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THE room was blue with the smoke of three pipes and a cigar. The leave-season had opened in India, and the firstfruits on this side of the water were. ‘Tick’ Boileau, of the 45th Bengal Cavalry, who called on me, after three years’ absence, to discuss old things which had happened. Fate, who
always does her work handsomely, sent up the same staircase within the same hour The Infant, fresh from Upper Burma, and he and Boileau looking out of my window saw walking in the street one Nevin, late in a Gurkha regiment which had been through the Black Mountain Expedition. They yelled to him to come up, and the whole street was aware that they desired him to come up, and he came up, and there followed Pandemonium in my room because we had foregathered from the ends of the earth, and three of us were on a
holiday, and none of us were twenty-five, and all the delights of all London lay waiting our pleasure.Boileau took the only other chair, the Infant, by right of his bulk, the sofa; and Nevin, being a little man, sat cross-legged on the top of the revolving bookcase, and we all said, ‘Who’d ha’ thought it!’ and ‘What are you doing here?’ till speculation was exhausted and the talk went over to inevitable
‘shop.’ Boileau was full of a great scheme for winning a military attaché-ship at St. Petersburg; Nevin had hopes of the Staff College, and The Infant had been moving heaven and earth and the Horse Guards for a commission in the Egyptian army.‘What’s the use o’ that?’ said Nevin, twirling round on the bookcase.

‘Oh, heaps! ’Course, if you get stuck with a Fellaheen regiment, you’re sold; but if you are appointed to a Soudanese lot, you’re in clover. They are first-class fighting-men—and just think of the eligible central position of Egypt in the next row.’

This was putting the match to a magazine. We all began to explain the Central Asian question off hand, flinging army corps from the Helmund to Kashmir with more than Russian recklessness. Each of the boys made for himself a war to his own liking, and when we had settled all the details of Armageddon, killed all our senior officers, handled a division apiece, and nearly torn the Atlas in two in attempts to explain our theories, Boileau needs must lift up his voice above the clamour, and cry, ‘Anyhow it’ll be the Hell of a row!’ in tones that carried conviction far down the staircase.

Entered, unperceived in the smoke, William the Silent. ‘Gen’elman to see you, sir,’ said he, and disappeared, leaving in his stead none other than Mr. Eustace Cleever. William would have introduced the Dragon of Wantley with equal disregard of present company.

‘I—I beg your pardon. I didn’t know that there was anybody—with you. I——’

But it was not seemly to allow Mr. Cleever to depart: he was a great man. The boys remained where they were, for any movement would have choked up the little room. Only when they saw his gray hairs they stood on their feet, and when The Infant caught the name, he said:

‘Are you—did you write that book called As it was in the Beginning?’

Mr. Cleever admitted that he had written the book.

‘Then—then I don’t know how to thank you, sir,’ said The Infant, flushing pink. ‘I was brought up in the country you wrote about—all my people live there; and I read the book in camp on the Hlinedatalone, and I knew every stick and stone, and the dialect too; and, by Jove! it was just like being at home and hearing the country-people talk. Nevin, you know As it was in the Beginning? So does Ti—Boileau.’

Mr. Cleever has tasted as much praise, public and private, as one man may safely swallow; but it seemed to me that the out-spoken admiration in The Infant’s eyes and the little stir in the little company came home to him very nearly indeed.

‘Won’t you take the sofa? ‘ said The Infant. ‘I’ll sit on Boileau’s chair, and——’here he looked at me to spur me to my duties as a host; but I was watching the novelist’s face. Cleever had not the least intention of going away, but settled himself on the sofa.

Following the first great law of the Army, which says ‘all property is common except money, and you’ve only got to ask the next man for that,’ The Infant offered tobacco and drink. It was the least he could do; but not the most lavish praise in the world held half as much appreciation and reverence as The Infant’s simple ‘Say when, sir,’ above the long glass.

Cleever said ‘when,’ and more thereto, for he was a golden talker, and he sat in the midst of hero-worship devoid of all taint of self-interest. The boys asked him of the birth of his book and whether it was hard to write, and how his notions came to him; and he answered with the same absolute simplicity as he was questioned. His big eyes twinkled, he dug his long thin hands into his gray beard and tugged it as he grew animated. He dropped little by little from the peculiar pinching of the broader vowels—the indefinable ‘Euh,’ that runs through the speech of the pundit caste—and the elaborate choice of words, to freely-mouthed ‘ows’ and ‘ois,’ and, for him at least, unfettered colloquialisms. He could not altogether understand the boys, who hung upon, his words so reverently. The line of the chin-strap, that still showed white and untanned on cheek-bone and jaw, the steadfast young eyes puckered at the corners of the lids with much staring through red-hot sunshine, the slow, untroubled breathing, and the curious, crisp, curt speech seemed to puzzle him equally. He could create men and women, and send them to the uttermost ends of the earth, to help delight and comfort; he knew every mood of the fields, and could interpret them to the cities, and he knew the hearts of many in city and the country, but he had hardly, in forty years, come into contact with the thing which is called a Subaltern of the Line. He told the boys this in his own way.

‘Well, how should you?’ said The Infant. ‘You—you’re quite different, y’ see, sir.’

The Infant expressed his ideas in his tone rather than his words, but Cleever understood the compliment.

‘We’re only Subs,’ said Nevin, ‘and we aren’t exactly the sort of men you’d meet much in your life, I s’pose.’

‘That’s true,’ said Cleever. ‘I live chiefly among men who write, and paint, and sculp, and so forth. We have our own talk and our own interests, and the outer world doesn’t trouble us much.’

‘That must be awfully jolly,’ said Boileau, at a venture. ‘We have our own shop, too, but ’tisn’t half as interesting as yours, of course. You know all the men who’ve ever done anything; and we only knock about from place to place, and we do nothing.’

‘The Army’s a very lazy profession if you choose to make it so,’ said Nevin. ‘When there’s nothing going on, there is nothing going on, and you lie up.’

‘Or try to get a billet somewhere, to be ready for the next show,’ said The Infant with a chuckle.

‘To me,’ said Cleever softly, ‘the whole idea of warfare seems so foreign and unnatural, so essentially vulgar, if I may say so, that I can hardly appreciate your sensations. Of course, though, any change from life in garrison towns must be a godsend to you.’

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Like many home-staying Englishmen, Cleever believed that the newspaper phrase he quoted covered the whole duty of the Army whose toils enabled him to enjoy his many-sided life in peace. The remark was not a happy one, for Boileau had just come off the Frontier, The Infant had been on the warpath for nearly eighteen months, and the little red man Nevin two months before had been sleeping under the stars at the peril of his life. But none of them tried to explain, till I ventured to point out that they had all seen service and were not used to idling. Cleever took in the idea slowly.

‘Seen service?’ said he. Then, as a child might ask, ‘Tell me. Tell me everything about everything.’

‘How do you mean?’ said The Infant, delighted at being directly appealed to by the great man.

‘Good Heavens! How am I to make you understand if you can’t see. In the first place, what is your age?’

‘Twenty-three next July,’ said The Infant promptly.

Cleever questioned the others with his eyes.

‘I’m twenty-four,’ said Nevin.

‘And I’m twenty-two,’ said Boileau.

‘And you’ve all seen service?’

‘We’ve all knocked about a little bit, sir, but The Infant’s the war-worn veteran. He’s had two years’ work in Upper Burma,’ said Nevin.

‘When you say work, what do you mean, you extraordinary creatures?’

‘Explain it, Infant,’ said Nevin.

‘Oh, keeping things in order generally, and running about after little dakus—that’s dacoits—and so on. There’s nothing to explain.’

‘Make that young Leviathan speak,’ said Cleever impatiently, above his glass.

‘How can he speak ?’ said I. ‘He’s done the work. The two don’t go together. But, Infant you’re ordered to bukh.’

‘What about? I’ll try.’

‘Bukh about a daur. You’ve been on heaps of ’em,’ said Nevin.

‘What in the world does that mean? Has the Army a language of its own ?’

The Infant turned very red. He was afraid he was being laughed at, and he detested talking before outsiders; but it was the author of As it was in the Beginning who waited.

‘It’s all so new to me,’ pleaded Cleever; ‘and—and you said you liked my book.’

This was a direct appeal that The Infant could understand, and he began rather flurriedly, with much slang bred of nervousness—

‘Pull me up, sir, if I say anything you don’t follow. About six months before I took my leave out of Burma, I was on the Hlinedatalone, up near the Shan States, with sixty Tommies—private soldiers, that is—and another subaltern, a year senior to me. The Burmese business was a subaltern’s war, and our forces were split up into little detachments, all running about the country and trying to keep the dacoits quiet. The dacoits were having a first-class time, y’ know—filling women up with kerosine and setting ’em alight, and burning villages, and crucifying people.’

The wonder in Eustace Cleever’s eyes deepened. He could not quite realise that the cross still existed in any form.

‘Have you ever seen a crucifixion?’ said he.

‘Of course not. ’Shouldn’t have allowed it if I had; but I’ve seen the corpses. The dacoits had a trick of sending a crucified corpse down the river on a raft, just to show they were keeping their tail up and enjoying themselves. Well, that was the kind of people I had to deal with.’

‘Alone?’ said Cleever. Solitude of the soul he could understand—none better—but he had never in the body moved ten miles from his fellows.

‘I had my men, but the rest of it was pretty much alone. The nearest post that could give me orders was fifteen miles away, and we used to heliograph to them, and they used to give us orders same way—too many orders.’

‘Who was your C.O.?’ said Boileau.

‘Bounderby — Major. Pukka Bounderby; more Bounder than pukka. He went out up Bhamo way. Shot, or cut down, last year,’ said The Infant.

‘What are these interludes in a strange tongue?’ said Cleever to me.

‘Professional information—like the Mississippi pilots’ talk,’ said I. ‘He did not approve of his major, who died a violent death. Go on, Infant.’

‘Far too many orders. You couldn’t take the Tommies out for a two days’ daur—that’s expedition—without being blown up for not asking leave. And the whole country was humming with dacoits. I used to send out spies, and act on their information. As soon as a man came in and told me of a gang in hiding, I’d take thirty men with some grub, and go out and look for them, while the other subaltern lay doggo in camp.’

‘Lay! Pardon me, but how did he lie?’ said Cleever.

’Lay doggo—lay quiet, with the other thirty men. When I came back, he’d take out his half of the men, and have a good time of his own.’

‘Who was he?’ said Boileau.

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Carter-Deecey, of the Aurungabadis. Good chap, but too zubberdusty, and went bokhar four days out of seven. He’s gone out, too. Don’t interrupt a man.’

Cleever looked helplessly at me.

‘The other subaltern,’ I translated swiftly, ‘came from a native regiment, and was overbearing in his demeanour. He suffered much from the fever of the country, and is now dead. Go on, Infant.’

‘After a bit we got into trouble for using the men on frivolous occasions, and so I used to put my signaller under arrest to prevent him reading the helio-orders. Then I’d go out and leave a message to be sent an hour after I got clear of the camp, something like this: “Received important information; start in an hour unless countermanded.” If I was ordered back, it didn’t much matter. I swore the C.O.’s watch was wrong, or something, when I came back. The Tommies enjoyed the fun, and—Oh, yes, there was one Tommy who was the bard of the detachment. He used to make up verses on everything that happened.’

‘What sort of verses?’ said Cleever.

‘Lovely verses; and the Tommies used to sing ’em. There was one song with a chorus, and it said something like this.’ The Infant dropped into the true barrack-room twang:

‘Theebaw, the Burma king, did a very foolish thing,
When ’e mustered ’ostile forces in ar-rai,
’E little thought that we, from far across the sea,
Would send our armies up to Mandalai!’

