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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Traffics and Discoveries, by Rudyard Kipling
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Traffics and Discoveries
+
+Author: Rudyard Kipling
+
+Release Date: October 17, 2003 [eBook #9790]
+[Most recently updated: January 15, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Juliet Sutherland, Keith M. Eckrich and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAFFICS AND DISCOVERIES ***
+
+
+
+
+TRAFFICS AND DISCOVERIES
+
+by Rudyard Kipling
+
+
+Contents
+
+ _from the Masjid-al-Aqsa of Sayyid Ahmed (Wahabi)_
+ THE CAPTIVE
+ _Poseidon’s Law_
+ THE BONDS OF DISCIPLINE
+ _The Runners_
+ A SAHIBS’ WAR
+ _The Wet Litany_
+ “THEIR LAWFUL OCCASIONS”—PART I.
+ “THEIR LAWFUL OCCASIONS”—PART II.
+ _The King’s Task_
+ THE COMPREHENSION OF PRIVATE COPPER
+ _The Necessitarian_
+ STEAM TACTICS
+ _Kaspar’s Song in “Varda”_
+ “WIRELESS”
+ _Song of the Old Guard_
+ THE ARMY OF A DREAM—PART I.
+ THE ARMY OF A DREAM—PART II.
+ _The Return of the Children_
+ “THEY”
+ _From Lyden’s “Irenius_”
+ MRS. BATHURST
+ “_Our Fathers Also_”
+ BELOW THE MILL DAM
+
+
+
+
+THE CAPTIVE
+
+
+
+
+FROM THE MASJID-AL-AQSA OF SAYYID AHMED (WAHABI)
+
+
+Not with an outcry to Allah nor any complaining
+He answered his name at the muster and stood to the chaining.
+When the twin anklets were nipped on the leg-bars that held them,
+He brotherly greeted the armourers stooping to weld them.
+Ere the sad dust of the marshalled feet of the chain-gang swallowed him,
+Observing him nobly at ease, I alighted and followed him.
+Thus we had speech by the way, but not touching his sorrow
+Rather his red Yesterday and his regal To-morrow,
+Wherein he statelily moved to the clink of his chains unregarded,
+Nowise abashed but contented to drink of the potion awarded.
+Saluting aloofly his Fate, he made swift with his story;
+And the words of his mouth were as slaves spreading carpets of glory
+Embroidered with names of the Djinns—a miraculous weaving—
+But the cool and perspicuous eye overbore unbelieving.
+So I submitted myself to the limits of rapture—
+Bound by this man we had bound, amid captives his capture—
+Till he returned me to earth and the visions departed;
+But on him be the Peace and the Blessing: for he was great-hearted!
+
+
+
+
+THE CAPTIVE
+
+
+“He that believeth shall not make haste.”—_Isaiah_.
+
+
+The guard-boat lay across the mouth of the bathing-pool, her crew idly
+spanking the water with the flat of their oars. A red-coated
+militia-man, rifle in hand, sat at the bows, and a petty officer at the
+stern. Between the snow-white cutter and the flat-topped,
+honey-coloured rocks on the beach the green water was troubled with
+shrimp-pink prisoners-of-war bathing. Behind their orderly tin camp and
+the electric-light poles rose those stone-dotted spurs that throw heat
+on Simonstown. Beneath them the little _Barracouta_ nodded to the big
+_Gibraltar_, and the old _Penelope_, that in ten years has been
+bachelors’ club, natural history museum, kindergarten, and prison,
+rooted and dug at her fixed moorings. Far out, a three-funnelled
+Atlantic transport with turtle bow and stern waddled in from the deep
+sea.
+
+Said the sentry, assured of the visitor’s good faith, “Talk to ’em? You
+can, to any that speak English. You’ll find a lot that do.”
+
+Here and there earnest groups gathered round ministers of the Dutch
+Reformed Church, who doubtless preached conciliation, but the majority
+preferred their bath. The God who Looks after Small Things had caused
+the visitor that day to receive two weeks’ delayed mails in one from a
+casual postman, and the whole heavy bundle of newspapers, tied with a
+strap, he dangled as bait. At the edge of the beach, cross-legged,
+undressed to his sky-blue army shirt, sat a lean, ginger-haired man, on
+guard over a dozen heaps of clothing. His eyes followed the incoming
+Atlantic boat.
+
+“Excuse me, Mister,” he said, without turning (and the speech betrayed
+his nationality), “would you mind keeping away from these garments?
+I’ve been elected janitor—on the Dutch vote.”
+
+The visitor moved over against the barbed-wire fence and sat down to
+his mail. At the rustle of the newspaper-wrappers the ginger-coloured
+man turned quickly, the hunger of a press-ridden people in his
+close-set iron-grey eyes.
+
+“Have you any use for papers?” said the visitor.
+
+“Have I any use?” A quick, curved forefinger was already snicking off
+the outer covers. “Why, that’s the New York postmark! Give me the ads.
+at the back of _Harper’s_ and _M’Clure’s_ and I’m in touch with God’s
+Country again! Did you know how I was aching for papers?”
+
+The visitor told the tale of the casual postman.
+
+“Providential!” said the ginger-coloured man, keen as a terrier on his
+task; “both in time and matter. Yes! … The _Scientific American_ yet
+once more! Oh, it’s good! it’s good!” His voice broke as he pressed his
+hawk-like nose against the heavily-inked patent-specifications at the
+end. “Can I keep it? I thank you—I thank you! Why—why—well—well! The
+_American Tyler_ of all things created! Do you subscribe to that?”
+
+“I’m on the free list,” said the visitor, nodding.
+
+He extended his blue-tanned hand with that air of Oriental spaciousness
+which distinguishes the native-born American, and met the visitor’s
+grasp expertly. “I can only say that you have treated me like a Brother
+(yes, I’ll take every last one you can spare), and if ever—” He plucked
+at the bosom of his shirt. “Psha! I forgot I’d no card on me; but my
+name’s Zigler—Laughton G. Zigler. An American? If Ohio’s still in the
+Union, I am, Sir. But I’m no extreme States’-rights man. I’ve used all
+of my native country and a few others as I have found occasion, and now
+I am the captive of your bow and spear. I’m not kicking at that. I am
+not a coerced alien, nor a naturalised Texas mule-tender, nor an
+adventurer on the instalment plan. _I_ don’t tag after our consul when
+he comes around, expecting the American Eagle to lift me out o’ this by
+the slack of my pants. No, sir! If a Britisher went into Indian
+Territory and shot up his surroundings with a Colt automatic (not that
+_she’s_ any sort of weapon, but I take her for an illustration), he’d
+be strung up quicker’n a snowflake ’ud melt in hell. No ambassador of
+yours ’ud save him. I’m my neck ahead on this game, anyway. That’s how
+I regard the proposition.
+
+“Have I gone gunning against the British? To a certain extent, I
+presume you never heard tell of the Laughton-Zigler automatic two-inch
+field-gun, with self-feeding hopper, single oil-cylinder recoil, and
+ballbearing gear throughout? Or Laughtite, the new explosive?
+Absolutely uniform in effect, and one-ninth the bulk of any present
+effete charge—flake, cannonite, cordite, troisdorf, cellulose, cocoa,
+cord, or prism—I don’t care what it is. Laughtite’s immense; so’s the
+Zigler automatic. It’s me. It’s fifteen years of me. You are not a
+gun-sharp? I am sorry. I could have surprised you. Apart from my gun,
+my tale don’t amount to much of anything. I thank you, but I don’t use
+any tobacco you’d be likely to carry… Bull Durham? _Bull Durham!_ I
+take it all back—every last word. Bull Durham—here! If ever you strike
+Akron, Ohio, when this fool-war’s over, remember you’ve Laughton O.
+Zigler in your vest pocket. Including the city of Akron. We’ve a little
+club there…. Hell! What’s the sense of talking Akron with no pants?
+
+“My gun? … For two cents I’d have shipped her to our Filipeens. ‘Came
+mighty near it too; but from what I’d read in the papers, you can’t
+trust Aguinaldo’s crowd on scientific matters. Why don’t I offer it to
+our army? Well, you’ve an effete aristocracy running yours, and we’ve a
+crowd of politicians. The results are practically identical. I am not
+taking any U.S. Army in mine.
+
+“I went to Amsterdam with her—to this Dutch junta that supposes it’s
+bossing the war. I wasn’t brought up to love the British for one thing,
+and for another I knew that if she got in her fine work (my gun) I’d
+stand more chance of receiving an unbiassed report from a crowd of
+dam-fool British officers than from a hatful of politicians’ nephews
+doing duty as commissaries and ordnance sharps. As I said, I put the
+brown man out of the question. That’s the way _I_ regarded the
+proposition.
+
+“The Dutch in Holland don’t amount to a row of pins. Maybe I misjudge
+’em. Maybe they’ve been swindled too often by self-seeking adventurers
+to know a enthusiast when they see him. Anyway, they’re slower than the
+Wrath o’ God. But on delusions—as to their winning out next Thursday
+week at 9 A.M.—they are—if I may say so—quite British.
+
+“I’ll tell you a curious thing, too. I fought ’em for ten days before I
+could get the financial side of my game fixed to my liking. I knew they
+didn’t believe in the Zigler, but they’d no call to be crazy-mean. I
+fixed it—free passage and freight for me and the gun to Delagoa Bay,
+and beyond by steam and rail. Then I went aboard to see her crated, and
+there I struck my fellow-passengers—all deadheads, same as me. Well,
+Sir, I turned in my tracks where I stood and besieged the
+ticket-office, and I said, ‘Look at here, Van Dunk. I’m paying for my
+passage and her room in the hold—every square and cubic foot.’ ‘Guess
+he knocked down the fare to himself; but I paid. I paid. I wasn’t going
+to deadhead along o’ _that_ crowd of Pentecostal sweepings. ’Twould
+have hoodooed my gun for all time. That was the way I regarded the
+proposition. No, Sir, they were not pretty company.
+
+“When we struck Pretoria I had a hell-and-a-half of a time trying to
+interest the Dutch vote in my gun an’ her potentialities. The bottom
+was out of things rather much just about that time. Kruger was praying
+some and stealing some, and the Hollander lot was singing, ‘If you
+haven’t any money you needn’t come round,’ Nobody was spending his
+dough on anything except tickets to Europe. We were both grossly
+neglected. When I think how I used to give performances in the public
+streets with dummy cartridges, filling the hopper and turning the
+handle till the sweat dropped off me, I blush, Sir. I’ve made her to do
+her stunts before Kaffirs—naked sons of Ham—in Commissioner Street,
+trying to get a holt somewhere.
+
+“Did I talk? I despise exaggeration—’tain’t American or scientific—but
+as true as I’m sitting here like a blue-ended baboon in a kloof, Teddy
+Roosevelt’s Western tour was a maiden’s sigh compared to my advertising
+work.
+
+“’Long in the spring I was rescued by a commandant called Van Zyl—a
+big, fleshy man with a lame leg. Take away his hair and his gun and
+he’d make a first-class Schenectady bar-keep. He found me and the
+Zigler on the veldt (Pretoria wasn’t wholesome at that time), and he
+annexed me in a somnambulistic sort o’ way. He was dead against the war
+from the start, but, being a Dutchman, he fought a sight better than
+the rest of that ‘God and the Mauser’ outfit. Adrian Van Zyl. Slept a
+heap in the daytime—and didn’t love niggers. I liked him. I was the
+only foreigner in his commando. The rest was Georgia Crackers and
+Pennsylvania Dutch—with a dash o’ Philadelphia lawyer. I could tell you
+things about them would surprise you. Religion for one thing; women for
+another; but I don’t know as their notions o’ geography weren’t the
+craziest. ‘Guess that must be some sort of automatic compensation.
+There wasn’t one blamed ant-hill in their district they didn’t know
+_and_ use; but the world was flat, they said, and England was a day’s
+trek from Cape Town.
+
+“They could fight in their own way, and don’t you forget it. But I
+guess you will not. They fought to kill, and, by what I could make out,
+the British fought to be killed. So both parties were accommodated.
+
+“I am the captive of your bow and spear, Sir. The position has its
+obligations—on both sides. You could not be offensive or partisan to
+me. I cannot, for the same reason, be offensive to you. Therefore I
+will not give you my opinions on the conduct of your war.
+
+“Anyway, I didn’t take the field as an offensive partisan, but as an
+inventor. It was a condition and not a theory that confronted me. (Yes,
+Sir, I’m a Democrat by conviction, and that was one of the best things
+Grover Cleveland ever got off.)
+
+“After three months’ trek, old man Van Zyl had his commando in good
+shape and refitted off the British, and he reckoned he’d wait on a
+British General of his acquaintance that did business on a circuit
+between Stompiesneuk, Jackhalputs, Vrelegen, and Odendaalstroom, year
+in and year out. He was a fixture in that section.
+
+“‘He’s a dam’ good man,’ says Van Zyl. ‘He’s a friend of mine. He sent
+in a fine doctor when I was wounded and our Hollander doc. wanted to
+cut my leg off. Ya, I’ll guess we’ll stay with him.’ Up to date, me and
+my Zigler had lived in innocuous desuetude owing to little odds and
+ends riding out of gear. How in thunder was I to know there wasn’t the
+ghost of any road in the country? But raw hide’s cheap and lastin’. I
+guess I’ll make my next gun a thousand pounds heavier, though.
+
+“Well, Sir, we struck the General on his beat—Vrelegen it was—and our
+crowd opened with the usual compliments at two thousand yards. Van Zyl
+shook himself into his greasy old saddle and says, ‘Now we shall be
+quite happy, Mr. Zigler. No more trekking. Joost twelve miles a day
+till the apricots are ripe.’
+
+“Then we hitched on to his outposts, and vedettes, and
+cossack-picquets, or whatever they was called, and we wandered around
+the veldt arm in arm like brothers.
+
+“The way we worked lodge was this way. The General, he had his
+breakfast at 8:45 A.M. to the tick. He might have been a Long Island
+commuter. At 8:42 A.M. I’d go down to the Thirty-fourth Street ferry to
+meet him—I mean I’d see the Zigler into position at two thousand (I
+began at three thousand, but that was cold and distant)—and blow him
+off to two full hoppers—eighteen rounds—just as they were bringing in
+his coffee. If his crowd was busy celebrating the anniversary of
+Waterloo or the last royal kid’s birthday, they’d open on me with two
+guns (I’ll tell you about them later on), but if they were disengaged
+they’d all stand to their horses and pile on the ironmongery, and
+washers, and typewriters, and five weeks’ grub, and in half an hour
+they’d sail out after me and the rest of Van Zyl’s boys; lying down and
+firing till 11:45 A.M. or maybe high noon. Then we’d go from labour to
+refreshment, resooming at 2 P.M. and battling till tea-time. Tuesday
+and Friday was the General’s moving days. He’d trek ahead ten or twelve
+miles, and we’d loaf around his flankers and exercise the ponies a
+piece. Sometimes he’d get hung up in a drift—stalled crossin’ a
+crick—and we’d make playful snatches at his wagons. First time that
+happened I turned the Zigler loose with high hopes, Sir; but the old
+man was well posted on rearguards with a gun to ’em, and I had to haul
+her out with three mules instead of six. I was pretty mad. I wasn’t
+looking for any experts back of the Royal British Artillery. Otherwise,
+the game was mostly even. He’d lay out three or four of our commando,
+and we’d gather in four or five of his once a week or thereon. One
+time, I remember, long towards dusk we saw ’em burying five of their
+boys. They stood pretty thick around the graves. We wasn’t more than
+fifteen hundred yards off, but old Van Zyl wouldn’t fire. He just took
+off his hat at the proper time. He said if you stretched a man at his
+prayers you’d have to hump his bad luck before the Throne as well as
+your own. I am inclined to agree with him. So we browsed along week in
+and week out. A war-sharp might have judged it sort of docile, but for
+an inventor needing practice one day and peace the next for checking
+his theories, it suited Laughton O. Zigler.
+
+“And friendly? Friendly was no word for it. We was brothers in arms.
+
+“Why, I knew those two guns of the Royal British Artillery as well as I
+used to know the old Fifth Avenoo stages. _They_ might have been
+brothers too.
+
+“They’d jolt into action, and wiggle around and skid and spit and cough
+and prize ’emselves back again during our hours of bloody battle till I
+could have wept, Sir, at the spectacle of modern white men chained up
+to these old hand-power, back-number, flint-and-steel reaping machines.
+One of ’em—I called her Baldy—she’d a long white scar all along her
+barrel—I’d made sure of twenty times. I knew her crew by sight, but
+she’d come switching and teturing out of the dust of my shells
+like—like a hen from under a buggy—and she’d dip into a gully, and next
+thing I’d know ’ud be her old nose peeking over the ridge sniffin’ for
+us. Her runnin’ mate had two grey mules in the lead, and a natural wood
+wheel repainted, and a whole raft of rope-ends trailin’ around. ‘Jever
+see Tom Reed with his vest off, steerin’ Congress through a heat-wave?
+I’ve been to Washington often—too often—filin’ my patents. I called her
+Tom Reed. We three ’ud play pussy-wants-a-corner all round the outposts
+on off-days—cross-lots through the sage and along the mezas till we was
+short-circuited by canons. O, it was great for me and Baldy and Tom
+Reed! I don’t know as we didn’t neglect the legitimate interests of our
+respective commanders sometimes for this ball-play. I know _I_ did.
+
+“’Long towards the fall the Royal British Artillery grew shy—hung back
+in their breeching sort of—and their shooting was way—way off. I
+observed they wasn’t taking any chances, not though I acted kitten
+almost underneath ’em.
+
+“I mentioned it to Van Zyl, because it struck me I had about knocked
+their Royal British moral endways.
+
+“‘No,’ says he, rocking as usual on his pony. ‘My Captain Mankeltow he
+is sick. That is all.’
+
+“‘So’s your Captain Mankeltow’s guns,’ I said. ‘But I’m going to make
+’em a heap sicker before he gets well.’
+
+“‘No,’ says Van Zyl. ‘He has had the enteric a little. Now he is
+better, and he was let out from hospital at Jackhalputs. Ah, that
+Mankeltow! He always makes me laugh so. I told him—long back—at
+Colesberg, I had a little home for him at Nooitgedacht. But he would
+not come—no! He has been sick, and I am sorry.’
+
+“‘How d’you know that?’ I says.
+
+“‘Why, only to-day he sends back his love by Johanna Van der Merwe,
+that goes to their doctor for her sick baby’s eyes. He sends his love,
+that Mankeltow, and he tells her tell me he has a little garden of
+roses all ready for me in the Dutch Indies—Umballa. He is very funny,
+my Captain Mankeltow.’
+
+“The Dutch and the English ought to fraternise, Sir. They’ve the same
+notions of humour, to my thinking.’
+
+“‘When he gets well,’ says Van Zyl, ‘you look out, Mr. Americaan. He
+comes back to his guns next Tuesday. Then they shoot better.’
+
+“I wasn’t so well acquainted with the Royal British Artillery as old
+man Van Zyl. I knew this Captain Mankeltow by sight, of course, and,
+considering what sort of a man with the hoe he was, I thought he’d done
+right well against my Zigler. But nothing epoch-making.
+
+“Next morning at the usual hour I waited on the General, and old Van
+Zyl come along with some of the boys. Van Zyl didn’t hang round the
+Zigler much as a rule, but this was his luck that day.
+
+“He was peeking through his glasses at the camp, and I was helping
+pepper, the General’s sow-belly—just as usual—when he turns to me quick
+and says, ‘Almighty! How all these Englishmen are liars! You cannot
+trust one,’ he says. ‘Captain Mankeltow tells our Johanna he comes not
+back till Tuesday, and to-day is Friday, and there he is! Almighty! The
+English are all Chamberlains!’
+
+“If the old man hadn’t stopped to make political speeches he’d have had
+his supper in laager that night, I guess. I was busy attending to Tom
+Reed at two thousand when Baldy got in her fine work on me. I saw one
+sheet of white flame wrapped round the hopper, and in the middle of it
+there was one o’ my mules straight on end. Nothing out of the way in a
+mule on end, but this mule hadn’t any head. I remember it struck me as
+incongruous at the time, and when I’d ciphered it out I was doing the
+Santos-Dumont act without any balloon and my motor out of gear. Then I
+got to thinking about Santos-Dumont and how much better my new way was.
+Then I thought about Professor Langley and the Smithsonian, and wishing
+I hadn’t lied so extravagantly in some of my specifications at
+Washington. Then I quit thinking for quite a while, and when I resumed
+my train of thought I was nude, Sir, in a very stale stretcher, and my
+mouth was full of fine dirt all flavoured with Laughtite.
+
+“I coughed up that dirt.
+
+“‘Hullo!’ says a man walking beside me. ‘You’ve spoke almost in time.
+Have a drink?’
+
+“I don’t use rum as a rule, but I did then, because I needed it.
+
+“‘What hit us?’ I said.
+
+“‘Me,’ he said. ‘I got you fair on the hopper as you pulled out of that
+donga; but I’m sorry to say every last round in the hopper’s exploded
+and your gun’s in a shocking state. I’m real sorry,’ he says. ‘I admire
+your gun, Sir.’
+
+“‘Are you Captain Mankeltow?’ I says.
+
+“‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I presoom you’re Mister Zigler. Your commanding
+officer told me about you.’
+
+“‘Have you gathered in old man Van Zyl?’ I said.
+
+“‘Commandant Van Zyl,’ he says very stiff, ‘was most unfortunately
+wounded, but I am glad to say it’s not serious. We hope he’ll be able
+to dine with us to-night; and I feel sure,’ he says, ‘the General would
+be delighted to see you too, though he didn’t expect,’ he says, ‘and no
+one else either, by Jove!’ he says, and blushed like the British do
+when they’re embarrassed.
+
+“I saw him slide an Episcopalian Prayer-book up his sleeve, and when I
+looked over the edge of the stretcher there was half-a-dozen enlisted
+men—privates—had just quit digging and was standing to attention by
+their spades. I guess he was right on the General not expecting me to
+dinner; but it was all of a piece with their sloppy British way of
+doing business. Any God’s quantity of fuss and flubdub to bury a man,
+and not an ounce of forehandedness in the whole outfit to find out
+whether he was rightly dead. And I am a Congregationalist anyway!
+
+“Well, Sir, that was my introduction to the British Army. I’d write a
+book about it if anyone would believe me. This Captain Mankeltow, Royal
+British Artillery, turned the doctor on me (I could write another book
+about _him_) and fixed me up with a suit of his own clothes, and fed me
+canned beef and biscuits, and give me a cigar—a Henry Clay and a
+whisky-and-sparklet. He was a white man.
+
+“‘Ye-es, by Jove,’ he said, dragging out his words like a twist of
+molasses, ‘we’ve all admired your gun and the way you’ve worked it.
+Some of us betted you was a British deserter. I won a sovereign on that
+from a yeoman. And, by the way,’ he says, ‘you’ve disappointed me groom
+pretty bad.’
+
+“‘Where does your groom come in?’ I said.
+
+“‘Oh, he was the yeoman. He’s a dam poor groom,’ says my captain, ‘but
+he’s a way-up barrister when he’s at home. He’s been running around the
+camp with his tongue out, waiting for the chance of defending you at
+the court-martial.’
+
+“‘What court-martial?’ I says.
+
+“‘On you as a deserter from the Artillery. You’d have had a good run
+for your money. Anyway, you’d never have been hung after the way you
+worked your gun. Deserter ten times over,’ he says, ‘I’d have stuck out
+for shooting you like a gentleman.’
+
+“Well, Sir, right there it struck me at the pit of my stomach—sort of
+sickish, sweetish feeling—that my position needed regularising pretty
+bad. I ought to have been a naturalised burgher of a year’s standing;
+but Ohio’s my State, and I wouldn’t have gone back on her for a
+desertful of Dutchmen. That and my enthoosiasm as an inventor had led
+me to the existing crisis; but I couldn’t expect this Captain Mankeltow
+to regard the proposition that way. There I sat, the rankest breed of
+unreconstructed American citizen, caught red-handed squirting hell at
+the British Army for months on end. I tell _you_, Sir, I wished I was
+in Cincinnatah that summer evening. I’d have compromised on Brooklyn.
+
+“‘What d’you do about aliens?’ I said, and the dirt I’d coughed up
+seemed all back of my tongue again.
+
+“‘Oh,’ says he, ‘we don’t do much of anything. They’re about all the
+society we get. I’m a bit of a pro-Boer myself,’ he says, ‘but between
+you and me the average Boer ain’t over and above intellectual. You’re
+the first American we’ve met up with, but of course you’re a burgher.’
+
+“It was what I ought to have been if I’d had the sense of a common
+tick, but the way he drawled it out made me mad.
+
+“‘Of course I am not,’ I says. ‘Would _you_ be a naturalised Boer?’
+
+“‘I’m fighting against ’em,’ he says, lighting a cigarette, ‘but it’s
+all a matter of opinion.’
+
+“‘Well,’ I says, ‘you can hold any blame opinion you choose, but I’m a
+white man, and my present intention is to die in that colour.’
+
+“He laughed one of those big, thick-ended, British laughs that don’t
+lead anywhere, and whacked up some sort of compliment about America
+that made me mad all through.
+
+“I am the captive of your bow and spear, Sir, but I do not understand
+the alleged British joke. It is depressing.
+
+“I was introdooced to five or six officers that evening, and every
+blame one of ’em grinned and asked me why I wasn’t in the Filipeens
+suppressing our war! And that was British humour! They all had to get
+it off their chests before they’d talk sense. But they was sound on the
+Zigler. They had all admired her. I made out a fairy-story of me being
+wearied of the war, and having pushed the gun at them these last three
+months in the hope they’d capture it and let me go home. That tickled
+’em to death. They made me say it three times over, and laughed like
+kids each time. But half the British _are_ kids; specially the older
+men. My Captain Mankeltow was less of it than the others. He talked
+about the Zigler like a lover, Sir, and I drew him diagrams of the
+hopper-feed and recoil-cylinder in his note-book. He asked the one
+British question I was waiting for, ‘Hadn’t I made my working-parts too
+light?’ The British think weight’s strength.
+
+“At last—I’d been shy of opening the subject before—at last I said,
+‘Gentlemen, you are the unprejudiced tribunal I’ve been hunting after.
+I guess you ain’t interested in any other gun-factory, and politics
+don’t weigh with you. How did it feel your end of the game? What’s my
+gun done, anyway?’
+
+“‘I hate to disappoint you,’ says Captain Mankeltow, ‘because I know
+you feel as an inventor.’ I wasn’t feeling like an inventor just then.
+I felt friendly, but the British haven’t more tact than you can pick up
+with a knife out of a plate of soup.
+
+“‘The honest truth,’ he says, ‘is that you’ve wounded about ten of us
+one way and another, killed two battery horses and four mules, and—oh,
+yes,’ he said, ‘you’ve bagged five Kaffirs. But, buck up,’ he said,
+‘we’ve all had mighty close calls’—shaves, he called ’em, I remember.
+‘Look at my pants.’
+
+“They was repaired right across the seat with Minneapolis
+flour-bagging. I could see the stencil.
+
+“‘I ain’t bluffing,’ he says. ‘Get the hospital returns, Doc.’
+
+“The doctor gets ’em and reads ’em out under the proper dates. That
+doctor alone was worth the price of admission.
+
+“I was right pleased right through that I hadn’t killed any of these
+cheerful kids; but none the less I couldn’t help thinking that a few
+more Kaffirs would have served me just as well for advertising purposes
+as white men. No, sir. Anywhichway you regard the proposition,
+twenty-one casualties after months of close friendship like ours
+was—paltry.
+
+“They gave me taffy about the gun—the British use taffy where we use
+sugar. It’s cheaper, and gets there just the same. They sat around and
+proved to me that my gun was too good, too uniform—shot as close as a
+Mannlicher rifle.
+
+“Says one kid chewing a bit of grass: ‘I counted eight of your shells,
+Sir, burst in a radius of ten feet. All of ’em would have gone through
+one waggon-tilt. It was beautiful,’ he says. ‘It was too good.’
+
+“I shouldn’t wonder if the boys were right. My Laughtite is too
+mathematically uniform in propelling power. Yes; she was too good for
+this refractory fool of a country. The training gear was broke, too,
+and we had to swivel her around by the trail. But I’ll build my next
+Zigler fifteen hundred pounds heavier. Might work in a gasoline motor
+under the axles. I must think that up.
+
+“‘Well, gentlemen,’ I said, ‘I’d hate to have been the death of any of
+you; and if a prisoner can deed away his property, I’d love to present
+the Captain here with what he’s seen fit to leave of my Zigler.’
+
+“‘Thanks awf’ly,’ says my Captain. ‘I’d like her very much. She’d look
+fine in the mess at Woolwich. That is, if you don’t mind, Mr. Zigler.’
+
+“‘Go right ahead,’ I says. ‘I’ve come out of all the mess I’ve any use
+for; but she’ll do to spread the light among the Royal British
+Artillery.’
+
+“I tell you, Sir, there’s not much of anything the matter with the
+Royal British Artillery. They’re brainy men languishing under an effete
+system which, when you take good holt of it, is England—just all
+England. ‘Times I’d feel I was talking with real live citizens, and
+times I’d feel I’d struck the Beef Eaters in the Tower.
+
+“How? Well, this way. I was telling my Captain Mankeltow what Van Zyl
+had said about the British being all Chamberlains when the old man saw
+him back from hospital four days ahead of time.
+
+“‘Oh, damn it all!’ he says, as serious as the Supreme Court. ‘It’s too
+bad,’ he says. ‘Johanna must have misunderstood me, or else I’ve got
+the wrong Dutch word for these blarsted days of the week. I told
+Johanna I’d be out on Friday. The woman’s a fool. Oah, da-am it all!’
+he says. ‘I wouldn’t have sold old Van Zyl a pup like that,’ he says.
+‘I’ll hunt him up and apologise.’
+
+“He must have fixed it all right, for when we sailed over to the
+General’s dinner my Captain had Van Zyl about half-full of sherry and
+bitters, as happy as a clam. The boys all called him Adrian, and
+treated him like their prodigal father. He’d been hit on the collarbone
+by a wad of shrapnel, and his arm was tied up.
+
+“But the General was the peach. I presume you’re acquainted with the
+average run of British generals, but this was my first. I sat on his
+left hand, and he talked like—like the _Ladies’ Home Journal_. J’ever
+read that paper? It’s refined, Sir—and innocuous, and full of
+nickel-plated sentiments guaranteed to improve the mind. He was it. He
+began by a Lydia Pinkham heart-to-heart talk about my health, and hoped
+the boys had done me well, and that I was enjoying my stay in their
+midst. Then he thanked me for the interesting and valuable lessons that
+I’d given his crowd—specially in the matter of placing artillery and
+rearguard attacks. He’d wipe his long thin moustache between
+drinks—lime-juice and water he used—and blat off into a long ‘a-aah,’
+and ladle out more taffy for me or old man Van Zyl on his right. I told
+him how I’d had my first Pisgah-sight of the principles of the Zigler
+when I was a fourth-class postmaster on a star-route in Arkansas. I
+told him how I’d worked it up by instalments when I was machinist in
+Waterbury, where the dollar-watches come from. He had one on his wrist
+then. I told him how I’d met Zalinski (he’d never heard of Zalinski!)
+when I was an extra clerk in the Naval Construction Bureau at
+Washington. I told him how my uncle, who was a truck-farmer in Noo
+Jersey (he loaned money on mortgage too, for ten acres ain’t enough now
+in Noo Jersey), how he’d willed me a quarter of a million dollars,
+because I was the only one of our kin that called him down when he used
+to come home with a hard-cider jag on him and heave ox-bows at his
+nieces. I told him how I’d turned in every red cent on the Zigler, and
+I told him the whole circus of my coming out with her, and so on, and
+so following; and every forty seconds he’d wipe his moustache and blat,
+‘How interesting. Really, now? How interesting.’
+
+“It was like being in an old English book, Sir. Like _Bracebridge
+Hall_. But an American wrote _that!_ I kept peeking around for the
+Boar’s Head and the Rosemary and Magna Charta and the Cricket on the
+Hearth, and the rest of the outfit. Then Van Zyl whirled in. He was no
+ways jagged, but thawed—thawed, Sir, and among friends. They began
+discussing previous scraps all along the old man’s beat—about sixty of
+’em—as well as side-shows with other generals and columns. Van Zyl told
+’im of a big beat he’d worked on a column a week or so before I’d
+joined him. He demonstrated his strategy with forks on the table.
+
+“‘There!’ said the General, when he’d finished. ‘That proves my
+contention to the hilt. Maybe I’m a bit of a pro-Boer, but I stick to
+it,’ he says, ‘that under proper officers, with due regard to his race
+prejudices, the Boer’ud make the finest mounted infantry in the Empire.
+Adrian,’ he says, ‘you’re simply squandered on a cattle-run. You ought
+to be at the Staff College with De Wet.’
+
+“‘You catch De Wet and I come to your Staff College—eh,’ says Adrian,
+laughing. ‘But you are so slow, Generaal. Why are you so slow? For a
+month,’ he says, ‘you do so well and strong that we say we shall
+hands-up and come back to our farms. Then you send to England and make
+us a present of two—three—six hundred young men, with rifles and wagons
+and rum and tobacco, and such a great lot of cartridges, that our young
+men put up their tails and start all over again. If you hold an ox by
+the horn and hit him by the bottom he runs round and round. He never
+goes anywhere. So, too, this war goes round and round. You know that,
+Generaal!’
+
+“‘Quite right, Adrian,’ says the General; ‘but you must believe your
+Bible.’
+
+“‘Hooh!’ says Adrian, and reaches for the whisky. ‘I’ve never known a
+Dutchman a professing Atheist, but some few have been rather active
+Agnostics since the British sat down in Pretoria. Old man Van Zyl—he
+told me—had soured on religion after Bloemfontein surrendered. He was a
+Free Stater for one thing.’
+
+“‘He that believeth,’ says the General, ‘shall not make haste. That’s
+in Isaiah. We believe we’re going to win, and so we don’t make haste.
+As far as I’m concerned I’d like this war to last another five years.
+We’d have an army then. It’s just this way, Mr. Zigler,’ he says, ‘our
+people are brimfull of patriotism, but they’ve been born and brought up
+between houses, and England ain’t big enough to train ’em—not if you
+expect to preserve.’
+
+“‘Preserve what?’ I says. ‘England?’
+
+“‘No. The game,’ he says; ‘and that reminds me, gentlemen, we haven’t
+drunk the King and Fox-hunting.’
+
+“So they drank the King and Fox-hunting. I drank the King because
+there’s something about Edward that tickles me (he’s so blame British);
+but I rather stood out on the Fox-hunting. I’ve ridden wolves in the
+cattle-country, and needed a drink pretty bad afterwards, but it never
+struck me as I ought to drink about it—he-red-it-arily.
+
+“‘No, as I was saying, Mr. Zigler,’ he goes on, ‘we have to train our
+men in the field to shoot and ride. I allow six months for it; but many
+column-commanders—not that I ought to say a word against ’em, for
+they’re the best fellows that ever stepped, and most of ’em are my
+dearest friends—seem to think that if they have men and horses and guns
+they can take tea with the Boers. It’s generally the other way about,
+ain’t it, Mr. Zigler?’
+
+“‘To some extent, Sir,’ I said.
+
+“‘I’m _so_ glad you agree with me,’ he says. ‘My command here I regard
+as a training depot, and you, if I may say so, have been one of my most
+efficient instructors. I mature my men slowly but thoroughly. First I
+put ’em in a town which is liable to be attacked by night, where they
+can attend riding-school in the day. Then I use ’em with a convoy, and
+last I put ’em into a column. It takes time,’ he says, ‘but I flatter
+myself that any men who have worked under me are at least grounded in
+the rudiments of their profession. Adrian,’ he says, ‘was there
+anything wrong with the men who upset Van Bester’s applecart last month
+when he was trying to cross the line to join Piper with those horses
+he’d stole from Gabbitas?’
+
+“‘No, Generaal,’ says Van Zyl. ‘Your men got the horses back and eleven
+dead; and Van Besters, he ran to Delarey in his shirt. They was very
+good, those men. They shoot hard.’
+
+“_‘So_ pleased to hear you say so. I laid ’em down at the beginning of
+this century—a 1900 vintage. _You_ remember ’em, Mankeltow?’ he says.
+‘The Central Middlesex Buncho Busters—clerks and floorwalkers mostly,’
+and he wiped his moustache. ‘It was just the same with the Liverpool
+Buckjumpers, but they were stevedores. Let’s see—they were a
+last-century draft, weren’t they? They did well after nine months.
+_You_ know ’em, Van Zyl? You didn’t get much change out of ’em at
+Pootfontein?’
+
+“‘No,’ says Van Zyl. ‘At Pootfontein I lost my son Andries.’
+
+“‘I beg your pardon, Commandant,’ says the General; and the rest of the
+crowd sort of cooed over Adrian.
+
+“‘Excoose,’ says Adrian. ‘It was all right. They were good men those,
+but it is just what I say. Some are so dam good we want to hands-up,
+and some are so dam bad, we say, “Take the Vierkleur into Cape Town.”
+It is not upright of you, Generaal. It is not upright of you at all. I
+do not think you ever wish this war to finish.’
+
+“‘It’s a first-class dress-parade for Armageddon,’ says the General.
+‘With luck, we ought to run half a million men through the mill. Why,
+we might even be able to give our Native Army a look in. Oh, not here,
+of course, Adrian, but down in the Colony—say a camp-of-exercise at
+Worcester. You mustn’t be prejudiced, Adrian. I’ve commanded a district
+in India, and I give you my word the native troops are splendid men.’
+
+“‘Oh, I should not mind them at Worcester,’ says Adrian. ‘I would sell
+you forage for them at Worcester—yes, and Paarl and Stellenbosch; but
+Almighty!’ he says, ‘must I stay with Cronje till you have taught half
+a million of these stupid boys to ride? I shall be an old man.’
+
+“Well, Sir, then and there they began arguing whether St. Helena would
+suit Adrian’s health as well as some other places they knew about, and
+fixing up letters of introduction to Dukes and Lords of their
+acquaintance, so’s Van Zyl should be well looked after. We own a
+fair-sized block of real estate—America does—but it made me sickish to
+hear this crowd fluttering round the Atlas (oh yes, they had an Atlas),
+and choosing stray continents for Adrian to drink his coffee in. The
+old man allowed he didn’t want to roost with Cronje, because one of
+Cronje’s kin had jumped one of his farms after Paardeberg. I forget the
+rights of the case, but it was interesting. They decided on a place
+called Umballa in India, because there was a first-class doctor there.
+
+“So Adrian was fixed to drink the King and Foxhunting, and study up the
+Native Army in India (I’d like to see ’em myself), till the British
+General had taught the male white citizens of Great Britain how to
+ride. Don’t misunderstand me, Sir. I loved that General. After ten
+minutes I loved him, and I wanted to laugh at him; but at the same
+time, sitting there and hearing him talk about the centuries, I tell
+you, Sir, it scared me. It scared me cold! He admitted everything—he
+acknowledged the corn before you spoke—he was more pleased to hear that
+his men had been used to wipe the geldt with than I was when I knocked
+out Tom Reed’s two lead-horses—and he sat back and blew smoke through
+his nose and matured his men like cigars and—he talked of the
+everlastin’ centuries!
+
+“I went to bed nearer nervous prostration than I’d come in a long time.
+Next morning me and Captain Mankeltow fixed up what his shrapnel had
+left of my Zigler for transport to the railroad. She went in on her own
+wheels, and I stencilled her ‘Royal Artillery Mess, Woolwich,’ on the
+muzzle, and he said he’d be grateful if I’d take charge of her to Cape
+Town, and hand her over to a man in the Ordnance there. ‘How are you
+fixed financially? You’ll need some money on the way home,’ he says at
+last.
+
+“‘For one thing, Cap,’ I said, ‘I’m not a poor man, and for another I’m
+not going home. I am the captive of your bow and spear. I decline to
+resign office.’
+
+“‘Skittles!’ he says (that was a great word of his), ‘you’ll take
+parole, and go back to America and invent another Zigler, a trifle
+heavier in the working parts—I would. We’ve got more prisoners than we
+know what to do with as it is,’ he says. ‘You’ll only be an additional
+expense to me as a taxpayer. Think of Schedule D,’ he says, ‘and take
+parole.’
+
+“‘I don’t know anything about your tariffs,’ I said, ‘but when I get to
+Cape Town I write home for money, and I turn in every cent my board’ll
+cost your country to any ten-century-old department that’s been
+ordained to take it since William the Conqueror came along.’
+
+“‘But, confound you for a thick-headed mule,’ he says, ‘this war ain’t
+any more than just started! Do you mean to tell me you’re going to play
+prisoner till it’s over?’
+
+“‘That’s about the size of it,’ I says, ‘if an Englishman and an
+American could ever understand each other.’
+
+“‘But, in Heaven’s Holy Name, why?’ he says, sitting down of a heap on
+an anthill.
+
+“‘Well, Cap,’ I says, ‘I don’t pretend to follow your ways of thought,
+and I can’t see why you abuse your position to persecute a poor
+prisoner o’ war on _his!_’
+
+“‘My dear fellow,’ he began, throwing up his hands and blushing, ‘I’ll
+apologise.’
+
+“‘But if you insist,’ I says, ‘there are just one and a half things in
+this world I can’t do. The odd half don’t matter here; but taking
+parole, and going home, and being interviewed by the boys, and giving
+lectures on my single-handed campaign against the hereditary enemies of
+my beloved country happens to be the one. We’ll let it go at that,
+Cap.’
+
+“‘But it’ll bore you to death,’ he says. The British are a heap more
+afraid of what they call being bored than of dying, I’ve noticed.
+
+“‘I’ll survive,’ I says, ‘I ain’t British. I can think,’ I says.
+
+“‘By God,’ he says, coming up to me, and extending the right hand of
+fellowship, ‘you ought to be English, Zigler!’
+
+“It’s no good getting mad at a compliment like that. The English all do
+it. They’re a crazy breed. When they don’t know you they freeze up
+tighter’n the St. Lawrence. When they _do_, they go out like an ice-jam
+in April. Up till we prisoners left—four days—my Captain Mankeltow told
+me pretty much all about himself there was; his mother and sisters, and
+his bad brother that was a trooper in some Colonial corps, and how his
+father didn’t get on with him, and—well, everything, as I’ve said.
+They’re undomesticated, the British, compared with us. They talk about
+their own family affairs as if they belonged to someone else. ’Taint as
+if they hadn’t any shame, but it sounds like it. I guess they talk out
+loud what we think, and we talk out loud what they think.
+
+“I liked my Captain Mankeltow. I liked him as well as any man I’d ever
+struck. He was white. He gave me his silver drinking-flask, and I gave
+him the formula of my Laughtite. That’s a hundred and fifty thousand
+dollars in his vest-pocket, on the lowest count, if he has the
+knowledge to use it. No, I didn’t tell him the money-value. He was
+English. He’d send his valet to find out.
+
+“Well, me and Adrian and a crowd of dam Dutchmen was sent down the road
+to Cape Town in first-class carriages under escort. (What did I think
+of your enlisted men? They are largely different from ours, Sir: very
+largely.) As I was saying, we slid down south, with Adrian looking out
+of the car-window and crying. Dutchmen cry mighty easy for a breed that
+fights as they do; but I never understood how a Dutchman could curse
+till we crossed into the Orange Free State Colony, and he lifted up his
+hand and cursed Steyn for a solid ten minutes. Then we got into the
+Colony, and the rebs—ministers mostly and schoolmasters—came round the
+cars with fruit and sympathy and texts. Van Zyl talked to ’em in Dutch,
+and one man, a big red-bearded minister, at Beaufort West, I remember,
+he jest wilted on the platform.
+
+“‘Keep your prayers for yourself,’ says Van Zyl, throwing back a bunch
+of grapes. ‘You’ll need ’em, and you’ll need the fruit too, when the
+war comes down here. _You_ done it,’ he says. ‘You and your picayune
+Church that’s deader than Cronje’s dead horses! What sort of a God have
+you been unloading on us, you black _aas vogels_? The British came, and
+we beat ’em,’ he says, ‘and you sat still and prayed. The British beat
+us, and you sat still,’ he says. ‘You told us to hang on, and we hung
+on, and our farms was burned, and you sat still—you and your God. See
+here,’ he says, ‘I shot my Bible full of bullets after Bloemfontein
+went, and you and God didn’t say anything. Take it and pray over it
+before we Federals help the British to knock hell out of you rebels.’
+
+“Then I hauled him back into the car. I judged he’d had a fit. But
+life’s curious—and sudden—and mixed. I hadn’t any more use for a reb
+than Van Zyl, and I knew something of the lies they’d fed us up with
+from the Colony for a year and more. I told the minister to pull his
+freight out of that, and went on with my lunch, when another man come
+along and shook hands with Van Zyl. He’d known him at close range in
+the Kimberley seige and before. Van Zyl was well seen by his
+neighbours, I judge. As soon as this other man opened his mouth I said,
+‘You’re Kentucky, ain’t you?’ ‘I am,’ he says; ‘and what may you be?’ I
+told him right off, for I was pleased to hear good United States in any
+man’s mouth; but he whipped his hands behind him and said, ‘I’m not
+knowing any man that fights for a Tammany Dutchman. But I presoom
+you’ve been well paid, you dam gun-runnin’ Yank.’
+
+“Well, Sir, I wasn’t looking for that, and it near knocked me over,
+while old man Van Zyl started in to explain.
+
+“‘Don’t you waste your breath, Mister Van Zyl,’ the man says. ‘I know
+this breed. The South’s full of ’em.’ Then he whirls round on me and
+says, ‘Look at here, you Yank. A little thing like a King’s neither
+here nor there, but what _you’ve_ done,’ he says, ‘is to go back on the
+White Man in six places at once—two hemispheres and four
+continents—America, England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South
+Africa. Don’t open your head,’ he says. ‘You know well if you’d been
+caught at this game in our country you’d have been jiggling in the
+bight of a lariat before you could reach for your naturalisation
+papers. Go on and prosper,’ he says, ‘and you’ll fetch up by fighting
+for niggers, as the North did.’ And he threw me half-a-crown—English
+money.
+
+“Sir, I do not regard the proposition in that light, but I guess I must
+have been somewhat shook by the explosion. They told me at Cape Town
+one rib was driven in on to my lungs. I am not adducing this as an
+excuse, but the cold God’s truth of the matter is—the money on the
+floor did it…. I give up and cried. Put my head down and cried.
+
+“I dream about this still sometimes. He didn’t know the circumstances,
+but I dream about it. And it’s Hell!
+
+“How do you regard the proposition—as a Brother? If you’d invented your
+own gun, and spent fifty-seven thousand dollars on her—and had paid
+your own expenses from the word ‘go’? An American citizen has a right
+to choose his own side in an unpleasantness, and Van Zyl wasn’t any
+Krugerite … and I’d risked my hide at my own expense. I got that man’s
+address from Van Zyl; he was a mining man at Kimberley, and I wrote him
+the facts. But he never answered. Guess he thought I lied…. Damned
+Southern rebel!
+
+“Oh, say. Did I tell you my Captain gave me a letter to an English Lord
+in Cape Town, and he fixed things so’s I could lie up a piece in his
+house? I was pretty sick, and threw up some blood from where the rib
+had gouged into the lung—here. This Lord was a crank on guns, and he
+took charge of the Zigler. He had his knife into the British system as
+much as any American. He said he wanted revolution, and not reform, in
+your army. He said the British soldier had failed in every point except
+courage. He said England needed a Monroe Doctrine worse than America—a
+new doctrine, barring out all the Continent, and strictly devoting
+herself to developing her own Colonies. He said he’d abolish half the
+Foreign Office, and take all the old hereditary families clean out of
+it, because, he said, they was expressly trained to fool around with
+continental diplomats, and to despise the Colonies. His own family
+wasn’t more than six hundred years old. He was a very brainy man, and a
+good citizen. We talked politics and inventions together when my lung
+let up on me.
+
+“Did he know my General? Yes. He knew ’em all. Called ’em Teddie and
+Gussie and Willie. They was all of the very best, and all his dearest
+friends; but he told me confidentially they was none of ’em fit to
+command a column in the field. He said they were too fond of
+advertising. Generals don’t seem very different from actors or doctors
+or—yes, Sir—inventors.
+
+“He fixed things for me lovelily at Simons-Town. Had the biggest sort
+of pull—even for a Lord. At first they treated me as a harmless
+lunatic; but after a while I got ’em to let me keep some of their
+books. If I was left alone in the world with the British system of
+bookkeeping, I’d reconstruct the whole British Empire—beginning with
+the Army. Yes, I’m one of their most trusted accountants, and I’m paid
+for it. As much as a dollar a day. I keep that. I’ve earned it, and I
+deduct it from the cost of my board. When the war’s over I’m going to
+pay up the balance to the British Government. Yes, Sir, that’s how I
+regard the proposition.
+
+“Adrian? Oh, he left for Umballa four months back. He told me he was
+going to apply to join the National Scouts if the war didn’t end in a
+year. ’Tisn’t in nature for one Dutchman to shoot another, but if
+Adrian ever meets up with Steyn there’ll be an exception to the rule.
+Ye—es, when the war’s over it’ll take some of the British Army to
+protect Steyn from his fellow-patriots. But the war won’t be over yet
+awhile. He that believeth don’t hurry, as Isaiah says. The ministers
+and the school-teachers and the rebs’ll have a war all to themselves
+long after the north is quiet.
+
+“I’m pleased with this country—it’s big. Not so many folk on the ground
+as in America. There’s a boom coming sure. I’ve talked it over with
+Adrian, and I guess I shall buy a farm somewhere near Bloemfontein and
+start in cattle-raising. It’s big and peaceful—a ten-thousand-acre
+farm. I could go on inventing there, too. I’ll sell my Zigler, I guess.
+I’ll offer the patent rights to the British Government; and if they do
+the ‘reelly-now-how-interesting’ act over her, I’ll turn her over to
+Captain Mankeltow and his friend the Lord. They’ll pretty quick find
+some Gussie, or Teddie, or Algie who can get her accepted in the proper
+quarters. I’m beginning to know my English.
+
+“And now I’ll go in swimming, and read the papers after lunch. I
+haven’t had such a good time since Willie died.” He pulled the blue
+shirt over his head as the bathers returned to their piles of clothing,
+and, speaking through the folds, added:
+
+“But if you want to realise your assets, you should lease the whole
+proposition to America for ninety-nine years.”
+
+
+
+
+THE BONDS OF DISCIPLINE
+
+
+
+
+POSEIDON’S LAW
+
+
+When the robust and brass-bound man commissioned first for sea
+His fragile raft, Poseidon laughed, and, “Mariner,” said he,
+“Behold, a Law immutable I lay on thee and thine,
+That never shall ye act or tell a falsehood at my shrine.
+
+“Let Zeus adjudge your landward kin, whose votive meal and salt
+At easy-cheated altars win oblivion for the fault,
+But ye the unhoodwinked waves shall test—the immediate gulfs condemn—
+Unless ye owe the Fates a jest, be slow to jest with them.
+
+“Ye shall not clear by Greekly speech, nor cozen from your path
+The twinkling shoal, the leeward beach, and Hadria’s white-lipped wrath;
+Nor tempt with painted cloth for wood my fraud-avenging hosts;
+Nor make at all or all make good your bulwarks and your boasts.
+
+“Now and henceforward serve unshod through wet and wakeful shifts,
+A present and oppressive God, but take, to aid, my gifts—
+The wide and windward-opened eye, the large and lavish hand,
+The soul that cannot tell a lie—except upon the land!”
+
+In dromond and in catafract—wet, wakeful, windward-eyed—
+He kept Poseidon’s Law intact (his ship and freight beside),
+But, once discharged the dromond’s hold, the bireme beached once more,
+Splendaciously mendacious rolled the brass-bound man ashore.
+
+
+The thranite now and thalamite are pressures low and high,
+And where three hundred blades bit white the twin-propellers ply:
+The God that hailed, the keel that sailed, are changed beyond recall,
+But the robust and brass-bound man he is not changed at all!
+
+From Punt returned, from Phormio’s Fleet, from Javan and Gadire,
+He strongly occupies the seat about the tavern fire,
+And, moist with much Falernian or smoked Massilian juice,
+Revenges there the brass-bound man his long-enforced truce!
+
+
+
+
+THE BONDS OF DISCIPLINE
+
+
+As literature, it is beneath contempt. It concerns the endurance,
+armament, turning-circle, and inner gear of every ship in the British
+Navy—the whole embellished with profile plates. The Teuton approaches
+the matter with pagan thoroughness; the Muscovite runs him close; but
+the Gaul, ever an artist, breaks enclosure to study the morale, at the
+present day, of the British sailorman.
+
+In this, I conceive, he is from time to time aided by the zealous
+amateur, though I find very little in his dispositions to show that he
+relies on that amateur’s hard-won information. There exists—unlike some
+other publication, it is not bound in lead boards—a work by one “M. de
+C.,” based on the absolutely unadorned performances of one of our
+well-known _Acolyte_ type of cruisers. It contains nothing that did not
+happen. It covers a period of two days; runs to twenty-seven pages of
+large type exclusive of appendices; and carries as many exclamation
+points as the average Dumas novel.
+
+I read it with care, from the adorably finished prologue—it is the
+disgrace of our Navy that we cannot produce a commissioned officer
+capable of writing one page of lyric prose—to the eloquent, the joyful,
+the impassioned end; and my first notion was that I had been cheated.
+In this sort of book-collecting you will see how entirely the
+bibliophile lies at the mercy of his agent.
+
+“M. de C.,” I read, opened his campaign by stowing away in one of her
+boats what time H.M.S. _Archimandrite_ lay off Funchal. “M. de C.” was,
+always on behalf of his country, a Madeira Portuguese fleeing from the
+conscription. They discovered him eighty miles at sea and bade him
+assist the cook. So far this seemed fairly reasonable. Next day, thanks
+to his histrionic powers and his ingratiating address, he was promoted
+to the rank of “supernumerary captain’s servant”—a “post which,” I give
+his words, “I flatter myself, was created for me alone, and furnished
+me with opportunities unequalled for a task in which one word
+malapropos would have been my destruction.”
+
+From this point onward, earth and water between them held no marvels
+like to those “M. de C.” had “envisaged”—if I translate him correctly.
+It became clear to me that “M. de C.” was either a pyramidal liar, or…
+
+I was not acquainted with any officer, seaman, or marine in the
+_Archimandrite_; but instinct told me I could not go far wrong if I
+took a third-class ticket to Plymouth.
+
+I gathered information on the way from a leading stoker, two
+seaman-gunners, and an odd hand in a torpedo factory. They courteously
+set my feet on the right path, and that led me through the alleys of
+Devonport to a public-house not fifty yards from the water. We drank
+with the proprietor, a huge, yellowish man called Tom Wessels; and when
+my guides had departed, I asked if he could produce any warrant or
+petty officer of the _Archimandrite_.
+
+“The _Bedlamite_, d’you mean—’er last commission, when they all went
+crazy?”
+
+“Shouldn’t wonder,” I replied. “Fetch me a sample and I’ll see.”
+
+“You’ll excuse me, o’ course, but—what d’you want ’im _for?_”
+
+“I want to make him drunk. I want to make you drunk—if you like. I want
+to make him drunk here.”
+
+“Spoke very ’andsome. I’ll do what I can.” He went out towards the
+water that lapped at the foot of the street. I gathered from the
+pot-boy that he was a person of influence beyond Admirals.
+
+In a few minutes I heard the noise of an advancing crowd, and the voice
+of Mr. Wessels.
+
+“’E only wants to make you drunk at ’is expense. Dessay ’e’ll stand you
+all a drink. Come up an’ look at ’im. ’E don’t bite.”
+
+A square man, with remarkable eyes, entered at the head of six large
+bluejackets. Behind them gathered a contingent of hopeful
+free-drinkers.
+
+“’E’s the only one I could get. Transferred to the _Postulant_ six
+months back. I found ’im quite accidental.” Mr. Wessels beamed.
