diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'old')
| -rw-r--r-- | old/7tdsc10.txt | 11349 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/7tdsc10.zip | bin | 0 -> 226038 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/8tdsc10.txt | 11348 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/8tdsc10.zip | bin | 0 -> 226076 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/9790-8.txt | 11383 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/9790-8.zip | bin | 0 -> 226703 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/9790.txt | 11383 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/9790.zip | bin | 0 -> 226669 bytes |
8 files changed, 45463 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/old/7tdsc10.txt b/old/7tdsc10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d8a1bf4 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/7tdsc10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11349 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Traffics and Discoveries, by Kipling +#26 in our series by Rudyard Kipling + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Traffics and Discoveries + +Author: Rudyard Kipling + +Release Date: January, 2006 [EBook #9790] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on October 17, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAFFICS AND DISCOVERIES *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Keith M. Eckrich +and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + +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 COOPER + +_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 Foxhunting.' + +"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 manoeuvres 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 manoeuvre +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 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 _resume_ 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' _onjeuew_. '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' any thin' 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 that 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' +aeolian 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 obligate,' '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 manoeuvres 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 _rel_ +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 Nihal Seyn, [Footnote: Mount Nelson?] +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. + +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 so 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 arow! 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 is 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" + +PART I + + ... "And a security for such as pass on the seas upon + their lawful occasions."--_Navy Prayer_. + +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 manoeuvres. 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 manoeuvres in the _Pedantic_," I replied. + +"Ho!" said Mr. Pyecroft. "An' what manner o' manoeuvres 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 +_resume_-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 tatties? 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 _Devulotion_ 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 manoeuvres 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 manoeuvres, 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 manoeuvres 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-pensee_--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 manoeuvre 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 manoeuvres 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 manoeuvre +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 is 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--hanamerin' 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 +arpeggie_: "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 curacoa 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 manoeuvre." + +"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 Cooper 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 wont 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. Proceed." + +"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 manoeuvred up the hill. + +"I'll teach you to come alongside properly, if I keep you 'tiffies out all +night!" shouted Pyecroft. It was evidently a quotation. Hinchcliffe's face +grew livid, and, his hand ever so slightly working on the throttle, the +car buzzed twenty yards uphill. + +"That's enough. We'll take your word for it. The mountain will go to +Ma'ommed. Stand _fast_!" + +Pyecroft and I and the rug marched up where she and Hinchcliffe fumed +together. + +"Not as easy as it looks--eh, Hinch?" + +"It is dead easy. I'm going to drive her to Instead Wick--aren't I?" said +the first-class 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 sake 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, "I 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 tunbellied 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, 'heefs' 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 manoeuvres 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 manoeuvres. 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 manoeuvre 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 manoeuvres 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 timel 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 tat 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 manoeuvres 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 etat 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 tat 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 tat 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 tat 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 etat 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 AEsculapius, 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 conies 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 manoeuvre 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 tke 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 that 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. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Traffics and Discoveries, by Rudyard Kipling + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAFFICS AND DISCOVERIES *** + +This file should be named 7tdsc10.txt or 7tdsc10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 7tdsc11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 7tdsc10a.txt + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Keith M. Eckrich +and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. +Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, +even years after the official publication date. + +Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. + +Most people start at our Web sites at: +http://gutenberg.net or +http://promo.net/pg + +These Web sites include award-winning information about Project +Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new +eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!). + + +Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement +can get to them as follows, and just download by date. This is +also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the +indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an +announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter. + +http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or +ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03 + +Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90 + +Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want, +as it appears in our Newsletters. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours +to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. Our +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If the value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text +files per month: 1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+ +We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002 +If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total +will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks! +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users. + +Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated): + +eBooks Year Month + + 1 1971 July + 10 1991 January + 100 1994 January + 1000 1997 August + 1500 1998 October + 2000 1999 December + 2500 2000 December + 3000 2001 November + 4000 2001 October/November + 6000 2002 December* + 9000 2003 November* +10000 2004 January* + + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created +to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people +and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, +Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, +Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, +Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New +Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, +Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South +Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West +Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. + +We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones +that have responded. + +As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list +will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states. +Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state. + +In answer to various questions we have received on this: + +We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally +request donations in all 50 states. If your