‘O gorgeous!’ said Cleever. ‘And how magnificently direct! The notion of a regimental bard is new to me, but of course it must be so.’

‘He was awf’ly popular with the men,’ said The Infant. ‘He had them all down in rhyme as soon as ever they had done anything. He was a great bard. He was always ready with an elegy when we picked up a Boh—that’s a leader of dacoits.’

‘How did you pick him up?’ said Cleever.

‘Oh! shot him if he wouldn’t surrender.’

‘You! Have you shot a man?’

There was a subdued chuckle from all three boys, and it dawned on the questioner that one experience in life which was denied to himself, and he weighed the souls of men in a balance, had been shared by three very young gentlemen of engaging appearance. He turned round on Nevin, who had climbed to the top of the bookcase, and was sitting crosslegged as before.

‘And have you, too?’

‘Think so,’ said Nevin sweetly. ‘In the Black Mountain. He was rolling cliffs on to my half-company, and spoiling our formation. I took a rifle from a man, and brought him down at the second shot.’

‘Good heavens! And how did you feel afterwards?‘

‘Thirsty. I wanted a smoke, too.’

Cleever looked at Boileau — the youngest. Surely his hands were guiltless of blood.

Boileau shook his head and laughed. ‘Go on, Infant,’ said he.

‘And you too?’ said Cleever.

‘’Fancy so. It was a case of cut, cut or be cut, with me; so I cut—One. I couldn’t do any more, sir.’

Cleever looked as though he would like to ask many questions, but The Infant swept on, in the full tide of his tale.

‘Well, we were called insubordinate young whelps at last, and strictly forbidden to take the Tommies out any more without orders. I wasn’t sorry, because Tommy is such an exacting sort of creature. He wants to live as though he were in barracks all the time. I was grubbing on fowls and boiled corn, but my Tommies wanted their pound of fresh meat, and their half ounce of this, and their two ounces of t’other thing, and they used to come to me and badger me for plug-tobacco when we were four days in jungle. I said: “I can get you Burma tobacco, but I don’t keep a canteen up my sleeve.” They couldn’t see it. They wanted all the luxuries of the season, confound ’em.’

‘You were alone when you were dealing with these men?’ said Cleever, watching The Infant’s face under the palm of his hand. He was getting new ideas, and they seemed to trouble him.

‘Of course, unless you count the mosquitoes. They were nearly as big as the men. After I had to lie doggo I began to look for something to do; and I was great pals with a man called Hicksey in the Police, the best man that ever stepped on earth; a first-class man.’

Cleever nodded applause. He knew how to appreciate enthusiasm.

‘Hicksey and I were as thick as thieves. He had some Burma mounted police—rummy chaps, armed with sword and snider carbine. They rode punchy Burma ponies with string stirrups, red cloth saddles, and red bell-rope head-stalls. Hicksey used to lend me six or eight of them when I asked him—nippy little devils, keen as mustard. But they told their wives too much, and all my plans got known, till I learned to give false marching orders over-night, and take the men to quite a different village in the morning.
Then we used to catch the simple daku before breakfast, and made him very sick. It’s a ghastly country on the Hlinedatalone; all bamboo jungle, with paths about four feet wide winding through it. The dakus knew all the paths, and potted at us as we came round a corner; but the mounted police knew the paths as well as the dakus, and we used to go stalking ’em in and out. Once we flushed ’em, the men on the ponies had the advantage of the men on foot. We held all the country absolutely quiet, for ten miles round, in about a month. Then we took Boh Na-ghee, Hicksey and I and the Civil officer. That was a lark!’

‘I think I am beginning to understand a little,’ said Cleever. ‘It was a pleasure to you to administer and fight?‘

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‘Rather! There’s nothing nicer than a satisfactory little expedition, when you find your plans fit together, and your conformation’s teek—correct, you know, and the whole sub-chiz—I mean, when everything works out like formula on a blackboard. Hicksey had all the information about the Boh. He had been burning villages and murdering people right and left, and cutting up Government convoys and all that. He was lying doggo in a village about fifteen miles off, waiting to get a fresh gang together. So we arranged to take thirty mounted police, and turn him out before he could plunder into our newly-settled villages. At the last minute, the Civil officer in our part of the world thought he’d assist at the performance.’

‘Who was he?’ said Nevin.

‘His name was Dennis,’ said The Infant slowly. ‘And we’ll let it stay so. He’s a better man now than he was then.’

‘But how old was the Civil power?’ said Cleever. ‘The situation is developing itself.’

‘He was about six-and-twenty, and he was awf’ly clever. He knew a lot of things, but I don’t think he was quite steady enough for dacoit-hunting. We started overnight for Boh Na-ghee’s village, and we got there just before morning, without raising an alarm. Dennis had turned out armed to his teeth—two revolvers, a carbine, and all sorts of things. I was talking to Hicksey about posting the men, and Dennis edged his pony in between us, and said, “What shall I do? What shall I do? Tell me what to do, you fellows.” We didn’t take much notice; but his pony tried to bite me in the leg, and I said, “Pull out a bit, old man, till we’ve settled the attack.” He kept edging in, and fiddling with his reins and his revolvers, and saying, “Dear me! Dear me! Oh, dear me! What do you think I’d better do?” The man was in a deadly funk, and his teeth were chattering.’

‘I sympathise with the Civil power,’ said Cleever. ‘Continue, young Clive.’

‘The fun of it was, that he was supposed to be our superior officer. Hicksey took a good look at him, and told him to attach himself to my party. ’Beastly mean of Hicksey, that. The chap kept on edging in and bothering, instead of asking for some men and taking up his own position, till I got angry, and the carbines began popping on the other side of the village. Then I said, “For God’s sake be quiet, and sit down where you are! If you see anybody come out of the village, shoot at him.” I knew he couldn’t hit a hayrick at a yard. Then I took my men over the garden wall—over the palisades, y’ know—somehow or other, and the fun began. Hicksey had found the Boh in bed under a mosquito-curtain, and he had taken a flying jump on to him.’

‘A flying jump!’ said Cleever. ‘Is that also war?’

‘Yes,’ said The Infant, now thoroughly warmed. ‘Don’t you know how you take a flying jump on to a fellow’s head at school, when he snores in the dormitory? The Boh was sleeping in a bedful of swords and pistols, and Hicksey came down like Zazel through the netting, and the net got mixed up with the pistols and the Boh and Hicksey, and they all rolled on the floor together. I laughed till I couldn’t stand, and Hicksey was cursing me for not helping him; so I left him to fight it out and went into the village. Our men were slashing about and firing, and so were the dacoits, and in the thick of the mess some ass set fire to a house, and we all had to clear out. I froze on to the nearest daku and ran to the palisade, shoving him in front of me. He wriggled loose, and bounded over the other side. I came after him; but when I had one leg one side and one leg the other of the palisade, I saw that the daku had fallen flat on Dennis’s head. That man had never moved from where I left him. They rolled on the ground together, and Dennis’s carbine went off and nearly shot me. The daku picked himself up and ran, and Dennis buzzed his carbine after him, and it caught him on the back of his head, and knocked him silly. You never saw anything so funny in your life. I doubled up on the top of the palisade and hung there, yelling with laughter. But Dennis began to weep like anything. “Oh, I’ve killed a man,” he said. “I’ve killed a man, and I shall never know another peaceful hour in my life! Is he dead? Oh, is he dead? Good Lord, I’ve killed a man!” I came down and said, “Don’t be a fool;” but he kept on shouting, “Is he dead?” till I could have kicked him. The daku was only knocked out of time with the carbine. He came to after a bit, and I said, “Are you hurt much?” He groaned and said “No.” His chest was all cut with scrambling over the palisade. “The white man’s gun didn’t do that,” he said, “I did that, and I knocked the white man over.” Just like a Burman, wasn’t it? But Dennis wouldn’t be happy at any price. He said: “Tie up his wounds. He’ll bleed to death. Oh, he’ll bleed to death!” “Tie ’em up yourself,” I said, “if you’re so anxious.” “I can’t touch him,” said Dennis, “but here’s my shirt.” He took off his shirt, and fixed the braces again over his bare shoulders. I ripped the shirt up, and bandaged the dacoit quite professionally. He was grinning at Dennis all the time; and Dennis’s haversack was lying on the ground, bursting full of sandwiches. Greedy hog! I took some, and offered some to Dennis. “How can I eat?” he said. “How can you ask me to eat? His very blood is on your hands now, and you’re eating my sandwiches!” “All right,” I said; “I’ll give ’em to the daku.” So I did, and the little chap was quite pleased, and wolfed ’em down like one o’clock.’

Cleever brought his hand down on the table with a thump that made the empty glasses dance. ‘That’s Art!’ he said. ‘Flat, flagrant mechanism! Don’t tell me that happened on the spot!’

The pupils of the Infant’s eyes contracted to two pin-points. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, slowly and stiffly, ‘but I am telling this thing as it happened.’

Cleever looked at him a moment. ‘My fault entirely,’ said he; ‘I should have known. Please go on.’

‘Hicksey came out of what was left of the village with his prisoners and captives, all neatly tied up. Boh Na-ghee was first, and one of the villagers, as soon as he found the old ruffian helpless, began kicking him quietly. The Boh stood it as long as he could, and then groaned, and we saw what was going on. Hicksey tied the villager up, and gave him a half-a-dozen, good, with a bamboo, to remind him to leave a prisoner alone. You should have seen the old Boh grin. Oh! but Hicksey was in a furious rage with everybody. He’d got a wipe over the elbow that had tickled up his funnybone, and he was rabid with me for not having helped him with the Boh and the mosquito-net. I had to explain that I couldn’t do anything. If you’d seen ’em both tangled up together on the floor in one kicking cocoon, you’d have laughed for a week. Hicksey
swore that the only decent man of his acquaintance was the Boh, and all the way to camp Hicksey was talking to the Boh, and the Boh was complaining about the soreness of his bones. When we got back, and had had a bath, the Boh wanted to know when he was going to be hanged. Hicksey said he couldn’t oblige him on the spot, but had to send him to Rangoon. The Boh went down on his knees, and reeled off a catalogue of his crimes—he ought to have been hanged seventeen times over, by his own confession—and implored Hicksey to settle the business out of hand. “If I’m sent to Rangoon,” said he, ‘they’ll keep me in, jail all my life, and that is a death every time the sun gets up or the wind blows.” But we had to send him to Rangoon, and, of course, he was let off down there, and given penal servitude for life. When I came to Rangoon I went over the jail—I had helped to fill it, y’ know—and the old Boh was there, and he spotted me at once. He begged for some opium first, and I tried to get him some, but that was against the rules. Then he asked me to have his sentence changed to death, because he was afraid of being sent to the Andamans. I couldn’t do that either, but I tried to cheer him, and told him how things were going up-country, and the last thing he said was—“Give my compliments to the fat white man who jumped on me. If I’d been awake I’d have killed him.” I wrote that to Hicksey next mail, and—and that’s all. I’m ’fraid I’ve been gassing awf’ly, sir.’

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Cleever said nothing for a long time. The Infant looked uncomfortable. He feared that, misled by enthusiasm, he had filled up the novelist’s time with unprofitable recital of trivial anecdotes.

Then said Cleever, ‘I can’t understand. Why should you have seen and done all these things before you have cut your wisdom-teeth?’

‘Don’t know,’ said The Infant apologetically. ‘I haven’t seen much—only Burmese jungle.’