+
+“I’m in charge o’ the cutter. Our wardroom is dinin’ on the beach _en
+masse_. They won’t be home till mornin’,” said the square man with the
+remarkable eyes. “Are you an _Archimandrite?_” I demanded.
+
+“That’s me. I was, as you might say.”
+
+“Hold on. I’m a _Archimandrite._” A Red Marine with moist eyes tried to
+climb on the table. “Was you lookin’ for a _Bedlamite?_ I’ve—I’ve been
+invalided, an’ what with that, an’ visitin’ my family ’ome at Lewes,
+per’aps I’ve come late. ’Ave I?”
+
+“You’ve ’ad all that’s good for you,” said Tom Wessels, as the Red
+Marine sat cross-legged on the floor.
+
+“There are those ’oo haven’t ’ad a thing yet!” cried a voice by the
+door.
+
+“I will take this _Archimandrite_,” I said, “and this Marine. Will you
+please give the boat’s crew a drink now, and another in half an hour
+if—if Mr.——”
+
+“Pyecroft,” said the square man. “Emanuel Pyecroft, second-class
+petty-officer.”
+
+“—Mr. Pyecroft doesn’t object?”
+
+“He don’t. Clear out. Goldin’, you picket the hill by yourself,
+throwin’ out a skirmishin’-line in ample time to let me know when
+Number One’s comin’ down from his vittles.”
+
+The crowd dissolved. We passed into the quiet of the inner bar, the Red
+Marine zealously leading the way.
+
+“And what do you drink, Mr. Pyecroft?” I said.
+
+“Only water. Warm water, with a little whisky an’ sugar an’ per’aps a
+lemon.”
+
+“Mine’s beer,” said the Marine. “It always was.”
+
+“Look ’ere, Glass. You take an’ go to sleep. The picket’ll be comin’
+for you in a little time, an’ per’aps you’ll ’ave slep’ it off by then.
+What’s your ship, now?” said Mr. Wessels.
+
+“The Ship o’ State—most important?” said the Red Marine magnificently,
+and shut his eyes.
+
+“That’s right,” said Mr. Pyecroft. “He’s safest where he is. An’
+now—here’s santy to us all!—what d’you want o’ me?”
+
+“I want to read you something.”
+
+“Tracts, again!” said the Marine, never opening his eyes. “Well. I’m
+game…. A little more ’ead to it, miss, please.”
+
+“He thinks ’e’s drinkin’—lucky beggar!” said Mr. Pyecroft. “I’m
+agreeable to be read to. ’Twon’t alter my convictions. I may as well
+tell you beforehand I’m a Plymouth Brother.”
+
+He composed his face with the air of one in the dentist’s chair, and I
+began at the third page of “M. de C.”
+
+“‘_At the moment of asphyxiation, for I had hidden myself under the
+boat’s cover, I heard footsteps upon the superstructure and coughed
+with empress_’—coughed loudly, Mr. Pyecroft. ‘_By this time I judged
+the vessel to be sufficiently far from land. A number of sailors
+extricated me amid language appropriate to their national brutality. I
+responded that I named myself Antonio, and that I sought to save myself
+from the Portuguese conscription_.’
+
+“Ho!” said Mr. Pyecroft, and the fashion of his countenance changed.
+Then pensively: “Ther beggar! What might you have in your hand there?”
+
+“It’s the story of Antonio—a stowaway in the _Archimandrite’s_ cutter.
+A French spy when he’s at home, I fancy. What do _you_ know about it?”
+
+“An’ I thought it was tracts! An’ yet some’ow I didn’t.” Mr. Pyecroft
+nodded his head wonderingly. “Our old man was quite right—so was ’Op—so
+was I. ’Ere, Glass!” He kicked the Marine. “Here’s our Antonio ’as
+written a impromptu book! He _was_ a spy all right.”
+
+The Red Marine turned slightly, speaking with the awful precision of
+the half-drunk. “’As ’e got any-thin’ in about my ’orrible death an’
+execution? Ex_cuse_ me, but if I open my eyes, I shan’t be well. That’s
+where I’m different from _all_ other men. Ahem!”
+
+“What about Glass’s execution?” demanded Pyecroft.
+
+“The book’s in French,” I replied.
+
+“Then it’s no good to me.”
+
+“Precisely. Now I want you to tell your story just as it happened. I’ll
+check it by this book. Take a cigar. I know about his being dragged out
+of the cutter. What I want to know is what was the meaning of all the
+other things, because they’re unusual.”
+
+“They were,” said Mr. Pyecroft with emphasis. “Lookin’ back on it as I
+set here more an’ more I see what an ’ighly unusual affair it was. But
+it happened. It transpired in the _Archimandrite_—the ship you can
+trust… Antonio! Ther beggar!”
+
+“Take your time, Mr. Pyecroft.”
+
+In a few moments we came to it thus—
+
+“The old man was displeased. I don’t deny he was quite a little
+displeased. With the mail-boats trottin’ into Madeira every twenty
+minutes, he didn’t see why a lop-eared Portugee had to take liberties
+with a man-o’-war’s first cutter. Any’ow, we couldn’t turn ship round
+for him. We drew him out and took him out to Number One. ‘Drown ’im,’
+’e says. ‘Drown ’im before ’e dirties my fine new decks.’ But our owner
+was tenderhearted. ‘Take him to the galley,’ ’e says. ‘Boil ’im! Skin
+’im! Cook ’im! Cut ’is bloomin’ hair? Take ’is bloomin’ number! We’ll
+have him executed at Ascension.’
+
+“Retallick, our chief cook, an’ a Carth’lic, was the on’y one any way
+near grateful; bein’ short-’anded in the galley. He annexes the
+blighter by the left ear an’ right foot an’ sets him to work peelin’
+potatoes. So then, this Antonio that was avoidin’ the conscription—”
+
+“_Sub_scription, you pink-eyed matlow!” said the Marine, with the face
+of a stone Buddha, and whimpered sadly: “Pye don’t see any fun in it at
+all.”
+
+“_Con_scription—come to his illegitimate sphere in Her Majesty’s Navy,
+an’ it was just then that Old ’Op, our Yeoman of Signals, an’ a
+fastidious joker, made remarks to me about ’is hands.
+
+“‘Those ’ands,’ says ’Op, ‘properly considered, never done a day’s
+honest labour in their life. Tell me those hands belong to a blighted
+Portugee manual labourist and I won’t call you a liar, but I’ll say you
+an’ the Admiralty are pretty much unique in your statements.’ ’Op was
+always a fastidious joker—in his language as much as anything else. He
+pursued ’is investigations with the eye of an ’awk outside the galley.
+He knew better than to advance line-head against Retallick, so he
+attacked _ong eshlong_, speakin’ his remarks as much as possible into
+the breech of the starboard four point seven, an’ ’ummin’ to ’imself.
+Our chief cook ’ated ’ummin’. ‘What’s the matter of your bowels?’ he
+says at last, fistin’ out the mess-pork agitated like. “‘Don’t mind
+me,’ says ’Op. ‘I’m only a mildewed buntin’-tosser,’ ’e says: ‘but
+speakin’ for my mess, I do hope,’ ’e says, ‘you ain’t goin’ to boil
+your Portugee friend’s boots along o’ that pork you’re smellin’ so
+gay!’
+
+“‘Boots! Boots! Boots!’ says Retallick, an’ he run round like a earwig
+in a alder-stalk. ‘Boots in the galley,’ ’e says. ‘Cook’s mate, cast
+out an’ abolish this cutter-cuddlin’ abori_gine’s_ boots!’”
+
+“They was hove overboard in quick time, an’ that was what ’Op was lyin’
+to for. As subsequently transpired.
+
+“‘Fine Arab arch to that cutter-cuddler’s hinstep,’ he says to me. ‘Run
+your eye over it, Pye,’ ’e says. ‘Nails all present an’ correct,’ ’e
+says. ‘Bunion on the little toe, too,’ ’e says; ‘which comes from
+wearin’ a tight boot. What do _you_ think?’
+
+“‘Dook in trouble, per’aps,’ I says. ‘He ain’t got the hang of
+spud-skinnin’.’ No more he ’ad. ’E was simply cannibalisin’ ’em.
+
+“‘I want to know what ’e ’as got the ’ang of,’ says ’Op,
+obstructed-like. ‘Watch ’im,’ ’e says. ‘These shoulders were
+foreign-drilled somewhere.’
+
+‘“When it comes to “Down ’ammicks!” which is our naval way o’ goin’ to
+bye-bye, I took particular trouble over Antonio, ’oo had ’is ’ammick
+’ove at ’im with general instructions to sling it an’ be sugared. In
+the ensuin’ melly I pioneered him to the after-’atch, which is a
+orifice communicatin’ with the after-flat an’ similar suites of
+apartments. He havin’ navigated at three fifths power immejit ahead o’
+me, _I_ wasn’t goin’ to volunteer any assistance, nor he didn’t need
+it.’
+
+“‘Mong Jew!’ says ’e, sniffin’ round. An’ twice more ‘Mong Jew!’—which
+is pure French. Then he slings ’is ’ammick, nips in, an’ coils down.
+‘Not bad for a Portugee conscript,’ I says to myself, casts off the
+tow, abandons him, and reports to ’Op.
+
+“About three minutes later I’m over’auled by our sub-lootenant,
+navigatin’ under forced draught, with his bearin’s ’eated. ’E had the
+temerity to say I’d instructed our Antonio to sling his carcass in the
+alleyway, an’ ’e was peevish about it. O’ course, I prevaricated like
+’ell. You get to do that in the service. Nevertheless, to oblige Mr.
+Ducane, I went an’ readjusted Antonio. You may not ’ave ascertained
+that there are two ways o’ comin’ out of an ’ammick when it’s cut down.
+Antonio came out t’other way—slidin’ ’andsome to his feet. That showed
+me two things. First, ’e had been in an ’ammick before, an’ next, he
+hadn’t been asleep. Then I reproached ’im for goin’ to bed where ’e’d
+been told to go, instead o’ standin’ by till some one gave him entirely
+contradictory orders. Which is the essence o’ naval discipline.
+
+“In the middle o’ this argument the gunner protrudes his ram-bow from
+’is cabin, an’ brings it all to an ’urried conclusion with some remarks
+suitable to ’is piebald warrant-rank. Navigatin’ thence under easy
+steam, an’ leavin’ Antonio to re-sling his little foreign self, my
+large flat foot comes in detonatin’ contact with a small objec’ on the
+deck. Not ’altin’ for the obstacle, nor changin’ step, I shuffles it
+along under the ball of the big toe to the foot o’ the hatchway, when,
+lightly stoopin’, I catch it in my right hand and continue my
+evolutions in rapid time till I eventuates under ’Op’s lee.
+
+“It was a small moroccer-bound pocket-book, full of indelible
+pencil-writin’—in French, for I could plainly discern the
+_doodeladays_, which is about as far as my education runs.
+
+“’Op fists it open and peruses. ’E’d known an ’arf-caste Frenchwoman
+pretty intricate before he was married; when he was trained man in a
+stinkin’ gunboat up the Saigon River. He understood a lot o’
+French—domestic brands chiefly—the kind that isn’t in print.
+
+“‘Pye,’ he says to me, ‘you’re a tattician o’ no mean value. I am a
+trifle shady about the precise bearin’ an’ import’ o’ this beggar’s
+private log here,’ ’e says, ‘but it’s evidently a case for the owner.
+You’ll ’ave your share o’ the credit,’ ’e says.
+
+“‘Nay, nay, Pauline,’ I says, ‘You don’t catch Emanuel Pyecroft
+mine-droppin’ under any post-captain’s bows,’ I says, ‘in search of
+honour,’ I says. ‘I’ve been there oft.’
+
+“‘Well, if you must, you must,’ ’e says, takin’ me up quick. ‘But I’ll
+speak a good word for you, Pye.’
+
+“‘You’ll shut your mouth, ’Op,’ I says, ‘or you an’ me’ll part
+brass-rags. The owner has his duties, an’ I have mine. We will keep
+station,’ I says, ‘nor seek to deviate.’
+
+“‘Deviate to blazes!’ says ’Op. ‘I’m goin’ to deviate to the owner’s
+comfortable cabin direct.’ So he deviated.”
+
+Mr. Pyecroft leaned forward and dealt the Marine a large pattern Navy
+kick. “’Ere, Glass! You was sentry when ’Op went to the old man—the
+first time, with Antonio’s washin’-book. Tell us what transpired.
+You’re sober. You don’t know how sober you are!”
+
+The Marine cautiously raised his head a few inches. As Mr. Pyecroft
+said, he was sober—after some R.M.L.I. fashion of his own devising.
+“’Op bounds in like a startled anteloper, carryin’ ’is signal-slate at
+the ready. The old man was settin’ down to ’is bountiful platter—not
+like you an’ me, without anythin’ more in sight for an ’ole night an’
+’arf a day. Talkin’ about food—”
+
+“No! No! No!” cried Pyecroft, kicking again. “What about ’Op?” I
+thought the Marine’s ribs would have snapped, but he merely hiccuped.
+
+“Oh, ’im! ’E ’ad it written all down on ’is little slate—I think—an’ ’e
+shoves it under the old man’s nose. ‘Shut the door,’ says ’Op. ‘For
+’Eavin’s sake shut the cabin door!’ Then the old man must ha’ said
+somethin’ ’bout irons. ‘I’ll put ’em on, Sir, in your very presence,’
+says ’Op, ‘only ’ear my prayer,’ or—words to that ’fect…. It was jus’
+the same with me when I called our Sergeant a bladder-bellied,
+lard-’eaded, perspirin’ pension-cheater. They on’y put on the
+charge-sheet ‘words to that effect.’ Spoiled the ’ole ’fect.”
+
+“’Op! ’Op! ’Op! What about ’Op?” thundered Pyecroft.
+
+“’Op? Oh, shame thing. Words t’ that ’fect. Door shut. Nushin’ more
+transphired till ’Op comes out—nose exshtreme angle plungin’ fire or—or
+words ‘that effect. Proud’s parrot. ‘Oh, you prou’ old parrot,’ I
+says.”
+
+Mr. Glass seemed to slumber again.
+
+“Lord! How a little moisture disintegrates, don’t it? When we had
+ship’s theatricals off Vigo, Glass ’ere played Dick Deadeye to the
+moral, though of course the lower deck wasn’t pleased to see a
+leatherneck interpretin’ a strictly maritime part, as you might say.
+It’s only his repartees, which ’e can’t contain, that conquers him.
+Shall I resume my narrative?”
+
+Another drink was brought on this hint, and Mr. Pyecroft resumed.
+
+“The essence o’ strategy bein’ forethought, the essence o’ tattics is
+surprise. Per’aps you didn’t know that? My forethought ’avin’ secured
+the initial advantage in attack, it remained for the old man to ladle
+out the surprise-packets. ’Eavens! What surprises! That night he dines
+with the wardroom, bein’ of the kind—I’ve told you as we were a ’appy
+ship?—that likes it, and the wardroom liked it too. This ain’t common
+in the service. They had up the new Madeira—awful undisciplined stuff
+which gives you a cordite mouth next morning. They told the mess-men to
+navigate towards the extreme an’ remote ’orizon, an’ they abrogated the
+sentry about fifteen paces out of earshot. Then they had in the Gunner,
+the Bo’sun, an’ the Carpenter, an’ stood them large round drinks. It
+all come out later—wardroom joints bein’ lower-deck hash, as the sayin’
+is—that our Number One stuck to it that ’e couldn’t trust the ship for
+the job. The old man swore ’e could, ’avin’ commanded ’er over two
+years. He was right. There wasn’t a ship, I don’t care in what fleet,
+could come near the _Archimandrites_ when we give our mind to a thing.
+We held the cruiser big-gun records, the sailing-cutter (fancy-rig)
+championship, an’ the challenge-cup row round the fleet. We ’ad the
+best nigger-minstrels, the best football an’ cricket teams, an’ the
+best squee-jee band of anything that ever pushed in front of a brace o’
+screws. An’ _yet_ our Number One mistrusted us! ’E said we’d be a
+floatin’ hell in a week, an’ it ’ud take the rest o’ the commission to
+stop our way. They was arguin’ it in the wardroom when the bridge
+reports a light three points off the port bow. We overtakes her,
+switches on our search-light, an’ she discloses herself as a collier o’
+no mean reputation, makin’ about seven knots on ’er lawful occasions—to
+the Cape most like.
+
+“Then the owner—so we ’eard in good time—broke the boom, springin’ all
+mines together at close interval.
+
+“‘Look ’ere, my jokers,’ ’e says (I’m givin’ the grist of ’is
+arguments, remember), ‘Number One says we can’t enlighten this
+cutter-cuddlin’ Gaulish lootenant on the manners an’ customs o’ the
+Navy without makin’ the ship a market-garden. There’s a lot in that,’
+’e says, ‘specially if we kept it up lavish, till we reached Ascension.
+But,’ ’e says, ‘the appearance o’ this strange sail has put a totally
+new aspect on the game. We can run to just one day’s amusement for our
+friend, or else what’s the good o’ discipline? An’ then we can turn ’im
+over to our presumably short-’anded fellow-subject in the small-coal
+line out yonder. He’ll be pleased,’ says the old man, ‘an’ so will
+Antonio. M’rover,’ he says to Number One, ‘I’ll lay you a dozen o’
+liquorice an’ ink’—it must ha’ been that new tawny port—‘that I’ve got
+a ship I can trust—for one day,’ ’e says. ‘Wherefore,’ he says, ‘will
+you have the extreme goodness to reduce speed as requisite for keepin’
+a proper distance behind this providential tramp till further orders?’
+Now, that’s what I call tattics.
+
+“The other manœuvres developed next day, strictly in accordance with
+the plans as laid down in the wardroom, where they sat long an’ steady.
+’Op whispers to me that Antonio was a Number One spy when ’e was in
+commission, and a French lootenant when ’e was paid off, so I navigated
+at three ’undred and ninety six revolutions to the galley, never ’avin’
+kicked a lootenant up to date. I may as well say that I did not
+manœuvre against ’im as a Frenchman, because I like Frenchmen, but
+stric’ly on ’is rank an’ ratin’ in ’is own navy. I inquired after ’is
+health from Retallick.
+
+“‘Don’t ask me,’ ’e says, sneerin’ be’ind his silver spectacles. ‘’E’s
+promoted to be captain’s second supernumerary servant, to be dressed
+and addressed as such. If ’e does ’is dooties same as he skinned the
+spuds, _I_ ain’t for changin’ with the old man.’
+
+“In the balmy dawnin’ it was given out, all among the ’olystones, by
+our sub-lootenant, who was a three-way-discharge devil, that all orders
+after eight bells was to be executed in inverse ration to the cube o’
+the velocity. ‘The reg’lar routine,’ he says, ‘was arrogated for
+reasons o’ state an’ policy, an’ any flat-foot who presumed to exhibit
+surprise, annoyance, or amusement, would be slightly but firmly
+reproached.’ Then the Gunner mops up a heathenish large detail for some
+hanky-panky in the magazines, an’ led ’em off along with our Gunnery
+Jack, which is to say, our Gunnery Lootenant.
+
+“That put us on the _viva voce_—particularly when we understood how the
+owner was navigatin’ abroad in his sword-belt trustin’ us like
+brothers. We shifts into the dress o’ the day, an’ we musters _an’_ we
+prays _ong reggle_, an’ we carries on anticipatory to bafflin’ Antonio.
+
+“Then our Sergeant of Marines come to me wringin’ his ’ands an’
+weepin’. ’E’d been talkin’ to the sub-lootenant, an’ it looked like as
+if his upper-works were collapsin’.
+
+“‘I want a guarantee,’ ’e says, wringin’ ’is ’ands like this. ‘_I_
+’aven’t ’ad sunstroke slave-dhowin’ in Tajurrah Bay, an’ been compelled
+to live on quinine an’ chlorodyne ever since. _I_ don’t get the horrors
+off glasses o’ brown sherry.’
+
+“‘What ’ave you got now?’ I says.
+
+“‘_I_ ain’t an officer,’ ’e says. ‘_My_ sword won’t be handed back to
+me at the end o’ the court-martial on account o’ my little weaknesses,
+an’ no stain on my character. I’m only a pore beggar of a Red Marine
+with eighteen years’ service, an’ why for,’ says he, wringin’ ’is hands
+like this all the time, ‘must I chuck away my pension, sub-lootenant or
+no sub-lootenant? Look at ’em,’ he says, ‘only look at ’em. Marines
+fallin’ in for small-arm drill!’
+
+“The leathernecks was layin’ aft at the double, an’ a more insanitary
+set of accidents I never wish to behold. Most of ’em was in their
+shirts. They had their trousers on, of course—rolled up nearly to the
+knee, but what I mean is belts over shirts. Three or four ’ad _our_
+caps, an’ them that had drawn helmets wore their chin-straps like
+Portugee earrings. Oh, yes; an’ three of ’em ’ad only one boot! I knew
+what our bafflin’ tattics was goin’ to be, but even I was mildly
+surprised when this gay fantasia of Brazee drummers halted under the
+poop, because of an ’ammick in charge of our Navigator, an’ a small but
+’ighly efficient landin’-party.
+
+“‘’Ard astern both screws!’ says the Navigator. ‘Room for the captain’s
+’ammick!’ The captain’s servant—Cockburn ’is name was—had one end, an’
+our newly promoted Antonio, in a blue slop rig, ’ad the other. They
+slung it from the muzzle of the port poop quick-firer thort-ships to a
+stanchion. Then the old man flickered up, smokin’ a cigarette, an’
+brought ’is stern to an anchor slow an’ oriental.
+
+“‘What a blessin’ it is, Mr. Ducane,’ ’e says to our sub-lootenant, ‘to
+be out o’ sight o’ the ’ole pack o’ blighted admirals! What’s an
+admiral after all?’ ’e says. ‘Why, ’e’s only a post-captain with the
+pip, Mr. Ducane. The drill will now proceed. What O! Antonio,
+_descendez_ an’ get me a split.’
+
+“When Antonio came back with the whisky-an’-soda, he was told off to
+swing the ’ammick in slow time, an’ that massacritin’ small-arm party
+went on with their oratorio. The Sergeant had been kindly excused from
+participating an’ he was jumpin’ round on the poop-ladder, stretchin’
+’is leather neck to see the disgustin’ exhibition an’ cluckin’ like a
+ash-hoist. A lot of us went on the fore an’ aft bridge an’ watched ’em
+like ‘Listen to the Band in the Park.’ All these evolutions, I may as
+well tell you, are highly unusual in the Navy. After ten minutes o’
+muckin’ about, Glass ’ere—pity ’e’s so drunk!—says that ’e’d had enough
+exercise for ’is simple needs an’ he wants to go ’ome. Mr. Ducane
+catches him a sanakatowzer of a smite over the ’ead with the flat of
+his sword. Down comes Glass’s rifle with language to correspond, and he
+fiddles with the bolt. Up jumps Maclean—’oo was a Gosport
+’ighlander—an’ lands on Glass’s neck, thus bringin’ him to the deck,
+fully extended.
+
+“The old man makes a great show o’ wakin’ up from sweet slumbers.
+‘Mistah Ducane,’ he says, ‘what is this painful interregnum?’ or words
+to that effect. Ducane takes one step to the front, an’ salutes: ‘Only
+’nother case of attempted assassination, Sir,’ he says.
+
+“‘Is that all?’ says the old man, while Maclean sits on Glass’s collar
+button. ‘Take him away,’ ’e says, ‘he knows the penalty.’”
+
+“Ah! I suppose that is the ‘invincible _morgue_ Britannic in the
+presence of brutally provoked mutiny,’” I muttered, as I turned over
+the pages of M. de C.
+
+“So, Glass, ’e was led off kickin’ an’ squealin’, an’ hove down the
+ladder into ’is Sergeant’s volupshus arms. ’E run Glass forward, an’
+was all for puttin’ ’im in irons as a maniac.
+
+“‘You refill your waterjacket and cool off!’ says Glass, sittin’ down
+rather winded. ‘The trouble with you is you haven’t any imagination.’
+
+“‘Haven’t I? I’ve got the remnants of a little poor authority though,’
+’e says, lookin’ pretty vicious.
+
+“‘You ’ave?’ says Glass. ‘Then for pity’s sake ’ave some proper feelin’
+too. I’m goin’ to be shot this evenin’. You’ll take charge o’ the
+firin’-party.’
+
+“Some’ow or other, that made the Sergeant froth at the mouth. ’E ’ad no
+more play to his intellects than a spit-kid. ’E just took everything as
+it come. Well, that was about all, I think…. Unless you’d care to have
+me resume my narrative.”
+
+We resumed on the old terms, but with rather less hot water. The marine
+on the floor breathed evenly, and Mr. Pyecroft nodded.
+
+“I may have omitted to inform you that our Number One took a general
+row round the situation while the small-arm party was at work, an’ o’
+course he supplied the outlines; but the details we coloured in by
+ourselves. These were our tattics to baffle Antonio. It occurs to the
+Carpenter to ’ave the steam-cutter down for repairs. ’E gets ’is
+cheero-party together, an’ down she comes. You’ve never seen a
+steam-cutter let down on the deck, ’ave you? It’s not usual, an’ she
+takes a lot o’ humourin’. Thus we ’ave the starboard side completely
+blocked an’ the general traffic tricklin’ over’ead along the
+fore-an’-aft bridge. Then Chips gets into her an’ begins balin’ out a
+mess o’ small reckonin’s on the deck. Simultaneous there come up three
+o’ those dirty engine-room objects which we call ‘tiffies,’ an’ a
+stoker or two with orders to repair her steamin’-gadgets. _They_ get
+into her an’ bale out another young Christmas-treeful of small
+reckonin’s—brass mostly. Simultaneous it hits the Pusser that ’e’d
+better serve out mess pork for the poor matlow. These things half
+shifted Retallick, our chief cook, off ’is bed-plate. Yes, you might
+say they broke ’im wide open. ’E wasn’t at all used to ’em.
+
+“Number One tells off five or six prime, able-bodied seamen-gunners to
+the pork barrels. You never see pork fisted out of its receptacle, ’ave
+you? Simultaneous, it hits the Gunner that now’s the day an’ now’s the
+hour for a non-continuous class in Maxim instruction. So they all give
+way together, and the general effect was _non plus ultra_. There was
+the cutter’s innards spread out like a Fratton pawnbroker’s shop; there
+was the ‘tiffies’ hammerin’ in the stern of ’er, an’ _they_ ain’t
+antiseptic; there was the Maxim class in light skirmishin’ order among
+the pork, an’ forrard the blacksmith had ’is forge in full blast,
+makin’ ’orse-shoes, I suppose. Well, that accounts for the starboard
+side. The on’y warrant officer ’oo hadn’t a look in so far was the
+Bosun. So ’e stated, all out of ’is own ’ead, that Chips’s reserve o’
+wood an’ timber, which Chips ’ad stole at our last refit, needed
+restowin’. It was on the port booms—a young an’ healthy forest of it,
+for Charley Peace wasn’t to be named ’longside o’ Chips for burglary.
+
+“‘All right,’ says our Number One. ‘You can ’ave the whole port watch
+if you like. Hell’s Hell,’ ’e says, ’an when there study to improve.’
+
+“Jarvis was our Bosun’s name. He hunted up the ’ole of the port watch
+by hand, as you might say, callin’ ’em by name loud an’ lovin’, which
+is not precisely Navy makee-pigeon. They ‘ad that timber-loft off the
+booms, an’ they dragged it up and down like so many sweatin’ little
+beavers. But Jarvis was jealous o’ Chips an’ went round the starboard
+side to envy at him.
+
+“’Tain’t enough,’ ’e says, when he had climbed back. ‘Chips ’as got his
+bazaar lookin’ like a coal-hulk in a cyclone. We must adop’ more
+drastic measures.’ Off ’e goes to Number One and communicates with ’im.
+Number One got the old man’s leave, on account of our goin’ so slow (we
+were keepin’ be’ind the tramp), to fit the ship with a full set of
+patent supernumerary sails. Four trysails—yes, you might call ’em
+trysails—was our Admiralty allowance in the un’eard of event of a
+cruiser breakin’ down, but we had our awnin’s as well. They was all
+extricated from the various flats an’ ’oles where they was stored, an’
+at the end o’ two hours’ hard work Number One ’e made out eleven sails
+o’ different sorts and sizes. I don’t know what exact nature of sail
+you’d call ’em—pyjama-stun’sles with a touch of Sarah’s shimmy,
+per’aps—but the riggin’ of ’em an’ all the supernumerary details, as
+you might say, bein’ carried on through an’ over an’ between the cutter
+an’ the forge an’ the pork an’ cleanin’ guns, an’ the Maxim class an’
+the Bosun’s calaboose _and_ the paintwork, was sublime. There’s no
+other word for it. Sub-lime!
+
+“The old man keeps swimmin’ up an’ down through it all with the
+faithful Antonio at ’is side, fetchin’ him numerous splits. ’E had
+eight that mornin’, an’ when Antonio was detached to get ’is spy-glass,
+or his gloves, or his lily-white ’andkerchief, the old man would waste
+’em down a ventilator. Antonio must ha’ learned a lot about our Navy
+thirst.”
+
+“He did.”
+
+“Ah! Would you kindly mind turnin’ to the precise page indicated an’
+givin’ me a _résumé_ of ’is tattics?” said Mr. Pyecroft, drinking
+deeply. “I’d like to know ’ow it looked from ’is side o’ the deck.”
+
+“How will this do?” I said. “‘_Once clear of the land, like Voltaire’s
+Habakkuk_———”’
+
+“One o’ their new commerce-destroyers, I suppose,” Mr. Pyecroft
+interjected.
+
+“‘—_each man seemed veritably capable of all—to do according to his
+will. The boats, dismantled and forlorn, are lowered upon the planking.
+One cries “Aid me!” flourishing at the same time the weapons of his
+business. A dozen launch themselves upon him in the orgasm of zeal
+misdirected. He beats them off with the howlings of dogs. He has lost a
+hammer. This ferocious outcry signifies that only. Eight men seek the
+utensil, colliding on the way with some many others which, seated in
+the stern of the boat, tear up and scatter upon the planking the
+ironwork which impedes their brutal efforts. Elsewhere, one detaches
+from on high wood, canvas, iron bolts, coal-dust—what do I know_?’”
+
+“That’s where ’e’s comin’ the bloomin’ _onjenew_. ’E knows a lot,
+reely.”
+
+“‘_They descend thundering upon the planking, and the spectacle cannot
+reproduce itself. In my capacity of valet to the captain, whom I have
+well and beautifully plied with drink since the rising of the sun
+(behold me also, Ganymede!) I pass throughout observing, it may be not
+a little. They ask orders. There is none to give them. One sits upon
+the edge of the vessel and chants interminably the lugubrious “Roule
+Britannia”—to endure how lomg_?’”
+
+“That was me! On’y ’twas ‘A Life on the Ocean Wave’—which I hate more
+than any stinkin’ tune I know, havin’ dragged too many nasty little
+guns to it. Yes, Number One told me off to that for ten minutes; an’ I
+ain’t musical, you might say.”
+
+“_‘Then come marines, half-dressed, seeking vainly through this
+“tohu-bohu_”’ (that’s one of his names for the _Archimandrite_, Mr.
+Pyecroft), ‘_for a place whence they shall not be dislodged. The
+captain, heavy with drink, rolls himself from his hammock. He would
+have his people fire the Maxims. They demand which Maxim. That to him
+is equal. The breech-lock indispensable is not there. They demand it of
+one who opens a barrel of pork, for this Navy feeds at all hours. He
+refers them to the cook, yesterday my master_—’”
+
+“Yes, an’ Retallick nearly had a fit. What a truthful an’ observin’
+little Antonio we ’ave!”
+
+“‘_It is discovered in the hands of a boy who says, and they do not
+rebuke him, that he has found it by hazard_.’ I’m afraid I haven’t
+translated quite correctly, Mr. Pyecroft, but I’ve done my best.”
+
+“Why, it’s beautiful—you ought to be a Frenchman—you ought. You don’t
+want anything o’ _me_. You’ve got it all there.”
+
+“Yes, but I like your side of it. For instance. Here’s a little thing I
+can’t quite see the end of. Listen! ‘_Of the domain which Britannia
+rules by sufferance, my gross captain, knew nothing, and his Navigator,
+if possible, less. From the bestial recriminations and the
+indeterminate chaos of the grand deck, I ascended—always with a
+whisky-and-soda in my hands—to a scene truly grotesque. Behold my
+captain in plain sea, at issue with his Navigator! A crisis of nerves
+due to the enormous quantity of alcohol which he had swallowed up to
+then, has filled for him the ocean with dangers, imaginary and
+fantastic. Incapable of judgment, menaced by the phantasms of his brain
+inflamed, he envisages islands perhaps of the Hesperides beneath his
+keel—vigias innumerable.’_ I don’t know what a vigia is, Mr. Pyecroft.
+_‘He creates shoals sad and far-reaching of the mid-Atlantic!’_ What
+was that, now?”
+
+“Oh, I see! That come after dinner, when our Navigator threw ’is cap
+down an’ danced on it. Danby was quartermaster. They ’ad a tea-party on
+the bridge. It was the old man’s contribution. Does he say anything
+about the leadsmen?”
+
+“Is this it? _‘Overborne by his superior’s causeless suspicion, the
+Navigator took off the badges of his rank and cast them at the feet of
+my captain and sobbed. A disgusting and maudlin reconciliation
+followed. The argument renewed itself, each grasping the wheel,
+crapulous’_ (that means drunk, I think, Mr. Pyecroft), _‘shouting. It
+appeared that my captain would chenaler’_ (I don’t know what that
+means, Mr. Pyecroft) _‘to the Cape. At the end, he placed a sailor with
+the sound’_ (that’s the lead, I think) _‘in his hand, garnished with
+suet.’_ Was it garnished with suet?”
+
+“He put two leadsmen in the chains, o’ course! He didn’t know that
+there mightn’t be shoals there, ’e said. Morgan went an’ armed his
+lead, to enter into the spirit o’ the thing. They ’eaved it for twenty
+minutes, but there wasn’t any suet—only tallow, o’ course.”
+
+“‘_Garnished with suet at two thousand metres of profundity. Decidedly
+the Britannic Navy is well guarded_.’ Well, that’s all right, Mr.
+Pyecroft. Would you mind telling me anything else of interest that
+happened?”
+
+“There was a good deal, one way an’ another. I’d like to know what this
+Antonio thought of our sails.”
+
+“He merely says that ‘_the engines having broken down, an officer
+extemporised a mournful and useless parody of sails_.’ Oh, yes! he says
+that some of them looked like ‘_bonnets in a needlecase_,’ I think.”
+
+“Bonnets in a needlecase! They were stun’sles. That shows the beggar’s
+no sailor. That trick was really the one thing we did. Pho! I thought
+he was a sailorman, an’ ’e hasn’t sense enough to see what
+extemporisin’ eleven good an’ drawin’ sails out o’ four trys’les an’ a
+few awnin’s means. ’E must have been drunk!”
+
+“Never mind, Mr. Pyecroft. I want to hear about your target-practice,
+and the execution.”
+
+“Oh! We had a special target-practice that afternoon all for Antonio.
+As I told my crew—me bein’ captain of the port-bow quick-firer, though
+I’m a torpedo man now—it just showed how you can work your gun under
+any discomforts. A shell—twenty six-inch shells—burstin’ inboard
+couldn’t ’ave begun to make the varicose collection o’ tit-bits which
+we had spilled on our deck. It was a lather—a rich, creamy lather!
+
+“We took it very easy—that gun-practice. We did it in a complimentary
+‘Jenny-’ave-another-cup-o’ tea’ style, an’ the crew was strictly
+ordered not to rupture ’emselves with unnecessary exertion. This isn’t
+our custom in the Navy when we’re _in puris naturalibus_, as you might
+say. But we wasn’t so then. We was impromptu. An’ Antonio was busy
+fetchin’ splits for the old man, and the old man was wastin’ ’em down
+the ventilators. There must ’ave been four inches in the bilges, I
+should think—wardroom whisky-an’-soda.
+
+“Then I thought I might as well bear a hand as look pretty. So I let my
+_bundoop_ go at fifteen ’undred—sightin’ very particular. There was a
+sort of ’appy little belch like—no more, I give you my word—an’ the
+shell trundled out maybe fifty feet an’ dropped into the deep Atlantic.
+
+“‘Government powder, Sir!’ sings out our Gunnery Jack to the bridge,
+laughin’ horrid sarcastic; an’ then, of course, we all laughs, which we
+are not encouraged to do _in puris naturalibus_. Then, of course, I saw
+what our Gunnery Jack ’ad been after with his subcutaneous details in
+the magazines all the mornin’ watch. He had redooced the charges to a
+minimum, as you might say. But it made me feel a trifle faint an’
+sickish notwithstanding this spit-in-the-eye business. Every time such
+transpired, our Gunnery Lootenant would say somethin’ sarcastic about
+Government stores, an’ the old man fair howled. ’Op was on the bridge
+with ’im, an’ ’e told me—’cause ’e’s a free-knowledgeist an’ reads
+character—that Antonio’s face was sweatin’ with pure joy. ’Op wanted to
+kick him. Does Antonio say anything about that?”
+
+“Not about the kicking, but he is great on the gun-practice, Mr.
+Pyecroft. He has put all the results into a sort of appendix—a table of
+shots. He says that the figures will speak more eloquently than words.”
+
+“What? Nothin’ about the way the crews flinched an’ hopped? Nothin’
+about the little shells rumblin’ out o’ the guns so casual?”
+
+“There are a few pages of notes, but they only bear out what you say.
+He says that these things always happen as soon as one of our ships is
+out of sight of land. Oh, yes! I’ve forgotten. He says, _‘From the
+conversation of my captain with his inferiors I gathered that no small
+proportion of the expense of these nominally efficient cartridges finds
+itself in his pockets. So much, indeed, was signified by an officer on
+the deck below, who cried in a high voice: “I hope, Sir, you are making
+something out of it. It is rather monotonous.” This insult, so
+flagrant, albeit well-merited, was received with a smile of drunken
+bonhommy’_—that’s cheerfulness, Mr. Pyecroft. Your glass is empty.”
+
+“Resumin’ afresh,” said Mr. Pyecroft, after a well-watered interval, “I
+may as well say that the target-practice occupied us two hours, and
+then we had to dig out after the tramp. Then we half an’ three-quarters
+cleaned up the decks an’ mucked about as requisite, haulin’ down the
+patent awnin’ stun’sles which Number One ’ad made. The old man was a
+shade doubtful of his course, ’cause I ’eard him say to Number One,
+‘You were right. A week o’ this would turn the ship into a Hayti
+bean-feast. But,’ he says pathetic, ‘haven’t they backed the band
+noble?’
+
+“‘Oh! it’s a picnic for them,’ says Number One.
+
+“‘But when do we get rid o’ this whisky-peddlin’ blighter o’ yours,
+Sir?’
+
+“‘That’s a cheerful way to speak of a Viscount,’ says the old man. “E’s
+the bluest blood o’ France when he’s at home,’
+
+“‘Which is the precise landfall I wish ’im to make,’ says Number One.’
+It’ll take all ’ands and the Captain of the Head to clean up after
+’im.’
+
+“‘They won’t grudge it,’ says the old man. ‘Just as soon as it’s dusk
+we’ll overhaul our tramp friend an’ waft him over.’
+
+“Then a sno—midshipman—Moorshed was is name—come up an’ says somethin’
+in a low voice. It fetches the old man.
+
+“‘You’ll oblige me,’ ’e says, ‘by takin’ the wardroom poultry for
+_that_. I’ve ear-marked every fowl we’ve shipped at Madeira, so there
+can’t be any possible mistake. M’rover,’ ’e says, ‘tell ’em if they
+spill one drop of blood on the deck,’ he says, ‘they’ll not be
+extenuated, but hung.’
+
+“Mr. Moorshed goes forward, lookin’ unusual ’appy, even for him. The
+Marines was enjoyin’ a committee-meetin’ in their own flat.
+
+“After that, it fell dark, with just a little streaky, oily light on
+the sea—an’ anythin’ more chronic than the _Archimandrite_ I’d trouble
+you to behold. She looked like a fancy bazaar and a auction-room—yes,
+she almost looked like a passenger-steamer. We’d picked up our tramp,
+an’ was about four mile be’ind ’er. I noticed the wardroom as a class,
+you might say, was manoeuvrin’ _en masse_, an’ then come the order to
+cockbill the yards. We hadn’t any yards except a couple o’ signallin’
+sticks, but we cock-billed ’em. I hadn’t seen that sight, not since
+thirteen years in the West Indies, when a post-captain died o’ yellow
+jack. It means a sign o’ mourning the yards bein’ canted opposite ways,
+to look drunk an’ disorderly. They do.
+
+“‘An’ what might our last giddy-go-round signify?’ I asks of ’Op.
+
+“‘Good ’Evins!’ ’e says, ‘Are you in the habit o’ permittin’
+leathernecks to assassinate lootenants every morning at drill without
+immejitly ’avin’ ’em shot on the foc’sle in the horrid crawly-crawly
+twilight?’”
+
+“‘Yes,’ I murmured over my dear book, ‘_the infinitely lugubrious
+crepuscule. A spectacle of barbarity unparalleled—hideous—cold-blooded,
+and yet touched with appalling grandeur_.’”
+
+“Ho! Was that the way Antonio looked at it? That shows he ’ad feelin’s.
+To resoom. Without anyone givin’ us orders to that effect, we began to
+creep about an’ whisper. Things got stiller and stiller, till they was
+as still as—mushrooms! Then the bugler let off the ‘Dead March’ from
+the upper bridge. He done it to cover the remarks of a cock-bird bein’
+killed forrard, but it came out paralysin’ in its _tout ensemble_. You
+never heard the ‘Dead March’ on a bugle? Then the pipes went twitterin’
+for both watches to attend public execution, an’ we came up like so
+many ghosts, the ’ole ship’s company. Why, Mucky ’Arcourt, one o’ our
+boys, was that took in he give tongue like a beagle-pup, an’ was
+properly kicked down the ladder for so doin’. Well, there we
+lay—engines stopped, rollin’ to the swell, all dark, yards cock-billed,
+an’ that merry tune yowlin’ from the upper bridge. We fell in on the
+foc’sle, leavin’ a large open space by the capstan, where our
+sail-maker was sittin’ sewin’ broken firebars into the foot of an old
+’ammick. ’E looked like a corpse, an’ Mucky had another fit o’
+hysterics, an’ you could ’ear us breathin’ ’ard. It beat anythin’ in
+the theatrical line that even us _Archimandrites_ had done—an’ we was
+the ship you could trust. Then come the doctor an’ lit a red lamp which
+he used for his photographic muckin’s, an’ chocked it on the capstan.
+That was finally gashly!
+
+“Then come twelve Marines guardin’ Glass ’ere. You wouldn’t think to
+see ’im what a gratooitous an’ aboundin’ terror he was that evenin’. ’E
+was in a white shirt ’e’d stole from Cockburn, an’ his regulation
+trousers, barefooted. ’E’d pipe-clayed ’is ’ands an’ face an’ feet an’
+as much of his chest as the openin’ of his shirt showed. ’E marched
+under escort with a firm an’ undeviatin’ step to the capstan, an’ came
+to attention. The old man reinforced by an extra strong split—his
+seventeenth, an’ ’e didn’t throw _that_ down the ventilator—come up on
+the bridge an’ stood like a image. ’Op, ’oo was with ’im, says that ’e
+heard Antonio’s teeth singin’, not chatterin’—singin’ like funnel-stays
+in a typhoon. Yes, a moanin’ æolian harp, ’Op said.
+
+“‘When you are ready, Sir, drop your ’andkerchief,’ Number One
+whispers.
+
+“‘Good Lord!’ says the old man, with a jump. ‘Eh! What? What a sight!
+What a sight!’ an’ he stood drinkin’ it in, I suppose, for quite two
+minutes.
+
+“Glass never says a word. ’E shoved aside an ’andkerchief which the
+sub-lootenant proffered ’im to bind ’is eyes with—quiet an’ collected;
+an’ if we ’adn’t been feelin’ so very much as we did feel, his gestures
+would ’ave brought down the ’ouse.”
+
+“I can’t open my eyes, or I’ll be sick,” said the Marine with appalling
+clearness. “I’m pretty far gone—I know it—but there wasn’t anyone could
+’ave beaten Edwardo Glass, R.M.L.I., that time. Why, I scared myself
+nearly into the ’orrors. Go on, Pye. Glass is in support—as ever.”
+
+“Then the old man drops ’is ’andkerchief, an’ the firin’-party fires
+like one man. Glass drops forward, twitchin’ an’ ’eavin’ horrid
+natural, into the shotted ’ammick all spread out before him, and the
+firin’ party closes in to guard the remains of the deceased while Sails
+is stitchin’ it up. An’ when they lifted that ’ammick it was one
+wringin’ mess of blood! They on’y expended one wardroom cock-bird, too.
+Did you know poultry bled that extravagant? _I_ never did.
+
+“The old man—so ’Op told me—stayed on the bridge, brought up on a dead
+centre. Number One was similarly, though lesser, impressed, but o’
+course ’is duty was to think of ’is fine white decks an’ the blood.
+’Arf a mo’, Sir,’ he says, when the old man was for leavin’. ‘We have
+to wait for the burial, which I am informed takes place immejit.’
+
+“‘It’s beyond me,’ says the owner. ‘There was general instructions for
+an execution, but I never knew I had such a dependable push of
+mountebanks aboard,’ he says. ‘I’m all cold up my back, still.’
+
+“The Marines carried the corpse below. Then the bugle give us some more
+‘Dead March,’ Then we ’eard a splash from a bow six-pounder port, an’
+the bugle struck up a cheerful tune. The whole lower deck was
+complimentin’ Glass, ’oo took it very meek. ’E _is_ a good actor, for
+all ’e’s a leatherneck.
+
+“‘Now,’ said the old man, ‘we must turn over Antonio. He’s in what I
+have ’eard called one perspirin’ funk.’
+
+“Of course, I’m tellin’ it slow, but it all ’appened much quicker. We
+run down our trampo—without o’ course informin’ Antonio of ’is ’appy
+destiny—an’ inquired of ’er if she had any use for a free and gratis
+stowaway. Oh, yes? she said she’d be highly grateful, but she seemed a
+shade puzzled at our generosity, as you might put it, an’ we lay by
+till she lowered a boat. Then Antonio—who was un’appy, distinctly
+un’appy—was politely requested to navigate elsewhere, which I don’t
+think he looked for. ’Op was deputed to convey the information, an’ ’Op
+got in one sixteen-inch kick which ’oisted ’im all up the ladder. ’Op
+ain’t really vindictive, an’ ’e’s fond of the French, especially the
+women, but his chances o’ kicking lootenants was like the
+cartridge—reduced to a minimum.
+
+“The boat ’adn’t more than shoved off before a change, as you might
+say, came o’er the spirit of our dream. The old man says, like
+Elphinstone an’ Bruce in the Portsmouth election when I was a boy:
+‘Gentlemen,’ he says, ‘for gentlemen you have shown yourselves to
+be—from the bottom of my heart I thank you. The status an’ position of
+our late lamented shipmate made it obligato,’ ’e says, ‘to take certain
+steps not strictly included in the regulations. An’ nobly,’ says ’e,
+‘have you assisted me. Now,’ ’e says, ‘you hold the false and felonious
+reputation of bein’ the smartest ship in the Service. Pigsties,’ ’e
+says, ‘is plane trigonometry alongside our present disgustin’ state.
+Efface the effects of this indecent orgy,’ he says. ‘Jump, you
+lop-eared, flat-footed, butter-backed Amalekites! Dig out, you
+briny-eyed beggars!’”
+
+“Do captains talk like that in the Navy, Mr. Pyecroft?” I asked.
+
+“I’ve told you once I only give the grist of his arguments. The Bosun’s
+mate translates it to the lower deck, as you may put it, and the lower
+deck springs smartly to attention. It took us half the night ’fore we
+got ’er anyway ship-shape; but by sunrise she was beautiful as ever,
+and we resoomed. I’ve thought it over a lot since; yes, an’ I’ve
+thought a lot of Antonio trimmin’ coal in that tramp’s bunkers. ’E must
+’ave been highly surprised. Wasn’t he?”
+
+“He was, Mr. Pyecroft,” I responded. “But now we’re talking of it,
+weren’t you all a little surprised?”
+
+“It come as a pleasant relief to the regular routine,” said Mr.
+Pyecroft. “We appreciated it as an easy way o’ workin’ for your
+country. But—the old man was right—a week o’ similar manœuvres would
+’ave knocked our moral double-bottoms bung out. Now, couldn’t you
+oblige with Antonio’s account of Glass’s execution?”
+
+I obliged for nearly ten minutes. It was at best but a feeble rendering
+of M. de C.’s magnificent prose, through which the soul of the poet,
+the eye of the mariner, and the heart of the patriot bore magnificent
+accord. His account of his descent from the side of the “_infamous
+vessel consecrated to blood_” in the “_vast and gathering dusk of the
+trembling ocean_” could only be matched by his description of the
+dishonoured hammock sinking unnoticed through the depths, while, above,
+the bugler played music “_of an indefinable brutality_”
+
+“By the way, what did the bugler play after Glass’s funeral?” I asked.
+
+“Him? Oh! ’e played ‘The Strict Q.T.’ It’s a very old song. We ’ad it
+in Fratton nearly fifteen years back,” said Mr. Pyecroft sleepily.
+
+I stirred the sugar dregs in my glass. Suddenly entered armed men, wet
+and discourteous, Tom Wessels smiling nervously in the background.
+
+“Where is that—minutely particularised person—Glass?” said the sergeant
+of the picket.
+
+“’Ere!” The marine rose to the strictest of attentions. “An’ it’s no
+good smelling of my breath, because I’m strictly an’ ruinously sober.”
+
+“Oh! An’ what may you have been doin’ with yourself?”
+
+“Listenin’ to tracts. You can look! I’ve had the evenin’ of my little
+life. Lead on to the _Cornucopia’s_ midmost dunjing cell. There’s a
+crowd of brass-’atted blighters there which will say I’ve been absent
+without leaf. Never mind. I forgive them before’and. _The_ evenin’ of
+my life, an’ please don’t forget it.” Then in a tone of most
+ingratiating apology to me: “I soaked it all in be’ind my shut eyes.
+‘I’m”—he jerked a contemptuous thumb towards Mr. Pyecroft—“’e’s a
+flatfoot, a indigo-blue matlow. ’E never saw the fun from first to
+last. A mournful beggar—most depressin’.” Private Glass departed,
+leaning heavily on the escort’s arm.
+
+Mr. Pyecroft wrinkled his brows in thought—the profound and
+far-reaching meditation that follows five glasses of hot
+whisky-and-water.
+
+“Well, I don’t see anything comical—greatly—except here an’ there.
+Specially about those redooced charges in the guns. Do _you_ see
+anything funny in it?”
+
+There was that in his eye which warned me the night was too wet for
+argument.
+
+“No, Mr. Pyecroft, I don’t,” I replied. “It was a beautiful tale, and I
+thank you very much.”
+
+
+
+
+A SAHIBS’ WAR
+
+
+
+
+THE RUNNERS
+
+
+                                   _News!_
+  What is the word that they tell now—now—now!
+  The little drums beating in the bazaars?
+      _They_ beat (among the buyers and sellers)
+          _“Nimrud—ah Nimrud!
+          God sends a gnat against Nimrud_!”
+      Watchers, O Watchers a thousand!
+
+                                   _News!_
+  At the edge of the crops—now—now—where the well-wheels are halted,
+  One prepares to loose the bullocks and one scrapes his hoe,
+      _They_ beat (among the sowers and the reapers)
+          _“Nimrud—ah Nimrud!
+          God prepares an ill day for Nimrud_!”
+      Watchers, O Watchers ten thousand.
+
+                                   _News!_
+  By the fires of the camps—now—now—where the travellers meet
+  Where the camels come in and the horses: their men conferring,
+      _They_ beat (among the packmen and the drivers)
+          _“Nimrud—ah Nimrud!
+          Thus it befell last noon to Nimrud_!”
+      Watchers, O Watchers an hundred thousand!
+
+                                   _News!_
+  Under the shadow of the border-peels—now—now—now!
+  In the rocks of the passes where the expectant shoe their horses,
+      _They_ beat (among the rifles and the riders)
+          _“Nimrud—ah Nimrud!
+          Shall we go up against Nimrud_?”
+      Watchers, O Watchers a thousand thousand?
+
+                                   _News!_
+  Bring out the heaps of grain—open the account-books again!
+  Drive forward the well-bullocks against the taxable harvest!
+  Eat and lie under the trees—pitch the police-guarded fair-grounds,
+      O dancers!
+  Hide away the rifles and let down the ladders from the watch-towers!
+      _They_ beat (among all the peoples)
+          _“Now—now—now!
+          God has reserved the Sword for Nimrud!
+          God has given Victory to Nimrud!”
+          Let us abide under Nimrud_!”
+      O Well-disposed and Heedful, an hundred thousand thousand!
+
+
+
+
+A SAHIBS’ WAR
+
+
+Pass? Pass? Pass? I have one pass already, allowing me to go by the
+_rêl_ from Kroonstadt to Eshtellenbosch, where the horses are, where I
+am to be paid off, and whence I return to India. I am a—trooper of the
+Gurgaon Rissala (cavalry regiment), the One Hundred and Forty-first
+Punjab Cavalry, Do not herd me with these black Kaffirs. I am a Sikh—a
+trooper of the State. The Lieutenant-Sahib does not understand my talk?
+Is there _any_ Sahib on the train who will interpret for a trooper of
+the Gurgaon Rissala going about his business in this devil’s devising
+of a country, where there is no flour, no oil, no spice, no red pepper,
+and no respect paid to a Sikh? Is there no help?… God be thanked, here
+is such a Sahib! Protector of the Poor! Heaven-born! Tell the young
+Lieutenant-Sahib that my name is Umr Singh; I am—I was servant to
+Kurban Sahib, now dead; and I have a pass to go to Eshtellenbosch,
+where the horses are. Do not let him herd me with these black Kaffirs!…
+Yes, I will sit by this truck till the Heaven-born has explained the
+matter to the young Lieutenant-Sahib who does not understand our
+tongue.
+
+
+What orders? The young Lieutenant-Sahib will not detain me? Good! I go
+down to Eshtellenbosch by the next _terain_? Good! I go with the
+Heaven-born? Good! Then for this day I am the Heaven-born’s servant.
+Will the Heaven-born bring the honour of his presence to a seat? Here
+is an empty truck; I will spread my blanket over one corner thus—for
+the sun is hot, though not so hot as our Punjab in May. I will prop it
+up thus, and I will arrange this hay thus, so the Presence can sit at
+ease till God sends us a _terain_ for Eshtellenbosch….
+
+The Presence knows the Punjab? Lahore? Amritzar? Attaree, belike? My
+village is north over the fields three miles from Attaree, near the big
+white house which was copied from a certain place of the Great Queen’s
+by—by—I have forgotten the name. Can the Presence recall it? Sirdar
+Dyal Singh Attareewalla! Yes, that is the very man; but how does the
+Presence know? Born and bred in Hind, was he? O-o-oh! This is quite a
+different matter. The Sahib’s nurse was a Surtee woman from the Bombay
+side? That was a pity. She should have been an up-country wench; for
+those make stout nurses. There is no land like the Punjab. There are no
+people like the Sikhs. Umr Singh is my name, yes. An old man? Yes. A
+trooper only after all these years? Ye-es. Look at my uniform, if the
+Sahib doubts. Nay—nay; the Sahib looks too closely. All marks of rank
+were picked off it long ago, but—but it is true—mine is not a common
+cloth such as troopers use for their coats, and—the Sahib has sharp
+eyes—that black mark is such a mark as a silver chain leaves when long
+worn on the breast. The Sahib says that troopers do not wear silver
+chains? No-o. Troopers do not wear the Arder of Beritish India? No. The
+Sahib should have been in the Police of the Punjab. I am not a trooper,
+but I have been a Sahib’s servant for nearly a year—bearer, butler,
+sweeper, any and all three. The Sahib says that Sikhs do not take
+menial service? True; but it was for Kurban Sahib—my Kurban Sahib—dead
+these three months!
