republicans shall be shot. Little Judson, if I am not drunk, why are so sloping the boards which do not support?’

The deck, as I have said, was at a very stiff cant. His Excellency sat down, slid to leeward, and fell asleep again.

The captain of the Guadala bit his moustache furiously, and muttered in his own tongue ‘“This land is the father of great villains and the step-father of honest men.” You see our material, Captain. It is so everywhere with us. You have killed some of the rats, I hope?’

‘Not a rat,’ said Judson genially.

‘That is a pity. If they were dead, our country might send us men, but our country is dead too, and I am dishonoured on a mud-bank through your English treachery.’

‘Well, it seems to me that firing on a little tub of our size without a word of warning when you knew that the countries were at peace is treachery enough in a small way.’

‘If one of my guns had touched you, you would have gone to the bottom, all of you. I would have taken the risk with my Government. By that time it would have been——’

‘A Republic. So you really did mean fighting on your own hook! You’re rather a dangerous officer to cut loose in a navy like yours. Well, what are you going to do now?’

‘Stay here. Go away in boats. What does it matter? That drunken cat’—he pointed to the shadow in which the Governor slept—‘is here. I must take him back to his hole.’

‘Very good. I’ll tow you off at daylight if you get steam up.’

‘Captain, I warn you that as soon as she floats again I will fight you.’

‘Humbug! You’ll have lunch with me, and then you’ll take the Governor up the river.’

The captain was silent for some time. Then he said: ‘Let us drink. What must be, must be, and after all we have not forgotten the Peninsular. You will admit, Captain, that it is bad to be run upon a shoal like a mud-dredger?’

‘Oh, we’ll pull you off before you can say knife. Take care of His Excellency. I shall try to get a little sleep now.’

They slept on both ships till the morning, and then the work of towing off the Guadala began. With the help of her own engines, and the tugging and puffing of the flat-iron, she slid off the mud bank sideways into deep water, the flat-iron immediately under her stern, and the big eye of the four-inch gun almost peering through the window of the captain’s cabin.

page 7

Remorse in the shape of a violent headache had overtaken the Governor. He was uneasily conscious that he might perhaps have exceeded his powers, and the captain of the Guadala, in spite of all his patriotic sentiments, remembered distinctly that no war had been declared between the two countries. He did not need the Governor’s repeated reminders that war, serious war, meant a Republic at home, possible supersession in his command, and much shooting of living men against dead walls.

‘We have satisfied our honour,’ said the Governor in confidence. ‘Our army is appeased, and the raporta that you take home will show that we were loyal and brave. That other captain? Bah! He is a boy. He will call this a—a—Judson of my soul, how you say this is—all this affairs which have transpirated between us?’

Judson was watching the last hawser slipping through the fairlead. ‘Call it? Oh, I should call it rather a lark. Now your boat’s all right, captain. When will you come to lunch?’

‘I told you,’ said the Governor, ‘it would be a larque to him.’

‘Mother of the Saints! then what is his seriousness?’ said the captain. ‘We shall be happy to come when you will. Indeed, we have no other choice,’ he added bitterly.

‘Not at all,’ said Judson, and as he looked at the three or four shot blisters on the bows of his boat a brilliant idea took him. ‘It is we who are at your mercy. See how His Excellency’s guns knocked us about.’

‘Senor Capitan,’ said the Governor pityingly, ‘that is very sad. You are most injured, and your deck too, it is all shot over. We shall not be too severe on a beat man, shall we, Captain?’

‘You couldn’t spare us a little paint, could you? I’d like to patch up a little after the—action,’ said Judson meditatively, fingering his upper lip to hide a smile.

‘Our storeroom is at your disposition,’ said the captain of the Guadala, and his eye brightened; for a few lead splashes on gray paint make a big show.

‘Mr. Davies, go aboard and see what they have to spare—to spare, remember. Their spar-colour with a little working up should be just our freeboard tint.’

‘Oh yes. I’ll spare them,’ said Mr. Davies savagely. ‘I don’t understand this how-d’you-do and damn-your-eyes business coming one atop of the other, in a manner o’ speaking! By all rights, they’re our lawful prize, after a manner o’ sayin’.’

The Governor and the captain came to lunch in the absence of Mr. Davies. Bai-Jove-Judson had not much to offer them, but what he had was given as by a beaten foeman to a generous conqueror. When they were a little warmed—the Governor genial and the captain almost effusive—he explained quite casually over the opening of a bottle that it would not be to his interest to report the affair seriously, and it was in the highest degree improbable that the Admiral would treat it in any grave fashion.

‘When my decks are cut up’ (there was one groove across four planks), ‘and my plates buckled’ (there were five lead patches on three plates), ‘and I meet such a boat as the Guadala, and a mere accident saves me from being blown out of the water——’

‘Yes. Yes. A mere accident, Captain. The shoal buoy has been lost,’ said the captain of the Guadala.

‘Ah? I do not know this river. That was very sad. But as I was saying, when an accident saves me from being sunk, what can I do but go away—if that is possible? But I fear that I have no coal for the sea-voyage. It is very sad.’ Judson had compromised on what he knew of the French tongue as a medium of communication.

‘It is enough,’ said the Governor, waving a generous hand. ‘Judson of my soul, the coal is yours and you shall be repaired—yes, repaired all over, of your battle’s wounds. You shall go with all the honours of all the wars. Your flag shall fly. Your drum shall beat. Your, ah!—jolly-boys shall spoke their bayonets! Is it not so, Captain?’

‘As you say, Excellency. But those traders in the town. What of them?’

The Governor looked puzzled for an instant. He could not quite remember what had happened to those jovial men who had cheered him overnight. Judson interrupted swiftly: ‘His Excellency has set them to forced works on barracks and magazines, and, I think, a custom-house. When that is done they will be released, I hope, Excellency.’

‘Yes, they shall be released for your sake, little Judson of my heart.’ Then they drank the health of their respective sovereigns, while Mr. Davies superintended the removal of the scarred plank and the shot-marks on the deck and the bowplates.

‘Oh, this is too bad,’ said Judson when they went on deck. ‘That idiot has exceeded his instructions, but—but you must let me pay for this!’

Mr. Davies, his legs in the water as he sat on a staging slung over the bows, was acutely conscious that he was being blamed in a foreign tongue. He twisted uneasily, and went on with his work.

‘What is it?’ said the Governor.

‘That thick-head has thought that we needed some gold-leaf, and he has borrowed that from your storeroom, but I must make it good.’ Then in English, ‘Stand up, Mr. Davies! What the Furnace in Tophet do you mean by taking their goldleaf? My——, are we a set of hairy pirates to scoff the store-room out of a painted Levantine bumboat. Look contrite, you butt-ended, broad-breeched, bottle-bellied, swivel-eyed son of a tinker, you! My Soul alive, can’t I maintain discipline in my own ship without a hired blacksmith of a boiler-riveter putting me to shame before a yellow-nosed picaroon! Get off the staging, Mr. Davies, and go to the engine-room! Put down that leaf first, though, and leave the books where they are. I’ll send for you in a minute. Go aft!’

Now, only the upper half of Mr. Davies’s round face was above the bulwarks when this torrent of abuse descended upon him; and it rose inch by inch as the shower continued, blank amazement, bewilderment, rage, and injured pride chasing each other across it till he saw his superior officer’s left eyelid flutter on the cheek twice. Then he fled to the engineroom, and wiping his brow with a handful of cotton-waste, sat down to overtake circumstances.

‘I am desolated,’ said Judson to his companions, ‘but you see the material that they give us. This leaves me more in your debt than before. The stuff I can replace’ [gold-leaf is never carried on floating gun-platforms, ‘but for the insolence of that man how shall I apologise?’

page 8

Mr. Davies’s mind moved slowly, but after a while he transferred the cotton-waste from his forehead to his mouth and bit on it to prevent laughter. He began a second dance on the engine-room plates. ‘Neat! Oh, damned neat!’ he chuckled. ‘I’ve served with a good few, but there never was one so neat as him. And I thought he was the new kind that don’t know how to throw a few words, as it were.’

‘Mr. Davies, you can continue your work,’ said Judson down the engine-room hatch. ‘These officers have been good enough to speak in your favour. Make a thorough job of it while you are about it. Slap on every man you have. Where did you get hold of it?’

‘Their storeroom is a regular theatre, sir. You couldn’t miss it. There’s enough for two first-rates, and I’ve scoffed the best half of it.’

‘Look sharp then. We shall be coaling from her this afternoon. You’ll have to cover it all up.’

‘Neat! Oh, damned neat!’ said Mr. Davies under his breath, as he gathered his subordinates together, and set about accomplishing the long-deferred wish of Judson’s heart.

It was the Martin Frobisher, the flagship, a great war-boat when she was new, in the days when men built for sail as well as for steam. She could turn twelve knots under full sail, and it was under that that she stood up the mouth of the river, a pyramid of silver beneath the moon. The Admiral, fearing that he had given Judson a task beyond his strength, was coming to look for him, and incidentally to do a little diplomatic work along the coast. There was hardly wind enough to move the Frobisher a couple of knots an hour, and the silence of the land closed about her as she entered the fairway. Her yards sighed a little from time to time, and the ripple under her bows answered the sigh. The full moon rose over the steaming swamps, and the Admiral gazing upon it thought less of Judson and more of the softer emotions. In answer to the very mood of his mind there floated across the silver levels of the water, mellowed by distance to a most poignant sweetness, the throb of a mandolin, and the voice of one who called upon a genteel Julia—upon Julia, and upon Love. The song ceased, and the sighing of the yards was all that broke the silence of the big ship.

Again the mandolin began, and the commander on the lee side of the quarter-deck grinned a grin that was reflected in the face of the signal-midshipman. Not a word of the song was lost, and the voice of the singer was the voice of Judson.

‘Last week down our alley came a toff,
Nice old geyser with a nasty cough,
Sees my missus, takes his topper off,
Quite in a gentlemanly way’—

and so on to the end of the verse. The chorus was borne by several voices, and the signal-midshipman’s foot began to tap the deck furtively.

‘“What cheer!” all the neighbours cried.
“Oo are you goin’ to meet, Bill?
’ave you bought the street, Bill?”
Laugh?—I thought I should ha’ died
When I knocked ’em in the Old Kent Road.’

It was the Admiral’s gig, rowing softly, that came into the midst of that merry little smoking-concert. It was Judson, with the beribboned mandolin round his neck, who received the Admiral as he came up the side of the Guadala, and it may or may not have been the Admiral who stayed till three in the morning and delighted the hearts of the Captain and the Governor. He had come as an unbidden guest, and he departed as an honoured one, but strictly unofficial throughout. Judson told his tale next day in the Admiral’s cabin as well as he could in the face of the Admiral’s gales of laughter; but the most amazing tale was that told by Mr. Davies to his friends in the dockyard at Simon’s Town from the point of view of a second-class engine-room artificer, all unversed in diplomacy.

And if there be no truth either in my tale, which is Judson’s tale, or the tales of Mr. Davies’ you will not find in harbour at Simon’s Town today a flat-bottomed, twin-screw gunboat, designed solely for the defence of rivers, about two hundred and seventy tons displacement and five feet draught, wearing in open defiance of the rules of the Service a gold line on her gray paint. It follows also that
you will be compelled to credit that version of the fray which, signed by His Excellency the Governor and despatched in the Guadala, satisfied the self-love of a great and glorious people, and saved a monarchy from the ill-considered despotism which is called a Republic.

page 1 of 8

A FOX came out of his earth on the banks of the Great River Gihon, which waters Ethiopia. He saw a white man riding through the dry dhurra-stalks, and, that his destiny might be fulfilled, barked at him. The rider drew rein among the villagers round his stirrup.

“What,” said he, “is that?”

“That,” said the Sheikh of the village, “is a fox, O Excellency Our Governor.”

“It is not, then, a jackal?”

“No jackal, but Abu Hussein the father of cunning.”

“Also,” the white man spoke half aloud, “I am Mudir of this Province.”

“It is true,” they cried. “Ya, Saart el Mudir” (O Excellency Our Governor).

The Great River Gihon, well used to the moods of kings, slid between his mile-wide banks toward the sea, while the Governor praised God in a loud and searching cry never before heard by the river.

When he had lowered his right forefinger from behind his right ear, the villagers talked to him of their crops—barley, dhurrah, millet, onions, and the like. The Governor stood in his stirrups. North he looked up a strip of green cultivation a few hundred yards wide that lay like a carpet between the river and the tawny line of the desert. Sixty miles that strip stretched before him, and as many behind. At every half-mile a groaning water-wheel lifted the soft water from the river to the crops by way of a mud-built aqueduct. A foot or so wide was the water-channel; five foot or more high was the bank on which it ran, and its base was broad in proportion. Abu Hussein, misnamed the Father of Cunning, drank from the river below his earth, and his shadow was long in the low sun. He could not understand the loud cry which the Governor had cried.

The Sheikh of the village spoke of the crops from which the rulers of all lands draw revenue; but the Governor’s eyes were fixed, between his horse’s ears, on the nearest water-channel.

“Very like a ditch in Ireland,” he murmured, and smiled, dreaming of a razor-topped bank in distant Kildare.

Encouraged by that smile, the Sheikh continued. “When crops fail it is necessary to remit taxation. Then it is a good thing, O Excellency Our Governor, that you come and see the crops which have failed, and discover that we have not lied.”

“Assuredly.” The Governor shortened his reins. The horse cantered on, rose at the embankment of the water-channel, changed leg cleverly on top, and hopped down in a cloud of golden dust.

Abu Hussein from his earth watched with interest. He had never before seen such things.

“Assuredly,” the Governor repeated, and came back by the way he had gone. “It is always best to see for one’s self.”

An ancient and still bullet-speckled stern-wheel steamer, with a barge lashed to her side, came round the river bend. She whistled to tell the Governor his dinner was ready, and the horse, seeing his fodder piled on the barge, whinnied back.

“Moreover,” the Sheikh added, “in the days of the Oppression the Emirs and their creatures dispossessed many people of their lands. All up and down the river our people are waiting to return to their lawful fields.”

“Judges have been appointed to settle that matter,” said the Governor. “They will presently come in steamers and hear the witnesses.”

“Wherefore? Did the Judges kill the Emirs? We would rather be judged by the men who executed God’s judgment on the Emirs. We would rather abide by your decision, O Excellency Our Governor.”

The Governor nodded. It was a year since he had seen the Emirs stretched close and still round the reddened sheepskin where lay El Mahdi, the Prophet of God. Now there remained no trace of their dominion except the old steamer, once part of a Dervish flotilla, which was his house and office. She sidled into the shore, lowered a plank, and the Governor followed his horse aboard.