‘And dead men, and war, and power, and responsibility,’ said Cleever, under his breath. ‘You won’t have any sensations left at thirty, if you go on as you have done. But I want to hear more tales—more tales!’ He seemed to forget that even subalterns might have engagements of their own.

‘We’re thinking of dining out somewhere—the lot of us—and going on to the Empire afterwards,’ said Nevin, with hesitation. He did not like to ask Cleever to come too. The invitation might be regarded as perilously near to ‘cheek.’ And Cleever, anxious not to wag a gray beard unbidden among boys at large, said nothing on his side.

Boileau solved the little difficulty by blurting out: ‘Won’t you come too, sir?’

Cleever almost shouted ‘Yes,’ and while he was being helped into his coat, continued to murmur ‘Good heavens!’ at intervals in a way that the boys could not understand.

‘I don’t think I’ve been to the Empire in my life,’ said he; ‘but—what is my life after all? Let us go.’

They went out with Eustace Cleever, and I sulked at home because they had come to see me
but had gone over to the better man; which was humiliating. They packed him into a cab with utmost reverence, for was he not the author of As it was in the Beginning, and a person in whose company it was an honour to go abroad? From all I gathered later, he had taken less interest in the performance before him than in their conversations, and they protested with emphasis that he was ‘as good a man as they make. ’Knew what a man was driving at almost before he said it; and yet he’s so damned simple about things any man knows.’ That was one of many comments.

At midnight they returned, announcing that they were ‘highly respectable gondoliers,’ and that oysters and stout were what they chiefly needed. The eminent novelist was still with them, and I think he was calling them by their shorter names. I am certain that he said he had been moving in worlds not realised, and that they had shown him the Empire in a new light.

Still sore at recent neglect, I answered shortly, ‘Thank heaven we have within the land ten thousand as good as they,’ and when he departed, asked him what he thought of things generally.

He replied with another quotation, to the effect that though singing was a remarkably fine performance, I was to be quite sure that few lips would be moved to song if they could find a sufficiency of kissing.

Whereby I understood that Eustace Cleever, decorator and colourman in words, was blaspheming his own Art, and would be sorry for this in the morning.

[a short tale]

WILL the public be good enough to look into this business? It has sent Crewe to bed, and Mottleby is applying for home leave, and I’ve lost my faith in man altogether, and the Club gives it up. Trivey is the only man who is unaffected by the catastrophe, and he says “I told you so.” We were all proud of Trivey at the Club, and would have crowned him with wreaths of Bougainvillea had he permitted the liberty. But Trivey was an austere man. The utmost that he permitted himself to say was: “I can stretch a little bit when I’m in the humour.” We called him the Monumental Liar. Nothing that the Club oflFered was too good for Trivey. He had the soft chair opposite the thermantidote in the hot weather, and he made up his own four at whist. When visitors came in—globe-trotters for choice—Trivey used to unmuzzle himself and tell tales that sent the globe-trotter out of the Club on tiptoe looking for snakes in his hat and tigers in the compound. Whenever a man from a strange Club came in Trivey used to call for a whisky and ginger-wine and rout that man on all points—from horses upward. There was a man whose nickname was “Ananias,” who came from the Prince’s Plungers to look at Trivey; and, though Trivey was only a civilian, the Plunger man resigned his title to the nickname before eleven o’clock. He made it over to Trivey on a card, and Trivey himg up the concession in his quarters. We loved Trivey—all of us; and now we don’t love him any more.

A man from the frontier came in and began to tell tales—some very good ones, and some better than good. He was an outsider, but he had a wonderful imagination—for the frontier. He told six stories before Trivey brought up his first line, and three more before Trivey hurled his reserves into the fray.

“When I was at Anungaracharlupillay in Madras,” said Trivey quietly, “there was a rogue elephant cutting about the district. And I came upon him asleep.” All the Club stopped talking here, until Trivey had finished the story. He told us that he, in the company of another man, had found the rogue asleep, but just as they got up to the brute’s head it woke up with a scream. Then Trivey, who was careful to explain that he was a “bit powerful about the arms,” caught hold of its ears as it rose, and hung there, kicking the animal in the eyes, which so bewildered it that it stayed screaming and frightened until Trivey’s ally shot it behind the shoulder, and the villagers ran in and hamstrung it. It evidently died from loss of blood. Trivey was hanging on the ears and kicking hard for nearly fifteen minutes. When the frontier man heard the story he put his hands in front of his face and sobbed audibly. We gave him all the drinks he wanted, and he recovered sufficiently to carry away eighty rupees at whist later on; but his nerve was irretrievably shattered. He will be no use on the frontier any more. The rest of the Club were very pleased with Trivey, because these frontier men, and especially the guides, want a great deal of keeping in order. Trivey was quite modest. He was a truly great soul, and popular applause never turned his head. As I have said, we loved Trivey, till that fatal day when Crewe announced that he had been transferred for a couple of months to Animgaracharlupillay. “Oh!” said Trivey, “I dare say they’ll remember about my rogue elephant down there. You ask ’em, Crewe.” Then we felt sorry for Trivey, because we were sure that he was arriving at that stage of mental decay when a man begins to believe in his own fictions. That spoils a man’s hand. Crewe wrote up once or twice to Mottleby, saying that he would bring back a story that would make our hair curl. Good stories are scarce in Madras, and we rather scoffed at the announcement. When Crewe returned it was easy to see that he was bursting with importance. He gave a big dinner at the Club and invited nearly everybody but Trivey, who went off after dinner to teach a young subaltern to play “snooker.” At coffee and cheroots, Crewe could not restrain himself any longer. “I say, you Johnnies, it’s all true—every single word of it—and you can throw the decanter at my head and I’ll apologise. The whole village was full of it. There was a rogue elephant, and it slept, and Trivey did catch hold of its ears and kick it in the eyes, and hang on for ten minutes, at least, and all the rest of it. I neglected my regular work to sift that story, and on my honour the tale’s an absolute fact. The headsman said so, all the shikaries said so, and all the villages corroborated it. Now would a whole village volunteer a lie that would do them no good?” You might have heard a cigar-ash fall after this statement. Then Mottleby said, with deep disgust: “What can you do with a man like that? His best and brightest lie, too!” “’Tisn’t!” shrieked Crewe. “It’s a fact—a nickel-plated, teak-wood, Tantalusaction, forty-five rupee fact.’’ “That only makes it worse,” said Mottleby; and we all felt that was true. We ran into the billiard-room to talk to Trivey, but he said we had put him off his stroke; and that was all the satisfaction we got out of him. Later on he repeated that he was a “bit powerful about the arms,” and went to bed. We sat up half the night devising vengeance on Trivey. We were very angry, and there was no hope of hushing up the tale. The man had taken us in completely, and now that we’ve lost our champion Ananias, all the frontier will laugh at us, and we shall never be able to trust a word that Trivey says.

I ask with Mottleby: “What can you do with a man like that?”

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H.M.S. Gardenia (we will take her name from the Herbaceous Border which belonged to the sloops, though she was a destroyer by profession) came quietly back to her berth some time after midnight, and disturbed half-a-dozen of her sisters as she settled down. They all talked about it next morning, especially Phlox and Stephanotis, her left- and right-hand neighbours in the big basin on the east coast of England, that was crowded with destroyers.But the soul of the Gardenia—Lieutenant-in-Command H.R. Duckett—was lifted far above insults. What he had done during his last trip had been well done. Vastly more important—Gardenia was in for a boiler-clean, which meant four days’ leave for her commanding officer.

“Where did you get that fender from, you dockyard burglar?” Stephanotis clamoured over his rail, for Gardenia was wearing a large coir-matting fender, evidently fresh from store, over her rail. It creaked with newness. “You common thief of the beach, where did you find that new fender?”

The only craft that a destroyer will, sometimes, not steal equipment from is a destroyer; which accounts for the purity of her morals and the loftiness of her conversation, and her curiosity in respect to stolen fillings.

Duckett, unmoved, went below, to return with a valise which he carried on to His Majesty’s quarter-deck, and, atop of a suit of rat-catcher clothes, crammed into it a pair of ancient pigskin gaiters.

Here Phlox, assisted by her Dandy Dinmont, Dinah, who had been trained to howl at certain notes in her master’s voice, gave a spirited and imaginary account of Gardenia’s return the night before, which was compared to that of an ambulance with a lady-driver. Duckett retaliated by slipping on to his head for one coquettish instant a gravy-coloured soft cloth cap. It was the last straw. Phlox and Stephanotis, who had no hope of any leave for the present, pronounced it an offence, only to be wiped out by drinks.

“All things considered,” said Duckett, “I don’t care if I do. Come along!” and, the hour being what it was, he gave the necessary orders through the wardroom’s tiny skylight. The captains came. Phlox—Lieutenant-Commander Jerry Marlett, a large and weather-beaten person, docked himself in the arm-chair by the ward-room stove with his cherished Dinah in his arms. Great possessions and much land, inherited from an uncle, had removed him from the Navy on the eve of war. Three days after the declaration of it he was back again, and had been very busy ever since. Stephanotis—Lieutenant-in-Command Augustus Holwell Rayne, alias “The Damper,” because of his pessimism, spread himself out on the settee. He was small and agile, but of gloomy outlook, which a D.S.O. earned, he said, quite by mistake could not lighten. “Horse” Duckett, Gardenia’s skipper, was a reversion to the primitive Marryat type—a predatory, astute, resourceful pirate, too well known to all His Majesty’s dockyards, a man of easily injured innocence who could always prove an alibi, and in whose ship, if his torpedo-coxswain had ever allowed any one to look there, several sorts of missing Government property might have been found. His ambition was to raise pigs (animals he only knew as bacon) in Shropshire (a county he had never seen) after the war, so he waged his war with zeal to bring that happy day nearer. He sat in the arm-chair by the door, whence he controlled the operations of “Crippen,” the wardroom steward, late of Bolitho’s Travelling Circus and Swings, who had taken to the high seas to avoid the attentions of the Police ashore.

As usual, Duckett’s character had been blackened by My Lords of the Admiralty, and he was in the midst of a hot campaign against them. An able-seaman’s widowed mother had sent a ham to her son, whose name was E. R. Davids. Unfortunately, Engineroom-Artificer E. Davies, who swore that he had both a mother and expectations of hams from her, came across the ham first, and, misreading its address, had had it boiled for, and at once eaten by, the Engineers’ mess. E. R. Davids, a vindictive soul, wrote to his mother, who, it seems, wrote to the Admiralty, who, according to Duckett, wrote to him daily every day for a month to know what had become of E. R. Davids’ ham. In the meantime the guilty Engineroom-Artificer E. Davies had been transferred to a sloop off the Irish coast.

“An’ what the dooce am I to do?” Duckett asked his guests plaintively.

“Apply for leave to go to Ireland with a stomach-pump and heave the ham out of Davies,” Jerry suggested promptly.

“That’s rather a wheeze,” said Duckett. “I had thought of marrying Davids’ mother to settle the case. Anyhow, it was all Crippen’s fault for not steering the ham into the wardroom when it came aboard. Don’t let it occur again, Crippen. Hams are going to be very scarce.”

“Well, now you’ve got all that off your chest”—Jerry Marlett lowered his voice—“suppose you tell us about what happened—the night before last.”

The talk became professional. Duckett produced certain evidence—still damp—in support of the claims that he had sent in concerning the fate of a German submarine, and gave a chain of facts and figures and bearings that the others duly noted.

“And how did your Acting Sub do?” asked Jerry at last.