+
+
+Young—of a reddish face—with blue eyes, and he lilted a little on his
+feet when he was pleased, and cracked his finger-joints. So did his
+father before him, who was Deputy-Commissioner of Jullundur in my
+father’s time when I rode with the Gurgaon Rissala. _My_ father? Jwala
+Singh. A Sikh of Sikhs—he fought against the English at Sobraon and
+carried the mark to his death. So we were knit as it were by a
+blood-tie, I and my Kurban Sahib. Yes, I was a trooper first—nay, I had
+risen to a Lance-Duffadar, I remember—and my father gave me a dun
+stallion of his own breeding on that day; and _he_ was a little baba,
+sitting upon a wall by the parade-ground with his ayah—all in white,
+Sahib—laughing at the end of our drill. And his father and mine talked
+together, and mine beckoned to me, and I dismounted, and the baba put
+his hand into mine—eighteen—twenty-five—twenty-seven years gone
+now—Kurban Sahib—my Kurban Sahib! Oh, we were great friends after that!
+He cut his teeth on my sword-hilt, as the saying is. He called me Big
+Umr Singh—Buwwa Umwa Singh, for he could not speak plain. He stood only
+this high, Sahib, from the bottom of this truck, but he knew all our
+troopers by name—every one…. And he went to England, and he became a
+young man, and back he came, lilting a little in his walk, and cracking
+his finger-joints—back to his own regiment and to me. He had not
+forgotten either our speech or our customs. He was a Sikh at heart,
+Sahib. He was rich, open-handed, just, a friend of poor troopers,
+keen-eyed, jestful, and careless. _I_ could tell tales about him in his
+first years. There was very little he hid from _me_. I was his Umr
+Singh, and when we were alone he called me Father, and I called him
+Son. Yes, that was how we spoke. We spoke freely together on
+everything—about war, and women, and money, and advancement, and such
+all.
+
+We spoke about this war, too, long before it came. There were many
+box-wallas, pedlars, with Pathans a few, in this country, notably at
+the city of Yunasbagh (Johannesburg), and they sent news in every week
+how the Sahibs lay without weapons under the heel of the Boer-log; and
+how big guns were hauled up and down the streets to keep Sahibs in
+order; and how a Sahib called Eger Sahib (Edgar?) was killed for a jest
+by the Boer-log. The Sahib knows how we of Hind hear all that passes
+over the earth? There was not a gun cocked in Yunasbagh that the echo
+did not come into Hind in a month. The Sahibs are very clever, but they
+forget their own cleverness has created the _dak_ (the post), and that
+for an anna or two all things become known. We of Hind listened and
+heard and wondered; and when it was a sure thing, as reported by the
+pedlars and the vegetable-sellers, that the Sahibs of Yunasbagh lay in
+bondage to the Boer-log, certain among us asked questions and waited
+for signs. Others of us mistook the meaning of those signs. _Wherefore,
+Sahib, came the long war in the Tirah_! This Kurban Sahib knew, and we
+talked together. He said, “There is no haste. Presently we shall fight,
+and we shall fight for all Hind in that country round Yunasbagh. Here
+he spoke truth. Does the Sahib not agree? Quite so. It is for Hind that
+the Sahibs are fighting this war. Ye cannot in one place rule and in
+another bear service. Either ye must everywhere rule or everywhere
+obey. God does not make the nations ringstraked. True—true—true!”
+
+So did matters ripen—a step at a time. It was nothing to me, except I
+think—and the Sahib sees this, too?—that it is foolish to make an army
+and break their hearts in idleness. Why have they not sent for men of
+the Tochi—the men of the Tirah—the men of Buner? Folly, a thousand
+times. _We_ could have done it all so gently—so gently.
+
+Then, upon a day, Kurban Sahib sent for me and said, “Ho, Dada, I am
+sick, and the doctor gives me a certificate for many months.” And he
+winked, and I said, “I will get leave and nurse thee, Child. Shall I
+bring my uniform?” He said, “Yes, and a sword for a sick man to lean
+on. We go to Bombay, and thence by sea to the country of the Hubshis”
+(niggers). Mark his cleverness! He was first of all our men among the
+native regiments to get leave for sickness and to come here. Now they
+will not let our officers go away, sick or well, except they sign a
+bond not to take part in this war-game upon the road. But _he_ was
+clever. There was no whisper of war when he took his sick-leave. I came
+also? Assuredly. I went to my Colonel, and sitting in the chair (I am—I
+was—of that rank for which a chair is placed when we speak with the
+Colonel) I said, “My child goes sick. Give me leave, for I am old and
+sick also.”
+
+And the Colonel, making the word double between English and our tongue,
+said, “Yes, thou art truly _Sikh_”; and he called me an old
+devil—jestingly, as one soldier may jest with another; and he said my
+Kurban Sahib was a liar as to his health (that was true, too), and at
+long last he stood up and shook my hand, and bade me go and bring my
+Sahib safe again. My Sahib back again—aie me!
+
+So I went to Bombay with Kurban Sahib, but there, at sight of the Black
+Water, Wajib Ali, his bearer checked, and said that his mother was
+dead. Then I said to Kurban Sahib, “What is one Mussulman pig more or
+less? Give me the keys of the trunks, and I will lay out the white
+shirts for dinner.” Then I beat Wajib Ali at the back of Watson’s
+Hotel, and that night I prepared Kurban Sahib’s razors. I say, Sahib,
+that I, a Sikh of the Khalsa, an unshorn man, prepared the razors. But
+I did not put on my uniform while I did it. On the other hand, Kurban
+Sahib took for me, upon the steamer, a room in all respects like to his
+own, and would have given me a servant. We spoke of many things on the
+way to this country; and Kurban Sahib told me what he perceived would
+be the conduct of the war. He said, “They have taken men afoot to fight
+men ahorse, and they will foolishly show mercy to these Boer-log
+because it is believed that they are white.” He said, “There is but one
+fault in this war, and that is that the Government have not employed
+_us_, but have made it altogether a Sahibs’ war. Very many men will
+thus be killed, and no vengeance will be taken.” True talk—true talk!
+It fell as Kurban Sahib foretold.
+
+And we came to this country, even to Cape Town over yonder, and Kurban
+Sahib said, “Bear the baggage to the big dak-bungalow, and I will look
+for employment fit for a sick man.” I put on the uniform of my rank and
+went to the big dak-bungalow, called Maun Nihâl Seyn,[1] and I caused
+the heavy baggage to be bestowed in that dark lower place—is it known
+to the Sahib?—which was already full of the swords and baggage of
+officers. It is fuller now—dead men’s kit all! I was careful to secure
+a receipt for all three pieces. I have it in my belt. They must go back
+to the Punjab.
+
+ [1] Mount Nelson?
+
+
+Anon came Kurban Sahib, lilting a little in his step, which sign I
+knew, and he said, “We are born in a fortunate hour. We go to
+Eshtellenbosch to oversee the despatch of horses.” Remember, Kurban
+Sahib was squadron-leader of the Gurgaon Rissala, and _I_ was Umr
+Singh. So I said, speaking as we do—we did—when none was near, “Thou
+art a groom and I am a grass-cutter, but is this any promotion, Child?”
+At this he laughed, saying, “It is the way to better things. Have
+patience, Father.” (Aye, he called me father when none were by.) “This
+war ends not to-morrow nor the next day. I have seen the new Sahibs,”
+he said, “and they are fathers of owls—all—all—all!”
+
+So we went to Eshtellenbosch, where the horses are; Kurban Sahib doing
+the service of servants in that business. And the whole business was
+managed without forethought by new Sahibs from God knows where, who had
+never seen a tent pitched or a peg driven. They were full of zeal, but
+empty of all knowledge. Then came, little by little from Hind, those
+Pathans—they are just like those vultures up there, Sahib—they always
+follow slaughter. And there came to Eshtellenbosch some Sikhs—Muzbees,
+though—and some Madras monkey-men. They came with horses. Puttiala sent
+horses. Jhind and Nabha sent horses. All the nations of the Khalsa sent
+horses.
+
+All the ends of the earth sent horses. God knows what the army did with
+them, unless they ate them raw. They used horses as a courtesan uses
+oil: with both hands. These needed many men. Kurban Sahib appointed me
+to the command (what a command for me!) of certain woolly
+ones—_Hubshis_—whose touch and shadow are pollution. They were enormous
+eaters; sleeping on their bellies; laughing without cause; wholly like
+animals. Some were called Fingoes, and some, I think, Red Kaffirs, but
+they were all Kaffirs—filth unspeakable. I taught them to water and
+feed, and sweep and rub down. Yes, I oversaw the work of sweepers—a
+_jemadar_ of _mehtars_ (headman of a refuse-gang) was I, and Kurban
+Sahib little better, for five months. Evil months! The war went as
+Kurban Sahib had said. Our new men were slain and no vengeance was
+taken. It was a war of fools armed with the weapons of magicians. Guns
+that slew at half a day’s march, and men who, being new, walked blind
+into high grass and were driven off like cattle by the Boer-log! As to
+the city of Eshtellenbosch, I am not a Sahib—only a Sikh. I would have
+quartered one troop only of the Gurgaon Rissala in that city—one little
+troop—and I would have schooled that city till its men learned to kiss
+the shadow of a Government horse upon the ground. There are many
+_mullahs_ (priests) in Eshtellenbosch. They preached the Jehad against
+us. This is true—all the camp knew it. And most of the houses were
+thatched! A war of fools indeed!
+
+At the end of five months my Kurban Sahib, who had grown lean, said,
+“The reward has come. We go up towards the front with horses to-morrow,
+and, once away, I shall be too sick to return. Make ready the baggage.”
+Thus we got away, with some Kaffirs in charge of new horses for a
+certain new regiment that had come in a ship. The second day by
+_terain_, when we were watering at a desolate place without any sort of
+a bazaar to it, slipped out from the horse-boxes one Sikander Khan,
+that had been a _jemadar_ of _saises_ (head-groom) at Eshtellenbosch,
+and was by service a trooper in a Border regiment. Kurban Sahib gave
+him big abuse for his desertion; but the Pathan put up his hands as
+excusing himself, and Kurban Sahib relented and added him to our
+service. So there were three of us—Kurban Sahib, I, and Sikander
+Khan—Sahib, Sikh, and _Sag_ (dog). But the man said truly, “We be far
+from our homes and both servants of the Raj. Make truce till we see the
+Indus again.” I have eaten from the same dish as Sikander Khan—beef,
+too, for aught I know! He said, on the night he stole some swine’s
+flesh in a tin from a mess-tent, that in his Book, the Koran, it is
+written that whoso engages in a holy war is freed from ceremonial
+obligations. Wah! He had no more religion than the sword-point picks up
+of sugar and water at baptism. He stole himself a horse at a place
+where there lay a new and very raw regiment. I also procured myself a
+grey gelding there. They let their horses stray too much, those new
+regiments.
+
+Some shameless regiments would indeed have made away with _our_ horses
+on the road! They exhibited indents and requisitions for horses, and
+once or twice would have uncoupled the trucks; but Kurban Sahib was
+wise, and I am not altogether a fool. There is not much honesty at the
+front. Notably, there was one congregation of hard-bitten
+horse-thieves; tall, light Sahibs, who spoke through their noses for
+the most part, and upon all occasions they said, “Oah Hell!” which, in
+our tongue, signifies _Jehannum ko jao_. They bore each man a vine-leaf
+upon their uniforms, and they rode like Rajputs. Nay, they rode like
+Sikhs. They rode like the Ustrelyahs! The Ustrelyahs, whom we met
+later, also spoke through their noses not little, and they were tall,
+dark men, with grey, clear eyes, heavily eyelashed like camel’s
+eyes—very proper men—a new brand of Sahib to me. They said on all
+occasions, “No fee-ah,” which in our tongue means _Durro mut_ (“Do not
+be afraid”), so we called them the _Durro Muts_. Dark, tall men, most
+excellent horsemen, hot and angry, waging war _as_ war, and drinking
+tea as a sandhill drinks water. Thieves? A little, Sahib. Sikander Khan
+swore to me; and he comes of a horse-stealing clan for ten generations;
+he swore a Pathan was a babe beside a _Durro Mut_ in regard to
+horse-lifting. The _Durro Muts_ cannot walk on their feet at all. They
+are like hens on the high road. Therefore they must have horses. Very
+proper men, with a just lust for the war. Aah—“No fee-ah,” say the
+_Durro Muts_. _They_ saw the worth of Kurban Sahib. _They_ did not ask
+him to sweep stables. They would by no means let him go. He did
+substitute for one of their troop-leaders who had a fever, one long day
+in a country full of little hills—like the mouth of the Khaibar; and
+when they returned in the evening, the _Durro Muts_ said, “Wallah! This
+is a man. Steal him!” So they stole my Kurban Sahib as they would have
+stolen anything else that they needed, and they sent a sick officer
+back to Eshtellenbosch in his place.
+
+Thus Kurban Sahib came to his own again, and I was his bearer, and
+Sikander Khan was his cook. The law was strict that this was a Sahibs’
+war, but there was no order that a bearer and a cook should not ride
+with their Sahib—and we had naught to wear but our uniforms. We rode up
+and down this accursed country, where there is no bazaar, no pulse, no
+flour, no oil, no spice, no red pepper, no firewood; nothing but raw
+corn and a little cattle. There were no great battles as I saw it, but
+a plenty of gun-firing. When we were many, the Boer-log came out with
+coffee to greet us, and to show us _purwanas_ (permits) from foolish
+English Generals who had gone that way before, certifying they were
+peaceful and well-disposed. When we were few, they hid behind stones
+and shot us. Now the order was that they were Sahibs, and this was a
+Sahibs’ war. Good! But, as I understand it, when a Sahib goes to war,
+he puts on the cloth of war, and only those who wear that cloth may
+take part in the war. Good! That also I understand. But these people
+were as they were in Burma, or as the Afridis are. They shot at their
+pleasure, and when pressed hid the gun and exhibited _purwanas_, or lay
+in a house and said they were farmers. Even such farmers as cut up the
+Madras troops at Hlinedatalone in Burma! Even such farmers as slew
+Cavagnari Sahib and the Guides at Kabul! We schooled _those_ men, to be
+sure—fifteen, aye, twenty of a morning pushed off the verandah in front
+of the Bala Hissar. I looked that the Jung-i-lat Sahib (the
+Commander-in-Chief) would have remembered the old days; but—no. All the
+people shot at us everywhere, and he issued proclamations saying that
+he did not fight the people, but a certain army, which army, in truth,
+was all the Boer-log, who, between them, did not wear enough of uniform
+to make a loincloth. A fool’s war from first to last; for it is
+manifest that he who fights should be hung if he fights with a gun in
+one hand and a _purwana_ in the other, as did all these people. Yet we,
+when they had had their bellyful for the time, received them with
+honour, and gave them permits, and refreshed them and fed their wives
+and their babes, and severely punished our soldiers who took their
+fowls. So the work was to be done not once with a few dead, but thrice
+and four times over. I talked much with Kurban Sahib on this, and he
+said, “It is a Sahibs’ war. That is the order;” and one night, when
+Sikander Khan would have lain out beyond the pickets with his knife and
+shown them how it is worked on the Border, he hit Sikander Khan between
+the eyes and came near to breaking in his head. Then Sikander Khan, a
+bandage over his eyes, so that he looked like a sick camel, talked to
+him half one march, and he was more bewildered than I, and vowed he
+would return to Eshtellenbosch. But privately to me Kurban Sahib said
+we should have loosed the Sikhs and the Gurkhas on these people till
+they came in with their foreheads in the dust. For the war was not of
+that sort which they comprehended.
+
+They shot us? Assuredly they shot us from houses adorned with a white
+flag; but when they came to know our custom, their widows sent word by
+Kaffir runners, and presently there was not quite so much firing. _No
+fee-ah_! All the Boer-log with whom we dealt had _purwanas_ signed by
+mad Generals attesting that they were well-disposed to the State.
+
+They had also rifles not a few, and cartridges, which they hid in the
+roof. The women wept very greatly when we burned such houses, but they
+did not approach too near after the flames had taken good hold of the
+thatch, for fear of the bursting cartridges. The women of the Boer-log
+are very clever. They are more clever than the men. The Boer-log are
+clever? Never, never, no! It is the Sahibs who are fools. For their own
+honour’s sake the Sahibs must say that the Boer-log are clever; but it
+is the Sahibs’ wonderful folly that has made the Boer-log. The Sahibs
+should have sent _us_ into the game.
+
+But the _Durro Muts_ did well. They dealt faithfully with all that
+country thereabouts—not in any way as we of Hind should have dealt, but
+they were not altogether fools. One night when we lay on the top of a
+ridge in the cold, I saw far away a light in a house that appeared for
+the sixth part of an hour and was obscured. Anon it appeared again
+thrice for the twelfth part of an hour. I showed this to Kurban Sahib,
+for it was a house that had been spared—the people having many permits
+and swearing fidelity at our stirrup-leathers. I said to Kurban Sahib,
+“Send half a troop, Child, and finish that house. They signal to their
+brethren.” And he laughed where he lay and said, “If I listened to my
+bearer Umr Singh, there would not be left ten houses in all this land.”
+I said, “What need to leave one? This is as it was in Burma. They are
+farmers to-day and fighters to-morrow. Let us deal justly with them.”
+He laughed and curled himself up in his blanket, and I watched the far
+light in the house till day. I have been on the border in eight wars,
+not counting Burma. The first Afghan War; the second Afghan War; two
+Mahsud Waziri wars (that is four); two Black Mountain wars, if I
+remember right; the Malakand and Tirah. I do not count Burma, or some
+small things. _I_ know when house signals to house!
+
+I pushed Sikandar Khan with my foot, and he saw it too. He said, “One
+of the Boer-log who brought pumpkins for the mess, which I fried last
+night, lives in yonder house.” I said, “How dost thou know?” He said,
+“Because he rode out of the camp another way, but I marked how his
+horse fought with him at the turn of the road; and before the light
+fell I stole out of the camp for evening prayer with Kurban Sahib’s
+glasses, and from a little hill I saw the pied horse of that
+pumpkin-seller hurrying to that house.” I said naught, but took Kurban
+Sahib’s glasses from his greasy hands and cleaned them with a silk
+handkerchief and returned them to their case. Sikander Khan told me
+that he had been the first man in the Zenab valley to use
+glasses—whereby he finished two blood-feuds cleanly in the course of
+three months’ leave. But he was otherwise a liar.
+
+That day Kurban Sahib, with some ten troopers, was sent on to spy the
+land for our camp. The _Durro Muts_ moved slowly at that time. They
+were weighted with grain and forage and carts, and they greatly wished
+to leave these all in some town and go on light to other business which
+pressed. So Kurban Sahib sought a short cut for them, a little off the
+line of march. We were twelve miles before the main body, and we came
+to a house under a high bushed hill, with a nullah, which they call a
+donga, behind it, and an old sangar of piled stones, which they call a
+kraal, before it. Two thorn bushes grew on either side of the door,
+like babul bushes, covered with a golden coloured bloom, and the roof
+was all of thatch. Before the house was a valley of stones that rose to
+another bush-covered hill. There was an old man in the verandah—an old
+man with a white beard and a wart upon the left side of his neck; and a
+fat woman with the eyes of a swine and the jowl of a swine; and a tall
+young man deprived of understanding. His head was hairless, no larger
+than an orange, and the pits of his nostrils were eaten away by a
+disease. He laughed and slavered and he sported sportively before
+Kurban Sahib. The man brought coffee and the woman showed us _purwanas_
+from three General Sahibs, certifying that they were people of peace
+and goodwill. Here are the _purwanas_, Sahib. Does the Sahib know the
+Generals who signed them?
+
+They swore the land was empty of Boer-log. They held up their hands and
+swore it. That was about the time of the evening meal. I stood near the
+verandah with Sikander Khan, who was nosing like a jackal on a lost
+scent. At last he took my arm and said, “See yonder! There is the sun
+on the window of the house that signalled last night. This house can
+see that house from here,” and he looked at the hill behind him all
+hairy with bushes, and sucked in his breath. Then the idiot with the
+shrivelled head danced by me and threw back that head, and regarded the
+roof and laughed like a hyena, and the fat woman talked loudly, as it
+were, to cover some noise. After this passed I to the back of the house
+on pretence to get water for tea, and I saw fresh fresh horse-dung on
+the ground, and that the ground was cut with the new marks of hoofs;
+and there had dropped in the dirt one cartridge. Then Kurban Sahib
+called to me in our tongue, saying, “Is this a good place to make tea?”
+and I replied, knowing what he meant, “There are over many cooks in the
+cook-house. Mount and go, Child.” Then I returned, and he said, smiling
+to the woman, “Prepare food, and when we have loosened our girths we
+will come in and eat;” but to his men he said in a whisper, “Ride
+away!” No. He did not cover the old man or the fat woman with his
+rifle. That was not his custom. Some fool of the _Durro Muts_, being
+hungry, raised his voice to dispute the order to flee, and before we
+were in our saddles many shots came from the roof—from rifles thrust
+through the thatch. Upon this we rode across the valley of stones, and
+men fired at us from the nullah behind the house, and from the hill
+behind the nullah, as well as from the roof of the house—so many shots
+that it sounded like a drumming in the hills. Then Sikandar Khan,
+riding low, said, “This play is not for us alone, but for the rest of
+the _Durro Muts_,” and I said, “Be quiet. Keep place!” for his place
+was behind me, and I rode behind Kurban Sahib. But these new bullets
+will pass through five men a-row! We were not hit—not one of us—and we
+reached the hill of rocks and scattered among the stones, and Kurban
+Sahib turned in his saddle and said, “Look at the old man!” He stood in
+the verandah firing swiftly with a gun, the woman beside him and the
+idiot also—both with guns. Kurban Sahib laughed, and I caught him by
+the wrist, but—his fate was written at that hour. The bullet passed
+under my arm-pit and struck him in the liver, and I pulled him backward
+between two great rocks atilt—Kurban Sahib, my Kurban Sahib! From the
+nullah behind the house and from the hills came our Boer-log in number
+more than a hundred, and Sikandar Khan said, “_Now_ we see the meaning
+of last night’s signal. Give me the rifle.” He took Kurban Sahib’s
+rifle—in this war of fools only the doctors carry swords—and lay
+belly-flat to the work, but Kurban Sahib turned where he lay and said,
+“Be still. It is a Sahibs’ war,” and Kurban Sahib put up his hand—thus;
+and then his eyes rolled on me, and I gave him water that he might pass
+the more quickly. And at the drinking his Spirit received permission….
+
+Thus went our fight, Sahib. We _Durro Muts_ were on a ridge working
+from the north to the south, where lay our main body, and the Boer-log
+lay in a valley working from east to west. There were more than a
+hundred, and our men were ten, but they held the Boer-log in the valley
+while they swiftly passed along the ridge to the south. I saw three
+Boers drop in the open. Then they all hid again and fired heavily at
+the rocks that hid our men; but our men were clever and did not show,
+but moved away and away, always south; and the noise of the battle
+withdrew itself southward, where we could hear the sound of big guns.
+So it fell stark dark, and Sikandar Khan found a deep old jackal’s
+earth amid rocks, into which we slid the body of Kurban Sahib upright.
+Sikandar Khan took his glasses, and I took his handkerchief and some
+letters and a certain thing which I knew hung round his neck, and
+Sikandar Khan is witness that I wrapped them all in the handkerchief.
+Then we took an oath together, and lay still and mourned for Kurban
+Sahib. Sikandar Khan wept till daybreak—even he, a Pathan, a
+Mohammedan! All that night we heard firing to the southward, and when
+the dawn broke the valley was full of Boer-log in carts and on horses.
+They gathered by the house, as we could see through Kurban Sahib’s
+glasses, and the old man, who, I take it, was a priest, blessed them,
+and preached the holy war, waving his arm; and the fat woman brought
+coffee; and the idiot capered among them and kissed their horses.
+Presently they went away in haste; they went over the hills and were
+not; and a black slave came out and washed the door-sills with bright
+water. Sikandar Khan saw through the glasses that the stain was blood,
+and he laughed, saying, “Wounded men lie there. We shall yet get
+vengeance.”
+
+About noon we saw a thin, high smoke to the southward, such a smoke as
+a burning house will make in sunshine, and Sikandar Khan, who knows how
+to take a bearing across a hill, said, “At last we have burned the
+house of the pumpkin-seller whence they signalled.” And I said: “What
+need now that they have slain my child? Let me mourn.” It was a high
+smoke, and the old man, as I saw, came out into the verandah to behold
+it, and shook his clenched hands at it. So we lay till the twilight,
+foodless and without water, for we had vowed a vow neither to eat nor
+to drink till we had accomplished the matter. I had a little opium
+left, of which I gave Sikandar Khan the half, because he loved Kurban
+Sahib. When it was full dark we sharpened our sabres upon a certain
+softish rock which, mixed with water, sharpens steel well, and we took
+off our boots and we went down to the house and looked through the
+windows very softly. The old man sat reading in a book, and the woman
+sat by the hearth; and the idiot lay on the floor with his head against
+her knee, and he counted his fingers and laughed, and she laughed
+again. So I knew they were mother and son, and I laughed, too, for I
+had suspected this when I claimed her life and her body from Sikandar
+Khan, in our discussion of the spoil. Then we entered with bare
+swords…. Indeed, these Boer-log do not understand the steel, for the
+old man ran towards a rifle in the corner; but Sikandar Khan prevented
+him with a blow of the flat across the hands, and he sat down and held
+up his hands, and I put my fingers on my lips to signify they should be
+silent. But the woman cried, and one stirred in an inner room, and a
+door opened, and a man, bound about the head with rags, stood stupidly
+fumbling with a gun. His whole head fell inside the door, and none
+followed him. It was a very pretty stroke—for a Pathan. They then were
+silent, staring at the head upon the floor, and I said to Sikandar
+Khan, “Fetch ropes! Not even for Kurban Sahib’s sake will I defile my
+sword.” So he went to seek and returned with three long leather ones,
+and said, “Four wounded lie within, and doubtless each has a permit
+from a General,” and he stretched the ropes and laughed. Then I bound
+the old man’s hands behind his back, and unwillingly—for he laughed in
+my face, and would have fingered my beard—the idiot’s. At this the
+woman with the swine’s eyes and the jowl of a swine ran forward, and
+Sikandar Khan said, “Shall I strike or bind? She was thy property on
+the division.” And I said, “Refrain! I have made a chain to hold her.
+Open the door.” I pushed out the two across the verandah into the
+darker shade of the thorn-trees, and she followed upon her knees and
+lay along the ground, and pawed at my boots and howled. Then Sikandar
+Khan bore out the lamp, saying that he was a butler and would light the
+table, and I looked for a branch that would bear fruit. But the woman
+hindered me not a little with her screechings and plungings, and spoke
+fast in her tongue, and I replied in my tongue, “I am childless
+to-night because of thy perfidy, and _my_ child was praised among men
+and loved among women. He would have begotten men—not animals. Thou
+hast more years to live than I, but my grief is the greater.”
+
+I stooped to make sure the noose upon the idiot’s neck, and flung the
+end over the branch, and Sikandar Khan held up the lamp that she might
+well see. Then appeared suddenly, a little beyond the light of the
+lamp, the spirit of Kurban Sahib. One hand he held to his side, even
+where the bullet had struck him, and the other he put forward thus, and
+said, “No. It is a Sahibs’ war.” And I said, “Wait a while, Child, and
+thou shalt sleep.” But he came nearer, riding, as it were, upon my
+eyes, and said, “No. It is a Sahibs’ war.” And Sikandar Khan said, “Is
+it too heavy?” and set down the lamp and came to me; and as he turned
+to tally on the rope, the spirit of Kurban Sahib stood up within arm’s
+reach of us, and his face was very angry, and a third time he said,
+“No. It is a Sahibs’ war.” And a little wind blew out the lamp, and I
+heard Sikandar Khan’s teeth chatter in his head.
+
+So we stayed side by side, the ropes in our hand, a very long while,
+for we could not shape any words. Then I heard Sikandar Khan open his
+water-bottle and drink; and when his mouth was slaked he passed to me
+and said, “We are absolved from our vow.” So I drank, and together we
+waited for the dawn in that place where we stood—the ropes in our hand.
+A little after third cockcrow we heard the feet of horses and gun
+wheels very far off, and so soon as the light came a shell burst on the
+threshold of the house, and the roof of the verandah that was thatched
+fell in and blazed before the windows. And I said, “What of the wounded
+Boer-log within?” And Sikandar Khan said, “We have heard the order. It
+is a Sahibs’ war. Stand still.” Then came a second shell—good line, but
+short—and scattered dust upon us where we stood; and then came ten of
+the little quick shells from the gun that speaks like a stammerer—yes,
+pompom the Sahibs call it—and the face of the house folded down like
+the nose and the chin of an old man mumbling, and the forefront of the
+house lay down. Then Sikandar Khan said, “If it be the fate of the
+wounded to die in the fire, _I_ shall not prevent it.” And he passed to
+the back of the house and presently came back, and four wounded
+Boer-log came after him, of whom two could not walk upright. And I
+said, “What hast thou done?” And he said, “I have neither spoken to
+them nor laid hand on them. They follow in hope of mercy.” And I said,
+“It is a Sahibs’ war. Let them wait the Sahibs’ mercy.” So they lay
+still, the four men and the idiot, and the fat woman under the
+thorn-tree, and the house burned furiously. Then began the known sound
+of cartouches in the roof—one or two at first; then a trill, and last
+of all one loud noise and the thatch blew here and there, and the
+captives would have crawled aside on account of the heat that was
+withering the thorn-trees, and on account of wood and bricks flying at
+random. But I said, “Abide! Abide! Ye be Sahibs, and this is a Sahibs’
+war, O Sahibs. There is no order that ye should depart from this war.”
+They did not understand my words. Yet they abode and they lived.
+
+Presently rode down five troopers of Kurban Sahib’s command, and one I
+knew spoke my tongue, having sailed to Calcutta often with horses. So I
+told him all my tale, using bazaar-talk, such as his kidney of Sahib
+would understand; and at the end I said, “An order has reached us here
+from the dead that this is a Sahibs’ war. I take the soul of my Kurban
+Sahib to witness that I give over to the justice of the Sahibs these
+Sahibs who have made me childless.” Then I gave him the ropes and fell
+down senseless, my heart being very full, but my belly was empty,
+except for the little opium.
+
+They put me into a cart with one of their wounded, and after a while I
+understood that they had fought against the Boer-log for two days and
+two nights. It was all one big trap, Sahib, of which we, with Kurban
+Sahib, saw no more than the outer edge. They were very angry, the
+_Durro Muts_—very angry indeed. I have never seen Sahibs so angry. They
+buried my Kurban Sahib with the rites of his faith upon the top of the
+ridge overlooking the house, and I said the proper prayers of the
+faith, and Sikandar Khan prayed in his fashion and stole five
+signalling-candles, which have each three wicks, and lighted the grave
+as if it had been the grave of a saint on a Friday. He wept very
+bitterly all that night, and I wept with him, and he took hold of my
+feet and besought me to give him a remembrance from Kurban Sahib. So I
+divided equally with him one of Kurban Sahib’s handkerchiefs—not the
+silk ones, for those were given him by a certain woman; and I also gave
+him a button from a coat, and a little steel ring of no value that
+Kurban Sahib used for his keys, and he kissed them and put them into
+his bosom. The rest I have here in that little bundle, and I must get
+the baggage from the hotel in Cape Town—some four shirts we sent to be
+washed, for which we could not wait when we went up-country—and I must
+give them all to my Colonel-Sahib at Sialkote in the Punjab. For my
+child is dead—my baba is dead!… I would have come away before; there
+was no need to stay, the child being dead; but we were far from the
+rail, and the _Durro Muts_ were as brothers to me, and I had come to
+look upon Sikandar Khan as in some sort a friend, and he got me a horse
+and I rode up and down with them; but the life had departed. God knows
+what they called me—orderly, _chaprassi_ (messenger), cook, sweeper, I
+did not know nor care. But once I had pleasure. We came back in a month
+after wide circles to that very valley. I knew it every stone, and I
+went up to the grave, and a clever Sahib of the _Durro Muts_ (we left a
+troop there for a week to school those people with _purwanas_) had cut
+an inscription upon a great rock; and they interpreted it to me, and it
+was a jest such as Kurban Sahib himself would have loved. Oh! I have
+the inscription well copied here. Read it aloud, Sahib, and I will
+explain the jests. There are two very good ones. Begin, Sahib:—
+
+In Memory of
+WALTER DECIES CORBYN
+Late Captain 141st Punjab Cavalry
+
+
+The Gurgaon Rissala, that is. Go on, Sahib.
+
+Treacherously shot near this place by
+The connivance of the late
+HENDRIK DIRK UYS
+A Minister of God
+Who thrice took the oath of neutrality
+And Piet his son,
+This little work
+
+
+Aha! This is the first jest. The Sahib should see this little work!
+
+Was accomplished in partial
+And inadequate recognition of their loss
+By some men who loved him
+
+
+_Si monumentum requiris circumspice_
+
+
+That is the second jest. It signifies that those who would desire to
+behold a proper memorial to Kurban Sahib must look out at the house.
+And, Sahib, the house is not there, nor the well, nor the big tank
+which they call dams, nor the little fruit-trees, nor the cattle. There
+is nothing at all, Sahib, except the two trees withered by the fire.
+The rest is like the desert here—or my hand—or my heart. Empty,
+Sahib—all empty!
+
+
+
+
+“THEIR LAWFUL OCCASIONS”
+
+
+
+
+THE WET LITANY
+
+
+When the water’s countenance
+Blurrs ’twixt glance and second glance;
+When the tattered smokes forerun
+Ashen ’neath a silvered sun;
+When the curtain of the haze
+Shuts upon our helpless ways—
+     Hear the Channel Fleet at sea;
+     _Libera nos domine_!
+
+When the engines’ bated pulse
+Scarcely thrills the nosing hulls;
+When the wash along the side
+Sounds, a sudden, magnified
+When the intolerable blast
+Marks each blindfold minute passed.
+
+When the fog-buoy’s squattering flight
+Guides us through the haggard night;
+When the warning bugle blows;
+When the lettered doorways close;
+When our brittle townships press,
+Impotent, on emptiness.
+
+When the unseen leadsmen lean
+Questioning a deep unseen;
+When their lessened count they tell
+To a bridge invisible;
+When the hid and perilous
+Cliffs return our cry to us.
+
+When the treble thickness spread
+Swallows up our next-ahead;
+When her siren’s frightened whine
+Shows her sheering out of line;
+When, her passage undiscerned,
+We must turn where she has turned—
+     Hear the Channel Fleet at sea;
+     _Libera nos Domine_!
+
+
+
+
+“THEIR LAWFUL OCCASIONS”
+
+
+“… And a security for such as pass on the seas upon   their lawful
+occasions.”—_Navy Prayer_.
+
+PART I
+
+Disregarding the inventions of the Marine Captain, whose other name is
+Gubbins, let a plain statement suffice.
+
+H.M.S. _Caryatid_ went to Portland to join Blue Fleet for manœuvres. I
+travelled overland from London by way of Portsmouth, where I fell among
+friends. When I reached Portland, H.M.S. _Caryatid_, whose guest I was
+to have been, had, with Blue Fleet, already sailed for some secret
+rendezvous off the west coast of Ireland, and Portland breakwater was
+filled with Red Fleet, my official enemies and joyous acquaintances,
+who received me with unstinted hospitality. For example,
+Lieutenant-Commander A. L. Hignett, in charge of three destroyers,
+_Wraith, Stiletto_, and _Kobbold_, due to depart at 6 P.M. that
+evening, offered me a berth on his thirty-knot flagship, but I
+preferred my comforts, and so accepted sleeping-room in H.M.S.
+_Pedantic_ (15,000 tons), leader of the second line. After dining
+aboard her I took boat to Weymouth to get my kit aboard, as the
+battleships would go to war at midnight. In transferring my allegiance
+from Blue to Red Fleet, whatever the Marine Captain may say, I did no
+wrong. I truly intended to return to the _Pedantic_ and help to fight
+Blue Fleet. All I needed was a new toothbrush, which I bought from a
+chemist in a side street at 9:15 P.M. As I turned to go, one entered
+seeking alleviation of a gum-boil. He was dressed in a checked ulster,
+a black silk hat three sizes too small, cord-breeches, boots, and pure
+brass spurs. These he managed painfully, stepping like a prisoner fresh
+from leg-irons. As he adjusted the pepper-plaster to the gum the light
+fell on his face, and I recognised Mr. Emanuel Pyecroft, late
+second-class petty officer of H.M.S. _Archimandrite_, an unforgettable
+man, met a year before under Tom Wessel’s roof in Plymouth. It occurred
+to me that when a petty officer takes to spurs he may conceivably
+meditate desertion. For that reason I, though a taxpayer, made no sign.
+Indeed, it was Mr. Pyecroft, following me out of the shop, who said
+hollowly: “What might you be doing here?”
+
+“I’m going on manœuvres in the _Pedantic_,” I replied.
+
+“Ho!” said Mr. Pyecroft. “An’ what manner o’ manœuvres d’you expect to
+see in a blighted cathedral like the _Pedantic_? _I_ know ’er. I knew
+her in Malta, when the _Vulcan_ was her permanent tender. Manoeuvres!
+You won’t see more than ‘Man an’ arm watertight doors!’ in your little
+woollen undervest.”
+
+“I’m sorry for that.”
+
+“Why?” He lurched heavily as his spurs caught and twanged like
+tuning-forks. “War’s declared at midnight. _Pedantics_ be sugared! Buy
+an ’am an’ see life!”
+
+For the moment I fancied Mr. Pyecroft, a fugitive from justice,
+purposed that we two should embrace a Robin Hood career in the uplands
+of Dorset. The spurs troubled me, and I made bold to say as much.
+“Them!” he said, coming to an intricate halt. “They’re part of the
+_prima facie_ evidence. But as for me—let me carry your bag—I’m second
+in command, leadin’-hand, cook, steward, an’ lavatory man, with a few
+incidentals for sixpence a day extra, on No. 267 torpedo-boat.”
+
+“They wear spurs there?”
+
+“Well,” said Mr. Peycroft, “seein’ that Two Six Seven belongs to Blue
+Fleet, which left the day before yesterday, disguises are imperative.
+It transpired thus. The Right Honourable Lord Gawd Almighty Admiral
+Master Frankie Frobisher, K.C.B., commandin’ Blue Fleet, can’t be
+bothered with one tin-torpedo-boat more or less; and what with lyin’ in
+the Reserve four years, an’ what with the new kind o’ tiffy which
+cleans dynamos with brick-dust and oil (Blast these spurs! They won’t
+render!), Two Six Seven’s steam-gadgets was paralytic. Our Mr. Moorshed
+done his painstakin’ best—it’s his first command of a war-canoe, matoor
+age nineteen (down that alleyway, please!) but be that as it may, His
+Holiness Frankie is aware of us crabbin’ ourselves round the breakwater
+at five knots, an’ steerin’ _pari passu_, as the French say. (Up this
+alley-way, please!) If he’d given Mr. Hinchcliffe, our chief engineer,
+a little time, it would never have transpired, for what Hinch can’t
+drive he can coax; but the new port bein’ a trifle cloudy, an’ ’is
+joints tinglin’ after a post-captain dinner, Frankie come on the upper
+bridge seekin’ for a sacrifice. We, offerin’ a broadside target, got
+it. He told us what ’is grandmamma, ’oo was a lady an’ went to sea in
+stick- and string-batteaus, had told him about steam. He throwed in his
+own prayers for the ’ealth an’ safety of all steam-packets an’ their
+officers. Then he give us several distinct orders. The first few—I kept
+tally—was all about going to Hell; the next many was about not
+evolutin’ in his company, when there; an’ the last all was simply
+repeatin’ the motions in quick time. Knowin’ Frankie’s groovin’ to be
+badly eroded by age and lack of attention, I didn’t much panic; but our
+Mr. Moorshed, ’e took it a little to heart. Me an’ Mr. Hinchcliffe
+consoled ’im as well as service conditions permits of, an’ we had a
+_résumé_-supper at the back o’ the Camber—secluded _an’_ lugubrious!
+Then one thing leadin’ up to another, an’ our orders, except about
+anchorin’ where he’s booked for, leavin’ us a clear ’orizon, Number Two
+Six Seven is now—mind the edge of the wharf—here!”
+
+By mysterious doublings he had brought me out on to the edge of a
+narrow strip of water crowded with coastwise shipping that runs far up
+into Weymouth town. A large foreign timber-brig lay at my feet, and
+under the round of her stern cowered, close to the wharf-edge, a
+slate-coloured, unkempt, two-funnelled craft of a type—but I am no
+expert—between the first-class torpedo-boat and the full-blooded
+destroyer. From her archaic torpedo-tubes at the stern, and
+quick-firers forward and amidship, she must have dated from the early
+nineties. Hammerings and clinkings, with spurts of steam and fumes of
+hot oil, arose from her inside, and a figure in a striped jersey
+squatted on the engine-room gratings.
+
+“She ain’t much of a war-canoe, but you’ll see more life in ’er than on
+an whole squadron of bleedin’ _Pedantics.”_
+
+“But she’s laid up here—and Blue Fleet have gone,” I protested.
+“Precisely. Only, in his comprehensive orders Frankie didn’t put us out
+of action. Thus we’re a non-neglectable fightin’ factor which you
+mightn’t think from this elevation; _an’_ m’rover, Red Fleet don’t know
+we’re ’ere. Most of us”—he glanced proudly at his boots—“didn’t run to
+spurs, but we’re disguised pretty devious, as you might say. Morgan,
+our signaliser, when last seen, was a Dawlish bathing-machine
+proprietor. Hinchcliffe was naturally a German waiter, and me you
+behold as a squire of low degree; while yonder Levantine dragoman on
+the hatch is our Mr. Moorshed. He was the second cutter’s snotty—_my_
+snotty—on the _Archimandrite_—two years—Cape Station. Likewise on the
+West Coast, mangrove swampin’, an’ gettin’ the cutter stove in on small
+an’ unlikely bars, an’ manufacturin’ lies to correspond. What I don’t
+know about Mr. Moorshed is precisely the same gauge as what Mr.
+Moorshed don’t know about me—half a millimetre, as you might say. He
+comes into awful opulence of his own when ’e’s of age; an’ judgin’ from
+what passed between us when Frankie cursed ’im, I don’t think ’e cares
+whether he’s broke to-morrow or—the day after. Are you beginnin’ to
+follow our tattics? They’ll be worth followin’. Or _are_ you goin’ back
+to your nice little cabin on the _Pedantic_—which I lay they’ve just
+dismounted the third engineer out of—to eat four fat meals per diem,
+an’ smoke in the casement?”
+
+The figure in the jersey lifted its head and mumbled.
+
+“Yes, Sir,” was Mr. Pyecroft’s answer. “I ’ave ascertained that
+_Stiletto, Wraith_, and _Kobbold_ left at 6 P.M. with the first
+division o’ Red Fleet’s cruisers except _Devolotion_ and _Cryptic_,
+which are delayed by engine-room defects.” Then to me: “Won’t you go
+aboard? Mr. Moorshed ’ud like some one to talk to. You buy an ’am an’
+see life.”
+
+At this he vanished; and the Demon of Pure Irresponsibility bade me
+lower myself from the edge of the wharf to the tea-tray plates of No.
+267.
+
+“What d’you want?” said the striped jersey.
+
+“I want to join Blue Fleet if I can,” I replied. “I’ve been left behind
+by—an accident.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Mr. Pyecroft told me to buy a ham and see life. About how big a ham do
+you need?”
+
+“I don’t want any ham, thank you. That’s the way up the wharf.
+_Good_-night.”
+
+“Good-night!” I retraced my steps, wandered in the dark till I found a
+shop, and there purchased, of sardines, canned tongue, lobster, and
+salmon, not less than half a hundredweight. A belated sausage-shop
+supplied me with a partially cut ham of pantomime tonnage. These things
+I, sweating, bore out to the edge of the wharf and set down in the
+shadow of a crane. It was a clear, dark summer night, and from time to
+time I laughed happily to myself. The adventure was preordained on the
+face of it. Pyecroft alone, spurred or barefoot, would have drawn me
+very far from the paths of circumspection. His advice to buy a ham and
+see life clinched it. Presently Mr. Pyecroft—I heard spurs clink—passed
+me. Then the jersey voice said: “What the mischief’s that?”
+
+“’Asn’t the visitor come aboard, Sir? ’E told me he’d purposely
+abandoned the _Pedantic_ for the pleasure of the trip with us. Told me
+he was official correspondent for the _Times_; an’ I know he’s littery
+by the way ’e tries to talk Navy-talk. Haven’t you seen ’im, Sir?”
+
+Slowly and dispassionately the answer drawled long on the night; “Pye,
+you are without exception the biggest liar in the Service!”
+
+“Then what am I to do with the bag, Sir? It’s marked with his name.”
+There was a pause till Mr. Moorshed said “Oh!” in a tone which the
+listener might construe precisely as he pleased.
+
+“_He_ was the maniac who wanted to buy a ham and see life—was he? If he
+goes back to the _Pedantic_—”
+
+“Pre-cisely, Sir. Gives us all away, Sir.”
+
+“Then what possessed _you_ to give it away to him, you owl?”
+
+“I’ve got his bag. If ’e gives anything away, he’ll have to go naked.”
+
+At this point I thought it best to rattle my tins and step out of the
+shadow of the crane.
+
+“I’ve bought the ham,” I called sweetly. “Have you still any objection
+to my seeing life, Mr. Moorshed?”
+
+“All right, if you’re insured. Won’t you come down?”
+
+I descended; Pyecroft, by a silent flank movement, possessing himself
+of all the provisions, which he bore to some hole forward.
+
+“Have you known Mr. Pyecroft long?” said my host.
+
+“Met him once, a year ago, at Devonport. What do you think of him?”
+
+“What do _you_ think of him?”
+
+“I’ve left the _Pedantic_—her boat will be waiting for me at ten
+o’clock, too—simply because I happened to meet him,” I replied.
+
+“That’s all right. If you’ll come down below, we may get some grub.”
+
+We descended a naked steel ladder to a steel-beamed tunnel, perhaps
+twelve feet long by six high. Leather-topped lockers ran along either
+side; a swinging table, with tray and lamp above, occupied the centre.
+Other furniture there was none.
+
+“You can’t shave here, of course. We don’t wash, and, as a rule, we eat
+with our fingers when we’re at sea. D’you mind?”
+
+Mr. Moorshed, black-haired, black-browed, sallow-complexioned, looked
+me over from head to foot and grinned. He was not handsome in any way,
+but his smile drew the heart. “You didn’t happen to hear what Frankie
+told me from the flagship, did you? His last instructions, and I’ve
+logged them here in shorthand, were”—he opened a neat
+pocket-book—”_‘Get out of this and conduct your own damned manœuvres in
+your own damned tinker fashion! You’re a disgrace to the Service, and
+your boat’s offal.’”_
+
+“Awful?” I said.
+
+“No—offal—tripes—swipes—ullage.” Mr. Pyecroft entered, in the costume
+of his calling, with the ham and an assortment of tin dishes, which he
+dealt out like cards.
+
+“I shall take these as my orders,” said Mr. Moorshed. “I’m chucking the
+Service at the end of the year, so it doesn’t matter.”
+
+We cut into the ham under the ill-trimmed lamp, washed it down with
+whisky, and then smoked. From the foreside of the bulkhead came an
+uninterrupted hammering and clinking, and now and then a hiss of steam.
+
+“That’s Mr. Hinchcliffe,” said Pyecroft. “He’s what is called a
+first-class engine-room artificer. If you hand ’im a drum of oil an’
+leave ’im alone, he can coax a stolen bicycle to do typewritin’.”
+
+Very leisurely, at the end of his first pipe, Mr. Moorshed drew out a
+folded map, cut from a newspaper, of the area of manœuvres, with the
+rules that regulate these wonderful things, below.
+
+“Well, I suppose I know as much as an average stick-and-string
+admiral,” he said, yawning. “Is our petticoat ready yet, Mr. Pyecroft?”
+
+As a preparation for naval manœuvres these councils seemed inadequate.
+I followed up the ladder into the gloom cast by the wharf edge and the
+big lumber-ship’s side. As my eyes stretched to the darkness I saw that
+No. 267 had miraculously sprouted an extra pair of funnels—soft, for
+they gave as I touched them.
+
+“More _prima facie_ evidence. You runs a rope fore an’ aft, an’ you
+erects perpendick-u-arly two canvas tubes, which you distends with cane
+hoops, thus ’avin’ as many funnels as a destroyer. At the word o’
+command, up they go like a pair of concertinas, an’ consequently
+collapses equally ’andy when requisite. Comin’ aft we shall doubtless
+overtake the Dawlish bathin’-machine proprietor fittin’ on her bustle.”
+
+Mr. Pyecroft whispered this in my ear as Moorshed moved toward a group
+at the stern.
+
+“None of us who ain’t built that way can be destroyers, but we can look
+as near it as we can. Let me explain to you, Sir, that the stern of a
+Thorneycroft boat, which we are _not_, comes out in a pretty bulge,
+totally different from the Yarrow mark, which again we are not. But, on
+the other ’and, _Dirk, Stiletto, Goblin, Ghoul, Djinn_, and
+_A-frite_—Red Fleet dee-stroyers, with ’oom we hope to consort later on
+terms o’ perfect equality—_are_ Thorneycrofts, an’ carry that Grecian
+bend which we are now adjustin’ to our _arriere-pensée_—as the French
+would put it—by means of painted canvas an’ iron rods bent as
+requisite. Between you an’ me an’ Frankie, we are the _Gnome_, now in
+the Fleet Reserve at Pompey—Portsmouth, I should say.”
+
+“The first sea will carry it all away,” said Moorshed, leaning gloomily
+outboard, “but it will do for the present.”
+
+“We’ve a lot of _prima facie_ evidence about us,” Mr. Pyecroft went on.
+“A first-class torpedo boat sits lower in the water than a destroyer.
+Hence we artificially raise our sides with a black canvas wash-streak
+to represent extra freeboard; _at_ the same time paddin’ out the cover
+of the forward three-pounder like as if it was a twelve-pounder, an’
+variously fakin’ up the bows of ’er. As you might say, we’ve took
+thought an’ added a cubic to our stature. It’s our len’th that sugars
+us. A ’undred an’ forty feet, which is our len’th into two ’undred and
+ten, which is about the _Gnome’s,_ leaves seventy feet over, which we
+haven’t got.”
+
+“Is this all your own notion, Mr. Pyecroft?” I asked.
+
+“In spots, you might say—yes; though we all contributed to make up
+deficiencies. But Mr. Moorshed, not much carin’ for further Navy after
+what Frankie said, certainly threw himself into the part with avidity.”
+
+“What the dickens are we going to do?”
+
+“Speaking as a seaman gunner, I should say we’d wait till the sights
+came on, an’ then fire. Speakin’ as a torpedo-coxswain, L.T.O., T.I.,
+M.D., etc., I presume we fall in—Number One in rear of the tube, etc.,
+secure tube to ball or diaphragm, clear away securin’-bar, release
+safety-pin from lockin-levers, an’ pray Heaven to look down on us. As
+second in command o’ 267, I say wait an’ see!”
+
+“What’s happened? We’re off,” I said. The timber ship had slid away
+from us.
+
+“We are. Stern first, an’ broadside on! If we don’t hit anything too
+hard, we’ll do.”
+
+“Come on the bridge,” said Mr. Moorshed. I saw no bridge, but fell over
+some sort of conning-tower forward, near which was a wheel. For the
+next few minutes I was more occupied with cursing my own folly than
+with the science of navigation. Therefore I cannot say how we got out
+of Weymouth Harbour, nor why it was necessary to turn sharp to the left
+and wallow in what appeared to be surf.
+
+“Excuse me,” said Mr. Pyecroft behind us, “_I_ don’t mind rammin’ a
+bathin’-machine; but if only _one_ of them week-end Weymouth blighters
+has thrown his empty baccy-tin into the sea here, we’ll rip our plates
+open on it; 267 isn’t the _Archimandrite’s_ old cutter.”
+
+“I am hugging the shore,” was the answer.
+
+“There’s no actual ’arm in huggin’, but it can come expensive if
+pursooed.”
+
+“Right-O!” said Moorshed, putting down the wheel, and as we left those
+scant waters I felt 267 move more freely.
+
+A thin cough ran up the speaking-tube.
+
+“Well, what is it, Mr. Hinchcliffe?” said Moorshed.
+
+“I merely wished to report that she is still continuin’ to go, Sir.”
+
+“Right-O! Can we whack her up to fifteen, d’you think?”
+
+“I’ll try, Sir; but we’d prefer to have the engine-room hatch open—at
+first, Sir.”
+
+Whacked up then she was, and for half an hour was careered largely
+through the night, turning at last with a suddenness that slung us
+across the narrow deck.
+
+“This,” said Mr. Pyecroft, who received me on his chest as a large rock
+receives a shadow, “represents the _Gnome_ arrivin’ cautious from the
+direction o’ Portsmouth, with Admiralty orders.”
+
+He pointed through the darkness ahead, and after much staring my eyes
+opened to a dozen destroyers, in two lines, some few hundred yards
+away.
+
+“Those are the Red Fleet destroyer flotilla, which is too frail to
+panic about among the full-blooded cruisers inside Portland breakwater,
+and several millimetres too excited over the approachin’ war to keep a
+look-out inshore. Hence our tattics!”
+
+We wailed through our siren—a long, malignant, hyena-like howl—and a
+voice hailed us as we went astern tumultuously.
+
+“The _Gnome_—Carteret-Jones—from Portsmouth, with
+orders—mm—mm—_Stiletto_,” Moorshed answered through the megaphone in a
+high, whining voice, rather like a chaplain’s.
+
+“_Who_?” was the answer.
+
+“Carter—et—Jones.”
+
+“Oh, Lord!”
+
+There was a pause; a voice cried to some friend, “It’s Podgie, adrift
+on the high seas in charge of a whole dee-stroyer!”
+
+Another voice echoed, “Podgie!” and from its note I gathered that Mr.
+Carteret-Jones had a reputation, but not for independent command.
+
+“Who’s your sub?” said the first speaker, a shadow on the bridge of the
+_Dirk_.
+
+“A gunner, at present, Sir. The _Stiletto_—broken down—turns over to
+us.”
+
+“When did the _Stiletto_ break down?”
+
+“Off the Start, Sir; two hours after—after she left here this evening,
+I believe. My orders are to report to you for the manœuvre
+signal-codes, and join Commander Hignett’s flotilla, which is in
+attendance on _Stiletto_.”
+
+A smothered chuckle greeted this last. Moorshed’s voice was high and
+uneasy. Said Pyecroft, with a sigh: “The amount o’ trouble me an’ my
+bright spurs ’ad fishin’ out that information from torpedo coxswains
+and similar blighters in pubs all this afternoon, you would never
+believe.”
+
+“But has the _Stiletto_ broken down?” I asked weakly.
+
+“How else are we to get Red Fleet’s private signal-code? Any way, if
+she ’asn’t now, she will before manœuvres are ended. It’s only
+executin’ in anticipation.”
+
+“Go astern and send your coxswain aboard for orders, Mr. Jones.” Water
+carries sound well, but I do not know whether we were intended to hear
+the next sentence: “They must have given him _one_ intelligent keeper.”
+
+“That’s me,” said Mr. Pyecroft, as a black and coal-stained dinghy—I
+did not foresee how well I should come to know her—was flung overside
+by three men.
+
+“Havin’ bought an ’am, we will now see life.” He stepped into the boat
+and was away.
+
+“I say, Podgie!”—the speaker was in the last of the line of destroyers,
+as we thumped astern—“aren’t you lonely out there?”
+
+“Oh, don’t rag me!” said Moorshed. “Do you suppose I’ll have to
+manœuvre with your flo-tilla?”
+
+“No, Podgie! I’m pretty sure our commander will see you sifting cinders
+in Tophet before you come with our flo-tilla.”