Lights burned on her till late, dully reflected in the river that tugged at her mooring-ropes. The Governor read, not for the first time, the administration reports of one John Jorrocks, M.F.H.

“We shall need,” he said suddenly to his Inspector, “about ten couple. I’ll get ’em when I go home. You’ll be Whip, Baker?”

The Inspector, who was not yet twenty-five, signified his assent in the usual manner, while Abu Hussein barked at the vast desert moon.

“Ha!” said the Governor, coming out in his pyjamas, “we’ll be giving you capivi in another three months, my friend.”

It was four, as a matter of fact, ere a steamer with a melodious bargeful of hounds anchored at that landing. The Inspector leaped down among them, and the homesick wanderers received him as a brother.

“Everybody fed ’em everything on board ship, but they’re real dainty hounds at bottom,” the Governor explained. “That’s Royal you’ve got hold of—the pick of the bunch—and the bitch that’s got, hold of you—she’s a little excited—is May Queen. Merriman, out of Cottesmore Maudlin, you know.”

“I know. ’Grand old bitch with the tan eyebrows,”’ the Inspector cooed. “Oh, Ben! I shall take an interest in life now. Hark to ’em! O hark!”

Abu Hussein, under the high bank, went about his night’s work. An eddy carried his scent to the barge, and three villages heard the crash of music that followed. Even then Abu Hussein did not know better than to bark in reply.

“Well, what about my Province?” the Governor asked.

“Not so bad,” the Inspector answered, with Royal’s head between his knees. “Of course, all the villages want remission of taxes, but, as far as I can see, the whole country’s stinkin’ with foxes. Our trouble will be choppin’ ’em in cover. I’ve got a list of the only villages entitled to any remission. What d’you call this flat-sided, blue-mottled beast with the jowl?”

“Beagle-boy. I have my doubts about him. Do you think we can get two days a week?”

page 2

“Easy; and as many byes as you please. The Sheikh of this village here tells me that his barley has failed, and he wants a fifty per cent remission.”

“We’ll begin with him to-morrow, and look at his crops as we go. Nothing like personal supervision,” said the Governor.

They began at sunrise. The pack flew off the barge in every direction, and, after gambols, dug like terriers at Abu Hussein’s many earths. Then they drank themselves pot-bellied on Gihon water while the Governor and the Inspector chastised them with whips. Scorpions were added; for May Queen nosed one, and was removed to the barge lamenting. Mystery (a puppy, alas!) met a snake, and the blue-mottled Beagle-boy (never a dainty hound) ate that which he should have passed by. Only Royal, of the Belvoir tan head and the sad, discerning eyes, made any attempt to uphold the honour of England before the watching village.

“You can’t expect everything,” said the Governor after breakfast.

“We got it, though—everything except foxes. Have you seen May Queen’s nose?” said the Inspector.

“And Mystery’s dead. We’ll keep ’em coupled next time till we get well in among the crops. I say, what a babbling body-snatcher that Beagle-boy is! Ought to be drowned!”

“They bury people so damn casual hereabouts. Give him another chance,” the Inspector pleaded, not knowing that he should live to repent most bitterly.

“Talkin’ of chances,” said the Governor, “this Sheikh lies about his barley bein’ a failure. If it’s high enough to hide a hound at this time of year, it’s all right. And he wants a fifty per cent remission, you said?”

“You didn’t go on past the melon patch where I tried to turn Wanderer. It’s all burned up from there on to the desert. His other water-wheel has broken down, too,” the Inspector replied.

“Very good. We’ll split the difference and allow him twenty-five per cent off. Where’ll we meet to-morrow?”

“There’s some trouble among the villages down the river about their land-titles. It’s good goin’ ground there, too,” the Inspector said.

The next meet, then, was some twenty miles down the river, and the pack were not enlarged till they were fairly among the fields. Abu Hussein was there in force—four of him. Four delirious hunts of four minutes each—four hounds per fox—ended in four earths just above the river. All the village looked on.

“We forgot about the earths. The banks are riddled with ’em. This’ll defeat us,” said the Inspector.

“Wait a moment!” The Governor drew forth a sneezing hound. “I’ve just remembered I’m Governor of these parts.”

“Then turn out a black battalion to stop for us. We’ll need ’em, old man.”

The Governor straightened his back. “Give ear, O people!” he cried. “I make a new Law!”

The villagers closed in. He called:—

“Henceforward I will give one dollar to the man on whose land Abu Hussein is found. And another dollar”—he held up the coin—“to the man on whose land these dogs shall kill him. But to the man on whose land Abu Hussein shall run into a hole such as is this hole, I will give not dollars, but a most unmeasurable beating. Is it understood?”

“Our Excellency,” a man stepped forth, “on my land Abu Hussein was found this morning. Is it not so, brothers?”

None denied. The Governor tossed him over four dollars without a word.

“On my land they all went into their holes,” cried another. “Therefore I must be beaten.”

“Not so. The land is mine, and mine are the beatings.”

This second speaker thrust forward his shoulders already bared, and the villagers shouted.

“Hullo! Two men anxious to be licked? There must be some swindle about the land,” said the Governor. Then in the local vernacular: “What are your rights to the beating?”

As a river-reach changes beneath a slant of the sun, that which had been a scattered mob changed to a court of most ancient justice. The hounds tore and sobbed at Abu Hussein’s hearthstone, all unnoticed among the legs of the witnesses, and Gihon, also accustomed to laws, purred approval.

“You will not wait till the Judges come up the river to settle the dispute?” said the Governor at last.

“No!” shouted all the village save the man who had first asked to be beaten. “We will abide by Our Excellency’s decision. Let Our Excellency turn out the creatures of the Emirs who stole our land in the days of the Oppression.”

“And thou sayest?” the Governor turned to the man who had first asked to be beaten.

“I say I will wait till the wise Judges come down in the steamer. Then I will bring my many witnesses,” he replied.

“He is rich. He will bring many witnesses,” the village Sheikh muttered.

“No need. Thy own mouth condemns thee!” the Governor cried. “No man lawfully entitled to his land would wait one hour before entering upon it. Stand aside!” The man, fell back, and the village jeered him.

The second claimant stooped quickly beneath the lifted hunting-crop. The village rejoiced.

“Oh, Such an one; Son of such an one,” said the Governor, prompted by the Sheikh, “learn, from the day when I send the order, to block up all the holes where Abu Hussein may hide on—thy—land!”

The light flicks ended. The man stood up triumphant. By that accolade had the Supreme Government acknowledged his title before all men.

While the village praised the perspicacity of the Governor, a naked, pock-marked child strode forward to the earth, and stood on one leg, unconcerned as a young stork.

page 3

“Hal” he said, hands behind his back. “This should be blocked up with bundles of dhurra stalks—or, better, bundles of thorns.”

“Better thorns,” said the Governor. “Thick ends innermost.”

The child nodded gravely and squatted on the sand.

“An evil day for thee, Abu Hussein,” he shrilled into the mouth of the earth. “A day of obstacles to thy flagitious returns in the morning.”

“Who is it?” the Governor asked the Sheikh. “It thinks.”

“Farag the Fatherless. His people were slain in the days of the Oppression. The man to whom Our Excellency has awarded the land is, as it were, his maternal uncle.”

“Will it come with me and feed the big dogs?” said the Governor.

The other peering children drew back. “Run!” they cried. “Our Excellency will feed Farag to the big dogs.”

“I will come,” said Farag. “And I will never go.” He threw his arm round Royal’s neck, and the wise beast licked his face.

“Binjamin, by Jove!” the Inspector cried.

“No!” said the Governor. “I believe he has the makings of a James Pigg!”

Farag waved his hand to his uncle, and led Royal on to the barge. The rest of the pack followed.

Gihon, that had seen many sports, learned to know the Hunt barge well. He met her rounding his bends on grey December dawns to music wild and lamentable as the almost forgotten throb of Dervish drums, when, high above Royal’s tenor bell, sharper even than lying Beagle-boy’s falsetto break, Farag chanted deathless war against Abu Hussein and all his seed. At sunrise the river would shoulder her carefully into her place, and listen to the rush and scutter of the pack fleeing up the gang-plank, and the tramp of the Governor’s Arab behind them. They would pass over the brow into the dewless crops where Gihon, low and shrunken, could only guess what they were about when Abu Hussein flew down the bank to scratch at a stopped earth, and flew back into the barley again. As Farag had foretold, it was evil days for Abu Hussein ere he learned to take the necessary steps and to get away crisply. Sometimes Gihon saw the whole procession of the Hunt silhouetted against the morning-blue, bearing him company for many merry miles. At every half mile the horses and the donkeys jumped the water-channels—up, on, change your leg, and off again like figures in a zoetrope, till they grew small along the line of waterwheels. Then Gibon waited their rustling return through the crops, and took them to rest on his bosom at ten o’clock. While the horses ate, and Farag slept with his head on Royal’s flank, the Governor and his Inspector worked for the good of the Hunt and his Province.

After a little time there was no need to beat any man for neglecting his earths. The steamer’s destination was telegraphed from waterwheel to waterwheel, and the villagers stopped out and put to according. If an earth were overlooked, it meant some dispute as to the ownership of the land, and then and there the Hunt checked and settled it in this wise: The Governor and the Inspector side by side, but the latter half a horse’s length to the rear; both bare-shouldered claimants well in front; the villagers half-mooned behind them, and Farag with the pack, who quite understood the performance, sitting down on the left. Twenty minutes were enough to settle the most complicated case, for, as the Governor said to a judge on the steamer, “One gets at the truth in a hunting-field a heap quicker than in your lawcourts.”

“But when the evidence is conflicting?” the Judge suggested.

“Watch the field. They’ll throw tongue fast enough if you’re running a wrong scent. You’ve never had an appeal from one of my decisions yet.”

The Sheikhs on horseback—the lesser folk on clever donkeys—the children so despised by Farag soon understood that villages which repaired their waterwheels and channels stood highest in the Governor’s favour. He bought their barley, for his horses.

“Channels,” he said, “are necessary that we may all jump them. They are necessary, moreover, for the crops. Let there be many wheels and sound channels—and much good barley.”

“Without money,” replied an aged Sheikh, “there are no waterwheels.”

“I will lend the money,” said the Governor.

“At what interest, O Our Excellency?”

“Take you two of May Queen’s puppies to bring up in your village in such a manner that they do not eat filth, nor lose their hair, nor catch fever from lying in the sun, but become wise hounds.”

“Like Ray-yal—not like Bigglebai?” (Already it was an insult along the River to compare a man to the shifty anthropophagous blue-mottled harrier.)

“Certainly, like Ray-yal—not in the least like Bigglebai. That shall be the interest on the loan. Let the puppies thrive and the waterwheel be built, and I shall be content,” said the Governor.

“The wheel shall be built, but, O Our Excellency, if by God’s favour the pups grow to be well-smelters, not filth-eaters, not unaccustomed to their names, not lawless, who will do them and me justice at the time of judging the young dogs?”

“Hounds, man, hounds! Ha-wands, O Sheikh, we call them in their manhood.”

“The ha-wands when they are judged at the Sha-ho. I have unfriends down the river to whom Our Excellency has also entrusted ha-wands to bring up.”

“Puppies, man! Pah-peaz we call them, O Sheikh, in their childhood.”

“Pah-peat. My enemies may judge my pah-peaz unjustly at the Sha-ho. This must be thought of.”

“I see the obstacle. Hear now! If the new waterwheel is built in a month without oppression, thou, O Sheikh, shalt be named one of the judges to judge the pah-peaz at the Sha-ho. Is it understood?”

page 4

“Understood. We will build the wheel. I and my seed are responsible for the repayment of the loan. Where are my pah-peaz? If they eat fowls, must they on any account eat the feathers?”

“On no account must they eat the feathers. Farag in the barge will tell thee how they are to live.”

There is no instance of any default on the Governor’s personal and unauthorized loans, for which they called him the Father of Waterwheels. But the first puppyshow at the capital needed enormous tact and the presence of a black battalion ostentatiously drilling in the barrack square to prevent trouble after the prize-giving.

But who can chronicle the glories of the Gihon Hunt—or their shames? Who remembers the kill in the market-place, when the Governor bade the assembled sheikhs and warriors observe how the hounds would instantly devour the body of Abu Hussein; but how, when he had scientifically broken it up, the weary pack turned from it in loathing, and Farag wept because he said the world’s face had been blackened? What men who have not yet ridden beyond the sound of any horn recall the midnight run which ended—Beagleboy leading—among tombs; the hasty whip-off, and the oath, taken Abo e bones, to forget the worry? The desert run, when Abu Hussein forsook the cultivation, and made a six-mile point to earth in a desolate khor—when strange armed riders on camels swooped out of a ravine, and instead of giving battle, offered to take the tired hounds home on their beasts. Which they did, and vanished.

Above all, who remembers the death of Royal, when a certain Sheikh wept above the body of the stainless hound as it might have been his son’s—and that day the Hunt rode no more? The badly-kept log-book says little of this, but at the end of their second season (forty-nine brace) appears the dark entry: “New blood badly wanted. They are beginning to listen to beagle-boy.”

The Inspector attended to the matter when his leave fell due.

“Remember,” said the Governor, “you must get us the best blood in England—real, dainty hounds—expense no object, but don’t trust your own judgment. Present my letters of introduction, and take what they give you.

The Inspector presented his letters in a society where they make much of horses, more of hounds, and are tolerably civil to men who can ride. They passed him from house to house, mounted him according to his merits, and fed him, after five years of goat chop and Worcester sauce, perhaps a thought too richly.

The seat or castle where he made his great coup does not much matter. Four Masters of Foxhounds were at table, and in a mellow hour the Inspector told them stories of the Gihon Hunt. He ended: “Ben said I wasn’t to trust my own judgment about hounds, but I think there ought to be a special tariff for Empire-makers.”

As soon as his hosts could speak, they reassured him on this point.

“And now tell us about your first puppy-show all over again,” said one.

“And about the earth-stoppin’. Was that all Ben’s own invention?” said another.

“Wait a moment,” said a large, clean-shaven man—not an M.F.H.—at the end of the table. “Are your villagers habitually beaten by your Governor when they fail to stop foxes’ holes?”

The tone and the phrase were enough even if, as the Inspector confessed afterwards, the big, blue double-chinned man had not looked so like Beagle-boy. He took him on for the honour of Ethiopia.