“Oh, very fair, but I didn’t tell him so, of course. They’re hard enough to hold at the best of times, these makee-do officers. Have you noticed that they are always above their job—always thinkin’ round the corner when they’re thinkin’ at al!? On our way back, this young merchant o’ mine—when I’d almost made up my mind to tell him he wasn’t as big tripes as he looked—told me his one dream in life was to fly. Fly! He flew alright by the time I’d done with him, but—imagine one’s Sub tellin’ one a thing like that! ‘It must be so interestin’ to fly,’ he said. The whole North Sea one blooming burgoo of what-come-nexts, an’ this pup complainin’ of lack of interest in it! Fly! Fly! When I was a Sub-Lootenant——”

He turned pathetically towards The Damper, who had known him in that rank in the Mediterranean.

“There wasn’t much flyin’ in our day,” said The Damper mournfully. “But I can’t remember anything else we didn’t do.”

“Quite so; but we had some decency knocked into us. The new breed wouldn’t know decency if they met it on a dungfork. That’s what I mean.”

“When I was Actin’ Sub,” Jerry opened thoughtfully, “in the Polycarp—the pious Polycarp—Nineteen-O-Seven, I got nine cuts of the best from the Senior Sub for occupyin’ the bathroom ten seconds too long. Twenty minutes later, just when the welts were beginnin’ to come up, y’ know, I was sent off in the gig with a Corporal o’ Marines an’ a private to fetch the Headman of All the Pelungas aboard. He was wanted for slavery, or barratry, or bigamy or something.”

“All the Pelungas?” Duckett repeated with interest. “’Odd you should mention that part of the world. What are the Pelungas like?”

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“Very nice. Hundreds of islands and millions of coral reefs with atolls an’ lagoons an’ palm-trees, an’ all the population scullin’ round in outrigger canoes between ’em like a permanent regatta. Filthy navigation, though. Polycarp had to lie five miles out on account of the reefs (even then our navigator was tearin’ his hair), an’ I had an hour’s steerin’ on hot, hard thwarts. Talk o’ tortures! You know. We landed in a white lather at the boat-steps of the Headman’s island. The Headman wasn’t takin’ any at first. He’d drawn up his whole army—three hundred strong, with old Martini rifles an’ a couple of ancestral seven-pounders—in front of his fort. We didn’t know anything about his domestic arrangements. We just dropped in among ’em, so to say. Then my Corporal of Marines—the fattest man in the Service bar one—fell down the landin’ steps. The Headman had a Prime Minister—about as fat as my Corporal—and he helped him up. Well, that broke the ice a bit. The Prime Minister was a statesman. He poured oil on the crisis, while the Headman cursed me and the Navy and the British Government, and I kept wrigglin’ in my white ducks to keep ’em from drawin’ tight on me. You know how it feels! I remember I told the Headman the Polycarp ’ud blow him an’ his island out of the water if he didn’t come along quick. She could have done it in a week or two; but we were scrubbin’ hammocks at the time. I forgot that little fact for the minute. I was a bit hot—all over. The Prime Minister soothed us down again, an’ by and by the Headman said he’d pay us a state call—as a favour. I didn’t care what he called it s’long as he came. So I lay about a quarter of a mile off-shore in the gig, in case the seven-pounders pooped off—I knew the Martinis couldn’t hit us at that range—and I waited for him till he shoved off in his State barge—forty rowers a side. Would you believe it, he wanted to take precedence of the White Ensign on the way to the ship? I had to fall him in behind the gig and bring him alongside properly. I was so sore I could hardly get aboard at the finish.”

“What happened to the Headman? “said The Damper.

“Nothing. He was acquitted or condemned—I forget which—but he was a perfect gentleman. We used to go sailing with him and his people—dancing with ’em on the beach and all that sort of thing. I don’t want to meet a nicer community than the Pelungaloos. They aren’t used to white men—but they’re first-class learners.”

“Yes, they do seem a cheery crowd,” Duckett commented.

“Where have you come across them?” said Jerry.

“Nowhere; but this Acting Sub of mine has got a cousin who’s been flying down there.”

“Flying in All the Pelungas? “Jerry cried. “That’s impossible!”

“In these days? Where’s your bright lexicon of youth? Nothing’s impossible anywhere now,” Duckett replied. “All the best people fly.”

“Count me out,” Jerry grunted. “We went up once, Dinah, little dog, and it made us both very sick, didn’t it? When did it all happen, Horse?”

“Some time last year. This chap, my Sub’s cousin—a man called Baxter—went adrift among All the Pelungas in his machine and failed to connect with his ship. He was reported missing for months. Then he turned up again. That’s all.”

“He was called Baxter?” said The Damper. “Hold on a shake! I wonder if he’s ‘Beloo’ Baxter, by any chance. There was a chap of that name about five years ago on the China Station. He had himself tattooed al! over, regardless, in Rangoon. Then he got as good as engaged to a woman in Hongkong—rich woman too. But the Pusser of his ship gave him away. He had a regular cinema of frogs and dragonflies up his legs. And that was only the beginnin’ of the show. So she broke off the engagement, and he half-killed the Pusser, and then he became a Buddhist, or something.”

“That couldn’t have been this Baxter, or my Sub would have told me,” said Duckett. “My Sub’s a morbid-minded young animal.”

“Maskee your Sub’s mind!” said Jerry.

“What was this Baxter man—plain or coloured—doin’ in All my Pelungas?”

“As far as I can make out,” said Duckett, “Lootenant Baxter was flyin’ in those parts—with an observer—out of a ship.”

“Yes, but what for?” Jerry insisted. “And what ship?”

“He was flyin’ for exercise, I suppose, an’ his ship was the Cormorang. D’you feel wiser? An’ he flew, an’ he flew, an’ he flew till, between him an’ his observer and the low visibility and Providence and all that sort of thing, he lost his ship—just like some other people I know. Then he flapped about huntin’ for’ her till dusk among the Pelungas, an’ then he effected a landin’ on the water.”

“A nasty wet business—landin’ that way; Dinah. We know,” said Jerry into the keen little cocked ear in his lap.

“Then he taxied about in the dark till he taxied on to a coral-reef and couldn’t get the machine off. Coral ain’t like mud, is it?” The question was to Jerry, but the insult was addressed to The Damper, who had lately spent eighteen hours on a soft and tenacious shoal off the East Coast. The Damper launched a kick at his host from where he lay along the settee.

“Then,” Duckett went on, “this Baxterman got busy with his wireless and S O S’ed like winkie till the tide came and floated the old bus off the reef, and they taxied over to another island in the dark.”

“Thousands of Islands in All the Pelungas,” Jerry murmured. “Likewise reefs—hairy ones. What about the reefs?”

“Oh, they kept on hittin’ reefs in the dark, till it occurred to them to fire their signal lights to see ’em by. So they went blazin’ an’ stinkin’ and taxyin’ up and down the reefs till they found a gap in one of ’em and they taxied bung on to an uninhabited island.”

“That must have been good for the machine,” was Jerry’s comment.

“I don’t deny it. I’m only tellin’ you what my Sub told me. Baxter wrote it all home to his people, and the letters have been passed round the family. Well, then, o’ course, it rained. It rained all the rest of the night, up to the afternoon of the next day. (It always does when you’re in a hole.) They tried to start their engine in the intervals of climbin’ palm-trees for coco-nuts. They’d only a few biscuits and some water with ’em.”

“’Don’t like climbin’ palm-trees. It scrapes you raw,” The Damper moaned.

“An’ when they weren’t climbin’ or crankin’ their engine, they tried to get into touch with the natives on the next nearest island. But the natives weren’t havin’ any. They took to the bush.”

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“Ah!” said Jerry sympathetically. “That aeroplane was too much for ’em. Otherwise, they’re the most cosy, confidential lot I ever met. Well, what happened?”

“Baxter sweated away at his engine till she started up again. Then he flew round lookin’ for his ship some more till his petrol ran out. Then he landed close to another uninhabited island and tried to taxi up to it.”

“Why was he so keen on uninhabited islands? I wish I’d been there. I’d ha’ shown him round the town,” said Jerry.

“I don’t know his reasons, but that was what he wrote home to his people,” Duckett went on. “Not havin’ any power by that time, his machine blew on to another reef and there they were! No grub, no petrol, and plenty of sharks! So they snugged her down. I don’t know how one snugs down an aeroplane,” Duckett admitted, “but Baxter took the necessary steps to reduce the sail-area, and cut the spanker-boom out of the tail-tassels or whatever it is they do on an aeroplane when they want her to be quiet. Anyhow, they more or less secured the bus to that reef so they thought she wouldn’t fetch adrift; and they tried to coax a canoe over that happened to be passing. Nothin’ doin’ there! ‘Canoe made one bunk of it.”

“He tickled ’em the wrong way,” Jerry sighed. “There’s a song they sing when they’re fishing.” He began to hum dolefully.

“I expect Baxter didn’t know that tune,” Duckett interrupted. “He an’ his observer cursed the canoe a good deal, an’ then they went in for swimmin’ stunts all among the sharks, until they fetched up on the next island when they came to it—it took ’em an hour to swim there—but the minute they landed the natives all left. ’Seems to me,” said Duckett thoughtfully, “Baxter and his observer must have spread a pretty healthy panic scullin’ about All the Pelungas in their shirts.”

“But why shirts?” said Jerry. “Those waters are perfectly warm.”

“If you come to that, why not shirts?” Duckett retorted. “A shirt’s a badge of civilization——”

“Maskee your shirts. What happened after that?” said The Damper.

“They went to sleep. They were tired by that time—oddly enough. The natives on that island had left everything standing when they bunked—fires lighted, chickens runnin’ about, and so forth. Baxter slept in one of the huts. About midnight some of the bold boys stole back again. Baxter heard ’em talkin’ just outside, and as he didn’t want his face trod on, he said ‘Salaam.’ That cleared the island for the second time. The natives jumped three foot into the air and shoved off.”

“Good Lord!” said Jerry impatiently. “I’d have had ’em eating out of my hand in ten seconds. ‘Salaam’ isn’t the word to use at all. What he ought to have said——”

“Well, anyhow, he didn’t,” Duckett replied. “He and his observer had their sleep out an’ they woke in the mornin’ with ragin’ appetites and a strong sense of decency. The first thing they annexed was some native loin-cloths off a bush. Baxter wrote all this home to his people, you know. I expect he was well brought up.”

“If he was ‘Beloo’ Baxter no one would notice——” The Damper began.

“He wasn’t. He was just a simple, virtuous Naval Officer—like me. He an’ his observer navigated the island in full dress in search of the natives, but they’d gone and taken the canoe with ’em. Baxter was so depressed at their lack of confidence that he killed a chicken an’ plucked it and drew it (I bet neither of you know how to draw fowls) an’ boiled it and ate it all at once.”

“Didn’t he feed his observer?” The Damper asked. “I’ve a little brother what’s an observer up in the air. I’d hate to think he——”

“The observer was kept busy wavin’ his shirt on the beach in order to attract the attention of local fishin’ craft. That was what he was for. After breakfast Baxter joined him an’ the two of ’em waved shirts for two hours on the beach. An’ that’s the sort of thing my Sub prefers to servin’ with me!—Me! After a bit, the Pelungaloos decided that they must be harmless lunatics, and one canoe stood pretty close in, an’ they swam out to her. But here’s a curious thing! Baxter wrote his people that, when the canoe came, his observer hadn’t any shirt at all. ’Expect he’d expended it wavin’ for succour. But Baxter’s shirt was all right. He went out of his way to tell his people so. An’ my Sub couldn’t see the humour of it one little bit. How does it strike you?”

“Perfectly simple,” said Jerry. “Lootenant Baxter as executive officer in charge took his subordinate’s shirt owin’ to the exigencies of the Service. I’d ha’ done the same. Pro-ceed.”