+
+“Thank you! She steers rather wild at high speeds.”
+
+Two men laughed together.
+
+“By the way, who is Mr. Carteret-Jones when he’s at home?” I whispered.
+
+“I was with him in the _Britannia_. I didn’t like him much, but I’m
+grateful to him now. I must tell him so some day.”
+
+“They seemed to know him hereabouts.”
+
+“He rammed the _Caryatid_ twice with her own steam-pinnace.”
+
+Presently, moved by long strokes, Mr. Pyecroft returned, skimming
+across the dark. The dinghy swung up behind him, even as his heel
+spurned it.
+
+“Commander Fasset’s compliments to Mr. L. Carteret-Jones, and the
+sooner he digs out in pursuance of Admiralty orders as received at
+Portsmouth, the better pleased Commander Fasset will be. But there’s a
+lot more——”
+
+“Whack her up, Mr. Hinchcliffe! Come on to the bridge. We can settle it
+as we go. Well?”
+
+Mr. Pyecroft drew an important breath, and slid off his cap.
+
+“Day an’ night private signals of Red Fleet _com_plete, Sir!” He handed
+a little paper to Moorshed. “You see, Sir, the trouble was, that Mr.
+Carteret-Jones bein’, so to say, a little new to his duties, ’ad forgot
+to give ’is gunner his Admiralty orders in writin’, but, as I told
+Commander Fasset, Mr. Jones had been repeatin’ ’em to me, nervous-like,
+most of the way from Portsmouth, so I knew ’em by heart—an’ better. The
+Commander, recognisin’ in me a man of agility, cautioned me to be a
+father an’ mother to Mr. Carteret-Jones.”
+
+“Didn’t he know you?” I asked, thinking for the moment that there could
+be no duplicates of Emanuel Pyecroft in the Navy.
+
+“What’s a torpedo-gunner more or less to a full lootenant commanding
+six thirty-knot destroyers for the first time? ’E seemed to cherish the
+’ope that ’e might use the _Gnome_ for ’is own ’orrible purposes; but
+what I told him about Mr. Jones’s sad lack o’ nerve comin’ from Pompey,
+an’ going dead slow on account of the dark, short-circuited _that_
+connection. ‘M’rover,’ I says to him, ‘our orders is explicit;
+_Stiletto’s_ reported broke down somewhere off the Start, an’ we’ve
+been tryin’ to coil down a new stiff wire hawser all the evenin’, so it
+looks like towin’ ’er back, don’t it?’ I says. That more than ever jams
+his turrets, an’ makes him keen to get rid of us. ’E even hinted that
+Mr. Carteret-Jones passin’ hawsers an’ assistin’ the impotent in a
+sea-way might come pretty expensive on the tax-payer. I agreed in a
+disciplined way. I ain’t proud. Gawd knows I ain’t proud! But when I’m
+really diggin’ out in the fancy line, I sometimes think that me in a
+copper punt, single-’anded, ’ud beat a cutter-full of De Rougemongs in
+a row round the fleet.”
+
+At this point I reclined without shame on Mr. Pyecroft’s bosom,
+supported by his quivering arm.
+
+“Well?” said Moorshed, scowling into the darkness, as 267’s bows
+snapped at the shore seas of the broader Channel, and we swayed
+together.
+
+“‘You’d better go on,’ says Commander Fassett, ‘an’ do what you’re told
+to do. I don’t envy Hignett if he has to dry-nurse the _Gnome’s_
+commander. But what d’you want with signals?’ ’e says. ‘It’s criminal
+lunacy to trust Mr. Jones with anything that steams.’
+
+“‘May I make an observation, Sir?’ I says. ‘Suppose,’ I says, ‘you was
+torpedo-gunner on the _Gnome_, an’ Mr. Carteret-Jones was your
+commandin’ officer, an’ you had your reputation _as_ a second in
+command for the first time,’ I says, well knowin’ it was his first
+command of a flotilla, ‘what ’ud you do, Sir?’ That gouged ’is
+unprotected ends open—clear back to the citadel.”
+
+“What did he say?” Moorshed jerked over his shoulder.
+
+“If you were Mr. Carteret-Jones, it might be disrespect for me to
+repeat it, Sir.”
+
+“Go ahead,” I heard the boy chuckle.
+
+“‘Do?’ ’e says. ‘I’d rub the young blighter’s nose into it till I made
+a perishin’ man of him, or a perspirin’ pillow-case,’ ’e says, ‘which,’
+he adds, ‘is forty per cent, more than he is at present.’
+
+“Whilst he’s gettin’ the private signals—they’re rather particular
+ones—I went forrard to see the _Dirk’s_ gunner about borrowin’ a
+holdin’-down bolt for our twelve-pounder. My open ears, while I was
+rovin’ over his packet, got the followin’ authentic particulars.” I
+heard his voice change, and his feet shifted. “There’s been a last
+council o’ war of destroyer-captains at the flagship, an’ a lot of
+things ’as come out. To begin with _Cryptic_ and _Devolution_, Captain
+Panke and Captain Malan—”
+
+“_Cryptic_ and _Devolution_, first-class cruisers,” said Mr. Moorshed
+dreamily. “Go on, Pyecroft.”
+
+“—bein’ delayed by minor defects in engine-room, did _not_, as we know,
+accompany Red Fleet’s first division of scouting cruisers, whose
+rendezvous is unknown, but presumed to be somewhere off the Lizard.
+_Cryptic_ an’ _Devolution_ left at 9:30 P.M. still reportin’ copious
+minor defects in engine-room. Admiral’s final instructions was they was
+to put into Torbay, an’ mend themselves there. If they can do it in
+twenty-four hours, they’re to come on and join the battle squadron at
+the first rendezvous, down Channel somewhere. (I couldn’t get that,
+Sir.) If they can’t, he’ll think about sendin’ them some destroyers for
+escort. But his present intention is to go ’ammer and tongs down
+Channel, usin’ ’is destroyers for all they’re worth, an’ thus keepin’
+Blue Fleet too busy off the Irish coast to sniff into any eshtuaries.”
+
+“But if those cruisers are crocks, why does the Admiral let ’em out of
+Weymouth at all?” I asked.
+
+“The tax-payer,” said Mr. Moorshed.
+
+“An’ newspapers,” added Mr. Pyecroft. “In Torbay they’ll look as they
+was muckin’ about for strategical purposes—hammerin’ like blazes in the
+engine room all the weary day, an’ the skipper droppin’ questions down
+the engine-room hatch every two or three minutes. _I’ve_ been there.
+Now, Sir?” I saw the white of his eye turn broad on Mr. Moorshed.
+
+The boy dropped his chin over the speaking-tube.
+
+“Mr. Hinchcliffe, what’s her extreme economical radius?”
+
+“Three hundred and forty knots, down to swept bunkers.”
+
+“Can do,” said Moorshed. “By the way, have her revolutions any bearing
+on her speed, Mr. Hinchcliffe?”
+
+“None that I can make out yet, Sir.”
+
+“Then slow to eight knots. We’ll jog down to forty-nine, forty-five, or
+four about, and three east. That puts us say forty miles from Torbay by
+nine o’clock to-morrow morning. We’ll have to muck about till dusk
+before we run in and try our luck with the cruisers.”
+
+“Yes, Sir. Their picket boats will be panickin’ round them all night.
+It’s considered good for the young gentlemen.”
+
+“Hallo! War’s declared! They’re off!” said Moorshed.
+
+He swung 267’s head round to get a better view. A few miles to our
+right the low horizon was spangled with small balls of fire, while
+nearer ran a procession of tiny cigar ends.
+
+“Red hot! Set ’em alight,” said Mr. Pyecroft. “That’s the second
+destroyer flotilla diggin’ out for Commander Fassett’s reputation.”
+
+The smaller lights disappeared; the glare of the destroyers’ funnels
+dwindled even as we watched.
+
+“They’re going down Channel with lights out, thus showin’ their zeal
+an’ drivin’ all watch-officers crazy. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think
+I’ll get you your pyjamas, an’ you’ll turn in,” said Pyecroft.
+
+He piloted me to the steel tunnel, where the ham still swung
+majestically over the swaying table, and dragged out trousers and a
+coat with a monk’s hood, all hewn from one hairy inch-thick board.
+
+“If you fall over in these you’ll be drowned. They’re lammies. I’ll
+chock you off with a pillow; but sleepin’ in a torpedo-boat’s what you
+might call an acquired habit.”
+
+I coiled down on an iron-hard horse-hair pillow next the quivering
+steel wall to acquire that habit. The sea, sliding over 267’s skin,
+worried me with importunate, half-caught confidences. It drummed
+tackily to gather my attention, coughed, spat, cleared its throat, and,
+on the eve of that portentous communication, retired up stage as a
+multitude whispering. Anon, I caught the tramp of armies afoot, the hum
+of crowded cities awaiting the event, the single sob of a woman, and
+dry roaring of wild beasts. A dropped shovel clanging on the stokehold
+floor was, naturally enough, the unbarring of arena gates; our sucking
+uplift across the crest of some little swell, nothing less than the
+haling forth of new worlds; our half-turning descent into the hollow of
+its mate, the abysmal plunge of God-forgotten planets. Through all
+these phenomena and more—though I ran with wild horses over illimitable
+plains of rustling grass; though I crouched belly-flat under appalling
+fires of musketry; though I was Livingstone, painless, and incurious in
+the grip of his lion—my shut eyes saw the lamp swinging in its gimbals,
+the irregularly gliding patch of light on the steel ladder, and every
+elastic shadow in the corners of the frail angle-irons; while my body
+strove to accommodate itself to the infernal vibration of the machine.
+At the last I rolled limply on the floor, and woke to real life with a
+bruised nose and a great call to go on deck at once.
+
+“It’s all right,” said a voice in my booming ears. “Morgan and Laughton
+are worse than you!”
+
+I was gripping a rail. Mr. Pyecroft pointed with his foot to two
+bundles beside a torpedo-tube, which at Weymouth had been a signaller
+and a most able seaman. “She’d do better in a bigger sea,” said Mr.
+Pyecroft. “This lop is what fetches it up.”
+
+The sky behind us whitened as I laboured, and the first dawn drove down
+the Channel, tipping the wave-tops with a chill glare. To me that round
+wind which runs before the true day has ever been fortunate and of good
+omen. It cleared the trouble from my body, and set my soul dancing to
+267’s heel and toe across the northerly set of the waves—such waves as
+I had often watched contemptuously from the deck of a ten-thousand-ton
+liner. They shouldered our little hull sideways and passed, scalloped,
+and splayed out, toward the coast, carrying our white wake in loops
+along their hollow backs. In succession we looked down a lead-grey
+cutting of water for half a clear mile, were flung up on its ridge,
+beheld the Channel traffic—full-sailed to that fair breeze—all about
+us, and swung slantwise, light as a bladder, elastic as a basket, into
+the next furrow. Then the sun found us, struck the wet gray bows to
+living, leaping opal, the colourless deep to hard sapphire, the many
+sails to pearl, and the little steam-plume of our escape to an
+inconstant rainbow.
+
+“A fair day and a fair wind for all, thank God!” said Emanuel Pyecroft,
+throwing back the cowl-like hood of his blanket coat. His face was
+pitted with coal-dust and grime, pallid for lack of sleep; but his eyes
+shone like a gull’s.
+
+“I told you you’d see life. Think o’ the _Pedantic_ now. Think o’ her
+Number One chasin’ the mobilised gobbies round the lower deck flats.
+Think o’ the pore little snotties now bein’ washed, fed, and taught,
+an’ the yeoman o’ signals with a pink eye wakin’ bright ’an brisk to
+another perishin’ day of five-flag hoists. Whereas _we_ shall caulk an’
+smoke cigarettes, same as the Spanish destroyers did for three weeks
+after war was declared.” He dropped into the wardroom singing:—
+
+If you’re going to marry me, marry me, Bill,
+It’s no use muckin’ about!
+
+
+The man at the wheel, uniformed in what had once been a Tam-o’-shanter,
+a pair of very worn R.M.L.I. trousers rolled up to the knee, and a
+black sweater, was smoking a cigarette. Moorshed, in a gray Balaclava
+and a brown mackintosh with a flapping cape, hauled at our
+supplementary funnel guys, and a thing like a waiter from a Soho
+restaurant sat at the head of the engine-room ladder exhorting the
+unseen below. The following wind beat down our smoke and covered all
+things with an inch-thick layer of stokers, so that eyelids, teeth, and
+feet gritted in their motions. I began to see that my previous
+experiences among battleships and cruisers had been altogether beside
+the mark.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+The wind went down with the sunset—
+    The fog came up with the tide,
+When the Witch of the North took an Egg-shell (_bis_)
+    With a little Blue Devil inside.
+“Sink,” she said, “or swim,” she said,
+    “It’s all you will get from me.
+And that is the finish of him!” she said,
+    And the Egg-shell went to sea.
+
+The wind got up with the morning,
+    And the fog blew off with the rain,
+When the Witch of the North saw the Egg-shell
+    And the little Blue Devil again.
+“Did you swim?” she said. “Did you sink?” she said,
+    And the little Blue Devil replied:
+“For myself I swam, but I think,” he said,
+    “There’s somebody sinking outside.”
+
+
+But for the small detail that I was a passenger and a civilian, and
+might not alter her course, torpedo-boat No. 267 was mine to me all
+that priceless day. Moorshed, after breakfast—frizzled ham and a devil
+that Pyecroft made out of sardines, anchovies, and French mustard
+smashed together with a spanner—showed me his few and simple navigating
+tools, and took an observation. Morgan, the signaller, let me hold the
+chamois leathers while he cleaned the searchlight (we seemed to be
+better equipped with electricity than most of our class), that lived
+under a bulbous umbrella-cover amidship. Then Pyecroft and Morgan,
+standing easy, talked together of the King’s Service as reformers and
+revolutionists, so notably, that were I not engaged on this tale I
+would, for its conclusion, substitute theirs.
+
+I would speak of Hinchcliffe—Henry Salt Hinchcliffe, first-class
+engine-room artificer, and genius in his line, who was prouder of
+having taken part in the Hat Crusade in his youth than of all his
+daring, his skill, and his nickel-steel nerve. I consorted with him for
+an hour in the packed and dancing engine-room, when Moorshed suggested
+“whacking her up” to eighteen knots, to see if she would stand it. The
+floor was ankle-deep in a creamy batter of oil and water; each moving
+part flicking more oil in zoetrope-circles, and the gauges invisible
+for their dizzy chattering on the chattering steel bulkhead. Leading
+stoker Grant, said to be a bigamist, an ox-eyed man smothered in hair,
+took me to the stokehold and planted me between a searing white furnace
+and some hell-hot iron plate for fifteen minutes, while I listened to
+the drone of fans and the worry of the sea without, striving to wrench
+all that palpitating firepot wide open.
+
+Then I came on deck and watched Moorshed—revolving in his orbit from
+the canvas bustle and torpedo-tubes aft, by way of engine-room,
+conning-tower, and wheel, to the doll’s house of a foc’sle—learned in
+experience withheld from me, moved by laws beyond my knowledge,
+authoritative, entirely adequate, and yet, in heart, a child at his
+play. _I_ could not take ten steps along the crowded deck but I
+collided with some body or thing; but he and his satellites swung,
+passed, and returned on their vocations with the freedom and
+spaciousness of the well-poised stars.
+
+Even now I can at will recall every tone and gesture, with each
+dissolving picture inboard or overside—Hinchcliffe’s white arm buried
+to the shoulder in a hornet’s nest of spinning machinery; Moorshed’s
+halt and jerk to windward as he looked across the water; Pyecroft’s
+back bent over the Berthon collapsible boat, while he drilled three men
+in expanding it swiftly; the outflung white water at the foot of a
+homeward-bound Chinaman not a hundred yards away, and her
+shadow-slashed, rope-purfled sails bulging sideways like insolent
+cheeks; the ribbed and pitted coal-dust on our decks, all iridescent
+under the sun; the first filmy haze that paled the shadows of our
+funnels about lunch time; the gradual die-down and dulling over of the
+short, cheery seas; the sea that changed to a swell: the swell that
+crumbled up and ran allwhither oilily: the triumphant, almost audible
+roll inward of wandering fog-walls that had been stalking us for two
+hours, and—welt upon welt, chill as the grave—the drive of the
+interminable main fog of the Atlantic. We slowed to little more than
+steerage-way and lay listening. Presently a hand-bellows foghorn jarred
+like a corncrake, and there rattled out of the mist a big ship
+literally above us. We could count the rivets in her plates as we
+scrooped by, and the little drops of dew gathered below them.
+
+“Wonder why they’re always barks—always steel—always four-masted—an’
+never less than two thousand tons. But they are,” said Pyecroft. He was
+out on the turtle-backed bows of her; Moorshed was at the wheel, and
+another man worked the whistle.
+
+“This fog is the best thing could ha’ happened to us,” said Moorshed.
+“It gives us our chance to run in on the quiet…. Hal-lo!”
+
+A cracked bell rang. Clean and sharp (beautifully grained, too), a
+bowsprit surged over our starboard bow, the bobstay confidentially
+hooking itself into our forward rail.
+
+I saw Pyecroft’s arm fly up; heard at the same moment the severing of
+the tense rope, the working of the wheel, Moorshed’s voice down the
+tube saying, “Astern a little, please, Mr. Hinchcliffe!” and Pyecroft’s
+cry, “Trawler with her gear down! Look out for our propeller, Sir, or
+we’ll be wrapped up in the rope.”
+
+267 surged quickly under my feet, as the pressure of the
+downward-bearing bobstay was removed. Half-a-dozen men of the foc’sle
+had already thrown out fenders, and stood by to bear off a just visible
+bulwark.
+
+Still going astern, we touched slowly, broadside on, to a suggestive
+crunching of fenders, and I looked into the deck of a Brixham trawler,
+her crew struck dumb.
+
+“Any luck?” said Moorshed politely.
+
+“Not till we met yeou,” was the answer. “The Lard he saved us from they
+big ships to be spitted by the little wan. Where be’e gwine tu with our
+fine new bobstay?”
+
+“Yah! You’ve had time to splice it by now,” said Pyecroft with
+contempt.
+
+“Aie; but we’m all crushed to port like aigs. You was runnin’
+twenty-seven knots, us reckoned it. Didn’t us, Albert?”
+
+“Liker twenty-nine, an’ niver no whistle.”
+
+“Yes, we always do that. Do you want a tow to Brixham?” said Moorshed.
+
+A great silence fell upon those wet men of the sea.
+
+We lifted a little toward their side, but our silent, quick-breathing
+crew, braced and strained outboard, bore us off as though we had been a
+mere picket-boat.
+
+“What for?” said a puzzled voice.
+
+“For love; for nothing. You’ll be abed in Brixham by midnight.”
+
+“Yiss; but trawl’s down.”
+
+“No hurry. I’ll pass you a line and go ahead. Sing out when you’re
+ready.” A rope smacked on their deck with the word; they made it fast;
+we slid forward, and in ten seconds saw nothing save a few feet of the
+wire rope running into fog over our stern; but we heard the noise of
+debate.
+
+“Catch a Brixham trawler letting go of a free tow in a fog,” said
+Moorshed listening.
+
+“But what in the world do you want him for?” I asked.
+
+“Oh, he’ll came in handy later.”
+
+“Was that your first collision?”
+
+“Yes.” I shook hands with him in silence, and our tow hailed us.
+
+“Aie! yeou little man-o’-war!” The voice rose muffled and wailing.
+“After us’ve upped trawl, us’ll be glad of a tow. Leave line just slack
+abaout as ’tis now, and kip a good fine look-out be’ind ’ee.”
+
+“There’s an accommodatin’ blighter for you!” said Pyecroft. “Where does
+he expect we’ll be, with these currents evolutin’ like sailormen at the
+Agricultural Hall?”
+
+I left the bridge to watch the wire-rope at the stern as it drew out
+and smacked down upon the water. By what instinct or guidance 267 kept
+it from fouling her languidly flapping propeller, I cannot tell. The
+fog now thickened and thinned in streaks that bothered the eyes like
+the glare of intermittent flash-lamps; by turns granting us the vision
+of a sick sun that leered and fled, or burying all a thousand fathom
+deep in gulfs of vapours. At no time could we see the trawler though we
+heard the click of her windlass, the jar of her trawl-beam, and the
+very flap of the fish on her deck. Forward was Pyecroft with the lead;
+on the bridge Moorshed pawed a Channel chart; aft sat I, listening to
+the whole of the British Mercantile Marine (never a keel less)
+returning to England, and watching the fog-dew run round the bight of
+the tow back to its mother-fog.
+
+“Aie! yeou little man-o’-war! We’m done with trawl. You can take us
+home if you know the road.”
+
+“Right O!” said Moorshed. “We’ll give the fishmonger a run for his
+money. Whack her up, Mr. Hinchcliffe.”
+
+The next few hours completed my education. I saw that I ought to be
+afraid, but more clearly (this was when a liner hooted down the back of
+my neck) that any fear which would begin to do justice to the situation
+would, if yielded to, incapacitate me for the rest of my days. A shadow
+of spread sails, deeper than the darkening twilight, brooding over us
+like the wings of Azrael (Pyecroft said she was a Swede), and,
+miraculously withdrawn, persuaded me that there was a working chance
+that I should reach the beach—any beach—alive, if not dry; and (this
+was when an economical tramp laved our port-rail with her condenser
+water) were I so spared, I vowed I would tell my tale worthily.
+
+Thus we floated in space as souls drift through raw time. Night added
+herself to the fog, and I laid hold on my limbs jealously, lest they,
+too, should melt in the general dissolution.
+
+“Where’s that prevaricatin’ fishmonger?” said Pyecroft, turning a
+lantern on a scant yard of the gleaming wire-rope that pointed like a
+stick to my left. “He’s doin’ some fancy steerin’ on his own. No wonder
+Mr. Hincheliffe is blasphemious. The tow’s sheered off to starboard,
+Sir. He’ll fair pull the stern out of us.”
+
+Moorshed, invisible, cursed through the megaphone into invisibility.
+
+“Aie! yeou little man-o’-war!” The voice butted through the fog with
+the monotonous insistence of a strayed sheep’s. “We don’t all like the
+road you’m takin’. ’Tis no road to Brixham. You’ll be buckled up under
+Prawle Point by’mbye.”
+
+“Do you pretend to know where you are?” the megaphone roared.
+
+“Iss, I reckon; but there’s no pretence to me!”
+
+“O Peter!” said Pyecroft. “Let’s hang him at ’is own gaff.”
+
+I could not see what followed, but Moorshed said: “Take another man
+with you. If you lose the tow, you’re done. I’ll slow her down.”
+
+I heard the dinghy splash overboard ere I could cry “Murder!” Heard the
+rasp of a boat-hook along the wire-rope, and then, as it had been in my
+ear, Pyecroft’s enormous and jubilant bellow astern: “Why, he’s here!
+Right atop of us! The blighter ’as pouched half the tow, like a shark!”
+A long pause filled with soft Devonian bleatings. Then Pyecroft, _solo
+arpeggio_: “Rum? Rum? Rum? Is that all? Come an’ try it, uncle.”
+
+I lifted my face to where once God’s sky had been, and besought The
+Trues I might not die inarticulate, amid these half-worked miracles,
+but live at least till my fellow-mortals could be made one-millionth as
+happy as I was happy. I prayed and I waited, and we went slow—slow as
+the processes of evolution—till the boat-hook rasped again.
+
+“He’s not what you might call a scientific navigator,” said Pyecroft,
+still in the dinghy, but rising like a fairy from a pantomime trap.
+“The lead’s what ’e goes by mostly; rum is what he’s come for; an’
+Brixham is ’is ’ome. Lay on, Mucduff!”
+
+A white whiskered man in a frock-coat—as I live by bread, a
+frock-coat!—sea-boots, and a comforter crawled over the torpedo-tube
+into Moorshed’s grip and vanished forward.
+
+“’E’ll probably ’old three gallon (look sharp with that dinghy!); but
+’is nephew, left in charge of the _Agatha_, wants two bottles
+command-allowance. You’re a tax-payer, Sir. Do you think that
+excessive?”
+
+“Lead there! Lead!” rang out from forward.
+
+“Didn’t I say ’e wouldn’t understand compass deviations? Watch him
+close. It’ll be worth it!”
+
+As I neared the bridge I heard the stranger say: “Let me zmell un!” and
+to his nose was the lead presented by a trained man of the King’s Navy.
+
+“I’ll tell ’ee where to goo, if yeou’ll tell your donkey-man what to
+du. I’m no hand wi’ steam.” On these lines we proceeded miraculously,
+and, under Moorshed’s orders—I was the fisherman’s Ganymede, even as
+“M. de C.” had served the captain—I found both rum and curaçoa in a
+locker, and mixed them equal bulk in an enamelled iron cup.
+
+“Now we’m just abeam o’ where we should be,” he said at last, “an’ here
+we’ll lay till she lifts. I’d take ’e in for another bottle—and wan for
+my nevvy; but I reckon yeou’m shart-allowanced for rum. That’s nivver
+no Navy rum yeou’m give me. Knowed ’ee by the smack tu un. Anchor now!”
+
+I was between Pyecroft and Moorshed on the bridge, and heard them
+spring to vibrating attention at my side. A man with a lead a few feet
+to port caught the panic through my body, and checked like a wild boar
+at gaze, for not far away an unmistakable ship’s bell was ringing. It
+ceased, and another began.
+
+“Them!” said Pyecroft. “Anchored!”
+
+“More!” said our pilot, passing me the cup, and I filled it. The
+trawler astern clattered vehemently on her bell. Pyecroft with a jerk
+of his arm threw loose the forward three-pounder. The bar of the
+back-sight was heavily blobbed with dew; the foresight was invisible.
+
+“No—they wouldn’t have their picket-boats out in this weather, though
+they ought to.” He returned the barrel to its crotch slowly.
+
+“Be yeou gwine to anchor?” said Macduff, smacking his lips, “or be yeou
+gwine straight on to Livermead Beach?”
+
+“Tell him what we’re driving at. Get it into his head somehow,” said
+Moorshed; and Pyecroft, snatching the cup from me, enfolded the old man
+with an arm and a mist of wonderful words.
+
+“And if you pull it off,” said Moorshed at the last, “I’ll give you a
+fiver.”
+
+“Lard! What’s fivers to me, young man? My nevvy, he likes ’em; but I do
+cherish more on fine drink than filthy lucre any day o’ God’s good
+weeks. Leave goo my arm, yeou common sailorman! I tall ’ee, gentlemen,
+I hain’t the ram-faced, ruddle-nosed old fule yeou reckon I be. Before
+the mast I’ve fared in my time; fisherman I’ve been since I seed the
+unsense of sea-dangerin’. Baccy and spirits—yiss, an’ cigars too, I’ve
+run a plenty. I’m no blind harse or boy to be coaxed with your
+forty-mile free towin’ and rum atop of all. There’s none more sober to
+Brix’am this tide, I don’t care who ’tis—than me. _I_ know—_I_ know.
+Yander’m two great King’s ships. Yeou’m wishful to sink, burn, and
+destroy they while us kips ’em busy sellin’ fish. No need tall me so
+twanty taime over. Us’ll find they ships! Us’ll find ’em, if us has to
+break our fine new bowsprit so close as Crump’s bull’s horn!”
+
+“Good egg!” quoth Moorshed, and brought his hand down on the wide
+shoulders with the smack of a beaver’s tail.
+
+“Us’ll go look for they by hand. Us’ll give they something to play
+upon; an’ do ’ee deal with them faithfully, an’ may the Lard have mercy
+on your sowls! Amen. Put I in dinghy again.”
+
+The fog was as dense as ever—we moved in the very womb of night—but I
+cannot recall that I took the faintest note of it as the dinghy, guided
+by the tow-rope, disappeared toward the _Agatha_, Pyecroft rowing. The
+bell began again on the starboard bow.
+
+“We’re pretty near,” said Moorshed, slowing down. “Out with the
+Berthon. (_We’ll_ sell ’em fish, too.) And if any one rows Navy-stroke,
+I’ll break his jaw with the tiller. Mr. Hinchcliffe (this down the
+tube), “you’ll stay here in charge with Gregory and Shergold and the
+engine-room staff. Morgan stays, too, for signalling purposes.” A deep
+groan broke from Morgan’s chest, but he said nothing. “If the fog thins
+and you’re seen by any one, keep’em quiet with the signals. I can’t
+think of the precise lie just now, but _you_ can, Morgan.”
+
+“Yes, Sir.”
+
+“Suppose their torpedo-nets are down?” I whispered, shivering with
+excitement.
+
+“If they’ve been repairing minor defects all day, they won’t have any
+one to spare from the engine-room, and ‘Out nets!’ is a job for the
+whole ship’s company. I expect they’ve trusted to the fog—like us.
+Well, Pyecroft?”
+
+That great soul had blown up on to the bridge like a feather. “’Ad to
+see the first o’ the rum into the _Agathites_, Sir. They was a bit
+jealous o’ their commandin’ officer comin’ ’ome so richly lacquered,
+and at first the _conversazione_ languished, as you might say. But they
+sprang to attention ere I left. Six sharp strokes on the bells, if any
+of ’em are sober enough to keep tally, will be the signal that our
+consort ’as cast off her tow an’ is manceuvrin’ on ’er own.”
+
+“Right O! Take Laughton with you in the dinghy. Put that Berthon over
+quietly there! Are you all right, Mr. Hinchcliffe?”
+
+I stood back to avoid the rush of half-a-dozen shadows dropping into
+the Berthon boat. A hand caught me by the slack of my garments, moved
+me in generous arcs through the night, and I rested on the bottom of
+the dinghy.
+
+“I want you for _prima facie_ evidence, in case the vaccination don’t
+take,” said Pyecroft in my ear. “Push off, Alf!”
+
+The last bell-ringing was high overhead. It was followed by six little
+tinkles from the _Agatha_, the roar of her falling anchor, the clash of
+pans, and loose shouting.
+
+“Where be gwine tu? Port your ’ellum. Aie! you mud-dredger in the
+fairway, goo astern! Out boats! She’ll sink us!”
+
+A clear-cut Navy voice drawled from the clouds: “Quiet! you gardeners
+there. This is the _Cryptic_ at anchor.”
+
+“Thank you for the range,” said Pyecroft, and paddled gingerly. “Feel
+well out in front of you, Alf. Remember your fat fist is our only
+Marconi installation.” The voices resumed:
+
+“Bournemouth steamer he says she be.”
+
+“Then where be Brixham Harbor?”
+
+“Damme, I’m a tax-payer tu. They’ve no right to cruise about this way.
+I’ll have the laa on ’ee if anything carries away.”
+
+Then the man-of-war:
+
+“Short on your anchor! Heave short, you howling maniacs! You’ll get
+yourselves smashed in a minute if you drift.”
+
+The air was full of these and other voices as the dinghy, checking,
+swung. I passed one hand down Laughton’s stretched arm and felt an iron
+gooseneck and a foot or two of a backward-sloping torpedo-net boom. The
+other hand I laid on broad, cold iron—even the flanks of H.M.S.
+_Cryptic_, which is twelve thousand tons.
+
+I heard a scrubby, raspy sound, as though Pyecroft had chosen that hour
+to shave, and I smelled paint. “Drop aft a bit, Alf; we’ll put a
+stencil under the stern six-inch casements.”
+
+Boom by boom Laughlin slid the dinghy along the towering curved wall.
+Once, twice, and again we stopped, and the keen scrubbing sound was
+renewed.
+
+“Umpires are ’ard-’earted blighters, but this ought to convince ’em….
+Captain Panke’s stern-walk is now above our defenceless ’eads. Repeat
+the evolution up the starboard side, Alf.”
+
+I was only conscious that we moved around an iron world palpitating
+with life. Though my knowledge was all by touch—as, for example, when
+Pyecroft led my surrendered hand to the base of some bulging sponson,
+or when my palm closed on the knife-edge of the stem and patted it
+timidly—yet I felt lonely and unprotected as the enormous, helpless
+ship was withdrawn, and we drifted away into the void where voices
+sang:
+
+Tom Pearce, Tom Pearce, lend me thy gray mare,
+All along, out along, down along lea!
+I want for to go to Widdicombe Fair
+With Bill Brewer, Sam Sewer, Peter Gurney, Harry Hawke,
+Old Uncle Tom Cobley an’ all!
+
+
+“That’s old Sinbad an’ ’is little lot from the _Agatha_! Give way, Alf!
+_You_ might sing somethin’, too.”
+
+“I’m no burnin’ Patti. Ain’t there noise enough for you, Pye?”
+
+“Yes, but it’s only amateurs. Give me the tones of ’earth and ’ome. Ha!
+List to the blighter on the ’orizon sayin’ his prayers, Navy-fashion.
+’Eaven ’elp me argue that way when I’m a warrant-officer!”
+
+We headed with little lapping strokes toward what seemed to be a
+fair-sized riot.
+
+“An’ I’ve ’eard the _Devolution_ called a happy ship, too,” said
+Pyecroft. “Just shows ’ow a man’s misled by prejudice. She’s
+peevish—that’s what she is—nasty-peevish. Prob’ly all because the
+_Agathites_ are scratching ’er paint. Well, rub along, Alf. I’ve got
+the lymph!”
+
+A voice, which Mr. Pyecroft assured me belonged to a chief carpenter,
+was speaking through an aperture (starboard bow twelve-pounder on the
+lower deck). He did not wish to purchase any fish, even at grossly
+reduced rates. Nobody wished to buy any fish. This ship was the
+_Devolution_ at anchor, and desired no communication with shore boats.
+
+“Mark how the Navy ’olds it’s own. He’s sober. The _Agathites_ are not,
+as you might say, an’ yet they can’t live with ’im. It’s the discipline
+that does it. ’Ark to the bald an’ unconvincin’ watch-officer chimin’
+in. I wonder where Mr. Moorshed has got to?”
+
+We drifted down the _Devolution’s_ side, as we had drifted down her
+sister’s; and we dealt with her in that dense gloom as we had dealt
+with her sister.
+
+“Whai! ’Tis a man-o’-war, after all! I can see the captain’s whisker
+all gilt at the edges! We took ’ee for the Bournemouth steamer. Three
+cheers for the real man-o’-war!”
+
+That cry came from under the _Devolution’s_ stern. Pyecroft held
+something in his teeth, for I heard him mumble, “Our Mister Moorshed!”
+
+Said a boy’s voice above us, just as we dodged a jet of hot water from
+some valve: “I don’t half like that cheer. If I’d been the old man I’d
+ha’ turned loose the quick-firers at the first go-off. Aren’t they
+rowing Navy-stroke, yonder?”
+
+“True,” said Pyecroft, listening to retreating oars. “It’s time to go
+’ome when snotties begin to think. The fog’s thinnin’, too.”
+
+I felt a chill breath on my forehead, and saw a few feet of the steel
+stand out darker than the darkness, disappear—it was then the dinghy
+shot away from it—and emerge once more.
+
+“Hallo! what boat’s that?” said the voice suspiciously.
+
+“Why, I do believe it’s a real man-o’-war, after all,” said Pyecroft,
+and kicked Laughton.
+
+“What’s that for?” Laughton was no dramatist.
+
+“Answer in character, you blighter! Say somethin’ opposite.”
+
+“What boat’s _thatt_?” The hail was repeated.
+
+“What do yee say-ay?” Pyecroft bellowed, and, under his breath to me:
+“Give us a hand.”
+
+“It’s called the _Marietta_—F. J. Stokes—Torquay,” I began,
+quaveringly. “At least, that’s the name on the name-board. I’ve been
+dining—on a yacht.”
+
+“I see.” The voice shook a little, and my way opened before me with
+disgraceful ease.
+
+“Yesh. Dining private yacht. _Eshmesheralda_. I belong to Torquay Yacht
+Club. _Are_ you member Torquay Yacht Club?”
+
+“You’d better go to bed, Sir. Good-night.” We slid into the rapidly
+thinning fog.
+
+“Dig out, Alf. Put your _nix mangiare_ back into it. The fog’s peelin’
+off like a petticoat. Where’s Two Six Seven?”
+
+“I can’t see her,” I replied, “but there’s a light low down ahead.”
+
+“The _Agatha_!” They rowed desperately through the uneasy dispersal of
+the fog for ten minutes and ducked round the trawler’s bow.
+
+“Well, Emanuel means ‘God with us’—so far.” Pyecroft wiped his brow,
+laid a hand on the low rail, and as he boosted me up to the trawler, I
+saw Moorshed’s face, white as pearl in the thinning dark.
+
+“Was it all right?” said he, over the bulwarks.
+
+“Vaccination ain’t in it. She’s took beautiful. But where’s 267, Sir?”
+Pyecroft replied.
+
+“Gone. We came here as the fog lifted. I gave the _Devolution_ four.
+Was that you behind us?”
+
+“Yes, sir; but I only got in three on the _Devolution_. I gave the
+_Cryptic_ nine, though. They’re what you might call more or less
+vaccinated.”
+
+He lifted me inboard, where Moorshed and six pirates lay round the
+_Agatha’s_ hatch. There was a hint of daylight in the cool air.
+
+“Where is the old man?” I asked.
+
+“Still selling ’em fish, I suppose. He’s a darling! But I wish I could
+get this filthy paint off my hands. Hallo! What the deuce is the
+_Cryptic_ signalling?”
+
+A pale masthead light winked through the last of the fog. It was
+answered by a white pencil to the southward.
+
+“Destroyer signalling with searchlight.” Pyecroft leaped on the
+stern-rail. “The first part is private signals. Ah! now she’s Morsing
+against the fog. ‘P-O-S-T—yes, ‘postpone’—‘D-E-P- (go on)!
+departure—till—further—orders—which—will—be com (he’s dropped the other
+m) unicated—verbally. End,’. He swung round. “_Cryptic_ is now
+answering: ‘Ready—proceed—immediately.
+What—news—promised—destroyer—flotilla?’”
+
+“Hallo!” said Moorshed. “Well, never mind, They’ll come too late.”
+
+“Whew! That’s some ’igh-born suckling on the destroyer. Destroyer
+signals: ‘Care not. All will be known later.’ What merry beehive’s
+broken loose now?”
+
+“What odds! We’ve done our little job.”
+
+“Why—why—it’s Two Six Seven!”
+
+Here Pyecroft dropped from the rail among the fishy nets and shook the
+_Agatha_ with heavings. Moorshed cast aside his cigarette, looked over
+the stern, and fell into his subordinate’s arms. I heard the guggle of
+engines, the rattle of a little anchor going over not a hundred yards
+away, a cough, and Morgan’s subdued hail. … So far as I remember, it
+was Laughton whom I hugged; but the men who hugged me most were
+Pyecroft and Moorshed, adrift among the fishy nets.
+
+There was no semblance of discipline in our flight over the _Agatha’s_
+side, nor, indeed, were ordinary precautions taken for the common
+safety, because (I was in the Berthon) they held that patent boat open
+by hand for the most part. We regained our own craft, cackling like
+wild geese, and crowded round Moorshed and Hinchcliffe. Behind us the
+_Agatha’s_ boat, returning from her fish-selling cruise, yelled: “Have
+’ee done the trick? Have ’ee done the trick?” and we could only shout
+hoarsely over the stern, guaranteeing them rum by the hold-full.
+
+“Fog got patchy here at 12:27,” said Henry Salt Hinchcliffe, growing
+clearer every instant in the dawn. “Went down to Brixham Harbour to
+keep out of the road. Heard whistles to the south and went to look. I
+had her up to sixteen good. Morgan kept on shedding private Red Fleet
+signals out of the signal-book, as the fog cleared, till we was
+answered by three destroyers. Morgan signalled ’em by searchlight:
+‘Alter course to South Seventeen East, so as not to lose time.’ They
+came round quick. We kept well away—on their port beam—and Morgan gave
+’em their orders.” He looked at Morgan and coughed.
+
+“The signalman, acting as second in command,” said Morgan, swelling,
+“then informed destroyer flotilla that _Cryptic_ and _Devolution_ had
+made good defects, and, in obedience to Admiral’s supplementary orders
+(I was afraid they might suspect that, but they didn’t), had proceeded
+at seven knots at 11:23 P.M. to rendezvous near Channel Islands, seven
+miles N.N.W. the Casquet light. (I’ve rendezvoused there myself, Sir.)
+Destroyer flotilla would therefore follow cruisers and catch up with
+them on their course. Destroyer flotilla then dug out on course
+indicated, all funnels sparking briskly.”
+
+“Who were the destroyers?”
+
+“_Wraith, Kobbold, Stiletto_, Lieutenant-Commander A. L. Hignett,
+acting under Admiral’s orders to escort cruisers received off the
+Dodman at 7 P.M. They’d come slow on account of fog.”
+
+“Then who were you?”
+
+“We were the _Afrite_, port-engine broke down, put in to Torbay, and
+there instructed by _Cryptic_, previous to her departure with
+_Devolution_) to inform Commander Hignett of change of plans.
+Lieutenant-Commander Hignett signalled that our meeting was quite
+providential. After this we returned to pick up our commanding officer,
+and being interrogated by _Cryptic_, marked time signalling as
+requisite, which you may have seen. The _Agatha_ representing the last
+known rallying-point—or, as I should say, pivot-ship of the
+evolution—it was decided to repair to the _Agatha_ at conclusion of
+manœuvre.”
+
+We breathed deeply, all of us, but no one spoke a word till Moorshed
+said: “Is there such a thing as one fine big drink aboard this one fine
+big battleship?”
+
+“Can do, sir,” said Pyecroft, and got it. Beginning with Mr. Moorshed
+and ending with myself, junior to the third first-class stoker, we
+drank, and it was as water of the brook, that two and a half inches of
+stiff, treacly, Navy rum. And we looked each in the other’s face, and
+we nodded, bright-eyed, burning with bliss.
+
+Moorshed walked aft to the torpedo-tubes and paced back and forth, a
+captain victorious on his own quarterdeck; and the triumphant day broke
+over the green-bedded villas of Torquay to show us the magnitude of our
+victory. There lay the cruisers (I have reason to believe that they had
+made good their defects). They were each four hundred and forty feet
+long and sixty-six wide; they held close upon eight hundred men apiece,
+and they had cost, say, a million and a half the pair. And they were
+ours, and they did not know it. Indeed, the _Cryptic_, senior ship, was
+signalling vehement remarks to our address, which we did not notice.
+
+“If you take these glasses, you’ll get the general run o’ last night’s
+vaccination,” said Pyecroft. “Each one represents a torpedo got ’ome,
+as you might say.”
+
+I saw on the _Cryptic’s_ port side, as she lay half a mile away across
+the glassy water, four neat white squares in outline, a white blur in
+the centre.
+
+“There are five more to starboard. ’Ere’s the original!” He handed me a
+paint-dappled copper stencil-plate, two feet square, bearing in the
+centre the six-inch initials, “G.M.”
+
+“Ten minutes ago I’d ha’ eulogised about that little trick of ours, but
+Morgan’s performance has short-circuited me. Are you happy, Morgan?”
+
+“Bustin’,” said the signalman briefly.
+
+“You may be. Gawd forgive you, Morgan, for as Queen ’Enrietta said to
+the ’ousemaid, _I_ never will. I’d ha’ given a year’s pay for ten
+minutes o’ your signallin’ work this mornin’.”
+
+“I wouldn’t ’ave took it up,” was the answer. “Perishin’ ’Eavens above!
+Look at the _Devolution’s_ semaphore!” Two black wooden arms waved from
+the junior ship’s upper bridge. “They’ve seen it.”
+
+“_The_ mote _on_ their neighbour’s beam, of course,” said Pyecroft, and
+read syllable by syllable: “‘Captain Malan to Captain Panke.
+Is—sten—cilled frieze your starboard side new Admiralty regulation, or
+your Number One’s private expense?’ Now _Cryptic_ is saying, ‘Not
+understood.’ Poor old _Crippy_, the _Devolute’s_ raggin’ ’er sore. ‘Who
+is G.M.?’ she says. That’s fetched the _Cryptic_. She’s answerin’: ‘You
+ought to know. Examine own paintwork.’ Oh, Lord! they’re both on to it
+now. This is balm. This is beginning to be balm. I forgive you,
+Morgan!”
+
+Two frantic pipes twittered. From either cruiser a whaler dropped into
+the water and madly rowed round the ship: as a gay-coloured hoist rose
+to the _Cryptic’s_ yardarm: “Destroyer will close at once. Wish to
+speak by semaphore.” Then on the bridge semaphore itself: “Have been
+trying to attract your attention last half hour. Send commanding
+officer aboard at once.”
+
+“Our attention? After all the attention we’ve given ’er, too,” said
+Pyecroft. “What a greedy old woman!” To Moorshed: “Signal from the
+_Cryptic_, Sir.”
+
+“Never mind that!” said the boy, peering through his glasses. “Our
+dinghy quick, or they’ll paint our marks out. Come along!”
+
+By this time I was long past even hysteria. I remember Pyecroft’s
+bending back, the surge of the driven dinghy, a knot of amazed faces as
+we skimmed the _Cryptic’s_ ram, and the dropped jaw of the midshipman
+in her whaler when we barged fairly into him.
+
+“Mind my paint!” he yelled.
+
+“You mind mine, snotty,” said Moorshed. “I was all night putting these
+little ear-marks on you for the umpires to sit on. Leave ’em alone.”
+
+We splashed past him to the _Devolution’s_ boat, where sat no one less
+than her first lieutenant, a singularly unhandy-looking officer.
+
+“What the deuce is the meaning of this?” he roared, with an accusing
+forefinger.
+
+“You’re sunk, that’s all. You’ve been dead half a tide.”
+
+“Dead, am I? I’ll show you whether I’m dead or not, Sir!”
+
+“Well, you may be a survivor,” said Moorshed ingratiatingly, “though it
+isn’t at all likely.”
+
+The officer choked for a minute. The midshipman crouched up in stern
+said, half aloud: “Then I _was_ right—last night.”
+
+“Yesh,” I gasped from the dinghy’s coal-dust. “Are you member Torquay
+Yacht Club?”
+
+“Hell!” said the first lieutenant, and fled away. The _Cryptic’s_ boat
+was already at that cruiser’s side, and semaphores flicked zealously
+from ship to ship. We floated, a minute speck, between the two hulls,
+while the pipes went for the captain’s galley on the _Devolution_.
+
+“That’s all right,” said Moorshed. “Wait till the gangway’s down and
+then board her decently. We oughtn’t to be expected to climb up a ship
+we’ve sunk.”
+
+Pyecroft lay on his disreputable oars till Captain Malan,
+full-uniformed, descended the _Devolution’s_ side. With due
+compliments—not acknowledged, I grieve to say—we fell in behind his
+sumptuous galley, and at last, upon pressing invitation, climbed, black
+as sweeps all, the lowered gangway of the _Cryptic_. At the top stood
+as fine a constellation of marine stars as ever sang together of a
+morning on a King’s ship. Every one who could get within earshot found
+that his work took him aft. I counted eleven able seamen polishing the
+breechblock of the stern nine-point-two, four marines zealously
+relieving each other at the life-buoy, six call-boys, nine midshipmen
+of the watch, exclusive of naval cadets, and the higher ranks past all
+census.
+
+“If I die o’ joy,” said Pyecroft behind his hand, “remember I died
+forgivin’ Morgan from the bottom of my ’eart, because, like Martha, we
+’ave scoffed the better part. You’d better try to come to attention,
+Sir.”
+
+Moorshed ran his eye voluptuously over the upper deck battery, the huge
+beam, and the immaculate perspective of power. Captain Panke and
+Captain Malan stood on the well-browned flash-plates by the dazzling
+hatch. Precisely over the flagstaff I saw Two Six Seven astern, her
+black petticoat half hitched up, meekly floating on the still sea. She
+looked like the pious Abigail who has just spoken her mind, and, with
+folded hands, sits thanking Heaven among the pieces. I could almost
+have sworn that she wore black worsted gloves and had a little dry
+cough. But it was Captain Panke that coughed so austerely. He favoured
+us with a lecture on uniform, deportment, and the urgent necessity of
+answering signals from a senior ship. He told us that he disapproved of
+masquerading, that he loved discipline, and would be obliged by an
+explanation. And while he delivered himself deeper and more deeply into
+our hands, I saw Captain Malan wince. He was watching Moorshed’s eye.
+
+“I belong to Blue Fleet, Sir. I command Number Two Six Seven,” said
+Moorshed, and Captain Planke was dumb. “Have you such a thing as a
+frame-plan of the _Cryptic_ aboard?” He spoke with winning politeness
+as he opened a small and neatly folded paper.
+
+“I have, sir.” The little man’s face was working with passion.
+
+“Ah! Then I shall be able to show you precisely where you were
+torpedoed last night in”—he consulted the paper with one finely arched
+eyebrow—“in nine places. And since the _Devolution_ is, I understand, a
+sister ship”—he bowed slightly toward Caplain Malan—“the same plan——”
+
+I had followed the clear precision of each word with a dumb amazement
+which seemed to leave my mind abnormally clear. I saw Captain Malan’s
+eye turn from Moorshed and seek that of the _Cryptic’s_ commander. And
+he telegraphed as clearly as Moorshed was speaking: “My dear friend and
+brother officer, _I_ know Panke; _you_ know Panke; _we_ know Panke—good
+little Panke! In less than three Greenwich chronometer seconds Panke
+will make an enormous ass of himself, and I shall have to put things
+straight, unless you who are a man of tact and discernment——”
+
+“Carry on.” The Commander’s order supplied the unspoken word. The
+cruiser boiled about her business around us; watch and watch officers
+together, up to the limit of noise permissible. I saw Captain Malan
+turn to his senior.
+
+“Come to my cabin!” said Panke gratingly, and led the way. Pyecroft and
+I stayed still.
+
+“It’s all right,” said Pyecroft. “They daren’t leave us loose aboard
+for one revolution,” and I knew that he had seen what I had seen.
+
+“You, too!” said Captain Malan, returning suddenly. We passed the
+sentry between white enamelled walls of speckless small arms, and since
+that Royal Marine Light infantryman was visibly suffocating from
+curiosity, I winked at him. We entered the chintz-adorned,
+photo-speckled, brass-fendered, tile-stoved main cabin. Moorshed, with
+a ruler, was demonstrating before the frame-plan of H.M.S. _Cryptic_.
+
+“—making nine stencils in all of my initials G.M.,” I heard him say.
+“Further, you will find attached to your rudder, and you, too, Sir”—he
+bowed to Captain Malan yet again—“one fourteen-inch Mark IV practice
+torpedo, as issued to first-class torpedo-boats, properly buoyed. I
+have sent full particulars by telegraph to the umpires, and have
+requested them to judge on the facts as they—appear.” He nodded through
+the large window to the stencilled _Devolution_ awink with brass work
+in the morning sun, and ceased.
+
+Captain Panke faced us. I remembered that this was only play, and
+caught myself wondering with what keener agony comes the real defeat.
+
+“Good God, Johnny!” he said, dropping his lower lip like a child, “this
+young pup says he has put us both out of action. Inconceivable—eh? My
+first command of one of the class. Eh? What shall we do with him? What
+shall we do with him—eh?”
+
+“As far as I can see, there’s no getting over the stencils,” his
+companion answered.
+
+“Why didn’t I have the nets down? Why didn’t I have the nets down?” The
+cry tore itself from Captain Panke’s chest as he twisted his hands.
+
+“I suppose we’d better wait and find out what the umpires will say. The
+Admiral won’t be exactly pleased.” Captain Malan spoke very soothingly.
+Moorshed looked out through the stern door at Two Six Seven. Pyecroft
+and I, at attention, studied the paintwork opposite. Captain Panke had
+dropped into his desk chair, and scribbled nervously at a blotting-pad.
+
+Just before the tension became unendurable, he looked at his junior for
+a lead. “What—what are you going to do about it, Johnny—eh?”
+
+“Well, if you don’t want him, I’m going to ask this young gentleman to
+breakfast, and then we’ll make and mend clothes till the umpires have
+decided.”
+
+Captain Panke flung out a hand swiftly.
+
+“Come with me,” said Captain Malan. “Your men had better go back in the
+dinghy to—their—own—ship.”
+
+“Yes, I think so,” said Moorshed, and passed out behind the captain. We
+followed at a respectful interval, waiting till they had ascended the
+ladder.
+
+Said the sentry, rigid as the naked barometer behind him: “For Gawd’s
+sake! ’Ere, come ’ere! For Gawd’s sake! What’s ’appened? Oh! come
+’_ere_ an’ tell.”
+
+“Tell? You?” said Pyecroft. Neither man’s lips moved, and the words
+were whispers: “Your ultimate illegitimate grandchildren might begin to
+understand, not you—nor ever will.”
+
+“Captain Malan’s galley away, Sir,” cried a voice above; and one
+replied: “Then get those two greasers into their dinghy and hoist the
+blue peter. We’re out of action.”
+
+“Can you do it, Sir?” said Pyecroft at the foot of the ladder. “Do you
+think it is in the English language, or do you not?”
+
+“I don’t think I can, but I’ll try. If it takes me two years, I’ll
+try.”
+
+
+There are witnesses who can testify that I have used no artifice. I
+have, on the contrary, cut away priceless slabs of _opus alexandrinum_.
+My gold I have lacquered down to dull bronze, my purples overlaid with
+sepia of the sea, and for hell-hearted ruby and blinding diamond I have
+substituted pale amethyst and mere jargoon. Because I would say again
+“Disregarding the inventions of the Marine Captain whose other name is
+Gubbins, let a plain statement suffice.”
+
+
+
+
+THE COMPREHENSION OF PRIVATE COPPER
+
+
+
+
+THE KING’S TASK
+
+
+After the sack of the City, when Rome was sunk to a name,
+In the years when the Lights were darkened, or ever Saint Wilfrid came.
+Low on the borders of Britain, the ancient poets sing,
+Between the cliff and the forest there ruled a Saxon king.
+
+Stubborn all were his people, a stark and a jealous horde—
+Not to be schooled by the cudgel, scarce to be cowed by the sword;
+Blithe to turn at their pleasure, bitter to cross in their mood,
+And set on the ways of their choosing as the hogs of Andred’s Wood …
+
+They made them laws in the Witan, the laws of flaying and fine,
+Folkland, common and pannage, the theft and the track of kine;
+Statutes of tun and of market for the fish and the malt and the meal,
+The tax on the Bramber packhorse and the tax on the Hastings keel.
+Over the graves of the Druids and over the wreck of Rome
+Rudely but deeply they bedded the plinth of the days to come.
+Behind the feet of the Legions and before the Northman’s ire,
+Rudely but greatly begat they the body of state and of shire.
+Rudely but greatly they laboured, and their labour stands till now
+If we trace on our ancient headlands the twist of their eight-ox plough.
+
+
+
+
+THE COMPREHENSION OF PRIVATE COPPER
+
+
+Private Copper’s father was a Southdown shepherd; in early youth Copper
+had studied under him. Five years’ army service had somewhat blunted
+Private Copper’s pastoral instincts, but it occurred to him as a memory
+of the Chalk that sheep, or in this case buck, do not move towards one
+across turf, or in this case, the Colesberg kopjes unless a stranger,
+or in this case an enemy, is in the neighbourhood. Copper, helmet
+back-first advanced with caution, leaving his mates of the picket full
+a mile behind. The picket, concerned for its evening meal, did not
+protest. A year ago it would have been an officer’s command, moving as
+such. To-day it paid casual allegiance to a Canadian, nominally a
+sergeant, actually a trooper of Irregular Horse, discovered
+convalescent in Naauwport Hospital, and forthwith employed on odd jobs.
+Private Copper crawled up the side of a bluish rock-strewn hill thinly
+fringed with brush atop, and remembering how he had peered at Sussex
+conies through the edge of furze-clumps, cautiously parted the dry
+stems before his face. At the foot of the long slope sat three farmers
+smoking. To his natural lust for tobacco was added personal wrath
+because spiky plants were pricking his belly, and Private Copper slid
+the backsight up to fifteen hundred yards….
+
+“Good evening, Khaki. Please don’t move,” said a voice on his left, and
+as he jerked his head round he saw entirely down the barrel of a
+well-kept Lee-Metford protruding from an insignificant tuft of thorn.