“We only hunt twice a week—sometimes three times. I’ve never known a man chastised more than four times a week unless there’s a bye.”

The large loose-lipped man flung his napkin down, came round the table, cast himself into the chair next the Inspector, and leaned forward earnestly, so that he breathed in the Inspector’s face.

“Chastised with what?” he said.

“With the kourbash—on the feet. A kourbash is a strip of old hippo-hide with a sort of keel on it, like the cutting edge of a boar’s tusk. But we use the rounded side for a first offender.”

“And do any consequences follow this sort of thing? For the victim, I mean—not for you?”

“Ve-ry rarely. Let me be fair. I’ve never seen a man die under the lash, but gangrene may set up if the kourbash has been pickled.”

“Pickled in what?” All the table was still and interested.

“In copperas, of course. Didn’t you know that” said the Inspector.

“Thank God I didn’t.” The large man sputtered visibly.

The Inspector wiped his face and grew bolder.

“You mustn’t think we’re careless about our earthstoppers. We’ve a Hunt fund for hot tar. Tar’s a splendid dressing if the toe-nails aren’t beaten off. But huntin’ as large a country as we do, we mayn’t be back at that village for a month, and if the dressings ain’t renewed, and gangrene sets in, often as not you find your man pegging about on his stumps. We’ve a well-known local name for ’em down the river. We call ’em the Mudir’s Cranes. You see, I persuaded the Governor only to bastinado on one foot.”

“On one foot? The Mudir’s Cranes!” The large man turned purple to the top of his bald head. “ Would you mind giving me the local word for Mudir’s Cranes?”

From a too well-stocked memory the Inspector drew one short adhesive word which surprises by itself even unblushing Ethiopia. He spelt it out, saw the large man write it down on his cuff and withdraw. Then the Inspector translated a few of its significations and implications to the four Masters of Foxhounds. He left three days later with eight couple of the best hounds in England—a free and a friendly and an ample gift from four packs to the Gihon Hunt. He had honestly meant to undeceive the large blue mottled man, but somehow forgot about it.

page 5

The new draft marks a new chapter in the Hunt’s history. From an isolated phenomenon in a barge it became a permanent institution with brick-built kennels ashore, and an influence social, political, and administrative, co-terminous with the boundaries of the province. Ben, the Governor, departed to England, where he kept a pack of real dainty hounds, but never ceased to long for the old lawless lot. His successors were ex-officio Masters of the Gihon Hunt, as all Inspectors were Whips. For one reason; Farag, the kennel huntsman, in khaki and puttees, would obey nothing under the rank of an Excellency, and the hounds would obey no one but Farag; for another, the best way of estimating crop returns and revenue was by riding straight to hounds; for a third, though Judges down the river issued signed and sealed land-titles to all lawful owners, yet public opinion along the river never held any such title valid till it had been confirmed, according to precedent, by the Governor’s hunting crop in the hunting field, above the wilfully neglected earth. True, the ceremony had been cut down to three mere taps on the shoulder, but Governors who tried to evade that much found themselves and their office compassed about with a great cloud of witnesses who took up their time with lawsuits and, worse still, neglected the puppies. The older sheikhs, indeed, stood out for the unmeasurable beatings of the old days—the sharper the punishment, they argued, the surer the title; but here the hand of modern progress was against them, and they contented themselves with telling tales of Ben the first Governor, whom they called the Father of Waterwheels, and of that heroic age when men, horses, and hounds were worth following.

This same Modern Progress which brought dog biscuit and brass water-taps to the kennels was at work all over the world. Forces, Activities, and Movements sprang into being, agitated themselves, coalesced, and, in one political avalanche, overwhelmed a bewildered, and not in the least intending it, England. The echoes of the New Era were borne into the Province on the wings of inexplicable cables. The Gihon Hunt read speeches and sentiments, and policies which amazed them, and they thanked God, prematurely, that their Province was too far off, too hot, and too hard worked to be reached by those speakers or their policies. But they, with others, under-estimated the scope and purpose of the New Era.

One by one, the Provinces of the Empire were hauled up and baited, hit and held, lashed under the belly, and forced back on their haunches for the amusement of their new masters in the parish of Westminster. One by one they fell away, sore and angry, to compare stripes with each other at the ends of the uneasy earth. Even so the Gihon Hunt, like Abu Hussein in the old days, did not understand. Then it reached them through the Press that they habitually flogged to death good revenue-paying cultivators who neglected to stop earths; but that the few, the very few who did not die under hippohide whips soaked in copperas, walked about on their gangrenous ankle-bones, and were known in derision as the Mudir’s Cranes. The charges were vouched for in the House of Commons by a Mr. Lethabie Groombride, who had formed a Committee, and was disseminating literature: The Province groaned; the Inspector—now an Inspector of Inspectors—whistled. He had forgotten the gentleman who sputtered in people’s faces.

“He shouldn’t have looked so like Beagle-boy!” was his sole defence when he met the Governor at breakfast on the steamer after a meet.

“You shouldn’t have joked with an animal of that class,” said Peter the Governor. “Look what Farag has brought me!”

It was a pamphlet, signed on behalf of a Committee by a lady secretary, but composed by some person who thoroughly understood the language of the Province. After telling the tale of the beatings, it recommended all the beaten to institute criminal proceedings against their Governor, and, as soon as might be, to rise against English oppression and tyranny. Such documents were new in Ethiopia in those days.

The Inspector read the last half page. “But—but,” he stammered, “this is impossible. White men don’t write this sort of stuff.”

“Don’t they, just?” said the Governor. “They get made Cabinet Ministers for doing it too. I went home last year. I know.”

“It’ll blow over,” said the Inspector weakly.

“Not it. Groombride is coming down here to investigate the matter in a few days.”

“For himself?”

“The Imperial Government’s behind him. Perhaps you’d like to look at my orders.” The Governor laid down an uncoded cable. The whiplash to it ran: “You will afford Mr. Groombride every facility for his inquiry, and will be held responsible that no obstacles are put in his way to the fullest possible examination of any witnesses which he may consider necessary. He will be accompanied by his own interpreter, who must not be tampered with.”

“That’s to me—Governor of the Province!” said Peter the Governor.

“It seems about enough,” the Inspector answered.

Farag, kennel-huntsman, entered the saloon, as was his privilege.

“My uncle, who was beaten by the Father of Waterwheels, would approach, O Excellency,” he said, “and there are others on the bank.”

“Admit,” said the Governor.

There tramped aboard sheikhs and villagers to the number of seventeen. In each man’s hand was a copy of the pamphlet; in each man’s eye terror and uneasiness of the sort that Governors spend and are spent to clear away. Farag’s uncle, now Sheikh of the village, spoke: “It is written in this book, Excellency, that the beatings whereby we hold our lands are all valueless. It is written that every man who received such a beating from the Father of Waterwheels who slow the Emirs, should instantly begin a lawsuit, because the title to his land is not valid.”

“It is so written. We do not wish lawsuits. We wish to hold the land as it was given to us after the days of the Oppression,” they cried.

The Governor glanced at the Inspector. This was serious. To cast doubt on the ownership of land means, in Ethiopia, the letting in of waters, and the getting out of troops.

“Your titles are good,” said the Governor. The Inspector confirmed with a nod.

“Then what is the meaning of these writings which came from down the river where the Judges are?” Farag’s uncle waved his copy. “By whose order are we ordered to slay you, O Excellency Our Governor?”

“It is not written that you are to slay me.”

“Not in those very words, but if we leave an earth unstopped, it is the same as though we wished to save Abu Hussein from the hounds. These writings say: ‘Abolish your rulers.’ How can we abolish except we kill? We hear rumours of one who comes from down the river soon to lead us to kill.”

page 6

“Fools!” said the Governor. “Your titles are good. This is madness!”

“It is so written,” they answered like a pack.

“Listen,” said the Inspector smoothly. “I know who caused the writings to be written and sent. He is a man of a blue-mottled jowl, in aspect like Bigglebai who ate unclean matters. He will come up the river and will give tongue about the beatings.”

“Will he impeach our land-titles? An evil day for him!”

“Go slow, Baker,” the Governor whispered. “They’ll kill him if they get scared about their land.”

“I tell a parable.” The Inspector lit a cigarette. “Declare which of you took to walk the children of Milkmaid?”

“Melik-meid First or Second?” said Farag quickly.

“The second—the one which was lamed by the thorn.”

“No—no. Melik-meid the Second strained her shoulder leaping my water-channel,” a sheikh cried. “Melik-meid the First was lamed by the thorns on the day when Our Excellency fell thrice.”

“True—true. The second Melik-meid’s mate was Malvolio, the pied hound,” said the Inspector.

“I had two of the second Melik-meid’s pups,” said Farag’s uncle. “They died of the madness in their ninth month.”

“And how did they do before they died?” said the Inspector.

“They ran about in the sun, and slavered at the mouth till they died.”

“Wherefore?”

“God knows. He sent the madness. It was no fault of mine.”

“Thy own mouth hath answered thee.” The Inspector laughed. “It is with men as it is with dogs. God afflicts some with a madness. It is no fault of ours if such men run about in the sun and froth at the mouth. The man who is coming will emit spray from his mouth in speaking, and will always edge and push in towards his hearers. When ye see and hear him ye will understand that he is afflicted of God: being mad. He is in God’s hands.”

“But our titles—are our titles to our lands good?” the crowd repeated.

“Your titles are in my hands—they are good,” said the Governor.

“And he who wrote the writings is an afflicted of God?” said Farag’s uncle.

“The Inspector hath said it,” cried the Governor. “Ye will see when the man comes. O sheikhs and men, have we ridden together and walked puppies together, and bought and sold barley for the horses that after these years we should run riot on the scent of a madman—an afflicted of God?”

“But the Hunt pays us to kill mad jackals,” said Farag’s uncle. “And he who questions my titles to my land “

“Aahh! ’Ware riot!” The Governor’s hunting-crop cracked like a three-pounder. “By Allah,” he thundered, “if the afflicted of God come to any harm at your hands, I myself will shoot every hound and every puppy, and the Hunt shall ride no more. On your heads be it. Go in peace, and tell the others.”

“The Hunt shall ride no more,” said Farag’s uncle. “Then how can the land be governed? No—no, O Excellency Our Governor, we will not harm a hair on the head of the afflicted of God. He shall be to us as is Abu Hussein’s wife in the breeding season.”

When they were gone the Governor mopped his forehead.

“We must put a few soldiers in every village this Groombride visits, Baker. Tell ’em to keep out of sight, and have an eye on the villagers. He’s trying ’em rather high.”

“O Excellency,” said the smooth voice of Farag, laying the Field and Country Life square on the table, “is the afflicted of God who resembles Bigglebai one with the man whom the Inspector met in the great house in England, and to whom he told the tale of the Mudir’s Cranes?”

“The same man, Farag,” said the Inspector.

“I have often heard the Inspector tell the tale to Our Excellency at feeding-time in the kennels; but since I am in the Government service I have never told it to my people. May I loose that tale among the villages?”

The Governor nodded. “No harm,” said he.

The details of Mr. Groombride’s arrival, with his interpreter, whom he proposed should eat with him at the Governor’s table, his allocution to the Governor on the New Movement, and the sins of Imperialism, I purposely omit. At three in the afternoon Mr. Groombride said: “I will go out now and address your victims in this village.”

“Won’t you find it rather hot?” said the Governor. “They generally take a nap till sunset at this time of year.”

Mr. Groombride’s large, loose lips set. “That,” he replied pointedly, “would be enough to decide me. I fear you have not quite mastered your instructions. May I ask you to send for my interpreter? I hope he has not been tampered with by your subordinates.”

He was a yellowish boy called Abdul, who had well eaten and drunk with Farag. The Inspector, by the way, was not present at the meal.

“At whatever risk, I shall go unattended,” said Mr. Groombride. “Your presence would cow them from giving evidence. Abdul, my good friend, would you very kindly open the umbrella?”

He passed up the gang-plank to the village, and with no more prelude than a Salvation Army picket in a Portsmouth slum, cried: “Oh, my brothers!”

page 7

He did not guess how his path had been prepared. The village was widely awake. Farag, in loose, flowing garments, quite unlike a kennel huntsman’s khaki and puttees, leaned against the wall of his uncle’s house. “Come and see the afflicted of God,” he cried musically, “whose face, indeed, resembles that of Bigglebai.”

The village came, and decided that on the whole Farag was right.

“I can’t quite catch what they are saying,” said Mr. Groombride.

“They saying they very much pleased to see you, Sar,” Adbul interpreted.

“Then I do think they might have sent a deputation to the steamer; but I suppose they were frightened of the officials. Tell them not to be frightened, Abdul.”

“He says you are not to be frightened,” Abdul explained. A child here sputtered with laughter. “Refrain from mirth,” Farag cried. “The afflicted of God is the guest of The Excellency Our Governor. We are responsible for every hair of his head.”

“He has none,” a voice spoke. “He has the white and the shining mange.”

“Now tell them what I have come for, Abdul, and please keep the umbrella well up. I think I shall reserve myself for my little vernacular speech at the end.”

“Approach! Look! Listen!” Abdul chanted. “The afflicted of God will now make sport. Presently he will speak in your tongue, and will consume you with mirth. I have been his servant for three weeks. I will tell you about his undergarments and his perfumes for his head.”

He told them at length.

“And didst thou take any of his perfume bottles?” said Farag at the end.

“I am his servant. I took two,” Abdul replied.

“Ask him,” said Farag’s uncle, “what he knows about our land-titles. Ye young men are all alike.” He waved a pamphlet. Mr. Groombride smiled to see how the seed sown in London had borne fruit by Gihon. Lo! All the seniors held copies of the pamphlet.

“He knows less than a buffalo. He told me on the steamer that he was driven out of his own land by Demah-Kerazi which is a devil inhabiting crowds and assemblies,” said Abdul.

“Allah between us and evil!” a woman cackled from the darkness of a hut. “Come in, children, he may have the Evil Eye.”

“No, my aunt,” said Farag. “No afflicted of God has an evil eye. Wait till ye hear his mirth-provoking speech which he will deliver. I have heard it twice from Abdul.”

“They seem very quick to grasp the point. How far have you got, Abdul?”

“All about the beatings, sar. They are highly interested.”

“Don’t forget about the local self-government, and please hold the umbrella over me. It is hopeless to destroy unless one first builds up.”

“He may not have the Evil Eye,” Farag’s uncle grunted, “but his devil led him too certainly to question my land-title. Ask him whether he still doubts my land-title?”

