(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)

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ISN’T it almost time that our Planet took some interest in the proceedings of the Aerial Board of Control? One knows that easy communications nowadays, and lack of privacy in the past, have killed all curiosity among mankind, but as the Board’s Official Reporter I am bound to tell my tale. At 9.30 a.m., August 26, a.d. 2065, the Board, sitting in London, was informed by De Forest that the District of Northern Illinois had riotously cut itself out of all systems and would remain disconnected till the Board should take over and administer it direct.

Every Northern Illinois freight and passenger tower was, he reported, out of action; all District main, local, and guiding lights had been extinguished; all General Communications were dumb, and through traffic had been diverted. No reason had been given, but he gathered unofficially from the Mayor of Chicago that the District complained of ‘crowd-making and invasion of privacy.’

As a matter of fact, it is of no importance whether Northern Illinois stay in or out of planetary circuit; as a matter of policy, any complaint of invasion of privacy needs immediate investigation, lest worse follow.

By 9.45 a.m. De Forest, Dragomiroff (Russia), Takahira (Japan), and Pirolo (Italy) were empowered to visit Illinois and ‘to take such steps as might be necessary for the resumption of traffic and all that that implies.’ By 10 a.m. the Hall was empty, and the four Members and I were aboard what Pirolo insisted on calling ‘my leetle godchild’—that is to say, the new Victor Pirolo. Our Planet prefers to know Victor Pirolo as a gentle, grey-haired enthusiast who spends his time near Foggia, inventing or creating new breeds of Spanish-Italian olive-trees; but there is another side to his nature—the manufacture of quaint inventions, of which the Victor Pirolo is perhaps, not the least surprising. She and a few score sister-craft of the same type embody his latest ideas. But she is not comfortable. An A.B.C. boat does not take the air with the level-keeled lift of a liner, but shoots up rocket-fashion like the ‘aeroplane’ of our ancestors, and makes her height at top-speed from the first. That is why I found myself sitting suddenly on the large lap of Eustace Arnott, who commands the A.B.C. Fleet. One knows vaguely that there is such a thing as a Fleet somewhere on the Planet, and that, theoretically, it exists for the purposes of what used to be known as ‘war.’ Only a week before, while visiting a glacier sanatorium behind Gothaven, I had seen some squadrons making false auroras far to the north while they manoeuvred round the Pole; but, naturally, it had never occurred to me that the things could be used in earnest.

Said Arnott to De Forest as I staggered to a seat on the chart-room divan: ‘We’re tremendously grateful to ’em in Illinois. We’ve never had a chance of exercising all the Fleet together. I’ve turned in a General Call, and I expect we’ll have at least two hundred keels aloft this evening.’

‘Well aloft?’ De Forest asked.

‘Of course, sir. Out of sight till they’re called for.’

Arnott laughed as he lolled over the transparent chart-table where the map of the summer-blue Atlantic slid along, degree by degree, in exact answer to our progress. Our dial already showed 320 m.p.h. and we were two thousand feet above the uppermost traffic lines.

‘Now, where is this Illinois District of yours?’ said Dragomiroff. ‘One travels so much, one sees so little. Oh, I remember! It is in North America.’

De Forest, whose business it is to know the out districts, told us that it lay at the foot of Lake Michigan, on a road to nowhere in particular, was about half an hour’s run from end to end, and, except in one corner, as flat as the sea. Like most flat countries nowadays, it was heavily guarded against invasion of privacy by forced timber—fifty-foot spruce and tamarack, grown in five years. The population was close on two millions, largely migratory between Florida and California, with a backbone of small farms (they call a thousand acres a farm in Illinois) whose owners come into Chicago for amusements and society during the winter. They were, he said noticeably kind, quiet folk, but a little exacting, as all flat countries must be, in their notions of privacy. There had, for instance, been no printed news-sheet in Illinois for twenty-seven years. Chicago argued that engines for printed news sooner or later developed into engines for invasion of privacy, which in turn might bring the old terror of Crowds and blackmail back to the Planet. So news-sheets were not.

‘And that’s Illinois,’ De Forest concluded. ‘You see, in the Old Days, she was in the fore-front of what they used to call “progress,” and Chicago——’

‘Chicago?’ said Takahira. ‘That’s the little place where there is Salati’s Statue of the Nigger in Flames. A fine bit of old work.’

‘When did you see it ?’ asked De Forest quickly. ‘They only unveil it once a year.’

‘I know. At Thanksgiving. It was then,’ said Takahira, with a shudder. ‘ And they sang MacDonough’s Song, too.’

‘Whew!’ De Forest whistled. ‘I did not know that! I wish you’d told me before. MacDonough’s Song may have had its uses when it was composed, but it was an infernal legacy for any man to leave behind.’

‘It’s protective instinct, my dear fellows,’ said Pirolo, rolling a cigarette. ‘The Planet, she has had her dose of popular government. She suffers from inherited agoraphobia. She has no—ah—use for crowds.’

Dragomiroff leaned forward to give him a light. ‘Certainly,’ said the white-bearded Russian, ‘the Planet has taken all precautions against crowds for the past hundred years. What is our total population today? Six hundred million, we hope; five hundred, we think; but—but if next year’s census shows more than four hundred and fifty, I myself will eat all the extra little babies. We have cut the birth-rate out—right out! For a long time we have said to Almighty God, “Thank You, Sir, but we do not much like Your game of life, so we will not play.”’

‘Anyhow,’ said Arnott defiantly, ‘men live a century apiece on the average now.’

‘Oh, that is quite well! I am rich—you are rich—we are all rich and happy because we are so few and we live so long. Only I think Almighty God He will remember what the Planet was like in the time of Crowds and the Plague. Perhaps He will send us nerves. Eh, Pirolo’

The Italian blinked into space. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘He has sent them already. Anyhow, you cannot argue with the Planet. She does not forget the Old Days, and—what can you do?’

‘For sure we can’t remake the world.’ De Forest glanced at the map flowing smoothly across the table from west to east. ‘We ought to be over our ground by nine to-night. There won’t be much sleep afterwards.’

On which hint we dispersed, and I slept till Takahira waked me for dinner. Our ancestors thought nine hours’ sleep ample for their little lives. We, living thirty years longer, feel ourselves defrauded with less than eleven out of the twenty-four.

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By ten o’clock we were over Lake Michigan. The west shore was lightless, except for a dull ground-glare at Chicago, and a single traffic-directing light—its leading beam pointing north—at Waukegan on our starboard bow. None of the Lake villages gave any sign of life; and inland, westward, so far as we could see, blackness lay unbroken on the level earth. We swooped down and skimmed low across the dark, throwing calls county by county. Now and again we picked up the faint glimmer of a house-light, or heard the rasp and rend of a cultivator being played across the fields, but Northern Illinois as a whole was one inky, apparently uninhabited, waste of high, forced woods. Only our illuminated map, with its little pointer switching from county to county, as we wheeled and twisted, gave us any idea of our position. Our calls, urgent, pleading, coaxing or commanding, through the General Communicator brought no answer. Illinois strictly maintained her own privacy in the timber which she grew for that purpose.

‘Oh, this is absurd! ‘ said De Forest. ‘We’re like an owl trying to work a wheat-field. Is this Bureau Creek? Let’s land, Arnott, and get hold of someone.’

We brushed over a belt of forced woodland—fifteen-year-old maple sixty feet high—grounded on a private meadow-dock, none too big, where we moored to our own grapnels, and hurried out through the warm dark night towards a light in a verandah. As we neared the garden gate I could have sworn we had stepped knee-deep in quicksand, for we could scarcely drag our feet against the prickling currents that clogged them. After five paces we stopped, wiping our foreheads, as hopelessly stuck on dry smooth turf as so many cows in a bog.

‘Pest!’ cried Pirolo angrily. We are ground-circuited. And it is my own system of ground-circuits too! I know the pull.’

‘Good evening,’ said a girl’s voice from the verandah. ‘Oh, I’m sorry! We’ve locked up. Wait a minute.’

We heard the click of a switch, and almost fell forward as the currents round our knees were withdrawn.

The girl laughed, and laid aside her knitting. An old-fashioned Controller stood at her elbow, which she reversed from time to time, and we could hear the snort and clank of the obedient cultivator half a mile away, behind the guardian woods.

‘Come in and sit down,’ she said. ‘I’m only playing a plough. Dad’s gone to Chicago to—Ah! Then it was your call I heard just now!’

She had caught sight of Arnott’s Board uniform, leaped to the switch, and turned it full on.

We were checked, gasping, waist-deep in current this time, three yards from the verandah.

‘We only want to know what’s the matter with Illinois,’ said De Forest placidly.

‘Then hadn’t you better go to Chicago and find out?’ she answered. ‘There’s nothing wrong here. We own ourselves.’

‘How can we go anywhere if you won’t loose us?’ De Forest went on, while Arnott scowled. Admirals of Fleets are still quite human when their dignity is touched.

‘Stop a minute—you don’t know how funny you look!’ She put her hands on her hips and laughed mercilessly.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Arnott, and whistled. A voice answered from the Victor Pirolo in the meadow.

‘Only a single-fuse ground-circuit!’ Arnott called. ‘Sort it out gently, please.’

We heard the ping of a breaking lamp; a fuse blew out somewhere in the verandah roof, frightening a nest full of birds. The groud-circuit was open. We stooped and rubbed our tingling ankles.

‘How rude—how very rude of you!’ the maiden cried.

‘’Sorry, but we haven’t time to look funny,’ said Arnott. ‘We’ve got to go to Chicago; and if I were you, young lady, I’d go into the cellars for the next two hours, and take mother with me.’

Off he strode, with us at his heels, muttering indignantly, till the humour of the thing struck and doubled him up with laughter at the foot of the gangway ladder.

‘The Board hasn’t shown what you might call a fat spark on this occasion,’ said De Forest, wiping his eyes. ‘I hope I didn’t look as big a fool as you did, Arnott! Hullo! What on earth is that? Dad coming home from Chicago?’

There was a rattle and a rush, and a five-plough cultivator, blades in air like so many teeth, trundled itself at us round the edge of the timber, fuming and sparking furiously.

‘Jump!’ said Arnott, as we hurled ourselves through the none-too-wide door. ‘Never mind about shutting it. Up!’

The Victor Pirolo lifted like a bubble, and the vicious machine shot just underneath us, clawing high as it passed.

‘There’s a nice little spit-kitten for you!’ said Arnott, dusting his knees. ‘We ask her a civil question. First she circuits us and then she plays a cultivator at us!’

‘And then we fly,’ said Dragomirof. ‘If I were forty years more young, I would go back and kiss her. Ho! Ho!’

‘I,’ said Pirolo, ‘would smack her! My pet ship has been chased by a dirty plough; a—how do you say?—agricultural implement.’

‘Oh, that is Illinois all over,’ said De Forest. ‘They don’t content themselves with talking about privacy. They arrange to have it. And now, where’s your alleged fleet, Arnott? We must assert ourselves against this wench.’

Arnott pointed to the black heavens. ‘Waiting on—up there,’ said he. ‘Shall I give them the whole installation, sir?’

‘Oh, I don’t think the young lady is quite worth that,’ said De Forest. ‘Get over Chicago, and perhaps we’ll see something.’

In a few minutes we were hanging at two thousand feet over an oblong block of incandescence in the centre of the little town.

‘That looks like the old City Hall. Yes, there’s Salati’s Statue in front of it,’ said Takahira.

‘But what on earth are they doing to the place? I thought they used it for a market nowadays! Drop a little, please.’

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We could hear the sputter and crackle of road-surfacing machines—the cheap Western type which fuse stone and rubbish into lava-like ribbed glass for their rough country roads. Three or four surfacers worked on each side of a square of ruins. The brick and stone wreckage crumbled, slid forward, and presently spread out into white-hot pools of sticky slag, which the levelling-rods smoothed more or less flat. Already a third of the big block had been so treated, and was cooling to dull red before our astonished eyes.

‘It is the Old Market,’ said De Forest. ‘Well, there’s nothing to prevent Illinois from making a road through a market. It doesn’t interfere with traffic, that I can see.’

‘Hsh!’ said Arnott, gripping me by the shoulder. ‘Listen! They’re singing. Why on the earth are they singing?’

We dropped again till we could see the black fringe of people at the edge of that glowing square.

At first they only roared against the roar of the surfacers and levellers. Then the words came up clearly—the words of the Forbidden Song that all men knew, and none let pass their lips—poor Pat MacDonough’s Song, made in the days of the Crowds and the Plague—every silly word of it loaded to sparking-point with the Planet’s inherited memories of horror, panic, fear and cruelty. And Chicago—innocent, contented little Chicago—was singing it aloud to the infernal tune that carried riot, pestilence and lunacy round our Planet a few generations ago!

(Then the stamp and pause):

The levellers thrust in savagely against the ruins as the song renewed itself again, again and again, louder than the crash of the melting walls.

De Forest frowned.

‘I don’t like that,’ he said. ‘They’ve broken back to the Old Days! They’ll be killing somebody soon. I think we’d better divert ’em, Arnott.’

‘Ay, ay, sir.’ Arnott’s hand went to his cap, and we heard the hull of the Victor Pirolo ring to the command: ‘Lamps! Both watches stand by! Lamps! Lamps! Lamps!’

‘Keep still!’ Takahira whispered to me. ‘Blinkers, please, quartermaster.’

‘It’s all right—all right!’ said Pirolo from behind, and to my horror slipped over my head some sort of rubber helmet that locked with a snap. I could feel thick colloid bosses before my eyes, but I stood in absolute darkness.

‘To save the sight,’ he explained, and pushed me on to the chart-room divan. ‘You will see in a minute.’

As he spoke I became aware of a thin thread of almost intolerable light, let down from heaven at an immense distance—one vertical hairs breadth of frozen lightning.

‘Those are our flanking ships,’ said Arnott at my elbow. ‘That one is over Galena. Look south—that other one’s over Keithburg. Vincennes is behind us, and north yonder is Winthrop Woods. The Fleet’s in position, sir’—this to De Forest. ‘As soon as you give the word.’

‘Ah no! No!’ cried Dragomiroff at my side. I could feel the old man tremble. ‘I do not know all that you can do, but be kind! I ask you to be a little kind to them below! This is horrible horrible!’

Takahira quoted. ‘It is too late to be gentle now.’

‘Then take off my helmet! Take off my helmet!’ Dragomiroff began hysterically.

Pirolo must have put his arm round him.

‘Hush,’ he said, ‘I am here. It is all right, Ivan, my dear fellow.’

‘I’ll just send our little girl in Bureau County a warning,’ said Arnott. ‘She don’t deserve it, but we’ll allow her a minute or two to take mamma to the cellar.’

In the utter hush that followed the growling spark after Arnott had linked up his Service Communicator with the invisible Fleet, we heard MacDonough’s Song from the city beneath us grow fainter as we rose to position. Then I clapped my hand before my mask lenses, for it was as though the floor of Heaven had been riddled and all the inconceivable blaze of suns in the making was poured through the manholes.

‘You needn’t count,’ said Arnott. I had had no thought of such a thing. ‘There are two hundred and fifty keels up there, five miles apart. Full power, please, for another twelve seconds.’

The firmament, as far as eye could reach, stood on pillars of white fire. One fell on the glowing square at Chicago, and turned it black.

‘Oh! Oh! Oh! Can men be allowed to do such things?’ Dragomiroff cried, and fell across our knees.

‘Glass of water, please,’ said Takahira to a helmeted shape that leaped forward. ‘He is a little faint.’

The lights switched off, and the darkness stunned like an avalanche. We could hear Dragomiroff’s teeth on the glass edge.

Pirolo was comforting him.

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‘All right, all ra-ight,’ he repeated. ‘Come and lie down. Come below and take off your mask. I give you my word, old friend, it is all right. They are my siege-lights. Little Victor Pirolo’s leetle lights. You know me! I do not hurt people.’

‘Pardon!’ Dragomiroff moaned. ‘I have never seen Death. I have never seen the Board take action. Shall we go down and burn them alive, or is that already done?’

‘Oh, hush,’ said Pirolo, and I think he rocked him in his arms.

‘Do we repeat, sir?’ Arnott asked De Forest.

‘Give ’em a minute’s break,’ De Forest replied. ‘They may need it.’

We waited a minute, and then MacDonough’s Song, broken but defiant, rose from undefeated Chicago.

‘They seem fond of that tune,’ said De Forest. ‘I should let ’em have it, Arnott.’

‘Very good, sir,’ said Arnott, and felt his way to the Communicator keys.

No lights broke forth, but the hollow of the skies made herself the mouth for one note that touched the raw fibre of the brain. Men hear such sounds in delirium, advancing like tides from horizons beyond the ruled foreshores of space.

‘That’s our pitch-pipe,’ said Arnott. ‘We may be a bit ragged. I’ve never conducted two hundred and fifty performers before.’ He pulled out the couplers, and struck a full chord on the Service Communicators.

The beams of light leaped down again, and danced, solemnly and awfully, a stilt-dance, sweeping thirty or forty miles left and right at each stiff-legged kick, while the darkness delivered itself—there is no scale to measure against that utterance—of the tune to which they kept time. Certain notes—one learnt to expect them with terror—cut through one’s marrow, but, after three minutes, thought and emotion passed in indescribable agony.

We saw, we heard, but I think we were in some sort swooning. The two hundred and fifty beams shifted, re-formed, straddled and split, narrowed, widened, rippled in ribbons, broke into a thousand white-hot parallel lines, melted and revolved in interwoven rings like old-fashioned engine-turning, flung up to the zenith, made as if to descend and renew the torment, halted at the last instant, twizzled insanely round the horizon, and vanished, to bring back for the hundredth time darkness more shattering than their instantly renewed light over all Illinois. Then the tune and lights ceased together, and we heard one single devastating wail that shook all the horizon as a rubbed wet finger shakes the rim of a bowl.

‘Ah, that is my new siren,’ said Pirolo. ‘You can break an iceberg in half, if you find the proper pitch. They will whistle by squadrons now. It is the wind through pierced shutters in the bows.’

I had collapsed beside Dragomiroff, broken and snivelling feebly, because I had been delivered before my time to all the terrors of Judgment Day, and the Archangels of the Resurrection were hailing me naked across the Universe to the sound of the music of the spheres.

Then I saw De Forest smacking Arnott’s helmet with his open hand. The wailing died down in a long shriek as a black shadow swooped past us, and returned to her place above the lower clouds.

‘I hate to interrupt a specialist when he’s enjoying himself,’ said De Forest. ‘But, as a matter of fact, all Illinois has been asking us to stop for these last fifteen seconds.’

‘What a pity.’ Arnott slipped off his mask. ‘I wanted you to hear us really hum. Our lower C can lift street-paving.’

‘It is Hell—Hell!’ cried Dragomiroff, and sobbed aloud.

Arnott looked away as he answered: ‘It’s a few thousand volts ahead of the old shoot-’em-and-sink-’em game, but I should scarcely call it that. What shall I tell the Fleet, sir?’

‘Tell ’em we’re very pleased and impressed. I don’t think they need wait on any longer. There isn’t a spark left down there.’ De Forest pointed. ‘They’ll be deaf and blind.’

‘Oh, I think not, sir. The demonstration lasted less than ten minutes.’

‘Marvellous!’ Takahira sighed. ‘I should have said it was half a night. Now, shall we go down and pick up the pieces?’

‘But first a small drink,’ said Pirolo. ‘The Board must not arrive weeping at its own works.’

‘I am an old fool—an old fool!’ Dragomiroff began piteously. ‘I did not know what would happen. It is all new to me. We reason with them in Little Russia.’

Chicago North landing-tower was unlighted, and Arnott worked his ship into the clips by her own lights. As soon as these broke out we heard groanings of horror and appeal from many people below.

‘All right,’ shouted Arnott into the darkness. ‘We aren’t beginning again!’ We descended by the stairs, to find ourselves knee deep in a grovelling crowd, some crying that they were blind, others beseeching us not to make any more noises, but the greater part writhing face downward, their hands or their caps before their eyes.

It was Pirolo who came to our rescue. He climbed the side of a surfacing-machine, and there, gesticulating as though they could see, made oration to those afflicted people of Illinois.

‘You stchewpids!’ he began. ‘There is nothing to fuss for. Of course, your eyes will smart and be red to-morrow. You will look as if you and your wives had drunk too much, but in a little while you will see again as well as before. I tell you this, and I—I am Pirolo. Victor Pirolo!’

The crowd with one accord shuddered, for many legends attach to Victor Pirolo of Foggia, deep in the secrets of God.

‘Pirolo?’ An unsteady voice lifted itself. ‘Then tell us was there anything except light in those lights of yours just now?’

The question was repeated from every corner of the darkness.

Pirolo laughed.

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‘No!’ he thundered. (Why have small men such large voices) ‘I give you my word and the Board’s word that there was nothing except light—just light! You stchewpids! Your birth-rate is too low already as it is. Some day I must invent something to send it up, but send it down—never!’

‘Is that true?—We thought—somebody said—’

One could feel the tension relax all round.

‘You too big fools,’ Pirolo cried. ‘You could have sent us a call and we would have told you.’

‘Send you a call!’ a deep voice shouted. ‘I wish you had been at our end of the wire.’

‘I’m glad I wasn’t,’ said De Forest. ‘It was bad enough from behind the lamps. Never mind! It’s over now. Is there any one here I can talk business with? I’m De Forest—for the Board.’

‘You might begin with me, for one—I’m Mayor,’ the bass voice replied.

A big man rose unsteadily from the street, and staggered towards us where we sat on the broad turf-edging, in front of the garden fences.

‘I ought to be the first on my feet. Am I?’ said he.

‘Yes,’ said De Forest, and steadied him as he dropped down beside us.

‘Hello, Andy. Is that you?’ a voice called.

‘Excuse me,’ said the Mayor; ‘that sounds like my Chief of Police, Bluthner!’

‘Bluthner it is; and here’s Mulligan and Keefe—on their feet.’

‘Bring ’em up please, Blut. We’re supposed to be the Four in charge of this hamlet. What we says, goes. And, De Forest, what do you say?’

‘Nothing—yet,’ De Forest answered, as we made room for the panting, reeling men. ‘You’ve cut out of system. Well?’

‘Tell the steward to send down drinks, please,’ Arnott whispered to an orderly at his side.

‘Good!’ said the Mayor, smacking his dry lips. ‘Now I suppose we can take it, De Forest, that henceforward the Board will administer us direct?’

‘Not if the Board can avoid it,’ De Forest laughed. ‘The A.B.C. is responsible for the planetary traffic only.’

‘And all that that implies.’ The big Four who ran Chicago chanted their Magna Charta like children at school.

‘Well, get on,’ said De Forest wearily. ‘What is your silly trouble anyway?’

‘Too much dam’ Democracy,’ said the Mayor, laying his hand on De Forest’s knee.

‘So? I thought Illinois had had her dose of that.’

‘She has. That’s why. Blut, what did you do with our prisoners last night?’

‘Locked ’em in the water-tower to prevent the women killing ’em,’ the Chief of Police replied. ‘I’m too blind to move just yet, but——’

‘Arnott, send some of your people, please, and fetch ’em along,’ said De Forest.

‘They’re triple-circuited,’ the Mayor called. ‘You’ll have to blow out three fuses.’ He turned to De Forest, his large outline just visible in the paling darkness. ‘I hate to throw any more work on the Board. I’m an administrator myself, but we’ve had a little fuss with our Serviles. What? In a big city there’s bound to be a few men and women who can’t live without listening to themselves, and who prefer drinking out of pipes they don’t own both ends of. They inhabit flats and hotels all the year round. They say it saves ’em trouble. Anyway, it gives ’em more time to make trouble for their neighbours. We call ’em Serviles locally. And they are apt to be tuberculous.’

‘Just so!’ said the man called Mulligan. ‘Transportation is Civilisation. Democracy is Disease. I’ve proved it by the blood-test, every time.’

‘Mulligan’s our Health Officer, and a one-idea man,’ said the Mayor, laughing. ‘But it’s true that most Serviles haven’t much control. They will talk; and when people take to talking as a business, anything may arrive—mayn’t it, De Forest?’

‘Anything—except the facts of the case,’ said De Forest, laughing.

‘I’ll give you those in a minute,’ said the Mayor. ‘Our Serviles got to talking—first in their houses and then on the streets, telling men and women how to manage their own affairs. (You can’t teach a Servile not to finger his neighbour’s soul.) That’s invasion of privacy, of course, but in Chicago we’ll suffer anything sooner than make crowds. Nobody took much notice, and so I let ’em alone. My fault! I was warned there would be trouble, but there hasn’t been a crowd or murder in Illinois for nineteen years.’

‘Twenty-two,’ said his Chief of Police.

‘Likely. Anyway, we’d forgot such things. So, from talking in the houses and on the streets, our Serviles go to calling a meeting at the Old Market yonder.’ He nodded across the square where the wrecked buildings heaved up grey in the dawn-glimmer behind the square-cased statue of The Negro in Flames. ‘There’s nothing to prevent anyone calling meetings except that it’s against human nature to stand in a crowd, besides being bad for the health. I ought to have known by the way our men and women attended that first meeting that trouble was brewing. There were as many as a thousand in the market-place, touching each other. Touching! Then the Serviles turned in all tongue-switches and talked, and we——’

‘What did they talk about?’ said Takahira.

‘First, how badly things were managed in the city. That pleased us Four—we were on the platform—because we hoped to catch one or two good men for City work. You know how rare executive capacity is. Even if we didn’t it’s—it’s refreshing to find any one interested enough in our job to damn our eyes. You don’t know what it means to work, year in, year out, without a spark of difference with a living soul.’

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‘Oh, don’t we!’ said De Forest. ‘There are times on the Board when we’d give our positions if any one would kick us out and take hold of things themselves.’

‘But they won’t,’ said the Mayor ruefully. ‘I assure you, sir, we Four have done things in Chicago, in the hope of rousing people, that would have discredited Nero. But what do they say? “Very good, Andy. Have it your own way. Anything’s better than a crowd. I’ll go back to my land.” You can’t do anything with folk who can go where they please, and don’t want anything on God’s earth except their own way. There isn’t a kick or a kicker left on the Planet.’

‘Then I suppose that little shed yonder fell down by itself?’ said De Forest. We could see the bare and still smoking ruins, and hear the slag-pools crackle as they hardened and set.

‘Oh, that’s only amusement. ’Tell you later. As I was saying, our Serviles held the meeting, and pretty soon we had to ground-circuit the platform to save ’em from being killed. And that didn’t make our people any more pacific.’

‘How d’you mean?’ I ventured to ask.

‘If you’ve ever been ground-circuited,’ said the Mayor, ‘you’ll know it don’t improve any man’s temper to be held up straining against nothing. No, sir! Eight or nine hundred folk kept pawing and buzzing like flies in treacle for two hours, while a pack of perfectly safe Serviles invades their mental and spiritual privacy, may be amusing to watch, but they are not pleasant to handle afterwards.’

Pirolo chuckled.

‘Our folk own themselves. They were of opinion things were going too far and too fiery. I warned the Serviles; but they’re born house-dwellers. Unless a fact hits ’em on the head, they cannot see it. Would you believe me, they went on to talk of what they called “popular government”? They did! They wanted us to go back to the old Voodoo-business of voting with papers and wooden boxes, and word-drunk people and printed formulas, and news-sheets! They said they practised it among themselves about what they’d have to eat in their flats and hotels. Yes, sir! They stood up behind Bluthner’s doubled ground-circuits, and they said that, in this present year of grace, to self-owning men and women, on that very spot! Then they finished’—he lowered his voice cautiously—‘by talking about “The People.” And then Bluthner he had to sit up all night in charge of the circuits because he couldn’t trust his men to keep ’em shut.’

‘It was trying ’em too high,’ the Chief of Police broke in. ‘But we couldn’t hold the crowd ground-circuited for ever. I gathered in all the Serviles on charge of crowd-making, and put ’em in the water-tower, and then I let things cut loose. I had to! The District lit like a sparked gas-tank!’

‘The news was out over seven degrees of country,’ the Mayor continued; ‘and when once it’s a question of invasion of privacy, good-bye to right and reason in Illinois! They began turning out traffic-lights and locking up landing-towers on Thursday night. Friday, they stopped all traffic and asked for the Board to take over. Then they wanted to clean Chicago off the side of the Lake and rebuild elsewhere—just for a souvenir of “The People” that the Serviles talked about. I suggested that they should slag the Old Market where the meeting was held, while I turned in a call to you all on the Board. That kept ’em quiet till you came along. And—and now you can take hold of the situation.’

‘Any chance of their quieting down?’ De Forest asked.

‘You can try,’ said the Mayor.

De Forest raised his voice in the face of the reviving crowd that had edged in towards us. Day was come.

‘Don’t you think this business can be arranged?’ he began. But there was a roar of angry voices:

‘We’ve finished with Crowds! We aren’t going back to the Old Days! Take us over! Take the Serviles away! Administer direct or we’ll kill ’em! Down with The People!’

An attempt was made to begin MacDonough’s Song. It got no further than the first line, for the Victor Pirolo sent down a warning drone on one stopped horn. A wrecked side-wall of the Old Market tottered and fell inwards on the slag-pools. None spoke or moved till the last of the dust had settled down again, turning the steel case of Salati’s Statue ashy grey.

‘You see you’ll just have to take us over’, the Mayor whispered.

De Forest shrugged his shoulders.

‘You talk as if executive capacity could be snatched out of the air like so much horse-power. Can’t you manage yourselves on any terms?’ he said.

‘We can, if you say so. It will only cost those few lives to begin with.’

The Mayor pointed across the square, where Arnott’s men guided a stumbling group of ten or twelve men and women to the lake front and halted them under the Statue.

‘Now I think,’ said Takahira under his breath, ‘there will be trouble.’

The mass in front of us growled like beasts.

At that moment the sun rose clear, and revealed the blinking assembly to itself. As soon as it realised that it was a crowd we saw the shiver of horror and mutual repulsion shoot across it precisely as the steely flaws shot across the lake outside. Nothing was said, and, being half blind, of course it moved slowly. Yet in less than fifteen minutes most of that vast multitude—three thousand at the lowest count—melted away like frost on south eaves. The remnant stretched themselves on the grass, where a crowd feels and looks less like a crowd.

‘These mean business,’ the Mayor whispered to Takahira. ‘There are a goodish few women there who’ve borne children. I don’t like it.’

The morning draught off the lake stirred the trees round us with promise of a hot day; the sun reflected itself dazzlingly on the canister-shaped covering of Salati’s Statue; cocks crew in the gardens, and we could hear gate-latches clicking in the distance as people stumblingly resought their homes.

‘I’m afraid there won’t be any morning deliveries,’ said De Forest. ‘We rather upset things in the country last night.’

page 7

‘That makes no odds,’ the Mayor returned. ‘We’re all provisioned for six months. We take no chances.’

Nor, when you come to think of it, does anyone else. It must be three-quarters of a generation since any house or city faced a food shortage. Yet is there house or city on the Planet today that has not half a year’s provisions laid in? We are like the shipwrecked seamen in the old books, who, having once nearly starved to death, ever afterwards hide away bits of food and biscuit. Truly we trust no Crowds, nor system based on Crowds!

De Forest waited till the last footstep had died away. Meantime the prisoners at the base of the Statue shuffled, posed and fidgeted, with the shamelessness of quite little children. None of them were more than six feet high, and many of them were as grey-haired as the ravaged, harassed heads of old pictures. They huddled together in actual touch, while the crowd, spaced at large intervals, looked at them with congested eyes.

Suddenly a man among them began to talk. The Mayor had not in the least exaggerated. It appeared that our Planet lay sunk in slavery beneath the heel of the Aerial Board of Control. The orator urged us to arise in our might, burst our prison doors and break our fetters (all his metaphors, by the way, were of the most medieval). Next he demanded that every matter of daily life, including most of the physical functions, should be submitted for decision at any time of the week, month, or year to, I gathered, anybody who happened to be passing by or residing within a certain radius, and that everybody should forthwith abandon his concerns to settle the matter, first by crowd-making, next by talking to the crowds made, and lastly by describing crosses on pieces of paper, which rubbish should later be counted with certain mystic ceremonies and oaths. Out of this amazing play, he assured us, would automatically arise a higher, nobler, and kinder world, based—he demonstrated this with the awful lucidity of the insane—based on the sanctity of the Crowd and the villainy of the single person. In conclusion, he called loudly upon God to testify to his personal merits and integrity. When the flow ceased, I turned bewildered to Takahira, who was nodding solemnly.

‘Quite correct,’ said he ‘It is all in the old books. He has left nothing out, not even the war-talk.’

‘But I don’t see how this stuff can upset a child, much less a district,’ I replied.

‘Ah, you are too young,’ said Dragomiroff. ‘For another thing, you are not a mamma. Please look at the mammas.’

Ten or fifteen women who remained had separated themselves from the silent men, and were drawing in towards the prisoners. It reminded one of the stealthy encircling, before the rush in at the quarry, of wolves round musk oxen in the North. The prisoners saw, and drew together more closely. The Mayor covered his face with his hands for an instant. De Forest, bareheaded, stepped forward between the prisoners and the slowly, stiffly moving line.

‘That’s all very interesting,’ he said to the dry-lipped orator. ‘But the point seems that you’ve been making crowds and invading privacy.’

A woman stepped forward, and would have spoken, but there was a quick assenting murmur from the men, who realised that De Forest was trying to pull the situation down to ground-line.

‘Yes! Yes!’ they cried. ‘We cut out because they made crowds and invaded privacy! Stick to that! Keep on that switch! Lift the Serviles out of this! The Board’s in charge! Hsh!’

‘Yes, the Board’s in charge,’ said De Forest.

‘I’ll take formal evidence of crowd-making if you like, but the Members of the Board can testify to it. Will that do?’

The women had closed in another pace, with hands that clenched and unclenched at their sides.

‘Good! Good enough!’ the men cried. ‘We’re content. Only take them away quickly.’

‘Come along up!’ said De Forest to the captives. ‘Breakfast is quite ready.’

It appeared, however, that they did not wish to go. They intended to remain in Chicago and make crowds. They pointed out that De Forest’s proposal was gross invasion of privacy.

‘My dear fellow,’ said Pirolo to the most voluble of the leaders, ‘you hurry, or your crowd that can’t be wrong will kill you!’

‘But that would be murder,’ answered the believer in crowds; and there was a roar of laughter from all sides that seemed to show the crisis had broken.

A woman stepped forward from the line of women, laughing, I protest, as merrily as any of the company. One hand, of course, shaded her eyes, the other was at her throat.

‘Oh, they needn’t be afraid of being killed!’ she called.