+Very few graven images have moved less than did Private Copper through
+the next ten seconds.
+
+“It’s nearer seventeen hundred than fifteen,” said a young man in an
+obviously ready-made suit of grey tweed, possessing himself of Private
+Copper’s rifle. “Thank _you_. We’ve got a post of thirty-seven men out
+yonder. You’ve eleven—eh? We don’t want to kill ’em. We have no quarrel
+with poor uneducated Khakis, and we do not want prisoners we do not
+keep. It is demoralising to both sides—eh?”
+
+Private Copper did not feel called upon to lay down the conduct of
+guerilla warfare. This dark-skinned, dark-haired, and dark-eyed
+stranger was his first intimate enemy. He spoke, allowing for a clipped
+cadence that recalled to Copper vague memories of Umballa, in precisely
+the same offensive accent that the young squire of Wilmington had used
+fifteen years ago when he caught and kicked Alf Copper, a rabbit in
+each pocket, out of the ditches of Cuckmere. The enemy looked Copper up
+and down, folded and re-pocketed a copy of an English weekly which he
+had been reading, and said: “You seem an inarticulate sort of
+swine—like the rest of them—eh?”
+
+“You,” said Copper, thinking, somehow, of the crushing answers he had
+never given to the young squire, “are a renegid. Why, you ain’t Dutch.
+You’re English, same as me.”
+
+“_No_, khaki. If you cannot talk civilly to a gentleman I will blow
+your head off.”
+
+Copper cringed, and the action overbalanced him so that he rolled some
+six or eight feet downhill, under the lee of a rough rock. His brain
+was working with a swiftness and clarity strange in all his experience
+of Alf Copper. While he rolled he spoke, and the voice from his own
+jaws amazed him: “If you did, ’twouldn’t make you any less of a
+renegid.” As a useful afterthought he added: “I’ve sprained my ankle.”
+
+The young man was at his side in a flash. Copper made no motion to
+rise, but, cross-legged under the rock, grunted: “’Ow much did old
+Krujer pay you for this? What was you wanted for at ’ome? Where did you
+desert from?”
+
+“Khaki,” said the young man, sitting down in his turn, “you are a shade
+better than your mates. You did not make much more noise than a yoke of
+oxen when you tried to come up this hill, but you are an ignorant
+diseased beast like the rest of your people—eh? When you were at the
+Ragged Schools did they teach you any history, Tommy—’istory I mean?”
+
+“Don’t need no schoolin’ to know a renegid,” said Copper. He had made
+three yards down the hill—out of sight, unless they could see through
+rocks, of the enemy’s smoking party.
+
+The young man laughed; and tossed the soldier a black sweating stick of
+“True Affection.” (Private Copper had not smoked a pipe for three
+weeks.)
+
+“_You_ don’t get this—eh?” said the young man. “_We_ do. We take it
+from the trains as we want it. You can keep the cake—you po-ah Tommee.”
+Copper rammed the good stuff into his long-cold pipe and puffed
+luxuriously. Two years ago the sister of gunner-guard De Souza, East
+India Railway, had, at a dance given by the sergeants to the Allahabad
+Railway Volunteers, informed Copper that she could not think of
+waltzing with “a poo-ah Tommee.” Private Copper wondered why that
+memory should have returned at this hour.
+
+“I’m going to waste a little trouble on you before I send you back to
+your picket _quite_ naked—eh? Then you can say how you were overpowered
+by twenty of us and fired off your last round—like the men we picked up
+at the drift playing cards at Stryden’s farm—eh? What’s your name—eh?”
+
+Private Copper thought for a moment of a far-away housemaid who might
+still, if the local postman had not gone too far, be interested in his
+fate. On the other hand, he was, by temperament, economical of the
+truth. “Pennycuik,” he said, “John Pennycuik.”
+
+“Thank you. Well, Mr. John Pennycuik, I’m going to teach you a little
+’istory, as you’d call it—eh?”
+
+“’Ow!” said Copper, stuffing his left hand in his mouth. “So long since
+I’ve smoked I’ve burned my ’and—an’ the pipe’s dropped too. No
+objection to my movin’ down to fetch it, is there—Sir?”
+
+“I’ve got you covered,” said the young man, graciously, and Private
+Copper, hopping on one leg, because of his sprain, recovered the pipe
+yet another three yards downhill and squatted under another rock
+slightly larger than the first. A roundish boulder made a pleasant rest
+for his captor, who sat cross-legged once more, facing Copper, his
+rifle across his knee, his hand on the trigger-guard.
+
+“Well, Mr. Pennycuik, as I was going to tell you. A little after you
+were born in your English workhouse, your kind, honourable, brave
+country, England, sent an English gentleman, who could not tell a lie,
+to say that so long as the sun rose and the rivers ran in their courses
+the Transvaal would belong to England. Did you ever hear that,
+khaki—eh?”
+
+“Oh no, Sir,” said Copper. This sentence about the sun and the rivers
+happened to be a very aged jest of McBride, the professional humorist
+of D Company, when they discussed the probable length of the war.
+Copper had thrown beef-tins at McBride in the grey dawn of many wet and
+dry camps for intoning it.
+
+“_Of_ course you would not. Now, mann, I tell you, listen.” He spat
+aside and cleared his throat. “Because of that little promise, my
+father he moved into the Transvaal and bought a farm—a little place of
+twenty or thirty thousand acres, don’t—you—know.”
+
+The tone, in spite of the sing-song cadence fighting with the laboured
+parody of the English drawl, was unbearably like the young Wilmington
+squire’s, and Copper found himself saying: “I ought to. I’ve ’elped
+burn some.”
+
+“Yes, you’ll pay for that later. _And_ he opened a store.”
+
+“Ho! Shopkeeper was he?”
+
+“The kind you call “Sir” and sweep the floor for, Pennycuik…. You see,
+in those days one used to believe in the British Government. My father
+did. _Then_ the Transvaal wiped thee earth with the English. They beat
+them six times running. You know _thatt_—eh?”
+
+“Isn’t what we’ve come ’ere for.”
+
+“_But_ my father (he knows better now) kept on believing in the
+English. I suppose it was the pretty talk about rivers and suns that
+cheated him—eh? Anyhow, he believed in his own country. Inn his own
+country. _So_—you see—he was a little startled when he found himself
+handed over to the Transvaal as a prisoner of war. That’s what it came
+to, Tommy—a prisoner of war. You know what that is—eh? England was too
+honourable and too gentlemanly to take trouble. There were no terms
+made for my father.”
+
+“So ’e made ’em ’imself. Useful old bird.” Private Copper sliced up
+another pipeful and looked out across the wrinkled sea of kopjes,
+through which came the roar of the rushing Orange River, so unlike
+quiet Cuckmere.
+
+The young man’s face darkened. “I think I shall sjambok you myself when
+I’ve quite done with you. _No_, my father (he was a fool) made no terms
+for eight years—ninety-six months—and for every day of them the
+Transvaal made his life hell for my father and—his people.”
+
+“I’m glad to hear that,” said the impenitent Copper.
+
+“Are you? You can think of it when I’m taking the skin off your
+back—eh?… My father, he lost everything—everything down to his
+self-respect. You don’t know what _thatt_ means—eh?”
+
+“Why?” said Copper. “I’m smokin’ baccy stole by a renegid. Why wouldn’t
+I know?”
+
+If it came to a flogging on that hillside there might be a chance of
+reprisals. Of course, he might be marched to the Boer camp in the next
+valley and there operated upon; but Army life teaches no man to cross
+bridges unnecessarily.
+
+“Yes, after eight years, my father, cheated by your bitch of a country,
+he found out who was the upper dog in South Africa.”
+
+“That’s me,” said Copper valiantly. “If it takes another ’alf century,
+it’s me an’ the likes of me.”
+
+“You? Heaven help you! You’ll be screaming at a wagon-wheel in an
+hour…. Then it struck my father that he’d like to shoot the people
+who’d betrayed him. You—you—_you_! He told his son all about it. He
+told him never to trust the English. He told him to do them all the
+harm he could. Mann, I tell you, I don’t want much telling. I was born
+in the Transvaal—I’m a burgher. If my father didn’t love the English,
+by the Lord, mann, I tell you, I hate them from the bottom of my soul.”
+
+The voice quavered and ran high. Once more, for no conceivable reason,
+Private Copper found his inward eye turned upon Umballa cantonments of
+a dry dusty afternoon, when the saddle-coloured son of a local
+hotel-keeper came to the barracks to complain of a theft of fowls. He
+saw the dark face, the plover’s-egg-tinted eyeballs, and the thin
+excited hands. Above all, he remembered the passionate, queerly-strung
+words. Slowly he returned to South Africa, using the very sentence his
+sergeant had used to the poultry man.
+
+“Go on with your complaint. I’m listenin’.”
+
+“Complaint! Complaint about _you_, you ox! We strip and kick your sort
+by thousands.”
+
+The young man rocked to and fro above the rifle, whose muzzle thus
+deflected itself from the pit of Private Copper’s stomach. His face was
+dusky with rage.
+
+“Yess, I’m a Transvaal burgher. It took us about twenty years to find
+out how rotten you were. _We_ know and you know it now. Your army—it is
+the laughing-stock of the Continent.” He tapped the newspaper in his
+pocket. “You think you’re going to win, you poor fools. Your
+people—your own people—your silly rotten fools of people will crawl out
+of it as they did after Majuba. They are beginning now. Look what your
+own working classes, the diseased, lying, drinking white stuff that you
+come out of, are saying.” He thrust the English weekly, doubled at the
+leading article, on Copper’s knee. “See what dirty dogs your masters
+are. They do not even back you in your dirty work. _We_ cleared the
+country down to Ladysmith—to Estcourt. We cleared the country down to
+Colesberg.”
+
+“Yes, we ’ad to clean up be’ind you. Messy, I call it.”
+
+“You’ve had to stop farm-burning because your people daren’t do it.
+They were afraid. You daren’t kill a spy. You daren’t shoot a spy when
+you catch him in your own uniform. You daren’t touch our loyall people
+in Cape Town! Your masters won’t let you. You will feed our women and
+children till we are quite ready to take them back. _You_ can’t put
+your cowardly noses out of the towns you say you’ve occupied. _You_
+daren’t move a convoy twenty miles. You think you’ve done something?
+You’ve done nothing, and you’ve taken a quarter of a million of men to
+do it! There isn’t a nigger in South Africa that doesn’t obey us if we
+lift our finger. You pay the stuff four pounds a month and they lie to
+you. _We_ flog ’em, as I shall flog you.”
+
+He clasped his hands together and leaned forward his out-thrust chin
+within two feet of Copper’s left, or pipe hand.
+
+“Yuss,” said Copper, “it’s a fair knock-out.” The fist landed to a hair
+on the chin-point, the neck snicked like a gun-lock, and the back of
+the head crashed on the boulder behind.
+
+Copper grabbed up both rifles, unshipped the cross-bandoliers, drew
+forth the English weekly, and picking up the lax hands, looked long and
+intently at the fingernails.
+
+“No! Not a sign of it there,” he said. “’Is nails are as clean as
+mine—but he talks just like ’em, though. And he’s a landlord too! A
+landed proprietor! Shockin’, I call it.”
+
+The arms began to flap with returning consciousness. Private Copper
+rose up and whispered: “If you open your head, I’ll bash it.” There was
+no suggestion of sprain in the flung-back left boot. “Now walk in front
+of me, both arms perpendicularly elevated. I’m only a third-class shot,
+so, if you don’t object, I’ll rest the muzzle of my rifle lightly but
+firmly on your collar-button—coverin’ the serviceable vertebree. If
+your friends see us thus engaged, you pray—’ard.”
+
+Private and prisoner staggered downhill. No shots broke the peace of
+the afternoon, but once the young man checked and was sick.
+
+“There’s a lot of things I could say to you,” Copper observed, at the
+close of the paroxysm, “but it doesn’t matter. Look ’ere, you call me
+‘pore Tommy’ again.”
+
+The prisoner hesitated.
+
+“Oh, I ain’t goin’ to do anythin’ _to_ you. I’m recon-noiterin’ in my
+own. Say ‘pore Tommy’ ’alf-a-dozen times.”
+
+The prisoner obeyed.
+
+“_That’s_ what’s been puzzlin’ me since I ’ad the pleasure o’ meetin’
+you,” said Copper. “You ain’t ’alf-caste, but you talk
+_chee-chee_—_pukka_ bazar chee-chee. _Pro_ceed.”
+
+“Hullo,” said the Sergeant of the picket, twenty minutes later, “where
+did you round him up?”
+
+“On the top o’ yonder craggy mounting. There’s a mob of ’em sitting
+round their Bibles seventeen ’undred yards (you said it was seventeen
+’undred?) t’other side—an’ I want some coffee.” He sat down on the
+smoke-blackened stones by the fire.
+
+“’Ow did you get ’im?” said McBride, professional humorist, quietly
+filching the English weekly from under Copper’s armpit.
+
+“On the chin—while ’e was waggin’ it at me.”
+
+“What is ’e? ’Nother Colonial rebel to be ’orribly disenfranchised, or
+a Cape Minister, or only a loyal farmer with dynamite in both boots.
+Tell us all about it, Burjer!”
+
+“You leave my prisoner alone,” said Private Copper. “’E’s ’ad losses
+an’ trouble; an’ it’s in the family too. ’E thought I never read the
+papers, so ’e kindly lent me his very own _Jerrold’s Weekly_—an’ ’e
+explained it to me as patronisin’ as a—as a militia subaltern doin’
+Railway Staff Officer. ’E’s a left-over from Majuba—one of the worst
+kind, an’ ’earin’ the evidence as I did, I don’t exactly blame ’im. It
+was this way.”
+
+To the picket Private Copper held forth for ten minutes on the
+life-history of his captive. Allowing for some purple patches, it was
+an absolute fair rendering.
+
+“But what I dis-liked was this baccy-priggin’ beggar, ’oo’s people, on
+’is own showin’, couldn’t ’ave been more than thirty or forty years in
+the coun—on this Gawd-forsaken dust-’eap, comin’ the squire over me.
+They’re all parsons—we know _that_, but parson _an’_ squire is a bit
+too thick for Alf Copper. Why, I caught ’im in the shameful act of
+tryin’ to start a aristocracy on a gun an’ a wagon an’ a _shambuk_!
+Yes; that’s what it was: a bloomin’ aristocracy.”
+
+“No, it weren’t,” said McBride, at length, on the dirt, above the
+purloined weekly. “You’re the aristocrat, Alf. Old _Jerrold’s_ givin’
+it you ’ot. You’re the uneducated ’ireling of a callous aristocracy
+which ’as sold itself to the ’Ebrew financier. Meantime, Ducky”—he ran
+his finger down a column of assorted paragraphs—“you’re slakin’ your
+brutal instincks in furious excesses. Shriekin’ women an’ desolated
+’omesteads is what you enjoy, Alf …, Halloa! What’s a smokin’
+’ektacomb?”
+
+“’Ere! Let’s look. ’Aven’t seen a proper spicy paper for a year. Good
+old _Jerrold’s!”_ Pinewood and Moppet, reservists, flung themselves on
+McBride’s shoulders, pinning him to the ground.
+
+“Lie over your own bloomin’ side of the bed, an’ we can all look,” he
+protested.
+
+“They’re only po-ah Tommies,” said Copper, apologetically, to the
+prisoner. “Po-ah unedicated Khakis. _They_ don’t know what they’re
+fightin’ for. They’re lookin’ for what the diseased, lying, drinkin’
+white stuff that they come from is sayin’ about ’em!”
+
+The prisoner set down his tin of coffee and stared helplessly round the
+circle.
+
+“I—I don’t understand them.”
+
+The Canadian sergeant, picking his teeth with a thorn, nodded
+sympathetically:
+
+“If it comes to that, _we_ don’t in my country!… Say, boys, when you’re
+through with your English mail you might’s well provide an escort for
+your prisoner. He’s waitin’.”
+
+“Arf a mo’, Sergeant,” said McBride, still reading.
+
+“’Ere’s Old Barbarity on the ramp again with some of ’is lady friends,
+’oo don’t like concentration camps. Wish they’d visit ours. Pinewood’s
+a married man. He’d know how to be’ave!”
+
+“Well, I ain’t goin’ to amuse my prisoner alone. ’E’s gettin’
+’omesick,” cried Copper. “One of you thieves read out what’s vexin’ Old
+Barbarity an’ ’is ’arem these days. You’d better listen, Burjer,
+because, afterwards, I’m goin’ to fall out an’ perpetrate those
+nameless barbarities all over you to keep up the reputation of the
+British Army.”
+
+From that English weekly, to bar out which a large and perspiring staff
+of Press censors toiled seven days of the week at Cape Town, did
+Pinewood of the Reserve read unctuously excerpts of the speeches of the
+accredited leaders of His Majesty’s Opposition. The night-picket
+arrived in the middle of it, but stayed entranced without paying any
+compliments, till Pinewood had entirely finished the leading article,
+and several occasional notes.
+
+“Gentlemen of the jury,” said Alf Copper, hitching up what war had left
+to him of trousers—“you’ve ’eard what ’e’s been fed up with. _Do_ you
+blame the beggar? ’Cause I don’t! … Leave ’im alone, McBride. He’s my
+first and only cap-ture, an’ I’m goin’ to walk ’ome with ’im, ain’t I,
+Ducky? … Fall in, Burjer. It’s Bermuda, or Umballa, or Ceylon for
+you—and I’d give a month’s pay to be in your little shoes.”
+
+As not infrequently happens, the actual moving off the ground broke the
+prisoner’s nerve. He stared at the tinted hills round him, gasped and
+began to struggle—kicking, swearing, weeping, and fluttering all
+together.
+
+“Pore beggar—oh pore, _pore_ beggar!” said Alf, leaning in on one side
+of him, while Pinewood blocked him on the other.
+
+“Let me go! Let me go! Mann, I tell you, let me go——”
+
+“’E screams like a woman!” said McBride. “They’ll ’ear ’im five miles
+off.”
+
+“There’s one or two ought to ’ear ’im—in England,” said Copper, putting
+aside a wildly waving arm.
+
+“Married, ain’t ’e?” said Pinewood. “I’ve seen ’em go like this
+before—just at the last. ’_Old_ on, old man, No one’s goin’ to ’urt
+you.”
+
+The last of the sun threw the enormous shadow of a kopje over the
+little, anxious, wriggling group.
+
+“Quit that,” said the Serjeant of a sudden. “You’re only making him
+worse. Hands _up_, prisoner! Now you get a holt of yourself, or this’ll
+go off.”
+
+And indeed the revolver-barrel square at the man’s panting chest seemed
+to act like a tonic; he choked, recovered himself, and fell in between
+Copper and Pinewood.
+
+As the picket neared the camp it broke into song that was heard among
+the officers’ tents:
+
+’E sent us ’is blessin’ from London town,
+    (The beggar that kep’ the cordite down,)
+But what do we care if ’e smile or frown,
+    The beggar that kep’ the cordite down?
+The mildly nefarious
+Wildly barbarious
+    Beggar that kept the cordite down!
+
+
+Said a captain a mile away: “Why are they singing _that?_ We haven’t
+had a mail for a month, have we?”
+
+An hour later the same captain said to his servant: “Jenkins, I
+understand the picket have got a—got a newspaper off a prisoner to-day.
+I wish you could lay hands on it, Jenkins. Copy of the _Times_, I
+think.”
+
+“Yes, Sir. Copy of the _Times_, Sir,” said Jenkins, without a quiver,
+and went forth to make his own arrangements.
+
+“Copy of the _Times_,” said the blameless Alf, from beneath his
+blanket. “I ain’t a member of the Soldier’s Institoot. Go an’ look in
+the reg’mental Readin’-room—Veldt Row, Kopje Street, second turnin’ to
+the left between ’ere an’ Naauwport.”
+
+Jenkins summarised briefly in a tense whisper the thing that Alf Copper
+need not be.
+
+“But my particular copy of the _Times_ is specially pro’ibited by the
+censor from corruptin’ the morals of the Army. Get a written order from
+K. o’ K., properly countersigned, an’ I’ll think about it.”
+
+“I’ve got all _you_ want,” said Jenkins. “’Urry up. I want to ’ave a
+squint myself.”
+
+Something gurgled in the darkness, and Private Copper fell back
+smacking his lips.
+
+“Gawd bless my prisoner, and make me a good boy. Amen. ’Ere you are,
+Jenkins. It’s dirt cheap at a tot.”
+
+
+
+
+STEAM TACTICS
+
+
+
+
+THE NECESSITARIAN
+
+
+I know not in whose hands are laid
+    To empty upon earth
+From unsuspected ambuscade
+    The very Urns of Mirth:
+
+Who bids the Heavenly Lark arise
+    And cheer our solemn round—
+The Jest beheld with streaming eyes
+    And grovellings on the ground;
+
+Who joins the flats of Time and Chance
+    Behind the prey preferred,
+And thrones on Shrieking Circumstance
+    The Sacredly Absurd,
+
+Till Laughter, voiceless through excess.
+    Waves mute appeal and sore,
+Above the midriff’s deep distress,
+    For breath to laugh once more.
+
+No creed hath dared to hail him Lord,
+    No raptured choirs proclaim,
+And Nature’s strenuous Overword
+    Hath nowhere breathed his name.
+
+Yet, may it be, on wayside jape,
+    The selfsame Power bestows
+The selfsame power as went to shape
+    His Planet or His Rose.
+
+
+
+
+STEAM TACTICS
+
+
+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 forewheels.
+
+“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 steam-pinnace 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.
+
+“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 remarkable 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 manœuvred 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 engine-room 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 11-3/4 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.”
+
+“Anytime?”
+
+“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 back-fired 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 port-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 South-Easter at Simon’s Town
+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 common-sense,” 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 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.
+
+“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 sheep-dog 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 1,200 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 engine-room! 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 lunch-basket 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 so 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.
+
+“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.
+
+“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 tax-payer, 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 turnin’ up.”
+
+“Don’t you fret about things turnin’ 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.
+
+“_Pre_cisely.”
+
+“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.”
+
+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
+water-pump 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.
+
+“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 steam-kettle home, somehow. I would be
+alone.”
+
+“Leggat,” I said to my man, “help Salmon home with my car.”
+
+“Home? Now? It’s hard. It’s cruel hard,” said Leggat, 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 engine-room.”
+
+“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.”
+
+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 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 further 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 fern-glade 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.
+
+“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 land-owners, 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.
+
+
+
+
+“WIRELESS”
+
+
+
+
+KASPAR’S SONG IN VARDA
+
+
+(_From the Swedish of Stagnelius_.)
+
+
+    Eyes aloft, over dangerous places,
+    The children follow where Psyche flies,
+And, in the sweat of their upturned faces,
+    Slash with a net at the empty skies.
+
+So it goes they fall amid brambles,
+    And sting their toes on the nettle-tops,
+Till after a thousand scratches and scrambles
+    They wipe their brows, and the hunting stops.
+
+Then to quiet them comes their father
+    And stills the riot of pain and grief,
+Saying, “Little ones, go and gather
+    Out of my garden a cabbage leaf.
+
+“You will find on it whorls and clots of
+    Dull grey eggs that, properly fed,
+Turn, by way of the worm, to lots of
+    Radiant Psyches raised from the dead.”
+
+
+“Heaven is beautiful, Earth is ugly,”
+    The three-dimensioned preacher saith,
+So we must not look where the snail and the slug lie
+    For Psyche’s birth … And that is our death!
+
+
+
+
+“WIRELESS”
+
+
+“It’s a funny thing, this Marconi business, isn’t it?” said Mr.
+Shaynor, coughing heavily. “Nothing seems to make any difference, by
+what they tell me—storms, hills, or anything; but if that’s true we
+shall know before morning.”
+
+“Of course it’s true,” I answered, stepping behind the counter.
+“Where’s old Mr. Cashell?”
+
+“He’s had to go to bed on account of his influenza. He said you’d very
+likely drop in.”
+
+“Where’s his nephew?”
+
+“Inside, getting the things ready. He told me that the last time they
+experimented they put the pole on the roof of one of the big hotels
+here, and the batteries electrified all the water-supply, and”—he
+giggled—“the ladies got shocks when they took their baths.”
+
+“I never heard of that.”
+
+“The hotel wouldn’t exactly advertise it, would it? Just now, by what
+Mr. Cashell tells me, they’re trying to signal from here to Poole, and
+they’re using stronger batteries than ever. But, you see, he being the
+guvnor’s nephew and all that (and it will be in the papers too), it
+doesn’t matter how they electrify things in this house. Are you going
+to watch?”
+
+“Very much. I’ve never seen this game. Aren’t you going to bed?”
+
+“We don’t close till ten on Saturdays. There’s a good deal of influenza
+in town, too, and there’ll be a dozen prescriptions coming in before
+morning. I generally sleep in the chair here. It’s warmer than jumping
+out of bed every time. Bitter cold, isn’t it?”
+
+“Freezing hard. I’m sorry your cough’s worse.”
+
+“Thank you. I don’t mind cold so much. It’s this wind that fair cuts me
+to pieces.” He coughed again hard and hackingly, as an old lady came in
+for ammoniated quinine. “We’ve just run out of it in bottles, madam,”
+said Mr. Shaynor, returning to the professional tone, “but if you will
+wait two minutes, I’ll make it up for you, madam.”
+
+I had used the shop for some time, and my acquaintance with the
+proprietor had ripened into friendship. It was Mr. Cashell who revealed
+to me the purpose and power of Apothecaries’ Hall what time a
+fellow-chemist had made an error in a prescription of mine, had lied to
+cover his sloth, and when error and lie were brought home to him had
+written vain letters.
+
+“A disgrace to our profession,” said the thin, mild-eyed man, hotly,
+after studying the evidence. “You couldn’t do a better service to the
+profession than report him to Apothecaries’ Hall.”
+
+I did so, not knowing what djinns I should evoke; and the result was
+such an apology as one might make who had spent a night on the rack. I
+conceived great respect for Apothecaries’ Hall, and esteem for Mr.
+Cashell, a zealous craftsman who magnified his calling. Until Mr.
+Shaynor came down from the North his assistants had by no means agreed
+with Mr. Cashell. “They forget,” said he, “that, first and foremost,
+the compounder is a medicine-man. On him depends the physician’s
+reputation. He holds it literally in the hollow of his hand, Sir.”
+
+Mr. Shaynor’s manners had not, perhaps, the polish of the grocery and
+Italian warehouse next door, but he knew and loved his dispensary work
+in every detail. For relaxation he seemed to go no farther afield than
+the romance of drugs—their discovery, preparation packing, and
+export—but it led him to the ends of the earth, and on this subject,
+and the Pharmaceutical Formulary, and Nicholas Culpepper, most
+confident of physicians, we met.
+
+Little by little I grew to know something of his beginnings and his
+hopes—of his mother, who had been a school-teacher in one of the
+northern counties, and of his red-headed father, a small job-master at
+Kirby Moors, who died when he was a child; of the examinations he had
+passed and of their exceeding and increasing difficulty; of his dreams
+of a shop in London; of his hate for the price-cutting Co-operative
+stores; and, most interesting, of his mental attitude towards
+customers.
+
+“There’s a way you get into,” he told me, “of serving them carefully,
+and I hope, politely, without stopping your own thinking. I’ve been
+reading Christie’s _New Commercial Plants_ all this autumn, and that
+needs keeping your mind on it, I can tell you. So long as it isn’t a
+prescription, of course, I can carry as much as half a page of Christie
+in my head, and at the same time I could sell out all that window twice
+over, and not a penny wrong at the end. As to prescriptions, I think I
+could make up the general run of ’em in my sleep, almost.”
+
+For reasons of my own, I was deeply interested in Marconi experiments
+at their outset in England; and it was of a piece with Mr. Cashell’s
+unvarying thoughtfulness that, when his nephew the electrician
+appropriated the house for a long-range installation, he should, as I
+have said, invite me to see the result.
+
+The old lady went away with her medicine, and Mr. Shaynor and I stamped
+on the tiled floor behind the counter to keep ourselves warm. The shop,
+by the light of the many electrics, looked like a Paris-diamond mine,
+for Mr. Cashell believed in all the ritual of his craft. Three superb
+glass jars—red, green, and blue—of the sort that led Rosamund to
+parting with her shoes—blazed in the broad plate-glass windows, and
+there was a confused smell of orris, Kodak films, vulcanite,
+tooth-powder, sachets, and almond-cream in the air. Mr. Shaynor fed the
+dispensary stove, and we sucked cayenne-pepper jujubes and menthol
+lozenges. The brutal east wind had cleared the streets, and the few
+passers-by were muffled to their puckered eyes. In the Italian
+warehouse next door some gay feathered birds and game, hung upon hooks,
+sagged to the wind across the left edge of our window-frame.
+
+“They ought to take these poultry in—all knocked about like that,” said
+Mr. Shaynor. “Doesn’t it make you feel fair perishing? See that old
+hare! The wind’s nearly blowing the fur off him.”
+
+I saw the belly-fur of the dead beast blown apart in ridges and streaks
+as the wind caught it, showing bluish skin underneath. “Bitter cold,”
+said Mr. Shaynor, shuddering. “Fancy going out on a night like this!
+Oh, here’s young Mr. Cashell.”
+
+The door of the inner office behind the dispensary opened, and an
+energetic, spade-bearded man stepped forth, rubbing his hands.
+
+“I want a bit of tin-foil, Shaynor,” he said. “Good-evening. My uncle
+told me you might be coming.” This to me, as I began the first of a
+hundred questions.
+
+“I’ve everything in order,” he replied. “We’re only waiting until Poole
+calls us up. Excuse me a minute. You can come in whenever you like—but
+I’d better be with the instruments. Give me that tin-foil. Thanks.”
+
+While we were talking, a girl—evidently no customer—had come into the
+shop, and the face and bearing of Mr. Shaynor changed. She leaned
+confidently across the counter.
+
+“But I can’t,” I heard him whisper uneasily—the flush on his cheek was
+dull red, and his eyes shone like a drugged moth’s. “I can’t. I tell
+you I’m alone in the place.”
+
+“No, you aren’t. Who’s _that_? Let him look after it for half an hour.
+A brisk walk will do you good. Ah, come now, John.”
+
+“But he isn’t——”
+
+“I don’t care. I want you to; we’ll only go round by St. Agnes. If you
+don’t——”
+
+He crossed to where I stood in the shadow of the dispensary counter,
+and began some sort of broken apology about a lady-friend.
+
+“Yes,” she interrupted. “You take the shop for half an hour—to oblige
+_me_, won’t you?”
+
+She had a singularly rich and promising voice that well matched her
+outline.
+
+“All right,” I said. “I’ll do it—but you’d better wrap yourself up, Mr.
+Shaynor.”
+
+“Oh, a brisk walk ought to help me. We’re only going round by the
+church.” I heard him cough grievously as they went out together.
+
+I refilled the stove, and, after reckless expenditure of Mr. Cashell’s
+coal, drove some warmth into the shop. I explored many of the
+glass-knobbed drawers that lined the walls, tasted some disconcerting
+drugs, and, by the aid of a few cardamoms, ground ginger,
+chloric-ether, and dilute alcohol, manufactured a new and wildish
+drink, of which I bore a glassful to young Mr. Cashell, busy in the
+back office. He laughed shortly when I told him that Mr. Shaynor had
+stepped out—but a frail coil of wire held all his attention, and he had
+no word for me bewildered among the batteries and rods. The noise of
+the sea on the beach began to make itself heard as the traffic in the
+street ceased. Then briefly, but very lucidly, he gave me the names and
+uses of the mechanism that crowded the tables and the floor.
+
+“When do you expect to get the message from Poole?” I demanded, sipping
+my liquor out of a graduated glass.
+
+“About midnight, if everything is in order. We’ve got our
+installation-pole fixed to the roof of the house. I shouldn’t advise
+you to turn on a tap or anything tonight. We’ve connected up with the
+plumbing, and all the water will be electrified.” He repeated to me the
+history of the agitated ladies at the hotel at the time of the first
+installation.
+
+“But what _is_ it?” I asked. “Electricity is out of my beat
+altogether.”
+
+“Ah, if you knew _that_ you’d know something nobody knows. It’s just
+It—what we call Electricity, but the magic—the manifestations—the
+Hertzian waves—are all revealed by _this_. The coherer, we call it.”
+
+He picked up a glass tube not much thicker than a thermometer, in
+which, almost touching, were two tiny silver plugs, and between them an
+infinitesimal pinch of metallic dust. “That’s all,” he said, proudly,
+as though himself responsible for the wonder. “That is the thing that
+will reveal to us the Powers—whatever the Powers may be—at work—through
+space—a long distance away.”
+
+Just then Mr. Shaynor returned alone and stood coughing his heart out
+on the mat.
+
+“Serves you right for being such a fool,” said young Mr. Cashell, as
+annoyed as myself at the interruption. “Never mind—we’ve all the night
+before us to see wonders.”
+
+Shaynor clutched the counter, his handkerchief to his lips. When he
+brought it away I saw two bright red stains.
+
+“I—I’ve got a bit of a rasped throat from smoking cigarettes,” he
+panted. “I think I’ll try a cubeb.”
+
+“Better take some of this. I’ve been compounding while you’ve been
+away.” I handed him the brew.
+
+“’Twon’t make me drunk, will it? I’m almost a teetotaller. My word!
+That’s grateful and comforting.”
+
+He sat down the empty glass to cough afresh.
+
+“Brr! But it was cold out there! I shouldn’t care to be lying in my
+grave a night like this. Don’t _you_ ever have a sore throat from
+smoking?” He pocketed the handkerchief after a furtive peep.
+
+“Oh, yes, sometimes,” I replied, wondering, while I spoke, into what
+agonies of terror I should fall if ever I saw those bright-red
+danger-signals under my nose. Young Mr. Cashell among the batteries
+coughed slightly to show that he was quite ready to continue his
+scientific explanations, but I was thinking still of the girl with the
+rich voice and the significantly cut mouth, at whose command I had
+taken charge of the shop. It flashed across me that she distantly
+resembled the seductive shape on a gold-framed toilet-water
+advertisement whose charms were unholily heightened by the glare from
+the red bottle in the window. Turning to make sure, I saw Mr. Shaynor’s
+eyes bent in the same direction, and by instinct recognised that the
+flamboyant thing was to him a shrine. “What do you take for
+your—cough?” I asked.
+
+“Well, I’m the wrong side of the counter to believe much in patent
+medicines. But there are asthma cigarettes and there are pastilles. To
+tell you the truth, if you don’t object to the smell, which is very
+like incense, I believe, though I’m not a Roman Catholic, Blaudett’s
+Cathedral Pastilles relieve me as much as anything.”
+
+“Let’s try.” I had never raided a chemist’s shop before, so I was
+thorough. We unearthed the pastilles—brown, gummy cones of benzoin—and
+set them alight under the toilet-water advertisement, where they fumed
+in thin blue spirals.
+
+“Of course,” said Mr. Shaynor, to my question, “what one uses in the
+shop for one’s self comes out of one’s pocket. Why, stock-taking in our
+business is nearly the same as with jewellers—and I can’t say more than
+that. But one gets them”—he pointed to the pastille-box—“at trade
+prices.” Evidently the censing of the gay, seven-tinted wench with the
+teeth was an established ritual which cost something.
+
+“And when do we shut up shop?”
+
+“We stay like this all night. The gov—old Mr. Cashell—doesn’t believe
+in locks and shutters as compared with electric light. Besides it
+brings trade. I’ll just sit here in the chair by the stove and write a
+letter, if you don’t mind. Electricity isn’t my prescription.”
+
+The energetic young Mr. Cashell snorted within, and Shaynor settled
+himself up in his chair over which he had thrown a staring red, black,
+and yellow Austrian jute blanket, rather like a table-cover. I cast
+about, amid patent medicine pamphlets, for something to read, but
+finding little, returned to the manufacture of the new drink. The
+Italian warehouse took down its game and went to bed. Across the street
+blank shutters flung back the gaslight in cold smears; the dried
+pavement seemed to rough up in goose-flesh under the scouring of the
+savage wind, and we could hear, long ere he passed, the policeman
+flapping his arms to keep himself warm. Within, the flavours of
+cardamoms and chloric-ether disputed those of the pastilles and a score
+of drugs and perfume and soap scents. Our electric lights, set low down
+in the windows before the tun-bellied Rosamund jars, flung inward three
+monstrous daubs of red, blue, and green, that broke into kaleidoscopic
+lights on the facetted knobs of the drug-drawers, the cut-glass scent
+flagons, and the bulbs of the sparklet bottles. They flushed the
+white-tiled floor in gorgeous patches; splashed along the nickel-silver
+counter-rails, and turned the polished mahogany counter-panels to the
+likeness of intricate grained marbles—slabs of porphyry and malachite.
+Mr. Shaynor unlocked a drawer, and ere he began to write, took out a
+meagre bundle of letters. From my place by the stove, I could see the
+scalloped edges of the paper with a flaring monogram in the corner and
+could even smell the reek of chypre. At each page he turned toward the
+toilet-water lady of the advertisement and devoured her with
+over-luminous eyes. He had drawn the Austrian blanket over his
+shoulders, and among those warring lights he looked more than ever the
+incarnation of a drugged moth—a tiger-moth as I thought.
+
+He put his letter into an envelope, stamped it with stiff mechanical
+movements, and dropped it in the drawer. Then I became aware of the
+silence of a great city asleep—the silence that underlaid the even
+voice of the breakers along the sea-front—a thick, tingling quiet of
+warm life stilled down for its appointed time, and unconsciously I
+moved about the glittering shop as one moves in a sick-room. Young Mr.
+Cashell was adjusting some wire that crackled from time to time with
+the tense, knuckle-stretching sound of the electric spark. Upstairs,
+where a door shut and opened swiftly, I could hear his uncle coughing
+abed.
+
+“Here,” I said, when the drink was properly warmed, “take some of this,
+Mr. Shaynor.”
+
+He jerked in his chair with a start and a wrench, and held out his hand
+for the glass. The mixture, of a rich port-wine colour, frothed at the
+top.
+
+“It looks,” he said, suddenly, “it looks—those bubbles—like a string of
+pearls winking at you—rather like the pearls round that young lady’s
+neck.” He turned again to the advertisement where the female in the
+dove-coloured corset had seen fit to put on all her pearls before she
+cleaned her teeth.
+
+“Not bad, is it?” I said.
+
+“Eh?”
+
+He rolled his eyes heavily full on me, and, as I stared, I beheld all
+meaning and consciousness die out of the swiftly dilating pupils. His
+figure lost its stark rigidity, softened into the chair, and, chin on
+chest, hands dropped before him, he rested open-eyed, absolutely still.
+
+“I’m afraid I’ve rather cooked Shaynor’s goose,” I said, bearing the
+fresh drink to young Mr. Cashell. “Perhaps it was the chloric-ether.”
+
+“Oh, he’s all right.” The spade-bearded man glanced at him pityingly.
+“Consumptives go off in those sort of doses very often. It’s
+exhaustion… I don’t wonder. I dare say the liquor will do him good.
+It’s grand stuff,” he finished his share appreciatively. “Well, as I
+was saying—before he interrupted—about this little coherer. The pinch
+of dust, you see, is nickel-filings. The Hertzian waves, you see, come
+out of space from the station that despatches ’em, and all these little
+particles are attracted together—cohere, we call it—for just so long as
+the current passes through them. Now, it’s important to remember that
+the current is an induced current. There are a good many kinds of
+induction——”
+
+“Yes, but what _is_ induction?”
+
+“That’s rather hard to explain untechnically. But the long and the
+short of it is that when a current of electricity passes through a wire
+there’s a lot of magnetism present round that wire; and if you put
+another wire parallel to, and within what we call its magnetic
+field—why then, the second wire will also become charged with
+electricity.”
+
+“On its own account?”
+
+“On its own account.”
+
+“Then let’s see if I’ve got it correctly. Miles off, at Poole, or
+wherever it is——”
+
+“It will be anywhere in ten years.”
+
+“You’ve got a charged wire——”
+
+“Charged with Hertzian waves which vibrate, say, two hundred and thirty
+million times a second.” Mr. Cashell snaked his forefinger rapidly
+through the air.
+
+“All right—a charged wire at Poole, giving out these waves into space.
+Then this wire of yours sticking out into space—on the roof of the
+house—in some mysterious way gets charged with those waves from
+Poole——”
+
+“Or anywhere—it only happens to be Poole tonight.”
+
+“And those waves set the coherer at work, just like an ordinary
+telegraph-office ticker?”
+
+“No! That’s where so many people make the mistake. The Hertzian waves
+wouldn’t be strong enough to work a great heavy Morse instrument like
+ours. They can only just make that dust cohere, and while it coheres (a
+little while for a dot and a longer while for a dash) the current from
+this battery—the home battery”—he laid his hand on the thing—“can get
+through to the Morse printing-machine to record the dot or dash. Let me
+make it clearer. Do you know anything about steam?”
+
+“Very little. But go on.”
+
+“Well, the coherer is like a steam-valve. Any child can open a valve
+and start a steamer’s engines, because a turn of the hand lets in the
+main steam, doesn’t it? Now, this home battery here ready to print is
+the main steam. The coherer is the valve, always ready to be turned on.
+The Hertzian wave is the child’s hand that turns it.”
+
+“I see. That’s marvellous.”
+
+“Marvellous, isn’t it? And, remember, we’re only at the beginning.
+There’s nothing we sha’n’t be able to do in ten years. I want to
+live—my God, how I want to live, and see it develop!” He looked through
+the door at Shaynor breathing lightly in his chair. “Poor beast! And he
+wants to keep company with Fanny Brand.”
+
+“Fanny _who_?” I said, for the name struck an obscurely familiar chord
+in my brain—something connected with a stained handkerchief, and the
+word “arterial.”
+
+“Fanny Brand—the girl you kept shop for.” He laughed, “That’s all I
+know about her, and for the life of me I can’t see what Shaynor sees in
+her, or she in him.”
+
+“_Can’t_ you see what he sees in her?” I insisted.
+
+“Oh, yes, if _that’s_ what you mean. She’s a great, big, fat lump of a
+girl, and so on. I suppose that’s why he’s so crazy after her. She
+isn’t his sort. Well, it doesn’t matter. My uncle says he’s bound to
+die before the year’s out. Your drink’s given him a good sleep, at any
+rate.” Young Mr. Cashell could not catch Mr. Shaynor’s face, which was
+half turned to the advertisement.
+
+I stoked the stove anew, for the room was growing cold, and lighted
+another pastille. Mr. Shaynor in his chair, never moving, looked
+through and over me with eyes as wide and lustreless as those of a dead
+hare.
+
+“Poole’s late,” said young Mr. Cashell, when I stepped back. “I’ll just
+send them a call.”
+
+He pressed a key in the semi-darkness, and with a rending crackle there
+leaped between two brass knobs a spark, streams of sparks, and sparks
+again.
+
+“Grand, isn’t it? _That’s_ the Power—our unknown Power—kicking and
+fighting to be let loose,” said young Mr. Cashell. “There she
+goes—kick—kick—kick into space. I never get over the strangeness of it
+when I work a sending-machine—waves going into space, you know. T.R. is
+our call. Poole ought to answer with L.L.L.”
+
+We waited two, three, five minutes. In that silence, of which the boom
+of the tide was an orderly part, I caught the clear “_kiss—kiss—kiss_”
+of the halliards on the roof, as they were blown against the
+installation-pole.
+
+“Poole is not ready. I’ll stay here and call you when he is.”
+
+I returned to the shop, and set down my glass on a marble slab with a
+careless clink. As I did so, Shaynor rose to his feet, his eyes fixed
+once more on the advertisement, where the young woman bathed in the
+light from the red jar simpered pinkly over her pearls. His lips moved
+without cessation. I stepped nearer to listen. “And threw—and threw—and
+threw,” he repeated, his face all sharp with some inexplicable agony.
+
+I moved forward astonished. But it was then he found words—delivered
+roundly and clearly. These:—
+
+And threw warm gules on Madeleine’s young breast.
+
+
+The trouble passed off his countenance, and he returned lightly to his
+place, rubbing his hands.
+
+It had never occurred to me, though we had many times discussed reading
+and prize-competitions as a diversion, that Mr. Shaynor ever read
+Keats, or could quote him at all appositely. There was, after all, a
+certain stained-glass effect of light on the high bosom of the
+highly-polished picture which might, by stretch of fancy, suggest, as a
+vile chromo recalls some incomparable canvas, the line he had spoken.
+Night, my drink, and solitude were evidently turning Mr. Shaynor into a
+poet. He sat down again and wrote swiftly on his villainous note-paper,
+his lips quivering.
+
+I shut the door into the inner office and moved up behind him. He made
+no sign that he saw or heard. I looked over his shoulder, and read,
+amid half-formed words, sentences, and wild scratches:—
+
+—Very cold it was. Very cold
+The hare—the hare—the hare—
+The birds——
+
+
+He raised his head sharply, and frowned toward the blank shutters of
+the poulterer’s shop where they jutted out against our window. Then one
+clear line came:—
+
+The hare, in spite of fur, was very cold.
+
+
+The head, moving machine-like, turned right to the advertisement where
+the Blaudett’s Cathedral pastille reeked abominably. He grunted, and
+went on:—
+
+Incense in a censer—
+Before her darling picture framed in gold—
+Maiden’s picture—angel’s portrait—
+
+
+“Hsh!” said Mr. Cashell guardedly from the inner office, as though in
+the presence of spirits. “There’s something coming through from
+somewhere; but it isn’t Poole.” I heard the crackle of sparks as he
+depressed the keys of the transmitter. In my own brain, too, something
+crackled, or it might have been the hair on my head. Then I heard my
+own voice, in a harsh whisper: “Mr. Cashell, there is something coming
+through here, too. Leave me alone till I tell you.”
+
+“But I thought you’d come to see this wonderful thing—Sir,” indignantly
+at the end.
+
+“Leave me alone till I tell you. Be quiet.”
+
+I watched—I waited. Under the blue-veined hand—the dry hand of the
+consumptive—came away clear, without erasure:
+
+And my weak spirit fails
+To think how the dead must freeze—
+
+
+he shivered as he wrote—
+
+Beneath the churchyard mould.
+
+
+Then he stopped, laid the pen down, and leaned back.
+
+For an instant, that was half an eternity, the shop spun before me in a
+rainbow-tinted whirl, in and through which my own soul most
+dispassionately considered my own soul as that fought with an
+over-mastering fear. Then I smelt the strong smell of cigarettes from
+Mr. Shaynor’s clothing, and heard, as though it had been the rending of
+trumpets, the rattle of his breathing. I was still in my place of
+observation, much as one would watch a rifle-shot at the butts,
+half-bent, hands on my knees, and head within a few inches of the
+black, red, and yellow blanket of his shoulder. I was whispering
+encouragement, evidently to my other self, sounding sentences, such as
+men pronounce in dreams.
+
+“If he has read Keats, it proves nothing. If he hasn’t—like causes
+_must_ beget like effects. There is no escape from this law. _You_
+ought to be grateful that you know ‘St. Agnes Eve’ without the book;
+because, given the circumstances, such as Fanny Brand, who is the key
+of the enigma, and approximately represents the latitude and longitude
+of Fanny Brawne; allowing also for the bright red colour of the
+arterial blood upon the handkerchief, which was just what you were
+puzzling over in the shop just now; and counting the effect of the
+professional environment, here almost perfectly duplicated—the result
+is logical and inevitable. As inevitable as induction.”
+
+Still, the other half of my soul refused to be comforted. It was
+cowering in some minute and inadequate corner—at an immense distance.
+
+Hereafter, I found myself one person again, my hands still gripping my
+knees, and my eyes glued on the page before Mr. Shaynor. As dreamers
+accept and explain the upheaval of landscapes and the resurrection of
+the dead, with excerpts from the evening hymn or the
+multiplication-table, so I had accepted the facts, whatever they might
+be, that I should witness, and had devised a theory, sane and plausible
+to my mind, that explained them all. Nay, I was even in advance of my
+facts, walking hurriedly before them, assured that they would fit my
+theory. And all that I now recall of that epoch-making theory are the
+lofty words: “If he has read Keats it’s the chloric-ether. If he
+hasn’t, it’s the identical bacillus, or Hertzian wave of tuberculosis,
+_plus_ Fanny Brand and the professional status which, in conjunction
+with the main-stream of subconscious thought common to all mankind, has
+thrown up temporarily an induced Keats.”
+
+Mr. Shaynor returned to his work, erasing and rewriting as before with
+swiftness. Two or three blank pages he tossed aside. Then he wrote,
+muttering:
+
+The little smoke of a candle that goes out.
+
+
+“No,” he muttered. “Little smoke—little smoke—little smoke. What else?”
+He thrust his chin forward toward the advertisement, whereunder the
+last of the Blaudett’s Cathedral pastilles fumed in its holder. “Ah!”
+Then with relief:—
+
+The little smoke that dies in moonlight cold.
+
+
+Evidently he was snared by the rhymes of his first verse, for he wrote
+and rewrote “gold—cold—mould” many times. Again he sought inspiration
+from the advertisement, and set down, without erasure, the line I had
+overheard:
+
+And threw warm gules on Madeleine’s young breast.
+
+
+As I remembered the original it is “fair”—a trite word—instead of
+“young,” and I found myself nodding approval, though I admitted that
+the attempt to reproduce “its little smoke in pallid moonlight died”
+was a failure.
+
+Followed without a break ten or fifteen lines of bald prose—the naked
+soul’s confession of its physical yearning for its beloved—unclean as
+we count uncleanliness; unwholesome, but human exceedingly; the raw
+material, so it seemed to me in that hour and in that place, whence
+Keats wove the twenty-sixth, seventh, and eighth stanzas of his poem.
+Shame I had none in overseeing this revelation; and my fear had gone
+with the smoke of the pastille.
+
+“That’s it,” I murmured. “That’s how it’s blocked out. Go on! Ink it
+in, man. Ink it in!”
+
+Mr. Shaynor returned to broken verse wherein “loveliness” was made to
+rhyme with a desire to look upon “her empty dress.” He picked up a fold
+of the gay, soft blanket, spread it over one hand, caressed it with
+infinite tenderness, thought, muttered, traced some snatches which I
+could not decipher, shut his eyes drowsily, shook his head, and dropped
+the stuff. Here I found myself at fault, for I could not then see (as I
+do now) in what manner a red, black, and yellow Austrian blanket
+coloured his dreams.
+
+In a few minutes he laid aside his pen, and, chin on hand, considered
+the shop with thoughtful and intelligent eyes. He threw down the
+blanket, rose, passed along a line of drug-drawers, and read the names
+on the labels aloud. Returning, he took from his desk Christie’s _New
+Commercial Plants_ and the old Culpepper that I had given him, opened
+and laid them side by side with a clerky air, all trace of passion gone
+from his face, read first in one and then in the other, and paused with
+pen behind his ear.
+
+“What wonder of Heaven’s coming now?” I thought.
+
+“Manna—manna—manna,” he said at last, under wrinkled brows. “That’s
+what I wanted. Good! Now then! Now then! Good! Good! Oh, by God, that’s
+good!” His voice rose and he spoke rightly and fully without a falter:—
+
+Candied apple, quince and plum and gourd,
+And jellies smoother than the creamy curd,
+And lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon,
+Manna and dates in Argosy transferred
+From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one
+From silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon.
+
+
+He repeated it once more, using “blander” for “smoother” in the second
+line; then wrote it down without erasure, but this time (my set eyes
+missed no stroke of any word) he substituted “soother” for his
+atrocious second thought, so that it came away under his hand as it is
+written in the book—as it is written in the book.
+
+A wind went shouting down the street, and on the heels of the wind
+followed a spurt and rattle of rain.
+
+After a smiling pause—and good right had he to smile—he began anew,
+always tossing the last sheet over his shoulder:—
+
+“The sharp rain falling on the window-pane,
+Rattling sleet—the wind-blown sleet.”
+
+
+Then prose: “It is very cold of mornings when the wind brings rain and
+sleet with it. I heard the sleet on the window-pane outside, and
+thought of you, my darling. I am always thinking of you. I wish we
+could both run away like two lovers into the storm and get that little
+cottage by the sea which we are always thinking about, my own dear
+darling. We could sit and watch the sea beneath our windows. It would
+be a fairyland all of our own—a fairy sea—a fairy sea….”
+
+He stopped, raised his head, and listened. The steady drone of the
+Channel along the sea-front that had borne us company so long leaped up
+a note to the sudden fuller surge that signals the change from ebb to
+flood. It beat in like the change of step throughout an army—this
+renewed pulse of the sea—and filled our ears till they, accepting it,
+marked it no longer.
+
+“A fairyland for you and me
+Across the foam—beyond …
+A magic foam, a perilous sea.”
+
+
+He grunted again with effort and bit his underlip. My throat dried, but
+I dared not gulp to moisten it lest I should break the spell that was
+drawing him nearer and nearer to the high-water mark but two of the
+sons of Adam have reached. Remember that in all the millions permitted
+there are no more than five—five little lines—of which one can say:
+“These are the pure Magic. These are the clear Vision. The rest is only
+poetry.” And Mr. Shaynor was playing hot and cold with two of them!
+
+I vowed no unconscious thought of mine should influence the blindfold
+soul, and pinned myself desperately to the other three, repeating and
+re-repeating:
+
+A savage spot as holy and enchanted
+As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
+By woman wailing for her demon lover.
+
+
+But though I believed my brain thus occupied, my every sense hung upon
+the writing under the dry, bony hand, all brown-fingered with chemicals
+and cigarette-smoke.
+
+Our windows fronting on the dangerous foam,
+
+
+(he wrote, after long, irresolute snatches), and then—
+
+“Our open casements facing desolate seas
+Forlorn—forlorn—”
+
+
+Here again his face grew peaked and anxious with that sense of loss I
+had first seen when the Power snatched him. But this time the agony was
+tenfold keener. As I watched it mounted like mercury in the tube. It
+lighted his face from within till I thought the visibly scourged soul
+must leap forth naked between his jaws, unable to endure. A drop of
+sweat trickled from my forehead down my nose and splashed on the back
+of my hand.
+
+“Our windows facing on the desolate seas
+And pearly foam of magic fairyland—”
+
+
+“Not yet—not yet,” he muttered, “wait a minute. _Please_ wait a minute.
+I shall get it then—”
+
+Our magic windows fronting on the sea,
+The dangerous foam of desolate seas …
+For aye.
+
+
+_Ouh_, my God!”
+
+From head to heel he shook—shook from the marrow of his bones
+outwards—then leaped to his feet with raised arms, and slid the chair
+screeching across the tiled floor where it struck the drawers behind
+and fell with a jar. Mechanically, I stooped to recover it.
+
+As I rose, Mr. Shaynor was stretching and yawning at leisure.
+
+“I’ve had a bit of a doze,” he said. “How did I come to knock the chair
+over? You look rather—”
+
+“The chair startled me,” I answered. “It was so sudden in this quiet.”
+
+Young Mr. Cashell behind his shut door was offendedly silent.
+
+“I suppose I must have been dreaming,” said Mr. Shaynor.
+
+“I suppose you must,” I said. “Talking of dreams—I—I noticed you
+writing—before—”
+
+He flushed consciously.
+
+“I meant to ask you if you’ve ever read anything written by a man
+called Keats.”
+
+“Oh! I haven’t much time to read poetry, and I can’t say that I
+remember the name exactly. Is he a popular writer?”
+
+“Middling. I thought you might know him because he’s the only poet who
+was ever a druggist. And he’s rather what’s called the lover’s poet.”
+
+“Indeed. I must dip into him. What did he write about?”
+
+“A lot of things. Here’s a sample that may interest you.”
+
+Then and there, carefully, I repeated the verse he had twice spoken and
+once written not ten minutes ago.
+
+“Ah. Anybody could see he was a druggist from that line about the
+tinctures and syrups. It’s a fine tribute to our profession.”