“There’s worse to follow. As soon as they got aboard the canoe and the natives found they didn’t bite, they cottoned to ’em no end. ’Gave ’em grub and dry loin-cloths and betel-nut to chew. What’s betel-nut like, Jerry?”

“Grateful an’ comfortin’. Warms you all through and makes you spit pink. It’s nonintoxicating.”

“Oh! I’ve never tried it. Well then, there was Baxter spittin’ pink in a loin-cloth an’ a canoeful of Pelungaloo fishermen, with his shirt dryin’ in the breeze. ’Got that? Well, then his aeroplane, which he thought he had secured to the reef of the next island, began to drift out to sea. That boy had to keep his eyes open, I tell you. He wanted the natives to go in and makee-catchee the machine, and there was a big palaver about it. They naturally didn’t care to compromise themselves with strange idols, but after a bit they lined up a dozen canoes—no, eleven, to be precise—Baxter was awfully precise in his letters to his people—an’ tailed on to the aeroplane an’ towed it to an island.”

“Excellent,” said Jerry Marlett, the complete Lieutenant-Commander. “I was gettin’ worried about His Majesty’s property. Baxter must have had a way with him. A loin-cloth ain’t uniform, but it’s dashed comfortable. An’ how did All my Pelungaloos treat ’em?”

“We-ell!” said Duckett, “Baxter was writin’ home to his people, so I expect he toned things down a bit, but, readin’ between the lines, it looks as if—an’ that’s why my Sub wants to take up flyin’, of course!—it looks as if, from then on, they had what you might call Garden-of-Eden picnics for weeks an’ weeks. The natives put ’em under a guard o’ sorts just for the look of the thing, while the news was sent to the Headman, but as far as I can make out from my Sub’s reminiscences of Baxter’s letters, their guard consisted of the entire male and female population goin’ in swimmin’ with ’em twice a day. At night they had concerts—native songs versus music-hall—in alternate what d’you call ’em? Anti-somethings. ’Phone, ain’t it?”

“They are a musical race! I’m glad he struck that side of their nature,” Jerry murmured.

“I’m envious,” Duckett protested. “Why should the Flyin’ Corps get all the plums? But Baxter didn’t forget His Majesty’s aeroplane. He got ’em to tow it to his island o’ delights, and in the evenings he an’ his observer, between the musical turns, used to give the women electric shocks off the wireless. And, one time, he told his observer to show ’em his false teeth, and when he took ’em out the people all bolted.”

page 4

“But that’s in Rider Haggard. It’s in King Solomon’s Mines,” The Damper remarked.

“P’raps that’s what put it into Baxter’s head then,” said Duckett. “Or else,” he suggested warily, “Baxter wanted to crab his observer’s chances with some lady.”

“Then he was a fool,” The Damper snarled. “It might have worked the other way. It generally does.”

“Well, one can’t foresee everything,” said Duckett. “Anyhow, Baxter didn’t complain. They lived there for weeks and weeks, singin’ songs together and bathin’ an’—oh, yes!— gamblin’. Baxter made a set of dice too. He doesn’t seem to have neglected much. He said it was just to pass the time away, but I wonder what he threw for. I wish I knew him. His letters to his people are too colourless. What a life he must have led! Women, dice and song, an’ your pay rollin’ up behind you in perfect safety with no exertion on your part.”

“There’s a dance they dance on moonlight nights,” said Jerry, “with just a few banana leaves—— Never mind. Go ahead!”

“All things bright and beautiful—fineesh,” Duckett mourned. “Presently the Headman of All the Pelungas came along——”

“’My friend? I hope it was. A first-class sportsman,” said Jerry.

“Baxter didn’t say. Anyhow, he turned up and they were taken over to the capital island till they could be sent back to their own ship. The Headman did ’em up to the nines in every respect while they were with him (Baxter’s quite enthusiastic over it, even in writin’ to his own people), but, o’ course, there’s nothing like first love, is there? They must have felt partin’ with their first loves. I always do. And then they were put into the full uniform of All the Pelungaloo Army. What’s that like, Jerry? You’ve seen it.”

“It’s a cross between a macaw an’ a rainbow-ended mandrill. Very tasty.”

“Just as they were gettin’ used to that, and they’d taught the Headman and his Court to sing: ‘Hello! Hello! Who’s your lady friend?’ they were embarked on a dirty common sailin’ craft an’ taken over the ocean and returned to the Cormorang, which, o’ course, had reported ’em missing and dead months before. They had one final kick-up before returnin’ to duty. You see, they’d both grown torpedo-beards in the Pelungas, and they were both in Pelungaloo uniform. Consequently, when they went aboard the Cormorang they weren’t recognized till they were half-way down to their cabins.”

“And then?” both Captains asked at once.

“That’s where Baxter breaks off—even though he’s writin’ to his own people. He’s so apologetic to ’em for havin’ gone missin’ and worried ’em, an’ he’s so sinful proud of havin’ taught the Headman music-hall songs, that he only said that they had ‘some reception aboard the Cormorang.’ It lasted till midnight.”

“It is possible. What about their machine?” said Jerry.

“The Cormorang ran down to the Pelungas and retrieved it all right. But I should have liked to have seen that reception. There is nothing I’d ha’ liked better than to have seen that reception. And it isn’t as if I hadn’t seen a reception or two either.”

“The leaf-signal is made, sir,” said the Quartermaster at the door.

“Twelve-twenty-four train,” Duckett muttered. “Can do.” He rose, adding, “I’m going to scratch the backs of swine for the next three days. G’wout!”

The well-trained servant was already fleeting along the edge of the basin with his valise. Stephanotis and Phlox returned to their own ships, loudly expressing envy and hatred. Duckett paused for a moment at his gangway rail to beckon to his torpedo-coxswain, a Mr. Wilkins, a peace-time sailor of mild and mildewed aspect who had followed Duckett’s shady fortunes for some years.

“Wilkins,” he whispered, “where did we get that new starboard fender of ours from?”

“Orf the dredger, sir. She was asleep when we came in,” said Wilkins through lips that scarcely seemed to move. “But our port one come orf the water-boat. We ’ad to over’aul our moorin’s in the skiff last night, sir, and we—er—found it on ’er.”

“Well, well, Wilkins. Keep the home fires burning,” and Lieutenant-in-Command H.R. Duckett sped after his servant in the direction of the railway-station. But not so fast that he could outrun a melody played aboard the Phlox on a concertina to which manly voices bore the burden:

Moved, Heaven knows whether by conscience or kindliness, Lieutenant Duckett smiled at the policeman on the Dockyard gates.

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

[a short tale]

Wherefore slew you the stranger? He brought me dishonour.
I saddled my mare Bijli. I set him upon her.
I gave him rice and goat’s flesh. He bared me to laughter;
When he was gone from my tent, swift I followed after,
Taking a sword in my hand. The hot wine had filled him
Under the stars he mocked me. Therefore I killed him.
 (Hadramauti) 

THIS tale must be told in the first person for many reasons. The man whom I want to expose is Tranter of the Bombay side. I want Tranter black-balled at his Club, divorced from his wife, turned out of the Service, and cast into prison, until I get an apology from him in writing. I wish to warn the world against Tranter of the Bombay side.

You know the casual way in which men pass on acquaintances in India? It is a great convenience, because you can get rid of a man you don’t like by writing a letter of introduction and putting him, with it, into the train. Globe-trotters are best treated thus. If you keep them moving, they have no time to say insulting and offensive things about ‘Anglo-Indian Society.’

One day, late in the cold weather, I got a letter of preparation from Tranter of the Bombay side, advising me of the advent of a G.T., a man called Jevon; and saying, as usual, that any kindness shown to Jevon would be a kindness to Tranter. Every one knows the regular form of these communications.

Two days afterwards Jevon turned up with his letter of introduction, and I did what I could for him. He was lint-haired, fresh-coloured, and very English. But he held no views about the Government of India. Nor did he insist on shooting tigers on the Station Mall, as some G.T.’s do. Nor did he call us ‘colonists,’ and dine in a flannel-shirt and tweeds, under that delusion as other G.T.’s do. He was well behaved and very grateful for the little I won for him—most grateful of all when I secured him an invitation for the Afghan Ball, and introduced him to a Mrs. Deemes, a lady for whom I had a great respect and admiration, who danced like the shadow of a leaf in a light wind. I set great store by the friendship of Mrs. Deemes; but, had I known what was coming, I would have broken Jevon’s neck with a curtain-pole before getting him that invitation.

But I did not know, and he dined at the Club, I think, on the night of the ball. I dined at home. When I went to the dance, the first man I met asked me whether I had seen Jevon. ‘No,’ said I. ‘He’s at the Club. Hasn’t he come?’—‘Come!’ said the man. ‘Yes, he’s very much come. You’d better look at him.’

I sought for Jevon. I found him sitting on a bench and smiling to himself and a programme. Half a look was enough for me. On that one night, of all others, he had begun a long and thirsty evening by taking too much! He was breathing heavily through his nose, his eyes were rather red, and he appeared very satisfied with all the earth. I put up a little prayer that the waltzing would work off the wine, and went about programme-filling, feeling uncomfortable. But I saw Jevon walk up to Mrs. Deemes for the first dance, and I knew that all the waltzing on the card was not enough to keep Jevon’s rebellious legs steady. That couple went round six times. I counted. Mrs. Deemes dropped Jevon’s arm and came across to me.

I am not going to repeat what Mrs. Deemes said to me, because she was very angry indeed. I am not going to write what I said to Mrs. Deemes, because I didn’t say anything. I only wished that I had killed Jevon first and been hanged for it. Mrs. Deemes drew her pencil through all the dances that I had booked with her, and went away, leaving me to remember that what I ought to have said was that Mrs. Deemes had asked to be introduced to Jevon because he danced well; and that I really had not carefully worked out a plot to get her insulted. But I felt that argument was no good, and that I had better try to stop Jevon from waltzing me into more trouble. He, however, was gone, and about every third dance I set off to hunt for him. This ruined what little pleasure I expected from the entertainment.

Just before supper I caught Jevon at the buffet with his legs wide apart, talking to a very fat and indignant chaperone. ‘If this person is a friend of yours, as I understand he is, I would recommend you to take him home,’ said she. ‘He is unfit for decent society.’ Then I knew that goodness only knew what Jevon had been doing, and I tried to get him away.

But Jevon wasn’t going; not he. He knew what was good for him, he did; and he wasn’t going to be dictated to by any colonial nigger-driver, he wasn’t; and I was the friend who had formed his infant mind, and brought him up to buy Benares brassware and fear God, so I was; and we would have many more blazing good drunks together, so we would; and all the she-camels in black silk in the world shouldn’t make him withdraw his opinion that there was nothing better than Benedictine to give one an appetite. And then . . . but he was my guest.

I set him in a quiet corner of the supper-room, and went to find a wall-prop that I could trust. There was a good and kindly Subaltern—may Heaven bless that Subaltern, and make him a Commander-in-Chief!—who heard of my trouble. He was not dancing himself, and he owned a head like five-year-old teak-baulks. He said that he would look after jevon till the end of the ball.

‘’Don’t suppose you much mind what I do with him?’ said he.

‘Mind!’ said I. ‘No! You can murder the beast if you like.’

But the Subaltern did not murder him. He trotted off to the supper-room, and sat down by Jevon, drinking peg for peg with him. I saw the two fairly established, and went away, feeling more easy.

When ‘The Roast Beef of Old England’ sounded, I heard of Jevon’s performances between the first dance and my meeting with him at the buffet. After Mrs. Deemes had cast him off, it seems that he had found his way into the gallery, and offered to conduct the Band or to play any instrument in it, just as the Bandmaster pleased.