‘Not in the least,’ said De Forest. ‘But don’t you think that, now the Board’s in charge, you might go home while we get these people away?’

‘I shall be home long before that. It—it has been rather a trying day.’

She stood up to her full height, dwarfing even De Forest’s six-foot-eight, and smiled, with eyes closed against the fierce light.

‘Yes, rather,’ said De Forest. ‘I’m afraid you feel the glare a little. We’ll have the ship down.’

He motioned to the Pirolo to drop between us and the sun, and at the same time to loop-circuit the prisoners, who were a trifle unsteady. We saw them stiffen to the current where they stood. The woman’s voice went on, sweet and deep and unshaken:

‘I don’t suppose you men realise how much this—this sort of thing means to a woman. I’ve borne three. We women don’t want our children given to Crowds. It must be an inherited instinct. Crowds make trouble. They bring back the Old Days. Hate, fear, blackmail, publicity, “The People”—That! That! That!’ She pointed to the Statue, and the crowd growled once more.

‘Yes, if they are allowed to go on,’ said De Forest. But this little affair—’

‘It means so much to us women that this—this little affair should never happen again. Of course, never’s a big word, but one feels so strongly that it is important to stop crowds at the very beginning. Those creatures’—she pointed with her left hand at the prisoners swaying like seaweed in a tide way as the circuit pulled them—‘those people have friends and wives and children in the city and elsewhere. One doesn’t want anything done to them, you know. It’s terrible to force a human being out of fifty or sixty years of good life. I’m only forty myself, I know. But, at the same time, one feels that an example should be made, because no price is too heavy to pay if—if these people and all that they imply can be put an end to. Do you quite understand or would you be kind enough to tell your men to take the casing off the Statue? It’s worth looking at.’

page 8

‘I understand perfectly. But I don’t think anybody here wants to see the Statue on an empty stomach. Excuse me one moment.’ De Forest called up to the ship, ‘A flying loop ready on the port side, if you please.’ Then to the woman he said with some crispness, ‘You might leave us a little discretion in the matter.’

‘Oh, of course. Thank you for being so patient. I know my arguments are silly, but——’ She half turned away and went on in a changed voice, ‘Perhaps this will help you to decide.’

She threw out her right arm with a knife in it. Before the blade could be returned to her throat or her bosom it was twitched from her grip, sparked as it flew out of the shadow of the ship above, and fell flashing in the sunshine at the foot of the Statue fifty yards away. The outflung arm was arrested, rigid as a bar for an instant, till the releasing circuit permitted her to bring it slowly to her side. The other women shrank back silent among the men.

Pirolo rubbed his hands, and Takahira nodded.

‘That was clever of you, De Forest,’ said he.

‘What a glorious pose!’ Dragomiroff murmured, for the frightened woman was on the edge of tears.

‘Why did you stop me? I would have done it!’ she cried.

‘I have no doubt you would,’ said De Forest. ‘But we can’t waste a life like yours on these people. I hope the arrest didn’t sprain your wrist; it’s so hard to regulate a flying loop. But I think you are quite right about those persons’ women and children. We’ll take them all away with us if you promise not to do anything stupid to yourself.’

‘I promise—I promise.’ She controlled herself with an effort. ‘But it is so important to us women. We know what it means; and I thought if you saw I was in earnest——’

‘I saw you were, and you’ve gained your point. I shall take all your Serviles away with me at once. The Mayor will make lists of their friends and families in the city and the district, and he’ll ship them after us this afternoon.’

‘Sure,’ said the Mayor, rising to his feet. ‘Keefe, if you can see, hadn’t you better finish levelling off the Old Market? It don’t look sightly the way it is now, and we shan’t use it for crowds any more.’

‘I think you had better wipe out that Statue as well, Mr. Mayor,’ said De Forest. ‘I don’t question its merits as a work of art, but I believe it’s a shade morbid.’

‘Certainly, sir. Oh, Keefe! Slag the Nigger before you go on to fuse the Market. I’ll get to the Communicators and tell the District that the Board is in charge. Are you making any special appointments, sir?’

‘None. We haven’t men to waste on these backwoods. Carry on as before, but under the Board. Arnott, run your Serviles aboard, please. Ground ship and pass them through the bilge-doors. We’ll wait till we’ve finished with this work of art.’

The prisoners trailed past him, talking fluently, but unable to gesticulate in the drag of the current. Then the surfacers rolled up, two on each side of the Statue. With one accord the spectators looked elsewhere, but there was no need. Keefe turned on full power, and the thing simply melted within its case. All I saw was a surge of white-hot metal pouring over the plinth, a glimpse of Salati’s inscription, ‘To the Eternal Memory of the Justice of the People,’ ere the stone base itself cracked and powdered into finest lime. The crowd cheered.

‘Thank you,’ said De Forest; ‘but we want our breakfasts, and I expect you do too. Good-bye, Mr. Mayor! Delighted to see you at any time, but I hope I shan’t have to, officially, for the next thirty years. Good-bye, madam. Yes. We’re all given to nerves nowadays. I suffer from them myself. Good-bye, gentlemen all! You’re under the tyrannous heel of the Board from this moment, but if ever you feel like breaking your fetters you’ve only to let us know. This is no treat to us. Good luck!’

We embarked amid shouts, and did not check our lift till they had dwindled into whispers. Then De Forest flung himself on the chart room divan and mopped his forehead.

‘I don’t mind men,’ he panted, ‘but women are the devil!’

‘Still the devil,’ said Pirolo cheerfully. ‘That one would have suicided.’

‘I know it. That was why I signalled for the flying loop to be clapped on her. I owe you an apology for that, Arnott. I hadn’t time to catch your eye, and you were busy with our caitiffs. By the way, who actually answered my signal? It was a smart piece of work.’

‘Ilroy,’ said Arnott; ‘but he overloaded the wave. It may be pretty gallery-work to knock a knife out of a lady’s hand, but didn’t you notice how she rubbed ’em? He scorched her fingers. Slovenly, I call it.’

‘Far be it from me to interfere with Fleet discipline, but don’t be too hard on the boy. If that woman had killed herself they would have killed every Servile and everything related to a Servile throughout the district by nightfall.’

‘That was what she was playing for,’ Takahira said. ‘And with our Fleet gone we could have done nothing to hold them.’

‘I may be ass enough to walk into a ground-circuit,’ said Arnott, ‘but I don’t dismiss my Fleet till I’m reasonably sure that trouble is over. They’re in position still, and I intend to keep ’em there till the Serviles are shipped out of the district. That last little crowd meant murder, my friends.’

‘Nerves! All nerves!’ said Pirolo. ‘You cannot argue with agoraphobia.’

‘And it is not as if they had seen much dead—or is it?’ said Takahira.

‘In all my ninety years I have never seen death.’ Dragomiroff spoke as one who would excuse himself. ‘Perhaps that was why—last night——’

Then it came out as we sat over breakfast, that, with the exception of Arnott and Pirolo, none of us had ever seen a corpse, or knew in what manner the spirit passes.

‘We’re a nice lot to flap about governing the Planet,’ De Forest laughed. ‘I confess, now it’s all over, that my main fear was I mightn’t be able to pull it off without losing a life.’

‘I thought of that too,’ sald Arnott; ‘but there’s no death reported, and I’ve inquired everywhere. What are we supposed to do with our passengers? I’ve fed ’em.’

page 9

‘We’re between two switches,’ De Forest drawled. ‘If we drop them in any place that isn’t under the Board, the natives will make their presence an excuse for cutting out, same as Illinois did, and forcing the Board to take over. If we drop them in any place under the Board’s control they’ll be killed as soon as our backs are turned.’

‘If you say so,’ said Pirolo thoughtfully, ‘I can guarantee that they will become extinct in process of time, quite happily. What is their birth-rate now?’

‘Go down and ask ’em,’ said De Forest.

‘I think they might become nervous and tear me to bits,’ the philosopher of Foggia replied.

‘Not really? Well?’

‘Open the bilge-doors,’ said Takahira with a downward jerk of the thumb.

‘Scarcely—after all the trouble we’ve taken to save ’em,’ said De Forest.

‘Try London,’ Arnott suggested. ‘You could turn Satan himself loose there, and they’d only ask him to dinner.’

‘Good man! You’ve given me an idea. Vincent! Oh, Vincent!’ He threw the General Communicator open so that we could all hear, and in a few minutes the chartroom filled with the rich, fruity voice of Leopold Vincent, who has purveyed all London her choicest amusements for the last thirty years. We answered with expectant grins, as though we were actually in the stalls of, say, the Combination on a first night.

‘We’ve picked up something in your line,’ De Forest began.

‘That’s good, dear man, if it’s old enough. There’s nothing to beat the old things for business purposes. Have you seen London, Chatham, and Dover at Earl’s Court? No? I thought I missed you there. Im-mense! I’ve had the real steam locomotive engines built from the old designs and the iron rails cast specially by hand. Cloth cushions in the carriages, too! Im-mense! And paper railway tickets. And Polly Milton.’

‘Polly Milton back again!’ said Arnott rapturously. ‘Book me two stalls for to-morrow night. What’s she singing now, bless her?’

‘The old songs. Nothing comes up to the old touch. Listen to this, dear men.’ Vincent carolled with flourishes:

‘You see?’ Pirolo waved his hands at us. ‘The old world always weeped when it saw crowds together. It did not know why, but it weeped. We know why, but we do not weep, except when we pay to be made to by fat, wicked old Vincent.’

‘Old, yourself!’ Vincent laughed. ‘I’m a public benefactor, I keep the world soft and united.’

‘And I’m De Forest of the Board,’ said De Forest acidly, ‘trying to get a little business done. As I was saying, I’ve picked up a few people in Chicago.’

‘I cut out. Chicago is——’

‘Do listen! They’re perfectly unique.’

‘Do they build houses of baked mud blocks while you wait—eh? That’s an old contact.’

‘They’re an untouched primitive community, with all the old ideas.’

‘Sewing-machines and maypole-dances? Cooking on coal-gas stoves, lighting pipes with matches, and driving horses? Gerolstein tried that last year. An absolute blow-out!’

De Forest plugged him wrathfully, and poured out the story of our doings for the last twenty-four hours on the top-note.

‘And they do it all in public,’ he concluded. ‘You can’t stop ’em. The more public, the better they are pleased. They’ll talk for hours—like you! Now you can come in again!’

‘Do you really mean they know how to vote?’ said Vincent. ‘Can they act it?’

‘Act? It’s their life to ’em! And you never saw such faces! Scarred like volcanoes. Envy, hatred, and malice in plain sight. Wonderfully flexible voices. They weep, too.’

‘Aloud? In public?’

‘I guarantee. Not a spark of shame or reticence in the entire installation. It’s the chance of your career.’

‘D’you say you’ve brought their voting props along—those papers and ballot-box things?’

‘No, confound you! I’m not a luggage-lifter. Apply direct to the Mayor of Chicago. He’ll forward you everything. Well?’

‘Wait a minute. Did Chicago want to kill ’em? That ’ud look well on the Communicators.’

‘Yes! They were only rescued with difficulty from a howling mob—if you know what that is.’

‘But I don’t,’ answered the Great Vincent simply.

‘Well then, they’ll tell you themselves. They can make speeches hours long.’

‘How many are there?’

‘By the time we ship ’em all over they’ll be perhaps a hundred, counting children. An old world in miniature. Can’t you see it?’

‘M-yes; but I’ve got to pay for it if it’s a blow-out, dear man.’

page 10

‘They can sing the old war songs in the streets. They can get word-drunk, and make crowds, and invade privacy in the genuine old-fashioned way; and they’ll do the voting trick as often as you ask ’em a question.’

‘Too good!’ said Vincent.

‘You unbelieving Jew! I’ve got a dozen head aboard here. I’ll put you through direct. Sample ’em yourself.’

He lifted the switch and we listened. Our passengers on the lower deck at once, but not less than five at a time, explained themselves to Vincent. They had been taken from the bosom of their families, stripped of their possessions, given food without finger-bowls, and cast into captivity in a noisome dungeon.

‘But look here,’ said Arnott aghast; ‘they’re saying what isn’t true. My lower deck isn’t noisome, and I saw to the finger-bowls myself.’

‘My people talk like that sometimes in Little Russia,’ said Dragomiroff. ‘We reason with them. We never kill. No!’

‘But it’s not true,’ Arnott insisted. ‘What can you do with people who don’t tell facts? They’re mad!’

‘Hsh!’ said Pirolo, his hand to his ear. ‘It is such a little time since all the Planet told lies.’

We heard Vincent silkily sympathetic. Would they, he asked, repeat their assertions in public—before a vast public? Only let Vincent give them a chance, and the Planet, they vowed, should ring with their wrongs. Their aim in life—two women and a man explained it together—was to reform the world. Oddly enough, this also had been Vincent’s life-dream. He offered them an arena in which to explain, and by their living example to raise the Planet to loftier levels. He was eloquent on the moral uplift of a simple, old-world life presented in its entirety to a deboshed civilisation.

Could they—would they—for three months certain, devote themselves under his auspices, as missionaries, to the elevation of mankind at a place called Earl’s Court, which he said, with some truth, was one of the intellectual centres of the Planet? They thanked him, and demanded (we could hear his chuckle of delight) time to discuss and to vote on the matter. The vote, solemnly managed by counting heads—one head, one vote—was favourable. His offer, therefore, was accepted, and they moved a vote of thanks to him in two speeches—one by what they called the ‘proposer’ and the other by the ‘seconder.’

Vincent threw over to us, his voice shaking with gratitude.

‘I’ve got ’em! Did you hear those speeches? That’s Nature, dear men. Art can’t teach that. And they voted as easily as lying. I’ve never had a troupe of natural liars before. Bless you, dear men! Remember, you’re on my free lists for ever, anywhere—all of you. Oh, Gerolstein will be sick—sick!’

‘Then you think they’ll do?’ said De Forest.

‘Do? The Little Village’ll go crazy! I’ll knock up a series of old—world plays for ’em. Their voices will make you laugh and cry. My God, dear men, where do you suppose they picked up all their misery from, on this sweet earth? I’ll have a pageant of the world’s beginnings, and Mosenthal shall do the music. I’ll——’

‘Go and knock up a village for ’em by to-night. We’ll meet you at No.15 West Landing Tower,’ said De Forest. ‘Remember the rest will be coming along to-morrow.’

‘Let ’em all come!’ said Vincent. ‘You don’t know how hard it is nowadays even for me, to find something that really gets under the public’s damned iridium-plated hide. But I’ve got it at last. Good-bye!’

‘Well,’ said De Forest when we had finished laughing, ‘if any one understood corruption in London I might have played off Vincent against Gerolstein, and sold my captives at enormous prices. As it is, I shall have to be their legal adviser to-night when the contracts are signed. And they won’t exactly press any commission on me, either.’

‘Meantime,’ said Takahira, ‘we cannot, of course, confine members of Leopold Vincent’s last-engaged company. Chairs for the ladies, please, Arnott.’

‘Then I go to bed,’ said De Forest. ‘I can’t face any more women!’ And he vanished.

When our passengers were released and given another meal (finger-bowls came first this time) they told us what they thought of us and the Board; and, like Vincent, we all marvelled how they had contrived to extract and secrete so much bitter poison and unrest out of the good life God gives us. They raged, they stormed, they palpitated, flushed and exhausted their poor, torn nerves, panted themselves into silence, and renewed the senseless, shameless attacks.

‘But can’t you understand,’ said Pirolo pathetically to a shrieking woman, ‘that if we’d left you in Chicago you’d have been killed?’

‘No, we shouldn’t. You were bound to save us from being murdered.’

‘Then we should have had to kill a lot of other people.’

‘That doesn’t matter. We were preaching the Truth. You can’t stop us. We shall go on preaching in London; and then you’ll see!’

‘You can see now,’ said Pirolo, and opened a lower shutter.

We were closing on the Little Village, with her three Million people spread out at ease inside her ring of girdling Main-Traffic lights—those eight fixed beams at Chatham, Tonbridge, Redhill, Dorking, Woking, St. Albans, Chipping Ongar, and Southend.

Leopold Vincent’s new company looked, with small pale faces, at the silence, the size, and the separated houses.

Then some began to weep aloud, shamelessly—always without shame.

page 1 of 6

‘BOOK—Book—Domesday Book!’ They were letting in the water for the evening stint at Robert’s Mill, and the wooden Wheel, where lived the Spirit of the Mill, settled to its nine-hundred-year-old song: ‘Here Azor, a freeman, held one rod, but it never paid geld. Nun-nun-nunquam geldavit. Here Reinbert has one villein and four cottars with one plough—and wood for six hogs and two fisheries of sixpence and a mill of ten shillings—unum molinum—one mill. Reinbert’s mill—Robert’s Mill. Then and afterwards and now—tune et post et modo—Robert’s Mill. Book—Book—Domesday Book!’  ‘I confess,’ said the Black Rat on the crossbeam, luxuriously trimming his whiskers—‘I confess I am not above appreciating my position and all it means.’ He was a genuine old English black rat, a breed which, report says, is rapidly diminishing before the incursions of the brown variety.

‘Appreciation is the surest sign of inadequacy,’ said the Grey Cat, coiled up on a piece of sacking.

‘But I know what you mean,’ she added. ‘To sit by right at the heart of things—eh?’

‘Yes,’ said the Black Rat, as the old mill shook and the heavy stones thuttered on the grist. ‘To possess—er—all this environment as an integral part of one’s daily life must insensibly of course . . . You see?’

‘I feel,’ said the Grey Cat. ‘Indeed, if we are not saturated with the spirit of the Mill, who should be?’

‘Book—Book—Domesday Book!’ The Wheel, set to his work, was running off the tenure of the whole rape, for he knew Domesday Book backwards and forwards: ‘In Ferle tenuit Abbatia de Wiltuna unam hidam et unam virgam et dimidiam. Nunquam geldavit. And Agemond, a freeman, has half a hide and one rod. I remember Agemond well. Charmin’ fellow—friend of mine. He married a Norman girl in the days when we rather looked down on the Normans as upstarts. An’ Agemond’s dead? So he is. Eh, dearie me! dearie me! I remember the wolves howling outside his door in the big frost of Ten Fifty-Nine . . . . Essewelde hundredum nunquam geldum reddidit. Book! Book! Domesday Book!’

‘After all,’ the Grey Cat continued, ‘atmosphere is life. It is the influences under which we live that count in the long run. Now, outside’ she cocked one ear towards the half-opened door—‘there is an absurd convention that rats and cats are, I won’t go so far as to say natural enemies, but opposed forces. Some such ruling may be crudely effective—I don’t for a minute presume to set up my standards as final—among the ditches; but from the larger point of view that one gains by living at the heart of things, it seems for a rule of life a little overstrained. Why, because some of your associates have, shall I say, liberal views on the ultimate destination of a sack of—er—middlings, don’t they call them——’

‘Something of that sort,’ said the Black Rat, a most sharp and sweet-toothed judge of everything ground in the mill for the last three years.

‘Thanks—middlings be it. Why, as I was saying, must I disarrange my fur and my digestion to chase you round the dusty arena whenever we happen to meet?’

‘As little reason,’ said the Black Rat, ‘as there is for me, who, I trust, am a person of ordinarily decent instincts, to wait till you have gone on a round of calls, and then to assassinate your very charming children.’

‘Exactly! It has its humorous side though.’ The Grey Cat yawned. ‘The miller seems afflicted by it. He shouted large and vague threats to my address, last night at tea, that he wasn’t going to keep cats who “caught no mice.” Those were his words. I remember the grammar sticking in my throat like a herring-bone.’

‘And what did you do?’

‘What does one do when a barbarian utters? One ceases to utter and removes. I removed—towards his pantry. It was a riposte he might appreciate.’

‘Really those people grow absolutely insufferable,’ said the Black Rat. ‘There is a local ruffian who answers to the name of Mangles—a builder—who has taken possession of the outhouses on the far side of the Wheel for the last fortnight. He has constructed cubical horrors in red brick where those deliciously picturesque pigstyes used to stand. Have you noticed?’

‘There has been much misdirected activity of late among the humans. They jabber inordinately. I haven’t yet been able to arrive at their reason for existence.’ The Cat yawned.

‘A couple of them came in here last week with wires, and fixed them all about the walls. Wires protected by some abominable composition, ending in iron brackets with glass bulbs. Utterly useless for any purpose and artistically absolutely hideous. What do they mean?’

‘Aaah! I have known four-and-twenty leaders of revolt in Faenza,’ said the Cat, who kept good company with the boarders spending a summer at the Mill Farm. ‘It means nothing except that humans occasionally bring their dogs with them. I object to dogs in all forms.’

‘Shouldn’t object to dogs,’ said the Wheel sleepily . . . . ‘The Abbot of Wilton kept the best pack in the county. He enclosed all the Harryngton Woods to Sturt Common. Aluric, a freeman, was dispossessed of his holding. They tried the case at Lewes, but he got no change out of William de Warrenne on the bench. William de Warrenne fined Aluric eight and fourpence for treason, and the Abbot of Wilton excommunicated him for blasphemy. Aluric was no sportsman. Then the Abbot’s brother married . . . . I’ve forgotten her name, but she was a charmin’ little woman. The Lady Philippa was her daughter. That was after the barony was conferred. She rode devilish straight to hounds. They were a bit throatier than we breed now, but a good pack one of the best. The Abbot kept ’em in splendid shape. Now, who was the woman the Abbot kept? Book—Book ! I shall have to go right back to Domesday and work up the centuries: Modo per omnia reddit burgum tunc—tunc—tunc! Was it burgum or hundredum? I shall remember in a minute. There’s no hurry.’ He paused as he turned over, silvered with showering drops.

‘This won’t do,’ said the Waters in the sluice. ‘Keep moving.’

The Wheel swung forward; the Waters roared on the buckets and dropped down to the darkness below.

‘Noisier than usual,’ said the Black Rat. ‘It must have been raining up the valley.’

‘Floods maybe,’ said the Wheel dreamily. ‘It isn’t the proper season, but they can come without warning. I shall never forget the big one—when the Miller went to sleep and forgot to open the hatches. More than two hundred years ago it was, but I recall it distinctly. Most unsettling.’

‘We lifted that wheel off his bearings,’ cried the Waters. ‘We said, “Take away that bauble!” And in the morning he was five miles down the valley—hung up in a tree.’

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‘Vulgar!’ said the Cat. ‘But I am sure he never lost his dignity.’

‘We don’t know. He looked like the Ace of Diamonds when we had finished with him . . . . Move on there! Keep on moving. Over! Get over!’

‘And why on this day more than any other?’ said the Wheel statelily. ‘I am not aware that my department requires the stimulus of external pressure to keep it up to its duties. I trust I have the elementary instincts of a gentleman.’

‘Maybe,’ the Waters answered together, leaping down on the buckets. ‘We only know that you are very stiff on your bearings. Over, get over!’

The Wheel creaked and groaned. There was certainly greater pressure upon him than he had ever felt, and his revolutions had increased from six and three-quarters to eight and a third per minute. But the uproar between the narrow, weed-hung walls annoyed the Grey Cat.

‘Isn’t it almost time,’ she said plaintively, ‘that the person who is paid to understand these things shuts off those vehement drippings with that screw-thing on the top of that box-thing?’

‘They’ll be shut off at eight o’clock as usual,’ said the Rat; ‘then we can go to dinner.’

‘But we shan’t be shut off till ever so late,’ said the Waters gaily. ‘We shall keep it up all night.’

‘The ineradicable offensiveness of youth is partially compensated for by its eternal hopefulness,’ said the Cat. ‘Our dam is not, I am glad to say, designed to furnish water for more than four hours at a time. Reserve is Life.’

‘Thank goodness!’ said the Black Rat. ‘Then they can return to their native ditches.’

‘Ditches!’ cried the Waters; ‘Raven’s Gill Brook is no ditch. It is almost navigable, and we come from there away.’ They slid over solid and compact till the Wheel thudded under their weight.

‘Raven’s Gill Brook,’ said the Rat. ‘I never heard of Raven’s Gill.’

‘We are the waters of Harpenden Brook—down from under Canton Rise. Phew! how the race stinks compared with the heather country.’ Another five foot of water flung itself against the Wheel, broke, roared, gurgled, and was gone.

‘Indeed?’ said the Grey Cat. ‘I am sorry to tell you that Raven’s Gill Brook is cut off from this valley by an absolutely impassable range of mountains, and Callton Rise is more than nine miles away. It belongs to another system entirely.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said the Rat, grinning, ‘but we forget that, for the young, water always runs uphill.’

‘Oh, hopeless! hopeless! hopeless!’ cried the Waters, descending open-palmed upon the Wheel. ‘There is nothing between here and Raven’s Gill Brook that a hundred yards of channelling and a few square feet of concrete could not remove; and hasn’t removed!’

‘And Harpenden Brook is north of Raven’s Gill and runs into Raven’s Gill at the foot of Callton Rise, where the big ilex trees are, and we come from there!’ These were the glassy, clear waters of the high chalk.

‘And Batten’s Ponds, that are fed by springs, have been led through Trott’s Wood, taking the spare water from the old Witches’ Spring under Churt Haw, and we—we—we are their combined waters!’ Those were the Waters from the upland bogs and moors—a porter-coloured, dusky, and foam-flecked flood.

‘It’s all very interesting,’ purred the Cat to the sliding waters, ‘and I have no doubt that Trott’s Woods and Bott’s Woods are tremendously important places; but if you could manage to do your work—whose value I don’t in the least dispute—a little more soberly, I, for one, should be grateful.’

‘Book—book—book—book—book—Domesday Book!’ The urged Wheel was fairly clattering now: ‘In Burgelstaltone a monk holds of Earl Godwin one hide and a half with eight villeins. There is a church—and a monk …. I remember that monk. Blessed if he could rattle his rosary off any quicker than I am doing now . . . and wood for seven hogs. I must be running twelve to the minute . . . almost as fast as Steam. Damnable invention, Steam! . . . Surely it’s time we went to dinner or prayers—or something. Can’t keep up this pressure, day in and day out, and not feel it. I don’t mind for myself, of course. Noblesse oblige, you know. I’m only thinking of the Upper and the Nether Millstones. They came out of the common rock. They can’t be expected to——’

‘Don’t worry on our account, please,’ said the Millstones huskily. ‘So long as you supply the power we’ll supply the weight and the bite.’

‘Isn’t it a trifle blasphemous, though, to work you in this way?’ grunted the Wheel. ‘I seem to remember something about the Mills of God grinding “ slowly.” Slowly was the word!’

‘But we are not the Mills of God. We’re only the Upper and the Nether Millstones. We have received no instructions to be anything else. We are actuated by power transmitted through you.’

‘Ah, but let us be merciful as we are strong. Think of all the beautiful little plants that grow on my woodwork. There are five varieties of rare moss within less than one square yard—and all these delicate jewels of nature are being grievously knocked about by this excessive rush of the water.’

‘Umph!’ growled the Millstones. ‘What with your religious scruples and your taste for botany we’d hardly know you for the Wheel that put the carter’s son under last autumn. You never worried about him!’

‘He ought to have known better.’

‘So ought your jewels of nature. Tell ’em to grow where it’s safe.’

‘How a purely mercantile life debases and brutalises!’ said the Cat to the Rat.

‘They were such beautiful little plants too,’ said the Rat tenderly. ‘Maiden’s-tongue and hart’s-hair fern trellising all over the wall just as they do on the sides of churches in the Downs. Think what a joy the sight of them must be to our sturdy peasants pulling hay!’

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‘Golly!’ said the Millstones. ‘There’s nothing like coming to the heart of things for information’; and they returned to the song that all English water-mills have sung from time beyond telling:

There was a jovial miller once
Lived on the River Dee,
And this the burden of his song
For ever used to be.

Then, as fresh grist poured in and dulled the note

I care for nobody—no, not I,
And nobody cares for me.

‘Even these stones have absorbed something of our atmosphere,’ said the Grey Cat. ‘Nine-tenths of the trouble in this world comes from lack of detachment.’

‘One of your people died from forgetting that, didn’t she?’ said the Rat.

‘One only. The example has sufficed us for generations.’

‘Ah! but what happened to Don’t Care?’ the Waters demanded.

‘Brutal riding to death of the casual analogy is another mark of provincialism!’ The Grey Cat raised her tufted chin. ‘I am going to sleep. With my social obligations I must snatch rest when I can; but, as our old friend here says, Noblesse oblige . . . . Pity me! Three functions to-night in the village, and a barn-dance across the valley!’

‘There’s no chance, I suppose, of your looking in on the loft about two. Some of our young people are going to amuse themselves with a new sacque-dance—best white flour only,’ said the Black Rat.

‘I believe I am officially supposed not to countenance that sort of thing, but youth is youth. . . By the way, the humans set my milk-bowl in the loft these days; I hope your youngsters respect it.’

‘My dear lady,’ said the Black Rat, bowing, ‘you grieve me. You hurt me inexpressibly. After all these years, too!’

‘A general crush is so mixed—highways and hedges—all that sort of thing—and no one can answer for one’s best friends. I never try. So long as mine are amusin’ and in full voice, and can hold their own at a tile-party, I’m as catholic as these mixed waters in the dam here!’

‘We aren’t mixed. We have mixed. We are one now,’ said the Waters sulkily.

‘Still uttering?’ said the Cat. ‘Never mind, here’s the Miller coming to shut you off. Ye-es, I have known—four—or five, is it?—and twenty leaders of revolt in Faenza . . . . A little more babble in the dam, a little more noise in the sluice, a little extra splashing on the wheel, and then——’

‘They will find that nothing has occurred,’ said the Black Rat. ‘The old things persist and survive and are recognised—our old friend here first of all. By the way,’ he turned toward the Wheel, ‘I believe we have to congratulate you on your latest honour.’

‘Profoundly well deserved—even if he had never—as he has—laboured strenuously through a long life for the amelioration of millkind,’ said the Cat, who belonged to many tile and oasthouse committees. ‘Doubly deserved, I may say, for the silent and dignified rebuke his existence offers to the clattering, fidgety-footed demands of—er—some people. What form did the honour take?’

‘It was,’ said the Wheel bashfully, ‘a machine-moulded pinion.’

‘Pinions! Oh, how heavenly!’ the Black Rat sighed. ‘I never see a bat without wishing for wings.’

‘Not exactly that sort of pinion,’ said the Wheel, ‘but a really ornate circle of toothed iron wheels. Absurd, of course, but gratifying. Mr. Mangles and an associate herald invested me with it personally—on my left rim—the side that you can’t see from the mill. I hadn’t meant to say anything about it—or the new steel straps round my axles—bright red, you know—to be worn on all occasions—but, without false modesty, I assure you that the recognition cheered me not a little.’

‘How intensely gratifying!’ said the Black Rat. ‘I must really steal an hour between lights some day and see what they are doing on your left side.’

‘By the way, have you any light on this recent activity of Mr. Mangles?’ the Grey Cat asked. ‘He seems to be building small houses on the far side of the tail-race. Believe me, I don’t ask from any vulgar curiosity.’

‘It affects our Order,’ said the Black Rat simply but firmly.

‘Thank you,’ said the Wheel. ‘Let me see if I can tabulate it properly. Nothing like system in accounts of all kinds. Book! Book! Book! On the side of the Wheel towards the hundred of Burgelstaltone, where till now was a stye of three hogs, Mangles, a freeman, with four villeins and two carts of two thousand bricks, has a new small house of five yards and a half, and one roof of iron and a floor of cement. Then, now, and afterwards beer in large tankards. And Felden, a stranger, with three villeins and one very great cart, deposits on it one engine of iron and brass and a small iron mill of four feet, and a broad strap of leather. And Mangles, the builder, with two villeins, constructs the floor for the same, and a floor of new brick with wires for the small mill. There are there also chalices filled with iron and water, in number fifty-seven. The whole is valued at one hundred and seventy-four pounds . . . . I’m sorry I can’t make myself clearer, but you can see for yourself.’

‘Amazingly lucid,’ said the Cat. She was the more to be admired because the language of Domesday Book is not, perhaps, the clearest medium wherein to describe a small but complete electric-light installation, deriving its power from a water-wheel by means of cogs and gearing.

‘See for yourself—by all means, see for yourself,’ said the Waters, spluttering and choking with mirth.

‘Upon my word,’ said the Black Rat furiously, ‘I may be at fault, but I wholly fail to perceive where these offensive eavesdroppers—er—come in. We were discussing a matter that solely affected our Order.’

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Suddenly they heard, as they had heard many times before, the Miller shutting off the water. To the rattle and rumble of the labouring stones succeeded thick silence, punctuated with little drops from the stayed wheel. Then some water-bird in the dam fluttered her wings as she slid to her nest, and the plop of a water-rat sounded like the fall of a log in the water.

‘It is all over—it always is all over at just this time. Listen, the Miller is going to bed—as usual. Nothing has occurred,’ said the Cat.

Something creaked in the house where the pigstyes had stood, as metal engaged on metal with a clink and a burr.

‘Shall I turn her on?’ cried the Miller.

‘Ay,’ said the voice from the dynamo-house.

‘A human in Mangles’ new house!’ the Rat squeaked.

‘What of it?’ said the Grey Cat. ‘Even supposing Mr. Mangles’ cat’s-meat-coloured hovel pullulated with humans, can’t you see for yourself—that——?’

There was a solid crash of released waters leaping upon the Wheel more furiously than ever, a grinding of cogs, a hum like the hum of a hornet, and then the unvisited darkness of the old mill was scattered by intolerable white light. It threw up every cobweb, every burl and knot in the beams and the floor; till the shadows behind the flakes of rough plaster on the wall lay clearcut as shadows of mountains on the photographed moon.

‘See! See! See!’ hissed the Waters in full flood. ‘Yes, see for yourselves. Nothing has occurred. Can’t you see?’

The Rat, amazed, had fallen from his foothold and lay half-stunned on the floor. The Cat, following her instinct, leaped nigh to the ceiling, and with flattened ears and bared teeth backed in a corner ready to fight whatever terror might be loosed on her. But nothing happened. Through the long aching minutes nothing whatever happened, and her wire-brush tail returned slowly to its proper shape.

‘Whatever it is,’ she said at last, ‘it’s overdone. They can never keep it up, you know.’

‘Much you know,’ said the Waters. ‘Over you go, old man. You can take the full head of us now. Those new steel axlestraps of yours can stand anything. Come along, Raven’s Gill, Harpenden, Callton Rise, Batten’s Ponds, Witches’ Spring, all together! Let’s show these gentlemen how to work!’

‘But—but—I thought it was a decoration. Why—why—why—it only means more work for me!’