“Or mine, or mine?” cried the elders.

“What odds? He is an afflicted of God,” Farag called. “Remember the tale I told you.”

“Yes, but he is an Englishman, and doubtless of influence, or Our Excellency would not entertain him. Bid the down-country jackass ask him.”

“Sar,” said Abdul, “these people, much fearing they may be turned out of their land in consequence of your remarks. Therefore they ask you to make promise no bad consequences following your visit.”

Mr. Groombride held his breath and turned purple. Then he stamped his foot.

“Tell them,” he cried, “that if a hair of any one of their heads is touched by any official on any account whatever, all England shall ring with it. Good God! What callous oppression! The dark places of the earth are full of cruelty.” He wiped his face, and throwing out his arms cried: “Tell them, oh! tell the poor, serfs not to be afraid of me. Tell them I come to redress their wrongs—not, heaven knows, to add to their burden.”

The long-drawn gurgle of the practised public speaker pleased them much.

“That is how the new water-tap runs out in the kennel,” said Farag. “The Excellency Our Governor entertains him that he may make sport. Make him say the mirth-moving speech.”

“What did he say about my land-titles?” Farag’s uncle was not to be turned.

“He says,” Farag interpreted, “that he desires, nothing better than that you should live on your lands in peace. He talks as though he believed himself to be Governor.”

“Well. We here are all witnesses to what he has said. Now go forward with the sport.” Farag’s uncle smoothed his garments. “How diversely hath Allah made His creatures! On one He bestows strength to slay Emirs; another He causes to go mad and wander in the sun, like the afflicted sons of Melik-meid.”

“Yes, and to emit spray from the mouth, as the Inspector told us. All will happen as the Inspector foretold,” said Farag. “ I have never yet seen the Inspector thrown out during any run.”

“I think,” Abdul plucked at Mr. Groombride’s sleeves, “I think perhaps it is better now, Sar, if you give your fine little native speech. They not understanding English, but much pleased at your condescensions.”

page 8

“Condescensions?” Mr. Groombride spun round. “If they only knew how I felt towards them in my heart! If I could express a tithe of my feelings! I must stay here and learn the language. Hold up the umbrella, Abdull I think my little speech will show them I know something of their vie intime.”

It was a short, simple; carefully learned address, and the accent, supervised by Abdul on the steamer, allowed the hearers to guess its meaning, which was a request to see one of the Mudir’s Cranes; since the desire of the speaker’s life, the object to which he would consecrate his days, was to improve the condition of the Mudir’s Cranes. But first he must behold them with his own eyes. Would, then, his brethren, whom he loved, show him a Mudir’s Crane whom he desired to love?

Once, twice, and again in his peroration he repeated his demand, using always—that they might see he was acquainted with their local argot—using always, I say, the word which the Inspector had given him in England long ago—the short, adhesive word which, by itself, surprises even unblushing Ethiopia.

There are limits to the sublime politeness of an ancient people. A bulky, blue-chinned man in white clothes, his name red-lettered across his lower shirtfront, spluttering from under a green-lined umbrella almost tearful appeals to be introduced to the Unintroducible; naming loudly the Unnameable; dancing, as it seemed, in perverse joy at mere mention of the Unmentionable—found those limits. There was a moment’s hush, and then such mirth as Gihon through his centuries had never heard—a roar like to the roar of his own cataracts in flood. Children cast themselves on the ground, and rolled back and forth cheering and whooping; strong men, their faces hidden in their clothes, swayed in silence, till the agony became insupportable, and they threw up their heads and bayed at the sun; women, mothers and virgins, shrilled shriek upon mounting shriek, and slapped their thighs as it might have been the roll of musketry. When they tried to draw breath, some half-strangled voice would quack out the word, and the riot began afresh. Last to fall was the city-trained Abdul. He held on to the edge of apoplexy, then collapsed, throwing the umbrella from him.

Mr. Groombride should not be judged too harshly. Exercise and strong emotion under a hot sun, the shock of public ingratitude, for the moment rued his spirit. He furled the umbrella, and with it beat the prostrate Abdul, crying that he had been betrayed. In which posture the Inspector, on horseback, followed by the Governor, suddenly found him.

“That’s all very well,” said the Inspector, when he had taken Abdul’s dramatically dying depositions on the steamer, “but you can’t hammer a native merely because he laughs at you. I see nothing for it but the law to take its course.”

“You might reduce the charge to—er—tampering with an interpreter,” said the Governor. Mr. Groombride was too far gone to be comforted.

“It’s the publicity that I fear,” he wailed. “Is there no possible means of hushing up the affair? You don’t know what a question—a single question in the House means to a man of my position—the ruin of my political career, I assure you.”

“I shouldn’t have imagined it,” said the Governor thoughtfully.

“And, though perhaps I ought not to say it, I am not without honour in my own country—or influence. A word in season, as you know, Your Excellency. It might carry an official far.”

The Governor shuddered.

“Yes, that had to come too,” he said to himself. “Well, look here. If I tell this man of yours to withdraw the charge against you, you can go to Gehenna for aught I care. The only condition I make is that if you write—I suppose that’s part of your business about your travels, you don’t praise me!”

So far Mr. Groombride has loyally adhered to this understanding.

page 1 of 7

THE day that I chose to visit H.M.S. Peridot in Simon’s Bay was the day that the Admiral had chosen to send her up the coast. She was just steaming out to sea as my train came in, and since the rest of the Fleet were either coaling or busy at the rifle-ranges a thousand feet up the hill, I found myself stranded, lunchless, on the sea-front with no hope of return to Cape Town before 5 p.m. At this crisis I had the luck to come across my friend Inspector Hooper, Cape Government Railways, in command of an engine and a brake-van chalked for repair.‘If you get something to eat,’ he said, ‘I’ll run you down to Glengaritf siding till the goods comes along. It’s cooler there than here, you see.’

I got food and drink from the Greeks who sell all things at a price, and the engine trotted us a couple of miles up the line to a bay of drifted sand and a plank-platform half buried in sand not a hundred yards from the edge of the surf. Moulded dunes, whiter than any snow, rolled far inland up a brown and purple valley of splintered rocks and dry scrub. A crowd of Malays hauled at a net beside two blue and green boats on the beach; a picnic party danced and shouted barefoot where a tiny river trickled across the flat, and a circle of dry hills, whose feet were set in sands of silver, locked us in against a seven-coloured sea. At either horn of the bay the railway line, cut just above highwater mark, ran round a shoulder of piled rocks, and disappeared.

‘You see, there’s always a breeze here,’ said Hooper, opening the door as the engine left us in the siding on the sand, and the strong south-easter buffeting under Elsie’s Peak dusted sand into our tickey beer. Presently he sat down to a file full of spiked documents. He had returned from a long trip up-country, where he had been reporting on damaged rolling-stock, as far away as Rhodesia. The weight of the bland wind on my eyelids; the song of it under the car-roof, and high up among the rocks; the drift of fine grains chasing each other musically ashore; the tramp of the surf; the voices of the picnickers; the rustle of Hooper’s file, and the presence of the assured sun, joined with the beer to cast me into magical slumber. The hills of False Bay were just dissolving into those of fairyland when I heard footsteps on the sand outside, and the clink of our couplings.

‘Stop that!’ snapped Hooper, without raising his head from his work. ‘It’s those dirty little Malay boys, you see: they’re always playing with the trucks . . . .’

‘Don’t be hard on ’em. The railway’s a general refuge in Africa,’ I replied.

‘’Tis—up-country at any rate. That reminds me,’ he felt in his waistcoat-pocket, ‘I’ve got a curiosity for you from Wankies—beyond Bulawayo. It’s more of a souvenir perhaps than——’

‘The old hotel’s inhabited,’ cried a voice. ‘White men, from the language. Marines to the front! Come on, Pritch. Here’s your Belmont. Wha—i—i!’

The last word dragged like a rope as Mr. Pyecroft ran round to the open door, and stood looking up into my face. Behind him an enormous Sergeant of Marines trailed a stalk of dried seaweed, and dusted the sand nervously from his fingers.

‘What are you doing here?’ I asked. ‘I thought the Hierophant was down the coast?’

‘We came in last Tuesday—from Tristan d’Acunha—for overhaul, and we shall be in dockyard ’ands for two months, with boiler-seatings.’

‘Come and sit down.’ Hooper put away the file.

‘This is Mr. Hooper of the Railway,’ I explained, as Pyecroft turned to haul up the black-moustached sergeant.

‘This is Sergeant Pritchard, of the Agaric, an old shipmate,’ said he. ‘We were strollin’ on the beach.’ The monster blushed and nodded. He filled up one side of the van when he sat down.

‘And this is my friend, Mr. Pyecroft,’ I added to Hooper, already busy with the extra beer which my prophetic soul had bought from the Greeks.

‘Moi aussi,’ quoth Pyecroft, and drew out beneath his coat a labelled quart bottle.

‘Why, it’s Bass!’ cried Hooper.

‘It was Pritchard,’ said Pyecroft. ‘They can’t resist him.’

‘That’s not so,’ said Pritchard mildly.

‘Not verbatim per’aps, but the look in the eye came to the same thing.’

‘Where was it?’ I demanded.

‘Just on beyond here—at Kalk Bay. She was slappin’ a rug in a back verandah. Pritch ’adn’t more than brought his batteries to bear, before she stepped indoors an’ sent it flyin’ over the wall.’

Pyecroft patted the warm bottle.

‘It was all a mistake,’ said Pritchard. ‘I shouldn’t wonder if she mistook me for Maclean. We’re about of a size.’

I had heard householders of Muizenberg, St. James, and Kalk Bay complain of the difficulty of keeping beer or good servants at the seaside, and I began to see the reason. None the less, it was excellent Bass, and I too drank to the health of that large-minded maid.

‘It’s the uniform that fetches ’em, an’ they fetch it,’ said Pyecroft. ‘My simple navy blue is respectable, but not fascinatin’. Now Pritch in ’is Number One rig is always “purr Mary, on the terrace”—ex officio as you might say.’

‘She took me for Maclean, I tell you,’ Pritchard insisted. ‘Why—why—to listen to him you wouldn’t think that only yesterday——’

‘Pritch,’ said Pyecroft, ‘be warned in time. If we begin tellin’ what we know about each other we’ll be turned out of the pub. Not to mention aggravated desertion on several occasions——’

‘Never anything more than absence without leaf—I defy you to prove it,’ said the Sergeant hotly. ‘An’ if it comes to that, how about Vancouver in ’87?’

‘How about it? Who pulled bow in the gig going ashore? Who told Boy Niven . . .?’

‘Surely you were court-martialled for that?’ I said. The story of Boy Niven who lured seven or eight able-bodied seamen and marines into the woods of British Columbia used to be a legend of the Fleet.

page 2

‘Yes, we were court-martialled to rights,’ said Pritchard, ‘but we should have been tried for murder if Boy Niven ’adn’t been unusually tough. He told us he had an uncle ’oo’d give us land to farm. ’E said he was born at the back o’ Vancouver Island, and all the time the beggar was a balmy Barnado Orphan!’

‘But we believed him, said Pyecroft. ‘I did—you did—Paterson did—an’ ’oo was the Marine that married the cocoanut-woman afterwards—him with the mouth?’

‘Oh, Jones, Spit-Kid Jones. I ’aven’t thought of ’im in years,’ said Pritchard. ‘Yes, Spit-Kid believed it, an’ George Anstey and Moon. We were very young an’ very curious.’

‘But lovin’ an’ trustful to a degree,’ said Pyecroft.

‘’Remember when ’e told us to walk in single file for fear o’ bears? ’Remember, Pye, when ’e ’opped about in that bog full o’ ferns an’ sniffed an’ said ’e could smell the smoke of ’is uncle’s farm ? An’ all the time it was a dirty little outlyin’ uninhabited island. We walked round it in a day, an’ come back to our boat lyin’ on the beach. A whole day Boy Niven kept us walkin’ in circles lookin’ for ’is uncle’s farm! He said his uncle was compelled by the law of the land to give us a farm!’

‘Don’t get hot, Pritch. We believed,’ said Pyecroft.

‘He’d been readin’ books. He only did it to get a run ashore an’ have himself talked of. A day an’ a night—eight of us—followin’ Boy Niven round an uninhabited island in the Vancouver archipelago! Then the picket came for us an’ a nice pack o’ idiots we looked!’

‘What did you get for it?’ Hooper asked.

‘Heavy thunder with continuous lightning for two hours. Thereafter sleet-squalls, a confused sea, and cold, unfriendly weather till conclusion o’cruise,’ said Pyecroft. ‘It was only what we expected, but what we felt—an’ I assure you, Mr. Hooper, even a sailor-man has a heart to break—was bein’ told that we able seamen an’ promisin’ marines ’ad misled Boy Niven. Yes, we poor back-to-the-landers was supposed to ’ave misled him! He rounded on us, o’ course, an’ got off easy.’

‘Excep’ for what we gave him in the steerin’-flat when we came out o’ cells. ’Eard anything of ’im lately, Pye?’

‘Signal Boatswain in the Channel Fleet, I believe—Mr. L. L. Niven is.’

‘An’ Anstey died o’ fever in Benin,’ Pritchard mused. ‘What come to Moon? Spit-Kid we know about.’

‘Moon—Moon! Now where did I last . . .? Oh yes, when I was in the Palladium. I met Quigley at Buncrana Station. He told me Moon ’ad run when the Astrild sloop was cruising among the South Seas three years back. He always showed signs o’ bein’ a Mormonastic beggar. Yes, he slipped off quietly an’ they ’adn’t time to chase ’im round the islands even if the navigatin’ officer ’ad been equal to the job.’

‘Wasn’t he?’ said Hooper.

‘Not so. Accordin’ to Quigley the Astrild spent half her commission rompin’ up the beach like a she-turtle, an’ the other half hatching turtles’ eggs on the top o’ numerous reefs. When she was docked at Sydney her copper looked like Aunt Maria’s washing on the line—an’ her ’midship frames was sprung. The commander swore the dockyard ’ad done it haulin’ the pore thing on to the slips. They do do strange things at sea, Mr. Hooper.’

‘Ah! I’m not a taxpayer,’ said Hooper, and opened a fresh bottle. The Sergeant seemed to be one who had a difficulty in dropping subjects.

‘How it all comes back, don’t it?’ he said. ‘Why, Moon must ’ave ’ad sixteen years’ service before he ran.’

‘It takes ’em at all ages. Look at—you know,’ said Pyecroft.