When the Bandmaster refused, Jevon said that he wasn’t appreciated, and he yearned for sympathy. So he trundled downstairs and sat out four dances with four girls, and proposed to three of them. One of the girls was a married woman by the way. Then he went into the whist-room, and fell facedown and wept on the hearth-rug in front of the fire, because he had fallen into a den of card-sharpers, and his Mamma had always warned him against bad company. He had done a lot of other things, too, and had taken about three quarts of mixed liquors. Besides, speaking of me in the most scandalous fashion!

All the women wanted him turned out, and all the men wanted him kicked. The worst of it was, that every one said it was my fault. Now, I put it to you, how on earth could I have known that this innocent, fluffy G.T. would break out in this disgusting manner? You see he had gone round the world nearly, and his vocabulary of abuse was cosmopolitan, though mainly Japanese, which he had—picked up in a low tea-house at Hakodate. It sounded like whistling.

While I was listening to first one man and then another telling me of Jevon’s shameless behaviour and asking me for his blood, I wondered where he was. I was prepared to sacrifice him to Society on the spot.

But Jevon was gone, and, far away in the corner of the supper-room, sat my dear, good Subaltern, a little flushed, eating salad. I went over and said, ‘Where’s Jevon?’—‘In the cloakroom,’ said the Subaltern. ‘He’ll keep till the women have gone. Don’t you interfere with my prisoner.’ I didn’t want to interfere, but I peeped into the cloakroom, and found my guest put to bed on some rolled-up carpets, all comfy, his collar free, and a wet swab on his head.

The rest of the evening I spent in making timid attempts to explain things to Mrs. Deemes and three or four other ladies, and trying to clear my character—for I am a respectable man—from the shameful slurs that my guest had cast upon it. Libel was no word for what he had said.

When I wasn’t trying to explain, I was running off to the cloakroom to see that Jevon wasn’t dead of apoplexy. I didn’t want him to die on my hands. He had eaten my salt.

At last that ghastly ball ended, though I was not in the least restored to Mrs. Deemes’ favour. When the ladies had gone, and some one was calling for songs at the second supper, that angelic Subaltern told the servants to bring in the Sahib who was in the cloakroom, and clear away one end of the supper-table. While this was being done we formed ourselves into a Board of Punishment with the Doctor for President.

Jevon came in on four men’s shoulders, and was put down on the table like a corpse in a dissecting-room, while the Doctor lectured on the evils of intemperance, and Jevon snored. Then we set to work.

We corked the whole of his face. We filled his hair with meringue-cream till it looked like a white wig. To protect everything till it dried, a man in the Ordnance Department, who understood the work, luted a big blue paper cap from a cracker, with meringue-cream, low down on Jevon’s forehead. This was punishment, not play, remember. We took gelatine off crackers, and stuck blue gelatine on his nose, and yellow gelatine on his chin, and green and red gelatine on his cheeks, pressing each dab down till it held as firm as goldbeaters’ skin.

We put a ham-frill round his neck, and tied it in a bow in front. He nodded like a mandarin.

We fixed gelatine on the back of his hands, and burnt-corked them inside, and put small cutlet-frills round his wrists, and tied both wrists together with string. We waxed up the ends of his moustache with isinglass. He looked very martial.

We turned him over, pinned up his coat-tails between his shoulders, and put a rosette of cutlet-frills there. We took up the red cloth from the ball-room to the supper-room, and wound him up in it. There were sixty feet of red cloth, six feet broad; and he rolled up into a big fat bundle, with only that amazing head sticking out.

Lastly, we tied up the surplus of the cloth beyond his feet with cocoanut-fibre string as tightly as we knew how. We were so angry that we hardly laughed at all.

Just as we finished, we heard the rumble of bullock-carts taking away some chairs and things that the General’s wife had lent for the ball. So we hoisted Jevon, like a roll of carpets, into one of the carts, and the carts went away.

Now the most extraordinary part of this tale is that never again did I see or hear anything of Jevon, G.T. He vanished utterly. He was not delivered at the General’s house with the carpets. He just went into the black darkness of the end of the night, and was swallowed up. Perhaps he died and was thrown into the river.

But, alive or dead, I have often wondered how he got rid of the red cloth and the meringue-cream. I wonder still whether Mrs. Deemes will ever take any notice of me again, and whether I shall live down the infamous stories that Jevon set afloat about my manners and customs between the first and the ninth waltz of the Afghan Ball. They stick closer than cream.

Wherefore, I want Tranter of the Bombay side, dead or alive. But dead for preference.

Pleasant it is for the Little Tin Gods
When great Jove nods;
But Little Tin Gods make their little mistakes
In missing the hour when great Jove wakes.

[a short tale]

AS a general rule, it is inexpedient to meddle with questions of State in a land where men are highly paid to work them out for you. This tale is a justifiable exception.

Once in every five years, as you know, we indent for a new Viceroy; and each Viceroy imports, with the rest of his baggage, a Private Secretary, who may or may not be the real Viceroy, just as Fate ordains. Fate looks after the Indian Empire because it is so big and so helpless.

There was a Viceroy once who brought out with him a turbulent Private Secretary—a hard man with a soft manner and a morbid passion for work. This Secretary was called Wonder—John Fennil Wonder. The Viceroy possessed no name—nothing but a string of counties and two-thirds of the alphabet after them. He said, in confidence, that he was the electro-plated figure head of a golden administration, and he watched in a dreamy, amused way Wonder’s attempts to draw matters which were entirely outside his province into his own hands. ‘When we are all cherubim together,’ said His Excellency once, ‘my dear, good friend Wonder will head the conspiracy for plucking out Gabriel’s tailfeathers or stealing Peter’s keys. Then I shall report him.’

But, though the Viceroy did nothing to check Wonder’s officiousness, other people said unpleasant things. May be the Members of Council began it; but, finally, all Simla agreed that there was ‘too much Wonder and too little Viceroy’ in that rule. Wonder was always quoting ‘His Excellency.’ It was ‘His Excellency this,’ ‘His Excellency that,’ ‘In the opinion of His Excellency,’ and so on. The Viceroy smiled; but he did not heed. He said that, so long as his old men squabbled with his ‘dear, good Wonder,’ they might be induced to leave the Immemorial East in peace.

‘No wise man has a Policy,’ said the Viceroy. ‘A Policy is the blackmail levied on the Fool by the Unforeseen. I am not the former, and I do not believe in the latter.’

I do not quite see what this means, unless it refers to an Insurance Policy. Perhaps it was the Viceroy’s way of saying, ‘Lie low.’

That season came up to Simla one of those crazy people with only a single idea. These are the men who make things move; but they are not nice to talk to. This man’s name was Mellish, and he had lived for fifteen years on land of his own, in Lower Bengal, studying cholera. He held that cholera was a germ that propagated itself as it flew through a muggy atmosphere; and stuck in the branches of trees like a wool-flake. The germ could be rendered sterile, he said, by ‘Mellish’s Own Invincible Fumigatory’—a heavy violet-black powder—, ‘the result of fifteen years’ scientific investigation, Sir!’

Inventors seem very much alike as a caste. They talk loudly, especially about ‘conspiracies of monopolists;’ they beat upon the table with their fists; and they secrete fragments of their inventions about their persons.

Mellish said that there was a Medical ‘Ring’ at Simla, headed by the Surgeon-General, who was in league, apparently, with all the Hospital Assistants in the Empire. I forget exactly how he proved it, but it had something to do with ‘skulking up to the Hills’; and what Mellish wanted was the independent evidence of the Viceroy—‘Steward of our Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, Sir.’ So Mellish went up to Simla, with eighty-four pounds of Fumigatory in his trunk, to speak to the Viceroy and to show him the merits of the invention.

But it is easier to see a Viceroy than to talk to him, unless you chance to be as important as Mellishe of Madras. He was a six-thousand-rupee man, so great that his daughters never married.‘They I contracted alliances.’ He himself was not paid. He ‘received emoluments,’ and his journeys about the country were ‘tours of observation.’ His business was to stir up the people in Madras with a long pole—as you stir up tench in a pond—and the people had to come up out of their comfortable old ways and gasp—‘This is Enlightenment and Progress. Isn’t it fine !’ Then they gave Mellishe statues and jasmine garlands, in the hope of getting rid of him.

Mellishe came up to Simla ‘to confer with the Viceroy.’ That was one of his perquisites. The Viceroy knew nothing of Mellishe except that he was ‘one of those middle-class deities who seem necessary to the spiritual comfort of this Paradise of the Middle-classes,’ and that, in all probability, he had ‘suggested, designed, founded, and endowed all the public institutions in Madras.’ Which proves that His Excellency, though dreamy, had experience of the ways of six-thousandrupee men.

Mellishe’s name was E. Mellishe, and Mellish’s was E. S. Mellish, and they were both staying at the same hotel, and the Fate that looks after the Indian Empire ordained that Wonder should blunder and drop the final ‘e’ ; that the Chaprassi should help him, and that the note which ran

should be given to Mellish with the Fumigatory. He nearly wept with pride and delight, and at the appointed hour cantered to Peterhof, a big paper bag full of the Fumigatory in his coat-tail pockets. He had his chance, and he meant to make the most of it. Mellishe of Madras had been so portentously solemn about his ‘conference’ that Wonder had arranged for a private tiffin,—no A.-D.-C.’s, no Wonder, no one but the Viceroy, who said plaintively that he feared being left alone with unmuzzled autocrats like the great Mellishe of Madras.

But his guest did not bore the Viceroy. On the contrary, he amused him. Mellish was nervously anxious to go straight to his Fumigatory, and talked at random until tiffin was over and His Excellency asked him to smoke. The Viceroy was pleased with Mellish because he did not talk ‘shop.’

As soon as the cheroots were lit, Mellish spoke like a man; beginning with his cholera-theory, reviewing his fifteen years’ ‘scientific labours,’ the machinations of the ‘Simla Ring,’ and the excellence of his Fumigatory, while the Viceroy watched him between half-shut eyes and thought—, ‘Evidently this is the wrong tiger; but it is an original animal.’ Mellish’s hair was standing on end with excitement, and he stammered. He began groping in his coat-tails and, before the Viceroy knew what was about to happen, he had tipped a bagful of his powder into the big silver ash-tray.

‘J-j-judge for yourself, Sir,’ said Mellish. ‘Y’ Excellency shall judge for yourself! Absolutely infallible, on my honour.’

He plunged the lighted end of his cigar into the powder, which began to smoke like a volcano, and send up fat, greasy wreaths of copper-coloured smoke. In five seconds the room was filled with a most pungent and sickening stench—a reek that took fierce hold of the trap of your windpipe and shut it. The powder hissed and fizzed, and sent out blue and green sparks, and the smoke rose till you could neither see, nor breathe, nor gasp. Mellish, however, was used to it.

‘Nitrate of strontia,’ he shouted; ‘baryta, bone-meal, etcetera! Thousand cubic feet smoke per cubic inch. Not a germ could live—not a germ, Y’ Excellency!’

But His Excellency had fled, and was coughing at the foot of the stairs, while all Peterhof hummed like a hive. Red Lancers came in, and the head Chaprassi who speaks English came in, and mace-bearers came in, and ladies ran downstairs screaming, ‘Fire’; for the smoke was drifting through the house and oozing out of the windows, and bellying along the verandahs, and wreathing and writhing across the gardens. No one could enter the room where Mellish was lecturing on his Fumigatory till that unspeakable powder had burned itself out.