‘Exactly. You’re to supply about sixty-eight candle lights when required. But they won’t be all in use at once’

‘Ah! I thought as much,’ said the Cat. ‘The reaction is bound to come.’

‘And,’ said the Waters, ‘you will do the ordinary work of the mill as well.’

‘Impossible!’ the old Wheel quivered as it drove. ‘Aluric never did it—nor Azor, nor Reinbert. Not even William de Warrenne or the Papal Legate. There’s no precedent for it. I tell you there’s no precedent for working a wheel like this.’

‘Wait a while! We’re making one as fast as we can. Aluric and Co. are dead. So’s the Papal Legate. You’ve no notion how dead they are, but we’re here—the Waters of Five Separate Systems. We’re just as interesting as Domesday Book. Would you like to hear about the land-tenure in Trott’s Wood? It’s squat-right, chiefly:’ The mocking Waters leaped one over the other, chuckling and chattering profanely.

‘In that hundred Jenkins, a tinker, with one dog—unus canis—holds, by the Grace of God and a habit he has of working hard, unam hidam—a large potato-patch. Charmin’ fellow, Jenkins. Friend of ours. Now, who the dooce did Jenkins keep? . . . In the hundred of Canton is one charcoal-burner irreligiosissimus homo—a bit of a rip—but a thorough sportsman. Ibi est ecclesia. Non multum. Not much of a church, quia because, episcopus the Vicar irritated the Non-conformists tunc et post et modo—then and afterwards and now—until they built a cut-stone Congregational chapel with red brick facings that did not return itself—defendebat se—at four thousand pounds.’

‘Charcoal-burners, vicars, schismatics, and red brick facings,’ groaned the Wheel. ‘But this is sheer blasphemy. What waters have they let in upon me?’

‘Floods from the gutters. Faugh, this light is positively sickening!’ said the Cat, rearranging her fur.

‘We come down from the clouds or up from the springs, exactly like all other waters everywhere. Is that what’s surprising you?’ sang the Waters.

‘Of course not. I know my work if you don’t. What I complain of is your lack of reverence and repose. You’ve no instinct of deference towards your betters—your heartless parody of the Sacred volume (the Wheel meant Domesday Book) proves it.’

‘Our betters?’ said the Waters most solemnly. ‘What is there in all this dammed race that hasn’t come down from the clouds, or——’

‘Spare me that talk, please,’ the Wheel persisted. ‘You’d never understand. It’s the tone—your tone that we object to.’

‘Yes. It’s your tone,’ said the Black Rat, picking himself up limb by limb.

‘If you thought a trifle more about the work you’re supposed to do, and a trifle less about your precious feelings, you’d render a little more duty in return for the power vested in you—we mean wasted on you,’ the Waters replied.

‘I have been some hundreds of years laboriously acquiring the knowledge which you see fit to challenge so lightheartedly,’ the Wheel jarred.

‘Challenge him! Challenge him!’ clamoured the little waves riddling down through the tailrace. ‘As well now as later. Take him up!’

The main mass of the Waters plunging on the Wheel shocked that well-bolted structure almost into box-lids by saying: ‘Very good. Tell us what you suppose yourself to be doing at the present moment.’

page 5

‘Waiving the offensive form of your question, I answer, purely as a matter of courtesy, that I am engaged in the trituration of farinaceous substances whose ultimate destination it would be a breach of the trust reposed in me to reveal.’

‘Fiddle!’ said the Waters. ‘We knew it all along! The first direct question shows his ignorance of his own job. Listen, old thing. Thanks to us, you are now actuating a machine of whose construction you know nothing, that that machine may, over wires of whose ramifications you are, by your very position, profoundly ignorant, deliver a power which you can never realise, to localities beyond the extreme limits of your mental horizon, with the object of producing phenomena which in your wildest dreams (if you ever dream) you could never comprehend. Is that clear, or would you like it all in words of four syllables?’

‘Your assumptions are deliciously sweeping, but may I point out that a decent and—the dear old Abbot of Wilton would have put it in his resonant monkish Latin much better than I can—a scholarly reserve does not necessarily connote blank vacuity of mind on all subjects?’

‘Ah, the dear old Abbot of Wilton,’ said the Rat sympathetically, as one nursed in that bosom. ‘Charmin’ fellow—thorough scholar and gentleman. Such a pity!’

‘Oh, Sacred Fountains!’—the Waters were fairly boiling. ‘He goes out of his way to expose his ignorance by triple bucketfuls. He creaks to high Heaven that he is hopelessly behind the common order of things! He invites the streams of Five Watersheds to witness his su-su-su-pernal incompetence, and then he talks as though there were untold reserves of knowledge behind him that he is too modest to bring forward. For a bland, circular, absolutely sincere imposter, you’re a miracle, O Wheel!’

‘I do not pretend to be anything more than an integral portion of an accepted and not altogether mushroom institution.’

‘Quite so,’ said the Waters. ‘Then go round—hard——’

‘To what end?’ asked the Wheel.

‘Till a big box of tanks in your house begins to fizz and fume—gassing is the proper word.’

‘It would be,’ said the Cat, sniffing.

‘That will show that your accumulators are full. When the accumulators are exhausted, and the lights burn badly, you will find us whacking you round and round again.’

‘The end of life as decreed by Mangles and his creatures is to go whacking round and round for ever,’ said the Cat.

‘In order,’ the Rat said, ‘that you may throw raw and unnecessary illumination upon all the unloveliness in the world. Unloveliness which we shall—er—have always with us. At the same time you will riotously neglect the so-called little but vital graces that make up Life.’

‘Yes, Life,’ said the Cat, ‘with its dim delicious half-tones and veiled indeterminate distances. Its surprisals, escapes, encounters, and dizzying leaps—its full-throated choruses in honour of the morning star, and its melting reveries beneath the sun-warmed wall.’

‘Oh, you can go on the tiles, Pussalina, just the same as usual,’ said the laughing Waters. ‘We shan’t interfere with you.’

‘On the tiles, forsooth!’ hissed the Cat.

‘Well, that’s what it amounts to,’ persisted the Waters. ‘We see a good deal of the minor graces of life on our way down to our job.’

‘And—but I fear I speak to deaf ears—do they never impress you?’ said the Wheel.

‘Enormously,’ said the Waters. ‘We have already learned six refined synonyms for loafing.’

‘But (here again I feel as though preaching in the wilderness) it never occurs to you that there may exist some small difference between the wholly animal—ah—rumination of bovine minds and the discerning, well-apportioned leisure of the finer type of intellect?’

‘Oh, yes. The bovine mind goes to sleep under a hedge and makes no bones about it when it’s shouted at. We’ve seen that—in haying-time—all along the meadows. The finer type is wide awake enough to fudge up excuses for shirking, and mean enough to get stuffy when its excuses aren’t accepted. Turn over!’

‘But, my good people, no gentleman gets stuffy as you call it. A certain proper pride, to put it no higher, forbids——’

‘Nothing that he wants to do if he really wants to do it. Get along! What are you giving us? D’you suppose we’ve scoured half heaven in the clouds and half earth in the mists, to be taken in at this time of the day by a bone-idle, old handquern of your type?’

‘It is not for me to bandy personalities with you. I can only say that I simply decline to accept the situation.’

‘Decline away. It doesn’t make any odds. They’ll probably put in a turbine if you decline too much.’

‘What’s a turbine?’ said the Wheel quickly.

‘A little thing you don’t see, that performs surprising revolutions. But you won’t decline. You’ll hang on to your two nice red-strapped axles and your new machine-moulded pinions like—a—like a leech on a lily stem! There’s centuries of work in your old bones if you’d only apply yourself to it; and, mechanically, an overshot wheel with this head of water is about as efficient as a turbine.’

‘So in future I am to be considered mechanically? I have been painted by at least five Royal Academicians.’

‘Oh, you can be painted by five hundred when you aren’t at work, of course. But while you are at work you’ll work. You won’t half-stop and think and talk about rare plants and dicky-birds and farinaceous fiduciary interests. You’ll continue to revolve, and this new head of water will see that you do so continue.’

‘It is a matter on which it would be exceedingly ill-advised to form a hasty or a premature conclusion. I will give it my most careful consideration,’ said the Wheel.

page 6

‘Please do,’ said the Waters gravely. ‘Hullo! Here’s the Miller again.’

The Cat coiled herself in a picturesque attitude on the softest corner of a sack, and the Rat without haste, yet certainly without rest, slipped behind the sacking as though an appointment had just occurred to him.

In the doorway, with the young Engineer, stood the Miller grinning amazedly.

‘Well—well—well! ’tis true-ly won’erful. An’ what a power o’ dirt! It come over me now looking at these lights, that I’ve never rightly seen my own mill before. She needs a lot bein’ done to her.’

‘Ah! I suppose one must make oneself moderately agreeable to the baser sort. They have their uses. This thing controls the dairy.’ The Cat, pincing on her toes, came forward and rubbed her head against the Miller’s knee.

‘Ay, you pretty puss,’ he said, stooping. ‘You’re as big a cheat as the rest of ’em that catch no mice about me. A won’erful smooth-skinned, rough-tongued cheat you be. I’ve more than half a mind——’

‘She does her work well,’ said the Engineer, pointing to where the Rat’s beady eyes showed behind the sacking. ‘Cats and Rats liven’ together—see?’

‘Too much they do—too long they’ve done. I’m sick and tired of it. Go and take a swim and larn to find your own vittles honest when you come out, Pussy.’

‘My word!’ said the Waters, as a sprawling Cat landed all unannounced in the centre of the tailrace. ‘Is that you, Mewsalina? You seem to have been quarrelling with your best friend. Get over to the left. It’s shallowest there. Up on that alder-root with all four paws. Goodnight!’

‘You’ll never get any they rats,’ said the Miller, as the young Engineer struck wrathfully with his stick at the sacking. ‘They’re not the common sort. They’re the old black English sort.’

‘Are they, by Jove? I must catch one to stuff, some day.’

Six months later, in the chill of a January afternoon, they were letting in the Waters as usual.

‘Come along! It’s both gears this evening,’ said the Wheel, kicking joyously in the first rush of the icy stream. ‘There’s a heavy load of grist just in from Lamber’s Wood. Eleven miles it came in an hour and a half in our new motor-lorry, and the Miller’s rigged five new five-candle lights in his cow-stables. I’m feeding ’em tonight. There’s a cow due to calve. Oh, while I think of it, what’s the news from Canton Rise?’

‘The waters are finding their level as usual—but why do you ask?’ said the deep outpouring Waters.

‘Because Mangles and Felden and the Miller are talking of increasing the plant here and running a saw-mill by electricity. I was wondering whether we——’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said the Waters, chuckling. ‘What did you say? ‘

‘Whether we, of course, had power enough for the job. It will be a biggish contract. There’s all Harpenden Brook to be considered and Batten’s Ponds as well, and Witches’ Spring, and the Churt Haw system.’

‘We’ve power enough for anything in the world,’ said the Waters. ‘The only question is whether you could stand the strain if we came down on you full head.’

‘Of course I can,’ said the Wheel. ‘Mangles is going to turn me into a set of turbines—beauties.’

‘Oh—er—I suppose it’s the frost that has made us a little thick-headed, but to whom are we talking?’ asked the amazed Waters.

‘To me—the Spirit of the Mill, of course.’

‘Not to the old Wheel, then?’

‘I happen to be living in the old Wheel just at present. When the turbines are installed I shall go and live in them. What earthly difference does it make?’

‘Absolutely none,’ said the Waters, ‘in the earth or in the waters under the earth. But we thought turbines didn’t appeal to you.’

‘Not like turbines? Me? My dear fellows, turbines are good for fifteen hundred revolutions a minute—and with our power we can drive ’em at full speed. Why, there’s nothing we couldn’t grind or saw or illuminate or heat with a set of turbines! That’s to say if all the Five Watersheds are agreeable.’

‘Oh, we’ve been agreeable for ever so long.’

‘Then why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Don’t know. Suppose it slipped our memory.’ The Waters were holding themselves in for fear of bursting with mirth.

‘How careless of you! You should keep abreast of the age, my dear fellows. We might have settled it long ago, if you’d only spoken. Yes, four good turbines and a neat brick penstock—eh? This old Wheel’s absurdly out of date.’

‘Well,’ said the Cat, who after a little proud seclusion had returned to her place impenitent as ever. ‘Praised be Pasht and the Old Gods, that whatever may have happened I, at least, have preserved the Spirit of the Mill!’

She looked round as expecting her faithful ally, the Black Rat; but that very week the Engineer had caught and stuffed him, and had put him in a glass case; he being a genuine old English black rat. That breed, the report says, is rapidly diminishing before the incursions of the brown variety.

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IF you remember my improper friend Brugglesmith, you will also bear in mind his friend McPhee, Chief Engineer of the Breslau, whose dinghy Brugglesmith tried to steal. His apologies for the performances of Brugglesmith may one day be told in their proper place: the tale before us concerns McPhee. He was never a racing engineer, and took special pride in saying as much before the Liverpool men; but he had a thirty-two years’ knowledge of machinery and the humours of ships. One side of his face had been wrecked through the bursting of a water-gauge in the days when men knew less than they do now; and his nose rose grandly out of the wreck, like a club in a public riot. There were cuts and lumps on his head, and he would guide your forefinger through his short iron-gray hair and tell you how he had come by his trade-marks. He owned all sorts of certificates of extra-competency, and at the bottom of his cabin chest of drawers, where he kept the photograph of his wife, were two or three Royal Humane Society medals for saving lives at sea. Professionally—it was different when crazy steerage-passengers jumped overboard—professionally, McPhee does not approve of saving life at sea, and he has often told me that a new hell is awaiting stokers and trimmers who sign for a strong man’s pay and fall sick the second day out. He believes in throwing boots at fourth and fifth engineers when they wake him up at night with word that a bearing is red-hot, all because a lamp’s glare is reflected red from the twirling metal. He believes that there are only two poets in the world: one being Robert Burns of course, and the other Gerald Massey. When he has time for novels he reads Wilkie Collins and Charles Reade—chiefly the latter—and knows whole pages of Hard Cash by heart. In the saloon his table is next to the captain’s, and he drinks only water while his engines work.He was good to me when we first met, because I did not ask questions, and believed in Charles Reade as a most shamefully neglected author. Later he approved of my writings to the extent of one pamphlet of twenty-four pages that I wrote for Holdock, Steiner, and Chase, owners of the line, when they bought some ventilating patent and fitted it to the cabins of the Breslau, Spandau, and Koltzau. The purser of the Breslau recommended me to Holdock’s secretary for the job; and Holdock, who is a Wesleyan Methodist, invited me to his house, and gave me dinner with the governess when the others had finished, and laced the plans and specifications in my hand, and wrote the pamphlet that same afternoon. It was called ‘Comfort in the Cabin,’ and brought me seven pound ten, cash down—an important sum of money in those days; and the governess, who was teaching Master John Holdock his scales, told me that Mrs. Holdock had told her to keep an eye on me, in case I went away with coats from the hat rack. McPhee liked that pamphlet enormously, for it was composed in the Bouverie-Byzantine style, with baroque and rococo embellishments; and afterward he introduced me to Mrs. McPhee, who succeeded Dinah in my heart; for Dinah was half a world away, and it is wholesome and antiseptic to love such a woman as Janet McPhee. They lived in a little twelve-pound house, close to the shipping. When McPhee was away Mrs. McPhee read the Lloyd’s column in the papers, and called on the wives of senior engineers of equal social standing. Once or twice, too, Mrs. Holdock visited Mrs. McPhee in a brougham with celluloid fittings, and I have reason to believe that, after she had played owner’s wife long enough, they talked scandal. The Holdocks lived in an old-fashioned house with a big brick garden not a mile from the McPhees, for they stayed by their money as their money stayed by them; and in summer you met their brougham solemnly junketing by Theydon Bois or Loughton. But I was Mrs. McPhee’s friend, for she allowed me to convoy her westward, sometimes, to theatres, where she sobbed or laughed or shivered with a simple heart; and she introduced me to a new world of doctors’ wives, captains’ wives, and engineers’ wives, whose whole talk and thought centred in and about ships and lines of ships you have never heard of. There were sailing-ships, with stewards and mahogany and maple saloons, trading to Australia, taking cargoes of consumptives and hopeless drunkards for whom a sea voyage was recommended; there were frouzy little West African boats, full of rats and cockroaches, where men died anywhere but in their bunks; there were Brazilian boats whose cabins could be hired for merchandise that went out loaded nearly awash; there were Zanzibar and Mauritius steamers, and wonderful reconstructed boats that plied to the other side of Borneo. These were loved and known, for they earned our bread and a little butter, and we despised the big Atlantic boats, and made fun of the P.&O. and Orient liners, and swore by our respected owners—Wesleyan, Baptist or Presbyterian, as the case might be.

I had only just come back to England when Mrs. McPhee invited me to dinner at three o’clock in the afternoon, and the notepaper was almost bridal in its scented creaminess. When I reached the house I saw that there were new curtains in the window that must have cost forty-five shillings a pair; and as Mrs. McPhee drew me into the little marble-paper hall, she looked at me keenly, and cried:

‘Have ye not heard? What d’ye think o’ the hat-rack?’

Now, that hat-rack was oak—thirty shillings at least. McPhee came downstairs with a sober foot—he steps as lightly as a cat, for all his weight, when he is at sea—and shook hands in a new and awful manner—a parody of old Holdock’s style when he says good-bye to his skippers. I perceived at once that a legacy had come to him, but I held my peace, though Mrs. McPhee begged me every thirty seconds to eat a great deal and say nothing. It was rather a mad sort of meal, because McPhee and his wife took hold of hands like little children (they always do after voyages), and nodded and winked and choked and gurgled, and hardly ate a mouthful.

A female servant came in and waited; though Mrs. McPhee had told me time and again that she would thank no one to do her housework while she had her health. But this was a servant with a cap, and I saw Mrs. McPhee swell and swell under her garance-coloured gown. There is no small free-board to Janet McPhee, nor is garance any subdued tint; and with all this unexplained pride and glory in the air I felt like watching fireworks without knowing the festival. When the maid had removed the cloth she brought a pineapple that would have cost half a guinea at that season (only McPhee has his own way of getting such things), and a Canton china bowl of dried lichis, and a glass plate of preserved ginger, and a small jar of sacred and imperial chow-chow that perfumed the room. McPhee gets it from a Dutchman in Java, and I think he doctors it with liqueurs. But the crown of the feast was some Madeira of the kind you can only come by if you know the wine and the man. A little maize-wrapped fig of clotted Madeira cigars went with the wine, and the rest was a pale-blue smoky silence; Janet, in her splendour, smiling on us two, and patting McPhee’s hand.

‘We’ll drink,’ said McPhee slowly, rubbing his chin, ‘to the eternal damnation o’ Holdock, Steiner, and Chase.’

Of course I answered ‘Amen,’ though I had made seven pound ten shillings out of the firm. McPhee’s enemies were mine, and I was drinking his Madeira.

‘Ye’ve heard nothing?’ said Janet. ‘Not a word, not a whisper?’

‘Not a word, nor a whisper. On my word, I have not.’

‘Tell him, Mac,’ said she; and that is another proof of Janet’s goodness and wifely love. A smaller woman would have babbled first, but Janet is five feet nine in her stockings.

‘We’re rich,’ said McPhee. I shook hands all round.

‘We’re damned rich,’ he added. I shook hands all round a second time.

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‘I’ll go to sea no more—unless—there’s no sayin’—a private yacht, maybe—wi’, a small an’ handy auxiliary.’

‘It’s not enough for that,’ said Janet. ‘We’re fair rich—well-to-do, but no more. A new gown for church, and one for the theatre. We’ll have it made west.’

‘How much is it?’ I asked.

‘Twenty-five thousand pounds.’ I drew a long breath. ‘An’ I’ve been earnin’ twenty-five an’ twenty pound a month!’ The last words came away with a roar, as though the wide world was conspiring to beat him down.

‘All this time I’m waiting,’ I said. ‘I know nothing since last September. Was it left you?’

They laughed aloud together. ‘It was left,’ said McPhee, choking. ‘Ou, ay, it was left. That’s vara good. Of course it was left. Janet, d’ye note that? It was left. Now if you’d put that in your pamphlet it would have been vara jocose. It was left.’ He slapped his thigh and roared till the wine quivered in the decanter.

The Scotch are a great people, but they are apt to hang over a joke too long, particularly when no one can see the point but themselves.

‘When I rewrite my pamphlet I’ll put it in, McPhee. Only I must know something more first.’

McPhee thought for the length of half a cigar, while Janet caught my eye and led it round the room to one new thing after another—the new vine-pattern carpet, the new chiming rustic clock between the models of the Colombo outrigger-boats, the new inlaid sideboard with a purple cutglass flower-stand, the fender of gilt and brass, and last, the new black-and-gold piano.

‘In October o’ last year the Board sacked me,’ began McPhee. ‘In October o’ last year the Breslau came in for winter overhaul. She’d been runnin’ eight months—two hunder an’ forty days—an’ I was three days makin’ up my indents, when she went to dry-dock. All told, mark you, it was this side o’ three hunder pound—to be preceese, two hunder an’ eighty-six pound four shillings. There’s not another man could ha’ nursed the Breslau for eight months to that tune. Never again—never again! They may send their boats to the bottom, for aught I care.’

‘There’s no need,’ said Janet softly. ‘We’re done wi’ Holdock, Steiner, and Chase.’

‘It’s irritatin’, Janet, it’s just irritatin’. I ha’ been justified from first to last, as the world knows, but—but I canna forgie ’em. Ay, wisdom is justified o’ her children; an’ any other man than me wad ha’ made the indent eight hunder. Hay was our skipper—ye’ll have met him. They shifted him to the Torgau, an’ bade me wait for the Breslau under young Bannister. Ye’ll obsairve there’d been a new election on the Board. I heard the shares were sellin’ hither an’ yon, an’ the major part of the Board was new to me. The old Board would ne’er ha’ done it. They trusted me. But the new Board was all for reorganisation. Young Steiner—Steiner’s son—the Jew, was at the bottom of it, an’ they did not think it worth their while to send me word. The first I knew—an’ I was Chief Engineer—was the notice of the Line’s winter sailin’s, and the Breslau timed for sixteen days between port an’ port! Sixteen days, man! She’s a good boat, but eighteen is her summer time, mark you. Sixteen was sheer flytin’, kitin’ nonsense, an’ so I told young Bannister.

‘“We’ve got to make it,” he said. “Ye should not ha’ sent in a three hunder pound indent.”

‘“Do they look for their boats to be run on air?” I said. “The Board is daft.”

‘“Fen tell ’em so,” he says. “I’m a married man, an’ my fourth’s on the ways now, she says.”’

‘A boy—wi’ red hair,’ Janet put in. Her own hair is the splendid red-gold that goes with a creamy complexion.

‘My word, I was an angry man that day! Forbye I was fond o’ the old Breslau, I looked for a little consideration from the Board after twenty years’ service. There was Board meetin’ on Wednesday; an’ I sat overnight in the engine-room, takin’ figures to support my case. Well, I put it fair and square before them all. “Gentlemen,” I said, “I’ve run the Breslau eight seasons, an’ I believe there’s no fault to find wi’ my wark. But if ye haud to this”—I waggled the advertisement at ’em—“this that I’ve never heard of till I read it at breakfast, I do assure you on my professional reputation, she can never do it. That is to say, she can for a while, but at a risk no thinkin’ man would run.”’

‘“What the deil d’ye suppose we pass your indent for?” says old Holdock. “Man, we’re spendin’ money like watter.”

‘“I’ll leave it in the Board’s hands,” I said, “if two hunder an’ eighty-seven pound is anything beyond right and reason for eight months.” I might ha’ saved my breath, for the Board was new since the last election, an’ there they sat, the damned deevidend-huntin’ ship-chandlers, deaf as the adders o’ Scripture.

‘“We must keep faith wi’ the public,” said young Steiner.

‘“Keep faith wi’ the Breslau then,” I said. “She’s served you well, an’ your father before you. She’ll need her bottom restiffenin’, an’ new bed-plates, an’ turnin’ out the forward boilers, an’ re-borin’ all three cylinders, an’ refacin’ all guides, to begin with. It’s a three months’ job.”

‘“Because one employé is afraid?” says young Steiner. “Maybe a piano in the Chief Engineer’s cabin would be more to the point.”

‘I crushed my cap in my hands, an’ thanked God we’d no bairns an’ a bit put by.

‘“Understand, gentlemen,” I said. “If the Breslau is made a sixteen-day boat, ye’ll find another engineer.”

‘“Bannister makes no objection,” said Holdock.

‘“I’m speakin’ for myself,” I said. “Bannister has bairns.” An’ then I lost my temper. “Ye can run her into Hell an’ out again if ye pay pilotage,” I said, “but ye run without me.”

‘“That’s insolence,” said young Steiner.

‘“At your pleasure,” I said, turnin’ to go.

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‘“Ye can consider yourself dismissed. We must preserve discipline among our employés,” said old Holdock, an’ he looked round to see that the Board was with him. They knew nothin’—God forgie ’em—an’ they nodded me out o’ the Line after twenty years—after twenty years.

‘I went out an’ sat down by the hall porter to get my wits again. I’m thinkin’ I swore at the Board. Then auld McRimmon—o’ McNaughton and McRimmon—came oot o’ his office, that’s on the same floor, an’ looked at me, proppin’ up one eyelid wi’ his forefinger. Ye know they call him the Blind Deevil, forbye he’s onythin’ but blind, an’ no deevil in his dealin’s wi’ me—McRimmon o’ the Black Bird Line.

‘“What’s here, Mister McPhee?” said he.

‘I was past prayin’ for by then. “A Chief Engineer sacked after twenty years’ service because he’ll not risk the Breslau on the new timin’, an’ be damned to ye, McRimmon,” I said.

‘The auld man sucked in his lips an’ whistled. “Ah,” said he, “the new timin’. I see! “He doddered into the Board-room I’d just left, an’ the Dandie-dog that is just his blind man’s leader stayed wi’ me. That was providential. In a minute he was back again. “Ye’ve cast your bread on the watter, M’Phee, an’ be damned to you,” he says. “Whaur’s my dog? My word, is he on your knee? There’s more discernment in a dog than a Jew. What garred ye curse your Board, McPhee? It’s expensive.”

‘“They’ll pay more for the Breslau,” I said. “Get off my knee, ye smotherin’ beastie.”

‘“Bearin’s hot, eh?” said McRimmon. “It’s thirty year since a man daur curse me to my face. Time was I’d ha’ cast ye doon the stairway for that.’

‘“Forgie’s all!” I said. He was wearin’ to eighty, as I knew. “I was wrong, McRimmon; but when a man’s shown the door for doin’ his plain duty he’s not always ceevil.”

‘“So I hear,” says McRimmon. “Ha’ ye ony objection to a tramp freighter? It’s only fifteen a month, but they say the Blind Deevil feeds a man better than others. She’s my Kite. Come ben. Ye can thank Dandie, here. I’m no used to thanks. An’ noo,” says he, “what possessed ye to throw up your berth wi’ Holdock?”

‘“The new timin’,” said I. “The Breslau will not stand it.”

‘“Hoot, oot,” said he. “Ye might ha’ crammed her a little—enough to show ye were drivin’ her—an’ brought her in twa days behind. What’s easier than to say ye slowed for bearin’s, eh? All my men do it, and—I believe ’em.”

‘“McRimmon,” says I, “what’s her virginity to a lassie?”

‘He puckered his dry face an’ twisted in his chair. “The warld an’ a’,” says he. “My God, the vara warld an’ a’! But what ha’ you or me to do wi’ virginity, this late along?”

‘“This,” I said. “There’s just one thing that each one of us in his trade or profession will not do for ony consideration whatever. If I run to time I run to time, barrin’ always the risks o’ the high. seas. Less than that, under God, I have not done. More than that, by God, I will not do! There’s no trick o’ the trade I’m not acquaint wi’——”

‘“So I’ve heard,” says McRimmon, dry as a biscuit.

‘“But yon matter o’ fair runnin’ ’s just my Shekinah, ye’ll understand. I daurna tamper wi’ that. Nursing weak engines is fair craftsmanship; but what the Board ask is cheatin’, wi’ the risk o’ manslaughter addeetional. Ye’ll note I know my business.”

‘There was some more talk, an’ next week I went aboard the Kite, twenty-five hunder ton, ordinary compound, a Black Bird tramp. The deeper she rode, the better she’d steam. I’ve snapped as much as nine out of her, but eight point three was her fair normal. Good food forward an’ better aft, all indents passed wi’out marginal remarks, the best coal, new donkeys, and good crews. There was nothin’ the old man would not do, except paint. That was his deeficulty. Ye could no more draw paint than his last teeth from him. He’d come down to dock, an’ his boats a scandal all along the watter, an’ he’d whine an’ cry an’ say they looked all he could desire. Every owner has his non plus ultra, I’ve obsairved. Paint was McRimmon’s. But you could get round his engines without riskin’ your life, an’, for all his blindness, I’ve seen him reject five flawed intermediates, one after the other, on a nod from me; an’ his cattle-fittin’s were guaranteed for North Atlantic winter weather. Ye ken what that means? McRimmon an’ the Black Bird Line, God bless him!

‘Oh, I forgot to say she would lie down an’ fill her forward deck green, an’ snore away into a twenty-knot gale forty-five to the minute, three an’ a half knots, the engines runnin’ sweet an’ true as a bairn breathin’ in its sleep. Bell was skipper; an’ forbye there’s no love lost between crews an’ owners, we were fond o’ the auld Blind Deevil an’ his dog, an’ I’m thinkin’ he liked us. He was worth the windy side o’ twa million sterling’, an’ no friend to his own blood-kin. Money’s an awfu’ thing—overmuch—for a lonely man.

‘I’d taken her out twice, there an’ back again, when word came o’ the Breslau’s breakdown, just as I prophesied. Calder was her engineer—he’s not fit to run a tug down the Solent—and he fairly lifted the engines off the bed-plates, an’ they fell down in heaps, by what I heard. So she filled from the after-stuffin’-box to the after-bulkhead, an’ lay star-gazing, with seventy-nine squealin’ passengers in the saloon, till the Camaralzaman o’ Ramsey and Gold’s Carthagena Line gave her a tow to the tune o’ five thousand seven hunder an’ forty pound, wi’ costs in the Admiralty Court. She was helpless, ye’ll understand, an’ in no case to meet ony weather. Five thousand seven hunder an’ forty pounds, with costs, an’ exclusive o’ new engines! They’d ha’ done better to ha’ kept me—on the old timin’.

‘But, even so, the new Board were all for retrenchment. Young Steiner, the Jew, was at the bottom of it. They sacked men right an’ left that would not eat the dirt the Board gave ’em. They cut down repairs; they fed crews wi’ leavin’s and scrapin’s; and, reversin’ McRimmon’s practice, they hid their defeeciencies wi’ paint an’ cheap gildin’. Quem Deus vult perrdere prrius dementat, ye remember.

‘In January we went to dry-dock, an’ in the next dock lay the Grotkau, their big freighter that was the Dolabella o’ Piegan, Piegan, and Walsh’s Line in ’84—a Clyde-built iron boat, a flat-bottomed, pigeon-breasted, under-engined, bullnosed bitch of a five thousand ton freighter, that would neither steer, nor steam, nor stop when ye asked her. Whiles she’d attend to her helm, whiles she’d take charge, whiles she’d wait to scratch herself, an’ whiles she’d buttock into a dockhead. But Holdock and Steiner had bought her cheap, and painted her all over like the Hoor o’ Babylon, an’ we called her the Hoor for short.’ (By the way, McPhee kept to that name throughout the rest of his tale; so you must read accordingly.) ‘I went to see young Bannister—he had to take what the Board gave him, an’ he an’ Calder were shifted together from the Breslau to this abortion—an’ talkin’ to him I went into the dock under her. Her plates were pitted till the men that were paint, paint, paintin’ her laughed at it. But the warst was at the last. She’d a great clumsy iron nineteen-foot Thresher propeller—Aitcheson designed the Kite’s—and just on the tail o’ the shaft, before the boss, was a red weepin’ crack ye could ha’ put a penknife to. Man, it was an awful crack!

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‘“When d’ye ship a new tail-shaft?” I said to Bannister.

‘He knew what I meant. “Oh, yon’s a superfeecial flaw,” says he, not lookin’ at me.

‘“Superfeecial Gehenna!” I said. “Ye’ll not take her oot wi’ a solution o’ continuity that like.”

‘“They’ll putty it up this evening,” he said. “I’m a married man, an’—ye used to know the Board.”

‘I e’en said what was gie’d me in that hour. Ye know how a dry-dock echoes. I saw young Steiner standin’ listenin’ above me, an’, man, he used language provocative of a breach o’ the peace. I was a spy and a disgraced employé, an’ a corrupter o’ young Bannister’s morals, an’ he’d prosecute me for libel. He went away when I ran up the steps—I’d ha’ thrown him into the dock if I’d caught him—an’ there I met McRimmon, wi’ Dandie pullin’ on the chain, guidin’ the auld man among the railway lines.

‘“McPhee,” said he, “ye’re no paid to fight Holdock, Steiner, Chase, and Company, Limited, when ye meet. What’s wrong between you.”

‘“No more than a tail-shaft rotten as a kailstump. For ony sakes go and look, McRimmon. It’s a comedietta.”

‘“I’m feared o’ yon conversational Hebrew,” said he. “Whaur’s the flaw, an’ what like?”

‘“A seven-inch crack just behind the boss. There’s no power on earth will fend it just jarrin’ off.”

‘“When?”

‘“That’s beyon’ my knowledge,” I said.

‘“So it is; so it is,” said McRimmon. “We’ve all oor leemitations. Ye’re certain it was a crack?”

‘“Man, it’s a crevasse,” I said, for there were no words to describe the magnitude of it. “An’ young Bannister’s sayin’ it’s no more than a superfeecial flaw!”

‘“Weel, I tak’ it oor business is to mind oor business. If ye’ve ony friends aboard her, McPhee, why not bid them to a bit dinner at Radley’s?”

‘“I was thinkin’ o’ tea in the cuddy,” I said. “Engineers o’ tramp freighters cannot afford hotel prices.”

‘“Na! na!” says the auld man, whimperin’. “Not the cuddy. They’ll laugh at my Kite, for she’s no plastered with paint like the Hoor. Bid them to Radley’s, McPhee, an’ send me the bill. Thank Dandie; here, man. I’m no used to thanks.” Then he turned him round. (I was just thinkin’ the vara same thing.)

‘“Mister McPhee,” said he, “this is not senile dementia.”

‘“Preserve’s!” I said, clean jumped oot o’ mysel’. “I was but thinkin’ you’re fey, McRimmon.”