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘A service man within eighteen months of his pension is the party you’re thinkin’ of,’ said Pritchard. ‘A warrant ’oo’s name begins with a V., isn’t it?’

‘But, in a way o’ puttin’ it, we can’t say that he actually did desert,’ Pyecroft suggested.

‘Oh no,’ said Pritchard. ‘It was only permanent absence up-country without leaf. That was all.’

‘Up-country?’ said Hooper. ‘Did they circulate his description?’

‘What for?’ said Pritchard, most impolitely.

‘Because deserters are like columns in the war. They don’t move away from the line, you see. I’ve known a chap caught at Salisbury that way tryin’ to get to Nyassa. They tell me, but o’ course I don’t know, that they don’t ask questions on the Nyassa Lake Flotilla up there. I’ve heard of a P. and O. quartermaster in full command of an armed launch there.’

‘Do you think Click ’ud ha’ gone up that way?’ Pritchard asked.

‘There’s no saying. He was sent up to Bloemfontein to take over some Navy ammunition left in the fort. We know he took it over and saw it into the trucks. Then there was no more Click—then or thereafter. Four months ago it transpired, and thus the casus belli stands at present,’ said Pyecroft.

‘What were his marks?’ said Hooper again.

‘Does the Railway get a reward for returnin’ ’em, then?’ said Pritchard.

‘If I did d’you suppose I’d talk about it?’ Hooper retorted angrily.

‘You seemed so very interested,’ said Pritchard with equal crispness.

‘Why was he called Click?’ I asked, to tide over an uneasy little break in the conversation. The two men were staring at each other very fixedly.

page 3

‘Because of an ammunition hoist carryin’ away,’ said Pyecroft. ‘And it carried away four of ’is teeth-on the lower port side, wasn’t it, Pritch? The substitutes which he bought weren’t screwed home, in a manner o’ sayin’. When he talked fast they used to lift a little on the bedplate. ’Ence, “Click.” They called ’im a superior man, which is what we’d call a long, black-’aired, genteelly-speakin’,’alf-bred beggar on the lower deck.’

‘Four false teeth in the lower left jaw,’ said Hooper, his hand in his waistcoat-pocket. ‘What tattoo marks?’

‘Look here,’ began Pritchard, half rising. ‘I’m sure we’re very grateful to you as a gentleman for your ’orspitality, but per’aps we may ’ave made an error in——’

I looked at Pyecroft for aid—Hooper was crimsoning rapidly.

‘If the fat marine now occupying the foc’sle will kindly bring ’is status quo to an anchor yet once more, we may be able to talk like gentlemen—not to say friends,’ said Pyecroft. ‘He regards you, Mr. Hooper, as a emissary of the Law.’

‘I only wish to observe that when a gentleman exhibits such a peculiar, or I should rather say, such a bloomin’ curiosity in identification marks as our friend here——’

‘Mr. Pritchard,’ I interposed, ‘I’ll take all the responsibility for Mr. Hooper.’

‘An’ you’ll apologise all round,’ said Pyecroft. ‘You’re a rude little man, Pritch.’

‘But how was I——’ he began, wavering.

‘I don’t know an’ I don’t care. Apologise!’

The giant looked round bewildered and took our little hands into his vast grip, one by one.

‘I was wrong,’ he said meekly as a sheep. ‘My suspicions was unfounded. Mr. Hooper, I apologise.’

‘You did quite right to look out for your own end o’ the line,’ said Hooper. ‘I’d ha’ done the same with a gentleman I didn’t know, you see. If you don’t mind I’d like to hear a little more o’ your Mr. Vickery. It’s safe with me, you see.’

‘Why did Vickery run?’ I began, but Pyecroft’s smile made me turn my question to ‘Who was she?’

‘She kep’ a little hotel at Hauraki—near Auckland,’ said Pyecroft.

‘By Gawd!’ roared Pritchard, slapping his hand on his leg. ‘Not Mrs. Bathurst!’

Pyecroft nodded slowly, and the Sergeant called all the powers of darkness to witness his bewilderment.

‘So far as I could get at it, Mrs. B. was the lady in question.’

‘But Click was married,’ cried Pritchard.

‘An’ ’ad a fifteen-year-old daughter. ’E’s shown me her photograph. Settin’ that aside, so to say, ’ave you ever found these little things make much difference? Because I haven’t.’

‘Good Lord Alive an’ Watchin’! . . . Mrs. Bathurst. . . .’ Then with another roar: ‘You can say what you please, Pye, but you don’t make me believe it was any of ’er fault. She wasn’t that!’

‘If I was going to say what I please, I’d begin by callin’ you a silly ox an’ work up to the higher pressures at leisure. I’m trying to say solely what transpired. M’rover, for once you’re right. It wasn’t her fault.’

‘You couldn’t ’aven’t made me believe it if it ’ad been,’ was the answer.

Such faith in a Sergeant of Marines interested me greatly. ‘Never mind about that,’ I cried. ‘Tell me what she was like.’

‘She was a widow,’ said Pyecroft. ‘Left so very young and never re-spliced. She kep’ a little hotel for warrants and noncoms close to Auckland, an’ she always wore black silk, and ’er neck——’

‘You ask what she was like,’ Pritchard broke in. ‘Let me give you an instance. I was at Auckland first in ’97, at the end o’ the Marroquin’s commission, an’ as I’d been promoted I went up with the others. She used to look after us all, an’ she never lost by it—not a penny! “Pay me now,” she’d say, “or settle later. I know you won’t let me suffer. Send the money from home if you like.” Why, gentlemen all, I tell you I’ve seen that lady take her own gold watch an’ chain off her neck in the bar an’ pass it to a bosun ’oo’d come ashore without ’is ticker an’ ’ad to catch the last boat. “I don’t know your name,” she said, “but when you’ve done with it, you’ll find plenty that know me on the front. Send it back by one o’ them.” And it was worth thirty pounds if it was worth ’arf-a-crown. The little gold watch, Pye, with the blue monogram at the back. But, as I was sayin’, in those days she kep’ a beer that agreed with me—Slits it was called. One way an’ another I must ’ave punished a good few bottles of it while we was in the bay—comin’ ashore every night or so. Chaffin’ across the bar like, once when we were alone, “Mrs. B.,” I said, “when next I call I want you to remember that this is my particular just as you’re my particular.” (She’d let you go that far!) “Just as you’re my particular,” I said. “Oh, thank you, Sergeant Pritchard,” she says, an’ put ’er hand up to the curl be’ind ’er ear. Remember that way she had, Pye?’

‘I think so,’ said the sailor.

‘Yes, “Thank you, Sergeant Pritchard,” she says. “The least I can do is to mark it for you in case you change your mind. There’s no great demand for it in the Fleet,” she says, “but to make sure I’ll put it at the back o’ the shelf,” an’ she snipped off apiece of her hair ribbon with that old dolphin cigar-cutter on the bar – remember it, Pye?—an’ she tied a bow round what was left just four bottles. That was ’97-no, ’96. In ’98 I was in the Resilient—China station—full commission. In Nineteen One, mark you, I was in the Carthusian, back in Auckland Bay again. Of course I went up to Mrs. B.’s with the rest of us to see how things were goin’. They were the same as ever. (Remember the big tree on the pavement by the side-bar, Pye?) I never said anythin’ in special (there was too many of us talkin’ to her), but she saw me at once.’

‘That wasn’t difficult?’ I ventured.

‘Ah, but wait. I was comin’ up to the bar, when, “Ada,” she says to her niece, “get me Sergeant Pritchard’s particular,” and, gentlemen all, I tell you before I could shake ’ands with the lady, there were those four bottles o’ Slits, with ’er ’air-ribbon in a bow round each o’ their necks, set down in front o’ me, an’ as she drew the cork she looked at me under her eyebrows in that blindish way she had o’ lookin’, an’, “Sergeant Pritchard,” she says, “I do ’ope you ’aven’t changed your mind about your particulars.” That’s the kind o’ woman she was—after five years!’

page 4

‘I don’t see her yet somehow,’ said Hooper, but with sympathy.

‘She—she never scrupled to feed a lame duck or set ’er foot on a scorpion at any time of ’er life,’ Pritchard added valiantly.

‘That don’t help me either. My mother’s like that for one.’

The giant heaved inside his uniform and rolled his eyes at the car-roof. Said Pyecroft suddenly:—

‘How many women have you been intimate with all over the world, Pritch?’

Pritchard ’blushed plum-colour to the short hairs of his seventeen-inch neck.

‘’Undreds,’ said Pyecroft. ‘So’ve I. How many of ’em can you remember in your own mind, settin’ aside the first—an’ per’aps the last—and one more?’

‘Few, wonderful few, now I tax myself,’ said Sergeant Pritchard relievedly.

‘An’ how many times might you ’ave been at Auckland?’

‘One—two,’ he began—‘why, I can’t make it more than three times in ten years. But I can remember every time that I ever saw Mrs. B.’

‘So can I—an’ I’ve only been to Auckland twice—how she stood an’ what she was sayin’ an’ what she looked like. That’s the secret. ’Tisn’t beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It’s just It. Some women’ll stay in a man’s memory if they once walk down a street, but most of ’em you can live with a month on end, an’ next commission you’d be put to it to certify whether they talked in their sleep or not, as one might say.’

‘Ah!’ said Hooper. ‘That’s more the idea. I’ve known just two women of that nature.’

‘An’ it was no fault o’ theirs ?’ asked Pritchard.

‘None whatever. I know that!’

‘An’ if a man gets struck with that kind o’ woman, Mr. Hooper?’ Pritchard went on.

‘He goes crazy—or just saves himself,’ was the slow answer.

‘You’ve hit it,’ said the Sergeant. ‘You’ve seen an’ known somethin’ in the course o’ your life, Mr. Hooper. I’m lookin’ at you!’ He set down his bottle.

‘And how often had Vickery seen her?’ I asked.

‘That’s the dark an’ bloody mystery,’ Pyecroft answered. ‘I’d never come across him till I come out in the Hierophant just now, an’ there wasn’t any one in the ship who knew much about him. You see, he was what you call a superior man. ’E spoke to me once or twice about Auckland and Mrs. B. on the voyage out. I called that to mind subsequently. There must ’ave been a good deal between ’em, to my way o’ thinkin’. Mind you, I’m only giving you my résumé of it all, because all I know is second-hand so to speak, or rather I should say more than second-’and.’

‘How?’ said Hooper peremptorily. ‘You must have seen it or heard it.’

‘Ye-es,’ said Pyecroft. ‘I used to think seein’ and hearin’ was the only regulation aids to ascertainin’ facts, but as we get older we get more accommodatin’. The cylinders work easier, I suppose . . . . Were you in Cape Town last December when Phyllis’s Circus came?’

‘No—up-country,’ said Hooper, a little nettled at the change of venue.

‘I ask because they had a new turn of a scientific nature called “Home and Friends for a Tickey.” ‘

‘Oh, you mean the cinematograph—the pictures of prize-fights and steamers. I’ve seen ’em upcountry.’

‘Biograph or cinematograph was what I was alludin’ to. London Bridge with the omnibuses—a troopship goin’ to the war—marines on parade at Portsmouth, an’ the Plymouth Express arrivin’ at Paddin’ton.’

‘Seen ’em all. Seen ’em all,’ said Hooper impatiently.

‘We Hierophants came in just before Christmas week an’ leaf was easy.’

‘I think a man gets fed up with Cape Town quicker than anywhere else on the station. Why, even Durban’s more like Nature. We was there for Christmas,’ Pritchard put in.

‘Not bein’ a devotee of Indian peeris, as our Doctor said to the Pusser, I can’t exactly say. Phyllis’s was good enough after musketry practice at Mozambique. I couldn’t get off the first two or three nights on account of what you might call an imbroglio with our Torpedo Lieutenant in the submerged flat, where some pride of the West Country had sugared up a gyroscope; but I remember Vickery went ashore with our Carpenter Rigdon—old Crocus we called him. As a general rule Crocus never left ’is ship unless an’ until he was ’oisted out with a winch, but when ’e went ’e would return noddin’ like a lily gemmed with dew. We smothered him down below that night, but the things ’e said about Vickery as a fittin’ playmate for a Warrant Officer of ’is cubic capacity, before we got him quiet, was what I should call pointed.’

‘I’ve been with Crocus—in the Redoubtable,’ said the Sergeant. ‘He’s a character if there is one.’

‘Next night I went into Cape Town with Dawson and Pratt; but just at the door of the Circus I came across Vickery. “Oh!” he says, “you’re the man I’m looking for. Come and sit next me. This way to the shillin’ places!” I went astern at once, protestin’ because tickey seats better suited my so-called finances. “Come on,” says Vickery, “I’m payin’.” Naturally I abandoned Pratt and Dawson in anticipation o’ drinks to match the seats. “No,” he says, when this was ’inted—“not now. Not now. As many as you please afterwards, but I want you sober for the occasion.” I caught ’is face under a lamp just then, an’ the appearance of it quite cured me of my thirst. Don’t mistake. It didn’t frighten me. It made me anxious. I can’t tell you what it was like, but that was the effect which it ’ad on me. If you want to know, it reminded me of those things in bottles in those herbalistic shops at Plymouth—preserved in spirits of wine. White an’ crumply things—previous to birth as you might say.’

‘You ’ave a beastial mind, Pye,’ said the Sergeant, relighting his pipe.

page 5

‘Perhaps. We were in the front row, an’ “Home an’ Friends” came on early. Vickery touched me on the knee when the number went up. “If you see anything that strikes you,” he says, “drop me a hint”; then he went on clicking. We saw London Bridge an’ so forth an’ so on, an’ it was most interestin’. I’d never seen it before. You ’eard a little dynamo like buzzin’, but the pictures were the real thing—alive an’ movin’.’

‘I’ve seen ’em,’ said Hooper. ‘Of course they are taken from the very thing itself—you see.’

‘Then the Western Mail came in to Paddin’ton on the big magic-lantern sheet. First we saw the platform empty an’ the porters standin’ by. Then the engine come in, head on, an’ the women in the front row jumped: she headed so straight. Then the doors opened and the passengers came out and the porters got the luggage just like life. Only—only when any one came down too far towards us that was watchin’, they walked right out o’ the picture, so to speak. I was ’ighly interested, I can tell you. So were all of us. I watched an old man with a rug ’oo’d dropped a book an’ was tryin’ to pick it up, when quite slowly, from be’ind two porters—carryin’ a little reticule an’ lookin’ from side to side—comes out Mrs. Bathurst. There was no mistakin’ the walk in a hundred thousand. She come forward—right forward—she looked out straight at us with that blindish look which Pritch alluded to. She walked on and on till she melted out of the picture—like—like a shadow jumpin’ over a candle, an’ as she went I ’eard Dawson in the tickey seats be’ind sing out: “Christ! there’s Mrs. B.!”’