+
+“I don’t know,” said young Mr. Cashell, with icy politeness, opening
+the door one half-inch, “if you still happen to be interested in our
+trifling experiments. But, should such be the case——”
+
+I drew him aside, whispering, “Shaynor seemed going off into some sort
+of fit when I spoke to you just now. I thought, even at the risk of
+being rude, it wouldn’t do to take you off your instruments just as the
+call was coming through. Don’t you see?”
+
+“Granted—granted as soon as asked,” he said unbending. “I _did_ think
+it a shade odd at the time. So that was why he knocked the chair down?”
+
+“I hope I haven’t missed anything,” I said. “I’m afraid I can’t say
+that, but you’re just in time for the end of a rather curious
+performance. You can come in, too, Mr. Shaynor. Listen, while I read it
+off.”
+
+The Morse instrument was ticking furiously. Mr. Cashell interpreted:
+“‘_K.K.V. Can make nothing of your signals_.’” A pause. “‘_M.M.V.
+M.M.V. Signals unintelligible. Purpose anchor Sandown Bay. Examine
+instruments to-morrow.’_ Do you know what that means? It’s a couple of
+men-o’-war working Marconi signals off the Isle of Wight. They are
+trying to talk to each other. Neither can read the other’s messages,
+but all their messages are being taken in by our receiver here. They’ve
+been going on for ever so long. I wish you could have heard it.”
+
+“How wonderful!” I said. “Do you mean we’re overhearing Portsmouth
+ships trying to talk to each other—that we’re eavesdropping across half
+South England?”
+
+“Just that. Their transmitters are all right, but their receivers are
+out of order, so they only get a dot here and a dash there. Nothing
+clear.”
+
+“Why is that?”
+
+“God knows—and Science will know to-morrow. Perhaps the induction is
+faulty; perhaps the receivers aren’t tuned to receive just the number
+of vibrations per second that the transmitter sends. Only a word here
+and there. Just enough to tantalise.”
+
+Again the Morse sprang to life.
+
+“That’s one of ’em complaining now. Listen: ‘_Disheartening—most
+disheartening_.’ It’s quite pathetic. Have you ever seen a
+spiritualistic seance? It reminds me of that sometimes—odds and ends of
+messages coming out of nowhere—a word here and there—no good at all.”
+
+“But mediums are all impostors,” said Mr. Shaynor, in the doorway,
+lighting an asthma-cigarette. “They only do it for the money they can
+make. I’ve seen ’em.”
+
+“Here’s Poole, at last—clear as a bell. L.L.L. _Now_ we sha’n’t be
+long.” Mr. Cashell rattled the keys merrily. “Anything you’d like to
+tell ’em?”
+
+“No, I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ll go home and get to bed. I’m
+feeling a little tired.”
+
+
+
+
+THE ARMY OF A DREAM
+
+
+
+
+SONG OF THE OLD GUARD
+
+
+“And thou shalt make a candlestick of pure gold of beaten work shall
+the candlestick be made: his shaft and its branches, his bowls, his
+knops, and his flowers, shall be the same.
+
+“And there shall be a knop under two branches of the same, and a knop
+under two branches of the same, and a knop under two branches of the
+same, according to the six branches that proceed out of the
+candlestick. Their knops and their branches shall be the
+same.”—_Exodus._
+
+    “Know this, my brethren, Heaven is clear
+    And all the clouds are gone—
+The Proper Sort shall flourish now,
+    Good times are coming on”—
+The evil that was threatened late
+    To all of our degree,
+Hath passed in discord and debate,
+    And, _Hey then up go we!_
+
+A common people strove in vain
+    To shame us unto toil,
+But they are spent and we remain,
+    And we shall share the spoil
+According to our several needs
+    As Beauty shall decree,
+As Age ordains or Birth concedes,
+    And, _Hey then up go we!_
+
+And they that with accursed zeal
+    Our Service would amend,
+Shall own the odds and come to heel
+    Ere worse befall their end
+For though no naked word be wrote
+    Yet plainly shall they see
+What pinneth Orders to their coat,
+    And, _Hey then up go we!_
+
+Our doorways that, in time of fear,
+    We opened overwide
+Shall softly close from year to year
+    Till all be purified;
+For though no fluttering fan be heard
+    Nor chaff be seen to flee—
+The Lord shall winnow the Lord’s Preferred—
+    And, _Hey then up go we!_
+
+Our altars which the heathen brake
+    Shall rankly smoke anew,
+And anise, mint, and cummin take
+    Their dread and sovereign due,
+Whereby the buttons of our trade
+    Shall all restored be
+With curious work in gilt and braid,
+    And, _Hey then up go we!_
+
+Then come, my brethren, and prepare
+    The candlesticks and bells,
+The scarlet, brass, and badger’s hair
+    Wherein our Honour dwells,
+And straitly fence and strictly keep
+    The Ark’s integrity
+Till Armageddon break our sleep …
+    And, _Hey then up go we!_
+
+
+
+
+THE ARMY OF A DREAM
+
+PART I
+
+
+I sat down in the club smoking-room to fill a pipe.
+
+
+It was entirely natural that I should be talking to “Boy” Bayley. We
+had met first, twenty odd years ago, at the Indian mess of the Tyneside
+Tail-twisters. Our last meeting, I remembered, had been at the Mount
+Nelson Hotel, which was by no means India, and there we had talked half
+the night. Boy Bayley had gone up that week to the front, where I think
+he stayed a long, long time.
+
+But now he had come back.
+
+“Are you still a Tynesider?” I asked.
+
+“I command the Imperial Guard Battalion of the old regiment, my son,”
+he replied.
+
+“Guard which? They’ve been Fusiliers since Fontenoy. Don’t pull my leg,
+Boy.”
+
+“I said Guard, not Guard-_s_. The I. G. Battalion of the Tail-twisters.
+Does that make it any clearer?”
+
+“Not in the least.”
+
+“Then come over to the mess and see for yourself. We aren’t a step from
+barracks. Keep on my right side. I’m—I’m a bit deaf on the near.”
+
+We left the club together and crossed the street to a vast four-storied
+pile, which more resembled a Rowton lodging-house than a barrack. I
+could see no sentry at the gates.
+
+“There ain’t any,” said the Boy lightly. He led me into a many-tabled
+restaurant full of civilians and grey-green uniforms. At one end of the
+room, on a slightly raised dais, stood a big table.
+
+“Here we are! We usually lunch here and dine in mess by ourselves.
+These are our chaps—but what am I thinking of? You must know most of
+’em. Devine’s my second in command now. There’s old Luttrell—remember
+him at Cherat?—Burgard, Verschoyle (you were at school with him),
+Harrison, Pigeon, and Kyd.”
+
+With the exception of this last I knew them all, but I could not
+remember that they had all been Tynesiders.
+
+“I’ve never seen this sort of place,” I said, looking round. “Half the
+men here are in plain clothes, and what are those women and children
+doing?”
+
+“Eating, I hope,” Boy Bayley answered. “Our canteens would never pay if
+it wasn’t for the Line and Militia trade. When they were first started
+people looked on ’em rather as catsmeat-shops; but we got a duchess or
+two to lunch in ’em, and they’ve been grossly fashionable since.”
+
+“So I see,” I answered. A woman of the type that shops at the Stores
+came up the room looking about her. A man in the dull-grey uniform of
+the corps rose up to meet her, piloted her to a place between three
+other uniforms, and there began a very merry little meal.
+
+“I give it up,” I said. “This is guilty splendour that I don’t
+understand.”
+
+“Quite simple,” said Burgard across the table. “The barrack supplies
+breakfast, dinner, and tea on the Army scale to the Imperial Guard
+(which we call I. G.) when it’s in barracks as well as to the Line and
+Militia. They can all invite their friends if they choose to pay for
+them. That’s where we make our profits. Look!”
+
+Near one of the doors were four or five tables crowded with workmen in
+the raiment of their callings. They ate steadily, but found time to
+jest with the uniforms about them; and when one o’clock clanged from a
+big half-built block of flats across the street, filed out.
+
+“Those,” Devine explained, “are either our Line or Militiamen, as such
+entitled to the regulation whack at regulation cost. It’s cheaper than
+they could buy it; an’ they meet their friends too. A man’ll walk a
+mile in his dinner hour to mess with his own lot.”
+
+“Wait a minute,” I pleaded. “Will you tell me what those plumbers and
+plasterers and bricklayers that I saw go out just now have to do with
+what I was taught to call the Line?”
+
+“Tell him,” said the Boy over his shoulder to Burgard. He was busy
+talking with the large Verschoyle, my old schoolmate.
+
+“The Line comes next to the Guard. The Linesman’s generally a town-bird
+who can’t afford to be a Volunteer. He has to go into camp in an Area
+for two months his first year, six weeks his second, and a month the
+third. He gets about five bob a week the year round for that and for
+being on duty two days of the week, and for being liable to be ordered
+out to help the Guard in a row. He needn’t live in barracks unless he
+wants to, and he and his family can feed at the regimental canteen at
+usual rates. The women like it.”
+
+“All this,” I said politely, but intensely, “is the raving of delirium.
+Where may your precious recruit who needn’t live in barracks learn his
+drill?”
+
+“At his precious school, my child, like the rest of us. The notion of
+allowing a human being to reach his twentieth year before asking him to
+put his feet in the first position _was_ raving lunacy if you like!”
+Boy Bayley dived back into the conversation.
+
+“Very good,” I said meekly. “I accept the virtuous plumber who puts in
+two months of his valuable time at Aldershot——”
+
+“Aldershot!” The table exploded. I felt a little annoyed.
+
+“A camp in an Area is not exactly Aldershot,” said Burgard. “The Line
+isn’t exactly what you fancy. Some of them even come to _us_!”
+
+“You recruit from ’em?”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said Devine with mock solemnity. “The Guard
+doesn’t recruit. It selects.”
+
+“It would,” I said, “with a Spiers and Pond restaurant; pretty girls to
+play with; and——”
+
+“A room apiece, four bob a day and all found,” said Verschoyle. “Don’t
+forget that.”
+
+“Of course!” I said. “It probably beats off recruits with a club.”
+
+“No, with the ballot-box,” said Verschoyle, laughing. “At least in all
+R.C. companies.”
+
+“I didn’t know Roman Catholics were so particular,” I ventured.
+
+They grinned. “R.C. companies,” said the Boy, “mean Right of Choice.
+When a company has been very good and pious for a long time it may, if
+the C.O. thinks fit, choose its own men—all same one-piecee club. All
+our companies are R.C.’s, and as the battalion is making up a few
+vacancies ere starting once more on the wild and trackless ‘heef’ into
+the Areas, the Linesman is here in force to-day sucking up to our
+non-coms.”
+
+“Would some one mind explaining to me the meaning of every other word
+you’ve used,” I said. “What’s a trackless ‘heef’? What’s an Area?
+What’s everything generally?” I asked.
+
+“Oh, ‘heef’s’ part of the British Constitution,” said the Boy. “It
+began long ago when they’d first mapped out the big military
+manoeuvring grounds—we call ’em Areas for short—where the I. G. spend
+two-thirds of their time and the other regiments get their training. It
+was slang originally for beef on the hoof, because in the Military
+Areas two-thirds of your meat-rations at least are handed over to you
+on the hoof, and you make your own arrangements. The word ‘heef’ became
+a parable for camping in the Military Areas and all its miseries. There
+are two Areas in Ireland, one in Wales for hill-work, a couple in
+Scotland, and a sort of parade-ground in the Lake District; but the
+real working Areas are in India, Africa, and Australia, and so on.”
+
+“And what do you do there?”
+
+“We ‘heef’ under service conditions, which are rather like hard work.
+We ‘heef’ in an English Area for about a year, coming into barracks for
+one month to make up wastage. Then we may ‘heef’ foreign for another
+year or eighteen months. Then we do sea-time in the war boats——”
+
+“_What-t?_” I said.
+
+“Sea-time,” Bayley repeated. “Just like Marines, to learn about the big
+guns and how to embark and disembark quick. Then we come back to our
+territorial headquarters for six months, to educate the Line and
+Volunteer camps, to go to Hythe, to keep abreast of any new ideas, and
+then we fill up vacancies. We call those six months ‘Schools.’ Then we
+begin all over again, thus: Home ‘heef,’ foreign ‘heef,’ sea-time,
+schools. ‘Heefing’ isn’t precisely luxurious, but it’s on ‘heef’ that
+we make our head-money.”
+
+“Or lose it,” said the sallow Pigeon, and all laughed, as men will, at
+regimental jokes.
+
+“The Dove never lets me forget that,” said Boy Bayley. “It happened
+last March. We were out in the Second Northern Area at the top end of
+Scotland where a lot of those silly deer forests used to be. I’d sooner
+‘heef’ in the middle of Australia myself—or Athabasca, with all respect
+to the Dove—he’s a native of those parts. We were camped somewhere near
+Caithness, and the Armity (that’s the combined Navy and Army board that
+runs our show) sent us about eight hundred raw remounts to break in to
+keep us warm.”
+
+“Why horses for a foot regiment?”
+
+“I. G.’s don’t foot it unless they’re obliged to. No have gee-gee how
+can move? I’ll show you later. Well, as I was saying, we broke those
+beasts in on compressed forage and small box-spurs, and then we started
+across Scotland to Applecross to hand ’em over to a horse-depot there.
+It was snowing cruel, and we didn’t know the country overmuch. You
+remember the 30th—the old East Lancashire—at Mian Mir?
+
+“Their Guard Battalion had been ‘heefing’ round those parts for six
+months. We thought they’d be snowed up all quiet and comfy, but Burden,
+their C. O., got wind of our coming, and sent spies in to Eschol.”
+
+“Confound him,” said Luttrell, who was fat and well-liking. “I
+entertained one of ’em—in a red worsted comforter—under Bean Derig. He
+said he was a crofter. ‘Gave him a drink too.”
+
+“I don’t mind admitting,” said the Boy, “that, what with the cold and
+the remounts, we were moving rather base over apex. Burden bottled us
+under Sghurr Mohr in a snowstorm. He stampeded half the horses, cut off
+a lot of us in a snow-bank, and generally rubbed our noses in the
+dirt.”
+
+“Was he allowed to do that?” I said.
+
+“There is no peace in a Military Area. If we’d beaten him off or got
+away without losing anyone, we’d have been entitled to a day’s pay from
+every man engaged against us. But we didn’t. He cut off fifty of ours,
+held ’em as prisoners for the regulation three days, and then sent in
+his bill—three days’ pay for each man taken. Fifty men at twelve bob a
+head, plus five pounds for the Dove as a captured officer, and Kyd
+here, his junior, three, made about forty quid to Burden & Co. They
+crowed over us horrid.”
+
+“Couldn’t you have appealed to an umpire or—or something?”
+
+“We could, but we talked it over with the men and decided to pay and
+look happy. We were fairly had. The 30th knew every foot of Sghurr
+Mohr. I spent three days huntin’ ’em in the snow, but they went off on
+our remounts about twenty mile that night.”
+
+“Do you always do this sham-fight business?” I asked.
+
+“Once inside an Area you must look after yourself; but I tell you that
+a fight which means that every man-Jack of us may lose a week’s pay
+isn’t so damn-sham after all. It keeps the men nippy. Still, in the
+long run, it’s like whist on a P. & O. It comes out fairly level if you
+play long enough. Now and again, though, one gets a present—say, when a
+Line regiment’s out on the ‘heef,’ and signifies that it’s ready to
+abide by the rules of the game. You mustn’t take head-money from a Line
+regiment in an Area unless it says that it’ll play you; but, after a
+week or two, those clever Linesmen always think they see a chance of
+making a pot, and send in their compliments to the nearest I. G. Then
+the fun begins. We caught a Line regiment single-handed about two years
+ago in Ireland—caught it on the hop between a bog and a beach. It had
+just moved in to join its brigade, and we made a forty-two mile march
+in fourteen hours, and cut it off, lock, stock, and barrel. It went to
+ground like a badger—I _will_ say those Line regiments can dig—but we
+got out privily by night and broke up the only road it could expect to
+get its baggage and company-guns along. Then we blew up a bridge that
+some Sappers had made for experimental purposes (_they_ were rather
+stuffy about it) on its line of retreat, while we lay up in the
+mountains and signalled for the A.C. of those parts.”
+
+“Who’s an A.C.?” I asked.
+
+“The Adjustment Committee—the umpires of the Military Areas. They’re a
+set of superannuated old aunts of colonels kept for the purpose, but
+they occasionally combine to do justice. Our A.C. came, saw our
+dispositions, and said it was a sanguinary massacre for the Line, and
+that we were entitled to our full pound of flesh—head-money for one
+whole regiment, with equipment, four company-guns, and all kit! At Line
+rates this worked out as one fat cheque for two hundred and fifty. Not
+bad!”
+
+“But we had to pay the Sappers seventy-four quid for blowing their
+patent bridge to pieces,” Devine interpolated. “That was a swindle.”
+
+“That’s true,” the Boy went on, “but the Adjustment Committee gave our
+helpless victims a talking to that was worth another hundred to hear.”
+
+“But isn’t there a lot of unfairness in this head-money system?” I
+asked.
+
+“Can’t have everything perfect,” said the Boy. “Head-money is an
+attempt at payment by results, and it gives the men a direct interest
+in their job. Three times out of five, of course, the A. C. will
+disallow both sides’ claim, but there’s always the chance of bringing
+off a coup.”
+
+“Do all regiments do it?”
+
+“Heavily. The Line pays a bob per prisoner and the Militia ninepence,
+not to mention side-bets which are what really keep the men keen. It
+isn’t supposed to be done by the Volunteers, but they gamble worse than
+anyone. Why, the very kids do it when they go to First Camp at
+Aldershot or Salisbury.”
+
+“Head-money’s a national institution—like betting,” said Burgard.
+
+“I should say it was,” said Pigeon suddenly. “I was roped in the other
+day as an Adjustment Committee by the Kemptown Board School. I was
+riding under the Brighton racecourse, and I heard the whistle goin’ for
+umpire—the regulation, two longs and two shorts. I didn’t take any
+notice till an infant about a yard high jumped up from a furze-patch
+and shouted: ‘Guard! Guard! Come ’ere! I want you _per_fessionally. Alf
+says ’e ain’t outflanked. Ain’t ’e a liar? Come an’ look ’ow I’ve
+posted my men.’ You bet I looked. The young demon trotted by my stirrup
+and showed me his whole army (twenty of ’em) laid out under cover as
+nicely as you please round a cowhouse in a hollow. He kept on shouting:
+‘I’ve drew Alf into there. ’Is persition ain’t tenable. Say it ain’t
+tenable, Guard!’ I rode round the position, and Alf with his army came
+out of his cowhouse an’ sat on the roof and protested like a—like a
+Militia Colonel; but the facts were in favour of my friend and I
+umpired according. Well, Alf abode by my decision. I explained it to
+him at length, and he solemnly paid up his head-money—farthing points
+if you please.”
+
+“Did they pay you umpire’s fee?” said Kyd. “I umpired a whole afternoon
+once for a village school at home, and they stood me a bottle of hot
+ginger beer.”
+
+“I compromised on a halfpenny—a sticky one—or I’d have hurt their
+feelings,” said Pigeon gravely. “But I gave ’em sixpence back.”
+
+“How were they manoeuvring and what with?” I asked.
+
+“Oh, by whistle and hand-signal. They had the dummy Board School guns
+and flags for positions, but they were rushing their attack much too
+quick for that open country. I told ’em so, and they admitted it.”
+
+“But who taught ’em?” I said.
+
+“They had learned in their schools, of course, like the rest of us.
+They were all of ’em over ten; and squad-drill begins when they’re
+eight. They knew their company-drill a heap better than they knew their
+King’s English.”
+
+“How much drill do the boys put in?” I asked.
+
+“All boys begin physical drill to music in the Board Schools when
+they’re six; squad-drill, one hour a week, when they’re eight;
+company-drill when they’re ten, for an hour and a half a week. Between
+ten and twelve they get battalion drill of a sort. They take the rifle
+at twelve and record their first target-score at thirteen. That’s what
+the Code lays down. But it’s worked very loosely so long as a boy comes
+up to the standard of his age.”
+
+“In Canada we don’t need your physical drill. We’re born fit,” said
+Pigeon, “and our ten-year-olds could knock spots out of your
+twelve-year-olds.”
+
+“I may as well explain,” said the Boy, “that the Dove is our ‘swop’
+officer. He’s an untamed Huskie from Nootka Sound when he’s at home. An
+I. G. Corps exchanges one officer every two years with a Canadian or
+Australian or African Guard Corps. We’ve had a year of our Dove, an’ we
+shall be sorry to lose him. He humbles our insular pride. Meantime,
+Morten, our ‘swop’ in Canada, keeps the ferocious Canuck humble. When
+Pij. goes we shall swop Kyd, who’s next on the roster, for a Cornstalk
+or a Maori. But about the education-drill. A boy can’t attend First
+Camp, as we call it, till he is a trained boy and holds his First
+Musketry certificate. The Education Code says he must be fourteen, and
+the boys usually go to First Camp at about that age. Of course, they’ve
+been to their little private camps and Boys’ Fresh Air Camps and public
+school picnics while they were at school, but First Camp is where the
+young drafts all meet—generally at Aldershot in this part of the world.
+First Camp lasts a week or ten days, and the boys are looked over for
+vaccination and worked lightly in brigades with lots of blank
+cartridge. Second Camp—that’s for the fifteen to
+eighteen-year-olds—lasts ten days or a fortnight, and that includes a
+final medical examination. Men don’t like to be chucked out on medical
+certificates much—nowadays. I assure you Second Camp, at Salisbury,
+say, is an experience for a young I. G. officer. We’re told off to ’em
+in rotation. A wilderness of monkeys isn’t in it. The kids are apt to
+think ’emselves soldiers, and we have to take the edge off ’em with
+lots of picquet-work and night attacks.”
+
+“And what happens after Second Camp?”
+
+“It’s hard to explain. Our system is so illogical. Theoretically, the
+boys needn’t show up for the next three or four years after Second
+Camp. They are supposed to be making their way in life. Actually, the
+young doctor or lawyer or engineer joins a Volunteer battalion that
+sticks to the minimum of camp—ten days per annum. That gives him a
+holiday in the open air, and now that men have taken to endowing their
+Volunteer drill-halls with baths and libraries, he finds, if he can’t
+run to a club, that his own drill-hall is an efficient substitute. He
+meets men there who’ll be useful to him later, and he keeps himself in
+touch with what’s going on while he’s studying for his profession. The
+town-birds—such as the chemist’s assistant, clerk, plumber, mechanic,
+electrician, and so forth—generally put in for their town Volunteer
+corps as soon as they begin to walk out with the girls. They like
+takin’ their true-loves to our restaurants. Look yonder!” I followed
+his gaze, and saw across the room a man and a maid at a far table,
+forgetting in each other’s eyes the good food on their plates.
+
+“So it is,” said I. “Go ahead.”
+
+“Then, too, we have some town Volunteer corps that lay themselves out
+to attract promising youths of nineteen or twenty, and make much of ’em
+on condition that they join their Line battalion and play for their
+county. Under the new county qualifications—birth or three years’
+residence—that means a great deal in League matches, and the same in
+County cricket.”
+
+“By Jove, that’s a good notion,” I cried. “Who invented it?”
+
+“C. B. Fry—long ago. He said in his paper, that County cricket and
+County volunteering ought to be on the same footing—unpaid and genuine.
+‘No cricketer no corps. No corps no cricketer’ was his watchword. There
+was a row among the pro’s at first, but C. B. won, and later the League
+had to come in. They said at first it would ruin the gate; but when
+County matches began to be _pukka_ county, _plus_ inter-regimental,
+affairs the gate trebled, and as two-thirds of the gate goes to the
+regiments supplying the teams some Volunteer corps fairly wallow in
+cash. It’s all unofficial, of course, but League Corps, as they call
+’em, can take their pick of the Second Camper. Some corps ask ten
+guineas entrance-fee, and get it too, from the young bloods that want
+to shine in the arena. I told you we catered for all tastes. Now, as
+regards the Line proper, I believe the young artisan and mechanic puts
+in for that before he marries. He likes the two-months’ ‘heef’ in his
+first year, and five bob a week is something to go on with between
+times.”
+
+“Do they follow their trade while they’re in the Line?” I demanded.
+
+“Why not? How many well-paid artisans work more than four days a week
+anyhow? Remember a Linesman hasn’t to be drilled in your sense of the
+word. He must have had at least eight years’ grounding in that, as well
+as two or three years in his Volunteer battalion. He can sleep where he
+pleases. He can’t leave town-limits without reporting himself, of
+course, but he can get leave if he wants it. He’s on duty two days in
+the week as a rule, and he’s liable to be invited out for garrison duty
+down the Mediterranean, but his benefit societies will insure him
+against that. I’ll tell you about that later. If it’s a hard winter and
+trade’s slack, a lot of the bachelors are taken into the I. G. barracks
+(while the I. G. is out on the heef) for theoretical instruction. Oh, I
+assure you the Line hasn’t half a bad time of it.”
+
+“Amazing!” I murmured. “And what about the others?”
+
+“The Volunteers? Observe the beauty of our system. We’re a free people.
+We get up and slay the man who says we aren’t. But as a little detail
+we never mention, if we don’t volunteer in some corps or another—as
+combatants if we’re fit, as non-combatants, if we ain’t—till we’re
+thirty-five we don’t vote, and we don’t get poor-relief, and the women
+don’t love us.”
+
+“Oh, that’s the compulsion of it?” said I.
+
+Bayley inclined his head gravely. “That, Sir, is the compulsion. We
+voted the legal part of it ourselves in a fit of panic, and we have not
+yet rescinded our resolution. The women attend to the unofficial
+penalties. But being free British citizens——”
+
+“_And_ snobs,” put in Pigeon. “The point is well taken, Pij———we have
+supplied ourselves with every sort and shape and make of Volunteer
+corps that you can imagine, and we’ve mixed the whole show up with our
+Odd Fellows and our I.O.G.T.’s and our Buffaloes, and our Burkes and
+our Debretts, not to mention Leagues and Athletic Clubs, till you can’t
+tell t’other from which. You remember the young pup who used to look on
+soldiering as a favour done to his ungrateful country—the gun-poking,
+ferret-pettin’, landed gentleman’s offspring—the suckin’ Facey Romford?
+Well, he generally joins a Foreign Service Corps when he leaves
+college.”
+
+“Can Volunteers go foreign, then?”
+
+“Can’t they just, if their C.O. _or_ his wife has influence! The Armity
+will always send a well-connected F.S. corps out to help a guard
+battalion in a small campaign. Otherwise F.S. corps make their own
+arrangements about camps. You see, the Military Areas are always open.
+They can ‘heef’ there (and gamble on head-money) as long as their
+finances run to it; or they can apply to do sea-time in the ships. It’s
+a cheap way for a young man to see the world, and if he’s any good he
+can try to get into the Guard later.”
+
+“The main point,” said Pigeon, “is that F.S. corps are ‘swagger’—the
+correct thing. It ’ud never do to be drawn for the Militia, don’t you
+know,” he drawled, trying to render the English voice.
+
+“That’s what happens to a chap who doesn’t volunteer,” said Bayley.
+“Well, after the F.S. corps (we’ve about forty of ’em) come our
+territorial Volunteer battalions, and a man who can’t suit himself
+somewhere among ’em must be a shade difficult. We’ve got those ‘League’
+corps I was talking about; and those studious corps that just scrape
+through their ten days’ camp; and we’ve crack corps of highly-paid
+mechanics who can afford a two months’ ‘heef’ in an interesting Area
+every other year; and we’ve senior and junior scientific corps of
+earnest boilermakers and fitters and engineers who read papers on high
+explosives, and do their ‘heefing’ in a wet
+picket-boat—mine-droppin’—at the ports. Then we’ve heavy
+artillery—recruited from the big manufacturing towns and ship-building
+yards—and ferocious hard-ridin’ Yeomanry (they _can_ ride—now),
+genteel, semi-genteel, and Hooligan corps, and so on and so forth till
+you come to the Home Defence Establishment—the young chaps knocked out
+under medical certificate at the Second Camp, but good enough to sit
+behind hedges or clean up camp, and the old was-birds who’ve served
+their time but don’t care to drop out of the fun of the yearly camps
+and the halls. They call ’emselves veterans and do fancy-shooting at
+Bisley, but, between you and me, they’re mostly Fresh Air Benefit
+Clubs. They contribute to the Volunteer journals and tell the Guard
+that it’s no good. But I like ’em. I shall be one of ’em some day—a
+copper-nosed was-bird! … So you see we’re mixed to a degree on the
+Volunteer side.”
+
+“It sounds that way,” I ventured.
+
+“You’ve overdone it, Bayley,” said Devine. “You’ve missed our one
+strong point.” He turned to me and continued: “It’s embarkation. The
+Volunteers may be as mixed as the Colonel says, but they _are_ trained
+to go down to the sea in ships. You ought to see a big Bank-Holiday
+roll-out. We suspend most of the usual railway traffic and turn on the
+military time-table—say on Friday at midnight. By 4 A.M. the trains are
+running from every big centre in England to the nearest port at
+two-minute intervals. As a rule, the Armity meets us at the other end
+with shipping of sorts—fleet reserves or regular men of war or
+hulks—anything you can stick a gang-plank to. We pile the men on to the
+troop-decks, stack the rifles in the racks, send down the sea-kit,
+steam about for a few hours, and land ’em somewhere. It’s a good
+notion, because our army to be any use _must_ be an army of
+embarkation. Why, last Whit Monday we had—how many were down at the
+dock-edge in the first eight hours? Kyd, you’re the Volunteer
+enthusiast last from school.”
+
+“In the first ten hours over a hundred and eighteen thousand,” said Kyd
+across the table, “with thirty-six thousand actually put in and taken
+out of ship. In the whole thirty-six hours we had close on ninety
+thousand men on the water and a hundred and thirty-three thousand on
+the quays fallen in with their sea-kit.”
+
+“That must have been a sight,” I said.
+
+“One didn’t notice it much. It was scattered between Chatham, Dover,
+Portsmouth, Plymouth, Bristol, Liverpool, and so on, merely to give the
+inland men a chance to get rid of their breakfasts. We don’t like to
+concentrate and try a big embarkation at any one point. It makes the
+Continent jumpy. Otherwise,” said Kyd, “I believe we could get two
+hundred thousand men, with their kits, away on one tide.”
+
+“What d’you want with so many?” I asked.
+
+“_We_ don’t want one of ’em; but the Continent used to point out, every
+time relations were strained, that nothing would be easier than to raid
+England if they got command of the sea for a week. After a few years
+some genius discovered that it cut both ways, an’ there was no reason
+why we, who are supposed to command the sea and own a few ships, should
+not organise our little raids in case of need. The notion caught on
+among the Volunteers—they were getting rather sick of manœuvres on dry
+land—and since then we haven’t heard so much about raids from the
+Continent,” said Bayley.
+
+“It’s the offensive-defensive,” said Verschoyle, “that they talk so
+much about. We learned it _all_ from the Continent—bless ’em! They
+insisted on it so.”
+
+“No, we learned it from the Fleet,” said Devine. “The Mediterranean
+Fleet landed ten thousand marines and sailors, with guns, in twenty
+minutes once at manœuvres. That was long ago. I’ve seen the Fleet
+Reserve and a few paddle-steamers, hired for the day, land twenty-five
+thousand Volunteers at Bantry in four hours—half the men sea-sick too.
+You’ve no notion what a difference that sort of manœuvre makes in the
+calculations of our friends on the mainland. The Continent knows what
+invasion means. It’s like dealing with a man whose nerve has been
+shaken. It doesn’t cost much after all, and it makes us better friends
+with the great European family. We’re now as thick as thieves.”
+
+“Where does the Imperial Guard come in in all this gorgeousness?” I
+asked. “You’re unusual modest about yourselves.”
+
+“As a matter of fact, we’re supposed to go out and stay out. We’re the
+permanently mobilised lot. I don’t think there are more than eight I.
+G. battalions in England now. We’re a hundred battalions all told.
+Mostly on the ‘heef’ in India, Africa and so forth.”
+
+“A hundred thousand. Isn’t that small allowance?” I suggested.
+
+“You think so? One hundred thousand _men_, without a single case of
+venereal, and an average sick list of two per cent, permanently on a
+war footing? Well, perhaps you’re right, but it’s a useful little force
+to begin with while the others are getting ready. There’s the native
+Indian Army also, which isn’t a broken reed, and, since ‘no Volunteer
+no Vote’ is the rule throughout the Empire, you will find a few men in
+Canada, Australia, and elsewhere, that are fairly hefty in their
+class.”
+
+“But a hundred thousand isn’t enough for garrison duty,” I persisted.
+
+“A hundred thousand _sound_ men, not sick boys, go quite a way,” said
+Pigeon.
+
+“We expect the Line to garrison the Mediterranean Ports and
+thereabouts,” said Bayley. “Don’t sneer at the mechanic. He’s deuced
+good stuff. He isn’t rudely ordered out, because this ain’t a military
+despotism, and we have to consider people’s feelings. The Armity
+usually brackets three Line regiments together, and calls for men for
+six months or a year for Malta, Gib, or elsewhere, at a bob a day.
+Three battalions will give you nearly a whole battalion of bachelors
+between ’em. You fill up deficiencies with a call on the territorial
+Volunteer battalion, and away you go with what we call a Ports
+battalion. What’s astonishing in that? Remember that in this country,
+where fifty per cent of the able-bodied males have got a pretty fair
+notion of soldiering, and, which is more, have all camped out in the
+open, you wake up the spirit of adventure in the young.”
+
+“Not much adventure at Malta, Gib, or Cyprus,” I retorted. “Don’t they
+get sick of it?”
+
+“But you don’t realise that we treat ’em rather differently from the
+soldier of the past. You ought to go and see a Ports battalion drawn
+from a manufacturing centre growin’ vines in Cyprus in its shirt
+sleeves; and at Gib, and Malta, of course, the battalions are working
+with the Fleet half the time.”
+
+“It seems to me,” I said angrily, “you are knocking _esprit de corps_
+on the head with all this Army-Navy jumble. It’s as bad as——”
+
+“I know what you’re going to say. As bad as what Kitchener used to do
+when he believed that a thousand details picked up on the veldt were as
+good as a column of two regiments. In the old days, when drill was a
+sort of holy sacred art learned in old age, you’d be quite right. But
+remember _our_ chaps are broke to drill from childhood, and the theory
+we work on is that a thousand trained Englishmen ought to be about as
+good as another thousand trained Englishmen. We’ve enlarged our
+horizon, that’s all. Some day the Army and the Navy will be
+interchangeable.”
+
+“You’ve enlarged it enough to fall out of, I think. Now where in all
+this mess of compulsory Volunteers——?”
+
+“My dear boy, there’s no compulsion. You’ve _got_ to be drilled when
+you’re a child, same as you’ve got to learn to read, and if you don’t
+pretend to serve in some corps or other till you’re thirty-five or
+medically chucked you rank with lunatics, women, and minors. That’s
+fair enough.”
+
+“Compulsory conscripts,” I continued. “Where, as I was going to say,
+does the Militia come in?”
+
+“As I have said—for the men who can’t afford volunteering. The Militia
+is recruited by ballot—pretty comprehensively too. Volunteers are
+exempt, but most men not otherwise accounted for are bagged by the
+Militia. They have to put in a minimum three weeks’ camp every other
+year, and they get fifteen bob a week and their keep when they’re at
+it, and some sort of a yearly fee, I’ve forgotten how much. ’Tisn’t a
+showy service, but it’s very useful. It keeps the mass of the men
+between twenty-five, say, and thirty-five moderately fit, and gives the
+Armity an excuse for having more equipment ready—in case of
+emergencies.”
+
+“I don’t think you’re quite fair on the Militia,” drawled Verschoyle.
+“They’re better than we give ’em credit for. Don’t you remember the
+Middle Moor Collieries’ strike?”
+
+“Tell me,” I said quickly. Evidently the others knew.
+
+“We-ell, it was no end of a pitman’s strike about eight years ago.
+There were twenty-five thousand men involved—Militia, of course. At the
+end of the first month—October—when things were looking rather blue,
+one of those clever Labour leaders got hold of the Militia Act and
+discovered that any Militia regiment could, by a two-thirds vote, go on
+‘heef’ in a Military Area in addition to its usual biennial camp.
+Two-and-twenty battalions of Geordies solemnly applied, and they were
+turned loose into the Irish and Scotch Areas under an I. G. Brigadier
+who had private instructions to knock clinkers out of ’em. But the
+pitman is a strong and agile bird. He throve on snowdrifts and
+entrenching and draggin’ guns through heather. _He_ was being fed and
+clothed for nothing, besides having a chance of making head-money, and
+his strike-pay was going clear to his wife and family. You see? Wily
+man. But wachtabittje! When that ‘heef’ finished in December the strike
+was still on. _Then_ that same Labour leader found out, from the same
+Act, that if at any time more than thirty or forty men of a Militia
+regiment wished to volunteer to do sea-time and study big guns in the
+Fleet they were in no wise to be discouraged, but were to be taken on
+as opportunity offered and paid a bob a day. Accordingly, about
+January, Geordie began volunteering for sea-time—seven and eight
+hundred men out of each regiment. Anyhow, it made up seventeen thousand
+men! It was a splendid chance and the Armity jumped at it. The Home and
+Channel Fleets and the North Sea and Cruiser Squadrons were
+strengthened with lame ducks from the Fleet Reserve, and between ’em
+with a little stretching and pushing they accommodated all of that
+young division.”
+
+“Yes, but you’ve forgotten how we lied to the Continent about it. All
+Europe wanted to know what the dooce we were at,” said Boy Bayley, “and
+the wretched Cabinet had to stump the country in the depths of winter
+explaining our new system of poor-relief. I beg your pardon,
+Verschoyle.”
+
+“The Armity improvised naval manœuvres between Gib and Land’s End, with
+frequent coalings and landings; ending in a cruise round England that
+fairly paralysed the pitmen. The first day out they wanted the fleet
+stopped while they went ashore and killed their Labour leader, but they
+couldn’t be obliged. Then they wanted to mutiny over the coaling—it was
+too like their own job. Oh, they had a lordly time! They came back—the
+combined Fleets anchored off Hull—with a nautical hitch to their
+breeches. They’d had a free fight at Gib with the Ports battalion
+there; they cleared out the town of Lagos; and they’d fought a pitched
+battle with the dockyard-mateys at Devonport. So they’d done ’emselves
+well, but they didn’t want any more military life for a bit.”
+
+“And the strike?”
+
+“That ended, all right enough, when the strike-money came to an end.
+The pit-owners were furious. They said the Armity had wilfully
+prolonged the strike, and asked questions in the House. The Armity said
+that they had taken advantage of the crisis to put a six months’ polish
+on fifteen thousand fine young men, and if the masters cared to come
+out on the same terms they’d be happy to do the same by them.”
+
+“And then?”
+
+“Palaver done set,” said Bayley. “Everybody laughed.”
+
+“I don’t quite understand about this sea-time business,” I said. “Is
+the Fleet open to take any regiment aboard?”
+
+“Rather. The I. G. must, the Line can, the Militia may, and the
+Volunteers do put in sea-time. The Coast Volunteers began it, and the
+fashion is spreading inland. Under certain circumstances, as Verschoyle
+told you, a Volunteer or Militia regiment can vote whether it ‘heefs’
+wet or dry. If it votes wet and has influence (like some F.S. corps),
+it can sneak into the Channel or the Home Fleet and do a cruise round
+England or to Madeira or the North Sea. The regiment, of course, is
+distributed among the ships, and the Fleet dry nurse ’em. It rather
+breaks up shore discipline, but it gives the inland men a bit of
+experience, and, of course, it gives us a fairish supply of men behind
+the gun, in event of any strain on the Fleet. Some coast corps make a
+specialty of it, and compete for embarking and disembarking records. I
+believe some of the Tyneside engineerin’ corps put ten per cent of
+their men through the Fleet engine rooms. But there’s no need to stay
+talking here all the afternoon. Come and see the I. G. in his lair—the
+miserable conscript driven up to the colours at the point of the
+bayonet.”
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+The great hall was emptying apace as the clocks struck two, and we
+passed out through double doors into a huge reading and smoking room,
+blue with tobacco and buzzing with voices.
+
+“We’re quieter as a rule,” said the Boy. “But we’re filling up
+vacancies to-day. Hence the anxious faces of the Line and Militia.
+Look!” There were four tables against the walls, and at each stood a
+crowd of uniforms. The centres of disturbance were noncommissioned
+officers who, seated, growled and wrote down names.
+
+“Come to my table,” said Burgard. “Well, Purvis, have you ear-marked
+our little lot?”
+
+“I’ve been tellin’ ’em for the last hour we’ve only twenty-three
+vacancies,” was the sergeant’s answer. “I’ve taken nearly fifty for
+Trials, and this is what’s left.” Burgard smiled.
+
+“I’m very sorry,” he said to the crowd, “but C Company’s full.”
+
+“Excuse me, Sir,” said a man, “but wouldn’t sea-time count in my
+favour? I’ve put in three months with the Fleet. Small quick-firers,
+Sir? Company guns? Any sort of light machinery?”
+
+“Come away,” said a voice behind. “They’ve chucked the best farrier
+between Hull and Dewsbury. Think they’ll take _you_ an’ your potty
+quick-firers?”
+
+The speaker turned on his heel and swore.
+
+“Oh, damn the Guard, by all means!” said Sergeant Purvis, collecting
+his papers. “D’you suppose it’s any pleasure to _me_ to reject chaps of
+your build and make? Vote us a second Guard battalion and we’ll
+accommodate you. Now, you can come into Schools and watch Trials if you
+like.”
+
+Most of the men accepted his invitation, but a few walked away angrily.
+I followed from the smoking-room across a wide corridor into a
+riding-school, under whose roof the voices of the few hundred assembled
+wandered in lost echoes.
+
+“I’ll leave you, if you don’t mind,” said Burgard. “Company officers
+aren’t supposed to assist at these games. Here, Matthews!” He called to
+a private and put me in his charge.
+
+In the centre of the vast floor my astonished eyes beheld a group of
+stripped men; the pink of their bodies startling the tan.
+
+“These are our crowd,” said Matthews. “They’ve been vetted, an’ we’re
+putting ’em through their paces.”
+
+“They don’t look a bit like raw material,” I said.
+
+“No, we don’t use either raw men or raw meat for that matter in the
+Guard,” Matthews replied. “Life’s too short.”
+
+Purvis stepped forward and barked in the professional manner. It was
+physical drill of the most searching, checked only when he laid his
+hand over some man’s heart.
+
+Six or seven, I noticed, were sent back at this stage of the game. Then
+a cry went up from a group of privates standing near the line of
+contorted figures. “White, Purvis, white! Number Nine is spitting
+white!”
+
+“I know it,” said Purvis. “Don’t you worry.”
+
+“Unfair!” murmured the man who understood quick-firers. “If I couldn’t
+shape better than that I’d hire myself out to wheel a perambulator.
+He’s cooked.”
+
+“Nah,” said the intent Matthews. “He’ll answer to a month’s training
+like a horse. It’s only suet. _You’ve_ been training for this, haven’t
+you?”
+
+“Look at me,” said the man simply.
+
+“Yes. You’re overtrained,” was Matthews’ comment. “The Guard isn’t a
+circus.”
+
+“Guns!” roared Purvis, as the men broke off and panted. “Number off
+from the right. Fourteen is one, three is two, eleven’s three, twenty
+and thirty-nine are four and five, and five is six.” He was giving them
+their numbers at the guns as they struggled into their uniforms. In
+like manner he told off three other guncrews, and the remainder left at
+the double, to return through the further doors with four light
+quick-firers jerking at the end of man-ropes.
+
+“Knock down and assemble against time!” Purvis called.
+
+The audience closed in a little as the crews flung themselves on the
+guns, which melted, wheel by wheel, beneath their touch.
+
+“I’ve never seen anything like this,” I whispered.
+
+“Huh!” said Matthews scornfully. “They’re always doin’ it in the Line
+and Militia drill-halls. It’s only circus-work.”
+
+The guns were assembled again and some one called the time. Then
+followed ten minutes of the quickest firing and feeding with dummy
+cartridges that was ever given man to behold.
+
+“They look as if they might amount to something—this draft,” said
+Matthews softly.
+
+“What might you teach ’em after this, then?” I asked.
+
+“To be Guard,” said Matthews.
+
+“Spurs,” cried Purvis, as the guns disappeared through the doors into
+the stables. Each man plucked at his sleeve, and drew up first one heel
+and then the other.
+
+“What the deuce are they doing?” I asked.
+
+“This,” said Matthews. He put his hand to a ticket-pocket inside his
+regulation cuff, showed me two very small black box-spurs: drawing up a
+gaitered foot, he snapped them into the box in the heel, and when I had
+inspected snapped them out again.
+
+“That’s all the spur you really need,” he said.
+
+Then horses were trotted out into the school barebacked, and the
+neophytes were told to ride.
+
+Evidently the beasts knew the game and enjoyed it, for they would not
+make it easy for the men.
+
+A heap of saddlery was thrown in a corner, and from this each man, as
+he captured his mount, made shift to draw proper equipment, while the
+audience laughed, derided, or called the horses towards them.
+
+It was, most literally, wild horseplay, and by the time it was finished
+the recruits and the company were weak with fatigue and laughter.
+
+“That’ll do,” said Purvis, while the men rocked in their saddles. “I
+don’t see any particular odds between any of you. C Company! Does
+anybody here know anything against any of these men?”
+
+“That’s a bit of the Regulations,” Matthews whispered. “Just like
+forbiddin’ the banns in church. Really, it was all settled long ago
+when the names first came up.”
+
+There was no answer.
+
+“You’ll take ’em as they stand?”
+
+There was a grunt of assent.
+
+“Very good. There’s forty men for twenty-three billets.” He turned to
+the sweating horsemen. “I must put you into the Hat.”
+
+With great ceremony and a shower of company jokes that I did not
+follow, an enormous Ally Sloper top-hat was produced, into which
+numbers and blanks were dropped, and the whole was handed round to the
+riders by a private, evidently the joker of C Company.
+
+Matthews gave me to understand that each company owned a cherished
+receptacle (sometimes not a respectable one) for the papers of the
+final drawing. He was telling me how his company had once stolen the
+Sacred Article used by D Company for this purpose and of the riot that
+followed, when through the west door of the schools entered a fresh
+detachment of stripped men, and the arena was flooded with another
+company.
+
+Said Matthews as we withdrew, “Each company does Trials their own way.
+B Company is all for teaching men how to cook and camp. D Company keeps
+’em to horse-work mostly. We call D the circus-riders and B the cooks.
+They call us the Gunners.”
+
+“An’ you’ve rejected _me_,” said the man who had done sea-time, pushing
+out before us. “The Army’s goin’ to the dogs.”
+
+I stood in the corridor looking for Burgard.
+
+“Come up to my room and have a smoke,” said Matthews, private of the
+Imperial Guard.
+
+We climbed two flights of stone stairs ere we reached an immense
+landing flanked with numbered doors.
+
+Matthews pressed a spring-latch and led me into a little cabin-like
+room. The cot was a standing bunk, with drawers beneath. On the bed lay
+a brilliant blanket; by the bed head was an electric light and a shelf
+of books: a writing table stood in the window, and I dropped into a low
+wicker chair.
+
+“This is a cut above subaltern’s quarters,” I said, surveying the
+photos, the dhurri on the floor, the rifle in its rack, the field-kit
+hung up behind the door, and the knicknacks on the walls.
+
+“The Line bachelors use ’em while we’re away; but they’re nice to come
+back to after ‘heef.’” Matthews passed me his cigarette-case.
+
+“Where have you ‘heefed’?” I said.
+
+“In Scotland, Central Australia, and North-Eastern Rhodesia and the
+North-West Indian front.”
+
+“What’s your service?”
+
+“Four years. I’ll have to go in a year. I got in when I was
+twenty-two—by a fluke—from the Militia direct—on Trials.”
+
+“Trials like those we just saw?”
+
+“Not so severe. There was less competition then. I hoped to get my
+stripes, but there’s no chance.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“I haven’t the knack of handling men. Purvis let me have a half-company
+for a month in Rhodesia—over towards Lake N’Garni. I couldn’t work ’em
+properly. It’s a gift.”
+
+“Do colour-sergeants handle half-companies with you?”
+
+“They can command ’em on the ‘heef.’ We’ve only four company
+officers—Burgard, Luttrell, Kyd, and Harrison. Pigeon’s our swop, and
+he’s in charge of the ponies. Burgard got his company on the ‘heef.’
+You see Burgard had been a lieutenant in the Line, but he came into the
+Guards on Trials like the men. _He_ could command. They tried him in
+India with a wing of the battalion for three months. He did well so he
+got his company. That’s what made me hopeful. But it’s a gift, you
+see—managing men—and so I’m only a senior private. They let ten per
+cent of us stay on for two years extra after our three are finished—to
+polish the others.”
+
+“Aren’t you even a corporal?”
+
+“We haven’t corporals, or lances for that matter, in the Guard. As a
+senior private I’d take twenty men into action; but one Guard don’t
+tell another how to clean himself. You’ve learned that before you
+apply. … Come in!”
+
+There was a knock at the door, and Burgard entered, removing his cap.
+
+“I thought you’d be here,” he said, as Matthews vacated the other chair
+and sat on the bed. “Well, has Matthews told you all about it? How did
+our Trials go, Matthews?”
+
+“Forty names in the Hat, Sir, at the finish. They’ll make a fairish
+lot. Their gun-tricks weren’t bad; but D company has taken the best
+horsemen—as usual.”
+
+“Oh, I’ll attend to that on ‘heef.’ Give me a man who can handle
+company-guns and I’ll engage to make him a horse-master. D company will
+end by thinkin’ ’emselves Captain Pigeon’s private cavalry some day.”
+
+I had never heard a private and a captain talking after this fashion,
+and my face must have betrayed my astonishment, for Burgard said:
+
+“These are not our parade manners. In our rooms, as we say in the
+Guard, all men are men. Outside we are officers and men.”
+
+“I begin to see,” I stammered. “Matthews was telling me that sergeants
+handled half-companies and rose from the ranks—and I don’t see that
+there are any lieutenants—and your companies appear to be two hundred
+and fifty strong. It’s a shade confusing to the layman.”
+
+Burgard leaned forward didactically. “The Regulations lay down that
+every man’s capacity for command must be tested to the uttermost. We
+construe that very literally when we’re on the ‘heef.’ F’r instance,
+any man can apply to take the command next above him, and if a man’s
+too shy to ask, his company officer must see that he gets his chance. A
+sergeant is given a wing of the battalion to play with for three
+weeks—a month, or six weeks—according to his capacity, and turned
+adrift in an Area to make his own arrangements. That’s what Areas are
+for—and to experiment in. A good gunner—a private very often—has all
+four company-guns to handle through a week’s fight, acting for the time
+as the major. Majors of Guard battalions (Verschoyle’s our major) are
+supposed to be responsible for the guns, by the way. There’s nothing to
+prevent any man who has the gift working his way up to the experimental
+command of the battalion on ‘heef.’ Purvis, my colour-sergeant,
+commanded the battalion for three months at the back of Coolgardie, an’
+very well he did it. Bayley ’verted to company officer for the time
+being an’ took Harrison’s company, and Harrison came over to me as my
+colour-sergeant. D’you see? Well, Purvis is down for a commission when
+there’s a vacancy. He’s been thoroughly tested, and we all like him.
+Two other sergeants have passed that three months’ trial in the same
+way (just as second mates go up for extra master’s certificate). They
+have E.C. after their names in the Army List. That shows they’re
+capable of taking command in event of war. The result of our system is
+that you could knock out every single officer of a Guard battalion
+early in the day, and the wheels ’ud still go forward, _not_ merely
+round. We’re allowed to fill up half our commissioned list from the
+ranks direct. _Now_ d’you see why there’s such a rush to get into a
+Guard battalion?”
+
+“Indeed I do. Have you commanded the regiment experimentally?”
+
+“Oh, time and again,” Burgard laughed. “We’ve all had our E.C. turn.”
+
+“Doesn’t the chopping and changing upset the men?”
+
+“It takes something to upset the Guard. Besides, they’re all in the
+game together. They give each other a fair show you may be sure.”
+
+“That’s true,” said Matthews. “When I went to N’Gami with my—with the
+half-company,” he sighed, “they helped me all they knew. But it’s a
+gift—handling men. I found _that_ out.”
+
+“I know you did,” said Burgard softly. “But you found it out in time,
+which is the great thing. You see,” he turned to me, “with our limited
+strength we can’t afford to have a single man who isn’t more than up to
+any duty—in reason. Don’t you be led away by what you saw at Trials
+just now. The Volunteers and the Militia have all the monkey-tricks of
+the trade—such as mounting and dismounting guns, and making fancy
+scores and doing record marches; but they need a lot of working up
+before they can pull their weight in the boat.”
+
+There was a knock at the door. A note was handed in. Burgard read it
+and smiled.
+
+“Bayley wants to know if you’d care to come with us to the Park and see
+the kids. It’s only a Saturday afternoon walk-round before the
+taxpayer…. Very good. If you’ll press the button we’ll try to do the
+rest.”
+
+He led me by two flights of stairs up an iron stairway that gave on a
+platform, not unlike a ship’s bridge, immediately above the barrelled
+glass roof of the riding-school. Through a ribbed ventilator I could
+see B Company far below watching some men who chased sheep. Burgard
+unlocked a glass-fronted fire-alarm arrangement flanked with dials and
+speaking-tubes, and bade me press the centre button.
+
+Next moment I should have fallen through the riding-school roof if he
+had not caught me; for the huge building below my feet thrilled to the
+multiplied purring of electric bells. The men in the school vanished
+like minnows before a shadow, and above the stamp of booted feet on
+staircases I heard the neighing of many horses.
+
+“What in the world have I done?” I gasped.
+
+“Turned out the Guard—horse, foot, and guns!”
+
+A telephone bell rang imperiously. Burgard snatched up the receiver:
+
+“Yes, Sir…. _What_, Sir?… I never heard they said that,” he laughed,
+“but it would be just like ’em. In an hour and a half? Yes, Sir.
+Opposite the Statue? Yes, Sir.”
+
+He turned to me with a wink as he hung up.
+
+“Bayley’s playing up for you. Now you’ll see some fun.”
+
+“Who’s going to catch it?” I demanded.
+
+“Only our local Foreign Service Corps. Its C.O. has been boasting that
+it’s _en état de partir_, and Bayley’s going to take him at his word
+and have a kit-inspection this afternoon in the Park. I must tell their
+drill-hall. Look over yonder between that brewery chimney and the
+mansard roof!”
+
+He readdressed himself to the telephone, and I kept my eye on the
+building to the southward. A Blue Peter climbed up to the top of the
+flagstaff that crowned it and blew out in the summer breeze. A black
+storm-cone followed.
+
+“Inspection for F.S. corps acknowledged, Sir,” said Burgard down the
+telephone. “Now we’d better go to the riding-school. The battalion
+falls in there. I have to change, but you’re free of the corps. Go
+anywhere. Ask anything. In another ten minutes we’re off.”
+
+I lingered for a little looking over the great city, its huddle of
+houses and the great fringe of the Park, all framed between the open
+windows of this dial-dotted eyrie.
+
+When I descended the halls and corridors were as hushed as they had
+been noisy, and my feet echoed down the broad tiled staircases. On the
+third floor, Matthews, gaitered and armed, overtook me smiling.
+
+“I thought you might want a guide,” said he. “We’ve five minutes yet,”
+and piloted me to the sunsplashed gloom of the riding-school. Three
+companies were in close order on the tan. They moved out at a whistle,
+and as I followed in their rear I was overtaken by Pigeon on a rough
+black mare.
+
+“Wait a bit,” he said, “till the horses are all out of stables, and
+come with us. D Company is the only one mounted just now. We do it to
+amuse the taxpayer,” he explained, above the noise of horses on the
+tan.
+
+“Where are the guns?” I asked, as the mare lipped my coat-collar.
+
+“Gone ahead long ago. They come out of their own door at the back of
+barracks. We don’t haul guns through traffic more than we can help…. If
+Belinda breathes down your neck smack her. She’ll be quiet in the
+streets. She loves lookin’ into the shop-windows.”