‘Dod, the auld deevil laughed till he nigh sat down on Dandie. “Send me the bill,” says he. “I’m lang past champagne, but tell me how it tastes the morn.”

‘Bell and I bid young Bannister and Calder to dinner at Radley’s. They’ll have no laughin’ an’ singin’ there, but we took a private room—like yacht-owners fra’ Cowes.’

McPhee grinned all over, and lay back to think.

‘And then?’ said I.

‘We were no drunk in ony preceese sense o’ the word, but Radley’s showed me the dead men. There were six magnums o’ dry champagne an’ maybe a bottle o’ whisky.’

‘Do you mean to tell me that you four got away with a magnum and a half apiece, besides whisky?’ I demanded.

McPhee looked down upon me from between his shoulders with toleration.

‘Man, we were not settin’ down to drink,’ he said. ‘They no more than made us wutty. To be sure, young Bannister laid his head on the table an’ greeted like a bairn, an’ Calder was all for callin’ on Steiner at two in the morn’ an’ painting him galley-green; but they’d been drinkin’ the afternoon. Lord, how they twa cursed the Board, an’ the Grotkau, an’ the tailshaft, an’ the engines, an’ a’! They didna talk o’ superfeecial flaws that night. I mind young Bannister an’ Calder shakin’ hands on a bond to be revenged on the Board at ony reasonable cost this side o’ losing their certificates. Now mark ye how false economy ruins business. The Board fed them like swine (I have good reason to know it), an’ I’ve obsairved wi’ my ain people that if ye touch his stomach ye wauken the deil in a Scot. Men will tak’ a dredger across the Atlantic if they’re well fed, and fetch her somewhere on the broadside o’ the Americas; but bad food’s bad service the warld over.

‘The bill went to McRimmon, an’ he said no more to me till the week-end, when I was at him for more paint, for we’d heard the Kite was chartered Liverpool-side.

‘“Bide whaur ye’re put,” said the Blind Deevil. “Man, do ye wash in champagne? The Kite’s no leavin’ here till I gie the order, an’—how am I to waste paint on her, wi’ the Lammergeyer docked for who knows how long, an’ a’!”

‘She was our big freighter—McIntyre was engineer—an’ I knew she’d come from overhaul not three months. That morn I met McRimmon’s head-clerk ye’ll not know him—fair bitin’ his nails off wi’ mortification.

‘“The auld man’s gone gyte,” says he. “He’s withdrawn the Lammergeyer.”

‘“Maybe he has reasons,” says I.

‘“Reasons! He’s daft!”

‘“He’ll no be daft till he begins to paint,” I said.

‘“That’s just what he’s done—and South American freights higher than we’ll live to see them again. He’s laid her up to paint her—to paint her—to paint her!” says the little clerk, dancin’ like a hen on a hot plate. “Five thousand ton o’ potential freight rottin’ in drydock, man; an’ he dolin’ the paint out in quarterpound tins, for it cuts him to the heart, mad though he is. An’ the Grotkau—the Grotkau of all conceivable bottoms—soaking up every pound that should be ours at Liverpool!”

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‘I was staggered wi’ this folly—considerin’ the dinner at Radley’s in connection wi’ the same.

‘“Ye may well stare, McPhee,” says the headclerk. “There’s engines, an’ rollin’ stock, an’ iron bridges—d’ye know what freights are noo?—an’ pianos, an’ millinery, an’ fancy Brazil cargo o’ every species pourin’ into the Grotkau—the Grotkau o’ the Jerusalem firm—and the Lammergeyer’s bein’ painted!”

‘Losh, I thought he’d drop dead wi’ the fits.

‘I could say no more than “Obey orders, if ye break owners,” but on the Kite we believed McRimmon was mad; an’ McIntyre of the Lammergeyer was for lockin’ him up by some patent legal process he’d found in a book o’ maritime law. An’ a’ that week South American freights rose an’ rose. It was sinfu’!

‘Syne Bell got orders to tak’ the Kite round to Liverpool in water-ballast, and McRimmon came to bid’s good-bye, yammerin’ an’ whinin’ o’er the acres o’ paint he’d lavished on the Lammergeyer.

‘“I look to you to retrieve it,” says he. “I look to you to reimburse me! ’Fore God, why are ye not cast off? Are ye dawdlin’ in dock for a purpose.?”

‘“What odds, McRimmon?” says Bell. “We’ll be a day behind the fair at Liverpool. The Grotkau’s got all the freight that might ha’ been ours an’ the Lammergeyer’s.” McRimmon laughed an’ chuckled—the pairfect eemage o’ senile dementia. Ye ken his eyebrows wark up an’ down like a gorilla’s.

‘“Ye’re under sealed orders,” said he, tee-heein’ an’ scratchin’ himself. “Yon’s they”—to be opened seriatim.

‘Says Bell, shufflin’ the envelopes when the auld man had gone ashore: “We’re to creep round a’ the south coast, standin’ in for orders—this weather, too. There’s no question o’ his lunacy now.”

‘Well, we buttocked the auld Kite along—vara bad weather we made—standin’ in alongside for telegraphic orders, which are the curse o’ skippers. Syne we made over to Holyhead, an’ Bell opened the last envelope for the last instructions. I was wi’ him in the cuddy, an’ he threw it over to me, cryin’: “Did ye ever know the like, Mac?”

‘I’ll no say what McRimmon had written, but he was far from mad. There was a sou’-wester brewin’ when we made the mouth o’ the Mersey, a bitter cold morn wi’ a gray-green sea and a gray-green sky—Liverpool weather, as they say; an’ there we lay choppin’, an’ the men swore. Ye canna keep secrets aboard ship. They thought McRimmon was mad, too.

‘Syne we saw the Grotkau rollin’ oot on the top o’ flood, deep an’ double deep, wi’ her newpainted funnel an’ her new-painted boats an’ a’. She looked her name, an’, moreover, she coughed like it. Calder tauld me at Radley’s what ailed his engines, but my own ear would ha’ told me twa mile awa’, by the beat o’ them. Round we came, plungin’ an’ squatterin’ in her wake, an’ the wind cut wi’ good promise o’ more to come. By six it blew hard but clear, an’ before the middle watch it was a sou’wester in airnest.

‘“She’ll edge into Ireland, this gait,” says Bell. I was with him on the bridge, watchin’ the Grotkau’s port light. Ye canna see green so far as red, or we’d ha’ kept to leeward. We’d no passengers to consider, an’ (all eyes being on the Grotkau) we fair walked into a liner rampin’ home to Liverpool. Or, to be preceese, Bell no more than twisted the Kite oot from under her bows, and there was a little damnin’ betwix’ the twa bridges. Noo a passenger’—McPhee regarded me benignantly—‘wad ha’ told the papers that as soon as he got to the Customs. We stuck to the Grotkau’s tail that night an’ the next twa days—she slowed down to five knots by my reckonin’—and we lapped along the weary way to the Fastnet.’

‘But you don’t go by the Fastnet to get to any South American port, do you?’ I said.

‘We do not. We prefer to go as direct as may be. But we were followin’ the Grotkau, an’ she’d no walk into that gale for ony consideration. Knowin’ what I did to her discredit, I couldna blame young Bannister. It was warkin’ up to a North Atlantic winter gale, snow an’ sleet an’ a perishin’ wind. Eh, it was like the Deil walkin’ abroad o’ the surface o’ the deep, whuppin’ off the top o’ the waves before he made up his mind. They’d bore up against it so far, but the minute she was clear o’ the Skelligs she fair tucked up her skirts an’ ran for it by Dunmore Head. Wow, she rolled!

‘“She’ll be makin’ Smerwick,” says Bell.

‘“She’d ha’ tried for Ventry by noo if she meant that,” I said.

‘“They’ll roll the funnel oot o’ her, this gait,” says Bell. “Why canna Bannister keep her head to sea?”

‘“It’s the tail-shaft. Ony rollin’ ’s better than pitchin’ wi’ superfeecial cracks in the tail-shaft. Calder knows that much,” I said.

‘“It’s ill wark retreevin’ steamers this weather,” said Bell. His beard and whiskers were frozen to his oilskin, an’ the spray was white on the weather side of him. Pairfect North Atlantic winter weather!

‘One by one the sea raxed away our three boats, an’ the davits were crumpled like rams’ horns.

‘“Yon’s bad,” said Belt, at the last. “Ye canna pass a hawser wi’oot a boat.” Bell was a vara judeecious man—for an Aberdonian.

‘I’m not one that fashes himself for eventualities outside the engine-room, so I e’en slipped down betwixt waves to see how the Kite fared. Man, she’s the best geared boat of her class that ever left the Clyde! Kinloch, my second, knew her as well as I did. I found him dryin’ his socks on the main steam, an’ combin’ his whiskers wi’ the comb Janet gied me last year, for the warld an’ a’ as though we were in port. I tried the feed, speered into the stoke-hole, thumbed all bearin’s, spat on the thrust for luck, gied ’em my blessin’, an’ took Kinloch’s socks before I went up to the bridge again.

‘Then Bell handed me the wheel, an’ went below to warm himself. When he came up my gloves were frozen to the spokes, an’ the ice clicked over my eyelids. Pairfect North Atlantic winter weather, as I was sayin’.

‘The gale blew out by night, but we lay in smotherin’ cross-seas that made the auld Kite chatter from stem to stern. I slowed to thirty-four, I mind—no, thirty-seven. There was a long swell the morn, an’ the Grotkau was headin’ into it west awa’.

‘“She’ll win to Rio yet, tail-shaft or no tailshaft,” says Bell.

‘“Last night shook her,” I said. “She’ll jar it off yet, mark my word.”

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‘We were then, maybe, a hunder and fifty mile west-sou’west o’ Slyne Head, by dead reckonin’. Next day we made a hunder an’ thirty—ye’ll note we were not racin’ boats—an’ the day after a hunder and sixty-one, an’ that made us, we’ll say, Eighteen an’ a bittock west, an’ maybe Fifty-one an’ a bittock north, crossin’ all the North Atlantic liner lanes on the long slant, always in sight o’ the Grotkau, creepin’ up by night and fallin’ awa’ by day. After the gale, it was cold weather wi’ dark nights.

‘I was in the engine-room on Friday night, just before the middle watch, when Bell whustled doon the tube: “She’s done it”; an’ up I came.

‘The Grotkau was just a fair distance south, an’ one by one she ran up the three red lights in a vertical line – the sign of a steamer not under control.

‘“Yon’s a tow for us,” said Bell, lickin’ his chops. “She’ll be worth more than the Breslau. We’ll go down to her, McPhee! “

‘“Bide a while,” I said. “The sea’s fair throng wi’ ships here.”

‘“Reason why,” said Bell. “It’s a fortune gaun beggin’. What d’ye think, man?”

‘“Gie her till daylight. She knows we’re here. If Bannister needs help he’ll loose a rocket.”

‘“Wha told ye Bannister’s need? We’ll ha’ some rag-an’-bone tramp snappin’ her up under oor nose,” said he; an’ he put the wheel over. We were gaun slow.

‘“Bannister wad like better to go home on a liner an’ eat in the saloon. Mind ye what they said o’ Holdock and Steiner’s food that night at Radley’s? Keep her awa’, man—keep her awa’. A tow’s a tow, but a derelict’s big salvage.”

‘“E-eh!” said Bell. “Yon’s an inshot o’ yours, Mac. I love ye like a brother. We’ll bide whaur we are till daylight”; an’ he kept her awa’.

‘Syne up went a rocket forward, an’ twa on the bridge, an’ a blue light aft. Syne a tar-barrel forward again.

‘“She’s sinkin’,” said Bell. “It’s all gaun, an’ I’ll get no more than a pair o’ night-glasses for pickin’ up young Bannister—the fool!”

‘“Fair an’ soft again,” I said. “She’s signallin’ to the south of us. Bannister knows as well as I that one rocket would bring the Kite. He’ll no be wastin’ fireworks for nothin’. Hear her ca’!”

‘The Grotkau whustled. an’ whustled for five minutes, an’ then there were more fireworks—a regular exhibeetion.

‘“That’s no for men in the regular trade,” says Bell. “Ye’re right, Mac. That’s for a cuddy full o’ passengers.” He blinked through the nightglasses where it lay a bit thick to southward.

‘“What d’ye make of it? “I said.

‘“Liner,” he says. “Yon’s her rocket. Ou, ay; they’ve waukened the gold-strapped skipper, an’—noo they’ve waukened the passengers. They’re turnin’ on the electrics, cabin by cabin. Yon’s anither rocket. They’re comin’ up to help the perishin’ in deep watters.”

‘“Gie me the glass,” I said. But Bell danced on the bridge, clean dementit. “Mails—mails—mails!” said he. “Under contract wi’ the Government for the due conveyance o’ the mails; an’ as such, Mac, ye’ll note, she may rescue life at sea, but she canna tow!—she canna tow! Yon’s her night-signal. She’ll be up in half an hour!”

“Gowk! “I said, “an’ we blazin’ here wi’ all oor lights. Oh, Bell, but ye’re a fool.”

‘He tumbled off the bridge forward, an’ I tumbled aft, an’ before ye could wink our lights were oot, the engine-room hatch was covered, an’ we lay pitch-dark, watchin’ the lights o’ the liner come up that the Grotkau ’d been signallin’ for. Twenty knot she came, every cabin lighted, an’ her boats swung awa’. It was grandly done, an’ in the inside of an hour. She stopped like Mrs. Holdock’s machine; doon went the gangway, doon went the boats, an’ in ten minutes we heard the passengers cheerin’, an’ awa’ she fled.

‘“They’ll tell o’ this all the days they live,” said Bell. “A rescue at sea by night, as pretty as a play. Young Bannister an’ Calder will be drinkin’ in the saloon, an’ six months hence the Board o’ Trade ’ll gie the skipper a pair o’ binoculars. It’s vara philanthropic all round.”

‘We lay by till day—ye may think we waited for it wi’ sore eyes—an’ there sat the Grotkau, her nose a bit cocked, just leerin’ at us. She looked pairfectly rideeculous.

‘“She’ll be fillip’ aft,” says Bell; “for why is she doon by the stern? The tail-shaft’s punched a hole in her, an’-we’ve no boats. There’s three hunder thousand pound sterlin’, at a conservative estimate, droonin’ before our eyes. What’s to do?” An’ his bearin’s got hot again in a minute; for he was an incontinent man.

‘“Run her as near as ye daur,” I said: “Gie me a jacket an’ a life-line, an’ I’ll swum for it.” There was a bit lump of a sea, an’ it was cold in the wind—vara cold; but they’d gone overside like passengers, young Bannister an’ Calder an’ a’, leaving the gangway doon on the lee-side. It would ha’ been a flyin’ in the face o’ manifest Providence to overlook the invitation. We were within fifty yards o’ her while Kinloch was garmin’ me all over wi’ oil behind the galley; an’ as we ran past I went outboard for the salvage o’ three hunder thousand pound. Man, it was perishin’ cold, but I’d done my job judgmatically, an’ came scrapin’ all along her side slap on to the lower gratin’ o’ the gangway. No one more astonished than me, I assure ye. Before I’d caught my breath I’d skinned both my knees on the gratin’, an’ was climbin’ up before she rolled again. I made my line fast to the rail, an’ squattered aft to young Bannister’s cabin, whaur I dried me wi’ everything in his bunk, an’ put on every conceivable sort o’ rig I found till the blood was circulatin’. Three pair drawers, I mind I found—to begin upon—an’ I needed them all. It was the coldest cold I remember in all my experience.

‘Syne I went aft to the engine-room. The Grotkau sat on her own tail, as they say. She was vara short-shafted, an’ her gear was all aft. There was four or five foot o’ watter in the engine-room slummockin’ to and fro, black an’ greasy; maybe there was six foot., The stokehold doors were screwed home, an’ the stokehold was tight enough; but for a minute the mess in the engine-room deceived me. Only for a minute, though, an’ that was because I was not, in a manner o’ speakin’, as calm as ordinar’. I looked again to mak’ sure. ’Twas just black wi’ bilge: dead watter that must ha’ come in fortuitously, ye ken.’

‘McPhee, I’m only a passenger,’ I said, ‘but you don’t persuade me that six foot o’ water can come into an engine-room fortuitously.’

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‘Wha’s tryin’ to persuade one way or the other?’ McPhee retorted. ‘I’m statin’ the facts o’ the case—the simple, natural facts. Six or seven foot o’ dead watter in the engine-room is a vara depressin’ sight if ye think there’s like to be more comin’; but I did not consider that such was likely, and so, ye’ll note, I was not depressed.’

‘That’s all very well, but I want to know about the water,’ I said.

‘I’ve told ye. There was six feet or more there, wi’ Calder’s cap floatin’ on top.’

‘Where did it come from?’

‘Weel, in the confusion o’ things after the propeller had dropped off an’ the engines were racin’ an’ a’, it’s vara possible that Calder might ha’ lost it off his head an’ no troubled himself to pick it up again. I remember seein’ that cap on him at Southampton.’

‘I don’t want to know about the cap. I’m asking where the water came from, and what it was doing there, and why you were so certain that it wasn’t a leak, McPhee?’

‘For good reason—for good an’ sufficient reason.’

‘Give it to me, then.’

‘Weel, it’s a reason that does not properly concern myself only. To be preceese, I’m of opinion that it was due, the watter, in part to an error o’ judgment in another man. We can a’ mak’ mistakes.’

‘Oh, I beg your pardon! Go on.

‘I got me to the rail again, an’, “What’s wrang?” said Bell, hailin’.

‘“She’ll do,” I said. “Send’s o’er a hawser, an’ a man to help steer. I’ll pull him in by the life-line.”

‘I could see heads bobbin’ back an’ forth, an’ a whuff or two o’ strong words. Then Bell said: “They’ll not trust themselves—one of ’em—in this watter—except Kinloch, an’ I’ll no spare him.”

‘“The more salvage to me, then,” I said. “I’ll make shift solo.”

‘Says one dock-rat at this: “D’ye think she’s safe?’

‘“I’ll guarantee ye nothing,” I said, “except, maybe, a hammerin’ for keepin’ me this long.”

‘Then he sings out: “There’s no more than one life-belt, an’ they canna find it, or I’d come.”

‘“Throw him over, the Jezebel,” I said, for I was oot o’ patience; an’ they took haud o’ that volunteer before he knew what was in store, and hove him over in the bight of the life-line. So I e’en hauled him up on the sag of it, hand-over-fist—a vara welcome recruit when I’d tilted the salt watter oot of him; for, by the way, he could not swum.

‘Syne they bent a twa-inch rope to the life-line, an’ a hawser to that, an’ I led the rope o’er the drum of a hand-winch forward, an’ we sweated the hawser inboard an’ made it fast to the Grotkau’s bitts.

‘Bell brought the Kite so close I feared she’d roll in an’ do the Grotkau’s plates a mischief. He hove anither life-line to me, an’ went astern, an’ we had all the weary winch-work to do again wi’ a second hawser. For all that, Bell was right: we’d a long tow before us, an’ though Providence had helped us that far, there was no sense in leavin’ too much to its keepin’. When the second hawser was fast, I was wet wi’ sweat, an’ I cried Bell to tak’ up his slack an’ go home. The other man was by way o’ helpin’ the work wi’ askin’ for drinks, but I e’en told him he must hand reef an’ steer, beginnin’ with steerin’, for I was goin’ to turn in. He steered—ou, ay, he steered, in a manner o’ speakin’. At the least, he grippit the spokes an’ twiddled ’em an’ looked wise, but I doubt if the Hoor ever felt it. I turned in there an’ then to young Bannister’s bunk, an’ slept past expression. I waukened ragin’ wi’ hunger, a fair lump o’ sea runnin’, the Kite snorin’ awa’ four knots; an’ the Grotkau slappin’ her nose under, an’ yawin’ an’ standin’ over at discretion. She was a most disgracefu’ tow. But the shameful thing of all was the food. I raxed me a meal fra galley-shelves an’ pantries an’ lazareetes an’ cubbyholes that I would not ha’ gied to the mate of a Cardiff collier; an’ ye ken we say a Cardiff mate will eat clinkers to save waste. I’m sayin’ it was simply vile! The crew had written what they thought of it on the new paint o’ the fo’c’sle, but I had not a decent soul wi’ me to complain on.

There was nothing’ for me to do save watch the hawsers an’ the Kite’s tail squatterin’ down in white watter when she lifted to a sea; so I got steam on the after donkey-pump, an’ pumped oot the engineroom. There’s no sense in leavin’ watter loose in a ship. When she was dry, I went doon the shaft-tunnel, an’ found she was leakin’ a little through the stuffin’-box, but nothin’ to make wark. The propeller had e’en jarred off, as I knew it must, an’ Calder had been waitin’ for it to go wi’ his hand on the gear. He told me as much when I met him ashore. There was nothin’ started or strained. It had just slipped awa’ to the bed o’ the Atlantic as easy as a man dyin’ wi’ due warnin’—a most providential business for all concerned. Syne I took stock o’ the Grotkau’s upper works. Her boats had been smashed on the davits, an’ here an’ there was the rail missin’, an’ a ventilator or two had fetched awa’, an’ the bridge-rails were bent by the seas; but her hatches were tight, and she’d taken no sort of harm. Dod, I came to hate her like a human bein’, for I was eight weary days aboard, starvin’—ay, starvin’—within a cable’s length o’ plenty. All day I lay in the bunk reading the Woman-Hater, the grandest book Charlie Reade ever wrote, an’ pickin’ a toothful here an’ there. It was weary, weary work. Eight days, man, I was aboard the Grotkau, an’ not one full meal did I make. Sma’ blame her crew would not stay by her. The other man? Oh, I warked him to keep him crack. I warked him wi’ a vengeance.

‘It came on to blow when we fetched soundin’s, an’ that kept me standin’ by the hawsers, lashed to the capstan, breathin’ betwixt green seas. I near died o’ cauld an’ hunger, for the Grotkau towed like a barge, an’ Bell howkit her along through or over. It was vara thick up-Channel, too. We were standin’ in to make some sort o’ light, and we near walked over twa three fishin’-boats, an’ they cried us we were o’er close to Falmouth. Then we were near cut down by a drunken foreign fruiter that was blunderin’ between us an’ the shore, and it got thicker and thicker that night, an’ I could feel by the tow Bell did not know whaur he was. Losh, we knew in the morn, for the wind blew the fog oot like a candle, an’ the sun came clear; and as surely as McRimmon gied me my cheque, the shadow o’ the Eddystone lay across our tow-rope! We were that near—ay, we were that near! Bell fetched the Kite round with a jerk that came close to tearin’ the bitts out o’ the Grotkau; an’ I mind I thanked my Maker in young Bannister’s cabin when we were inside Plymouth breakwater.

‘The first to come aboard was McRimmon, wi’ Dandie. Did I tell you our orders were to take anything found into Plymouth? The auld deil had just come down overnight, puttin’ two an’ two together from what Calder had told him when the liner landed the Grotkau’s men. He had preceesely hit oor time. I’d hailed Bell for something to eat, an’ he sent it o’er in the same boat wi’ McRimmon, when the auld man came to me. He grinned an’ slapped his legs and worked his eyebrows the while I ate.

page 8

‘“How do Holdock, Steiner, and Chase feed their men?” said he.

‘“Ye can see,” I said, knockin’ the top off another beer-bottle. “I did not take to be starved, McRimmon.”

‘“Nor to swim, either,” said he, for Bell had tauld him how I carried the line aboard. “Well, I’m thinkin’ you’ll be no loser. What freight could we ha’ put into the Lammergeyer would equal salvage on four hunder thousand pounds—hull and cargo? Eh, McPhee? This cuts the liver out o’ Holdock, Steiner, Chase, and Company, Limited. Eh, McPhee? An’ I’m sufferin’ from senile dementia now? Eh, McPhee? An’ I’m not daft, am I, till I begin to paint the Lammergeyer? Eh, McPhee? Ye may weel lift your leg, Dandie! I ha’ the laugh o’ them all. Ye found watter in the engine-room?”

‘“To speak wi’oot prejudice,” I said, “there was some watter.”

‘“They thought she was sinkin’ after the propeller went. She filled with extraordinary rapeedity. Calder said it grieved him an’ Bannister to abandon her.”

‘I thought o’ the dinner at Radley’s, an’ what like o’ food I’d eaten for eight days.

‘“It would grieve them sore,” I said.

‘“But the crew would not hear o’ stayin’ an’ takin’ their chances. They’re gaun up an’ down sayin’ they’d ha’ starved first.”

‘“They’d ha’ starved if they’d stayed,” said I.

‘“I tak’ it, fra Calder’s account, there was a mutiny a’most.”

‘“Ye know more than I, McRimmon,” I said. “Speakin’ wi’oot prejudice, for we’re all in the same boat, who opened the bilge-cock?”

‘“Oh, that’s it—is it?” said the auld man, an’ I could see he was surprised. “A bilge-cock, ye say?”

‘“I believe it was a bilge-cock. They were all shut when I came aboard, but someone had flooded the engine-room eight feet over all, and shut it off with the worm-an’-wheel gear from the second gratin’ afterwards.”

‘“Losh!” said McRimmon. “The ineequity o’ man’s beyond belief. But it’s awfu’ discreditable to Holdock, Steiner, and Chase, if that came oot in court.”

‘“It’s just my own curiosity,” I said.

‘“Aweel, Dandie’s afflicted wi’ the same disease. Dandie, strive against curiosity, for it brings a little dog into traps an’ suchlike. Whaur was the Kite when yon painted liner took off the Grotkau’s people? “

‘“Just there or thereabouts,” I said.

‘“An’ which o’ you twa thought to cover your lights? “said he, winkin’.

‘“Dandie,” I said to the dog, “we must both strive against curiosity. It’s an unremunerative business. What’s our chance o’ salvage, Dandie?”

‘He laughed till he choked. “Tak’ what I gie you, McPhee, an’ be content,” he said. “Lord, how a man wastes time when he gets old. Get aboard the Kite, mon, as soon as ye can. I’ve clean forgot there’s a Baltic charter yammerin’ for you at London. That’ll be your last voyage, I’m thinkin’, excep’ by way o’ pleasure.”

‘Steiner’s men were comin’ aboard to take charge an’ tow her round, an’ I passed young Steiner in a boat as I went to the Kite. He looked down his nose; but McRimmon pipes up: “Here’s the man ye owe the Grotkau to—at a price, Steiner—at a price! Let me introduce Mister McPhee to you. Maybe ye’ve met before; but ye’ve vara little luck in keeping your men—ashore or afloat!”

‘Young Steiner looked angry enough to eat him as he chuckled an’ whustled in his dry old throat.

‘“Ye’ve not got your award yet,” Steiner says.

‘“Na, na,” says the auld man, in a screech ye could hear to the Hoe, “but I’ve twa million sterlin’, an’ no bairns, ye Judeeas Apella, if ye mean to fight; an’ I’ll match ye p’und for p’und till the last p’und’s oot. Ye ken me, Steiner? I’m McRimmon o’ McNaughton and McRimmon!”

‘“Dod,” he said betwix’ his teeth, sittin’ back in the boat, “I’ve waited fourteen year to break that Jew-firm, an’ God be thankit I’ll do it now.”

‘The Kite was in the Baltic while the auld man was warkin his warks, but I know the assessors valued the Grotkau, all told, at over three hunder and sixty thousand—her manifest was a treat o’ richness—and McRimmon got a third for salvin’ an abandoned ship. Ye see, there’s vast deeference between towin’ a ship wi’ men on her and pickin’ up a derelict—a vast deeference—in pounds sterlin’. Moreover, twa—three o’ the Grotkau’s crew were burnin’ to testify about food, an’ there was a note o’ Calder to the Board in regard to the tail-shaft that would ha’ been vara damagin’ if it had come into court. They knew better than to fight.

‘Syne the Kite came back, and McRimmon paid off me an’ Bell personally, and the rest of the crew pro rata, I believe it’s ca’ed. My share—oor share, I should say—was just twenty-five thousand pounds sterlin’.’

At this point Janet jumped up and kissed him.

‘Five-and-twenty thousand pound sterlin’. Noo, I’m fra the North, and I’m not the like to fling money awa’ rashly, but I’d gie six months’ pay—one hunder an twenty pound—to know who flooded the engine-room of the Grotkau. I’m fairly well acquaint wi’ McRimmon’s eediosyncrasies, and he’d no hand in it. It was not Calder, for I’ve asked him, an’ he wanted to fight me. It would be in the highest degree unprofessional o’ Calder—not fightin’, but openin’ bilge-cocks—but for a while I thought it was him. Ay, I judged it might be him—under temptation.,

‘What’s your theory?’ I demanded.

‘Weel, I’m inclined to think it was one o’ those singular providences that remind us we’re in the hands o’ Higher Powers.’

‘It couldn’t open and shut itself?’

‘I did not mean that; but some half-starvin’ oiler or, maybe, trimmer must ha’ opened it a while to mak’ sure o’ leavin’ the Grotkau. It’s a demoralisin’ thing to see an engine-room flood up after any accident to the gear—demoralisin’ and deceptive both. Aweel, the man got what he wanted, for they went aboard the liner cryin’ that the Grotkau was sinkin’. But it’s curious to think o’ the consequences. In a’ human probability, he’s bein’ damned in heaps at the present moment aboard another tramp-freighter; an’ here am I, wi’ five-an’-twenty thousand pounds invested, resolute to go to sea no more—providential’s the preceese word—except as a passenger, ye’ll understand, Janet.’

McPhee kept his word. He and Janet went for a voyage as passengers in the first-class saloon. They paid seventy pounds for their berths; and Janet found a very sick woman in the second-class saloon, so that for sixteen days she lived below, and chatted with the stewardesses at the foot of the second-saloon stairs while her patient slept. McPhee was a passenger for exactly twenty-four hours. Then the engineers’ mess—where the oilcloth tables are–joyfully took him to its bosom, and for the rest of the voyage that company was richer by the unpaid services of a highly certificated engineer.

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“WHIST?”

“Can’t make up a four?”

“Poker, then?”

“Never again with you, Robin. ’Tisn’t good enough, old man.”

“Seeking what he may devour,” murmured a third voice from behind a newspaper. “Stop the punkah, and make him go away.”

“Don’t talk of it on a night like this. It’s enough to give a man fits. You’ve no enterprise. Here I’ve taken the trouble to come over after dinner——”

“On the off-chance of skinning some one. I don’t believe you ever crossed a horse for pleasure.”

“That’s true, I never did—and there are only two Johnnies in the Club.”

“They’ve all gone off to the Gaff.”

“Wah! Wah! They must be pretty hard up for amusement. Help me to a split.”

“Split in this weather! Hi, bearer, do burra — burra whiskey-peg lao, and just put all the barf into them that you can find.”

The newspaper came down with a rustle, as the reader said:

“How the deuce d’you expect a man to improve his mind when you two are bukking about drinks? Qui hai! Mera wasti bhi.”

“Oh! you’re alive, are you? I thought pegs would fetch you out of that. Game for a little poker?”

“Poker—poker—red-hot poker! Saveloy, you’re too generous. Can’t you let a man die in peace?”

“Who’s going to die?”

“I am, please the pigs, if it gets much hotter and that bearer doesn’t bring the peg quickly.”

“All right. Die away, mon ami. Only don’t do it in the Club, that’s all. Can’t have it littered up with dead members. Houligan would object.”

“By Jove! I think I can imagine old Houligan doing it. ‘Member dead in the ante-room? Good Gud! Bless my soul! Impossible to run a Club this way. Call the Babu and see if his last month’s bill is paid. Not paid! Good Gud! Bless my soul! Impossible to run a Club this way. Babu, attach that body till the bill is paid.’ Revel, you might just hurry up your dying once in a way to give us the pleasure of seeing Houligan perform.”

“I’ll die legitimately,” said Revel. “I’m not going to create a fresh scandal in the station. I’ll wait for heat-apoplexy, or whatever is going, to come and fetch me.”

“This is pukka hot-weather talk,” said Saveloy. “I come over for a little honest poker, and find two moderately sensible men, Revel and Dallston, talking tombs. I’m sorry I’ve thrown away my valuable evening.”

“D’you expect us to talk about buttercups and daisies, then?” said Dallston.

“No, but there’s some sort of medium between those and Sudden Death.”

“There isn’t. I haven’t seen a daisy for seven years, and now I want to die,” said Revel, plunging luxuriously into his peg.

“I knew a Johnnie on the Frontier once who did,” began Dallston meditatively.

“Half a minute. Bearer, cherut lao! Tobacco soothes the nerves when a man is expecting to hear a whacker. We know what your Frontier stories are, Martha.”

Dallston had once, in a misguided moment, taken the part of Martha in the burlesque of Faust, and the nickname stuck.

“’Tisn’t a whacker, it’s a fact. He told me so himself.”

“They always do, Martha. I’ve noticed that before. But what did he tell you?”

“He told me that he had died.”

“Was that all? Explain him.”

“It was this way. The man went down with a bad go of fever and was off his head. About the second day it struck him in the middle of the night.”

“Steady the Buffs! Martha, you aren’t an Irishman yet.”

“Never mind. It’s too hot to put it correctly. In the middle of the night he woke up quite calm, and it struck him that it would be a good thing to die—just as it might ha’ struck him that it would be a good thing to put ice on his head. He lay on his bed and thought it over, and the more he thought about it, the better sort of bundobust it seemed to be. He was quite calm, you know, and he said that he could have sworn that he had no fever on him.”

“Well, what happened?”

“Oh, he got up and loaded his revolver—he remembers all this—and let fly, with the muzzle to his temple. The thing didn’t go off, so he turned it up and found he’d forgot to load one chamber.”

“Better stop the tale there. We can guess what’s coming.”

“Hang it! It’s a true yam. Well, he jammed the thing to his head again, and it missed fire, and he said that he felt ready to cry with rage, he was so disgusted. So he took it by the muzzle and hit himself on the head with it.”

page 2

“Good man! Didn’t it go off then?”

“No, but the blow knocked him silly, and he thought he was dead. He was awfully pleased, for he had been fiddling over the show for nearly half an hour. He dropped down and died. When he got his wits again, he was shaking with the fever worse than ever, but he had sense enough to go and knock up the doctor and give himself into his charge as a lunatic. Then he went clean off his head till the fever wore out.”

“That’s a good story,” said Revel critically. “I didn’t think you had it in you at this season of the year.”

“I can believe it,” said the man they called Saveloy. “Fever makes one do all sorts of queer things. I suppose your friend was mad with it when he discovered it would be so healthy to die.”