Hooper swallowed his spittle and leaned forward intently.

‘Vickery touched me on the knee again. He was clickin’ his four false teeth with his jaw down like an enteric at the last kick. “Are you sure?” says he. “Sure,” I says, “didn’t you ’ear Dawson give tongue? Why, it’s the woman herself.” “I was sure before,” he says, “but I brought you to make sure. Will you come again with me tomorrow?”

‘“Willingly,” I says, “it’s like meetin’ old friends.”

‘“Yes,” he says, openin’ his watch, “very like. It will be four-and-twenty hours less four minutes before I see her again. Come and have a drink,” he says. “It may amuse you, but it’s no sort of earthly use to me.” He went out shaking his head an’ stumblin’ over people’s feet as if he was drunk already. I anticipated a swift drink an’ a speedy return, because I wanted to see the performin’ elephants. Instead o’ which Vickery began to navigate the town at the rate o’ knots, lookin’ in at a bar every three minutes approximate Greenwich time. I’m not a drinkin’ man, though there are those present’;—he cocked his unforgettable eye at me—‘who may have seen me more or less imbued with the fragrant spirit. None the less when I drink I like to do it at anchor an’ not at an average speed of eighteen knots on the measured mile. There’s a tank as you might say at the back o’ that big hotel up the hill—what do they call it?’

‘The Molteno Reservoir,’ I suggested, and Hooper nodded.

‘That was his limit o’ drift. We walked there an’ we come down through the Gardens—there was a South-Easter blowin’—an’ we finished up by the Docks. Then we bore up the road to Salt River, and wherever there was a pub Vickery put in sweatin’. He didn’t look at what he drunk—he didn’t look at the change. He walked an’ he drunk an’ he perspired in rivers. I understood why old Crocus ’ad come back in the condition ’e did, because Vickery an’ I ’ad two an’ a half hours o’ this gipsy manœuvre an’ when we got back to the station there wasn’t a dry atom on or in me.’

‘Did he say anything?’ Pritchard asked.

‘The sum total of ’is conversation from 7.45 p.m. till 11.15 p.m. was “Let’s have another.” Thus the mornin’ an’ the evenin’ were the first day, as Scripture says . . . . To abbreviate a lengthy narrative, I went into Cape Town for five consecutive nights with Master Vickers, and in that time I must ’ave logged about fifty knots over the ground an’ taken in two gallon o’ all the worst spirits south the Equator. The evolution never varied. Two shilling seats for us two; five minutes o’ the pictures, an’ perhaps forty-five seconds o’ Mrs. B. walking down towards us with that blindish look in her eyes an’ the reticule in her hand. Then out-walk—and drink till train time.’

‘What did you think?’ said Hooper, his hand fingering his waistcoat-pocket.

‘Several things,’ said Pyecroft. ‘To tell you the truth, I aren’t quite done thinkin’ about it yet. Mad? The man was a dumb lunatic—must ’ave been for months—years p’raps. I know somethin’ o’ maniacs, as every man in the Service must. I’ve been shipmates with a mad skipper—an’ a lunatic Number One, but never both together, I thank ’Eaven. I could give you the names o’ three captains now ’oo ought to be in an asylum, but you don’t find me interferin’ with the mentally afflicted till they begin to lay about ’em with rammers an’ winch-handles. Only once I crept up a little into the wind towards Master Vickers. “I wonder what she’s doin’ in England,” I says. “Don’t it seem to you she’s lookin’ for somebody?” That was in the Gardens again, with the South-Easter blowin’ as we were makin’ our desperate round. “She’s lookin’ for me,” he says, stoppin’ dead under a lamp an’ clickin’. When he wasn’t drinkin’, in which case all ’is teeth clicked on the glass, ’e was clickin’ ’is four false teeth like a Marconi ticker. “Yes! lookin’ for me,” he said, an’ he went on very softly an’ as you might say affectionately. “But,” he went on, “in future, Mr. Pyecroft, I should take it kindly of you if you’d confine your remarks to the drinks set before you. Otherwise,” he says, “with the best will in the world towards you, I may find myself guilty of murder! Do you understand?” he says. “Perfectly,” I says, “but would it at all soothe you to know that in such a case the chances o’ your being killed are precisely equivalent to the chances o’ me being outed.” “Why, no,” he says, “I’m almost afraid that ’ud be a temptation.” Then I said—we was right under the lamp by that arch at the end o’ the Gardens where the trams come round—“Assumin’ murder was done—or attempted murder—I put it to you that you would still be left so badly crippled, as one might say, that your subsequent capture by the police—to ’oom you would ’ave to explain—would be largely inevitable.” “That’s better,” ’e says, passin’ ’is hands over his forehead. “That’s much better, because,” he says, “do you know, as I am now, Pye, I’m not so sure if I could explain anything much.” Those were the only particular words I had with ’im in our walks as I remember.’

‘What walks!’ said Hooper. ‘Oh my soul, what walks!’

page 6

‘They were chronic,’ said Pyecroft gravely, ‘but I didn’t anticipate any danger till the Circus left. Then I anticipated that, bein’ deprived of ’is stimulant, he might react on me, so to say, with a hatchet. Consequently, after the final performance an’ the ensuin’ wet walk, I kep’ myself aloof from my superior officer on board in the execution of is duty, as you might put it. Consequently, I was interested when the sentry informs me while I was passin’ on my lawful occasions that Click had asked to see the captain. As a general rule warrant-officers don’t dissipate much of the owner’s time, but Click put in an hour and more be’ind that door. My duties kep’ me within eyeshot of it. Vickery came out first, an’ ’e actually nodded at me an’ smiled. This knocked me out o’ the boat, because, havin’ seen ’is face for five consecutive nights, I didn’t anticipate any change there more than a condenser in hell, so to speak. The owner emerged later. His face didn’t read off at all, so I fell back on his cox, ’oo’d been eight years with him and knew him better than boat signals. Lamson—that was the cox’s name—crossed ’is bows once or twice at low speeds an’ dropped down to me visibly concerned. “He’s shipped ’is court-martial face,” says Lamson. “Some one’s goin’ to be ’ung. I’ve never seen that look but once before, when they chucked the gun-sights overboard in the Fantastic.” Throwin’ gun-sights overboard, Mr. Hooper, is the equivalent for mutiny in these degenerate days. It’s done to attract the notice of the authorities an’ the Western Mornin’ News—generally by a stoker. Naturally, word went round the lower deck an’ we had a private over’aul of our little consciences. But, barrin’ a shirt which a second-class stoker said ’ad walked into ’is bag from the marines’ flat by itself, nothin’ vital transpired. The owner went about flyin’ the signal for “attend public execution,” so to say, but there was no corpse at the yard-arm. ’E lunched on the beach an’ ’e returned with ’is regulation harbour-routine face about 3 p.m. Thus Lamson lost prestige for raising false alarms. The only person ’oo might ’ave connected the epicycloidal gears correctly was one Pyecroft, when he was told that Mr. Vickery would go up-country that same evening to take over certain naval ammunition left after the war in Bloemfontein Fort. No details was ordered to accompany Master Vickery. He was told off first person singular—as a unit—by himself.’

The marine whistled penetratingly.

‘That’s what I thought,’ said Pyecroft. ‘I went ashore with him in the cutter an’ ’e asked me to walk through the station. He was clickin’ audibly, but otherwise seemed happy-ish.

‘“You might like to know,” he says, stoppin’ just opposite the Admiral’s front gate, “that Phyllis’s Circus will be performin’ at Worcester to-morrow night. So I shall see ’er yet once again. You’ve been very patient with me,” he says.

‘“Look here, Vickery,” I said, “this thing’s come to be just as much as I can stand. Consume your own smoke. I don’t want to know any more.”

‘“You!” he said. “What have you got to complain of?—you’ve only ’ad to watch. I’m it,” he says, “but that’s neither here nor there,” he says. “I’ve one thing to say before shakin’ ’ands. Remember,” ’e says—we were just by the Admiral’s garden-gate then—“remember that I am not a murderer, because my lawful wife died in childbed six weeks after I came out. That much at least I am clear of,” ’e says.

‘“Then what have you done that signifies?” I said. “What’s the rest of it?”

‘“The rest,” ’e says, “is silence,” an’ he shook ’ands and went clickin’ into Simonstown station.’

‘Did he stop to see Mrs. Bathurst at Worcester?’ I asked.

‘It’s not known. He reported at Bloemfontein, saw the ammunition into the trucks, and then ’e disappeared. Went out—deserted, if you care to put it so—within eighteen months of his pension, an’ if what ’e said about ’is wife was true he was a free man as ’e then stood. How do you read it off?’

‘Poor devil!’ said Hooper. ‘To see her that way every night! I wonder what it was.’

‘I’ve made my ’ead ache in that direction many a long night.’

‘But I’ll swear Mrs. B. ’ad no ’and in it,’ said the Sergeant, unshaken.

‘No. Whatever the wrong or deceit was, he did it, I’m sure o’ that. I ’ad to look at ’is face for five consecutive nights. I’m not so fond o’ navigatin’ about Cape Town with a South-Easter blowin’ these days. I can hear those teeth click, so to say.’

‘Ah, those teeth,’ said Hooper, and his hand went to his waistcoat-pocket once more. ‘Permanent things false teeth are. You read about ’em in all the murder trials.’

‘What d’you suppose the captain knew—or did?’ I asked.

‘I’ve never turned my searchlight that way,’ Pyecroft answered unblushingly.

We all reflected together, and drummed on empty beer bottles as the picnic-party, sunburned, wet, and sandy, passed our door singing ‘The Honeysuckle and the Bee.’

‘Pretty girl under that kapje,’ said Pyecroft.

‘They never circulated his description?’ said Pritchard.

‘I was askin’ you before these gentlemen came,’ said Hooper to me, ‘whether you knew Wankies—on the way to the Zambesi—beyond Bulawayo?’

‘Would he pass there—tryin’ to get to that Lake what’s ’is name?’ said Pritchard.

Hooper shook his head and went on: ‘There’s a curious bit o’ line there, you see. It runs through solid teak forest—a sort o’ mahogany really—seventy-two miles without a curve. I’ve had a train derailed there twenty-three times in forty miles. I was up there a month ago relievin’ a sick inspector, you see. He told me to look out for a couple of tramps in the teak.’

‘Two?’ Pyecroft said. ‘I don’t envy that other man if——’

‘We get heaps of tramps up there since the war. The inspector told me I’d find ’em at M’Bindwe siding waiting to go North. He’d given ’em some grub and quinine, you see. I went up on a construction train. I looked out for ’em. I saw them miles ahead along the straight, waiting in the teak. One of ’em was standin’ up by the dead-end of the siding an’ the other was squattin’ down lookin’ up at ’im, you see.’

‘What did you do for ’em?’ said Pritchard.

page 7

‘There wasn’t much I could do, except bury ’em. There’d been a bit of a thunderstorm in the teak, you see, and they were both stone dead and as black as charcoal. That’s what they really were, you see—charcoal. They fell to bits when we tried to shift ’em. The man who was standin’ up had the false teeth. I saw ’em shinin’ against the black. Fell to bits he did too, like his mate squatting down an’ watchin’ him, both of ’em all wet in the rain. Both burned to charcoal, you see. And—that’s what made me ask about marks just now—the false-toother was tattooed on the arms and chest—a crown and foul anchor with M.V. above.’

‘I’ve seen that,’ said Pyecroft quickly. ‘It was so.’

‘But if he was all charcoal-like?’ said Pritchard, shuddering.

‘You know how writing shows up white on a burned letter? Well, it was like that, you see. We buried ’em in the teak and I kept . . . But he was a friend of you two gentlemen, you see.’

Mr. Hooper brought his hand away from his waistcoat-pocket—empty.

Pritchard covered his face with his hands for a moment, like a child shutting out an ugliness.

‘And to think of her at Hauraki!’ he murmured—‘with ’er ’air-ribbon on my beer. “Ada,” she said to her niece . . . Oh, my Gawd !’ . . .

‘On a summer afternoon,
when the honeysuckle blooms,
And all Nature seems at rest,
Underneath the bower,
’mid the perfume of the flower,
Sat a maiden with the one
she loves the best——’

sang the picnic-party waiting for their train at Glengariff.

‘Well, I don’t know how you feel about it,’ said Pyecroft, ‘but ’avin’ seen ’is face for five consecutive nights on end, I’m inclined to finish what’s left of the beer an’ thank Gawd he’s dead!’

I was reading an odd number of the St. George’s Gazette and, studying the motto for the thousandth time, fell into a muse.

The Fates have called me across the track of the Old Regiment fairly early and fairly often. First eastward to Lahore, six miles distant by dusty roads from the cantonments of Mian Mir. This was after the 8th, who were relieved by the 30th, had been badly hit by cholera and fever, and had left a good many men where, as the song says:

Underneath that kunkar dry
Twenty thousand corpses lie,
Flower of Runjit’s soldiery—
  Slain by sickness, not the sword;
And above them, white and grey,
Stands, a mark for miles away,
Church of good St. Golgotha
  To the Glory of the Lord!

To the 30th succeeded THE FIFTH. I saw them come in, a thousand and eighty strong — smallish tough men, all of a size and most with a grateful Northumbrian burr. It was their custom once a year to adorn their helmets with red and white roses, in honour of a certain saint — roses plucked from the sides of the Thanda Sark — such roses as grow at Amritzar for the distilleries — heavy-scented Bengal roses. To this hour a certain smell of roses in hot sunshine brings back to me a certain corner outside the Lawrence Hall Gate, where a be-wreathed and fragrant Fusilier was (for good reason) bundled into an ekka just in time to save his being seen by an officer driving to polo. I am afraid my first introduction to THE FIFTH was not precisely through regular channels; but it was very useful.

Later, I became the guest of a frivolous person who told me that a new and shy subaltern had just joined and that we would drink wine with him. This we did upon a guest-night, so that presently he grew thoughtful and went to bed. That night stands out very clearly in my memory. I recall the new-joined boy’s pink-and-white face turned to my host’s; there was no shadow of Stormberg or Sanna’s Post to darken either, and the huge Captain, behind whose back we jested, never dreamed that he would one day command an entirely new Battalion of the Old Regiment. I remember the sparkle of the Mess plate; the rattle and riot of the chaff down among the subalterns; the kindly voice of the Colonel asking me about his son, with whom I had been at school; the slight lisp of a junior Captain who trained ponies (The Witch was one, I believe) to walk into unexpected places (same as he did west of Belmont later); and certain songs that were sung till the glasses danced in the European Infantry Mess — in the days of the Martini-Henry Rifle when THE FIFTH were new to Mian Mir.