+
+The mounted company clattered through vaulted concrete corridors in the
+wake of the main body, and filed out into the crowded streets.
+
+When I looked at the townsfolk on the pavement, or in the double-decked
+trams, I saw that the bulk of them saluted, not grudgingly or of
+necessity, but in a light-hearted, even flippant fashion.
+
+“Those are Line and Militia men,” said Pigeon. “That old chap in the
+top-hat by the lamp-post is an ex-Guardee. That’s why he’s saluting in
+slow-time. No, there’s no regulation governing these things, but we’ve
+all fallen into the way of it somehow. Steady, mare!”
+
+“I don’t know whether I care about this aggressive militarism,” I
+began, when the company halted, and Belinda almost knocked me down.
+Looking forward I saw the badged cuff of a policeman upraised at a
+crossing, his back towards us.
+
+“Horrid aggressive, ain’t we?” said Pigeon with a chuckle when we moved
+on again and overtook the main body. Here I caught the strains of the
+band, which Pigeon told me did not accompany the battalion on ‘heef,’
+but lived in barracks and made much money by playing at parties in
+town.
+
+“If we want anything more than drums and fifes on ‘heef’ we sing,” said
+Pigeon. “Singin’ helps the wind.”
+
+I rejoiced to the marrow of my bones thus to be borne along on billows
+of surging music among magnificent men, in sunlight, through a crowded
+town whose people, I could feel, regarded us with comradeship,
+affection—and more.
+
+“By Jove,” I said at last, watching the eyes about us, “these people
+are looking us over as if we were horses.”
+
+“Why not? They know the game.”
+
+The eyes on the pavement, in the trams, the cabs, at the upper windows,
+swept our lines back and forth with a weighed intensity of regard which
+at first seemed altogether new to me, till I recalled just such eyes, a
+thousand of them, at manœuvres in the Channel when one crowded
+battleship drew past its sister at biscuit-toss range. Then I stared at
+the ground, overborne by those considering eyes.
+
+Suddenly the music changed to the wail of the Dead March in “Saul,” and
+once more—we were crossing a large square—the regiment halted.
+
+“Damn!” said Pigeon, glancing behind him at the mounted company. “I
+believe they save up their Saturday corpses on purpose.”
+
+“What is it?” I asked.
+
+“A dead Volunteer. We must play him through.” Again I looked forward
+and saw the top of a hearse, followed by two mourning-coaches, boring
+directly up the halted regiment, which opened out company by company to
+let it through.
+
+“But they’ve got the whole blessed square to funeralise in!” I
+exclaimed. “Why don’t they go round?”
+
+“Not so!” Pigeon replied. “In this city it’s the Volunteer’s perquisite
+to be played through by any corps he happens to meet on his way to the
+cemetery. And they make the most of it. You’ll see.”
+
+I heard the order, “Rest on your arms,” run before the poor little
+procession as the men opened out. The driver pulled the black Flanders
+beasts into a more than funeral crawl, and in the first mourning-coach
+I saw the tearful face of a fat woman (his mother, doubtless), a
+handkerchief pressed to one eye, but the other rolling vigilantly,
+alight with proper pride. Last came a knot of uniformed men—privates, I
+took it—of the dead one’s corps.
+
+Said a man in the crowd beside us to the girl on his arm, “There,
+Jenny! That’s what I’ll get if I ’ave the luck to meet ’em when my time
+comes.”
+
+“You an’ your luck,” she snapped. “’Ow can you talk such silly
+nonsense?”
+
+“Played through by the Guard,” he repeated slowly. “The undertaker ’oo
+could guarantee _that_, mark you, for all his customers—well, ’e’d
+monopolise the trade, is all I can say. See the horses passagin’
+sideways!”
+
+“She done it a purpose,” said the woman with a sniff.
+
+“An’ I only hope you’ll follow her example. Just as long as you think
+I’ll keep, too.”
+
+We reclosed when the funeral had left us twenty paces behind. A small
+boy stuck his head out of a carriage and watched us jealously.
+
+“Amazing! Amazing!” I murmured. “Is it regulation?”
+
+“No. Town-custom. It varies a little in different cities, but the
+people value being played through more than most things, I imagine.
+Duddell, the big Ipswich manufacturer—he’s a Quaker—tried to bring in a
+bill to suppress it as unchristian.” Pigeon laughed.
+
+“And?”
+
+“It cost him his seat next election. You see, we’re all in the game.”
+
+We reached the Park without further adventure, and found the four
+company-guns with their spike teams and single drivers waiting for us.
+Many people were gathered here, and we were halted, so far as I could
+see, that they might talk with the men in the ranks. The officers broke
+into groups.
+
+“Why on earth didn’t you come along with me?” said Boy Bayley at my
+side. “I was expecting you.”
+
+“Well, I had a delicacy about brigading myself with a colonel at the
+head of his regiment, so I stayed with the rear company and the horses.
+It’s all too wonderful for any words. What’s going to happen next?”
+
+“I’ve handed over to Verschoyle, who will amuse and edify the school
+children while I take you round our kindergarten. Don’t kill any one,
+Vee. Are you goin’ to charge ’em?”
+
+Old Verschoyle hitched his big shoulder and nodded precisely as he used
+to do at school. He was a boy of few words grown into a kindly taciturn
+man.
+
+“Now!” Bayley slid his arm through mine and led me across a riding road
+towards a stretch of rough common (singularly out of place in a park)
+perhaps three-quarters of a mile long and half as wide. On the
+encircling rails leaned an almost unbroken line of men and women—the
+women outnumbering the men. I saw the Guard battalion move up the road
+flanking the common and disappear behind the trees.
+
+As far as the eye could range through the mellow English haze the
+ground inside the railings was dotted with boys in and out of uniform,
+armed and unarmed. I saw squads here, half-companies there; then three
+companies in an open space, wheeling with stately steps; a knot of
+drums and fifes near the railings unconcernedly slashing their way
+across popular airs; and a batch of gamins labouring through some
+extended attack destined to be swept aside by a corps crossing the
+ground at the double. They broke out of furze bushes, ducked over
+hollows and bunkers, held or fell away from hillocks and rough
+sandbanks till the eye wearied of their busy legs.
+
+Bayley took me through the railings, and gravely returned the salute of
+a freckled twelve-year-old near by.
+
+“What’s your corps?” said the Colonel of that Imperial Guard battalion
+to that child.
+
+“Eighth District Board School, fourth standard, Sir. We aren’t out
+to-day.” Then, with a twinkle, “I go to First Camp next year.”
+
+“What are those boys yonder—that squad at the double?”
+
+“Jewboys, Sir. Jewish Voluntary Schools, Sir.”
+
+“And that full company extending behind the three elms to the
+south-west?”
+
+“Private day-schools, Sir, I think. Judging distance, Sir.”
+
+“Can you come with us?”
+
+“Certainly, Sir.”
+
+“Here’s the raw material at the beginning of the process,” said Bayley
+to me.
+
+We strolled on towards the strains of “A Bicycle Built for Two,”
+breathed jerkily into a mouth-organ by a slim maid of fourteen. Some
+dozen infants with clenched fists and earnest legs were swinging
+through the extension movements which that tune calls for. A stunted
+hawthorn overhung the little group, and from a branch a dirty white
+handkerchief flapped in the breeze. The girl blushed, scowled, and
+wiped the mouth-organ on her sleeve as we came up.
+
+“We’re all waiting for our big bruvvers,” piped up one bold person in
+blue breeches—seven if he was a day.
+
+“It keeps ’em quieter, Sir,” the maiden lisped. “The others are with
+the regiments.”
+
+“Yeth, and they’ve all lots of blank for _you_,” said the gentleman in
+blue breeches ferociously.
+
+“Oh, Artie! ’Ush!” the girl cried.
+
+“But why have they lots of blank for _us_?” Bayley asked. Blue Breeches
+stood firm.
+
+“’Cause—’cause the Guard’s goin’ to fight the Schools this afternoon;
+but my big bruvver says they’ll be dam-well surprised.”
+
+“_Artie!_” The girl leaped towards him. “You know your ma said I was to
+smack——”
+
+“Don’t. Please don’t,” said Bayley, pink with suppressed mirth. “It was
+all my fault. I must tell old Verschoyle this. I’ve surprised his plan
+out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.”
+
+“What plan?”
+
+“Old Vee has taken the battalion up to the top of the common, and he
+told me he meant to charge down through the kids, but they’re on to him
+already. He’ll be scuppered. The Guard will be scuppered!”
+
+Here Blue Breeches, overcome by the reproof of his fellows, began to
+weep.
+
+“I didn’t tell,” he roared. “My big bruvver _he_ knew when he saw them
+go up the road…”
+
+“Never mind! Never mind, old man,” said Bayley soothingly. “I’m not
+fighting to-day. It’s all right.”
+
+He rightened it yet further with sixpence, and left that band loudly at
+feud over the spoil.
+
+“Oh, Vee! Vee the strategist,” he chuckled. “We’ll pull Vee’s leg
+to-night.”
+
+Our freckled friend of the barriers doubled up behind us.
+
+“So you know that my battalion is charging down the ground,” Bayley
+demanded.
+
+“Not for certain, Sir, but we’re preparin’ for the worst,” he answered
+with a cheerful grin. “They allow the Schools a little blank ammunition
+after we’ve passed the third standard; and we nearly always bring it on
+to the ground of Saturdays.”
+
+“The deuce you do! Why?”
+
+“On account of these amateur Volunteer corps, Sir. They’re always
+experimentin’ upon us, Sir, comin’ over from their ground an’
+developin’ attacks on our flanks. Oh, it’s chronic ’ere of a Saturday
+sometimes, unless you flag yourself.”
+
+I followed his eye and saw white flags fluttering before a drum and
+fife band and a knot of youths in sweaters gathered round the dummy
+breech of a four-inch gun which they were feeding at express rates.
+
+“The attacks don’t interfere with you if you flag yourself, Sir,” the
+boy explained. “That’s a Second Camp team from the Technical Schools
+loading against time for a bet.”
+
+We picked our way deviously through the busy groups. Apparently it was
+not etiquette to notice a Guard officer, and the youths at the
+twenty-five pounder were far too busy to look up. I watched the cleanly
+finished hoist and shove-home of the full-weight shell from a safe
+distance, when I became aware of a change among the scattered boys on
+the common, who disappeared among the hillocks to an accompaniment of
+querulous whistles. A boy or two on bicycles dashed from corps to
+corps, and on their arrival each corps seemed to fade away.
+
+The youths at loading practice did not pause for the growing hush round
+them, nor did the drum and fife band drop a single note. Bayley
+exploded afresh. “The Schools are preparing for our attack, by Jove! I
+wonder who’s directin’ ’em. Do _you_ know?”
+
+The warrior of the Eighth District looked up shrewdly.
+
+“I saw Mr. Cameron speaking to Mr. Levitt just as the Guard went up the
+road. ’E’s our ’ead-master, Mr. Cameron, but Mr. Levitt, of the Sixth
+District, is actin’ as senior officer on the ground this Saturday. Most
+likely Mr. Levitt is commandin’.”
+
+“How many corps are there here?” I asked.
+
+“Oh, bits of lots of ’em—thirty or forty, p’r’aps, Sir. But the
+whistles says they’ve all got to rally on the Board Schools. ’Ark!
+There’s the whistle for the Private Schools! They’ve been called up the
+ground at the double.”
+
+“Stop!” cried a bearded man with a watch, and the crews dropped beside
+the breech wiping their brows and panting.
+
+“Hullo! there’s some attack on the Schools,” said one. “Well, Marden,
+you owe me three half-crowns. I’ve beaten your record. Pay up.”
+
+The boy beside us tapped his foot fretfully as he eyed his companions
+melting among the hillocks, but the gun-team adjusted their bets
+without once looking up.
+
+The ground rose a little to a furze-crowned ridge in the centre so that
+I could not see the full length of it, but I heard a faint bubble of
+blank in the distance.
+
+“The Saturday allowance,” murmured Bayley. “War’s begun, but it
+wouldn’t be etiquette for us to interfere. What are you saying, my
+child?”
+
+“Nothin’, Sir, only—only I don’t think the Guard will be able to come
+through on so narrer a front, Sir. They’ll all be jammed up be’ind the
+ridge if _we_’ve got there in time. It’s awful sticky for guns at the
+end of our ground, Sir.”
+
+“I’m inclined to think you’re right, Moltke. The Guard is hung up:
+distinctly so. Old Vee will have to cut his way through. What a
+pernicious amount of blank the kids seem to have!”
+
+It was quite a respectable roar of battle that rolled among the
+hillocks for ten minutes, always out of our sight. Then we heard the
+“Cease Fire” over the ridge.
+
+“They’ve sent for the Umpires,” the Board School boy squeaked, dancing
+on one foot. “You’ve been hung up, Sir. I—I thought the sand-pits ’ud
+stop you.”
+
+Said one of the jerseyed hobbledehoys at the gun, slipping on his coat:
+“Well, that’s enough for this afternoon. I’m off,” and moved to the
+railings without even glancing towards the fray.
+
+“I anticipate the worst,” said Bayley with gravity after a few minutes.
+“Hullo! Here comes my disgraced corps!”
+
+The Guard was pouring over the ridge—a disorderly mob—horse, foot, and
+guns mixed, while from every hollow of the ground about rose small boys
+cheering shrilly. The outcry was taken up by the parents at the
+railings, and spread to a complete circle of cheers, handclappings, and
+waved handkerchiefs.
+
+Our Eighth District private cast away restraint and openly capered. “We
+got ’em! We got ’em!” he squealed.
+
+The grey-green flood paused a fraction of a minute and drew itself into
+shape, coming to rest before Bayley. Verschoyle saluted.
+
+“Vee, Vee,” said Bayley. “Give me back my legions. Well, I hope you’re
+proud of yourself?”
+
+“The little beasts were ready for us. Deuced well posted too,”
+Verschoyle replied. “I wish you’d seen that first attack on our flank.
+Rather impressive. Who warned ’em?”
+
+“I don’t know. I got my information from a baby in blue plush breeches.
+Did they do well?”
+
+“Very decently indeed. I’ve complimented their C.O. and buttered the
+whole boiling.” He lowered his voice. “As a matter o’ fact, I halted
+five good minutes to give ’em time to get into position.”
+
+“Well, now we can inspect our Foreign Service corps. We sha’n’t need
+the men for an hour, Vee.”
+
+“Very good, Sir. Colour-sergeants!” cried Verschoyle, raising his
+voice, and the cry ran from company to company. Whereupon the officers
+left their men, people began to climb over the railings, and the
+regiment dissolved among the spectators and the school corps of the
+city.
+
+“No sense keeping men standing when you don’t need ’em,” said Bayley.
+“Besides, the Schools learn more from our chaps in an afternoon than
+they can pick up in a month’s drill. Look at those Board-schoolmaster
+captains buttonholing old Purvis on the art of war!”
+
+“Wonder what the evening papers’ll say about this,” said Pigeon.
+
+“You’ll know in half an hour,” Burgard laughed. “What possessed you to
+take your ponies across the sand-pits, Pij?”
+
+“Pride. Silly pride,” said the Canadian.
+
+We crossed the common to a very regulation paradeground overlooked by a
+statue of our Queen. Here were carriages, many and elegant, filled with
+pretty women, and the railings were lined with frockcoats and top hats.
+“This is distinctly social,” I suggested to Kyd.
+
+“Ra-ather. Our F.S. corps is nothing if not correct, but Bayley’ll
+sweat ’em all the same.”
+
+I saw six companies drawn up for inspection behind lines of long
+sausage-shaped kit-bags. A band welcomed us with “A Life on the Ocean
+Wave.”
+
+“What cheek!” muttered Verschoyle. “Give ’em beans, Bayley.”
+
+“I intend to,” said the Colonel, grimly. “Will each of you fellows take
+a company, please, and inspect ’em faithfully. ‘_En état de partir_’ is
+their little boast, remember. When you’ve finished you can give ’em a
+little pillow-fighting.”
+
+“What does the single cannon on those men’s sleeves mean?” I asked.
+
+“That they’re big gun-men, who’ve done time with the Fleet,” Bayley
+returned. “Any F.S. corps that has over twenty per cent big-gun men
+thinks itself entitled to play ‘A Life on the Ocean Wave’—when it’s out
+of hearing of the Navy.”
+
+“What beautiful stuff they are! What’s their regimental average?”
+
+“It ought to be five eight, height, thirty-eight, chest, and
+twenty-four years, age. What is it?” Bayley asked of a Private.
+
+“Five nine and half, Sir, thirty-nine, twenty-four and a half,” was the
+reply, and he added insolently, “_En état de partir_.” Evidently that
+F.S. corps was on its mettle ready for the worst.
+
+“What about their musketry average?” I went on.
+
+“Not my pidgin,” said Bayley. “But they wouldn’t be in the corps a day
+if they couldn’t shoot; I know _that_ much. Now I’m going to go through
+’em for socks and slippers.”
+
+The kit-inspection exceeded anything I had ever dreamed. I drifted from
+company to company while the Guard officers oppressed them. Twenty per
+cent, at least, of the kits were shovelled out on the grass and gone
+through in detail.
+
+“What have they got jumpers and ducks for?” I asked of Harrison.
+
+“For Fleet work, of course. _En état de partir_ with an F. S. corps
+means they are amphibious.”
+
+“Who gives ’em their kit—Government?”
+
+“There is a Government allowance, but no C. O. sticks to it. It’s the
+same as paint and gold-leaf in the Navy. It comes out of some one’s
+pockets. How much does your kit cost you?”—this to the private in front
+of us.
+
+“About ten or fifteen quid every other year, I suppose,” was the
+answer.
+
+“Very good. Pack your bag—quick.”
+
+The man knelt, and with supremely deft hands returned all to the bag,
+lashed and tied it, and fell back.
+
+“Arms,” said Harrison. “Strip and show ammunition.”
+
+The man divested himself of his rolled greatcoat and haversack with one
+wriggle, as it seemed to me; a twist of a screw removed the side plate
+of the rifle breech (it was not a bolt action). He handed it to
+Harrison with one hand, and with the other loosed his clip-studded
+belt.
+
+“What baby cartridges!” I exclaimed. “No bigger than bulletted
+breech-caps.”
+
+“They’re the regulation .256,” said Harrison. “No one has complained of
+’em yet. They expand a bit when they arrive…. Empty your bottle,
+please, and show your rations.”
+
+The man poured out his water-bottle and showed the two-inch emergency
+tin.
+
+Harrison passed on to the next, but I was fascinated by the way in
+which the man re-established himself amid his straps and buckles,
+asking no help from either side.
+
+“How long does it take you to prepare for inspection?” I asked him.
+
+“Well, I got ready this afternoon in twelve minutes,” he smiled. “I
+didn’t see the storm-cone till half-past three. I was at the Club.”
+
+“Weren’t a good many of you out of town?”
+
+“Not _this_ Saturday. We knew what was coming. You see, if we pull
+through the inspection we may move up one place on the roster for
+foreign service…. You’d better stand back. We’re going to
+pillow-fight.”
+
+The companies stooped to the stuffed kit-bags, doubled with them
+variously, piled them in squares and mounds, passed them from shoulder
+to shoulder like buckets at a fire, and repeated the evolution.
+
+“What’s the idea?” I asked of Verschoyle, who, arms folded behind him,
+was controlling the display. Many women had descended from the
+carriages, and were pressing in about us admiringly.
+
+“For one thing, it’s a fair test of wind and muscle, and for another it
+saves time at the docks. We’ll suppose this first company to be drawn
+up on the dock-head and those five others still in the troop-train. How
+would you get their kit into the ship?”
+
+“Fall ’em all in on the platform, march ’em to the gangways,” I
+answered, “and trust to Heaven and a fatigue party to gather the
+baggage and drunks in later.”
+
+“Ye-es, and have half of it sent by the wrong trooper. I know _that_
+game,” Verschoyle drawled. “We don’t play it any more. Look!”
+
+He raised his voice, and five companies, glistening a little and
+breathing hard, formed at right angles to the sixth, each man embracing
+his sixty-pound bag.
+
+“Pack away,” cried Verschoyle, and the great bean-bag game (I can
+compare it to nothing else) began. In five minutes every bag was passed
+along either arm of the T and forward down the sixth company, who
+passed, stacked, and piled them in a great heap. These were followed by
+the rifles, belts, greatcoats, and knapsacks, so that in another five
+minutes the regiment stood, as it were, stripped clean.
+
+“Of course on a trooper there’d be a company below stacking the kit
+away,” said Verschoyle, “but that wasn’t so bad.”
+
+“Bad!” I cried. “It was miraculous!”
+
+“Circus-work—all circus-work!” said Pigeon. “It won’t prevent ’em bein’
+sick as dogs when the ship rolls.” The crowd round us applauded, while
+the men looked meekly down their self-conscious noses.
+
+A little grey-whiskered man trotted up to the Boy.
+
+“Have we made good, Bayley?” he said. “Are we _en état de partir_?”
+
+“That’s what I shall report,” said Bayley, smiling.
+
+“I thought my bit o’ French ’ud draw you,” said the little man, rubbing
+his hands.
+
+“Who is he?” I whispered to Pigeon.
+
+“Ramsay—their C.O. An old Guard captain. A keen little devil. They say
+he spends six hundred a year on the show. He used to be in the Lincolns
+till he came into his property.”
+
+“Take ’em home an’ make ’em drunk,” I heard Bayley say. “I suppose
+you’ll have a dinner to celebrate. But you may as well tell the
+officers of E company that I don’t think much of them. I sha’n’t report
+it, but their men were all over the shop.”
+
+“Well, they’re young, you see,” Colonel Ramsay began.
+
+“You’re quite right. Send ’em to me and I’ll talk to ’em. Youth is the
+time to learn.”
+
+“Six hundred a year,” I repeated to Pigeon. “That must be an awful tax
+on a man. Worse than in the old volunteering days.”
+
+“That’s where you make your mistake,” said Verschoyle. “In the old days
+a man had to spend his money to coax his men to drill because they
+weren’t the genuine article. You know what I mean. They made a favour
+of putting in drills, didn’t they? And they were, most of ’em, the
+children we have to take over at Second Camp, weren’t they? Well, now
+that a C. O. is sure of his _men_, now that he hasn’t to waste himself
+in conciliating an’ bribin’, an’ beerin’ _kids_, he doesn’t care what
+he spends on his corps, because every pound tells. Do you understand?”
+
+“I see what you mean, Vee. Having the male material guaranteed——”
+
+“And trained material at that,” Pigeon put in. “Eight years in the
+schools, remember, as well as——”
+
+“Precisely. A man rejoices in working them up. That’s as it should be,”
+I said.
+
+“Bayly’s saying the very same to those F. S. pups,” said Verschoyle.
+
+The Boy was behind us, between two young F. S. officers, a hand on the
+shoulder of each.
+
+“Yes, that’s all doocid interesting,” he growled paternally. “But you
+forget, my sons, now that your men are bound to serve, you’re trebly
+bound to put a polish on ’em. You’ve let your company simply go to
+seed. Don’t try and explain. I’ve told all those lies myself in my
+time. It’s only idleness. _I_ know. Come and lunch with me to-morrow
+and I’ll give you a wrinkle or two in barracks.” He turned to me.
+
+“Suppose we pick up Vee’s defeated legion and go home. You’ll dine with
+us to-night. Good-bye, Ramsay. Yes, you’re _en état de partir_, right
+enough. You’d better get Lady Gertrude to talk to the Armity if you
+want the corps sent foreign. I’m no politician.”
+
+We strolled away from the great white statue of the Widow, with
+sceptre, orb, and crown, that looked toward the city, and regained the
+common, where the Guard battalion walked with the female of its species
+and the children of all its relatives. At sight of the officers the
+uniforms began to detach themselves and gather in companies. A Board
+School corps was moving off the ground, headed by its drums and fifes,
+which it assisted with song. As we drew nearer we caught the words, for
+they were launched with intention:—
+
+’Oo is it mashes the country nurse?
+    The Guardsman!
+’Oo is it takes the lydy’s purse?
+    The Guardsman!
+Calls for a drink, and a mild cigar,
+Batters a sovereign down on the bar,
+Collars the change and says “Ta-ta!”
+    The Guardsman!
+
+
+“Why, that’s one of old Jemmy Fawne’s songs. I haven’t heard it in
+ages,” I began.
+
+“Little devils!” said Pigeon. “Speshul! Extra speshul! Sports Edition!”
+a newsboy cried. “’Ere y’are, Captain. Defeat o’ the Guard!”
+
+“I’ll buy a copy,” said the Boy, as Pigeon blushed wrathfully. “I must,
+to see how the Dove lost his mounted company.” He unfolded the flapping
+sheet and we crowded round it.
+
+“‘_Complete Rout of the Guard,_’” he read. “‘_Too Narrow a Front._’
+That’s one for you, Vee! ‘_Attack Anticipated by Mr. Levitt, B. A._’
+Aha! ‘_The Schools Stand Fast._’”
+
+“Here’s another version,” said Kyd, waving a tinted sheet. “‘_To your
+tents, O Israel! The Hebrew Schools stop the Mounted Troops._’ Pij,
+were you scuppered by Jewboys?”
+
+“‘_Umpires Decide all Four Guns Lost,_’” Bayley went on. “By Jove,
+there’ll have to be an inquiry into this regrettable incident, Vee!”
+
+“I’ll never try to amuse the kids again,” said the baited Verschoyle.
+“Children and newspapers are low things…. And I was hit on the nose by
+a wad, too! They oughtn’t to be allowed blank ammunition!”
+
+So we leaned against the railings in the warm twilight haze while the
+battalion, silently as a shadow, formed up behind us ready to be taken
+over. The heat, the hum of the great city, as it might have been the
+hum of a camped army, the creaking of the belts, and the well-known
+faces bent above them, brought back to me the memory of another
+evening, years ago, when Verschoyle and I waited for news of guns
+missing in no sham fight.
+
+“A regular Sanna’s Post, isn’t it?” I said at last. “D’you remember,
+Vee—by the market-square—that night when the wagons went out?”
+
+Then it came upon me, with no horror, but a certain mild wonder, that
+we had waited, Vee and I, that night for the body of Boy Bayley; and
+that Vee himself had died of typhoid in the spring of 1902. The
+rustling of the papers continued, but Bayley, shifting slightly,
+revealed to me the three-day old wound on his left side that had soaked
+the ground about him. I saw Pigeon fling up a helpless arm as to guard
+himself against a spatter of shrapnel, and Luttrell with a foolish
+tight-lipped smile lurched over all in one jointless piece. Only old
+Vee’s honest face held steady for awhile against the darkness that had
+swallowed up the battalion behind us. Then his jaw dropped and the face
+stiffened, so that a fly made bold to explore the puffed and scornful
+nostril.
+
+
+I waked brushing a fly from my nose, and saw the Club waiter set out
+the evening papers on the table.
+
+
+
+
+“THEY”
+
+
+
+
+THE RETURN OF THE CHILDREN
+
+
+Neither the harps nor the crowns amused, nor the cherubs’ dove-winged races—
+Holding hands forlornly the Children wandered beneath the Dome;
+Plucking the radiant robes of the passers by, and with pitiful faces
+Begging what Princes and Powers refused:—“Ah, please will you let us go home?”
+
+Over the jewelled floor, nigh weeping, ran to them Mary the Mother,
+Kneeled and caressed and made promise with kisses, and drew them along to the gateway—
+Yea, the all-iron unbribable Door which Peter must guard and none other.
+Straightway She took the Keys from his keeping, and opened and freed them straightway.
+
+Then to Her Son, Who had seen and smiled, She said: “On the night that I bore Thee
+What didst Thou care for a love beyond mine or a heaven that was not my arm?
+Didst Thou push from the nipple, O Child, to hear the angels adore Thee?
+When we two lay in the breath of the kine?” And He said:—“Thou hast done no harm.”
+
+So through the Void the Children ran homeward merrily hand in hand,
+Looking neither to left nor right where the breathless Heavens stood still;
+And the Guards of the Void resheathed their swords, for they heard the Command.
+“Shall I that have suffered the children to come to me hold them against their will?”
+
+
+
+
+“THEY”
+
+
+One view called me to another; one hill top to its fellow, half across
+the county, and since I could answer at no more trouble than the
+snapping forward of a lever, I let the country flow under my wheels.
+The orchid-studded flats of the East gave way to the thyme, ilex, and
+grey grass of the Downs; these again to the rich cornland and fig-trees
+of the lower coast, where you carry the beat of the tide on your left
+hand for fifteen level miles; and when at last I turned inland through
+a huddle of rounded hills and woods I had run myself clean out of my
+known marks. Beyond that precise hamlet which stands godmother to the
+capital of the United States, I found hidden villages where bees, the
+only things awake, boomed in eighty-foot lindens that overhung grey
+Norman churches; miraculous brooks diving under stone bridges built for
+heavier traffic than would ever vex them again; tithe-barns larger than
+their churches, and an old smithy that cried out aloud how it had once
+been a hall of the Knights of the Temple. Gipsies I found on a common
+where the gorse, bracken, and heath fought it out together up a mile of
+Roman road; and a little farther on I disturbed a red fox rolling
+dog-fashion in the naked sunlight.
+
+As the wooded hills closed about me I stood up in the car to take the
+bearings of that great Down whose ringed head is a landmark for fifty
+miles across the low countries. I judged that the lie of the country
+would bring me across some westward running road that went to his feet,
+but I did not allow for the confusing veils of the woods. A quick turn
+plunged me first into a green cutting brimful of liquid sunshine, next
+into a gloomy tunnel where last year’s dead leaves whispered and
+scuffled about my tyres. The strong hazel stuff meeting overhead had
+not been cut for a couple of generations at least, nor had any axe
+helped the moss-cankered oak and beech to spring above them. Here the
+road changed frankly into a carpetted ride on whose brown velvet spent
+primrose-clumps showed like jade, and a few sickly, white-stalked
+bluebells nodded together. As the slope favoured I shut off the power
+and slid over the whirled leaves, expecting every moment to meet a
+keeper; but I only heard a jay, far off, arguing against the silence
+under the twilight of the trees.
+
+Still the track descended. I was on the point of reversing and working
+my way back on the second speed ere I ended in some swamp, when I saw
+sunshine through the tangle ahead and lifted the brake.
+
+It was down again at once. As the light beat across my face my
+fore-wheels took the turf of a great still lawn from which sprang
+horsemen ten feet high with levelled lances, monstrous peacocks, and
+sleek round-headed maids of honour—blue, black, and glistening—all of
+clipped yew. Across the lawn—the marshalled woods besieged it on three
+sides—stood an ancient house of lichened and weather-worn stone, with
+mullioned windows and roofs of rose-red tile. It was flanked by
+semi-circular walls, also rose-red, that closed the lawn on the fourth
+side, and at their feet a box hedge grew man-high. There were doves on
+the roof about the slim brick chimneys, and I caught a glimpse of an
+octagonal dove-house behind the screening wall.
+
+Here, then, I stayed; a horseman’s green spear laid at my breast; held
+by the exceeding beauty of that jewel in that setting.
+
+“If I am not packed off for a trespasser, or if this knight does not
+ride a wallop at me,” thought I, “Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth at
+least must come out of that half-open garden door and ask me to tea.”
+
+A child appeared at an upper window, and I thought the little thing
+waved a friendly hand. But it was to call a companion, for presently
+another bright head showed. Then I heard a laugh among the
+yew-peacocks, and turning to make sure (till then I had been watching
+the house only) I saw the silver of a fountain behind a hedge thrown up
+against the sun. The doves on the roof cooed to the cooing water; but
+between the two notes I caught the utterly happy chuckle of a child
+absorbed in some light mischief.
+
+The garden door—heavy oak sunk deep in the thickness of the wall—opened
+further: a woman in a big garden hat set her foot slowly on the
+time-hollowed stone step and as slowly walked across the turf. I was
+forming some apology when she lifted up her head and I saw that she was
+blind.
+
+“I heard you,” she said. “Isn’t that a motor car?”
+
+“I’m afraid I’ve made a mistake in my road. I should have turned off up
+above—I never dreamed”—I began.
+
+“But I’m very glad. Fancy a motor car coming into the garden! It will
+be such a treat——” She turned and made as though looking about her.
+“You—you haven’t seen any one have you—perhaps?”
+
+“No one to speak to, but the children seemed interested at a distance.”
+
+“Which?”
+
+“I saw a couple up at the window just now, and I think I heard a little
+chap in the grounds.”
+
+“Oh, lucky you!” she cried, and her face brightened. “I hear them, of
+course, but that’s all. You’ve seen them and heard them?”
+
+“Yes,” I answered. “And if I know anything of children one of them’s
+having a beautiful time by the fountain yonder. Escaped, I should
+imagine.”
+
+“You’re fond of children?”
+
+I gave her one or two reasons why I did not altogether hate them.
+
+“Of course, of course,” she said. “Then you understand. Then you won’t
+think it foolish if I ask you to take your car through the gardens,
+once or twice—quite slowly. I’m sure they’d like to see it. They see so
+little, poor things. One tries to make their life pleasant, but——” she
+threw out her hands towards the woods. “We’re so out of the world
+here.”
+
+“That will be splendid,” I said. “But I can’t cut up your grass.”
+
+She faced to the right. “Wait a minute,” she said. “We’re at the South
+gate, aren’t we? Behind those peacocks there’s a flagged path. We call
+it the Peacock’s Walk. You can’t see it from here, they tell me, but if
+you squeeze along by the edge of the wood you can turn at the first
+peacock and get on to the flags.”
+
+It was sacrilege to wake that dreaming house-front with the clatter of
+machinery, but I swung the car to clear the turf, brushed along the
+edge of the wood and turned in on the broad stone path where the
+fountain-basin lay like one star-sapphire.
+
+“May I come too?” she cried. “No, please don’t help me. They’ll like it
+better if they see me.”
+
+She felt her way lightly to the front of the car, and with one foot on
+the step she called: “Children, oh, children! Look and see what’s going
+to happen!”
+
+The voice would have drawn lost souls from the Pit, for the yearning
+that underlay its sweetness, and I was not surprised to hear an
+answering shout behind the yews. It must have been the child by the
+fountain, but he fled at our approach, leaving a little toy boat in the
+water. I saw the glint of his blue blouse among the still horsemen.
+
+Very disposedly we paraded the length of the walk and at her request
+backed again. This time the child had got the better of his panic, but
+stood far off and doubting.
+
+“The little fellow’s watching us,” I said. “I wonder if he’d like a
+ride.”
+
+“They’re very shy still. Very shy. But, oh, lucky you to be able to see
+them! Let’s listen.”
+
+I stopped the machine at once, and the humid stillness, heavy with the
+scent of box, cloaked us deep. Shears I could hear where some gardener
+was clipping; a mumble of bees and broken voices that might have been
+the doves.
+
+“Oh, unkind!” she said weariedly.
+
+“Perhaps they’re only shy of the motor. The little maid at the window
+looks tremendously interested.”
+
+“Yes?” She raised her head. “It was wrong of me to say that. They are
+really fond of me. It’s the only thing that makes life worth
+living—when they’re fond of you, isn’t it? I daren’t think what the
+place would be without them. By the way, is it beautiful?”
+
+“I think it is the most beautiful place I have ever seen.”
+
+“So they all tell me. I can feel it, of course, but that isn’t quite
+the same thing.”
+
+“Then have you never—-?” I began, but stopped abashed.
+
+“Not since I can remember. It happened when I was only a few months
+old, they tell me. And yet I must remember something, else how could I
+dream about colours. I see light in my dreams, and colours, but I never
+see _them_. I only hear them just as I do when I’m awake.”
+
+“It’s difficult to see faces in dreams. Some people can, but most of us
+haven’t the gift,” I went on, looking up at the window where the child
+stood all but hidden.
+
+“I’ve heard that too,” she said. “And they tell me that one never sees
+a dead person’s face in a dream. Is that true?”
+
+“I believe it is—now I come to think of it.”
+
+“But how is it with yourself—yourself?” The blind eyes turned towards
+me.
+
+“I have never seen the faces of my dead in any dream,” I answered.
+
+“Then it must be as bad as being blind.”
+
+The sun had dipped behind the woods and the long shades were possessing
+the insolent horsemen one by one. I saw the light die from off the top
+of a glossy-leaved lance and all the brave hard green turn to soft
+black. The house, accepting another day at end, as it had accepted an
+hundred thousand gone, seemed to settle deeper into its rest among the
+shadows.
+
+“Have you ever wanted to?” she said after the silence.
+
+“Very much sometimes,” I replied. The child had left the window as the
+shadows closed upon it.
+
+“Ah! So’ve I, but I don’t suppose it’s allowed. … Where d’you live?”
+
+“Quite the other side of the county—sixty miles and more, and I must be
+going back. I’ve come without my big lamp.”
+
+“But it’s not dark yet. I can feel it.”
+
+“I’m afraid it will be by the time I get home. Could you lend me
+someone to set me on my road at first? I’ve utterly lost myself.”
+
+“I’ll send Madden with you to the cross-roads. We are so out of the
+world, I don’t wonder you were lost! I’ll guide you round to the front
+of the house; but you will go slowly, won’t you, till you’re out of the
+grounds? It isn’t foolish, do you think?”
+
+“I promise you I’ll go like this,” I said, and let the car start
+herself down the flagged path.
+
+We skirted the left wing of the house, whose elaborately cast lead
+guttering alone was worth a day’s journey; passed under a great
+rose-grown gate in the red wall, and so round to the high front of the
+house which in beauty and stateliness as much excelled the back as that
+all others I had seen.
+
+“Is it so very beautiful?” she said wistfully when she heard my
+raptures. “And you like the lead-figures too? There’s the old azalea
+garden behind. They say that this place must have been made for
+children. Will you help me out, please? I should like to come with you
+as far as the cross-roads, but I mustn’t leave them. Is that you,
+Madden? I want you to show this gentleman the way to the cross-roads.
+He has lost his way but—he has seen them.”
+
+A butler appeared noiselessly at the miracle of old oak that must be
+called the front door, and slipped aside to put on his hat. She stood
+looking at me with open blue eyes in which no sight lay, and I saw for
+the first time that she was beautiful.
+
+“Remember,” she said quietly, “if you are fond of them you will come
+again,” and disappeared within the house.
+
+The butler in the car said nothing till we were nearly at the lodge
+gates, where catching a glimpse of a blue blouse in a shrubbery I
+swerved amply lest the devil that leads little boys to play should drag
+me into child-murder.
+
+“Excuse me,” he asked of a sudden, “but why did you do that, Sir?”
+
+“The child yonder.”
+
+“Our young gentleman in blue?”
+
+“Of course.”
+
+“He runs about a good deal. Did you see him by the fountain, Sir?”
+
+“Oh, yes, several times. Do we turn here?”
+
+“Yes, Sir. And did you ’appen to see them upstairs too?”
+
+“At the upper window? Yes.”
+
+“Was that before the mistress come out to speak to you, Sir?”
+
+“A little before that. Why d’you want to know?”
+
+He paused a little. “Only to make sure that—that they had seen the car,
+Sir, because with children running about, though I’m sure you’re
+driving particularly careful, there might be an accident. That was all,
+Sir. Here are the cross-roads. You can’t miss your way from now on.
+Thank you, Sir, but that isn’t _our_ custom, not with——”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” I said, and thrust away the British silver.
+
+“Oh, it’s quite right with the rest of ’em as a rule. Goodbye, Sir.”
+
+He retired into the armour-plated conning tower of his caste and walked
+away. Evidently a butler solicitous for the honour of his house, and
+interested, probably through a maid, in the nursery.
+
+Once beyond the signposts at the cross-roads I looked back, but the
+crumpled hills interlaced so jealously that I could not see where the
+house had lain. When I asked its name at a cottage along the road, the
+fat woman who sold sweetmeats there gave me to understand that people
+with motor cars had small right to live—much less to “go about talking
+like carriage folk.” They were not a pleasant-mannered community.
+
+When I retraced my route on the map that evening I was little wiser.
+Hawkin’s Old Farm appeared to be the survey title of the place, and the
+old County Gazetteer, generally so ample, did not allude to it. The big
+house of those parts was Hodnington Hall, Georgian with early Victorian
+embellishments, as an atrocious steel engraving attested. I carried my
+difficulty to a neighbour—a deep-rooted tree of that soil—and he gave
+me a name of a family which conveyed no meaning.
+
+A month or so later—I went again, or it may have been that my car took
+the road of her own volition. She over-ran the fruitless Downs,
+threaded every turn of the maze of lanes below the hills, drew through
+the high-walled woods, impenetrable in their full leaf, came out at the
+cross roads where the butler had left me, and a little further on
+developed an internal trouble which forced me to turn her in on a grass
+way-waste that cut into a summer-silent hazel wood. So far as I could
+make sure by the sun and a six-inch Ordnance map, this should be the
+road flank of that wood which I had first explored from the heights
+above. I made a mighty serious business of my repairs and a glittering
+shop of my repair kit, spanners, pump, and the like, which I spread out
+orderly upon a rug. It was a trap to catch all childhood, for on such a
+day, I argued, the children would not be far off. When I paused in my
+work I listened, but the wood was so full of the noises of summer
+(though the birds had mated) that I could not at first distinguish
+these from the tread of small cautious feet stealing across the dead
+leaves. I rang my bell in an alluring manner, but the feet fled, and I
+repented, for to a child a sudden noise is very real terror. I must
+have been at work half an hour when I heard in the wood the voice of
+the blind woman crying: “Children, oh children, where are you?” and the
+stillness made slow to close on the perfection of that cry. She came
+towards me, half feeling her way between the tree boles, and though a
+child it seemed clung to her skirt, it swerved into the leafage like a
+rabbit as she drew nearer.
+
+“Is that you?” she said, “from the other side of the county?”
+
+“Yes, it’s me from the other side of the county.”
+
+“Then why didn’t you come through the upper woods? They were there just
+now.”
+
+“They were here a few minutes ago. I expect they knew my car had broken
+down, and came to see the fun.”
+
+“Nothing serious, I hope? How do cars break down?”
+
+“In fifty different ways. Only mine has chosen the fifty first.”
+
+She laughed merrily at the tiny joke, cooed with delicious laughter,
+and pushed her hat back.
+
+“Let me hear,” she said.
+
+“Wait a moment,” I cried, “and I’ll get you a cushion.”
+
+She set her foot on the rug all covered with spare parts, and stooped
+above it eagerly. “What delightful things!” The hands through which she
+saw glanced in the chequered sunlight. “A box here—another box! Why
+you’ve arranged them like playing shop!”
+
+“I confess now that I put it out to attract them. I don’t need half
+those things really.”
+
+“How nice of you! I heard your bell in the upper wood. You say they
+were here before that?”
+
+“I’m sure of it. Why are they so shy? That little fellow in blue who
+was with you just now ought to have got over his fright. He’s been
+watching me like a Red Indian.”
+
+“It must have been your bell,” she said. “I heard one of them go past
+me in trouble when I was coming down. They’re shy—so shy even with me.”
+She turned her face over her shoulder and cried again: “Children! Oh,
+children! Look and see!”
+
+“They must have gone off together on their own affairs,” I suggested,
+for there was a murmur behind us of lowered voices broken by the sudden
+squeaking giggles of childhood. I returned to my tinkerings and she
+leaned forward, her chin on her hand, listening interestedly.
+
+“How many are they?” I said at last. The work was finished, but I saw
+no reason to go.
+
+Her forehead puckered a little in thought. “I don’t quite know,” she
+said simply. “Sometimes more—sometimes less. They come and stay with me
+because I love them, you see.”
+
+“That must be very jolly,” I said, replacing a drawer, and as I spoke I
+heard the inanity of my answer.
+
+“You—you aren’t laughing at me,” she cried. “I—I haven’t any of my own.
+I never married. People laugh at me sometimes about them
+because—because———”
+
+“Because they’re savages,” I returned. “It’s nothing to fret for. That
+sort laugh at everything that isn’t in their own fat lives.”
+
+“I don’t know. How should I? I only don’t like being laughed at about
+_them_. It hurts; and when one can’t see…. I don’t want to seem silly,”
+her chin quivered like a child’s as she spoke, “but we blindies have
+only one skin, I think. Everything outside hits straight at our souls.
+It’s different with you. You’ve such good defences in your eyes—looking
+out—before anyone can really pain you in your soul. People forget that
+with us.”
+
+I was silent reviewing that inexhaustible matter—the more than
+inherited (since it is also carefully taught) brutality of the
+Christian peoples, beside which the mere heathendom of the West Coast
+nigger is clean and restrained. It led me a long distance into myself.
+
+“Don’t do that!” she said of a sudden, putting her hands before her
+eyes.
+
+“What?”
+
+She made a gesture with her hand.
+
+“That! It’s—it’s all purple and black. Don’t! That colour hurts.”
+
+“But, how in the world do you know about colours?” I exclaimed, for
+here was a revelation indeed.
+
+“Colours as colours?” she asked.
+
+“No. _Those_ Colours which you saw just now.”
+
+“You know as well as I do,” she laughed, “else you wouldn’t have asked
+that question. They aren’t in the world at all. They’re in _you_—when
+you went so angry.”
+
+“D’you mean a dull purplish patch, like port-wine mixed with ink?” I
+said.
+
+“I’ve never seen ink or port-wine, but the colours aren’t mixed. They
+are separate—all separate.”
+
+“Do you mean black streaks and jags across the purple?”
+
+She nodded. “Yes—if they are like this,” and zigzagged her finger
+again, “but it’s more red than purple—that bad colour.”
+
+“And what are the colours at the top of the—whatever you see?”
+
+Slowly she leaned forward and traced on the rug the figure of the Egg
+itself.
+
+“I see them so,” she said, pointing with a grass stem, “white, green,
+yellow, red, purple, and when people are angry or bad, black across the
+red—as you were just now.”
+
+“Who told you anything about it—in the beginning?” I demanded.
+
+“About the colours? No one. I used to ask what colours were when I was
+little—in table-covers and curtains and carpets, you see—because some
+colours hurt me and some made me happy. People told me; and when I got
+older that was how I saw people.” Again she traced the outline of the
+Egg which it is given to very few of us to see.
+
+“All by yourself?” I repeated.
+
+“All by myself. There wasn’t anyone else. I only found out afterwards
+that other people did not see the Colours.”
+
+She leaned against the tree-hole plaiting and unplaiting chance-plucked
+grass stems. The children in the wood had drawn nearer. I could see
+them with the tail of my eye frolicking like squirrels.
+
+“Now I am sure you will never laugh at me,” she went on after a long
+silence. “Nor at _them_.”
+
+“Goodness! No!” I cried, jolted out of my train of thought. “A man who
+laughs at a child—unless the child is laughing too—is a heathen!”
+
+“I didn’t mean that of course. You’d never laugh _at_ children, but I
+thought—I used to think—that perhaps you might laugh about _them_. So
+now I beg your pardon…. What are you going to laugh at?”
+
+I had made no sound, but she knew.
+
+“At the notion of your begging my pardon. If you had done your duty as
+a pillar of the state and a landed proprietress you ought to have
+summoned me for trespass when I barged through your woods the other
+day. It was disgraceful of me—inexcusable.”
+
+She looked at me, her head against the tree trunk—long and
+steadfastly—this woman who could see the naked soul.
+
+“How curious,” she half whispered. “How very curious.”
+
+“Why, what have I done?”
+
+“You don’t understand … and yet you understood about the Colours. Don’t
+you understand?”
+
+She spoke with a passion that nothing had justified, and I faced her
+bewilderedly as she rose. The children had gathered themselves in a
+roundel behind a bramble bush. One sleek head bent over something
+smaller, and the set of the little shoulders told me that fingers were
+on lips. They, too, had some child’s tremendous secret. I alone was
+hopelessly astray there in the broad sunlight.
+
+“No,” I said, and shook my head as though the dead eyes could note.
+“Whatever it is, I don’t understand yet. Perhaps I shall later—if
+you’ll let me come again.”
+
+“You will come again,” she answered. “You will surely come again and
+walk in the wood.”
+
+“Perhaps the children will know me well enough by that time to let me
+play with them—as a favour. You know what children are like.”
+
+“It isn’t a matter of favour but of right,” she replied, and while I
+wondered what she meant, a dishevelled woman plunged round the bend of
+the road, loose-haired, purple, almost lowing with agony as she ran. It
+was my rude, fat friend of the sweetmeat shop. The blind woman heard
+and stepped forward. “What is it, Mrs. Madehurst?” she asked.
+
+The woman flung her apron over her head and literally grovelled in the
+dust, crying that her grandchild was sick to death, that the local
+doctor was away fishing, that Jenny the mother was at her wits end, and
+so forth, with repetitions and bellowings.
+
+“Where’s the next nearest doctor?” I asked between paroxysms.
+
+“Madden will tell you. Go round to the house and take him with you.
+I’ll attend to this. Be quick!” She half-supported the fat woman into
+the shade. In two minutes I was blowing all the horns of Jericho under
+the front of the House Beautiful, and Madden, in the pantry, rose to
+the crisis like a butler and a man.
+
+A quarter of an hour at illegal speeds caught us a doctor five miles
+away. Within the half-hour we had decanted him, much interested in
+motors, at the door of the sweetmeat shop, and drew up the road to
+await the verdict.
+
+“Useful things cars,” said Madden, all man and no butler. “If I’d had
+one when mine took sick she wouldn’t have died.”
+
+“How was it?” I asked.
+
+“Croup. Mrs. Madden was away. No one knew what to do. I drove eight
+miles in a tax cart for the doctor. She was choked when we came back.
+This car ’d ha’ saved her. She’d have been close on ten now.”
+
+“I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought you were rather fond of children from
+what you told me going to the cross-roads the other day.”
+
+“Have you seen ’em again, Sir—this mornin’?”
+
+“Yes, but they’re well broke to cars. I couldn’t get any of them within
+twenty yards of it.”
+
+He looked at me carefully as a scout considers a stranger—not as a
+menial should lift his eyes to his divinely appointed superior.
+
+“I wonder why,” he said just above the breath that he drew.
+
+We waited on. A light wind from the sea wandered up and down the long
+lines of the woods, and the wayside grasses, whitened already with
+summer dust, rose and bowed in sallow waves.
+
+A woman, wiping the suds off her arms, came out of the cottage next the
+sweetmeat shop.
+
+“I’ve be’n listenin’ in de back-yard,” she said cheerily. “He says
+Arthur’s unaccountable bad. Did ye hear him shruck just now?
+Unaccountable bad. I reckon t’will come Jenny’s turn to walk in de wood
+nex’ week along, Mr. Madden.”
+
+“Excuse me, Sir, but your lap-robe is slipping,” said Madden
+deferentially. The woman started, dropped a curtsey, and hurried away.
+
+“What does she mean by ‘walking in the wood’?” I asked.
+
+“It must be some saying they use hereabouts. I’m from Norfolk myself,”
+said Madden. “They’re an independent lot in this county. She took you
+for a chauffeur, Sir.”
+
+I saw the Doctor come out of the cottage followed by a draggle-tailed
+wench who clung to his arm as though he could make treaty for her with
+Death. “Dat sort,” she wailed—“dey’re just as much to us dat has ’em as
+if dey was lawful born. Just as much—just as much! An’ God he’d be just
+as pleased if you saved ’un, Doctor. Don’t take it from me. Miss
+Florence will tell ye de very same. Don’t leave ’im, Doctor!”
+
+“I know. I know,” said the man, “but he’ll be quiet for a while now.
+We’ll get the nurse and the medicine as fast as we can.” He signalled
+me to come forward with the car, and I strove not to be privy to what
+followed; but I saw the girl’s face, blotched and frozen with grief,
+and I felt the hand without a ring clutching at my knees when we moved
+away.
+
+The Doctor was a man of some humour, for I remember he claimed my car
+under the Oath of Æsculapius, and used it and me without mercy. First
+we convoyed Mrs. Madehurst and the blind woman to wait by the sick bed
+till the nurse should come. Next we invaded a neat county town for
+prescriptions (the Doctor said the trouble was cerebro-spinal
+meningitis), and when the County Institute, banked and flanked with
+scared market cattle, reported itself out of nurses for the moment we
+literally flung ourselves loose upon the county. We conferred with the
+owners of great houses—magnates at the ends of overarching avenues
+whose big-boned womenfolk strode away from their tea-tables to listen
+to the imperious Doctor. At last a white-haired lady sitting under a
+cedar of Lebanon and surrounded by a court of magnificent Borzois—all
+hostile to motors—gave the Doctor, who received them as from a
+princess, written orders which we bore many miles at top speed, through
+a park, to a French nunnery, where we took over in exchange a
+pallid-faced and trembling Sister. She knelt at the bottom of the
+tonneau telling her beads without pause till, by short cuts of the
+Doctor’s invention, we had her to the sweetmeat shop once more. It was
+a long afternoon crowded with mad episodes that rose and dissolved like
+the dust of our wheels; cross-sections of remote and incomprehensible
+lives through which we raced at right angles; and I went home in the
+dusk, wearied out, to dream of the clashing horns of cattle; round-eyed
+nuns walking in a garden of graves; pleasant tea-parties beneath shaded
+trees; the carbolic-scented, grey-painted corridors of the County
+Institute; the steps of shy children in the wood, and the hands that
+clung to my knees as the motor began to move.
+
+
+I had intended to return in a day or two, but it pleased Fate to hold
+me from that side of the county, on many pretexts, till the elder and
+the wild rose had fruited. There came at last a brilliant day, swept
+clear from the south-west, that brought the hills within hand’s reach—a
+day of unstable airs and high filmy clouds. Through no merit of my own
+I was free, and set the car for the third time on that known road. As I
+reached the crest of the Downs I felt the soft air change, saw it glaze
+under the sun; and, looking down at the sea, in that instant beheld the
+blue of the Channel turn through polished silver and dulled steel to
+dingy pewter. A laden collier hugging the coast steered outward for
+deeper water and, across copper-coloured haze, I saw sails rise one by
+one on the anchored fishing-fleet. In a deep dene behind me an eddy of
+sudden wind drummed through sheltered oaks, and spun aloft the first
+day sample of autumn leaves. When I reached the beach road the sea-fog
+fumed over the brickfields, and the tide was telling all the groins of
+the gale beyond Ushant. In less than an hour summer England vanished in
+chill grey. We were again the shut island of the North, all the ships
+of the world bellowing at our perilous gates; and between their
+outcries ran the piping of bewildered gulls. My cap dripped moisture,
+the folds of the rug held it in pools or sluiced it away in runnels,
+and the salt-rime stuck to my lips.
+
+Inland the smell of autumn loaded the thickened fog among the trees,
+and the drip became a continuous shower. Yet the late flowers—mallow of
+the wayside, scabious of the field, and dahlia of the garden—showed gay
+in the mist, and beyond the sea’s breath there was little sign of decay
+in the leaf. Yet in the villages the house doors were all open, and
+bare-legged, bare-headed children sat at ease on the damp doorsteps to
+shout “pip-pip” at the stranger.
+
+I made bold to call at the sweetmeat shop, where Mrs. Madehurst met me
+with a fat woman’s hospitable tears. Jenny’s child, she said, had died
+two days after the nun had come. It was, she felt, best out of the way,
+even though insurance offices, for reasons which she did not pretend to
+follow, would not willingly insure such stray lives. “Not but what
+Jenny didn’t tend to Arthur as though he’d come all proper at de end of
+de first year—like Jenny herself.” Thanks to Miss Florence, the child
+had been buried with a pomp which, in Mrs. Madehurst’s opinion, more
+than covered the small irregularity of its birth. She described the
+coffin, within and without, the glass hearse, and the evergreen lining
+of the grave.
+
+“But how’s the mother?” I asked.
+
+“Jenny? Oh, she’ll get over it. I’ve felt dat way with one or two o’ my
+own. She’ll get over. She’s walkin’ in de wood now.”
+
+“In this weather?”
+
+Mrs. Madehurst looked at me with narrowed eyes across the counter.
+
+“I dunno but it opens de ’eart like. Yes, it opens de ’eart. Dat’s
+where losin’ and bearin’ comes so alike in de long run, we do say.”