“S’pose so. The fever must have been so bad that he felt all right—same way that a man who is nearly mad with drink gets to look sober. Well, anyhow, there was a man who died.”

“Did he tell you what it felt like?”

“He said that he was awfully happy until his fever came back and shook him up. Then he was sick with fear. I don’t wonder. He’d had rather a narrow escape.”

“That’s nothing,” said Saveloy. “I know a man who lived.”

“So do I,” said Revel. “Lots of ’em, confound ’em.”

“Now, this takes Martha’s story, and it’s quite true.”

“They always are,” said Martha. “I’ve noticed that before.”

“Never mind, I’ll forgive you. But this happened to me. Since you are talking tombs, I’ll assist at the seance. It was in ’82 or ’88, I have forgotten which. Anyhow, it was when I was on the Utamamula Canal Headworks, and I was chumming with a man called Stovey. You’ve never met him because he belongs to the Bombay side, and if he isn’t really dead by this he ought to be somewhere there now. He was a pukka sweep, and I hated him. We divided the Canal bimgalow between us, and we kept strictly to our own side of the buildings.”

“Hold on! I call. What was Stovey to look at?” said Revel.

“Living picture of the King of Spades—a blackish, greasy sort of ruffian who hadn’t any pretence of manners or form. He used to dine in the kit he had been messing about the Canal in all day, and I don’t believe he ever washed. He had the embankments to look after, and I was in charge of the headworks, but he was always contriving to fall foul of me if he possibly could.”

“I know that sort of man. Mullane of Ghoridasah’s built that way.”

“Don’t know Mullane, but Stovey was a sweep. Canal work isn’t exactly cheering, and it doesn’t take you into much society. We were like a couple of rats in a burrow, grubbing and scooping all day and turning in at night into the barn of a bungalow. Well, this man Stovey didn’t get fever. He was so coated with dirt that I don’t believe the fever could have got at him. He just began to go mad.”

“Cheerful! What were the symptoms?”

“Well, his naturally vile temper grew infamous. It was really unsafe to speak to him, and he always seemed anxious to murder a coolie or two. With me, of course, he restrained himself a little, but he sulked like a bear for days and days together. As he was the only European society within sixty miles, you can imagine how nice it was for me. He’d sit at table and sulk and stare at the opposite wall by the hour—instead of doing his work. When I pointed out that the Government didn’t send us into these cheerful places to twiddle our thimibs, he glared like a beast. Oh, he was a thorough hog! He had a lot of other endearing tricks, but the worst was when he began to pray.”

“Began to—how much?”

“Pray. He’d got hold of an old copy of the War Cry and used to read it at meals; and I suppose that that, on the top of tough goat, disordered his intellect. One night I heard him in his room groaning and talking at a fearful rate. Next morning I asked him if he’d been taken worse. ‘I’ve been engaged in prayer,’ he said, looking as black as thunder. ‘A man’s spiritual concerns are his own property.’ One night—he’d kept up these spiritual exercises for about ten days, growing queerer and queerer every day—he said ‘ Good-night’ after dinner, and got up and shook hands with me.”

“Bad sign, that,” said Revel, sucking industriously at his cheroot.

“At first I couldn’t make out what the man wanted. No fellow shakes hands with a fellow he’s living with—least of all such a beast as Stovey. However, I was civil, but the minute after he’d left the room it struck me what he was going to do. If he hadn’t shaken hands I’d have taken no notice, I suppose. This unusual effusion put me on my guard.”

“Curious thing! You can nearly always tell when a Johnnie means pegging out. He gives himself away by some softening. It’s human nature. What did you do?”

“Called him back, and asked him what the this and that he meant by interfering with my coolies in the day. He was generally hampering my men, but I had never taken any notice of his vagaries till then. In another minute we were arguing away, hammer and tongs. If it had been any other man I’d ’a’ simply thrown the lamp at his head. He was calling me all the mean names under the sum, accusing me of misusing my authority and goodness only knows what all. When he had talked himself down one stretch, I had only to say a few words to start him off again, as fresh as a daisy. On my word, this jabbering went on for nearly three hours.”

“Why didn’t you get coolies and have him tied up, if you thought he was mad?” asked Revel.

“Not a safe business, believe me. Wrongful restraint on your own responsibility of a man nearly your own standing looks ugly. Well, Stovey went on bullying me and complaining about everything I’d ever said or done since I came on the Canal, till—he went fast asleep.”

“Wha-at?”

page 3

“Went off dead asleep, just as if he’d been drugged. I thought the brute had had a fit at first, but there he was, with his head hanging a little on one side and his mouth open. I knocked up his bearer and told him to take the man to bed. We carried him off and shoved him on his charpoy. He was still asleep, and I didn’t think it worth while to undress him. The fit, whatever it was, had worked itself out, and he was limp and used up. But as I was going to leave the room, and went to turn the lamp down, I looked in the glass and saw that he was watching me between his eyelids. When I spun round he seemed asleep. ‘That’s your game, is it?’ I thought, and I stood over him long enough to see that he was shamming. Then I cast an eye roumd the room and saw his Martini in the comer. We were all bullumteers on the Canal works. I couldn’t find the cartridges, so to make all serene I knocked the breech-pin out with the cleaning-rod and went to my own room. I didn’t go to sleep for some time. About one o’clock—our rooms were only divided by a door of sorts, and my bed was close to it—I heard my friend open a chest of drawers. Then he went for the Martini. Of course, the breechblock came out with a rattle. Then he went back to bed again, and I nearly laughed.

“Next morning he was doing the genial, hail-fellow-well-met trick. Said he was afraid he’d lost his temper overnight, and apologised for it. About half way through breakfast—he was talking thickly about everything and anything—he said he’d come to the conclusion that a beard was a beastly nuisance and made one stuffy. He was going to shave his. Would I lend him my razors? ‘Oh, you’re a crafty beast, you are,’ I said to myself. I told him that I was of the other opinion, and finding my razors nearly worn out had chucked them into the Canal only the night before. He gave me one look under his eyebrows and went on with his breakfast. I was in a stew lest the man should cut his throat with one of the breakfast knives, so I kept one eye on him most of the time.

“Before I left the bungalow I caught old Jeewun Singh, one of the mistries on the gates, and gave him strict orders that he was to keep in sight of the Sahib wherever he went and whatever he did; and if he did or tried to do anything foolish, such as jumping down the well, Jeewim Singh was to stop him. The old man tumbled at once, and I was easier in my mind when I saw how he was shadowing Stovey up and down the works. Then I sat down and wrote a letter to old Baggs, the Civil Surgeon at Chemanghath, about sixty miles off, telling him how we stood. The runner left about three o’clock. Jeewun Singh turned up at the end of the day and gave a full, true and particular account of Stovey’s doings. D’you know what the brute had done?”

“Spare us the agony. Kill him straight off, Saveloy!”

“He’d stopped the runner, opened the bag, read my letter and torn it up! There were only two letters in the bag, both of which I’d written. I was pretty average angry, but I lay low. At dinner he said he’d got a touch of dysentery and wanted some chlorodyne. For a man anxious to depart this life he was about as badly equipped as you could wish. Hadn’t even a medicine-chest to play with. He was no more suffering from dysentery than I, but I said I’d give him the chlorodyne, and so I did—fifteen drops, mixed in a wine-glass, and when he asked for the bottle I said that I hadn’t any more.

“That night he began praying again, and I just lay in bed and shuddered. He was invoking the most blasphemous curses on my head—all in a whisper, for fear of waking me up—for frustrating what he called his ‘great and holy purpose.’ You never heard anything like it. But as long as he was praying I knew he was alive, and he ran his praying half through the night.

“Well, for the next ten days he was apparently quite rational; but I watched him and told Jeewun Singh to watch him like a cat. I suppose he wanted to throw me off my guard, but I wasn’t to be thrown. I grew thin watching him. Baggs wrote in to say he had gone on tour and couldn’t be found anywhere in paiticular for another six weeks. It was a ghastly time.

“One day& old Jeewun Singh turned up with a bit of paper that Storey had given to one of the lohars as a naksha. I thought it was mean work spying into another man’s very plans, but when I saw what was on the paper I gave old Jeewun Singh a rupee. It was a be-autiful little breech-pin. The one-idead idiot had gone back to Martini! I never dreamt of such persistence. ‘Tell me when the lohar gives it to the Sahib,’ I said, and I felt more comfy for a few days. Even if Jeewun Singh hadn’t split I would have known when the new breechpin was made. The brute came in to dinner with a dashed confident, triumphant air, as if he’d done me in the eye at last; and all through dinner he was fiddling in his waistcoat pocket. He went to bed early. I went, too, and I put my head against the door and listened like a woman. I must have been shivering in my pyjamas for about two hours before my friend went for the dismantled Martin! He could not get the breech-pin to fit at first. He rummaged about, and then I heard a file go. That seemed to make too much noise to suit his fancy, so he opened the door and went out into the compound, and I heard him, about fifty yards off, filing in the dark at that breech-pin as if he had been possessed. Well, he was you know. Then he came back to the light, cursing me for keeping him out of his rest and the peace of Abraham’s bosom. As soon as I heard him taking up the Martini, I ran round to his door and tried to enter gaily, as the stage directions say. ‘Lend me your gun, old man, if you’re awake,’ I said. ‘There’s a howling big brute of a pariah in my room, and I want to get a shot at it.’ I pretended not to notice that he was standing over the gun, but just pranced up and caught hold of it. He turned round with a jump and said: ‘I’m sick of this. I’ll see that dog, and if it’s another of your lies I’ll ——’ You know I’m not a moral man.”

“Hear! hearl” drowsily from Martha.

“But I simply daren’t repeat what he said. ‘All right!’ I said, still hanging on to the gun.

‘Come along and we’ll bowl him over.’ He followed me into my room with a face like a fiend in torment And, as truly as I’m yarning here, there was a huge brindled beast of a pariah sitting on my bed!”

“Tall, sir, tall. But go on. The audience is now awake.”

“Hang it! Could I have invented that pariah? Stovey dropped of the gun and flopped down in a comer and yowled. I went ‘ee ki ri ki re!’ like a woman in hysterics, pitched the gun forward and loosed off through a window.”

“And the pariah?”

“He quitted for the time being. Stovey was in an awful state. He swore the animal hadn’t been there when I called him. That was true enough. I firmly believe Providence put it there to save me from being killed by the infuriated Stovey.”

“You’ve too lively a belief in Providence altogether. What happened?”

“Stovey tried to recover himself and pass it all over, but he let me keep the gun and went to bed. About two days afterwards old Baggs turned up on tour, and I told him Stovey wanted watching—more than I could give him. I don’t know whether Baggs or the pi did it, but he didn’t throw any more suicidal splints. I was transferred a little while afterwards.”

“Ever meet the man again?”

“Yes; once at Sheik Katan dâk bungalow— trailing the big brindle pi after him.”

“Oh, it was real, then. I thought it was arranged for the occasion.”

“Not a bit. It was a pukka pi. Stovey seemed to remember me in the same way that a horse seems to remember. I fancy his brain was a little cloudy. We tiffined together— after the pi had been fed, if you please—and Stovey said to me: ‘See that dog? He saved my life once. Oh, by the way, I believe you were there, too, weren’t you?’ I shouldn’t care to work with Stovey again.”

There was a holy pause in the smoking-room of the Toopare Club.

“What I like about Saveloy’s play,” said Martha, looking at the ceiling, “is the beautifully artistic way in which he follows up a flush with a full. Go to bed, old man!’

They burnt a corpse upon the sand—
The light shone out afar;
It guided home the plunging boats
That beat from Zanzibar.
Spirit of Fire, where’er Thy altars rise,
Thou art Light of Guidance to our eyes!
(Salrette Boat-Song)

[a short tale]

THERE is hope for a man who gets publicly and riotously drunk more often than he ought to do; but there is no hope for the man who drinks secretly and alone in his own house—the man who is never seen to drink.

This is a rule; so there must be an exception to prove it. Moriarty’s case was that exception.

He was a Civil Engineer, and the Government, very kindly, put him quite by himself in an out-district, with nobody but natives to talk to and a great deal of work to do. He did his work well in the four years he was utterly alone; but he picked up the vice of secret and solitary drinking, and came up out of the wilderness more old and worn and haggard than the dead-alive life had any right to make him. You know the saying, that a man who has been alone in the jungle for more than a year is never quite sane all his life after. People credited Moriarty’s queerness of manner and moody ways to the solitude, and said that it showed how Government spoilt the futures of its best men. Moriarty had built himself the plinth of a very good reputation in the bridge-dam-girder line. But he knew, every night of the week, that he was taking steps to undermine that reputation with L.L.L. and Christopher and little nips of liqueurs, and filth of that kind. He had a sound constitution and a great brain, or else he would have broken down and died like a sick camel in the district; as better men have done before him.

Government ordered him to Simla after he had come out of the desert; and he went up meaning to try for a post then vacant. That season, Mrs. Reiver—perhaps you will remember her—was in the height of her power, and many men lay under her yoke. Everything bad that could be said has already been said about Mrs. Reiver, in another tale. Moriarty was heavily-built and handsome, very quiet and nervously anxious to please his neighbours when he wasn’t sunk in a brown study. He started a good deal at sudden noises or if spoken to without warning; and, when you watched him drinking his glass of water at dinner, you could see the hand shake a little. But all this was put down to nervousness, and the quiet, steady, sip-sip-sip, fill and sip-sip-sip again that went on in his own room when he was by himself, was never known. Which was miraculous, seeing how everything in a man’s private life is public property in India.

Moriarty was drawn, not into Mrs. Reiver’s set, because they were not his sort, but into the power of Mrs. Reiver, and he fell down in front of her and made a goddess of her. This was due to his coming fresh out of the jungle to a big town. He could not scale things properly or see who was what.

Because Mrs. Reiver was cold and hard he said she was stately and dignified. Because she had no brains, and could not talk cleverly, he said she was reserved and shy. Mrs. Reiver shy! Because she was unworthy of honour or reverence from any one, he reverenced her from a distance and dowered her with all the virtues in the Bible and most of those in Shakespeare.

This big, dark, abstracted man who was so nervous when a pony cantered behind him, used to moon in the train of Mrs. Reiver, blushing with pleasure when she threw a word or two his way. His admiration was strictly platonic; even other women saw and admitted this. He did not move about in Simla, so he heard nothing against his idol: which was satisfactory. Mrs. Reiver took no special notice of him, beyond seeing that he was added to her list of admirers, and going for a walk with him now and then, just to show that he was her property, claimable as such. Moriarty must have done most of the talking, for Mrs. Reiver couldn’t talk much to a man of his stamp; and the little she said could not have been profitable. What Moriarty believed in, as he had good reason to, was Mrs. Reiver’s influence over him, and, in that belief, he set himself seriously to try to do away with the vice that only he himself knew of.

His experiences while he was fighting with it must have been peculiar, but he never described them. Sometimes he would hold off from everything except water for a week. Then, on a rainy night, when no one had asked him out to dinner, and there was a big fire in his room, and everything comfortable, he would sit down and make a big night of it by adding little nip to little nip, planning big schemes of reformation meanwhile, until he threw himself on his bed hopelessly drunk. He suffered next morning.

One night the big crash came. He was troubled in his own mind over his attempts to make himself ‘worthy of the friendship’ of Mrs. Reiver. The past ten days had been very bad ones, and the end of it all was that he received the arrears of two and three-quarter years of sipping in one attack of delirium tremens of the subdued kind; beginning with suicidal depression, going on to fits and starts and hysteria, and ending with downright raving. As he sat in a chair in front of the fire, or walked up and down the room picking a handkerchief to pieces, you heard what poor Moriarty really thought of Mrs. Reiver, for he raved about her and his own fall for the most part; though he ravelled some P.W.D. accounts into the same skein of thought. He talked and talked, and talked in a low dry whisper to himself, and there was no stopping him. He seemed to know that there was something wrong, and twice tried to pull himself together and confer rationally with the Doctor; but his mind ran out of control at once, and he fell back to a whisper and the story of his troubles. It is terrible to hear a big man babbling like a child of all that a man usually locks up, and puts away in the deep of his heart. Moriarty read out his very soul for the benefit of any one who was in the room between ten-thirty that night and two-forty-five next morning.

From what he said, one gathered how immense in influence Mrs. Reiver held over him, and how thoroughly he felt for his own lapse. His whisperings cannot, of course, be put down here; but they were very instructive—as showing the errors of his estimates.

When the trouble was over, and his few acquaintances were pitying him for the bad attack of jungle-fever that had so pulled him down, Moriarty swore a big oath to himself and went abroad again with Mrs. Reiver till the end of the season, adoring her in a quiet and deferential way as an angel from heaven. Later on, he took to riding—not hacking, but honest riding—which was good proof that he was improving, and you could slam doors behind him without his jumping to his feet with a gasp. That, again, was hopeful.

How he kept his oath, and what it cost him in the beginning nobody knows. He certainly managed to compass the hardest thing that a man who has drunk heavily can do. He took his peg and wine at dinner; but he never drank alone, and never let what he drank have the least hold on him.

Once he told a bosom-friend the story of his great trouble, and how the ‘influence of a pure honest woman, and an angel as well,’ had saved him. When the man—startled at anything good being laid to Mrs. Reiver’s door—laughed, it cost him Moriarty’s friendship. Moriarty, who is married now to a woman ten thousand times better than Mrs. Reiver—a woman who believes that there is no man on earth as good and clever as her husband—will go down to his grave vowing and protesting that Mrs. Reiver saved him from ruin in both worlds.

That she knew anything of Moriarty’s weakness nobody believed for a moment. That she would have cut him dead, thrown him over, and acquainted all her friends with her discovery, if she had known of it, nobody who knew her doubted for an instant.

Moriarty thought her something she never was, and in that belief saved himself; which was just as good as though she had been everything that he had imagined.

But the question is, what claim will Mrs. Reiver have to the credit of Moriarty’s salvation, when her day of reckoning comes?

WE WERE wallowing through the China Seas in a dense fog, the horn blowing every two minutes for the benefit of the fishery craft that crowded the waterways. From the bridge the fo’c’sle was invisible; from the hand-wheel at the stern by the captain’s cabin. The fog held possession of everything – the pearly white fog. Once or twice when it tried to lift, we saw a glimpse of the oily sea, the flitting vision of a junk’s sail spread in the vain hope of catching the breeze, or the buoys of a line of nets. Somewhere close to us lay the land, but it might have been the Kurile Islands for aught we knew.

Very early in the morning there passed us, not a cable’s length away, but as unseen as the spirits of the dead, a steamer of the same line as ours. She howled melodiously in answer to our bellowing, and passed on.

‘Suppose she had hit us,’ said a man from Saigon. ‘Then we should have gone down,’ answered the chief officer sweetly. ‘Beastly thing to go down in a fog,’ said a young gentleman who was travelling for pleasure. ‘Chokes a man both ways, y’ know.’ We were comfortably gathered in the smoking-room, the weather being too cold to venture on the deck. Conversation naturally turned upon accidents of fog, the horn tooting significantly in the pauses between the tales. I heard of the wreck of the Eric, the cutting down of the Strathnairn within half a mile of harbour, and the carrying away of the bow plates of the Sigismund outside Sandy Hook.

‘It is astonishing,’ said the man from Saigon, ‘how many true stories are put down as sea yarns. It makes a man almost shrink from telling an anecdote.’ ‘Oh, please don’t shrink on our account,’ said the smoking-room with one voice. ‘It’s not my own story,’ said the man from Saigon. ‘A fellow on a Massageries boat told it me. He had been third officer of a sort on a Geordie tramp – one of those lumbering, dish-bottomed coal-barges where the machinery is tied up with a string and the plates are rivetted with putty. The way he told his tale was this.

The tramp had been creeping along some sea or other with a chart ten years old and the haziest sort of chronometers when she got into a fog – just such a fog as we have now.’ Here the smoking-room turned round as one man, and looked through the windows. ‘In the man’s own words, “just when the fog was thickest, the engines broke down. They had been doing this for some weeks, and we were too weary to care. I went forward of the bridge, and leaned over the side, wondering where I should ever get something that I could call a ship, and whether the old hulk would fall to pieces as she lay. The fog was as thick as any London one, but as white as steam.

While they were tinkering at the engines below, I heard a voice in the fog about twenty yards from the ship’s side, calling out, ‘Can you climb on board if we throw you a rope?’ That startled me, because I fancied we were going to be run down the next minute by a ship engaged in rescuing a man overboard. I shouted for the engine-room whistle; and it whistled about five minutes, but never the sound of a ship could we hear.

The ship’s boy came forward with some biscuit for me. As he put it into my hand, I heard the voice in the fog, crying out about throwing us a rope. This time it was the boy that yelled, ‘Ship on us!’ and off went the whistle again, while the men in the engine-room – it generally took the ship’s crew to repair the Hespa’s engines – tumbled upon deck to know what we were doing. I told them about the hail, and we listened in the smother of the fog for the sound of a screw.

We listened for ten minutes, then we blew the whistle for another ten. Then the crew began to call the ship’s boy a fool, meaning that the third mate was no better. When they were going down below, I heard the hail the third time, so did the ship’s boy. ‘There you are,’ I said, ‘it is not twenty yards from us.’ The engineer sings out, ‘I heard it too! Are you all asleep?’ Then the crew began to swear at the engineer; and what with discussion, argument, and a little swearing, – for there is not much discipline on board a tramp, – we raised such a row that our skipper came aft to enquire. I, the engineer, and the ship’s boy stuck to our tale. ‘Voices or no voices,’ said the captain, ‘you’d better patch the old engines up, and see if you’ve got enough steam to whistle with. I’ve a notion that we’ve got into rather too crowded ways.’

The engineer stayed on deck while the men went down below. The skipper hadn’t got back to the chart-room before I saw thirty feet of bowsprit hanging over the break of the fo’c’sle. Thirty feet of bowsprit, sir, doesn’t belong to anything that sails the seas except a sailing-ship or a man-of-war. I speculated quite a long time, with my hands on the bulwarks, as to whether our friend was soft wood or steel plated. It would not have made much difference to us, anyway; but I felt there was more honour in being rammed, you know.

Then I knew all about it. It was a ram. We opened out. I am not exaggerating – we opened out, sir, like a cardboard box. The other ship cut us two-thirds through, a little behind the break of the fo’c’sle. Our decks split up lengthways. The mizzen-mast bounded out of its place, and we heeled over. Then the other ship blew a fog-horn. I remember thinking, as I took water from the port bulwark, that this was rather ostentatious after she had done all the mischief. After that, I was a mile and a half under sea, trying to go to sleep as hard as I could. Some one caught hold of my hair, and waked me up. I was hanging to what was left of one of our boats under the lee of a large English ironclad. There were two men with me; the three of us began to yell. A man on the ship sings out, ‘Can you climb on board if we throw you a rope?’ They weren’t going to let down a fine new man-of-war’s boat to pick up half-drowned rats.

We accepted the invitation. We climbed – I, the engineer, and the ship’s boy. About half an hour later the fog cleared entirely; except for the half of the boat away in the offing, there was neither stick nor string on the sea to show that the Hespa had been cut down. ‘And what do you think of that now?’ said the man from Saigon.

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KNOW, O MY MASTERS AND NOBLE PERSONS, there was, in the days of the Caliph Haroun Alrashid, a certain Afrit of little sense and great power, named Beiman Be-uql [Faithless and Senseless], dwelling in the city of Bagdad, who had devised brazen engines that ran upon iron roads. These, by the perfection of their operations, dilated the heart with wonder and the eye with amazement, for they resembled, as it were, litters drawn by fire-breathing dragons. Now the Afrit did not make benefactions for the sake of the approbation of Allah, but for money. For such-and-such pieces of money the brazen engines of unexampled celerity accommodated themselves to the desires of the adventurous. They bore the lover to his beloved, the merchant to his market, the fisherman to his nets, and the weaver to his loom, as was permitted by the All-Merciful. The people of Bagdad, who are both amorous and adventurous, disported themselves by day and by night on these engines, and gave the Afrit gold as from a catapult; and some twelve merchants of the city entered into a partnership with the Afrit, for the gains that accrued. Accordingly the Afrit became slothful and of a negligent disposition, forgetting that which is written:

‘Except sword contend against sword in battle how shall a sword be sharpened? Except his neighbour contend against him in the market-place even the Very Veracious would sell rotten figs at enormous profit.’

Allah (Whose Name be exalted!) caused the belly of the Afrit to expand with fatness, and his eyes to be darkened with over-much meat; and he dismounted from the steed of zeal and stretched himself upon the pillow of shamelessness, and ceased to concern himself at all with the comings and the goings of his brazen engines.

The rumour of these things reached the ears of the Prince of the Faithful (whose perspicacity be rewarded!), and he called Mesrour, chief of the Eunuchs, and Giaffar into his presence, and he said: ‘What is the complaint against the Afrit that his engines are lacking in celerity?’ Upon which Mesrour kissed the ground, and said: ‘O my Lord, let the Prince of the Faithful go out into the city and make enquiry.’ Then Mesrour fetched the clothes of three Frankish merchants, and they went out, all three, disguised as Frankish merchants, to the place of the brazen engines, which is over against the chief quarter of Bagdad. And they met a young man with a pair of linen drawers upon his shoulder and a linen cloth under his arm – for he would bathe in the water – and as he walked he wept and recited the following verses:

‘May Allah preserve the pure-intentioned from the engines of the Afrit! I am old in calamity, but expert in resignation. I enter the engines constrained only by stringent necessity: They regard the efflux of time as a drunkard regards the fallen petals of his chaplet: and they attain their ends solely by the fortuitousness of unmitigated fatuity.’

Then they went into the caravanserai appointed for the coming and the departure, and it was as though a battle had passed that way; for the caravanserai was full of smoke, black and white, and the ground was piled with the baggage of the faithful – pots, and bundles, and food, and medicaments, and the implements of exercise and diversion, all in little heaps, and by each heap stood distressful women and children not a few, imploring guidance. Hereupon the Caliph enquired: ‘What have these done to merit extinction?’ And Giaffar replied: ‘They go a journey in the brazen engines,’ and he recited the following verses:

‘The Mercy of Allah is upon all things created, whereby the ignorant emerge from vicissitude. If it seem good in the eyes of the Fashioner of Events, doubt not that these, even these, shall ultimately arrive at their destination.’

Then came a servant of the Afrit clad in bluish raiment, and cried: ‘With thy permission!’ and smote the legs of Giaffar from under him by means of a small wheeled cart which he wheeled in haste, and he recited the following verses:

‘O True Believers! The first is behind the third, and the third is before the second. Advance boldly and turn to the right! Continue and turn to the left, for that brazen engine which departs for Lawaz and Isbahan upon the hour of second prayer lacking one eighth of an hour.

Come hither, O true Believers, and behold the brazen engine which departs for Raidill: but go elsewhere if thou wouldst behold the towers of Harundill!

Ya Illah! Allah! Six is four and three is five; but the second and third are only little engines from Sha’ham.’

Then the Afrits of the engines shrieked with a lamentable shrieking, and the faithful were cast into turmoil. Then came Mesrour with written bonds which he had purchased from the Afrit for money, and upon each bond was written the following verses:

‘By the merit of this white bond it is permitted to such an one, the son of such an one, to enter into such-and-such an one of my engines, and to sit in the place appointed for such as hold the white bonds, and to proceed to such-and-such a place.

But it is forbidden to such an one to linger more than a day after that he has purchased the bond: nor may he give away the bond even to his maternal uncle, but must strictly seat himself at the hour appointed. Moreover, I take Allah to witness that I wash my hands thrice of all that may befall this person, either by the sloth and negligence of my Afrits, or by the sloth and negligence of any other Afrits, or by the errors of any of the creatures of Allah!’

And it was signed with the seal of the Afrit. And the Caliph said: ‘This is a notable bond. Whither go we?’

And Mesrour said: ‘To Isbahan by way of Lawaz. Come swiftly.’ So through the Protection of Allah, Who protects whom He will, they entered the litter appointed for such as hold the white bonds of the Afrit – a room of six seats and no more, of a bluish colour, with windows upon either side, and in the roof a lamp. Now there followed upon their heels the wife of a fisherman, perfumed with new wine, a woman of scandalous aspect; and four children who had never known the baths; and two men, sons of a kabab-seller; and a gambler upon the swiftness of horses; and a maiden, whose hair was like brass wire, who leered with the leer of invitation; and the wet-nurse of a sickly one.

When the Caliph perceived that their bonds were written on blue or brown paper only, and not one upon white, he said: ‘This is the place appointed solely for such as have the white bonds. I conjure ye by Allah, remove elsewhere!’ But they laughed, and the wife of the fisherman demanded of the maiden her opinion as to whether the Caliph resembled a water-bird of antiquity, and the two sons of the kabab-seller said: ‘Behold his hair!’ which is the salutation of the unseemly. But the wet-nurse said: ‘Has Allah deprived thee of understanding, that thou hast forgotten the day is Saturday?’

At this the Caliph laughed and replied: ‘What is the merit of this one day which, by the ordinances of Allah, hath recurred once in the seven since the beginning?’ And the wet-nurse recited the following verses:

‘When the carpet of Opportunity is unrolled before thee, do not consider where thou shalt sit, but leap swiftly into the middle thereof, and take firm hold on all four comers.

Let the proud man be abashed, but consider thou thine own advancement.

What are the colours of bonds to the true believer, or the gradations of affluence to such as go in haste?’

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So the Caliph said: ‘Of what good is the Afrit’s bond?’ And the maiden with the hair like brass wire laughed and said: ‘None to thee, O my beloved, but much to the Afrit,’ and she spoke with laxity of the Caliph’s wife (for she thought him to be a Frankish merchant) and of the legs and visage of Mesrour. So they abounded in impure talk and contention upon the way, and the wife of the fisherman vomited the wine from her stomach, and the Caliph’s heart became contracted on account of the incommodiousness of the situation.

Thus they reached the city of Lawaz, and waited for a brazen engine to bear them to Isbahan. Now there are some eight alley-ways in that city for the entry and departure of the engines, but no man, not even the servants of the Afrit, knows by which alley-way any one engine will enter or depart. And lest men should by study attain enlightenment the place is without lamps, and the alley-ways are joined by magic bridges and corridors, and mazes that are each the work of Afrits. Therefore the adventurous must lay hold upon the bridle of courage and pursue the ball of his goal with the mallet of ferocity.

After a great while Mesrour said: ‘O Prince of the Faithful, there is no escape from this pestilent locality till the Afrit brings a new engine, and it is reported to me by the veracious, whose skins are wrinkled through long waiting, that that engine is not here.’ Now upon the wall of the place was written: ‘At the hour of evening prayer a brazen engine will depart for Isbahan.’ This was written in large characters, but beneath had the Afrit written the following verses:

‘O true believers, who can do more than set forth his holy intentions?

This is a heart-lifting verse to read – the verse of the engines arriving and departing.

Consider it no more than as a song sung in a rose-garden, or as the voice of the nightingale among roses.

I have bound roses round the rod of Inaccuracy, and wreathed Emptiness with a desirable wreath:

But of the coming and the going of the engines I have washed my hands thrice.’

And it was signed with the seal of the Afrit.

Then the Caliph’s liver grew congested, and he said: ‘What are the promises of this impure Afrit?’ And Mesrour said; ‘As a stake in bran! Behold his shamelessness, and the names of those whom he has afflicted.’ And upon another wall was written that all might read:

‘Such an one, the son of such an one, was upon such-and-such a day beaten with fifty strokes of the ferash for that he tampered with a white bond of the Afrit.

And such an one, the son of such another, was fined an hundred pieces of gold because he gave the half of a white bond to his maternal uncle.

O true believers, read and fear!’

And the Caliph said: ‘Not content with afflicting us by the means of his own idleness and uncleanliness, he afflicts the faithful by means of the law. Assuredly I will subject him to the operations of a law which he does not comprehend, and pursue him with a torment which he has not in the least anticipated.’

Then they leaped upon a brazen engine that came out of the darkness, and it bore them to a city called ‘Alisham, and it ceased; and they waited in an extreme discomfort for yet other engines which came not. For three days and three nights the Caliph, and Mesrour, and Giaffar resigned the direction of their feet into the hands of the Afrit, but Allah (Whose Power is uplifting) maintained them alive. Throughout the length and the breadth of the Caliph’s dominions there was not one brazen engine which arrived upon the hour appointed; nor within an hour of that hour; nor was there any shame or penitence among the servants of the Afrit. There was no dependence upon their veracity and no refuge under the shadow of their assertions. And the Caliph spoke with men anxious to see their sick who desired them; and with merchants hastening to the market; with lovers seeking their beloveds; with women purchasing commodities; with muleteers, and craftsmen, and butchers, and courtezans, and widows, and the pious, and the clean and the unclean who had confided themselves to the engines of the Afrit. There was but one thing certain in all the machinations of the Afrit – that he had taken the money of the true believers, and that he had cheated them all every one. Then the Caliph returned to his palace and bathed and refreshed himself, and repaired to the Lady Zobeide, his wife, and told her all that story. And she said: ‘O my Lord, I conjure thee to chastise the Afrit with a heavy chastisement.’ And the Caliph said: ‘He is an Afrit. How may a creature of Allah chastise a son of fire?’ Then the Lady Zobeide recited the following verses:

‘At the end and the beginning of all events permitted upon the Footstool of God sits either a Man or a Woman.

Can a Woman be more than a Woman? No, or she would be in Paradise. Can a Man be more than a Man? No, or he would be elsewhere.

Allah be exalted, Who has decreed that we of flesh and blood, confident in integrity, meet with nothing in the world other than Men or Women!’

And the Caliph took counsel with the Lady Zobeide and together they devised an excellent device.

Know, O masters and noble persons, that the first of the twelve merchants of Bagdad who had associated themselves with the Afrit for the sake of gain was called Ali, son of Abu Bakr, and he was wealthy and he loaned money to the Afrit and took usury therefor. His stall was in the market, but his house where he received his friends was in the rich quarter of the city of Bagdad.

Upon a day appointed, when he was making merry with his friends, there came to Ali a messenger with a message, written upon pale paper, and the message said:

‘Peace be unto thee, O Ali, son of Abu Bakr. I am a man with red hair, the father of three sons and two daughters. Also my income is sufficient for my needs. I am delayed an hour upon my journey by the faithlessness of one of thy brazen engines, and I tell thee this for the love I bear thee.’

And Ali said: ‘Whose is this shamelessness? I am no more than an overseer of the partnership with the Afrit. What have I to do with brazen engines?’ Then came a second messenger with a second message and it said:

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‘May we never be made sad by thy loss, O Ali, son of Abu Bakr. I am a widow lame of one leg, and I bear a little black bag. Moreover, it rains and I am cold. One of thy brazen engines has experienced a contraction of the interior, whereby it has ceased to proceed. Send hither an implement for its repair, if thou lovest me.’