Then an Aide-de-Camp, who desired the V.C., rushed through the rolling clouds and hauled Mellish into the hall. The Viceroy was prostrate with laughter, and could only waggle his hands feebly at Mellish, who was shaking a fresh bagful of powder at him.

‘Glorious! Glorious!’ sobbed His Excellency. ‘Not a germ, as you justly observe, could exist! I can swear it. A magnificent success!’

Then he laughed till the tears came, and Wonder, who had caught the real Mellishe snorting on the Mall, entered and was deeply shocked at the scene. But the Viceroy was delighted, because he saw that Wonder would presently depart. Mellish with the Fumigatory was also pleased, for he felt that he had smashed the Simla Medical ‘Ring.’

Few men could tell a story like His Excellency when he took the trouble, and his account of ‘my dear, good Wonder’s friend with the powder’ went the round of Simla, and flippant folk made Wonder unhappy by their remarks.

But His Excellency told the tale once too often—for Wonder. As he meant to do. It was at a Seepee Picnic. Wonder was sitting just behind the Viceroy.

‘And I really thought for a moment,’ wound up His Excellency, ‘that my dear, good Wonder had hired an assassin to clear his way to the throne!’

Every one laughed; but there was a delicate sub-tinkle in the Viceroy’s tone which Wonder understood. He found that his health was giving way; and the Viceroy allowed him to go, and presented him with a flaming ‘character’ for use at Home among big people.

‘My fault entirely,’ said His Excellency, in after seasons, with a twinkle in his eye. ‘My inconsistency must always have been distasteful to such a masterly man.’

“Qui procul hinc—the legend’s writ,
    The frontier grave is far away;
Qui ante diem periit,
    Sed miles, sed pro patriâ.
(NEWBOLT)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Oh, may’s well, I s’pose.’

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

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

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

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

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

‘Horrid,’ said the sergeant briefly.

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

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

The boys went out into the wet, walking swiftly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

page 2

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

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

‘Kill him! Kill him!’ gasped Beetle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Oh, stop jawin’ at me. I want——’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

page 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Crandall major—the Gunner?’ Perowne asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

page 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Dooce he did! When?’

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

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

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

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

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

‘Cheek! You’re only a day-boy.’

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

‘Ugh! ‘Shot if I would!’

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

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

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

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

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

page 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Shove a cold cleek down his neck.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Did you kill any one?’

‘Yes. Shouldn’t wonder. Good-night.’

page 6

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

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

‘I say, Crandall’—Stalky’s voice was tuned to a wholly foreign reverence.

‘Well, what?’

‘Suppose a chap found another chap croaking with diphtheria—all bunged up with it—and they stuck a tube in his throat and the chap sucked the stuff out, what would you say?’

‘Um,’ said Crandall reflectively. ‘I’ve only heard of one case, and that was a doctor. He did it for a woman.’

‘Oh, this wasn’t a woman. It was only a boy.’

‘Makes it all the finer, then. It’s about the bravest thing a man can do. Why?’

‘Oh, I heard of a chap doin’ it. That’s all.’

‘Then he’s a brave man.’

‘Would you funk it?’

‘Ra-ather. Anybody would. Fancy dying of diphtheria in cold blood.’

‘Well—ah! Er! Look here!’ The sentence ended in a grunt, for Stalky had leaped out of bed and with M‘Turk was sitting on the head of Beetle, who would have sprung the mine there and then.

Next day, which was the last of the term and given up to a few wholly unimportant examinations, began with wrath and war. Mr. King had discovered that nearly all his house—it lay, as you know, next door but one to Prout’s in the long range of buildings—had unlocked the doors between the dormitories and had gone in to listen to a story told by Crandall. He went to the Head, clamorous, injured, appealing; for he never approved of allowing so-called young men of the world to contaminate the morals of boyhood. ‘Very good,’ said the Head. He would attend to it.

‘Well, I’m awf’ly sorry,’ said Crandall guiltily. ‘I don’t think I told ’em anything they oughtn’t to hear. Don’t let them get into trouble on my account.’

‘Tck!’ the Head answered, with the ghost of a wink. ‘It isn’t the boys that make trouble; it’s the masters. However, Prout and King don’t approve of dormitory gatherings on this scale, and one must back up the house-masters. Moreover, it’s hopeless to punish two houses only, so late in the term. We must be fair and include everybody. Let’s see. They have a holiday task for the Easters, which, of course, none of them will ever look at. We will give the whole school, except prefects and study-boys, regular prep. to-night; and the Common-room will have to supply a master to take it. We must be fair to all.’

‘Prep. on the last night of the term. Whew!’ said Crandall, thinking of his own wild youth. ‘I fancy there will be larks.’

The school, frolicking among packed trunks, whooping down the corridor, and ‘gloating’ in form-rooms, received the news with amazement and rage. No school in the world did prep. on the last night of the term. This thing was monstrous, tyrannical, subversive of law, religion, and morality. They would go into the form-rooms, and they would take their degraded holiday task with them, but—here they smiled and speculated what manner of man the Common-room would send up against them. The lot fell on Mason, credulous and enthusiastic, who loved youth. No other master was anxious to take that ‘prep.,’ for the school lacked the steadying influence of tradition; and men accustomed to the ordered routine of ancient foundations found it occasionally insubordinate. The four long form-rooms, in which all below the rank of study-boys worked, received him with thunders of applause. Ere he had coughed twice they favoured him with a metrical summary of the marriage-laws of Great Britain, as recorded by the High Priest of the Israelites and commented on by the leader of the host. The lower forms reminded him that it was the last day, and that therefore he must ‘take it all in play.’ When he dashed off to rebuke them, the Lower Fourth and Upper Third began with one accord to be sick, loudly and realistically. Mr. Mason tried, of all vain things under heaven, to argue with them, and a bold soul at a back desk bade him ‘take fifty lines for not ’olding up ’is ’and before speaking.’ As one who prided himself upon the precision of his English this cut Mason to the quick, and while he was trying to discover the offender, the Upper and Lower Second, three form-rooms away, turned out the gas and threw ink-pots. It was a pleasant and stimulating ‘prep.’ The study-boys and prefects heard the echoes of it far off, and the Common-room at dessert smiled.

Stalky waited, watch in hand, till half-past eight.

‘If it goes on much longer the Head will come up,’ said he. ‘We’ll tell the studies first, and then the form-rooms. Look sharp!’

He allowed no time for Beetle to be dramatic or M‘Turk to drawl. They poured into study after study, told their tale, and went again so soon as they saw they were understood, waiting for no comment; while the noise of that unholy ‘prep.’ grew and deepened. By the door of Flint’s study they met Mason flying towards the corridor.

‘He’s gone to fetch the Head. Hurry up! Come on!’

They broke into Number Twelve form-room abreast and panting.

‘The Head! The Head! The Head!’ That call stilled the tumult for a minute, and Stalky leaping to a desk shouted, ‘He went and sucked the diphtheria stuff out of Stettson major’s throat when we thought he was in town. Stop rotting, you asses! Stettson major would have croaked if the Head hadn’t done it. The Head might have died himself. Crandall says it’s the bravest thing any livin’ man can do, and’—his voice cracked—‘the Head don’t know we know!’

M‘Turk and Beetle, jumping from desk to desk, drove the news home among the junior forms. There was a pause, and then, Mason behind him, the Head entered. It was in the established order of things that no boy should speak or move under his eye. He expected the hush of awe. He was received with cheers—steady, ceaseless cheering. Being a wise man he went away, and the forms were silent and a little frightened.

‘It’s all right,’ said Stalky. ‘He can’t do much. ’Tisn’t as if you’d pulled the desks up like we did when old Carleton took prep. once. Keep it up! Hear ’em cheering in the studies!’ He rocketed out with a yell, to find Flint and the prefects lifting the roof off the corridor.

page 7

When the Head of a limited liability company, paying four per cent., is cheered on his saintly way to prayers, not only by four form-rooms of boys waiting punishment, but by his trusted prefects, he can either ask for an explanation or go his road with dignity, while the senior housemaster glares like an excited cat and points out to a white and trembling mathematical master that certain methods—not his, thank God—usually produce certain results. Out of delicacy the Old Boys did not attend that call-over; and it was to the school drawn up in the gymnasium that the Head spoke icily.

‘It is not often that I do not understand you; but I confess I do not to-night. Some of you, after your idiotic performances at prep., seem to think me a fit person to cheer. I am going to show you that I am not.’

Crash—crash—crash—came the triple cheer that disproved it, and the Head glowered under the gas.

‘That is enough. You will gain nothing. The little boys (the Lower School did not like that form of address) will do me three hundred lines apiece in the holidays. I shall take no further notice of them. The Upper School will do me one thousand lines apiece in the holidays, to be shown up the evening of the day they come back. And further——’

‘Gummy, what a glutton!’ Stalky whispered.

‘For your behaviour towards Mr. Mason I intend to lick the whole of the Upper School to-morrow when I give you your journey-money. This will include the three study-boys I found dancing on the form-room desks when I came up. Prefects will stay after call-over.’

The school filed out in silence, but gathered in groups by the gymnasium door waiting what might befall.

‘And now, Flint,’ said the Head, ‘will you be good enough to give me some explanation of your conduct?’

‘Well, sir,’ said Flint desperately, ’if you save a chap’s life at the risk of your own when he’s dyin’ of diphtheria, and the Coll. finds it out, whawhat can you expect, sir?’

‘Um, I see. Then that noise was not meant for—ah, cheek. I can connive at immorality, but I cannot stand impudence. However, it does not excuse their insolence to Mr. Mason. I’ll forgo the lines this once, remember; but the lickings hold good.’

When this news was made public, the school, lost in wonder and admiration, gasped at the Head as he went to his house. Here was a man to be reverenced. On the rare occasions when he caned he did it very scientifically, and the execution of a hundred boys would be epic—immense.

‘It’s all right, Head Sahib. We know,’ said Crandall, as the Head slipped off his gown with a grunt in his smoking-room. ‘I found out just now from our substitute. He was gettin’ my opinion of your performance last night in the dormitory. I didn’t know then that it was you he was talkin’ about. Crafty young animal. Freckled chap with eyes—Corkran, I think his name is.’

‘Oh, I know him, thank you,’ said the Head; and reflectively, ‘Ye-es, I should have included them even if I hadn’t seen ’em.’

‘If the old Coll. weren’t a little above themselves already, we’d chair you down the corridor,’ said the Engineer. ‘Oh, Bates, how could you? You might have caught it yourself, and where would we have been then?’

‘I always knew you were worth twenty of us any day. Now I’m sure of it,’ said the Squadron Commander, looking round for contradictions.

‘He isn’t fit to manage a school, though. Promise you’ll never do it again, Bates Sahib. We—we can’t go away comfy in our minds if you take these risks,’ said the Gunner.

‘Bates Sahib, you aren’t ever goin’ to cane the whole Upper School, are you?’ said Crandall.

‘I can connive at immorality, as I said, but I can’t stand impudence. Mason’s lot is quite hard enough even when I back him. Besides, the men at the golf-club heard them singing “Aaron and Moses.” I shall have complaints about that from the parents of day-boys. Decency must be preserved.’

‘We’re coming to help,’ said all the guests.

The Upper School were caned one after the other, their overcoats over their arms, the brakes waiting in the road below to take them to the station, their journey-money on the table. The Head began with Stalky, M‘Turk, and Beetle. He dealt faithfully by them.

‘And here’s your journey-money. Good-bye, and pleasant holidays.’

‘Good-bye. Thank you, sir. Good-bye.’

They shook hands.

‘Desire don’t outrun performance—much—this mornin’. We got the cream of it,’ said Stalky. ‘Now wait till a few chaps come out, and we’ll really cheer him.’