+
+Now the wisdom of the old wives is greater than that of all the
+Fathers, and this last oracle sent me thinking so extendedly as I went
+up the road, that I nearly ran over a woman and a child at the wooded
+corner by the lodge gates of the House Beautiful.
+
+“Awful weather!” I cried, as I slowed dead for the turn.
+
+“Not so bad,” she answered placidly out of the fog. “Mine’s used to
+’un. You’ll find yours indoors, I reckon.”
+
+Indoors, Madden received me with professional courtesy, and kind
+inquiries for the health of the motor, which he would put under cover.
+
+I waited in a still, nut-brown hall, pleasant with late flowers and
+warmed with a delicious wood fire—a place of good influence and great
+peace. (Men and women may sometimes, after great effort, achieve a
+creditable lie; but the house, which is their temple, cannot say
+anything save the truth of those who have lived in it.) A child’s cart
+and a doll lay on the black-and-white floor, where a rug had been
+kicked back. I felt that the children had only just hurried away—to
+hide themselves, most like—in the many turns of the great adzed
+staircase that climbed statelily out of the hall, or to crouch at gaze
+behind the lions and roses of the carven gallery above. Then I heard
+her voice above me, singing as the blind sing—from the soul:—
+
+In the pleasant orchard-closes.
+
+
+And all my early summer came back at the call.
+
+In the pleasant orchard-closes,
+God bless all our gains say we—
+But may God bless all our losses,
+Better suits with our degree,
+
+
+She dropped the marring fifth line, and repeated—
+
+Better suits with our degree!
+
+
+I saw her lean over the gallery, her linked hands white as pearl
+against the oak.
+
+“Is that you—from the other side of the county?” she called.
+
+“Yes, me—from the other side of the county,” I answered laughing.
+
+“What a long time before you had to come here again.” She ran down the
+stairs, one hand lightly touching the broad rail. “It’s two months and
+four days. Summer’s gone!”
+
+“I meant to come before, but Fate prevented.”
+
+“I knew it. Please do something to that fire. They won’t let me play
+with it, but I can feel it’s behaving badly. Hit it!”
+
+I looked on either side of the deep fireplace, and found but a
+half-charred hedge-stake with which I punched a black log into flame.
+
+“It never goes out, day or night,” she said, as though explaining. “In
+case any one comes in with cold toes, you see.”
+
+“It’s even lovelier inside than it was out,” I murmured. The red light
+poured itself along the age-polished dusky panels till the Tudor roses
+and lions of the gallery took colour and motion. An old eagle-topped
+convex mirror gathered the picture into its mysterious heart,
+distorting afresh the distorted shadows, and curving the gallery lines
+into the curves of a ship. The day was shutting down in half a gale as
+the fog turned to stringy scud. Through the uncurtained mullions of the
+broad window I could see valiant horsemen of the lawn rear and recover
+against the wind that taunted them with legions of dead leaves. “Yes,
+it must be beautiful,” she said. “Would you like to go over it? There’s
+still light enough upstairs.”
+
+I followed her up the unflinching, wagon-wide staircase to the gallery
+whence opened the thin fluted Elizabethan doors.
+
+“Feel how they put the latch low down for the sake of the children.”
+She swung a light door inward.
+
+“By the way, where are they?” I asked. “I haven’t even heard them
+to-day.”
+
+She did not answer at once. Then, “I can only hear them,” she replied
+softly. “This is one of their rooms—everything ready, you see.”
+
+She pointed into a heavily-timbered room. There were little low gate
+tables and children’s chairs. A doll’s house, its hooked front half
+open, faced a great dappled rocking-horse, from whose padded saddle it
+was but a child’s scramble to the broad window-seat overlooking the
+lawn. A toy gun lay in a corner beside a gilt wooden cannon.
+
+“Surely they’ve only just gone,” I whispered. In the failing light a
+door creaked cautiously. I heard the rustle of a frock and the patter
+of feet—quick feet through a room beyond.
+
+“I heard that,” she cried triumphantly. “Did you? Children, O children,
+where are you?”
+
+The voice filled the walls that held it lovingly to the last perfect
+note, but there came no answering shout such as I had heard in the
+garden. We hurried on from room to oak-floored room; up a step here,
+down three steps there; among a maze of passages; always mocked by our
+quarry. One might as well have tried to work an unstopped warren with a
+single ferret. There were bolt-holes innumerable—recesses in walls,
+embrasures of deep slitten windows now darkened, whence they could
+start up behind us; and abandoned fireplaces, six feet deep in the
+masonry, as well as the tangle of communicating doors. Above all, they
+had the twilight for their helper in our game. I had caught one or two
+joyous chuckles of evasion, and once or twice had seen the silhouette
+of a child’s frock against some darkening window at the end of a
+passage; but we returned empty-handed to the gallery, just as a
+middle-aged woman was setting a lamp in its niche.
+
+“No, I haven’t seen her either this evening, Miss Florence,” I heard
+her say, “but that Turpin he says he wants to see you about his shed.”
+
+“Oh, Mr. Turpin must want to see me very badly. Tell him to come to the
+hall, Mrs. Madden.”
+
+I looked down into the hall whose only light was the dulled fire, and
+deep in the shadow I saw them at last. They must have slipped down
+while we were in the passages, and now thought themselves perfectly
+hidden behind an old gilt leather screen. By child’s law, my fruitless
+chase was as good as an introduction, but since I had taken so much
+trouble I resolved to force them to come forward later by the simple
+trick, which children detest, of pretending not to notice them. They
+lay close, in a little huddle, no more than shadows except when a quick
+flame betrayed an outline.
+
+“And now we’ll have some tea,” she said. “I believe I ought to have
+offered it you at first, but one doesn’t arrive at manners somehow when
+one lives alone and is considered—h’m—peculiar.” Then with very pretty
+scorn, “would you like a lamp to see to eat by?”
+
+“The firelight’s much pleasanter, I think.” We descended into that
+delicious gloom and Madden brought tea.
+
+I took my chair in the direction of the screen ready to surprise or be
+surprised as the game should go, and at her permission, since a hearth
+is always sacred, bent forward to play with the fire.
+
+“Where do you get these beautiful short faggots from?” I asked idly.
+“Why, they are tallies!”
+
+“Of course,” she said. “As I can’t read or write I’m driven back on the
+early English tally for my accounts. Give me one and I’ll tell you what
+it meant.”
+
+I passed her an unburned hazel-tally, about a foot long, and she ran
+her thumb down the nicks.
+
+“This is the milk-record for the home farm for the month of April last
+year, in gallons,” said she. “I don’t know what I should have done
+without tallies. An old forester of mine taught me the system. It’s out
+of date now for every one else; but my tenants respect it. One of
+them’s coming now to see me. Oh, it doesn’t matter. He has no business
+here out of office hours. He’s a greedy, ignorant man—very greedy or—he
+wouldn’t come here after dark.”
+
+“Have you much land then?”
+
+“Only a couple of hundred acres in hand, thank goodness. The other six
+hundred are nearly all let to folk who knew my folk before me, but this
+Turpin is quite a new man—and a highway robber.”
+
+“But are you sure I sha’n’t be——?”
+
+“Certainly not. You have the right. He hasn’t any children.”
+
+“Ah, the children!” I said, and slid my low chair back till it nearly
+touched the screen that hid them. “I wonder whether they’ll come out
+for me.”
+
+There was a murmur of voices—Madden’s and a deeper note—at the low,
+dark side door, and a ginger-headed, canvas-gaitered giant of the
+unmistakable tenant farmer type stumbled or was pushed in.
+
+“Come to the fire, Mr. Turpin,” she said.
+
+“If—if you please, Miss, I’ll—I’ll be quite as well by the door.” He
+clung to the latch as he spoke like a frightened child. Of a sudden I
+realised that he was in the grip of some almost overpowering fear.
+
+“Well?”
+
+“About that new shed for the young stock—that was all. These first
+autumn storms settin’ in … but I’ll come again, Miss.” His teeth did
+not chatter much more than the door latch.
+
+“I think not,” she answered levelly. “The new shed—m’m. What did my
+agent write you on the 15th?”
+
+“I—fancied p’raps that if I came to see you—ma—man to man like, Miss.
+But——”
+
+His eyes rolled into every corner of the room wide with horror. He half
+opened the door through which he had entered, but I noticed it shut
+again—from without and firmly.
+
+“He wrote what I told him,” she went on. “You are overstocked already.
+Dunnett’s Farm never carried more than fifty bullocks—even in Mr.
+Wright’s time. And _he_ used cake. You’ve sixty-seven and you don’t
+cake. You’ve broken the lease in that respect. You’re dragging the
+heart out of the farm.”
+
+“I’m—I’m getting some minerals—superphosphates—next week. I’ve as good
+as ordered a truck-load already. I’ll go down to the station to-morrow
+about ’em. Then I can come and see you man to man like, Miss, in the
+daylight…. That gentleman’s not going away, is he?” He almost shrieked.
+
+I had only slid the chair a little further back, reaching behind me to
+tap on the leather of the screen, but he jumped like a rat.
+
+“No. Please attend to me, Mr. Turpin.” She turned in her chair and
+faced him with his back to the door. It was an old and sordid little
+piece of scheming that she forced from him—his plea for the new cowshed
+at his landlady’s expense, that he might with the covered manure pay
+his next year’s rent out of the valuation after, as she made clear, he
+had bled the enriched pastures to the bone. I could not but admire the
+intensity of his greed, when I saw him out-facing for its sake whatever
+terror it was that ran wet on his forehead.
+
+I ceased to tap the leather—was, indeed, calculating the cost of the
+shed—when I felt my relaxed hand taken and turned softly between the
+soft hands of a child. So at last I had triumphed. In a moment I would
+turn and acquaint myself with those quick-footed wanderers….
+
+The little brushing kiss fell in the centre of my palm—as a gift on
+which the fingers were, once, expected to close: as the all faithful
+half-reproachful signal of a waiting child not used to neglect even
+when grown-ups were busiest—a fragment of the mute code devised very
+long ago.
+
+Then I knew. And it was as though I had known from the first day when I
+looked across the lawn at the high window.
+
+I heard the door shut. The woman turned to me in silence, and I felt
+that she knew.
+
+What time passed after this I cannot say. I was roused by the fall of a
+log, and mechanically rose to put it back. Then I returned to my place
+in the chair very close to the screen.
+
+“Now you understand,” she whispered, across the packed shadows.
+
+“Yes, I understand—now. Thank you.”
+
+“I—I only hear them.” She bowed her head in her hands. “I have no
+right, you know—no other right. I have neither borne nor lost—neither
+borne nor lost!”
+
+“Be very glad then,” said I, for my soul was torn open within me.
+
+“Forgive me!”
+
+She was still, and I went back to my sorrow and my joy.
+
+“It was because I loved them so,” she said at last, brokenly. “_That_
+was why it was, even from the first—even before I knew that they—they
+were all I should ever have. And I loved them so!”
+
+She stretched out her arms to the shadows and the shadows within the
+shadow.
+
+“They came because I loved them—because I needed them. I—I must have
+made them come. Was that wrong, think you?”
+
+“No—no.”
+
+“I—I grant you that the toys and—and all that sort of thing were
+nonsense, but—but I used to so hate empty rooms myself when I was
+little.” She pointed to the gallery. “And the passages all empty. … And
+how could I ever bear the garden door shut? Suppose——”
+
+“Don’t! For pity’s sake, don’t!” I cried. The twilight had brought a
+cold rain with gusty squalls that plucked at the leaded windows.
+
+“And the same thing with keeping the fire in all night. _I_ don’t think
+it so foolish—do you?”
+
+I looked at the broad brick hearth, saw, through tears I believe, that
+there was no unpassable iron on or near it, and bowed my head.
+
+“I did all that and lots of other things—just to make believe. Then
+they came. I heard them, but I didn’t know that they were not mine by
+right till Mrs. Madden told me——”
+
+“The butler’s wife? What?”
+
+“One of them—I heard—she saw. And knew. Hers! _Not_ for me. I didn’t
+know at first. Perhaps I was jealous. Afterwards, I began to understand
+that it was only because I loved them, not because——… Oh, you _must_
+bear or lose,” she said piteously. “There is no other way—and yet they
+love me. They must! Don’t they?”
+
+There was no sound in the room except the lapping voices of the fire,
+but we two listened intently, and she at least took comfort from what
+she heard. She recovered herself and half rose. I sat still in my chair
+by the screen.
+
+“Don’t think me a wretch to whine about myself like this, but—but I’m
+all in the dark, you know, and _you_ can see.”
+
+In truth I could see, and my vision confirmed me in my resolve, though
+that was like the very parting of spirit and flesh. Yet a little longer
+I would stay since it was the last time.
+
+“You think it is wrong, then?” she cried sharply, though I had said
+nothing.
+
+“Not for you. A thousand times no. For you it is right…. I am grateful
+to you beyond words. For me it would be wrong. For me only….”
+
+“Why?” she said, but passed her hand before her face as she had done at
+our second meeting in the wood. “Oh, I see,” she went on simply as a
+child. “For you it would be wrong.” Then with a little indrawn laugh,
+“and, d’you remember, I called you lucky—once—at first. You who must
+never come here again!”
+
+She left me to sit a little longer by the screen, and I heard the sound
+of her feet die out along the gallery above.
+
+
+
+
+MRS. BATHURST
+
+
+
+
+FROM LYDEN’S “IRENIUS”
+
+
+ACT III. Sc. II.
+
+
+GOW.—Had it been your Prince instead of a groom caught in this noose
+there’s not an astrologer of the city——
+
+PRINCE.—Sacked! Sacked! We were a city yesterday.
+
+GOW.—So be it, but I was not governor. Not an astrologer, but would ha’
+sworn he’d foreseen it at the last versary of Venus, when Vulcan caught
+her with Mars in the house of stinking Capricorn. But since ’tis Jack
+of the Straw that hangs, the forgetful stars had it not on their
+tablets.
+
+PRINCE.—Another life! Were there any left to die? How did the poor fool
+come by it?
+
+GOW.—_Simpliciter_ thus. She that damned him to death knew not that she
+did it, or would have died ere she had done it. For she loved him. He
+that hangs him does so in obedience to the Duke, and asks no more than
+“Where is the rope?” The Duke, very exactly he hath told us, works
+God’s will, in which holy employ he’s not to be questioned. We have
+then left upon this finger, only Jack whose soul now plucks the left
+sleeve of Destiny in Hell to overtake why she clapped him up like a fly
+on a sunny wall. Whuff! Soh!
+
+PRINCE.—Your cloak, Ferdinand. I’ll sleep now.
+
+FERDINAND.—Sleep, then… He too, loved his life?
+
+GOW.—He was born of woman … but at the end threw life from him, like
+your Prince, for a little sleep … “Have I any look of a King?” said he,
+clanking his chain—“to be so baited on all sides by Fortune, that I
+must e’en die now to live with myself one day longer?” I left him
+railing at Fortune and woman’s love.
+
+FERDINAND.—Ah, woman’s love!
+
+_(Aside)_ Who knows not Fortune, glutted on easy thrones, Stealing from
+feasts as rare to coneycatch, Privily in the hedgerows for a clown With
+that same cruel-lustful hand and eye, Those nails and wedges, that one
+hammer and lead, And the very gerb of long-stored lightnings loosed
+Yesterday ’gainst some King.
+
+
+
+
+MRS. BATHURST
+
+
+The day that I chose to visit H.M.S. _Peridot_ in Simon’s Bay was the
+day that the Admiral had chosen to send her up the coast. She was just
+steaming out to sea as my train came in, and since the rest of the
+Fleet were either coaling or busy at the rifle-ranges a thousand feet
+up the hill, I found myself stranded, lunchless, on the sea-front with
+no hope of return to Cape Town before five P.M. At this crisis I had
+the luck to come across my friend Inspector Hooper, Cape Government
+Railways, in command of an engine and a brake-van chalked for repair.
+
+“If you get something to eat,” he said, “I’ll run you down to
+Glengariff siding till the goods comes along. It’s cooler there than
+here, you see.”
+
+I got food and drink from the Greeks who sell all things at a price,
+and the engine trotted us a couple of miles up the line to a bay of
+drifted sand and a plank-platform half buried in sand not a hundred
+yards from the edge of the surf. Moulded dunes, whiter than any snow,
+rolled far inland up a brown and purple valley of splintered rocks and
+dry scrub. A crowd of Malays hauled at a net beside two blue and green
+boats on the beach; a picnic party danced and shouted barefoot where a
+tiny river trickled across the flat, and a circle of dry hills, whose
+feet were set in sands of silver, locked us in against a seven-coloured
+sea. At either horn of the bay the railway line, cut just above high
+water-mark, ran round a shoulder of piled rocks, and disappeared.
+
+“You see there’s always a breeze here,” said Hooper, opening the door
+as the engine left us in the siding on the sand, and the strong
+south-easter buffeting under Elsie’s Peak dusted sand into our tickey
+beer. Presently he sat down to a file full of spiked documents. He had
+returned from a long trip up-country, where he had been reporting on
+damaged rolling-stock, as far away as Rhodesia. The weight of the bland
+wind on my eyelids; the song of it under the car roof, and high up
+among the rocks; the drift of fine grains chasing each other musically
+ashore; the tramp of the surf; the voices of the picnickers; the rustle
+of Hooper’s file, and the presence of the assured sun, joined with the
+beer to cast me into magical slumber. The hills of False Bay were just
+dissolving into those of fairyland when I heard footsteps on the sand
+outside, and the clink of our couplings.
+
+“Stop that!” snapped Hooper, without raising his head from his work.
+“It’s those dirty little Malay boys, you see: they’re always playing
+with the trucks….”
+
+“Don’t be hard on ’em. The railway’s a general refuge in Africa,” I
+replied.
+
+“’Tis—up-country at any rate. That reminds me,” he felt in his
+waistcoat-pocket, “I’ve got a curiosity for you from Wankies—beyond
+Buluwayo. It’s more of a souvenir perhaps than——”
+
+“The old hotel’s inhabited,” cried a voice. “White men from the
+language. Marines to the front! Come on, Pritch. Here’s your Belmont.
+Wha—i—i!”
+
+The last word dragged like a rope as Mr. Pyecroft ran round to the open
+door, and stood looking up into my face. Behind him an enormous
+Sergeant of Marines trailed a stalk of dried seaweed, and dusted the
+sand nervously from his fingers.
+
+“What are you doing here?” I asked. “I thought the _Hierophant_ was
+down the coast?”
+
+“We came in last Tuesday—from Tristan D’Acunha—for overhaul, and we
+shall be in dockyard ’ands for two months, with boiler-seatings.”
+
+“Come and sit down,” Hooper put away the file.
+
+“This is Mr. Hooper of the Railway,” I exclaimed, as Pyecroft turned to
+haul up the black-moustached sergeant.
+
+“This is Sergeant Pritchard, of the _Agaric_, an old shipmate,” said
+he. “We were strollin’ on the beach.” The monster blushed and nodded.
+He filled up one side of the van when he sat down.
+
+“And this is my friend, Mr. Pyecroft,” I added to Hooper, already busy
+with the extra beer which my prophetic soul had bought from the Greeks.
+
+“_Moi aussi_” quoth Pyecroft, and drew out beneath his coat a labelled
+quart bottle.
+
+“Why, it’s Bass,” cried Hooper.
+
+“It was Pritchard,” said Pyecroft. “They can’t resist him.”
+
+“That’s not so,” said Pritchard, mildly.
+
+“Not _verbatim_ per’aps, but the look in the eye came to the same
+thing.”
+
+“Where was it?” I demanded.
+
+“Just on beyond here—at Kalk Bay. She was slappin’ a rug in a back
+verandah. Pritch hadn’t more than brought his batteries to bear, before
+she stepped indoors an’ sent it flyin’ over the wall.”
+
+Pyecroft patted the warm bottle.
+
+“It was all a mistake,” said Pritchard. “I shouldn’t wonder if she
+mistook me for Maclean. We’re about of a size.”
+
+I had heard householders of Muizenburg, St. James’s, and Kalk Bay
+complain of the difficulty of keeping beer or good servants at the
+seaside, and I began to see the reason. None the less, it was excellent
+Bass, and I too drank to the health of that large-minded maid.
+
+“It’s the uniform that fetches ’em, an’ they fetch it,” said Pyecroft.
+“My simple navy blue is respectable, but not fascinatin’. Now Pritch in
+’is Number One rig is always ‘purr Mary, on the terrace’—_ex officio_
+as you might say.”
+
+“She took me for Maclean, I tell you,” Pritchard insisted. “Why—why—to
+listen to him you wouldn’t think that only yesterday——”
+
+“Pritch,” said Pyecroft, “be warned in time. If we begin tellin’ what
+we know about each other we’ll be turned out of the pub. Not to mention
+aggravated desertion on several occasions——”
+
+“Never anything more than absence without leaf—I defy you to prove it,”
+said the Sergeant hotly. “An’ if it comes to that how about Vancouver
+in ’87?”
+
+“How about it? Who pulled bow in the gig going ashore? Who told Boy
+Niven…?”
+
+“Surely you were court martialled for that?” I said. The story of Boy
+Niven who lured seven or eight able-bodied seamen and marines into the
+woods of British Columbia used to be a legend of the Fleet.
+
+“Yes, we were court-martialled to rights,” said Pritchard, “but we
+should have been tried for murder if Boy Niven ’adn’t been unusually
+tough. He told us he had an uncle ’oo’d give us land to farm. ’E said
+he was born at the back o’ Vancouver Island, and _all_ the time the
+beggar was a balmy Barnado Orphan!”
+
+“_But_ we believed him,” said Pyecroft. “I did—you did—Paterson did—an’
+’oo was the Marine that married the cocoanut-woman afterwards—him with
+the mouth?”
+
+“Oh, Jones, Spit-Kid Jones. I ’aven’t thought of ’im in years,” said
+Pritchard. “Yes, Spit-Kid believed it, an’ George Anstey and Moon. We
+were very young an’ very curious.”
+
+“_But_ lovin’ an’ trustful to a degree,” said Pyecroft.
+
+“Remember when ’e told us to walk in single file for fear o’ bears?
+‘Remember, Pye, when ’e ’opped about in that bog full o’ ferns an’
+sniffed an’ said ’e could smell the smoke of ’is uncle’s farm? An’
+_all_ the time it was a dirty little out-lyin’ uninhabited island. We
+walked round it in a day, an’ come back to our boat lyin’ on the beach.
+A whole day Boy Niven kept us walkin’ in circles lookin’ for ’is
+uncle’s farm! He said his uncle was compelled by the law of the land to
+give us a farm!”
+
+“Don’t get hot, Pritch. We believed,” said Pyecroft.
+
+“He’d been readin’ books. He only did it to get a run ashore an’ have
+himself talked of. A day an’ a night—eight of us—followin’ Boy Niven
+round an uninhabited island in the Vancouver archipelago! Then the
+picket came for us an’ a nice pack o’ idiots we looked!”
+
+“What did you get for it?” Hooper asked.
+
+“Heavy thunder with continuous lightning for two hours. Thereafter
+sleet-squalls, a confused sea, and cold, unfriendly weather till
+conclusion o’ cruise,” said Pyecroft. “It was only what we expected,
+but what we felt, an’ I assure you, Mr. Hooper, even a sailor-man has a
+heart to break, was bein’ told that we able seamen an’ promisin’
+marines ’ad misled Boy Niven. Yes, we poor back-to-the-landers was
+supposed to ’ave misled him! He rounded on us, o’ course, an’ got off
+easy.”
+
+“Excep’ for what we gave him in the steerin’-flat when we came out o’
+cells. ’Eard anything of ’im lately, Pye?”
+
+“Signal Boatswain in the Channel Fleet, I believe—Mr. L.L. Niven is.”
+
+“An’ Anstey died o’ fever in Benin,” Pritchard mused. “What come to
+Moon? Spit-Kid we know about.”
+
+“Moon—Moon! Now where did I last…? Oh yes, when I was in the
+_Palladium_! I met Quigley at Buncrana Station. He told me Moon ’ad run
+when the _Astrild_ sloop was cruising among the South Seas three years
+back. He always showed signs o’ bein’ a Mormonastic beggar. Yes, he
+slipped off quietly an’ they ’adn’t time to chase ’im round the islands
+even if the navigatin’ officer ’ad been equal to the job.”
+
+“Wasn’t he?” said Hooper.
+
+“Not so. Accordin’ to Quigley the _Astrild_ spent half her commission
+rompin’ up the beach like a she-turtle, an’ the other half hatching
+turtles’ eggs on the top o’ numerous reefs. When she was docked at
+Sydney her copper looked like Aunt Maria’s washing on the line—an’ her
+’midship frames was sprung. The commander swore the dockyard ’ad done
+it haulin’ the pore thing on to the slips. They _do_ do strange things
+at sea, Mr. Hooper.”
+
+“Ah! I’m not a tax-payer,” said Hooper, and opened a fresh bottle. The
+Sergeant seemed to be one who had a difficulty in dropping subjects.
+
+“How it all comes back, don’t it?” he said. “Why Moon must ’ave ’ad
+sixteen years’ service before he ran.”
+
+“It takes ’em at all ages. Look at—you know,” said Pyecroft.
+
+“Who?” I asked.
+
+“A service man within eighteen months of his pension, is the party
+you’re thinkin’ of,” said Pritchard. “A warrant ’oose name begins with
+a V., isn’t it?”
+
+“But, in a way o’ puttin’ it, we can’t say that he actually did
+desert,” Pyecroft suggested.
+
+“Oh, no,” said Pritchard. “It was only permanent absence up country
+without leaf. That was all.”
+
+“Up country?” said Hooper. “Did they circulate his description?”
+
+“What for?” said Pritchard, most impolitely.
+
+“Because deserters are like columns in the war. They don’t move away
+from the line, you see. I’ve known a chap caught at Salisbury that way
+tryin’ to get to Nyassa. They tell me, but o’ course I don’t know, that
+they don’t ask questions on the Nyassa Lake Flotilla up there. I’ve
+heard of a P. and O. quartermaster in full command of an armed launch
+there.”
+
+“Do you think Click ’ud ha’ gone up that way?” Pritchard asked.
+
+“There’s no saying. He was sent up to Bloemfontein to take over some
+Navy ammunition left in the fort. We know he took it over and saw it
+into the trucks. Then there was no more Click—then or thereafter. Four
+months ago it transpired, and thus the _casus belli_ stands at
+present,” said Pyecroft.
+
+“What were his marks?” said Hooper again.
+
+“Does the Railway get a reward for returnin’ ’em, then?” said
+Pritchard.
+
+“If I did d’you suppose I’d talk about it?” Hooper retorted angrily.
+
+“You seemed so very interested,” said Pritchard with equal crispness.
+
+“Why was he called Click?” I asked to tide over an uneasy little break
+in the conversation. The two men were staring at each other very
+fixedly.
+
+“Because of an ammunition hoist carryin’ away,” said Pyecroft. “And it
+carried away four of ’is teeth—on the lower port side, wasn’t it,
+Pritch? The substitutes which he bought weren’t screwed home in a
+manner o’ sayin’. When he talked fast they used to lift a little on the
+bed plate. ’Ence, ‘Click.’ They called ’im a superior man which is what
+we’d call a long, black-’aired, genteely speakin’, ’alf-bred beggar on
+the lower deck.”
+
+“Four false teeth on the lower left jaw,” said Hooper, his hand in his
+waistcoat pocket. “What tattoo marks?”
+
+“Look here,” began Pritchard, half rising. “I’m sure we’re very
+grateful to you as a gentleman for your ’orspitality, but per’aps we
+may ’ave made an error in—”
+
+I looked at Pyecroft for aid, Hooper was crimsoning rapidly.
+
+“If the fat marine now occupying the foc’sle will kindly bring ’is
+_status quo_ to an anchor yet once more, we may be able to talk like
+gentlemen—not to say friends,” said Pyecroft. “He regards you, Mr.
+Hooper, as a emissary of the Law.”
+
+“I only wish to observe that when a gentleman exhibits such a peculiar,
+or I should rather say, such a _bloomin’_ curiosity in identification
+marks as our friend here——”
+
+“Mr. Pritchard,” I interposed, “I’ll take all the responsibility for
+Mr. Hooper.”
+
+“An’ _you_’ll apologise all round,” said Pyecroft. “You’re a rude
+little man, Pritch.”
+
+“But how was I——” he began, wavering.
+
+“I don’t know an’ I don’t care. Apologise!”
+
+The giant looked round bewildered and took our little hands into his
+vast grip, one by one. “I was wrong,” he said meekly as a sheep. “My
+suspicions was unfounded. Mr. Hooper, I apologise.”
+
+“You did quite right to look out for your own end o’ the line,” said
+Hooper. “I’d ha’ done the same with a gentleman I didn’t know, you see.
+If you don’t mind I’d like to hear a little more o’ your Mr. Vickery.
+It’s safe with me, you see.”
+
+“Why did Vickery run,” I began, but Pyecroft’s smile made me turn my
+question to “Who was she?”
+
+“She kep’ a little hotel at Hauraki—near Auckland,” said Pyecroft.
+
+“By Gawd!” roared Pritchard, slapping his hand on his leg. “Not Mrs.
+Bathurst!”
+
+Pyecroft nodded slowly, and the Sergeant called all the powers of
+darkness to witness his bewilderment.
+
+“So far as I could get at it Mrs. B. was the lady in question.”
+
+“But Click was married,” cried Pritchard.
+
+“An’ ’ad a fifteen year old daughter. ’E’s shown me her photograph.
+Settin’ that aside, so to say, ’ave you ever found these little things
+make much difference? Because I haven’t.”
+
+“Good Lord Alive an’ Watchin’!… Mrs. Bathurst….” Then with another
+roar: “You can say what you please, Pye, but you don’t make me believe
+it was any of ’er fault. She wasn’t _that!_”
+
+“If I was going to say what I please, I’d begin by callin’ you a silly
+ox an’ work up to the higher pressures at leisure. I’m trying to say
+solely what transpired. M’rover, for once you’re right. It wasn’t her
+fault.”
+
+“You couldn’t ’aven’t made me believe it if it ’ad been,” was the
+answer.
+
+Such faith in a Sergeant of Marines interested me greatly. “Never mind
+about that,” I cried. “Tell me what she was like.”
+
+“She was a widow,” said Pyecroft. “Left so very young and never
+re-spliced. She kep’ a little hotel for warrants and non-coms close to
+Auckland, an’ she always wore black silk, and ’er neck—”
+
+“You ask what she was like,” Pritchard broke in. “Let me give you an
+instance. I was at Auckland first in ’97, at the end o’ the
+_Marroquin’s_ commission, an’ as I’d been promoted I went up with the
+others. She used to look after us all, an’ she never lost by it—not a
+penny! ‘Pay me now,’ she’d say, ‘or settle later. I know you won’t let
+me suffer. Send the money from home if you like,’ Why, gentlemen all, I
+tell you I’ve seen that lady take her own gold watch an’ chain off her
+neck in the bar an’ pass it to a bosun ’oo’d come ashore without ’is
+ticker an’ ’ad to catch the last boat. ‘I don’t know your name,’ she
+said, ‘but when you’ve done with it, you’ll find plenty that know me on
+the front. Send it back by one o’ them.’ And it was worth thirty pounds
+if it was worth ’arf a crown. The little gold watch, Pye, with the blue
+monogram at the back. But, as I was sayin’, in those days she kep’ a
+beer that agreed with me—Slits it was called. One way an’ another I
+must ’ave punished a good few bottles of it while we was in the
+bay—comin’ ashore every night or so. Chaffin across the bar like, once
+when we were alone, ‘Mrs. B.,’ I said, ‘when next I call I want you to
+remember that this is my particular—just as you’re my particular?’
+(She’d let you go _that_ far!) ‘Just as you’re my particular,’ I said.
+‘Oh, thank you, Sergeant Pritchard,’ she says, an’ put ’er hand up to
+the curl be’ind ’er ear. Remember that way she had, Pye?”
+
+“I think so,” said the sailor.
+
+“Yes, ‘Thank you, Sergeant Pritchard,’ she says. ‘The least I can do is
+to mark it for you in case you change your mind. There’s no great
+demand for it in the Fleet,’ she says, ‘but to make sure I’ll put it at
+the back o’ the shelf,’ an’ she snipped off a piece of her hair ribbon
+with that old dolphin cigar cutter on the bar—remember it, Pye?—an’ she
+tied a bow round what was left—just four bottles. That was ’97—no, ’96.
+In ’98 I was in the _Resiliant_—China station—full commission. In
+Nineteen One, mark you, I was in the _Carthusian_, back in Auckland Bay
+again. Of course I went up to Mrs. B.’s with the rest of us to see how
+things were goin’. They were the same as ever. (Remember the big tree
+on the pavement by the side-bar, Pye?) I never said anythin’ in special
+(there was too many of us talkin’ to her), but she saw me at once.”
+
+“That wasn’t difficult?” I ventured.
+
+“Ah, but wait. I was comin’ up to the bar, when, ‘Ada,’ she says to her
+niece, ‘get me Sergeant Pritchard’s particular,’ and, gentlemen all, I
+tell you before I could shake ’ands with the lady, there were those
+four bottles o’ Slits, with ’er ’air ribbon in a bow round each o’
+their necks, set down in front o’ me, an’ as she drew the cork she
+looked at me under her eyebrows in that blindish way she had o’
+lookin’, an’, ‘Sergeant Pritchard,’ she says, ‘I do ’ope you ’aven’t
+changed your mind about your particulars.’ That’s the kind o’ woman she
+was—after five years!”
+
+“I don’t _see_ her yet somehow,” said Hooper, but with sympathy.
+
+“She—she never scrupled to feed a lame duck or set ’er foot on a
+scorpion at any time of ’er life,” Pritchard added valiantly.
+
+“That don’t help me either. My mother’s like that for one.”
+
+The giant heaved inside his uniform and rolled his eyes at the
+car-roof. Said Pyecroft suddenly:—
+
+“How many women have you been intimate with all over the world,
+Pritch?”
+
+Pritchard blushed plum colour to the short hairs of his seventeen-inch
+neck.
+
+“’Undreds,” said Pyecroft. “So’ve I. How many of ’em can you remember
+in your own mind, settin’ aside the first—an’ per’aps the last—_and one
+more_?”
+
+“Few, wonderful few, now I tax myself,” said Sergeant Pritchard,
+relievedly.
+
+“An’ how many times might you ’ave been at Aukland?”
+
+“One—two,” he began. “Why, I can’t make it more than three times in ten
+years. But I can remember every time that I ever saw Mrs. B.”
+
+“So can I—an’ I’ve only been to Auckland twice—how she stood an’ what
+she was sayin’ an’ what she looked like. That’s the secret. ’Tisn’t
+beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It’s just It. Some
+women’ll stay in a man’s memory if they once walked down a street, but
+most of ’em you can live with a month on end, an’ next commission you’d
+be put to it to certify whether they talked in their sleep or not, as
+one might say.”
+
+“Ah,” said Hooper. “That’s more the idea. I’ve known just two women of
+that nature.”
+
+“An’ it was no fault o’ theirs?” asked Pritchard.
+
+“None whatever. I know that!”
+
+“An’ if a man gets struck with that kind o’ woman, Mr. Hooper?”
+Pritchard went on.
+
+“He goes crazy—or just saves himself,” was the slow answer.
+
+“You’ve hit it,” said the Sergeant. “You’ve seen an’ known somethin’ in
+the course o’ your life, Mr. Hooper. I’m lookin’ at you!” He set down
+his bottle.
+
+“And how often had Vickery seen her?” I asked.
+
+“That’s the dark an’ bloody mystery,” Pyecroft answered. “I’d never
+come across him till I come out in the _Hierophant_ just now, an’ there
+wasn’t any one in the ship who knew much about him. You see, he was
+what you call a superior man. ’E spoke to me once or twice about
+Auckland and Mrs. B. on the voyage out. I called that to mind
+subsequently. There must ’ave been a good deal between ’em, to my way
+o’ thinkin’. Mind you I’m only giving you my _sum_ of it all, because
+all I know is second-hand so to speak, or rather I should say more than
+second-’and.”
+
+“How?” said Hooper peremptorily. “You must have seen it or heard it.”
+
+“Yes,” said Pyecroft. “I used to think seein’ and hearin’ was the only
+regulation aids to ascertainin’ facts, but as we get older we get more
+accommodatin’. The cylinders work easier, I suppose…. Were you in Cape
+Town last December when Phyllis’s Circus came?”
+
+“No—up country,” said Hooper, a little nettled at the change of venue.
+
+“I ask because they had a new turn of a scientific nature called ‘Home
+and Friends for a Tickey.’”
+
+“Oh, you mean the cinematograph—the pictures of prize-fights and
+steamers. I’ve seen ’em up country.”
+
+“Biograph or cinematograph was what I was alludin’ to. London Bridge
+with the omnibuses—a troopship goin’ to the war—marines on parade at
+Portsmouth an’ the Plymouth Express arrivin’ at Paddin’ton.”
+
+“Seen ’em all. Seen ’em all,” said Hooper impatiently.
+
+“We _Hierophants_ came in just before Christmas week an’ leaf was
+easy.”
+
+“I think a man gets fed up with Cape Town quicker than anywhere else on
+the station. Why, even Durban’s more like Nature. We was there for
+Christmas,” Pritchard put in.
+
+“Not bein’ a devotee of Indian _peeris_, as our Doctor said to the
+Pusser, I can’t exactly say. Phyllis’s was good enough after musketry
+practice at Mozambique. I couldn’t get off the first two or three
+nights on account of what you might call an imbroglio with our Torpedo
+Lieutenant in the submerged flat, where some pride of the West country
+had sugared up a gyroscope; but I remember Vickery went ashore with our
+Carpenter Rigdon—old Crocus we called him. As a general rule Crocus
+never left ’is ship unless an’ until he was ’oisted out with a winch,
+but _when_ ’e went ’e would return noddin’ like a lily gemmed with dew.
+We smothered him down below that night, but the things ’e said about
+Vickery as a fittin’ playmate for a Warrant Officer of ’is cubic
+capacity, before we got him quiet, was what I should call pointed.”
+
+“I’ve been with Crocus—in the _Redoubtable_,” said the Sergeant. “He’s
+a character if there is one.”
+
+“Next night I went into Cape Town with Dawson and Pratt; but just at
+the door of the Circus I came across Vickery. ‘Oh!’ he says, ‘you’re
+the man I’m looking for. Come and sit next me. This way to the shillin’
+places!’ I went astern at once, protestin’ because tickey seats better
+suited my so-called finances. ‘Come on,’ says Vickery, ‘I’m payin’.’
+Naturally I abandoned Pratt and Dawson in anticipation o’ drinks to
+match the seats. ‘No,’ he says, when this was ’inted—‘not now. Not now.
+As many as you please afterwards, but I want you sober for the
+occasion.’ I caught ’is face under a lamp just then, an’ the appearance
+of it quite cured me of my thirsts. Don’t mistake. It didn’t frighten
+me. It made me anxious. I can’t tell you what it was like, but that was
+the effect which it ’ad on me. If you want to know, it reminded me of
+those things in bottles in those herbalistic shops at
+Plymouth—preserved in spirits of wine. White an’ crumply
+things—previous to birth as you might say.”
+
+“You ’ave a beastial mind, Pye,” said the Sergeant, relighting his
+pipe.
+
+“Perhaps. We were in the front row, an’ ‘Home an’ Friends’ came on
+early. Vickery touched me on the knee when the number went up. ‘If you
+see anything that strikes you,’ he says, ‘drop me a hint’; then he went
+on clicking. We saw London Bridge an’ so forth an’ so on, an’ it was
+most interestin’. I’d never seen it before. You ’eard a little dynamo
+like buzzin’, but the pictures were the real thing—alive an’ movin’.”
+
+“I’ve seen ’em,” said Hooper. “Of course they are taken from the very
+thing itself—you see.”
+
+“Then the Western Mail came in to Paddin’ton on the big magic lantern
+sheet. First we saw the platform empty an’ the porters standin’ by.
+Then the engine come in, head on, an’ the women in the front row
+jumped: she headed so straight. Then the doors opened and the
+passengers came out and the porters got the luggage—just like life.
+Only—only when any one came down too far towards us that was watchin’,
+they walked right out o’ the picture, so to speak. I was ’ighly
+interested, I can tell you. So were all of us. I watched an old man
+with a rug ’oo’d dropped a book an’ was tryin’ to pick it up, when
+quite slowly, from be’ind two porters—carryin’ a little reticule an’
+lookin’ from side to side—comes out Mrs. Bathurst. There was no
+mistakin’ the walk in a hundred thousand. She come forward—right
+forward—she looked out straight at us with that blindish look which
+Pritch alluded to. She walked on and on till she melted out of the
+picture—like—like a shadow jumpin’ over a candle, an’ as she went I
+’eard Dawson in the ticky seats be’ind sing out: ‘Christ! There’s Mrs.
+B.!’”
+
+Hooper swallowed his spittle and leaned forward intently.
+
+“Vickery touched me on the knee again. He was clickin’ his four false
+teeth with his jaw down like an enteric at the last kick. ‘Are you
+sure?’ says he. ‘Sure,’ I says, ‘didn’t you ’ear Dawson give tongue?
+Why, it’s the woman herself.’ ‘I was sure before,’ he says, ‘but I
+brought you to make sure. Will you come again with me to-morrow?’
+
+“‘Willingly,’ I says, ‘it’s like meetin’ old friends.’
+
+“‘Yes,’ he says, openin’ his watch, ‘very like. It will be
+four-and-twenty hours less four minutes before I see her again. Come
+and have a drink,’ he says. ‘It may amuse you, but it’s no sort of
+earthly use to me.’ He went out shaking his head an’ stumblin’ over
+people’s feet as if he was drunk already. I anticipated a swift drink
+an’ a speedy return, because I wanted to see the performin’ elephants.
+Instead o’ which Vickery began to navigate the town at the rate o’
+knots, lookin’ in at a bar every three minutes approximate Greenwich
+time. I’m not a drinkin’ man, though there are those present”—he cocked
+his unforgetable eye at me—“who may have seen me more or less imbued
+with the fragrant spirit. None the less, when I drink I like to do it
+at anchor an’ not at an average speed of eighteen knots on the measured
+mile. There’s a tank as you might say at the back o’ that big hotel up
+the hill—what do they call it?”
+
+“The Molteno Reservoir,” I suggested, and Hooper nodded.
+
+“That was his limit o’ drift. We walked there an’ we come down through
+the Gardens—there was a South-Easter blowin’—an’ we finished up by the
+Docks. Then we bore up the road to Salt River, and wherever there was a
+pub Vickery put in sweatin’. He didn’t look at what he drunk—he didn’t
+look at the change. He walked an’ he drunk an’ he perspired in rivers.
+I understood why old Crocus ’ad come back in the condition ’e did,
+because Vickery an’ I ’ad two an’ a half hours o’ this gipsy manœuvre
+an’ when we got back to the station there wasn’t a dry atom on or in
+me.”
+
+“Did he say anything?” Pritchard asked.
+
+“The sum total of ’is conversation from 7.45 P.M. till 11.15 P.M. was
+‘Let’s have another.’ Thus the mornin’ an’ the evenin’ were the first
+day, as Scripture says…. To abbreviate a lengthy narrative, I went into
+Cape Town for five consecutive nights with Master Vickery, and in that
+time I must ’ave logged about fifty knots over the ground an’ taken in
+two gallon o’ all the worst spirits south the Equator. The evolution
+never varied. Two shilling seats for us two; five minutes o’ the
+pictures, an’ perhaps forty-five seconds o’ Mrs. B. walking down
+towards us with that blindish look in her eyes an’ the reticule in her
+hand. Then out walk—and drink till train time.”
+
+“What did you think?” said Hooper, his hand fingering his waistcoat
+pocket.
+
+“Several things,” said Pyecroft. “To tell you the truth, I aren’t quite
+done thinkin’ about it yet. Mad? The man was a dumb lunatic—must ’ave
+been for months—years p’raps. I know somethin’ o’ maniacs, as every man
+in the Service must. I’ve been shipmates with a mad skipper—an’ a
+lunatic Number One, but never both together I thank ’Eaven. I could
+give you the names o’ three captains now ’oo ought to be in an asylum,
+but you don’t find me interferin’ with the mentally afflicted till they
+begin to lay about ’em with rammers an’ winch-handles. Only once I
+crept up a little into the wind towards Master Vickery. ‘I wonder what
+she’s doin’ in England,’ I says. ‘Don’t it seem to you she’s lookin’
+for somebody?’ That was in the Gardens again, with the South-Easter
+blowin’ as we were makin’ our desperate round. ‘She’s lookin’ for me,’
+he says, stoppin’ dead under a lamp an’ clickin’. When he wasn’t
+drinkin’, in which case all ’is teeth clicked on the glass, ’e was
+clickin’ ’is four false teeth like a Marconi ticker. ‘Yes! lookin’ for
+me,’ he said, an’ he went on very softly an’ as you might say
+affectionately. ‘_But_, he went on, ‘in future, Mr. Pyecroft, I should
+take it kindly of you if you’d confine your remarks to the drinks set
+before you. Otherwise,’ he says, ‘with the best will in the world
+towards you, I may find myself guilty of murder! Do you understand?’ he
+says. ‘Perfectly,’ I says, ‘but would it at all soothe you to know that
+in such a case the chances o’ your being killed are precisely
+equivalent to the chances o’ me being outed.’ ‘Why, no,’ he says, ‘I’m
+almost afraid that ’ud be a temptation,’
+
+“Then I said—we was right under the lamp by that arch at the end o’ the
+Gardens where the trams came round—‘Assumin’ murder was done—or
+attempted murder—I put it to you that you would still be left so badly
+crippled, as one might say, that your subsequent capture by the
+police—to ’oom you would ’ave to explain—would be largely inevitable.’
+‘That’s better,’ ’e says, passin’ ’is hands over his forehead. ‘That’s
+much better, because,’ he says, ‘do you know, as I am now, Pye, I’m not
+so sure if I could explain anything much.’ Those were the only
+particular words I had with ’im in our walks as I remember.”
+
+“What walks!” said Hooper. “Oh my soul, what walks!”
+
+“They were chronic,” said Pyecroft gravely, “but I didn’t anticipate
+any danger till the Circus left. Then I anticipated that, bein’
+deprived of ’is stimulant, he might react on me, so to say, with a
+hatchet. Consequently, after the final performance an’ the ensuin’ wet
+walk, I kep’ myself aloof from my superior officer on board in the
+execution of ’is duty as you might put it. Consequently, I was
+interested when the sentry informs me while I was passin’ on my lawful
+occasions that Click had asked to see the captain. As a general rule
+warrant officers don’t dissipate much of the owner’s time, but Click
+put in an hour and more be’ind that door. My duties kep’ me within
+eyeshot of it. Vickery came out first, an’ ’e actually nodded at me an’
+smiled. This knocked me out o’ the boat, because, havin’ seen ’is face
+for five consecutive nights, I didn’t anticipate any change there more
+than a condenser in hell, so to speak. The owner emerged later. His
+face didn’t read off at all, so I fell back on his cox, ’oo’d been
+eight years with him and knew him better than boat signals. Lamson—that
+was the cox’s name—crossed ’is bows once or twice at low speeds an’
+dropped down to me visibly concerned. ‘He’s shipped ’is court-martial
+face,’ says Lamson. ‘Some one’s goin’ to be ’ung. I’ve never seen that
+look but once before when they chucked the gun-sights overboard in the
+_Fantastic_.’ Throwin’ gun-sights overboard, Mr. Hooper, is the
+equivalent for mutiny in these degenerate days. It’s done to attract
+the notice of the authorities an’ the _Western Mornin’ News_—generally
+by a stoker. Naturally, word went round the lower deck an’ we had a
+private over’aul of our little consciences. But, barrin’ a shirt which
+a second-class stoker said ’ad walked into ’is bag from the marines
+flat by itself, nothin’ vital transpired. The owner went about flyin’
+the signal for ‘attend public execution,’ so to say, but there was no
+corpse at the yardarm. ’E lunched on the beach an’ ’e returned with ’is
+regulation harbour-routine face about 3 P.M. Thus Lamson lost prestige
+for raising false alarms. The only person ’oo might ’ave connected the
+epicycloidal gears correctly was one Pyecroft, when he was told that
+Mr. Vickery would go up country that same evening to take over certain
+naval ammunition left after the war in Bloemfontein Fort. No details
+was ordered to accompany Master Vickery. He was told off first person
+singular—as a unit—-by himself.”
+
+The marine whistled penetratingly.
+
+“That’s what I thought,” said Pyecroft. “I went ashore with him in the
+cutter an’ ’e asked me to walk through the station. He was clickin’
+audibly, but otherwise seemed happy-ish.
+
+“‘You might like to know,’ he says, stoppin’ just opposite the
+Admiral’s front gate, ‘that Phyllis’s Circus will be performin’ at
+Worcester to-morrow night. So I shall see ’er yet once again. You’ve
+been very patient with me,’ he says.
+
+“‘Look here, Vickery,’ I said, ‘this thing’s come to be just as much as
+I can stand. Consume your own smoke. I don’t want to know any more.’
+
+“‘You!’ he said. ‘What have you got to complain of?—you’ve only ’ad to
+watch. I’m _it_,’ he says, ‘but that’s neither here nor there,’ he
+says. ‘I’ve one thing to say before shakin’ ’ands. Remember,’ ’e
+says—we were just by the Admiral’s garden-gate then—‘remember, that I
+am _not_ a murderer, because my lawful wife died in childbed six weeks
+after I came out. That much at least I am clear of,’ ’e says.
+
+“‘Then what have you done that signifies?’ I said. ‘What’s the rest of
+it?’
+
+“‘The rest,’ ’e says, ‘is silence,’ an’ he shook ’ands and went
+clickin’ into Simons Town station.”
+
+“Did he stop to see Mrs. Bathurst at Worcester?” I asked.
+
+“It’s not known. He reported at Bloemfontein, saw the ammunition into
+the trucks, and then ’e disappeared. Went out—deserted, if you care to
+put it so—within eighteen months of his pension, an’ if what ’e said
+about ’is wife was true he was a free man as ’e then stood. How do you
+read it off?”
+
+“Poor devil!” said Hooper. “To see her that way every night! I wonder
+what it was.”
+
+“I’ve made my ’ead ache in that direction many a long night.”
+
+“But I’ll swear Mrs. B. ’ad no ’and in it,” said the Sergeant unshaken.
+
+“No. Whatever the wrong or deceit was, he did it, I’m sure o’ that. I
+’ad to look at ’is face for five consecutive nights. I’m not so fond o’
+navigatin’ about Cape Town with a South-Easter blowin’ these days. I
+can hear those teeth click, so to say.”
+
+“Ah, those teeth,” said Hooper, and his hand went to his waistcoat
+pocket once more. “Permanent things false teeth are. You read about ’em
+in all the murder trials.”
+
+“What d’you suppose the captain knew—or did?” I asked.
+
+“I never turned my searchlight that way,” Pyecroft answered
+unblushingly.
+
+We all reflected together, and drummed on empty beer bottles as the
+picnic-party, sunburned, wet, and sandy, passed our door singing “The
+Honeysuckle and the Bee.”
+
+“Pretty girl under that kapje,” said Pyecroft.
+
+“They never circulated his description?” said Pritchard.
+
+“I was askin’ you before these gentlemen came,” said Hooper to me,
+“whether you knew Wankies—on the way to the Zambesi—beyond Buluwayo?”
+
+“Would he pass there—tryin’ to get to that Lake what’s ’is name?” said
+Pritchard.
+
+Hooper shook his head and went on: “There’s a curious bit o’ line
+there, you see. It runs through solid teak forest—a sort o’ mahogany
+really—seventy-two miles without a curve. I’ve had a train derailed
+there twenty-three times in forty miles. I was up there a month ago
+relievin’ a sick inspector, you see. He told me to look out for a
+couple of tramps in the teak.”
+
+“Two?” Pyecroft said. “I don’t envy that other man if——”
+
+“We get heaps of tramps up there since the war. The inspector told me
+I’d find ’em at M’Bindwe siding waiting to go North. He’d given ’em
+some grub and quinine, you see. I went up on a construction train. I
+looked out for ’em. I saw them miles ahead along the straight, waiting
+in the teak. One of ’em was standin’ up by the dead-end of the siding
+an’ the other was squattin’ down lookin’ up at ’im, you see.”
+
+“What did you do for ’em?” said Pritchard.
+
+“There wasn’t much I could do, except bury ’em. There’d been a bit of a
+thunderstorm in the teak, you see, and they were both stone dead and as
+black as charcoal. That’s what they really were, you see—charcoal. They
+fell to bits when we tried to shift ’em. The man who was standin’ up
+had the false teeth. I saw ’em shinin’ against the black. Fell to bits
+he did too, like his mate squatting down an’ watchin’ him, both of ’em
+all wet in the rain. Both burned to charcoal, you see. And—that’s what
+made me ask about marks just now—the false-toother was tattooed on the
+arms and chest—a crown and foul anchor with M.V. above.”
+
+“I’ve seen that,” said Pyecroft quickly. “It was so.”
+
+“But if he was all charcoal-like?” said Pritchard, shuddering.
+
+“You know how writing shows up white on a burned letter? Well, it was
+like that, you see. We buried ’em in the teak and I kept… But he was a
+friend of you two gentlemen, you see.”
+
+Mr. Hooper brought his hand away from his waistcoat-pocket—empty.
+
+Pritchard covered his face with his hands for a moment, like a child
+shutting out an ugliness.
+
+“And to think of her at Hauraki!” he murmured—“with ’er ’air-ribbon on
+my beer. ‘Ada,’ she said to her niece… Oh, my Gawd!”…
+
+“On a summer afternoon, when the honeysuckle blooms,
+    And all Nature seems at rest,
+Underneath the bower, ’mid the perfume of the flower,
+    Sat a maiden with the one she loves the best——”
+
+
+sang the picnic-party waiting for their train at Glengariff.
+
+“Well, I don’t know how you feel about it,” said Pyecroft, “but ’avin’
+seen ’is face for five consecutive nights on end, I’m inclined to
+finish what’s left of the beer an’ thank Gawd he’s dead!”
+
+
+
+
+BELOW THE MILL DAM
+
+
+
+
+“OUR FATHERS ALSO”
+
+
+By—they are by with mirth and tears,
+    Wit or the works of Desire—
+Cushioned about on the kindly years
+    Between the wall and the fire.
+
+The grapes are pressed, the corn is shocked—
+    Standeth no more to glean;
+For the Gates of Love and Learning locked
+    When they went out between.
+
+All lore our Lady Venus bares
+    Signalled it was or told
+By the dear lips long given to theirs
+    And longer to the mould.
+
+All Profit, all Device, all Truth
+    Written it was or said
+By the mighty men of their mighty youth.
+    Which is mighty being dead.
+
+The film that floats before their eyes
+    The Temple’s Veil they call;
+And the dust that on the Shewbread lies
+    Is holy over all.
+
+Warn them of seas that slip our yoke
+    Of slow conspiring stars—
+The ancient Front of Things unbroke
+    But heavy with new wars?
+
+By—they are by with mirth and tears.
+    Wit or the waste of Desire—
+Cushioned about on the kindly years
+    Between the wall and the fire.
+
+
+
+
+BELOW THE MILL DAM
+
+
+“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—_tunc 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, “atmospere 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 mile down the
+valley—hung up in a tree.”
+
+“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 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 Callton 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 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!”
+
+“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 outhouse 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.”
+
+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 pig-styes 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’
+cats’-meat-coloured hovel ululated 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 clear-cut 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 axle-straps 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—_unis 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 Callton 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 Nonconformists _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 light-heartedly,” the Wheel jarred.
+
+“Challenge him! Challenge him!” clamoured the little waves riddling
+down through the tail-race. “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.”
+
+“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 impostor, 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_ sha’n’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 hand-quern 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.
+
+“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 livin’
+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 tail-race. “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.
+Good-night!”
+
+“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 to-night.
+There’s a cow due to calve. Oh, while I think of it, what’s the news
+from Callton 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’ Fountain, and the Churt’s Hawd
+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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