And the skin of Ali’s forehead wrinkled, and he cursed the widow and her forefathers, and said: ‘By Allah, am I the refuge of the destitute? Bring no more such messages to this house, O messengers, but take them to my stall in the market that the clerks may receive them. This house is the house of my rest.’

And the messengers said: ‘Little rest for thee, O son of Abu Bakr, for there walks an host behind us bearing messages which are not to thy clerks, but to thee! Doubtless thou hast relieved a city by stealth, which is only now known to the grateful.’

And there came a third messenger with a package, intricately corded, demanding a price and receipt, and in its heart was a huge stone delicately wrapped, and on the wrapping was this message:

‘Allah preserve thee, O chief of the Directors of the brazen engines! I am the son of a barber newly affianced to be wed. It is reported to me in the city of Krahidin that one of thy brazen engines has not arrived upon the hour appointed. I myself use not thy brazen engines, preferring mules when there is any haste; but I have found upon the roadside this large stone which, it may be, falling upon the iron road, has delayed thy engine. I send it thee for a love-gift, worthy of acceptation.’

Then the moisture ceased in the mouth of Ali, son of Abu Bakr, and his eyes manifested anxiety, and he said: ‘What is this calamity which has come upon me from associating with Afrits? May Allah confound all red-haired men, with all lame widows and the affianced sons of barbers!’

Then entered Fatima his wife, and her countenance was dark, and she bit her lips and said: ‘What dost thou know of Cypress-Branch, O man of impure associates?’ And he said: ‘I am in no humour to jest. Begone!’ And she exhibited a message upon pale paper which the messengers had delivered to her, and she read it aloud, and it said:

‘To the Lady Fatima, wife of Ali, Greeting! Kiss thy husband for me. I am slender as an Oriental willow-shoot, and of unequalled gait. Ali has caused me to be delayed in the city of Tabriziz because of the unveracity of his brazen engines. Wherefore I am unable to bestow upon him the kiss of affection, and supplicate thee to be my substitute.’

And the message was signed ‘Cypress-Branch.’

Then Ali took off his turban and cast it upon the floor, and tore his hair, for his wife was old and of an unforgiving disposition, and she ceased not to load him with reproaches for an hour; and she retired into her apartments and wept. Then Ali left her and went out, and he saw a multitude of messengers advancing in their stately procession, or sitting in the court and playing games of chance upon his doorstep, or winking upon his female slaves. In each man’s hand was a message upon pale paper, or a packet intricately corded, demanding receipt, and to none might the messages be given except to Ali, son of Abu Bakr. So he dismissed his friends and forsook diversion, and he wrote receipts until evening, and he wept and said: ‘By Allah, this life is unendurable!’

Then there came a messenger to him and cried: ‘I conjure thee by thy ancestors to hasten to the hall of the merchants, O son of Abu Bakr, for they have called a council and thy attendance is requisite.’ And Ali said: ‘It is the custom of those who are in partnership with the Afrit to meet but four times a year. Wherefore do they meet now?’

And the messenger said: ‘Inconvenience has overtaken them and they are afraid.’

Then Ali put on his turban and washed his face and went to the hall of the merchants, and the first that greeted him cried: ‘O son of Abu Bakr, hast thou seen the inscriptions by the roadside where our brazen engines go up and down?’

And Ali said: ‘No, I have sufficiency of sorrow in mine own house.’

And they told him that within a night had sprung up intolerable inscriptions over against all the fields through which the brazen engines passed.

Then Ali laughed and said; ‘This is the work of a red-haired man and of a woman lame in one leg and of the newly affianced son of a barber.’ And they said: ‘Allah preserve thy understanding, O Ali! Thou art mad.’ And he laughed yet louder and said; ‘It is the work of Cypress-Branch.’ Upon this the unmarried drew away from him, fearing the excess of his madness, but such as were married embraced him and said: ‘Is thy house also darkened by the machinations of Cypress-Branch and Jasmine, and Musk and Almond-Blossom? Verily this is an evil day for the upright.’ So Ali’s bosom expanded, for he said: ‘Fellowship in calamity diminishes the sharpness of sorrow. Shew me the inscriptions.’

The first inscription was white and blue, three-and-thirty times repeated upon high poles to the left and right hand of the iron road to Isbahan, and it said:

‘There are no engines like the brazen engines of the Afrit. Let us therefore thank Allah!’

The second inscription was blue on white, an hundred times repeated upon painted wood to the left and right hand of the iron road to Krahidin and Tabriziz; and it said only:

‘O True Believer, why dost thou not walk?’

And the third inscription was red upon black, an hundred and nineteen times repeated on the right and the left hand of the iron road, and it said:

‘When the Artificer of all Things created Eternity He foresaw that the brazen engines of the Afrit would require a reasonable time to reach their destination.’

This was the nature of the three inscriptions, and they were offensive to all the twelve merchants. Then said Ali, son of Abu Bakr: ‘Let us issue a proclamation demanding the heads of those who have caused the intolerable inscriptions to be written, lest we become a mock to the people of Bagdad.’ This they did, but there appeared forthwith an officer of the law, and cried: ‘I conjure ye by your pure forefathers to declare by what authority ye have issued the proclamation: for I am the servant of a great company of the oppressed, who have hired the ground in the fields whereon those inscriptions stand. May Allah render them salutary to you, O merchants!’ And he haled them before the Caliph on account of their proclamation, and the people assembled in multitude like pelicans on a lake and waited on the judgment of the Caliph. Then the Prince of the Faithful took up the first inscription and said: ‘What is your complaint, O traffickers with the Afrit; for it is not said whether there be engines worse or better than the engines of the Afrit, but only that there are no engines resembling them? This is no more than extreme laudation: yet if there be doubt, call thy witnesses.’ And the twelve merchants scratched with the toe of distress upon the ankle

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of embarrassment and said nothing, and the Caliph spoke to the people: ‘O True Believers, are there any engines like to the engines of the Afrit?’ Then there came forward seven-and-fifty men, young and old, and thirty-four women, old and young, and said that were there no engines like to the engines of the Afrit. And he said: ‘Do ye thank Allah therefor?’ And they said: ‘We thank Allah by day and by night.’ So he fined the twelve merchants a thousand pieces of gold each. Then he took the second inscription and said: ‘Where was this found?’ And the merchants said: ‘In a field.’ And he said: ‘Do men walk in a field?’ And they said: ‘Yes.’ And he said: ‘Do the brazen engines walk in the field?’ And they said: ‘No.’ Then the Caliph said: ‘Where is the offence of this enquiry, seeing that those who go by the brazen engines are not walking, and that those who walk in the fields are not in the brazen engines?’ And he fined the twelve merchants two thousand pieces of gold each. And he took up the third inscription, and the veins of his forehead swelled, and he said: ‘Do ye deny that Allah created Eternity?’ And they said: ‘We do not deny.’ And he said: ‘Do ye deny that the brazen engines require a reasonable time wherein to reach their destination?’ And they said: ‘We do not deny.’ And he said: ‘Do ye know for what reason Allah created Eternity?’ And they said: ‘Who are we to fathom the secrets of Allah?’ Then he said: ‘What is your complaint?’ and he fined them three thousand pieces of gold each, and the people extolled the justice of the Caliph (upon whom be blessing!), but the merchants wept.

When they had returned to their hall. Ali, son of Abu Bakr, said: ‘By Allah, O my masters, we have fallen into grievous calamity, and I see no method of delivery from the inscriptions wherewith we are tormented, except we expedite these accursed engines.’ And the merchants said: ‘It is impossible, for it hath never been.’ Then Ali recited the following verses:

‘We are as those who have ascended a blossoming mulberry-tree, from which there is access neither to Heaven nor to Earth.

When the charioteer is Eblis, and the reins are held by the son of Eblis, who may talk of what is possible or impossible?’

So they took counsel with the Afrit, and by the Permission of Allah, to Whom nought is impossible of accomplishment, the merchants caused one brazen engine to arrive in the caravanserai upon the hour appointed. And they swooned with amazement. And when they were recovered they went, some to the baths, and some to the wine-sellers, and some to the inner apartments. About second cockcrow Ali, son of Abu Bakr, was washing himself in the baths and there came a messenger from the Caliph mounted upon a white camel, bearing a dress of honour, and he cast it upon Ali wet from the bath and constrained him by the wrist and said: ‘This is the reward of diligence.’ And Ali said: ‘I conjure thee by Allah, O interpreter of the way, compliment me with no more compliments, for I am sick of compliments, but fetch me the towels.’ And the messenger said: ‘I am but the mouth of the Prince of the Faithful, who hath need of thee!’ And Ali groaned and wept and said: ‘Am I not already sufficiently afflicted?’ And the messenger said; ‘Doubt not there are companions!’ And he sat him upon a high white camel of unbridled disposition, and led him before the Caliph. And there were gathered in the courtyard of the palace the eleven his companions, each upon a white camel of a lofty nature, and each attired in a dress of honour; and they were speechless because of the honour that had been done them. At the hour that men can distinguish a black thread from a white, the Prince of the Faithful appeared at an upper window and he said: ‘O persons of integrity, it is reported to me that a brazen engine has arrived upon the hour appointed,’ and he ceased not to extol their wisdom and diligence, their perspicacity and their zeal, until the hour of second prayer, in the presence of the city of Bagdad. And when the sun was high and men had eaten-all except Ali, son of Abu Bakr, and those eleven his mates upon the camels, he said: ‘O True Believers, I conjure ye by the benefits that ye have received from the Afrit that ye do not let these men of pure countenances at any time go unrewarded for their endeavours. If, therefore, one of their delectable brazen engines arrive upon the hour appointed, acquaint me of the circumstance that I may honour them in this fashion, and in others, upon whatever hour of the day or the night that that brazen engine may arrive.’ And the people said:’Upon the head and the eye.’

Then he gave the merchants permission to depart and they returned to their houses. But the people of Bagdad sat by their doorsteps waiting for word of the arrival of yet another brazen engine upon the hour appointed. So the merchants within ate in haste and drank expeditiously and denied themselves to their wives, and remained far from their stalls in the market, and forsook the company of musicians. When a second brazen engine arrived upon the hour appointed, the people of Bagdad broke in upon them with salutations, and set them all upon tall camels of unbridled dispositions, and the messengers of the Caliph cast upon them dresses of honour, and they were borne to the very presence of the Caliph, who in all respects entreated them as before, for a very long while. But when that second engine arrived the Caliph (may his mercy be requited!) excused Ali, son of Abu Bakr, from the attendance; and when the third engine arrived he excused Hussein of the Fishmarkets from the attendance; and so with the other engines as they arrived, for he said: ‘If I make this honour common how shall it be prized? Verily punctuality is an unheard-of virtue, rarer than the egg of the Roc, but we must also remember the infirmities of mankind.’

The people of Bagdad delighted rapturously to do honour to the remnant of the twelve merchants. When the fifth brazen engine arrived upon the hour appointed, they beat drums and cymbals; and for the sixth engine they closed all the markets; for the seventh engine they lit torches and shouted; and for the eighth they burned fires, red, white, and blue, in all the wards; for the ninth they assembled the Army and exercised them in the exercises of war; for the tenth they invited their friends and acquaintances, in number like netted fish, who came drawn by brazen engines from Isbahan and Lawaz, from Krahidin and Tabriziz; for the eleventh they extended the arm of allurement to all the inhabitants of the earth as far as a brazen engine might travel, nor were the inhabitants undesirous to attend to assist and to admire; for the twelfth, when there was called but one merchant to the presence of the Caliph, they altogether abandoned gravity and delivered themselves in multitudes, together with vast assemblies from other cities, to the dominion of mirth and excess. On that day at one time they beat gongs and the instruments of music. they blew upon horns without ceasing; they burned coloured fires, and they exercised the Army, and they closed the markets, and they waved banners and recited verses in honour of the twelve merchants and their wives and their daughters and their sons unborn, so that for a day’s journey round Bagdad the clouds quaked with tumult. And when the merchants had occasion to come forth the inhabitants of Bagdad pursued them with the steeds of unbitted praise, and buried them beneath the blossoms of importunate compliment, so that the merchants covered the face of humility with the hand of modesty.

And Ali, son of Abu Bakr, joined himself to a company of those rejoicing and said: ‘I conjure ye by your most remote ancestors, declare to me in what way ye have profited by the laudations wherewith ye have belauded us? For it is brought to my notice that through seven weeks the inhabitants of Bagdad have abandoned the pursuit of all trade and gain, that they may pursue me and my associates with an unmerited honour.’

And the merry-makers said: ‘May we never lose thy presence, O son of Abu Bakr!’ and they recited the following verses

‘Have we wasted a day, or forty days, in unseemly revelry?

Still we have revelled, and the remembrances of our diversions will not soon depart from us.

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But we assert that our merry-making was not flagitious, and that the echo of our laughter shall not perish out of men’s hearts.

Give us an equal occasion, and we will disport ourselves anew, lest any should believe us incapable of more than a little mirth.

Truly our benevolence is inexhaustible, and our goodwill knows neither beginning nor end. This is but a foretaste of our favours. We have unexpended a million million others.’

Then Ali said: ‘Is this of a truth your intention?’ And the merry-makers said: ‘Have we not already proved it, or shall we set thee again upon the camel and delight thee with amazing caresses?’

Then he trembled excessively, and the sweat leaped out upon his forehead like seed-pearls, and he said: ‘I hear and I obey and I toil,’ and he cast off his garments and bought a leathern apron and a porter’s knot and went down to the caravanserai to oversee and to expedite the brazen engines.

But he found in the caravanserai, attired in leathern aprons, adorned with porters’ knots, the eleven his companions, and the sweat stood out upon their foreheads also like seed-pearls by reason of the vehemence with which they laboured both to oversee and to expedite the engines. And Ali said: ‘I am not alone in affliction.’ And they said: ‘By Allah, dost thou call this affliction? It is altogether Paradise by the side of the honours to which we have been subjected, and we purpose to endure in it to our lives’ end rather than to incur again the attentions of the inhabitants of Bagdad’…And they recited the following verses:

Against all things, except Ridicule, hath Allah fortified the hearts of men; but even the most vicious desire not to be made a butt; and the brazen-faced preserve still a remnant of shame.

When sweet words are useless the fool speaks sourly; but the wise man maketh his speech yet sweeter, till the teeth of such as hear it ache from excess of sweetness.

Hast thou forgotten the red-headed man, or the widow lame of one leg, or the newly affianced son of the barber, or the inscriptions in colour like to the rainbow, or the lamentable chapter of the camels?

Be sure that these are prepared against the day of Dereliction, and will inevitably return at the hour of Unpunctuality.

Allah hath applied a goad to the extremities of our reason. He hath sent a remembrancer into our secret apartments, and an open shame about our feet going forth.

Alas for the days when, free and uncontrolled, we lived among the valleys of Bagdad, merrily, and in no very good fame!’

So, then, these twelve merchants, who were partners with the Afrit, laboured unremittingly for many years in honesty and sobriety and zeal and devotion to expedite the engines of the Afrit; and having, by the Permission of Allah, attained these ends, they were each at the appointed hour overtaken by Death, the separator of companions, the divider of real estate, the terminator of leases, the herdsman of heriots, and the completor of operations.

Extolled be the excellence of Allah-al-Bari Who alone is the contriver of wonderful things; the Artificer of the destinies of the Universe, and the Compeller of the hearts of men!

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CATTIWOW came down the steep lane with his five-horse timber-tug. He stopped by the wood-lump at the back gate to take off the brakes. His real name was Brabon, but the first time the children met him, years and years ago, he told them he was ‘carting wood,’ and it sounded so exactly like ‘cattiwow’ that they never called him anything else.‘Hi!’ Una shouted from the top of the wood-lump, where they had been watching the lane. ‘What are you doing? Why weren’t we told?’

‘They’ve just sent for me,’ Cattiwow answered. ‘There’s a middlin’ big log stacked in the dirt at Rabbit Shaw, and’—he flicked his whip back along the line—‘so they’ve sent for us all.’

Dan and Una threw themselves off the wood-lump almost under black Sailor’s nose. Cattiwow never let them ride the big beam that makes the body of the timber-tug, but they hung on behind while their teeth thuttered.

The Wood road beyond the brook climbs at once into the woods, and you see all the horses’ backs rising, one above another, like moving stairs. Cattiwow strode ahead in his sackcloth woodman’s petticoat, belted at the waist with a leather strap; and when he turned and grinned, his red lips showed under his sackcloth-coloured beard. His cap was sackcloth too, with a flap behind, to keep twigs and bark out of his neck. He navigated the tug among pools of heather-water that splashed in their faces, and through clumps of young birches that slashed at their legs, and when they hit an old toadstooled stump, they never knew whether it would give way in showers of rotten wood, or jar them back again.

At the top of Rabbit Shaw half-a-dozen men and a team of horses stood round a forty-foot oak log in a muddy hollow. The ground about was poached and stoached with sliding hoofmarks, and a wave of dirt was driven up in front of the butt.

‘What did you want to bury her for this way?’ said Cattiwow. He took his broad-axe and went up the log tapping it.

‘She’s sticked fast,’ said ‘Bunny’ Lewknor, who managed the other team.

Cattiwow unfastened the five wise horses from the tug. They cocked their ears forward, looked, and shook themselves.

‘I believe Sailor knows,’ Dan whispered to Una.

‘He do,’ said a man behind them. He was dressed in flour sacks like the others, and he leaned on his broad-axe, but the children, who knew all the wood-gangs, knew he was a stranger. In his size and oily hairiness he might have been Bunny Lewknor’s brother, except that his brown eyes were as soft as a spaniel’s, and his rounded black beard, beginning close up under them, reminded Una of the walrus in ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter.’

‘Don’t he justabout know?’ he said shyly, and shifted from one foot to the other.

‘Yes. “What Cattiwow can’t get out of the woods must have roots growing to her.”’ Dan had heard old Hobden say this a few days before.

At that minute Puck pranced up, picking his way through the pools of black water in the ling.

‘Look out!’ cried Una, jumping forward. ‘He’ll see you, Puck!’

‘Me and Mus’ Robin are pretty middlin’ well acquainted,’ the man answered with a smile that made them forget all about walruses.

‘This is Simon Cheyneys,’ Puck began, and cleared his throat. ‘Shipbuilder of Rye Port; burgess of the said town, and the only—’

‘Oh, look! Look ye! That’s a knowing one,’ said the man.

Cattiwow had fastened his team to the thin end of the log, and was moving them about with his whip till they stood at right angles to it, heading downhill. Then he grunted. The horses took the strain, beginning with Sailor next the log, like a tug-of-war team, and dropped almost to their knees. The log shifted a nail’s breadth in the clinging dirt, with the noise of a giant’s kiss.

‘You’re getting her!’ Simon Cheyneys slapped his knee. ‘Hing on! Hing on, lads, or she’ll master ye! Ah!’

Sailor’s left hind hoof had slipped on a heather-tuft. One of the men whipped off his sack apron and spread it down. They saw Sailor feel for it, and recover. Still the log hung, and the team grunted in despair.

‘Hai!’ shouted Cattiwow, and brought his dreadful whip twice across Sailor’s loins with the crack of a shot-gun. The horse almost screamed as he pulled that extra last ounce which he did not know was in him. The thin end of the log left the dirt and rasped on dry gravel. The butt ground round like a buffalo in his wallow. Quick as an axe-cut, Lewknor snapped on his five horses, and sliding, trampling, jingling, and snorting, they had the whole thing out on the heather.

‘Dat’s the very first time I’ve knowed you lay into Sailor—to hurt him,’ said Lewknor.

‘It is,’ said Cattiwow, and passed his hand over the two wheals. ‘But I’d ha’ laid my own brother open at that pinch. Now we’ll twitch her down the hill a piece—she lies just about right—and get her home by the low road. My team’ll do it, Bunny; you bring the tug along. Mind out!’

He spoke to the horses, who tightened the chains. The great log half rolled over, and slowly drew itself out of sight downhill, followed by the wood-gang and the timber-tug. In half a minute there was nothing to see but the deserted hollow of the torn-up dirt, the birch undergrowth still shaking, and the water draining back into the hoof-prints.

‘Ye heard him?’ Simon Cheyneys asked. ‘He cherished his horse, but he’d ha’ laid him open in that pinch.’

‘Not for his own advantage,’ said Puck quickly. ‘’Twas only to shift the log.’

‘I reckon every man born of woman has his log to shift in the world—if so be you’re hintin’ at any o’ Frankie’s doings. He never hit beyond reason or without reason,’ said Simon.

‘I never said a word against Frankie,’ Puck retorted, with a wink at the children. ‘An’ if I did, do it lie in your mouth to contest my say-so, seeing how you—’

‘Why don’t it lie in my mouth, seeing I was the first which knowed Frankie for all he was?’ The burly sack-clad man puffed down at cool little Puck.

‘Yes, and the first which set out to poison him—Frankie—on the high seas—’

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Simon’s angry face changed to a sheepish grin. He waggled his immense hands, but Puck stood off and laughed mercilessly.

‘But let me tell you, Mus’ Robin,’he pleaded.

‘I’ve heard the tale. Tell the children here. Look, Dan! Look, Una!’ —Puck’s straight brown finger levelled like an arrow. ‘There’s the only man that ever tried to poison Sir Francis Drake!’

‘Oh, Mus’ Robin! ’Tidn’t fair. You’ve the ’vantage of us all in your upbringin’s by hundreds o’ years. Stands to nature you know all the tales against every one.’

He turned his soft eyes so helplessly on Una that she cried, ‘Stop ragging him, Puck! You know he didn’t really.’

‘I do. But why are you so sure, little maid?’

‘Because—because he doesn’t look like it,’ said Una stoutly.

‘I thank you,’ said Simon to Una. ‘I—I was always trustable—like with children if you let me alone, you double handful o’ mischief.’ He pretended to heave up his axe on Puck; and then his shyness overtook him afresh.

‘Where did you know Sir Francis Drake?’ said Dan, not liking being called a child.

‘At Rye Port, to be sure,’ said Simon, and seeing Dan’s bewilderment, repeated it.

‘Yes, but look here,’said Dan. ‘“Drake he was a Devon man.” The song says so.’

‘“And ruled the Devon seas,”’ Una went on. ‘That’s what I was thinking—if you don’t mind.’

Simon Cheyneys seemed to mind very much indeed, for he swelled in silence while Puck laughed.

‘Hutt!’ he burst out at last, ‘I’ve heard that talk too. If you listen to them West Country folk, you’ll listen to a pack o’ lies. I believe Frankie was born somewhere out west among the Shires, but his father had to run for it when Frankie was a baby, because the neighbours was wishful to kill him, d’ye see? He run to Chatham, old Parson Drake did, an’ Frankie was brought up in a old hulks of a ship moored in the Medway river, same as it might ha’ been the Rother. Brought up at sea, you might say, before he could walk on land—nigh Chatham in Kent. And ain’t Kent back-door to Sussex? And don’t that make Frankie Sussex? O’ course it do. Devon man! Bah! Those West Country boats they’re always fishin’ in other folks’ water.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Dan. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No call to be sorry. You’ve been misled. I met Frankie at Rye Port when my Uncle, that was the shipbuilder there, pushed me off his wharf-edge on to Frankie’s ship. Frankie had put in from Chatham with his rudder splutted, and a man’s arm—Moon’s that ’ud be—broken at the tiller. “Take this boy aboard an’ drown him,” says my Uncle, “and I’ll mend your rudder-piece for love.”

‘What did your Uncle want you drowned for?’said Una.

‘That was only his fashion of say-so, same as Mus’ Robin. I’d a foolishness in my head that ships could be builded out of iron. Yes—iron ships! I’d made me a liddle toy one of iron plates beat out thin—and she floated a wonder! But my Uncle, bein’ a burgess of Rye, and a shipbuilder, he ’prenticed me to Frankie in the fetchin’ trade, to cure this foolishness.’

‘What was the fetchin’ trade?’ Dan interrupted.

‘Fetchin’ poor Flemishers and Dutchmen out o’ the Low Countries into England. The King o’ Spain, d’ye see, he was burnin’ ’em in those parts, for to make ’em Papishers, so Frankie he fetched ’em away to our parts, and a risky trade it was. His master wouldn’t never touch it while he lived, but he left his ship to Frankie when he died, and Frankie turned her into this fetchin’ trade. Outrageous cruel hard work—on besom-black nights bulting back and forth off they Dutch roads with shoals on all sides, and having to hark out for the frish-frish-frish-like of a Spanish galliwopses’ oars creepin’ up on ye. Frankie ’ud have the tiller and Moon he’d peer forth at the bows, our lantern under his skirts, till the boat we was lookin’ for ’ud blurt up out o’ the dark, and we’d lay hold and haul aboard whoever ’twas—man, woman, or babe—an’ round we’d go again, the wind bewling like a kite in our riggin’s, and they’d drop into the hold and praise God for happy deliverance till they was all sick.

‘I had nigh a year at it, an’ we must have fetched off—oh, a hundred pore folk, I reckon. Outrageous bold, too, Frankie growed to be. Outrageous cunnin’ he was. Once we was as near as nothin’ nipped by a tall ship off Tergoes Sands in a snowstorm. She had the wind of us, and spooned straight before it, shootin’ all bow guns. Frankie fled inshore smack for the beach, till he was atop of the first breakers. Then he hove his anchor out, which nigh tore our bows off, but it twitched us round end-for-end into the wind, d’ye see, an’ we clawed off them sands like a drunk man rubbin’ along a tavern bench. When we could see, the Spanisher was laid flat along in the breakers with the snows whitening on his wet belly. He thought he could go where Frankie went.’

‘What happened to the crew?’ said Una.

‘We didn’t stop,’ Simon answered. ‘There was a very liddle new baby in our hold, and the mother she wanted to get to some dry bed middlin’ quick. We runned into Dover, and said nothing.’

‘Was Sir Francis Drake very much pleased?’

‘Heart alive, maid, he’d no head to his name in those days. He was just a outrageous, valiant, crop-haired, tutt-mouthed boy, roarin’ up an’ down the narrer seas, with his beard not yet quilted out. He made a laughing-stock of everything all day, and he’d hold our lives in the bight of his arm all the besom-black night among they Dutch sands; and we’d ha’ jumped overside to behove him any one time, all of us.’

‘Then why did you try to poison him?’ Una asked wickedly, and Simon hung his head like a shy child.

‘Oh, that was when he set me to make a pudden, for because our cook was hurted. I done my uttermost, but she all fetched adrift like in the bag, an’ the more I biled the bits of her, the less she favoured any fashion o’ pudden. Moon he chawed and chammed his piece, and Frankie chawed and chammed his’n, and—no words to it—he took me by the ear an’ walked me out over the bow-end, an’ him an’ Moon hove the pudden at me on the bowsprit gub by gub, something cruel hard!’ Simon rubbed his hairy cheek.

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‘“Nex’ time you bring me anything,” says Frankie, “you bring me cannon-shot an’ I’ll know what I’m getting.” But as for poisonin’—’ He stopped, the children laughed so.

‘Of course you didn’t,’ said Una. ‘Oh, Simon, we do like you!’

‘I was always likeable with children.’ His smile crinkled up through the hair round his eyes. ‘Simple Simon they used to call me through our yard gates.’

‘Did Sir Francis mock you?’ Dan asked.

‘Ah, no. He was gentle-born. Laugh he did—he was always laughing—but not so as to hurt a feather. An’ I loved ’en. I loved ’en before England knew ’en, or Queen Bess she broke his heart.’

‘But he hadn’t really done anything when you knew him, had he?’ Una insisted. ‘Armadas and those things, I mean.’

Simon pointed to the scars and scrapes left by Cattiwow’s great log. ‘You tell me that that good ship’s timber never done nothing against winds and weathers since her up-springing, and I’ll confess ye that young Frankie never done nothing neither. Nothing? He adventured and suffered and made shift on they Dutch sands as much in any one month as ever he had occasion for to do in a half-year on the high seas afterwards. An’ what was his tools? A coaster boat—a liddle box o’ walty plankin’ an’ some few fathom feeble rope held together an’ made able by him sole. He drawed our spirits up in our bodies same as a chimney-towel draws a fire. ’Twas in him, and it comed out all times and shapes.’

‘I wonder did he ever ’magine what he was going to be? Tell himself stories about it?’ said Dan with a flush.

‘I expect so. We mostly do—even when we’re grown. But bein’ Frankie, he took good care to find out beforehand what his fortune might be. Had I rightly ought to tell ’em this piece?’ Simon turned to Puck, who nodded.

‘My Mother, she was just a fair woman, but my Aunt, her sister, she had gifts by inheritance laid up in her,’ Simon began.

‘Oh, that’ll never do,’ cried Puck, for the children stared blankly. ‘Do you remember what Robin promised to the Widow Whitgift so long as her blood and get lasted?” [See ‘Dymchurch Flit’ in Puck of Pook’s Hill.]

‘Yes. There was always to be one of them that could see farther through a millstone than most,’ Dan answered promptly.

‘Well, Simon’s Aunt’s mother,’ said Puck slowly, ‘married the Widow’s blind son on the Marsh, and Simon’s Aunt was the one chosen to see farthest through millstones. Do you understand?’

‘That was what I was gettin’ at,’ said Simon, ‘but you’re so desperate quick. My Aunt she knew what was comin’ to people. My Uncle being a burgess of Rye, he counted all such things odious, and my Aunt she couldn’t be got to practise her gifts hardly at all, because it hurted her head for a week after-wards; but when Frankie heard she had ’em, he was all for nothin’ till she foretold on him—till she looked in his hand to tell his fortune, d’ye see? One time we was at Rye she come aboard with my other shirt and some apples, and he fair beazled the life out of her about it.

‘“Oh, you’ll be twice wed, and die childless,” she says, and pushes his hand away.

‘“That’s the woman’s part,” he says. “What’ll come to me—to me?” an’ he thrusts it back under her nose.

‘“Gold—gold, past belief or counting,” she says. “Let go o’ me, lad.”

‘“Sink the gold!” he says. “What’ll I do, mother?” He coaxed her like no woman could well withstand. I’ve seen him with ’em—even when they were sea-sick.

‘“If you will have it,” she says at last, “you shall have it. You’ll do a many things, and eating and drinking with a dead man beyond the world’s end will be the least of them. For you’ll open a road from the East unto the West, and back again, and you’ll bury your heart with your best friend by that road-side, and the road you open none shall shut so long as you’re let lie quiet in your grave.”

[The old lady’s prophecy is in a fair way to come true, for now the Panama Canal is finished, one end of it opens into the very bay where Sir Francis Drake was buried. So ships are taken through the Canal, and the road round Cape Horn which Sir Francis opened is very little used.]

‘“And if I’m not?” he says.

‘“Why, then,” she says, “Sim’s iron ships will be sailing on dry land. Now ha’ done with this foolishness. Where’s Sim’s shirt?”

‘He couldn’t fetch no more out of her, and when we come up from the cabin, he stood mazed-like by the tiller, playing with a apple. ‘“My Sorrow!” says my Aunt; “d’ye see that? The great world lying in his hand, liddle and round like a apple.”

‘“Why, ’tis one you gived him,” I says.

‘“To be sure,” she says. “’Tis just a apple,” and she went ashore with her hand to her head. It always hurted her to show her gifts.

Him and me puzzled over that talk plenty. It sticked in his mind quite extravagant. The very next time we slipped out for some fetchin’ trade, we met Mus’ Stenning’s boat over by Calais sands; and he warned us that the Spanishers had shut down all their Dutch ports against us English, and their galliwopses was out picking up our boats like flies off hogs’ backs. Mus’ Stenning he runs for Shoreham, but Frankie held on a piece, knowin’ that Mus Stenning was jealous of our good trade. Over by Dunkirk a great gor-bellied Spanisher, with the Cross on his sails, came rampin’ at us. We left him. We left him all they bare seas to conquest in.

‘“Looks like this road was going to be shut pretty soon,” says Frankie, humourin’ her at the tiller. “I’ll have to open that other one your Aunt foretold of.”

‘“The Spanisher’s crowdin’ down on us middlin’ quick,” I says. No odds,” says Frankie, “he’ll have the inshore tide against him. Did your Aunt say I was to be quiet in my grave for ever?”

‘“Till my iron ships sailed dry land,” I says.

‘“That’s foolishness,” he says. “Who cares where Frankie Drake makes a hole in the water now or twenty years from now?”

‘The Spanisher kept muckin’ on more and more canvas. I told him so.

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‘“He’s feelin’ the tide,” was all he says. “If he was among Tergoes Sands with this wind, we’d be picking his bones proper. I’d give my heart to have all their tall ships there some night before a north gale, and me to windward. There’d be gold in my hands then. Did your Aunt say she saw the world settin’ in my hand, Sim?”

Yes, but ’twas a apple,” says I, and he laughed like he always did at me. “Do you ever feel minded to jump overside and be done with everything?” he asks after a while.

‘“No. What water comes aboard is too wet as ’tis,” I says. “The Spanisher’s going about.”

‘“I told you,” says he, never looking back. “He’ll give us the Pope’s Blessing as he swings. Come down off that rail. There’s no knowin’ where stray shots may hit.” So I came down off the rail, and leaned against it, and the Spanisher he ruffled round in the wind, and his port-lids opened all red inside.

‘“Now what’ll happen to my road if they don’t let me lie quiet in my grave?” he says. “Does your Aunt mean there’s two roads to be found and kept open—or what does she mean? I don’t like that talk about t’other road. D’you believe in your iron ships, Sim?”

‘He knowed I did, so I only nodded, and he nodded back again. ‘“Anybody but me ’ud call you a fool, Sim,” he says. “Lie down. Here comes the Pope’s Blessing!”

‘The Spanisher gave us his broadside as he went about. They all fell short except one that smack-smooth hit the rail behind my back, an’ I felt most won’erful cold.

‘“Be you hit anywhere to signify?” he says. “Come over to me.”

‘“O Lord, Mus’ Drake,” I says, “my legs won’t move,” and that was the last I spoke for months.’

‘Why? What had happened?’ cried Dan and Una together.

‘The rail had jarred me in here like.’ Simon reached behind him clumsily. ‘From my shoulders down I didn’t act no shape. Frankie carried me piggyback to my Aunt’s house, and I lay bed-rid and tongue-tied while she rubbed me day and night, month in and month out. She had faith in rubbing with the hands. P’raps she put some of her gifts into it, too. Last of all, something loosed itself in my pore back, and lo! I was whole restored again, but kitten-feeble.