‘Don’t wait on our account, please,’ said Crandall, speaking for the Old Boys. ‘We’re going to begin now.’

It was very well so long as the cheering was confined to the corridor, but when it spread to the gymnasium, when the boys awaiting their turn cheered, the Head gave it up in despair, and the remnant flung themselves upon him to shake hands.

Then they seriously devoted themselves to cheering till the brakes were hustled off the premises in dumb show.

‘Didn’t I say I’d get even with him?’ said Stalky on the box-seat, as they swung into the narrow Northam street. ‘Now all together—takin’ time from your Uncle Stalky:

It’s a way we have in the Army,
It’s a way we have in the Navy,
It’s a way we have in the Public Schools,
        Which nobody can deny!’

[a short tale]

IT was pyjama time on the Madura in the Bay of Bengal, and the incense of the very early morning cigar went up to the stainless skies. Every one knows pyjama time—the long hour that follows the removal of the beds from the saloon skylight and the consumption of chota hazri. Most men know, too, that the choicest stories of many seas may be picked up then—from the long-winded histories of the Colonial sheep-master to the crisp anecdotes of the Californian; from tales of battle, murder and sudden death told by the Burmah-retumed subaltern, to the bland drivel of the globe-trotter. The Captain, taste-fully attired in pale pink, sat up on the signal-gun and tossed the husk of a banana overboard.

“It looked in through my cabin-window,” said he, “and scared me nearly into a fit.” We had just been talking about a monkey who appeared to a man in an omnibus, and haunted him till he cut his own throat. The apparition, amid howls of incredulity, was said to have been the result of excessive tea-drinking. The Captain’s apparition promised to be better.

“It was a menagerie—a whole turnout, lock, stock, and barrel, from the big bear to the little hippopotamus; and you can guess the size of it from the fact that they paid us a thousand pounds in freight only. We got them all accommodated somewhere forward among the deck passengers, and they whooped up terribly all along the ship for two or three days. Among other things, such as panthers and leopards, there were sixteen giraffes, and we moored ’em fore and aft as securely as might be; but you can’t get a purchase on a giraffe somehow. He slopes back too much from the bows to the stem. We were running up the Red Sea, I think, and the menagerie fairly quiet. One night I went to my cabin not feeling well. About midnight I was waked by something breathing on my face. I was quite cahn and collected, for I had got it into my head that it was one of the panthers, or at least the bear; and I reached back to the rack behind me for a revolver. Then the head began to slide against my cabin—all across it—and I said to myself: ‘It’s the big python.’ But I looked into its eyes—they were beautiful eyes—and saw it was one of the giraffes. Tell you, though, a giraffe has the eyes of a sorrowful nun, and this creature was just brimming over with liquid tenderness. The seven-foot neck rather spoilt the effect, but I’ll always recollect those eyes.”

“Say, did you kiss the critter?” demanded the orchid-hunter en route to Siam.

“No; I remembered that it was dam valuable, and I didn’t want to lose freight on it. I was afraid it would break its neck drawing its head out of my window—I had a big deck cabin, of course—so I shoved it out softly like a hen, and the head slid out, with those Mary Magdalene eyes following me to the last. Then I heard the quartermaster calling on heaven and earth for his lost giraffe, and then the row began all up and down the decks. The giraffe had sense enough to duck its head to avoid the awnings—we were awned from bow to stem—but it clattered about like a sick cow, the quartermaster jumping after it, and it swinging its long neck like a flail. ‘Catch it, and hold it!’ said the quartermaster. ‘Catch a typhoon,’ said I. ‘She’s going overboard.’ The spotted fool had heaved one foot over the stem railings and was trying to get the other to follow. It was so happy at getting its head into the open I thought it would have crowed—I don’t know whether giraffes crow, but it heaved up its neck for all the world like a crowing cock. ‘Come back to your stable,’ yelled the quartermaster, grabbing hold of the brute’s tail.

“I was nearly helpless with laughing, though I knew if the concern went over it would be no laughing matter for me. Well, by good luck she came round—the quartermaster was a strong man at a rope’s end. First of all she slewed her neck round, and I could see those tender, loving eyes under the stars sort of saying: ‘Cruel man! What are you doing to my tail?’ Then the foot came on board, and she humped herself up under the awning, looking ready to cry with disappointment. The funniest thing was she didn’t make any noise—a pig would ha’ roused the ship in no time—only every time she dropped her foot on the deck it was like firing a revolver, the hoofs clicked so. We headed her towards the bows, back to her moorings—just like a policeman showing a short-sighted old woman over a crossing. The quartermaster sweated and panted and swore, but she never said anything—only whacked her old head despsiringly against the awning and the funnel case. Her feet woke up the whole ship, and by the time we had her fairly moored fore and aft the population in their night-gear were giving us advice. Then we took up a yard or two in all the moorings and turned in. No other animal got loose that voyage, though the old lady looked at me most repmachfully every time I came that way, and ‘You’ve blasted my young and tender innocence’ was the expression of her eyes. It was all the quartermaster’s fault for hauling her tail. I wonder she didn’t kick him open. Well, of course, that isn’t much of a yarn, but I remember once, in the city of Venice, we had a Malayan tapir loose on Hm deck, and we had to lasso him. It was this way”:

“Guzl thyar hai,” said the steward, and I fled down the companion and missed the tale of be tapir.

[a short tale]

THERE are times when one wants to get into pyjamas and stretch and loll, and explain things generally. This is one of those times. It is impossible to stand at ease in London, and the inhabitants are so abominably egotistical that one cannot shout “I, I, I” for two minutes without another man joining in with “Me, too!” Which things are an allegory.

The amusement began with a gentleman of infinite erudition offering to publish my autobiography. I was to write a string of legends—he would publish them; and would I forward a cheque for five guineas “to cover incidental expenses?” To him I explained that I wanted five guinea cheques myself very much indeed, and that, emboldened by his letter, which gave me a very fair insight into his character, I was even then maturing his autobiography, which I hoped to publish before long with illustrations, and would he forward a cheque for five guineas “to cover incidental expenses?” This brought me an eight-page compilation of contumely. He was grieved to find that he had been mistaken in my character, which he had believed was, at least, elevated. He begged me to remember that the first letter had been written in the strictest confidence, and that if I notated one tittle of the said “repository” he would unkennel the bloodhounds of the law and hunt me down. An autobiography on the lines that I had “so flippantly proposed” was libel without benefit of authorship, and I had better lend him two guineas—I.O.U. enclosed—to salve his lacerated feelings. I replied that I had his autobiography by me in manuscript, and would post it to his address, V.P.P., two guineas and one-half. He evidently knew nothing about the V.P.P., and the correspondence stopped. It is really very hard for an Anglo-Indian to get along in London. Besides, my autobiography is not a thing I should care to make public before extensive Bowdlerisation.

These things, however, only led up to much worse. I dare not grin over them unless I step aside Eastward. I wrote stories, all about little pieces of India, carefully arranged and expurgated for the English public. Then various people began to write about them. One gentleman pointed out that I had taken “the well-worn themes of passion, love, despair and fate,” and, thanks to the “singular fascination” of my style had “wrought them into new and glowing fabricks instinct with the eternal vitality of the East.” For three days after this chit I was almost too proud to speak to the housemaid with the fan-teeth (there is a story about her that I will tell another time). On the fourth day another gentleman made clear that that beautiful style was “tortuous, elaborated and inept,” and it was only on account of the “newness of the subjects handled so crabbedly” that I “arrested the attention of the public for a day.” Then I wept before the housemaid, and she called me a “real gentleman” because I gave her a shilling.

Then I tried an all-round cannon—published one thing under one name and another under another, and sat still to watch. A gentleman, who also speaks with authority on Literature and Art, came to me and said: “I don’t deny that there is a great deal of clever and superficial fooling in that last thing of yours in the—I’ve forgotten what it was called—but do you yourself think that you have that curious, subtle grip on and instinct of matters Oriental that that other man shows in his study of native life?” And he mentioned the name of my Other Self. I bowed my head, and my shoulders shook with repentance and grief. “No,” said I. “It’s so true,” said he. “Yes,” said I. “So feeling,” said he. “Indeed it is,” said I. “Such honest work, tool” said he. “Oh, awful!” said I. “Think it over,” said he, “and try to follow his path.” “I will,” said I. And when he left I danced sarabands with the housemaid of the fan-teeth till she wanted to know whether I had bought “spirruts.”

Then another man came along and sat on my sofa and hailed me as a brother. “And I know that we are kindred souls,” said he, “because I feel sure that you have evolved all the dreamy mystery and curious brutality of the British soldier from the pure realm of fancy.” “I did,” I said. “If you went into a barrack-room you would see at once.” “Faugh!” said he. “What have we to do with barrack-rooms? The pure air of fancy feeds us both; keep to that. If you are trammelled by the bitter, bornée truth, you are lost. You die the death of Zola. Invention is the only test of creation.” “Of course,” said I. “Zola’s a bold, bad man. Not a patch on you,” I hadn’t caught his name, but I fancied that would prevent him flinging himself about on my sofa, which is a cheap one. “I don’t say that altogether,” he said. “He has his strong points. But he is deficient in imaginative constructiveness. You, I see from what you have said, will belong to the Neo-Gynekalistic school.” I knew “Gyne” meant something about cow-killing, and was prepared to hedge when he said good-bye, and wrote an article about my ways and works, which brought another man to my door spouting foam.

“Great Landor’s ghost!” he said. “What under the stars has possessed you to join the Gynekalistic lot?” “I haven’t,” I said. “I believe in municipal regulation of slaughterhouses, if there is a strong Deputy Conmiissioner to control the Muhanunadan butchers, especially in the hot weather, but . . . ” “This is madness,” said he. “Your reputation is at stake. You must make it clear to the world that you have nothing whatever to do with the flatulent, imballasted fiction of . . . ” “Do you suppose the world cares a tuppeny dam?” said I.

Then he raged afresh, and left me, pointing out that the Gynewallahs wrote about nothing but women—which seems rather an unlimited subject—and that I would die the death of a French author whose name I have forgotten. But it wasn’t Zola this time.

I asked the housemaid what in the world the Gynekalisthenics were. “La, sir,” said she, “it’s only their way of being rude. That fat gentleman with the long hair tried to kiss me when I opened the door. I slapped his fat chops for him.”

Now the crisis is at its height. All the entire romid world, composed, as far as I can learn, of the Gynekalistic and the anti-Gynekalistic man, and two or three loafers, are trying to find out to what school I rightly belong. They seem to use what they are pleased to call my reputation as a bolster through which to stab at the foe. One gentleman is proving that I am a bit of a blackguard, probably reduced from the ranks, rather an impostor, and a considerable amount of plagiarist. The other man denies the reduction from the ranks, withholds judgment about the plagiarism, but would like, in the interest of the public—who are at present exclusively occupied with Barnum—to prove it true, and is convinced that my style is “hermaphroditic.” I have all the money on the first man. He is on the eve of discovering that I stole a dead Tommy’s diary just before I was drummed out of the service for desertion, and have lived on the proceeds ever since. “Do yew know,” as the Private Secretary said at Simla this year, “it’s remarkably hard for an Anglo-Indian to get along in England.”

Shakl hai lekin ukl nahin hai!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Admiral and Mr. Vergil nodded.

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

Mr. Vergil rubbed hands in assent.

page 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

page 3

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

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

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

The Commander continued.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘And Mike?’ Mr. Randolph asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Knife!’ the shocked Admiral interrupted.

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

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

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

‘Did Mike know?’ said Mr. Randolph.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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