The Fates called me not seldom to that Mess, where I listened to the band; and to those barracks, where I listened to other matters; to the Lawrence Hall, where we danced, not counting ‘Cinderellas’, thrice a week for four months of the year; to the carefully-flooded tennis-courts near the bougainvilleas, and to the Lahore racecourse (one mile, six furlongs, twenty yards) and to the brick-hard polo-ground opposite the grandstand. There were three or four subalterns with whom I specially played, and in return they played with me at the Club and in Fort Lahore when they went up on detachment. Who among the living — the estimable round Majors with D.S.O.’s — remembers our weird cold-weather dinners in the old tomb which was the Fort Mess-room, when we sat down in our poshteens and mingled ten—fifteen—twenty-five— grains at a time of quinine with our sherry and bitters, and talked of everything under heaven till it was time to visit the sentries? Who remembers the coughing ponies outside the guard-gate where Runjit Singh sleeps with eleven of his wives; the clatter of sleepy feet descending the brick steps of the Quarter-guard; and the disgraceful attempt of a civilian (at 2 A.M.) to personate Visiting Rounds? Who remembers the ghosts — the real ghosts? The Banjo that played by Itself, and the quarters over against the Shish Mahal where the Manifestations took place? The long, hot, dusty evenings when we sat above the Ditch watching the parrots coming back from the river like so much shrieking green shrapnel. The stillness of the interminable nights when the stars swung behind the Mosque of Wazir Khan? The snarl and worry-worry of a Mohurrum riot within the walls; or the dull boom of the city waking to another day of heat and sickness? We had not much money, but one way or another we did see life — of a queer sort—up in old Fort Lahore.

For the rest, THE FIFTH raced and sat up late in lottery tents (‘Nine hundred and forty rupees in the lottery and Grey Hen for sale!’) and made more or less calamitous books with the local talent. Strong confederacies wandered up and down the Punjab, and gentlemen riders (‘catch-weights over ten stone’) rode furiously. How were we to know that some of the gayest of that gay crowd would presently put aside childish things and live austerely between Prieska and Calvinia; burying the dead rebel with the ritual of the New, and chasing the living with the rigour of the Old Testament? We were more interested in Blitz, the most perfect Arab gentleman who ever looked through a bridle, for he was Lord of Upper India; and in Nina, little thirteen-hand Nina, the Lahore Confederacy’s country-bred, who ran him second for the Civil Service Cup. Also there was Lucky Boy, bought out of an ekka by a far-sighted subaltern, and he became a wonder, and cost some of us money; and there was Gazelle, who had manners, and Nana, who had none; and Rob Roy, who could jump, and Telephone, who was lame, and a brute called The Professor. Behind all was Afzul of the Kashmir Serai, ever ready to sell remounts. Sometimes; of course, things went wrong and horses fell down (or lottery-tents took fire), and on those occasions THE FIFTH may or may not have gone, with the rest of us, to Bunsee Lal and Ram Rutton for a little ready cash. In the intervals they cheered themselves with poora gin-tonic-and-bitters or the estimable ‘Macdougal,’ ‘MacDonald,’ or ‘Bamboo’ as the seasons varied, and their tastes prompted.

They gave dances, sumptuous ones, to the up-to-date tunes of See-Saw and Dream Faces, and among the guests were men looking rather like mere Captains of P3 or K2, who were destined to do heavy work in and outside Ladysmith. They gave theatricals — Alonzo the Brave, for instance, when one who is now a Colonel, but has been a Sergeant (Klooque for choice), capered in a table-cloth before eight hundred of his delighted men, and the immortal Vasey, as Martha, knocked us down in perishing heaps.

‘But’, says one looking over my shoulder, ‘you are only describing what every regiment in the East has done from time immemorial. If you went to Mian Mir to-morrow, you’d find the Royal Sussex, or who-ever it is, carrying on precisely like THE FIFTH.’

This is probably true, but still I cannot bring myself to believe that those (Orange) lilies of the field toil and spin as festively as did St. George and the Dragon. Perhaps their regimental paper will furnish a confidential report on these heads. Do they ever sit up so late at the Club that, to save parade, they snatch other people’s carts at 4.45 A.M. and sent them back with several spokes out of each wheel? Can they change into uniform en route; the sais driving over the back while the Sahib struggles into trousers and tunic? Have they ever seduced a pony—ekka—native—one in number—into a Major’s tent and lain out half the night to hear what the Major would say to his visitor? Do they know a ‘writter’ when they see him, and can they make that ‘writter’ happy and contented down by the elephant lines? Have they ever attended a Christmas week with the Piffers, and helped them play ‘Quill Snookers’ with a coiled-up hedgehog till the baize of the billiard-table looked like a bracken-patch, and the Club Secretary stood on one leg from pure emotion? Can they drive ‘random’—three agitated entries in a string—and coil up the whole outfit round a gate-post in the cold, cold moonlight? Have they ever dined at the Mess of the Door that Won’t Shut? Do they know the way to Baoli Lehna Singh, where the pig come from? And, if so, at whose house do they eat curried eggs and drink Pilsener after the pig-stick is over? I have a perfectly unjust notion, born of envy and the years, that the Royal Sussex (who, I take it, have been the 35th) cut up and down the Outram Road in motor-cars discussing problem plays over a nimbu-esquaash, and that if you asked them where you could get a bit of paper done on reasonable terms, they would probably direct you to the nearest printing-office. There were no days like the old days, and there was no regiment like the Old Regiment!

THE FIFTH stayed at Mian Mir a little too long, and the fever, at which they had scoffed on their arrival, hit them heavily. When they trooped the Colours at the First Jubilee, outside Fort Lahore on a February morning in ’87, there were many blue-gowned invalids hanging over the rails and explaining with the proper nicknames the merits, etc., of their company officers, Thus (for it doesn’t matter after fifteen years): ‘Collars and Cuffs is a good little man, but I do wish ‘e didn’t smell ‘is sword so, at the salute. There ‘e goes, as if it were a bloomin’ posy.’ Or judicially: ‘The Major’s running to belly something shockin’. ‘E’s ‘ad that old tunic let out again,’ or pathetically to a friend: ‘That’s Amelia! ‘Im an’ ‘is pet Sergeant ‘ave been persecutin’ me for the past three months; an’ look at ‘im now—trailin’ ‘is company ‘alf over the maidan like a kite with the string cut.’ (You must remember Lahore City was full of people flying kites, and the simile, for a company edging into line five seconds too late, is very nearly perfect.) There used to be some very good mimics in the ranks, and they could reproduce the manners and tones of their officers with an unholy skill. What they did not know, the officers’ servants supplied. Whereby they were enabled to give before a shouting barrack-room or a giggling Married Quarters an accurate presentment of Lieutenant So-and-so getting himself up regardless for an afternoon ride with Miss Such Another; or, better still, the blushing joy of Second Lieutenant Sweetlips paddling about among his razors on the occasion of his first real shave.

I am not quite sure whether THE FIFTH stayed out the First Jubilee hot weather with us. If they did they will preserve some record of that ghastly sing-song on Coronation night, ‘The Judgment Day Sing-Song’ — when Mian Mir broke all records in the way of heat and we lost a Colonel of native cavalry, a Sergeant’s wife, a private, and, I think, two children, all of heat-apoplexy, before the day broke. There was a red-hot wind, and stirrup-irons burned through dress-pumps, and the dust cut like lava in the nostrils; and I remember the lines of white faces in the glare of the tossing flare-lamps as the comic singers (one of them was a very first-class Chaplain) sweated and dripped.

In that year our ways divided. I went South, and picked up with a rather fascinating Cockney regiment full of talent in the step-dance and conjuring line, and THE FIFTH moved on their appointed path to Pindi. But in one way or another, I kept touch with the Old Regiment, picking up news here and there year after year.

At last all the names changed, and the Army List was a horror to read, and everybody grew up. So, after Omdurman, I said: ‘I am tired of these men who die and retire and are seconded. The Service is going to the dogs, and I will sever my connection with it.’

Then the Fates called with a vengeance—called THE FIFTH to Stormberg, and me to Cape Town. In that cheerful city (and Cape Town, before Ladysmith and Kimberley were relieved, was about as gay as Murree when the cholera broke out) I ran across a subaltern of the old FIFTH, thinly disguised as a Major in the Intelligence. He gave me news — more than I wanted; he told me of two or three ex-FIFTH men I should be likely to meet up the line, and when I went North he confided to my care about a quarter of a ton of documents for the Intelligence at Bloemfontein. This he did because he had heard of my singular uprightness and tact and discretion at Mian Mir, when a long-legged lunatic with an Irish brogue dropped the ticca-gharri horse into the culvert and we pulled it out with punkah ropes, and the gharri went home entirely on the spokes of its front wheels because it had mislaid its tires. In return, he heard my holiest thoughts about the Intelligence Department.

That journey North was pure joy. Three out of five men that I had ever known in India seemed to be on the line or near it. I tumbled over them at wayside stations, in telegraph offices, and dongas; in camps, in ammunition-columns, and hospitals — the men from Cherat, and Sialkot, and Pindi, and Umballa, and Mian Mir, and the other good places of perpetual youth. Some of them pretended to be Brigadiers and things of a repulsive nature, but, as a matter of fact, the shadow turned back on the dial, and we were all young, and we talked the slang of our stations and loyally backed each other’s biggest lies (particularly when any Egyptian officers were about) lest the prestige of the East should suffer. Those Bimbashi and Kaimakan-log are really quite respectable fictionists for amateurs. Some of them almost forced some of us to a twelve-anna gallop. But we won. I gave over the documents at Bloemfontein and hunted zealously for old friends. Incidentally, through no earthly desire of my own, I came within appreciable distance of going to Pretoria in advance of the Grand Army. But, before the invitation was pressed, a Column-Commander arrived with three pom-poms and, among other things, conveyed my regrets that present engagements did not permit, etc., etc. The last time I had heard anything of that Column-Commander was when they were settling the weights for a Cup which he and another man had given at the Lahore Spring Races of ’86, and the handicapping was level enough to bring all four horses entered into the lottery within fifty rupees of one another. I was exceedingly happy to hear from him again, and more than willing to accept his entries at any weights he chose to declare.

The war in Orange River Colony was supposed to be over, barring a few ‘bill-sticking’ expeditions, but one stuffy, stale evening, outside Bloemfontein, I met a man on a spent horse who told me that he represented Doctor Brydon at Jellalabad, or words to that effect, and passed on, gasping and rocking in the saddle. I gathered from others that a ‘bill-sticking’ expedition had come to grief somewhere out Thabanchu way. Both my friends of the old FIFTH were with or near the Column and I wanted further details. An effusive shop-keeper advised me an hour later that not less than forty thousand Boers were closing in on Bloemfontein after having ‘destroyed the flower of the British Army’ at a place called Sanna’s Post. I knew that flower. It grows weedy in spots, and just then might have been rather ragged; but it is not an easy herb to destroy. At last one of my friends turned up, a little frayed at the edges but otherwise as serene as in the old days at Mian Mir. He said that the affair was not what you might call a success except for the Boers. From a professional point of view he was very pleased with the Boers, and praised, while he explained, their simple tactics at Koornspruit.

‘And so,’ he concluded, ‘that was about all.’

‘But what of The Boy?’ I asked, forgetting that The Boy was a Major.

The Fates had not called The Boy back from Sanna’s Post, and I marvelled, as I listened, at their workings; because that Boy had been my frivolous host at the guest-night when we took tea with the new subaltern, and he who told me the news of The Boy’s death was a pony-training Captain. And now The Boy was dead, and the new-joined subaltern a prisoner at Pretoria, and he who told the tale had commanded expeditions in West Africa and taken columns into Sunnyside and eloped from Ladybrand with the landrost, so to speak, on his saddle-bow, and there we two sat, looking back over the years, in a pea-green hotel at Bloemfontein, listening to the rumble of the ambulances.

‘What are you going to do?’ I asked drearily.

‘I shall try to pull a little of it back later,’ he answered, and passed out into the whirl of dust and khaki. It would have paid the Boers to have killed him early, because he became a column-leader of repute, and did them much well-considered evil for many months.

Next year I was out at the Cape again, and met the news that the old FIFTH had been badly cut up, and that one of the Majors was at a base hospital, wounded. I went to see him for the sake of that first Mess-room dinner and some slight acquaintance after. But the hospitals were under new and very sanitary regulations. A P.M.O. explained them to me. You could not visit without a permit, and you must be accompanied round the wards by an orderly. This was not a visiting day and therefore I could not see my friend. So I did not see him. He recovered and returned to his duty and to his death up country. He had been a prisoner. He was twice, I think, wounded, and at the last he was killed — this man whom I remember with his buttons scarcely out of their tissue-paper, laughing and jesting with The Boy at Mess. I never thought that either of them could die. A convalescent Sergeant in a canteen gave me news of the death next year when I went down South again. He talked of dozens of officers who had joined long after my time; of Sergeant-Majors (and you expect a Sergeant-Major to be fairly permanent) whose names were strange to me; and of a rank and file that had sprung up the day before yesterday. It was like talking to a deaf man in a cemetery, and I felt that the wheel had come full circle, and that the Fates would call me towards THE FIFTH no more.

But who knows? Some time, maybe, our paths will cross again, and I may sit out another guest-night and see the old plate (of which even now I could supply a fairly accurate inventory) and hear the Band and watch the cased Colours, and wonder whether I am awake or dreaming.

I shall take my seat, of course, between Colonels and Majors by virtue of my seniority; but I shall endear myself to the subalterns—the butchas who can stand up and sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ without a quaver—by asking them why their cuff-links and the Mess cigar-lamps are made like old-fashioned shells with little fuses atop, and whether they wear the flash or trim their hats with holly on Christmas Day. I shall discuss Army Reform long and raucously. I shall put plenty of soda-water into my champagne, and I shall go home at 10.15 p.m. (but I shall not try to turn out any Guard by the way), and if anybody asks me whether I have enjoyed myself, I shall say: ‘Not at all. Your ante-room’s too full of ghosts.’

CRICH, THE ORDERLY, sat on a camp-stool cheering Parker, who lay suspiciously quiet. Parker had come from Queensland, via New Jersey, among other cities, and the registered voters of Colesberg had shot him across the spine below the shoulders.