‘“Where’s Frankie?” I says, thinking I’d been a longish while abed.

‘“Down-wind amongst the Dons—months ago,” says my Aunt.

‘“When can I go after ’en?” I says.

‘“Your duty’s to your town and trade now,” says she. “Your Uncle he died last Michaelmas and he’ve left you and me the yard. So no more iron ships, mind ye.”

‘“What?” I says. “And you the only one that beleft in ’em!”

‘“Maybe I do still,” she says, “but I’m a woman before I’m a Whitgift, and wooden ships is what England needs us to build. I lay on ye to do so.”

‘That’s why I’ve never teched iron since that day—not to build a toy ship of. I’ve never even drawed a draft of one for my pleasure of evenings.’ Simon smiled down on them all.

‘Whitgift blood is terrible resolute—on the she-side,’ said Puck.

‘Didn’t You ever see Sir Francis Drake again?’Dan asked.

‘With one thing and another, and my being made a burgess of Rye, I never clapped eyes on him for the next twenty years. Oh, I had the news of his mighty doings the world over. They was the very same bold, cunning shifts and passes he’d worked with beforetimes off they Dutch sands, but, naturally, folk took more note of them. When Queen Bess made him knight, he sent my Aunt a dried orange stuffed with spiceries to smell to. She cried outrageous on it. She blamed herself for her foretellings, having set him on his won’erful road; but I reckon he’d ha’ gone that way all withstanding. Curious how close she foretelled it! The world in his hand like an apple, an’ he burying his best friend, Mus’ Doughty—’

‘Never mind for Mus’ Doughty,’ Puck interrupted. ‘Tell us where you met Sir Francis next.’

‘Oh, ha! That was the year I was made a burgess of Rye—the same year which King Philip sent his ships to take England without Frankie’s leave.’

‘The Armada!’ said Dan contentedly. ‘I was hoping that would come.’

‘I knowed Frankie would never let ’em smell London smoke, but plenty good men in Rye was two-three minded about the upshot. ’Twas the noise of the gun-fire tarrified us. The wind favoured it our way from off behind the Isle of Wight. It made a mutter like, which growed and growed, and by the end of a week women was shruckin’ in the streets. Then they come slidderin’ past Fairlight in a great smoky pat vambrished with red gun-fire, and our ships flyin’ forth and duckin’ in again. The smoke-pat sliddered over to the French shore, so I knowed Frankie was edgin’ the Spanishers toward they Dutch sands where he was master. I says to my Aunt, “The smoke’s thinnin’ out. I lay Frankie’s just about scrapin’ his hold for a few last rounds shot. ’Tis time for me to go.”

‘“Never in them clothes,” she says. “Do on the doublet I bought you to be made burgess in, and don’t you shame this day.”

‘So I mucked it on, and my chain, and my stiffed Dutch breeches and all.

‘“I be comin’, too,” she says from her chamber, and forth she come pavisandin’ like a peacock—stuff, ruff, stomacher and all. She was a notable woman.’

‘But how did you go? You haven’t told us,’ said Una.

‘In my own ship—but half-share was my Aunt’s. In the Antony of Rye, to be sure; and not empty-handed. I’d been loadin’ her for three days with the pick of our yard. We was ballasted on cannon-shot of all three sizes; and iron rods and straps for his carpenters; and a nice passel of clean three-inch oak planking and hide breech-ropes for his cannon, and gubs of good oakum, and bolts o’ canvas, and all the sound rope in the yard. What else could I ha’ done? I knowed what he’d need most after a week’s such work. I’m a shipbuilder, little maid.

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‘We’d a fair slant o’ wind off Dungeness, and we crept on till it fell light airs and puffed out. The Spanishers was all in a huddle over by Calais, and our ships was strawed about mending ’emselves like dogs lickin’ bites. Now and then a Spanisher would fire from a low port, and the ball ’ud troll across the flat swells, but both sides was finished fightin’ for that tide.

‘The first ship we foreslowed on, her breastworks was crushed in, an’ men was shorin’ ’em up. She said nothing. The next was a black pinnace, his pumps clackin’ middling quick, and he said nothing. But the third, mending shot-holes, he spoke out plenty . I asked him where Mus’ Drake might be, and a shiny-suited man on the poop looked down into us, and saw what we carried.

‘“Lay alongside you!” he says. “We’ll take that all.”

‘“’Tis for Mus’ Drake,” I says, keeping away lest his size should lee the wind out of my sails.

‘“Hi! Ho! Hither! We’re Lord High Admiral of England! Come alongside, or we’ll hang ye,” he says.

‘’Twas none of my affairs who he was if he wasn’t Frankie, and while he talked so hot I slipped behind a green-painted ship with her top-sides splintered. We was all in the middest of ’em then.

‘“Hi! Hoi!” the green ship says. “Come alongside, honest man, and I’ll buy your load. I’m Fenner that fought the seven Portugals—clean out of shot or bullets. Frankie knows me.”

‘“Ay, but I don’t,” I says, and I slacked nothing.

‘He was a masterpiece. Seein’ I was for goin’ on, he hails a Bridport hoy beyond us and shouts, “George! Oh, George! Wing that duck. He’s fat!” An’ true as we’re all here, that squatty Bridport boat rounds to acrost our bows, intendin’ to stop us by means o’ shooting.

‘My Aunt looks over our rail. “George,” she says, “you finish with your enemies afore you begin on your friends.”

‘Him that was laying the liddle swivel-gun at us sweeps off his hat an’ calls her Queen Bess, and asks if she was selling liquor to pore dry sailors. My Aunt answered him quite a piece. She was a notable woman.

‘Then he come up—his long pennant trailing overside—his waistcloths and netting tore all to pieces where the Spanishers had grappled, and his sides black-smeared with their gun-blasts like candle-smoke in a bottle. We hooked on to a lower port and hung.

‘“Oh, Mus’ Drake! Mus’ Drake!” I calls up.

‘He stood on the great anchor cathead, his shirt open to the middle, and his face shining like the sun.

‘“Why, Sim!” he says. just like that—after twenty year! “Sim,” he says, “what brings you?”

‘“Pudden,” I says, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

‘“You told me to bring cannon-shot next time, an’ I’ve brought ’em. “

‘He saw we had. He ripped out a fathom and a half o’ brimstone Spanish, and he swung down on our rail, and he kissed me before all his fine young captains. His men was swarming out of the lower ports ready to unload us. When he saw how I’d considered all his likely wants, he kissed me again.

‘“Here’s a friend that sticketh closer than a brother!” he says. “Mistress,” he says to my Aunt, “all you foretold on me was true. I’ve opened that road from the East to the West, and I’ve buried my heart beside it. “

‘“I know,” she says. “That’s why I be come.”

‘“But ye never foretold this”; he points to both they great fleets.

‘“This don’t seem to me to make much odds compared to what happens to a man,” she says. “Do it?”

‘“Certain sure a man forgets to remember when he’s proper mucked up with work. Sim,” he says to me, “we must shift every living Spanisher round Dunkirk corner on to our Dutch sands before morning. The wind’ll come out of the North after this calm—same as it used—and then they’re our meat.”

‘“Amen,” says I. “I’ve brought you what I could scutchel up of odds and ends. Be you hit anywhere to signify?”

‘“Oh, our folk’ll attend to all that when we’ve time,” he says. He turns to talk to my Aunt, while his men flew the stuff out of our hold. I think I saw old Moon amongst ’em, but he was too busy to more than nod like. Yet the Spanishers was going to prayers with their bells and candles before we’d cleaned out the Antony. Twenty-two ton o’ useful stuff I’d fetched him.

‘“Now, Sim,” says my Aunt, “no more devouring of Mus’ Drake’s time. He’s sending us home in the Bridport hoy. I want to speak to them young springalds again.”

‘“But here’s our ship all ready and swept,” I says.

‘“Swep’ an’ garnished,” says Frankie. “I’m going to fill her with devils in the likeness o’ pitch and sulphur. We must shift the Dons round Dunkirk comer, and if shot can’t do it, we’ll send down fireships.”

‘“I’ve given him my share of the Antony,” says my Aunt. “What do you reckon to do about yours?”

‘“She offered it,” said Frankie, laughing.

‘“She wouldn’t have if I’d overheard her,” I says; “because I’d have offered my share first.” Then I told him how the Antony’s sails was best trimmed to drive before the wind, and seeing he was full of occupations we went acrost to that Bridport hoy, and left him.

‘But Frankie was gentle-born, d’ye see, and that sort they never overlook any folks’ dues.

‘When the hoy passed under his stern, he stood bare-headed on the poop same as if my Aunt had been his Queen, and his musicianers played “Mary Ambree” on their silver trumpets quite a long while. Heart alive, little maid! I never meaned to make you look sorrowful!”

Bunny Lewknor in his sackcloth petticoats burst through the birch scrub wiping his forehead.

‘We’ve got the stick to rights now! She’ve been a whole hatful o’ trouble. You come an’ ride her home, Mus’ Dan and Miss Una!’

They found the proud wood-gang at the foot of the slope, with the log double-chained on the tug.

‘Cattiwow, what are you going to do with it?’said Dan, as they straddled the thin part.

‘She’s going down to Rye to make a keel for a Lowestoft fishin’-boat, I’ve heard. Hold tight!’

Cattiwow cracked his whip, and the great log dipped and tilted, and leaned and dipped again, exactly like a stately ship upon the high seas.

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I CAUGHT sight of their faces as we came up behind the cart in the narrow Sussex lane; but though it was not eleven o’clock, they were both asleep.That the carrier was on the wrong side of the road made no difference to his language when I rang my bell. He said aloud of motor-cars, and specially of steam ones, all the things which I had read in the faces of superior coachmen. Then he pulled slantwise across me.

There was a vociferous steam air-pump attached to that car which could be applied at pleasure ….

The cart was removed about a bowshot’s length in seven and a quarter seconds, to the accompaniment of parcels clattering. At the foot of the next hill the horse stopped, and the two men came out over the tail-board.

My engineer backed and swung the car, ready to move out of reach.

‘The blighted egg-boiler has steam up,’ said Mr. Hinchcliffe, pausing to gather a large stone. ‘Temporise with the beggar, Pye, till the sights come on!’

‘I can’t leave my ’orse!’ roared the carrier; ‘but bring ’em up ’ere, an’ I’ll kill ’em all over again.’

‘Good morning, Mr. Pyecroft,’ I called cheerfully. ‘Can I give you a lift anywhere?’

The attack broke up round my fore-wheels.

‘Well, we do ’ave the knack o’ meeting in puris naturalibus, as I’ve so often said.’ Mr. Pyecroft wrung my hand. ‘Yes, I’m on leaf. So’s Hinch. We’re visiting friends among these kopjes.’

A monotonous bellowing up the road persisted, where the carrier was still calling for corpses.

‘That’s Agg. He’s Hinch’s cousin. You aren’t fortunit in your family connections, Hinch. ’E’s usin’ language in derogation of good manners. Go and abolish ’im.’

Henry Salt Hinchcliffe stalked back to the cart and spoke to his cousin. I recall much that the wind bore to me of his words and the carrier’s. It seemed as if the friendship of years were dissolving amid throes.

‘’Ave it your own silly way, then,’ roared the carrier, ‘an’ get into Linghurst on your own silly feet. I’ve done with you two runagates.’ He lashed his horse and passed out of sight still rumbling.

‘The fleet’s sailed,’ said Pyecroft, ‘leavin’ us on the beach as before. Had you any particular port in your mind?’

‘Well, I was going to meet a friend at Instead Wick, but I don’t mind——’

‘Oh! that’ll do as well as anything! We’re on leaf, you see.’

‘She’ll hardly hold four,’ said my engineer. I had broken him of the foolish habit of being surprised at things, but he was visibly uneasy.

Hinchcliffe returned, drawn as by ropes to my steam-car, round which he walked in narrowing circles.

‘What’s her speed?’ he demanded of the engineer.

‘Twenty-five,’ said that loyal man.

‘Easy to run?’

‘No; very difficult,’ was the emphatic answer.

‘That just shows that you ain’t fit for your rating. D’you suppose that a man who earns his livin’ by runnin’ 30-knot destroyers for a parstime—for a parstime, mark you!—is going to lie down before any blighted land-crabbing steampinnace on springs?’

Yet that was what he did. Directly under the car he lay and looked upward into pipes—petrol, steam, and water—with a keen and searching eye.

I telegraphed Mr. Pyecroft a question.

‘Not—in—the—least,’ was the answer. ‘Steam gadgets always take him that way. We had a bit of a riot at Parsley Green through his tryin’ to show a traction-engine haulin’ gipsy-wagons how to turn corners.’

‘Tell him everything he wants to know,’ I said to the engineer, as I dragged out a rug and spread it on the roadside.

‘He don’t want much showing,’ said the engineer. Now, the two men had not, counting the time we took to stuff our pipes, been together more than three minutes.

‘This,’ said Pyecroft, driving an elbow back into the deep verdure of the hedge-foot, ‘is a little bit of all right. Hinch, I shouldn’t let too much o’ that hot muckings drop in my eyes. Your leaf’s up in a fortnight, an’ you’ll be wantin’ ’em.’

‘Here!’ said Hinchcliffe, still on his back, to the engineer. ‘Come here and show me the lead of this pipe.’ And the engineer lay down beside him.

‘That’s all right,’ said Mr. Hinchcliffe, rising. ‘But she’s more of a bag of tricks than I thought. Unship this superstructure aft’—he pointed to the back seat—‘and I’ll have a look at the forced draught.’

The engineer obeyed with alacrity. I heard him volunteer the fact that he had a brother an artificer in the Navy.

‘They couple very well, those two,’ said Pyecroft critically, while Hinchcliffe sniffed round the asbestos-lagged boiler and turned on gay jets of steam.

‘Now take me up the road,’ he said. My man, for form’s sake, looked at me.

‘Yes, take him,’ I said. ‘He’s all right.’

‘No, I’m not,’ said Hinchcliffe of a sudden—‘not if I’m expected to judge my water out of a little shaving-glass.’

The water-gauge of that steam-car was reflected on a mirror to the right of the dashboard. I also had found it inconvenient.

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‘Throw up your arm and look at the gauge under your armpit. Only mind how you steer while you’re doing it, or you’ll get ditched!’ I cried, as the car ran down the road.

‘I wonder!’ said Pyecroft, musing. ‘But, after all, it’s your steamin’ gadgets he’s usin for his libretto, as you might put it. He said to me after breakfast only this mornin’ ’ow he thanked his Maker, on all fours, that he wouldn’t see nor smell nor thumb a runnin’ bulgine till the nineteenth prox. Now look at him! Only look at ’im!’

We could see, down the long slope of the road, my driver surrendering his seat to Hinchcliffe, while the car flickered generously from hedge to hedge.

‘What happens if he upsets?’

‘The petrol will light up and the boiler may blow up.’

‘How rambunkshus! And’—Pyecroft blew a slow cloud—’Agg’s about three hoops up this mornin’, too.’

‘What’s that to do with us? He’s gone down the road,’ I retorted.

‘Ye—es, but we’ll overtake him. He’s a vindictive carrier. He and Hinch ’ad words about pig-breeding this morning. O’ course, Hinch don’t know the elements o’ that evolution; but he fell back on ’is naval rank an’ office, an’ Agg grew peevish. I wasn’t sorry to get out of the cart . . . . Have you ever considered how, when you an’ I meet, so to say, there’s nearly always a remarkably hectic day ahead of us! Hullo! Behold the beef-boat returnin’!’

He rose as the car climbed up the slope, and shouted: ‘In bow! Way ‘nuff!’

‘You be quiet!’ cried Hinchcliffe, and drew up opposite the rug, his dark face shining with joy. ‘She’s the Poetry o’ Motion! She’s the Angel’s Dream. She’s——’ He shut off steam, and the slope being against her, the car slid soberly downhill again.

‘What’s this? I’ve got the brake on!’ he yelled.

‘It doesn’t hold backwards,’ I said. ‘Put her on the mid-link.’

‘That’s a nasty one for the chief engineer o’ the Djinn, 31-knot T.B.D.,’ said Pyecroft. ‘Do you know what the mid-link is, Hinch?’

Once more the car returned to us; but as Pyecroft stooped to gather up the rug, Hinchcliffe jerked the lever testily, and with prawn-like speed she retired backwards into her own steam.

‘Apparently ’e don’t,’ said Pyecroft. ‘What’s he done now, Sir?’

‘Reversed her. I’ve done it myself.’

‘But he’s an engineer.’

For the third time the car manoeuvred up the hill.

‘I’ll teach you to come alongside properly, if I keep you tiffies out all night!’ shouted Pyecroft. It was evidently a quotation. Hinchcliffe’s face grew livid, and, his hand ever so slightly working on the throttle, the car buzzed twenty yards uphill.

‘That’s enough. We’ll take your word for it. The mountain will go to Ma’ommed. Stand fast!’

Pyecroft and I and the rug marched up where she and Hinchcliffe fumed together.

‘Not as easy as it looks—eh, Hinch?’

‘It is dead easy. I’m going to drive her to Instead Wick—aren’t I?’ said the first-class engineroom artificer. I thought of his performances with No. 267 and nodded. After all, it was a small privilege to accord to pure genius.

‘But my engineer will stand by—at first,’ I added.

‘An’ you a family man, too,’ muttered Pyecroft, swinging himself into the right rear seat. ‘Sure to be a remarkably hectic day when we meet.’

We adjusted ourselves and, in the language of the immortal Navy doctor, paved our way towards Linghurst, distant by mile-post 11¾ miles.

Mr. Hinchcliffe, every nerve and muscle braced, talked only to the engineer, and that professionally. I recalled the time when I, too, had enjoyed the rack on which he voluntarily extended himself.

And the County of Sussex slid by in slow time.

‘How cautious is the tiffy-bird!’ said Pyecroft.

‘Even in a destroyer,’ Hinch snapped over his shoulder, ‘you ain’t expected to con and drive simultaneous. Don’t address any remarks to me!’

‘Pump!’ said the engineer. ‘Your water’s droppin’.’

‘I know that. Where the Heavens is that blighted by-pass?’

He beat his right or throttle hand madly on the side of the car till he found the bent rod that more or less controls the pump, and, neglecting all else, twisted it furiously.

My engineer grabbed the steering-bar just in time to save us lurching into a ditch.

‘If I was a burnin’ peacock, with two hundred bloodshot eyes in my shinin’ tail, I’d need ’em all on this job!’ said Hinch.

‘Don’t talk! Steer! This ain’t the North Atlantic,’ Pyecroft replied.

‘Blast my stokers! Why, the steam’s dropped fifty pounds!’ Hinchcliffe cried.

‘Fire’s blown out,’ said the engineer. ‘Stop her!’

‘Does she do that often?’ said Hinch, descending.

‘Sometimes.’

page 3

‘Any time?’

‘Any time a cross-wind catches her.’

The engineer produced a match and stooped.

That car (now, thank Heaven, no more than an evil memory) never lit twice in the same fashion. This time she backfired superbly, and Pyecroft went out over the right rear wheel in a column of rich yellow flame.

‘I’ve seen a mine explode at Bantry—once—prematoor,’ he volunteered.

‘That’s all right,’ said Hinchcliffe, brushing down his singed beard with a singed forefinger. (He had been watching too closely.) ‘Has she any more little surprises up her dainty sleeve?’

‘She hasn’t begun yet,’ said my engineer, with a scornful cough. ‘Some one ’as opened the petrol-supply-valve too wide.’

‘Change places with me, Pyecroft,’ I commanded, for I remembered that the petrol-supply, the steam-lock, and the forced draught were all controlled from the right rear seat.

‘Me? Why? There’s a whole switchboard full o’ nickel-plated muckin’s which I haven’t begun to play with yet. The starboard side’s crawlin’ with ’em.’

‘Change, or I’ll kill you!’ said Hinchcliffe, and he looked like it.

‘That’s the tiffy all over. When anything goes wrong, blame it on the lower deck. Navigate by your automatic self, then! I won’t help you any more.’

We navigated for a mile in dead silence.

‘Talkin’ o’ wakes——’ said Pyecroft suddenly.

‘We weren’t,’ Hinchcliffe grunted.

‘There’s some wakes would break a snake’s back; but this of yours, so to speak, would fair turn a tapeworm giddy. That’s all I wish to observe, Hinch . . . . Cart at anchor on the port bow. It’s Agg!’

Far up the shaded road into secluded Bromlingleigh we saw the carrier’s cart at rest before the post-office.

‘He’s bung in the fairway. How’m I to get past?’ said Hinchcliffe. ‘There’s no room. Here, Pye, come and relieve the wheel!’

‘Nay, nay, Pauline. You’ve made your own bed. You’ve as good as left your happy home an’ family cart to steal it. Now you lie on it.’

‘Ring your bell,’ I suggested.

‘Glory!’ said Pyecroft, falling forward into the nape of Hinchcliffe’s neck as the car stopped dead.

‘Get out o’ my back-hair! That must have been the brake I touched off,’ Hinchcliffe muttered, and repaired his error tumultuously.

We passed the cart as though we had been all Bruges belfry. Agg, from the post-office door, regarded us with a too pacific eye. I remembered later that the pretty postmistress looked on us pityingly.

Hinchcliffe wiped the sweat from his brow and drew breath. It was the first vehicle that he had passed, and I sympathised with him.

‘You needn’t grip so hard,’ said my engineer. ‘She steers as easy as a bicycle.’

‘Ho! You suppose I ride bicycles up an’ down my engine-room?’ was the answer. ‘I’ve other things to think about. She’s a terror. She’s a whistlin’ lunatic. I’d sooner run the old SouthEaster at Simonstown than her!’

‘One of the nice things they say about her,’ I interrupted, ‘is that no engineer is needed to run this machine.’

‘No. They’d need about seven.’

‘“Common-sense only is needed,”’ I quoted.

‘Make a note of that, Hinch. Just commonsense,’ Pyecroft put in.

‘And now,’ I said, ‘we’ll have to take in water. There isn’t more than a couple of inches of water in the tank.’

‘Where d’you get it from?’

‘Oh!—cottages and such-like.’

‘Yes, but that being so, where does your much-advertised twenty-five miles an hour come in? Ain’t a dung-cart more to the point?’

‘If you want to go anywhere, I suppose it would be,’ I replied.

‘I don’t want to go anywhere. I’m thinkin’ of you who’ve got to live with her. She’ll burn her tubes if she loses her water?’

‘She will.’

‘I’ve never scorched yet, and I’m not beginnin’ now.’ He shut off steam firmly. ‘Out you get, Pye, an’ shove her along by hand.’

‘Where to?’

‘The nearest water-tank,’ was the reply. ‘And Sussex is a dry county.’

‘She ought to have drag-ropes—little pipe-clayed ones,’ said Pyecroft.

We got out and pushed under the hot sun for half a mile till we came to a cottage, sparsely inhabited by one child who wept.

page 4

‘All out haymakin’, o’ course,’ said Pyecroft, thrusting his head into the parlour for an instant. ‘What’s the evolution now?’

‘Skirmish till we find a well,’ I said.

‘Hmm! But they wouldn’t ’ave left that kid without a chaperon, so to say . . . I thought so! Where’s a stick?’

A bluish and silent beast of the true old sheepdog breed glided from behind an outhouse and without words fell to work.

Pyecroft kept him at bay with a rake-handle while our party, in rallying-square, retired along the box-bordered brick path to the car.

At the garden gate the dumb devil halted, looked back on the child, and sat down to scratch.

‘That’s his three-mile limit, thank Heaven!’ said Pyecroft. ‘Fall in, push-party, and proceed with land-transport o’ pinnace. I’ll protect your flanks in case this sniffin’ flea-bag is tempted beyond ’is strength.’

We pushed off in silence. The car weighed 1200 lb., and even on ball-bearings was a powerful sudorific. From somewhere behind a hedge we heard a gross rustic laugh.

‘Those are the beggars we lie awake for, patrollin’ the high seas. There ain’t a port in China where we wouldn’t be better treated. Yes, a Boxer ’ud be ashamed of it,’ said Pyecroft.

A cloud of fine dust boomed down the road.

‘Some happy craft with a well-found engineroom! How different!’ panted Hinchcliffe, bent over the starboard mudguard.

It was a claret-coloured petrol car, and it stopped courteously, as good cars will at sight of trouble.

‘Water, only water,’ I answered in reply to offers of help.

‘There’s a lodge at the end of these oak palings. They’ll give you all you want. Say I sent you. Gregory—Michael Gregory. Good-bye!’

‘Ought to ’ave been in the Service. Prob’ly is,’ was Pyecroft’s comment.

At that thrice-blessed lodge our water-tank was filled (I dare not quote Mr. Hinchcliffe’s remarks when he saw the collapsible rubber bucket with which we did it) and we re-embarked. It seemed that Sir Michael Gregory owned many acres, and that his park ran for miles.

‘No objection to your going through it,’ said the lodge-keeper. ‘It’ll save you a goodish bit to Instead Wick.’

But we needed petrol, which could be purchased at Pigginfold, a few miles farther up, and so we held to the main road, as our fate had decreed.

‘We’ve come seven miles in fifty-four minutes, so far,’ said Hinchcliffe (he was driving with greater freedom and less responsibility), ‘and now we have to fill our bunkers. This is worse than the Channel Fleet.’

At Pigginfold, after ten minutes, we refilled our petrol tank and lavishly oiled our engines. Mr. Hinchcliffe wished to discharge our engineer on the grounds that he (Mr. Hinchcliffe) was now entirely abreast of his work. To this I demurred, for I knew my car. She had, in the language of the road, held up for a day and a half, and by most bitter experience I suspected that her time was very near. Therefore, three miles short of Linghurst, I was less surprised than any one, excepting always my engineer, when the engines set up a lunatic clucking, and, after two or three kicks, jammed.

‘Heaven forgive me all the harsh things I may have said about destroyers in my sinful time!’ wailed Hinchcliffe, snapping back the throttle. ‘What’s worryin’ Ada now?’

‘The forward eccentric-strap screw’s dropped off,’ said the engineer, investigating.

‘That all ? I thought it was a propeller-blade.’

‘We must go an’ look for it. There isn’t another.’

‘Not me,’ said Pyecroft from his seat. ‘Out pinnace, Hinch, an’ creep for it. It won’t be more than five miles back.’

The two men, with bowed heads, moved up the road.

‘Look like etymologists, don’t they? Does she decant her innards often, so to speak?’ Pyecroft asked.

I told him the true tale of a race-full of ball bearings strewn four miles along a Hampshire road, and by me recovered in detail. He was profoundly touched.

‘Poor Hinch! Poor—poor Hinch!’ he said. ‘And that’s only one of her little games, is it? He’ll be homesick for the Navy by night.’

When the search-party doubled back with the missing screw, it was Hinchcliffe who replaced it in less than five minutes, while my engineer looked on admiringly.

‘Your boiler’s only seated on four little paperclips,’ he said, crawling from beneath her. ‘She’s a wicker-willow lunchbasket below. She’s a runnin’ miracle. Have you had this combustible spirit-lamp long?’

I told him.

‘And yet you were afraid to come into the Nightmare’s engine-room when we were runnin’ trials!’

‘It’s all a matter of taste,’ Pyecroft volunteered. ‘But I will say for you, Hinch, you’ve certainly got the hang of her steamin’ gadgets in quick time.’

He was driving her very sweetly, but with a worried look in his eye and a tremor in his arm.

‘She don’t seem to answer her helm somehow,’ he said.

‘There’s a lot of play to the steering-gear,’ said my engineer. ‘We generally tighten it up every few miles.’

‘‘Like me to stop now? We’ve run as much as one mile and a half without incident,’ he replied tartly.

page 5

‘Then you’re lucky,’ said my engineer, bristling in turn.

‘They’ll wreck the whole turret out o’ nasty professional spite in a minute,’ said Pyecroft. ‘That’s the worst o’ machinery. Man dead ahead, Hinch—semaphorin’ like the flagship in a fit!’

‘Amen!’ said Hinchcliffe. ‘Shall I stop, or shall I cut him down?’

He stopped, for full in the centre of the Linghurst Road stood a person in pepper-and-salt raiment (ready-made), with a brown telegraph envelope in his hands.

‘Twenty-three and a half miles an hour,’ he began, weighing a small beam-engine of a Waterbury in one red paw. ‘From the top of the hill over our measured quarter-mile—twenty-three and a half.’

‘You manurial gardener——’ Hinchcliffe began. I prodded him warningly from behind, and laid the other hand on Pyecroft’s stiffening knee.

‘Also—on information received-drunk and disorderly in charge of a motor-car—to the common danger—two men like sailors in appearance,’ the man went on.

‘Like sailors! . . . That’s Agg’s little roose. No wonder he smiled at us,’ said Pyecroft.

‘I’ve been waiting for you some time,’ the man concluded, folding up the telegram.

‘Who’s the owner?’

I indicated myself.

‘Then I want you as well as the two seafaring men. Drunk and disorderly can be treated summary. You come on.’

My relations with the Sussex constabulary have, so far, been of the best, but I could not love this person.

‘Of course you have your authority to show?’ I hinted.

‘I’ll show it you at Linghurst,’ he retorted hotly—‘all the authority you want.’

‘I only want the badge, or warrant, or whatever it is a plain-clothes man has to show.’

He made as though to produce it, but checked himself, repeating less politely the invitation to Linghurst. The action and the tone confirmed my many-times-tested theory that the bulk of English shoregoing institutions are based on conformable strata of absolutely impervious inaccuracy. I reflected and became aware of a drumming on the back of the front seat that Pyecroft, bowed forward and relaxed, was tapping with his knuckles. The hardly checked fury on Hinchcliffe’s brow had given place to a greasy imbecility, and he nodded over the steering-bar. In longs and shorts, as laid down by the pious and immortal Mr. Morse, Pyecroft tapped out, ‘Sham drunk. Get him in the car.’

‘I can’t stay here all day,’ said the constable.

Pyecroft raised his head. Then was seen with what majesty the British sailor-man envisages a new situation.

‘Met gennelman heavy sheeway,’ said he. ‘Do’ tell me British gelman can’t give ’ole Brish Navy lif’ own blighted ste’ cart. Have another drink!’

‘I didn’t know they were as drunk as all that when they stopped me,’ I explained.

‘You can say all that at Linghurst,’ was the answer. ‘Come on.’

‘Quite right,’ I said. ‘But the question is, if you take these two out on the road, they’ll fall down or start killing you.’

‘Then I’d call on you to assist me in the execution o’ my duty.’

‘But I’d see you further first. You’d better come with us in the car. I’ll turn this passenger out.’ (This was my engineer, sitting quite silent.) ‘You don’t want him, and, anyhow, he’d only be a witness for the defence.’

‘That’s true,’ said the constable. ‘But it wouldn’t make any odds—at Linghurst.’

My engineer skipped into the bracken like a rabbit. I bade him cut across Sir Michael Gregory’s park, and if he caught my friend, to tell him I should probably be rather late for lunch.

‘I ain’t going to be driven by him.’ Our destined prey pointed at Hinchcliffe with apprehension.

‘Of course not. You take my seat and keep the big sailor in order. He’s too drunk to do much. I’ll change places with the other one. Only be quick; I want to pay my fine and get it over.’

‘That’s the way to look at it,’ he said, dropping into the left rear seat. ‘We’re making quite a lot out o’ you motor gentry.’ He folded his arms judicially as the car gathered way under Hinchcliffe’s stealthy hand.

‘But you aren’t driving!’ he cried, half rising.

‘You’ve noticed it?’ said Pyecroft, and embraced him with one anaconda-like left arm.

‘Don’t kill him,’ said Hinchcliffe briefly. ‘I want to show him what twenty-three and a quarter is.’ We were going a fair twelve, which was about the car’s limit.

Our passenger swore something and then groaned.

‘Hush, darling!’ said Pyecroft, ‘or I’ll have to hug you.’

The main road, white under the noon sun, lay broad before us, running north to Linghurst. We slowed and looked anxiously for a side track.

‘And now,’ said I, ‘I want to see your authority.’

‘The badge of your ratin’,’ Pyecroft added.

page 6

‘I’m a constable,’ he said, and kicked. Indeed, his boots would have bewrayed him across half a county’s plough ; but boots are not legal evidence.

‘I want your authority,’ I repeated coldly; ‘some evidence that you are not a common, drunken tramp.’

It was as I had expected. He had forgotten or mislaid his badge. He had neglected to learn the outlines of the work for which he received money and consideration; and he expected me, the taxpayer, to go to infinite trouble to supplement his deficiencies.

‘If you don’t believe me, come to Linghurst,’ was the burden of his almost national anthem.

‘But I can’t run all over Sussex every time a blackmailer jumps up and says he is a policeman.’

‘Why, it’s quite close,’ he persisted.

‘’Twon’t be—soon,’ said Hinchcliffe.

‘None of the other people ever made any trouble. To be sure they was gentlemen,’ he cried. ‘All I can say is, it may be very funny, but it ain’t fair.’

I laboured with him in this dense fog, but to no end. He had forgotten his badge, and we were villains for that we did not cart him to the pub or barracks where he had left it.

Pyecroft listened critically as we spun along the hard road.

‘If he was a concentrated Boer, he couldn’t expect much more,’ he observed. ‘Now, suppose I’d been a lady in a delicate state o’ health—you’d ha’ made me very ill with your doings.’

‘I wish I ’ad. ’Ere!’Elp!’Elp! Hi!’

The man had seen a constable in uniform fifty yards ahead, where a lane ran into the road, and would have said more but that Hinchcliffe jerked her up that lane with a wrench that nearly capsized us as the constable came running heavily.

It seemed to me that both our guest and his fellow-villain in uniform smiled as we fled down the road easterly betwixt the narrowing hedges.

‘You’ll know all about it in a little time,’ said our guest. ‘You’ve only yourselves to thank for runnin’ your ’ead into a trap.’ And he whistled ostentatiously.

We made no answer.

‘If that man ’ad chose, ’e could have identified me,’ he said.

Still we were silent.

‘But ’e’ll do it later, when you’re caught.’

‘Not if you go on talking. ’E won’t be able to,’ said Pyecroft. ‘I don’t know what traverse you think you’re workin’, but your duty till you’re put in cells for a highway robber is to love, honour, an’ cherish me most special—performin’ all evolutions signalled in rapid time. I tell you this, in case o’ anything turnip’ up.’

‘Don’t you fret about things turnip’ up,’ was the reply.

Hinchcliffe had given the car a generous throttle, and she was well set to work, when, without warning, the road—there are two or three in Sussex like it—turned down and ceased.

‘Holy Muckins!’ he cried, and stood on both brakes as our helpless tyres slithered over wet grass and bracken—down and down into forest—early British woodland. It was the change of a nightmare, and that all should fit, fifty yards ahead of us a babbling brook barred our way. On the far side a velvet green ride, sprinkled with rabbits and fern, gently sloped upwards and away, but behind us was no hope. Forty horse-power would never have rolled wet pneumatic tyres up that verdurous cliff we had descended.

‘H’m!’ Our guest coughed significantly. ‘A great many cars thinks they can take this road; but they all come back. We walks after ’em at our convenience.’

‘Meanin’ that the other jaunty is now pursuin’ us on his lily feet?’ said Pyecroft.

‘Precisely.’

‘An’ you think,’ said Pyecroft (I have no hope to render the scorn of the words), ‘that’ll make any odds? Get out!’

The man obeyed with alacrity.

‘See those spars up-ended over there? I mean that wickyup-thing. Hop-poles, then, you rural blighter. Keep on fetching me hop-poles at the double.’

And he doubled, Pyecroft at his heels; for they had arrived at a perfect understanding.

There was a stack of hurdles a few yards down stream, laid aside after sheep-washing; and there were stepping-stones in the brook. Hinchcliffe rearranged these last to make some sort of causeway; I brought up the hurdles; and when Pyecroft and his subaltern had dropped a dozen hop-poles across the stream, laid them down over all.

‘Talk o’ the Agricultur’l Hall!’ he said, mopping his brow—‘’tisn’t in it with us. The approach to the bridge must now be paved with hurdles, owin’ to the squashy nature o’ the country. Yes, an’ we’d better have one or two on the far side to lead her on to terror fermior. Now, Hinch Give her full steam and ’op along. If, she slips off, we’re done. Shall I take the wheel?’

‘No. This is my job,’ said the first-class engine-room artificer. ‘Get over the far side, and be ready to catch her if she jibs on the uphill.’

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We crossed that elastic structure and stood ready amid the bracken. Hinchcliffe gave her a full steam and she came like a destroyer on her trial. There was a crack, a flicker of white water, and she was in our arms fifty yards up the slope; or rather, we were behind her pushing her madly towards a patch of raw gravel whereon her wheels could bite. Of the bridge remained only a few wildly vibrating hop-poles, and those hurdles which had been sunk in the mud of the approaches.

‘She—she kicked out all the loose ones behind her, as she finished with ’em,’ Hinchcliffe panted.

‘At the Agricultural Hall they would ’ave been fastened down with ribbons,’ said Pyecroft. ‘But this ain’t Olympia.’

‘She nearly wrenched the tiller out of my hand. Don’t you think I conned her like a cock-angel, Pye?’

‘I never saw anything like it,’ said our guest propitiatingly. ‘And now, gentlemen, if you’ll let me go back to Linghurst, I promise you you won’t hear another word from me.’

‘Get in,’ said Pyecroft, as we puffed out on to a metalled road once more. ‘We ’aven’t begun on you yet.’

‘A joke’s a joke,’ he replied. ‘I don’t mind a little bit of a joke myself, but this is going beyond it.’

‘Miles an’ miles beyond it, if this machine stands up. We’ll want water pretty soon.’

Our guest’s countenance brightened, and Pyecroft perceived it.

‘Let me tell you,’ he said earnestly, ‘it won’t make any difference to you whatever happens. Barrin’ a dhow or two Tajurrah-way, prizes are scarce in the Navy. Hence we never abandon ’em.’

There was a long silence. Pyecroft broke it suddenly.

‘Robert,’ he said, ‘have you a mother?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you a big brother?’

‘Yes.’

‘An’ a little sister?’

‘Yes.’

‘Robert. Does your mamma keep a dog?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘All right, Robert. I won’t forget it.’

I looked for an explanation.

‘I saw his cabinet photograph in full uniform on the mantelpiece o’ that cottage before faithful Fido turned up,’ Pyecroft whispered. ‘Ain’t you glad it’s all in the family somehow?’

We filled with water at a cottage on the edge of St. Leonard’s Forest, and, despite our increasing leakage, made shift to climb the ridge above Instead Wick. Knowing the car as I did, I felt sure that final collapse would not be long delayed. My sole concern was to run our guest well into the wilderness before that came.

On the roof of the world—a naked plateau clothed with young heather—she retired from active life in floods of tears. Her feed-water-heater (Hinchcliffe blessed it and its maker for three minutes) was leaking beyond hope of repair; she had shifted most of her packing, and her waterpump would not lift.

‘If I had a bit of piping I could disconnect this tin cartridge-case an’ feed direct into the boiler. It ’ud knock down her speed, but we could get on,’ said he, and looked hopelessly at the long dun ridges that hove us above the panorama of Sussex. Northward we could see the London haze. Southward, between gaps of the whale-backed Downs, lay the Channel’s zinc-blue. But all our available population in that vast survey was one cow and a kestrel.

‘It’s down hill to Instead Wick. We can run her there by gravity,’ I said at last.

‘Then he’ll only have to walk to the station to get home. Unless we take off ’is boots first,’ Pyecroft replied.

‘That,’ said our guest earnestly, ‘would be theft atop of assault and very serious.’

‘Oh, let’s hang him an’ be done,’ Hinchcliffe grunted. ‘It’s evidently what he’s sufferin’ for.’

Somehow murder did not appeal to us that warm noon. We sat down to smoke in the heather, and presently out of the valley below came the thick beat of a petrol-motor ascending. I paid little attention to it till I heard the roar of a horn that has no duplicate in all the Home Counties.

‘That’s the man I was going to lunch with!’ I cried. ‘Hold on!’ and I ran down the road.

It was a big, black, black-dashed, tonneaued twenty-four-horse Octopod; and it bore not only Kysh my friend, and Salmon his engineer, but my own man, who for the first time in our acquaintance smiled.

‘Did they get you? What did you get? I was coming into Linghurst as witness to character—your man told me what happened—but I was stopped near Instead Wick myself,’ cried Kysh.

‘What for?’

‘Leaving car unattended. An infernal swindle, when you think of the loose carts outside every pub in the county. I was jawing with the police for an hour, but it’s no use. They’ve got it all their own way, and we’re helpless.’

Hereupon I told him my tale, and for proof, as we topped the hill, pointed out the little group round my car.

All supreme emotion is dumb. Kysh put on the brake and hugged me to his bosom till I groaned. Then, as I remember, he crooned like a mother returned to her suckling.

page 8

‘Divine! Divine!’ he murmured. ‘Command me.’

‘Take charge of the situation,’ I said. ‘You’ll find a Mr. Pyecroft on the quarter-deck. I’m altogether out of it.’

‘He shall stay there. Who am I but the instrument of vengeance in the hands of an over-ruling Providence? (And I put in fresh sparking-plugs this morning.) Salmon, take that steamkettle home, somehow. I would be alone.’

‘Leggatt,’ I said to my man, ‘help Salmon home with my car.’

‘Home? Now? It’s hard. It’s cruel hard,’ said Leggatt, almost with a sob.

Hinchcliffe outlined my car’s condition briefly to the two engineers. Mr. Pyecroft clung to our guest, who stared with affrighted eyes at the palpitating Octopod; and the free wind of high Sussex whimpered across the ling.

‘I am quite agreeable to walkin’ ’ome all the way on my feet,’ said our guest. ‘I wouldn’t go to any railway station. It ’ud be just the proper finish to our little joke.’ He laughed nervously.

‘What’s the evolution?’ said Pyecroft. ‘Do we turn over to the new cruiser?’

I nodded, and he escorted our guest to the tonneau with care. When I was in, he sat himself broad-armed on the little flap-seat which controls the door. Hinchcliffe sat by Kysh.

‘You drive?’ Kysh asked, with the smile that has won him his chequered way through the world.

‘Steam only, and I’ve about had my whack for to-day, thanks.’

‘I see.’

The long, low car slid forward and then dropped like a bullet down the descent our steam toy had so painfully climbed. Our guest’s face blanched, and he clutched the back of the tonneau.

‘New commander’s evidently been trained on a destroyer,’ said Hinchcliffe.

‘What’s ’is wonderful name?’ whispered Pyecroft. ‘Ho! Well, I’m glad it ain’t Saul we’ve run up against—nor Nimshi, for that matter. This is makin’ me feel religious.’

Our impetus carried us half-way up the next slope, where we steadied to a resonant fifteen an hour against the collar.

‘What do you think?’ I called to Hinchcliffe.

‘’Taint as sweet as steam, o’ course; but for power it’s twice the Furious against half the Jaseur in a head-sea.’

Volumes could not have touched it more exactly. His bright eyes were glued on Kysh’s hands juggling with levers behind the discreet backward-sloping dash.

‘An’ what sort of a brake might you use?’ he said politely.

‘This,’ Kysh replied, as the last of the hill shot up to one in eight. He let the car run back a few feet and caught her deftly on the brake, repeating the performance cup and ball fashion. It was like being daped above the Pit at the end of an uncoiled solar plexus. Even Pyecroft held his breath.

‘It ain’t fair! It ain’t fair!’ our guest moaned. ‘You’re makin’ me sick.’

‘What an ungrateful blighter he is!’ said Pyecroft. ‘Money couldn’t buy you a run like this . . . . Do it well overboard!’

‘We’ll just trundle up the Forest and drop into the Park Row, I think,’ said Kysh. ‘There’s a bit of good going hereabouts.’

He flung a careless knee over the low raking tiller that the ordinary expert puts under his armpit, and down four miles of yellow road, cut through barren waste, the Octopod sang like a six-inch shell.

‘Whew ! But you know your job,’ said Hinchcliffe. ‘You’re wasted here. I’d give something to have you in my engineroom.’

‘He’s steering with ’is little hind-legs,’ said Pyecroft. ‘Stand up and look at him, Robert. You’ll never see such a sight again!’

‘Nor don’t want to,’ was our guest’s reply. ‘Five ’undred pounds wouldn’t begin to cover ’is fines even since I’ve been with him.’

Park Row is reached by one hill which drops three hundred feet in half a mile. Kysh had the thought to steer with his hand down the abyss, but the manner in which he took the curved bridge at the bottom brought my few remaining hairs much nearer the grave.

‘We’re in Surrey now; better look out,’ I said.

‘Never mind. I’ll roll her into Kent for a bit. We’ve lots of time; it’s only three o’clock.’

‘Won’t you want to fill your bunkers, or take water, or oil her up?’ said Hinchcliffe.

‘We don’t use water, and she’s good for two hundred on one tank o’ petrol if she doesn’t break down.’

‘Two hundred miles from ’ome and mother and faithful Fido to-night, Robert,’ said Pyecroft, slapping our guest on the knee. ‘Cheer up! Why, I’ve known a destroyer do less.’

We passed with some decency through some towns, till by way of the Hastings road we whirled into Cramberhurst, which is a deep pit.

‘Now,’ said Kysh, ‘we begin.’

‘Previous service not reckoned towards pension,’ said Pyecroft. ‘We are doin’ you lavish, Robert.’

‘But when’s this silly game to finish, any’ow?’ our guest snarled.

‘Don’t worry about the when of it, Robert. The where’s the interestin’ point for you just now.’

page 9

I had seen Kysh drive before, and I thought I knew the Octopod, but that afternoon he and she were exalted beyond my knowledge. He improvised on the keys—the snapping levers and quivering accelerators—marvellous variations, so that our progress was sometimes a fugue and sometimes a barn-dance, varied on open greens by the weaving of fairy rings. When I protested, all that he would say was: ‘I’ll hypnotise the fowl! I’ll dazzle the rooster!’ or other words equally futile. And she—oh! that I could do her justice!—she turned her broad black bows to the westering light, and lifted us high upon hills that we might see and rejoice with her. She whooped into veiled hollows of elm and Sussex oak; she devoured infinite perspectives of park palings; she surged through forgotten hamlets, whose single streets gave back, reduplicated, the clatter of her exhaust, and, tireless, she repeated the motions. Over naked uplands she droned like a homing bee, her shadow lengthening in the sun that she chased to his lair. She nosed up unparochial byways and accommodation-roads of the least accommodation, and put old scarred turf or new-raised molehills under her most marvellous springs with never a jar. And since the King’s highway is used for every purpose save traffic, in mid-career she stepped aside for, or flung amazing loops about, the brainless driver, the driverless horse, the drunken carrier, the engaged couple, the female student of the bicycle and her staggering instructor, the pig, the perambulator, and the infant school (where it disembogued yelping on cross-roads), with the grace of Nellie Farren (upon whom be the Peace) and the lithe abandon of all the Vokes family. But at heart she was ever Judic as I remember that Judic long ago—Judic clad in bourgeois black from wrist to ankle, achieving incredible improprieties.

We were silent—Hinchcliffe and Pyecroft through professional appreciation; I with a layman’s delight in the expert; and our guest because of fear.

At the edge of the evening she smelt the sea to southward and sheered thither like the strong-winged albatross, to circle enormously amid green flats fringed by martello towers.

‘Ain’t that Eastbourne yonder?’ said our guest, reviving. ‘I’ve a aunt there—she’s cook to a J.P.—could identify me.’

‘Don’t worry her for a little thing like that,’ said Pyecroft; and ere he had ceased to praise family love, our unpaid judiciary, and domestic service, the Downs rose between us and the sea, and the Long Man of Hillingdon lay out upon the turf.

‘Trevington—up yonder—is a fairly isolated little dorp,’ I said, for I was beginning to feel hungry.

‘No,’ said Kysh. ‘He’d get a lift to the railway in no time …. Besides, I’m enjoying myself . . . . Three pounds eighteen and sixpence. Infernal swindle!’

I take it one of his more recent fines was rankling in Kysh’s brain; but he drove like the Archangel of the Twilight.

About the longitude of Cassocks, Hinchcliffe yawned. ‘Aren’t we ever goin’ to maroon our Robert? I’m hungry, too.’

‘The commodore wants his money back,’ I answered.

‘If he drives like this habitual, there must be a tidyish little lump owin’ to him,’ said Pyecroft. ‘Well, I’m agreeable.’

‘I didn’t know it could be done. S’welp me, I didn’t,’ our guest murmured.

‘But you will,’ said Kysh. And that was the first and last time he addressed the man.

We ran through Penfield Green, half stupefied with open air, drugged with the relentless boom of the Octopod, and extinct with famine.

‘I used to shoot about here,’ said Kysh, a few miles farther on. ‘Open that gate, please,’ and he slowed as the sun touched the sky-line. At this point we left metalled roads and bucked vigorously amid ditches and under trees for twenty minutes.

‘Only cross-country car on the market,’ he said, as we wheeled into a straw-yard where a lone bull bellowed defiance to our growlings. ‘Open that gate, please. I hope the cattle-bridge will stand up.’

‘I’ve took a few risks in my time,’ said Pyecroft as timbers cracked beneath us and we entered between thickets, ‘but I’m a babe to this man, Hinch.’

‘Don’t talk to me. Watch him! It’s a liberal education, as Shakespeare says. Fallen tree on the port bow, Sir.’

‘Right! That’s my mark. Sit tight!’

She flung up her tail like a sounding whale and buried us in a fifteen-foot-deep bridle-path buttressed with the exposed roots of enormous beeches. The wheels leaped from root to rounded boulder, and it was very dark in the shadow of the foliage.

‘There ought to be a hammer-pond somewhere about here.’ Kysh was letting her down this chute in brakeful spasms.

‘Water dead ahead, Sir. Stack o’ brushwood on the starboard beam, and—no road,’ sang Pyecroft.

‘Cr-r-ri-key!’ said Hinchcliffe, as the car on a wild cant to the left went astern, screwing herself round the angle of a track that overhung the pond. ‘If she only had two propellers, I believe she’d talk poetry. She can do everything else.’

‘We’re rather on our port wheels now,’ said Kysh ; ‘but I don’t think she’ll capsize. This road isn’t used much by motors.’

‘You don’t say so,’ said Pyecroft. ‘What a pity!’

She bored through a mass of crackling brushwood, and emerged into an upward-sloping fernglade fenced with woods so virgin, so untouched, that William Rufus might have ridden off as we entered. We climbed out of the violet-purple shadows towards the upland where the last of the day lingered. I was filled to my moist eyes with the almost sacred beauty of sense and association that clad the landscape.

‘Does ’unger produce ’alluciations ?’ said Pyecroft in a whisper. ‘Because I’ve just seen a sacred ibis walkin’ arm in arm with a British cock-pheasant.’

‘What are you panickin’ at?’ said Hinchcliffe. ‘I’ve been seein’ zebra for the last two minutes, but I ’aven’t complained.’

He pointed behind us, and I beheld a superb painted zebra (Burchell’s, I think), following our track with palpitating nostrils. The car stopped, and it fled away.

There was a little pond in front of us from which rose a dome of irregular sticks crowned with a blunt-muzzled beast that sat upon its haunches.

page 10

‘Is it catching?’ said Pyecroft.

‘Yes. I’m seeing beaver,’ I replied.

‘It is here!’ said Kysh, with the air and gesture of Captain Nemo, and half turned.

‘No—no—no ! For ’Eaven’s sake—not ’ere!’ Our guest gasped like a sea-bathed child, as four efficient hands swung him far out-board on to the turf. The car ran back noiselessly down the slope.

‘Look! Look! It’s sorcery!’ cried Hinchcliffe.

There was a report like a pistol-shot as the beaver dived from the roof of his lodge, but we watched our guest. He was on his knees, praying to kangaroos. Yea, in his bowler hat he kneeled before kangaroos—gigantic, erect, silhouetted against the light—four buck-kangaroos in the heart of Sussex!

And we retrogressed over the velvet grass till our hind-wheels struck well-rolled gravel, leading us to sanity, main roads, and, half an hour later, the ‘Grapnel Inn ‘at Horsham.

After a great meal we poured libations and made burnt-offerings in honour of Kysh, who received our homage graciously, and, by the way, explained a few things in the natural history line that had puzzled us. England is a most marvellous country, but one is not, till one knows the eccentricities of large landowners, trained to accept kangaroos, zebras, or beavers as part of its landscape.When we went to bed Pyecroft pressed my hand, his voice thick with emotion.

‘We owe it to you,’ he said. ‘We owe it all to you. Didn’t I say we never met in pup-pup-puris naturalibus, if I may so put it, without a remarkably hectic day ahead of us?’

‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘Mind the candle.’ He was tracing smoke-patterns on the wall.

‘But what I want to know is whether we’ll succeed in acclimatisin’ the blighter, or whether Sir William Gardner’s keepers ’ll kill ’im before ’e gets accustomed to ’is surroundin’s?’

Some day, I think, we must go up the Linghurst road and find out.

page 1 of 3

YOUNG Ottley’s father came to Calcutta in 1857 as fireman on the first locomotive ever run by the D.I.R., which was then the largest Indian railway. All his life he spoke broad Yorkshire, but young Ottley, being born in India, naturally talked the clipped sing-song that is used by the half-castes and English-speaking natives. When he was fifteen years old the D.I.R. took him into their service as an apprentice in the Locomotive Repair Department of the Ajaibpore workshops, and he became one of a gang of three or four white men and nine or ten natives.

There were scores of such gangs, each with its hoisting and overhead cranes, jack-screws, vices and lathes, as separate as separate shops, and their work was to mend locomotives and make the apprentices behave. But the apprentices threw nuts at one another, chalked caricatures of unpopular foremen on buffer-bars and discarded boilers, and did as little work as they possibly could.

They were nearly all sons of old employees, living with their parents in the white bungalows of Steam Road or Church Road or Albert Road—on the broad avenues of pounded brick bordered by palms and crotons and bougainvilleas and bamboos which made up the railway town of Ajaibpore. They had never seen the sea or a steamer; half their speech was helped out with native slang; they were all volunteers in the D.I.R.’s Railway Corps—grey with red facings—and their talk was exclusively about the Company and its affairs.

They all hoped to become engine-drivers earning six or eight hundred a year, and therefore they despised all mere sit-down clerks in the Store, Audit and Traffic departments, and ducked them when they met at the Company’s swimming baths.

There were no strikes or tie-ups on the D.I.R. in those days, for the reason that the ten or twelve thousand natives and two or three thousand whites were doing their best to turn the Company’s employment into a caste in which their sons and relatives would be sure of positions and pensions. Everything in India crystallizes into a caste sooner or later—the big jute and cotton mills, the leather, harness and opium factories, the coal-mines and the dockyards, and, in years to come, when India begins to be heard from as one of the manufacturing countries of the world, the labour unions of other lands will learn something about the beauty of caste which will greatly interest them.

Those were the days when the D.I.R. decided that it would be cheaper to employ native drivers as much as possible, and the “Sheds,” as they called the Repair Department, felt the change acutely; for a native driver could misuse his engine, they said, more curiously than any six monkeys. The Company had not then standardized its rolling-stock, and this was very good for apprentices anxious to learn about machines, because there were, perhaps, twenty types of locomotives in use on the road. They were Hawthornes; E types; O types; outside cylinders; Spaulding and Cushman double-enders and shortrun Continental-built tank engines, and many others. But the native drivers burned them all out impartially, and the apprentices took to writing remarks in Bengali on the cabs of the repaired ones where the next driver would be sure to see them.

Young Ottley worked at first as little as the other apprentices, but his father, who was then a pensioned driver, taught him a great deal about the insides of locomotives; and Olaf Swanson, the red-headed Swede who ran the Government Mail, the big Thursday express, from Serai Rajgara to Guldee Haut, was a great friend of the Ottley family, and dined with them every Friday night.

Olaf was an important person, for besides being the best of the mail-drivers, he was Past Master of the big railway Masonic Lodge, “St. Duncan’s in the East,” Secretary of the Drivers’ Provident Association, a Captain in the D.I.R. Volunteer Corps, and, which he thought much more of, an Author; for he had written a book in a language of his own which he insisted upon calling English, and had printed it at his own expense at the ticket-printing works.

Some of the copies were buff and green, and some were pinkish and blue, and some were yellow and brown; for Olaf did not believe in wasting money on high-class white paper. Wrapping-paper was good enough for him, and besides, he said the colours rested the eyes of the reader. It was called “The Art of Road-Locos Repair or The Young Driver’s Vademecome,” and was dedicated in verse to a man of the name of Swedenborg.

It covered every conceivable accident that could happen to an engine on the road; and gave a rough-and-ready remedy for each; but you had to understand Olaf’s written English, as well as all the technical talk about engines, to make head or tail of it, and you had also to know personally every engine on the D.I.R., for the “Vademecome” was full of what might be called “locomotive allusions,” which concerned the D.I.R. only. Otherwise, it would, as some great locomotive designer once said, have been a classic and a text-book.

Olaf was immensely proud of it, and would pin young Ottley in a corner and make him learn whole pages—it was written all in questions and answers—by heart.

“Never mind what she means,” Olaf would shout. “You learn her word-perfect, and she will help you in the Sheds. I drive the Mail,—the mail of all India,—and what I write and say is true.”

“But I do not wish to learn the book,” said young Ottley, who thought he saw quite enough of locomotives in business hours.

“You shall learn! I haf great friendship for your father, and so I shall teach you whether you like it or not.”

Young Ottley submitted, for he was really fond of old Olaf, and at the end of six months’ teaching in Olaf’s peculiar way began to see that the “Vademecome” was a very valuable help in the repair sheds, when broken-down engines of a new type came in. Olaf gave him a copy bound in cartridge paper and hedged round the margins with square-headed manuscript notes, each line the result of years of experience and accidents.

“There is nothing in this book,” said Olaf, “that I have not tried in my time, and I say that the engine is like the body of a man. So long as there is steam—the life, you see,—so long, if you know how, you can make her move a little,—so!” He waggled his hand slowly. “Till a man is dead or the engine she is at the bottom of a river, you can do something with her. Remember that! I say it and I know.”

He repaid young Ottley’s time and attention by using his influence to get him made a Sergeant in his Company, and young Ottley, being a keen Volunteer and a good shot, stood well with the D.I.R. in the matter of casual leave. When repairs were light in the Sheds and the honour of the D.I.R. was to be upheld at some far-away station against the men of Agra or Bandikui, the narrow-gauge railway-towns of the west, young Ottley would contrive to get away, and help to uphold it on the glaring dusty rifle-ranges of those parts.

A ’prentice never dreamed of paying for his ticket on any line in India, least of all when he was in uniform, and young Ottley was practically as free of the Indian railway system as any member of the Supreme Legislative Council who wore a golden General Pass on his watch-chain and could ride where he chose.

page 2

Late in September of his nineteenth year he went north on one of his cup-hunting excursions, elegantly and accurately dressed, with one-eighth of one inch of white collar showing above his grey uniform stock and his Martini-Henry rifle polished to match his sergeant’s sword in the rack above him.

The rains were out, and in Bengal that means a good deal to the railways; for the rain falls for three months lavishly, till the whole country is one sea, and the snakes take refuge on the embankment, and the racing floods puff out the brick ballast from under the iron ties, and leave the rails hanging in graceful loops. Then the trains run as they can, and the permanent-way inspectors spend their nights flourishing about in hand-carts pushed by coolies over the dislocated metals, and everybody is covered with the fire-red rash of prickly heat, and loses his temper.

Young Ottley was used to these things from birth. All he regretted was that his friends along the line were so draggled and dripping and sulky that they could not appreciate his gorgeousness; for he considered himself very consoling to behold when he cocked his helmet over one eye and puffed the rank smoke of native-made cigars through his nostrils. Until night fell he lay out on his bunk, in his shirt sleeves, reading the works of G.W.M. Reynolds, which were sold on all the railway bookstalls, and dozing at intervals.

Then he found they were changing engines at Guldee Haut, and old Rustomjee, a Parsee, was the new driver, with Number Forty in hand. Young Ottley took this opportunity to go forward and tell Rustomjee exactly what they thought of him in the Sheds, where the ’prentices had been repairing some of his carelessness in the way of a dropped crown-sheet, the result of inattention and bad stoking.

Rustomjee said he had bad luck with engines, and young Ottley went back to his carriage and slept. He was waked by a bang, a bump, and a jar, and saw on the opposite bunk a subaltern who was travelling north with a detachment of some twenty English soldiers.

“What’s that?” said the subaltern.

“Rustomjee has blown her up, perhaps,” said young Ottley, and dropped out into the wet, the subaltern at his heels. They found Rustomjee sitting by the side of the line, nursing a scalded foot and crying aloud that he was a dead man, while the gunner-guard—who is a kind of extra-hand—looked respectfully at the roaring, hissing machine.

“What has happened?” said young Ottley, by the light of the gunner-guard’s lantern.

“Phut gya [She has gone smash],” said Rustomjee, still hopping.

“Without doubt; but where?”

“Khuda janta! [God knows]. I am a poor man. Number Forty is broke.”

Young Ottley jumped into the cab and turned off all the steam he could find, for there was a good deal escaping. Then he took the lantern and dived under the drive-wheels, where he lay face up, investigating among spurts of hot water.

“Doocid plucky,” said the subaltern. “I shouldn’t like to do that myself. What’s gone wrong?”

“Cylinder-head blown off, coupler-rod twisted, and several more things. She is very badly wrecked. Oah, yes, she is a total wreck,” said young Ottley between the spokes of the right-hand driver.

“Awkward,” said the subaltern, turning up his coat-collar in the wet. “What’s to be done, then?”

Young Ottley came out, a rich black all over his grey uniform with the red facings, and drummed on his teeth with his finger-nails, while the rain fell and the native passengers shouted questions and old Rustomjee told the gunner-guard to walk back six or seven miles and wire to some one for help.

“I cannot swim,” said the gunner-guard. “Go and lie down.” And that, as you might say, settled that. Besides, as far as one could see by the light of the gunner-guard’s lantern, all Bengal was flooded.

“Olaf Swanson will be at Serai Rajgara with the Mail. He will be particularly angry,” said young Ottley. Then he ducked under the engine again with a flare-lamp and sat crosslegged, considering things and wishing he had brought his “Vademecome” in his valise.

Number Forty was an old reconstructed Mutiny engine, with Frenchified cock-nosed cylinders and a profligate allowance of underpinning. She had been through the Sheds several times, and young Ottley, though he had never worked on her, had heard much about her, but nothing to her credit.

“You can lend me some men?” he said at last to the subaltern. “Then I think we shall disconnect her this side, and perhaps, notwithstanding, she will move. We will try—eh?”

“Of course we will. Hi! Sergeant!” said the subaltern. “Turn out the men here and do what this—this officer tells you.”

“Officer!” said one of the privates, under his breath. “’Didn’t think I’d enlisted to serve under a Sergeant o’ Volunteers. ’Ere’s a ’orrible street accident. ’Looks like mother’s tea-kettle broke. What d’yer expect us to do, Mister Civilian Sergeant?”

Young Ottley explained his plan of campaign while he was ravaging Rustomjee’s tool-chest, and then the men crawled and knelt and levered and pushed and hauled and turned spanners under the engine, as young Ottley told them. What he wanted was to disconnect the right cylinder altogether, and get off a badly twisted coupler-rod. Practically Number Forty’s right side was paralysed, and they pulled away enough ironmongery there to build a culvert with.

Young Ottley remembered that the instructions for a case like this were all in the “Vademecome,” but even he began to feel a little alarmed as he saw what came away from the engine and was stacked by the side of the line. After forty minutes of the hardest kind of work it seemed to him that everything movable was cleared out, and that he might venture to give her steam. She leaked and sweated and shook, but she moved—in a grinding sort of way—and the soldiers cheered.

Rustomjee flatly refused to help in anything so revolutionary as driving an engine on one cylinder, because, he said, Heaven had decreed that he should always be unlucky, even with sound machines. Moreover, as he pointed out, the pressure-gauge was jumping up and down like a bottle-imp. The stoker had long since gone away into the night; for he was a prudent man.

“Doocid queer thing altogether,” said the subaltern, “but look here, if you like, I’ll chuck on the coals and you can drive the old jigamaroo, if she’ll go.”

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“Perhaps she will blow up,” said the gunner-guard.

“’Shouldn’t at all wonder by the sound of her. Where’s the shovel?” said the subaltern.

“Oah no. She’s all raight according to my book, I think,” said young Ottley. “Now we will go to Serai Rajgara—if she moves.”

She moved with long ssghee! ssghee’s! of exhaustion and lamentation. She moved quite seven miles an hour, and—for the floods were all over the line—the staggering voyage began.

The subaltern stoked four shovels to the minute, spreading them thin, and Number Forty made noises like a dying cow, and young Ottley discovered that it was one thing to run a healthy switching-locomotive up and down the yards for fun when the head of the yard wasn’t looking, and quite another to drive a very sick one over an unknown road in absolute darkness and tropic rain. But they felt their way along with their hearts in their mouths till they came to a distant signal, and whistled frugally, having no steam to spare.

“This might be Serai Rajgara,” said young Ottley, hopefully.

“’Looks more like the Suez Canal,” said the subaltern. “I say, when an engine kicks up that sort of a noise she’s a little impatient, isn’t she?”

“That sort of noise” was a full-powered, furious yelling whistle half a mile up the line.

“That is the Down Mail,” said young Ottley. “We have delayed Olaf two hours and forty-five minutes. She must surely be in Serai Rajgara.”

“’Don’t wonder she wants to get out of it,” said the subaltern. “Golly, what a country!”

The line here dipped bodily under water, and young Ottley sent the gunner-guard on to find the switch to let Number Forty into the siding. Then he followed and drew up with a dolefu! wop! wop! wop! by the side of the great forty-five-ton, six-wheel, coupled, eighteen-inch inside-cylinder Number Twenty-five, all paint and lacquer, standing roaring at the head of the Down Mail. The rest was all water-flat, level and solid from one point of the horizon to the other.

Olaf’s red beard flared like a danger-signal, and as soon as they were in range some knobby pieces of Giridih coal whizzed past young Ottley’s head.

‘’Your friend very mad?” said the subaltern, ducking.

“Aah!” roared Olaf. “This is the fifth time you make delay. Three hours’ delay you make me—Swanson—the Mail! Now I will lose more time to break your head.” He swung on to the foot-board of Number Forty, with a shovel in one hand.

“Olaf!” cried young Ottley, and Olaf nearly tumbled backward. “Rustomjee is behind.”

“Of course. He always is. But you? How you come here?”

“Oah, we smashed up. I have disconnected her and arrived here on one cylinder, by your book. We are only a—a diagram of an engine, I think.”

“My book! My very good book! My ‘Vademecome’! Ottley, you are a fine driver. I forgive my delays. It was worth. Oh, my book, my book!” and Olaf leapt back to Number Twenty-five, shouting things about Swedenborg and steam.

“That is all right,” said young Ottley, “but where is Serai Rajgara? We want assistance.”

“There is no Serai Rajgara. The water is two feet on the embankment, and the telegraph office is fell in. I will report at Purnool Road. Goodnight, good boy!”

The Mail train splashed out into the dark, and Ottley made great haste to let off his steam and draw his fire. Number Forty had done enough for that night.

“Odd chap, that friend of yours,” said the subaltern, when Number Forty stood empty and disarmed in the gathering waters. “What do we do now? Swim?”

“Oah, no! At ten-forty-five this morning that is coming, an engine will perhaps arrive from Purnool Road and take us north. Now we will lie down and go to sleep. You see there is no Serai Rajgara. You could get a cup of tea here once on a time.”

“Oh, my Aunt, what a country!” said the subaltern, as he followed Ottley to the carriage and lay down on the leather bunk.

For the next three weeks Olaf Swanson talked to everybody of nothing but his “Vademecome” and young Ottley. “What he said about his book does not matter, but the compliments of a maildriver are things to be repeated, as they were, to people in high authority, the masters of many engines. So young Ottley was sent for, and he came from the Sheds buttoning his jacket and wondering which of his sins had been found out this time.

It was a loop line near Ajaibpore, where he could by no possibility come to harm. It was light but steady traffic, and a first-class superintendent was in charge; but it was a driver’s billet, and permanent after six months. As a new engine was on order for the loop, the foreman of the Sheds told young Ottley he might look through the stalls and suit himself.

He waited, boiling with impatience, till Olaf came in, and the two went off together, old Olaf clucking, “Look! Look! Look!” like a hen, all down the Sheds, and they chose a nearly new Hawthorne, No. 239, which Olaf highly recommended. Then Olaf went away, to give young Ottley his chance to order her to the cleaning-pit, and jerk his thumb at the cleaner and say, as he turned magnificently on his heel, “Thursday, eight o’clock. Mallum? ’Understand?”

That was almost the proudest moment of his life. The very proudest was when he pulled out of Atami Junction through the brick-field on the way to his loop, and passed the Down Mail, with Olaf in the cab.

They say in the Sheds that you could have heard Number Two hundred and Thirty-nine’s whistle from Raneegunge clear to Calcutta.