‘My stomach’s a trifle out of order,’ said Parker cheerily. ‘They can’t get it to work. Except for that I don’t feel that there’s anything wrong with me.’

Crich looked at me, to signify that it would b, better for Parker if he had a little more feeling. ‘We’re comin’ on beautifully, ain’t we?’ said Crich, and Parker nodded.

‘I’m the last o’ four—all spinal cases — all in this tent too!’ said Parker. ‘I’ve seen ’em all go, and here am I hangin’ on by my finger-nails. They all went, didn’t they?’

‘Yes,’ said Crich, his braces round his hips; ‘an’ they all called for me ‘fore they went. ‘Member Tommy?

Parker smiled. Sir Philip Sidney smiled very much in that fashion. ‘Oh, yes. I was on special allowance of brandy, but Tommy he always looked for a little of mine in his lemonade.’ Couldn’t speak much, but he used to roll his eyes to my bed. Tommy liked his tot of brandy and lemonade. When did he go, Crich ?’

‘Yes’day afternoon. You was asleep, Parker. He said “Crich, old man, where are you?” he said. “Right here in front o’ you,” I says, and I went up to ‘im, ’cause I knew what was comin’. “I can’t see you, Crich,” he says. Then I laid ‘old of his arms by my two ‘ands. “That’s better,” he says. “If I Can’t see you I can feel you,” he says. “Don’t let go, Crich,” he says, and in a minute or two he was off, as quiet as anything. You was asleep, Parker. Oh, yes, they all asked for old Crich to take ‘old of when they went off Parker’s goin’ to best the lot of ’em.’ Thus to me. ‘Last o’ four spinal cases, he is, an’ he’s goin’ to Netley , an’ he’ll be all right in a few weeks. ‘Ave some more tomatoes, Parker?’

The giant turned his head and raised an arm. He could not quite reach the tomatoes. Crick stepped across the tent, and lavishly douched the cut fruit with oil and vinegar, and exhibited Parker in the act of eating. Then Parker talked of real estate speculations in Orange, New Jersey, and stock-riding in Queensland; Crick supplying an ever-appreciative chorus. I watched the superbly-built body, so all alive to the chest-line, so all dead below, and it seemed to me unfair that nervous anxiety to make Cape Colony a ‘little haven of peace’ had led a ‘neutral Government’ to postpone the ordinary preparations for war till the Colesberg rebels (all registered voters, remember) could conveniently mangle Parker’s spinal cord. I laid it upon Crich, the hairy-chested and adequate, that Parker must not die, and Crich hopefully hopeless said, out of Parker’s hearing, that he would do his damnedest.

That was some weeks ago. I have seen Parker twice or thrice since, but to-day his bed is empty. He has bested the registered voter of Colesberg, all the young doctors who prophesied death, and Crich, who couldn’t see any other way out of it.

He has gone home in a steamer to Netley, with the chance of living, half-dead for a year or two, and the ghost of a chance that he may partially recover. This is a load off my mind. For some absurd reason Parker was my war-fetish. He held on through the black days ere Ladysmith was relieved; he heard of Cronje’s surrender, and now, at Madeira, he will learn that Bloemfontein is his and ours.

The war goes better. With Parker and Bloemfontein disposed of we can attend to the hospitals. Dinniss, the light-moustached Sergeant Major of a Horse battery, has gone away; but not before he saved the lives of three or four depressed and morbid, by his cheerfulness and his yarns.

Dinniss has six-and-twenty years’ service. He refused his majority eleven years ago, because it was not in his beloved battery, and he is an encyclopaedia of military knowledge — the unofficial brand. I heard him tell his tent confidentially that if he had known what sort of a silly sort of war this war was going to turn out, he would have retired on his laurels early in October.

He caught something at Magersfontein, which has kept him in bed for a few weeks, but now he is at the Front again. He was more or less in charge of the Horse battery which, out of pure politeness, stood still to take the Boer fire when our naval gun on the left of the line did not see the flag of truce, went on firing, and brought down a fresh Boer fusillade.

Said Dinniss: ‘Of course, we sat tight to show it was a mistake, but the shells were makin’ our horses skittish, so I said: “Send a driver to their heads. They’re a little shy.” I looked round, an’ there wasn’t any drivers! D’you know what they were doin’ Chasin’ rats round a bush! Yiss! Rat-huntin’ under fire. On my worrud, I don’t believe drivers have sowls. No, not one!’

‘Were they Cockneys, by any chance, Dinniss?’ ‘Ye may say so. We come from St. John’s Wood, London, N.W.’ The tent and the orderlies grieved when Dinniss left, for he had great authority, and most persuasive tact. Now, Derby of the Inniskillings had no authority. He lived on his tongue and his skill in outflanking orderlies. Derby got it badly in the leg, and hopped like a cock robin in scarlet flannel between the tents. He was marked for England, and the day before he sailed all Rondebosch was too small for his transports.

A visitor came by with pipes and tobacco to give the men, and Derby steered him towards a convalescent. ‘D’you want to buy a pipe?’ said Derby with a serious face. ‘They’re only threepence, and the baccy’s one and threepence a stick. It’s dirt cheap.’ The convalescent fingered the stock and demanded cigarettes. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Derby, ‘but we’re sold out of cigarettes. If you’ll give your order, maybe this man will —’ Then the convalescent tumbled to the jest, and Derby had to run for it all between the tent-pegs. There should be lively times on Derby’s boat home, but he is the kindest of souls to an invalid.

The Twins are not on their feet yet. They are both Australians, both have broken legs, they lie side by side, their legs in slings, and the one loyally caps the other’s tallest yarns. A few days back talk turned on what blackfellows could do with a boomerang.

A Fusilier cut to pieces with barbed wire, a 9th Lancer, and a West Yorkshireman told the twins to draw it mild. Sticks could not twist and turn in that way. It was as absurd as the word Woolloomooloo. Entered then from another tent Rae, of Manitoba, hit at Slinger’s or Arundel.

Rae said he did not understand boomerangs, but things could be made to curve in the air, for all the 9th Lancer said. For instance, there was a game called baseball. Rae illustrated with his sound arm how a pitcher sends in a curved ball, and the Twins, applauding, welcomed him as an ally. They had a file of Australian papers with pictures of boomerangs. Would the 9th Lancer please get them out from the shelf, and they would explain. So, under the pines planted in South Africa by men from the North, Welshman,Tyke ,Cockney, and Canadian bent their heads over a Melbourne weekly, while a Queenslander read the letterpress

Johnson, of a Highland regiment — he looked very like Alan Breck had tried to stop a shell-splinter with his stomach, and it cost him eight weeks’ agony. The first time we met he walked crab-fashion, his blue eyes alight with pain. Hear, O Heaven, and bear witness, O Earth, that there would be no more of South Africa for Johnson and his stomach! A fortnight later we sat in the sun with a whispering Guardsman, half of whose larynx had been put out of commission by a down-dropping bullet.

But Johnson was a changed man. He had developed a scheme, and explained it as he sat grasping his ankles and rocking to and fro. They were going to send him to Green Point with other convalescents. The odds were they would send him home, and that did not suit Johnson’s revised book. ‘I’m a saddler by trade. They’ll not overlook the likes of me when they’re repairing collars and harnesses. I’ll not be sent home till the war is over — if I can help it. Surely they’ll need a collar-maker. Then I’ll be able to get back again.’

He went off to draw his kit, walking corkily, and the Guardsman whispered husky congratulations. But there is no spring in McConnell, sergeant of another Highland regiment — nothing but sour disgust. He got it in the hand, round Paardeberg, a rending, shattering bullet, that has marked him for England. And there is what is left of his Company to consider, and there is his unpaid debt to the Boer, drawing interest every day, and there is his right hand throbbing and aching in the night watches. His chief interest is the daily paper and the list of the Boer dead. He lies in his corner, smoking, brooding, and meditating how to escape England. But his hand—his right hand, with the iron-hard forearm — is useless. He always comes back to that.

Not far from him lies Carter, who went downhill by reason of a fractured thigh and some fever.

Then he got bed-sores — two, he told me — and then they got him an air-mattress. Carter came near to losing his life, but the story in the ward is that Neeld, a graceless Cockney Highlander, bucked him up, precisely as Dinniss bucked up the man shot through the lungs.

Anyhow, Carter is spared, which is a sign of grace, and they have taken him out for a small walk in a wheeled chair. ‘He kep’ askin’ us all the way uphill if he was too heavy,’ said one of Carter’s steeds — a convalescent with a head-wound. ‘Well, you see, it’s voluntary, not compulsory, takin’ convalescents out,’ says Carter, rather tremulous about the mouth.

‘You don’t weigh more’n a rat now,’ is the answer, and then, the voice touched with a beautiful tenderness, ‘Did ye like it, ‘Arry?’

Did he like it? After three months he has seen trees and sunshine, and felt the big sky above him. He picked up the good dirt of the earth and let it run through his fingers. Now he is going to sleep. In a little while Mylton will be fit to wheel out. He hails from St. John, New Brunswick — the old city of many fires over against the racing Fundy tide. The scent of the Wynberg pine-needles makes him one jelly of home-sickness. Providence sent to his bedside one who knows his city, and street by street and suburb by suburb, ‘from Castor in the Forum to Mars without the wall’—from the fragrant lumber-mills to Loch Lomond. Mylton goes over it all rejoicing. Yes, he knows, moreover, Dalhousie, Gaspe, and Baie Chaleur. And how he longs to see them! Two yards away a Yorkshire Reservist points out to a man who is fashioning a canvas and wool belt that of all places under heaven there is none like to Bradford. He is married, with four children and a damaged shoulder; but all will be well when he returns to Bradford, ‘in t’ steamer.’

Lascelles, Tasmanian Mounted Infantry, holds quite other views. He had come through much rough-and-tumble work, ending with abscess of the liver. That removed, they have put him to light duty at Maitland Camp till he is fit to sit a horse. His eyes are sunk and heavy, but he sees far. He is the son of a Hobart fruitgrower. What about fruit-growing in this country? Is himself an apple man, but understands peaches and plums. Has noticed while in hospital that many apples sent to convalescents were full of codlin-grub, which he considers far more serious than Boers.

What about red-scale and the other fruit-pests? What about packing and freight-rates? In Tasmania the wood for an apple-crate costs threepence halfpenny, and the completed article less than fivepence. On the other hand, South Africa is nearer London than Hobart. Lascelles works out the sum in his head, and emerges to say that he has dug up many samples of soil round Kimberley; has also looked over many farms up-country as he rode through.

Lascelles thinks that Tasmania being a small place — a young man might do worse than settle here and grow up in a new country, eh? It is represented to Lascelles that he is the kind of man we need badly. Yes, Mr. Lascelles, this is the one land for the new man of colonial experience — for open-air men used to large spaces and plain living – thousands of them. Here is everything — horses, cattle, wool, and fruit. Do you know any more young men of the same views Manitoba ranchers, New Zealand sheep-men, fruitgrowers of the South?

If so, bring them along, and we will make such a country as the world has never seen. Lascelles admits that he has talked to several friends about the wisdom of settling here after the war. They think well of it. In twenty minutes I have pledged the honour of the Empire to the hilt on behalf of Lascelles & Co. If they mean business everything shall be made easy for their first start. I will lend them money on mortgage (at least, you will, and we shall get four per cent on it). I will slap down railways along the valleys where the fruit grows, so that no farm need haul her dried prunes more than five miles to the rail. (This is not so mad as it sounds, for such valleys are few.)

I will arrange low freights, if I have to go on my knees to German shipping firms. I will break the Covent Garden fruit-ring into flinders. I will erect coldstorage warehouses by the acre, and chilled fruit-cars at 40° uniform shall be as common as cattle-trucks on all our lines. I will develop under the care of half-a-dozen picked Canal officers from India such a scheme of irrigation (it will not cost more than three millions to begin with) as shall beat the Bara Doab, Colorado, and the Queensland colonies combined.

Mr. Lascelles accepts everything calmly. He is young and has the divine faith. ‘In twenty years’ time!’ he says, and his eye with a budding stye on it glows.

‘Ah, but it’s all a gamble,’ I make haste to qualify. ‘One has to take one’s chances.’

‘I’ll take ’em,’ says Mr. Lascelles; and, when you come to think of it, a man who has been risking his life for a few weeks is not going to be deterred by the prospect of one fruit farm or a score, for that matter failing on Iris hands.

Meantime, will you please take notes of the few schemes I have committed you to? Because in five years you will be lending money on them and they will pay more than trappy gold-reefs or South American tramways. The tents arc full of boys who, with a little steering, would settle here. Nixon, of Vancouver, for instance, is in real estate and life insurance when he is at home. He was also in the Canadian rush on the Paardeberg laager. Being a youth of cheerful and speculative temperament, he would be shrewd enough to pronounce on the chances of a new country if any one brought him the facts and the figures — and the fancies. As it is, lie lies in bed with a bullet through his leg and thinks about a Vancouver girl. Colliss, also a Western man in real estate, would be another splendid recruit. He shed his blood for the country with a vengeance, the bullet narrowly missing an artery. He would stay in the country if properly approached. He is sinful proud of the fact that of eight hundred and fifty Canadians engaged in this business not more than four hundred and sixty are at this date available. And they were not cut down by sickness nor cut off by Boer patrols. We may assume, then, that among the hospitals are three hundred Canadians of the very stamp and breed we require — young, sound, clean, intelligent, well educated, of whom seventy-five per cent hold or have held land. Three hundred possible heads of sane and soaped families. And not a man to show them maps and photos and plans to lure them to stay in South Africa. We shall let all these beautiful men, and hundreds and hundreds more, go back to their own place and never lift finger to stay them. Truly we are the most wasteful as we are the most idle nation under heaven!

Derby, and Dinniss, and Crich, and Neeld, and Johnson, and the young postman at Crieff, and my own postman at Rottingdean (he is here in a bearer company), and the man that drives the big brewery wagon at Newhaven (he is here in the Black Watch, and was hit at Magersfontein), must go home when the war is ended. Blessings and thanks go with them. They are all either Reserve men, their places waiting for them, or men of the Regular Line without a trade.

But we need Mylton when he gets better, and Nixon, and Colliss, and Lascelles, and the Twins, and a few thousand more of their kidney to stay and inherit.

For the land is a good land. It has been wilfully and wickedly starved — starved by policy and craft through many years lest an incompetent race should be found out before the face of the nations.

RUDYARD KIPLING