state is not listed and +you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have, +just ask. + +While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are +not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting +donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to +donate. + +International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about +how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made +deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are +ways. + +Donations by check or money order may be sent to: + +Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +PMB 113 +1739 University Ave. +Oxford, MS 38655-4109 + +Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment +method other than by check or money order. + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by +the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN +[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154. Donations are +tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law. As fund-raising +requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be +made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +You can get up to date donation information online at: + +http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html + + +*** + +If you can't reach Project Gutenberg, +you can always email directly to: + +Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com> + +Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message. + +We would prefer to send you information by email. + + +**The Legal Small Print** + + +(Three Pages) + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks, +is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart +through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project"). +Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook +under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market +any commercial products without permission. + +To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may +receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims +all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation, +and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated +with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including +legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the +following that you do or cause: [1] distribution of this eBook, +[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook, +or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + eBook or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word + processing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the eBook (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the + gross profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation" + the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were + legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent + periodic) tax return. Please contact us beforehand to + let us know your plans and to work out the details. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of +public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed +in machine readable form. + +The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time, +public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses. +Money should be paid to the: +"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or +software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at: +hart@pobox.com + +[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only +when distributed free of all fees. Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by +Michael S. Hart. Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be +used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be +they hardware or software or any other related product without +express permission.] + +*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END* + diff --git a/old/7tdsc10.zip b/old/7tdsc10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2b6a11f --- /dev/null +++ b/old/7tdsc10.zip diff --git a/old/8tdsc10.txt b/old/8tdsc10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..76c356e --- /dev/null +++ b/old/8tdsc10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11348 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Traffics and Discoveries, by Kipling +#26 in our series by Rudyard Kipling + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Traffics and Discoveries + +Author: Rudyard Kipling + +Release Date: January, 2006 [EBook #9790] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on October 17, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAFFICS AND DISCOVERIES *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Keith M. Eckrich +and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + +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 COOPER + +_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 Foxhunting.' + +"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 manoeuvres 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 manoeuvre +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 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' _onjeuew_. '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' any thin' 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 that 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 obligate,' '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 manoeuvres 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, [Footnote: Mount Nelson?] +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. + +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 so 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 arow! 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 is 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" + +PART I + + ... "And a security for such as pass on the seas upon + their lawful occasions."--_Navy Prayer_. + +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 manoeuvres. 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 manoeuvres in the _Pedantic_," I replied. + +"Ho!" said Mr. Pyecroft. "An' what manner o' manoeuvres 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 tatties? 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 _Devulotion_ 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 manoeuvres 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 manoeuvres, 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 manoeuvres 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 manoeuvre 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 manoeuvres 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 manoeuvre +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 is 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--hanamerin' 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 +arpeggie_: "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 manoeuvre." + +"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 Cooper 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 wont 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. Proceed." + +"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 manoeuvred up the hill. + +"I'll teach you to come alongside properly, if I keep you 'tiffies out all +night!" shouted Pyecroft. It was evidently a quotation. Hinchcliffe's face +grew livid, and, his hand ever so slightly working on the throttle, the +car buzzed twenty yards uphill. + +"That's enough. We'll take your word for it. The mountain will go to +Ma'ommed. Stand _fast_!" + +Pyecroft and I and the rug marched up where she and Hinchcliffe fumed +together. + +"Not as easy as it looks--eh, Hinch?" + +"It is dead easy. I'm going to drive her to Instead Wick--aren't I?" said +the first-class 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 sake 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, "I 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 tunbellied 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, 'heefs' 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 manoeuvres 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 manoeuvres. 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 manoeuvre 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 manoeuvres 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 timel 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 tat 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 manoeuvres 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 tat 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 tat 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 tat 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 conies 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 manoeuvre 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 tke 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 that 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. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Traffics and Discoveries, by Rudyard Kipling + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAFFICS AND DISCOVERIES *** + +This file should be named 8tdsc10.txt or 8tdsc10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8tdsc11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8tdsc10a.txt + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Keith M. Eckrich +and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. +Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, +even years after the official publication date. + +Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. + +Most people start at our Web sites at: +http://gutenberg.net or +http://promo.net/pg + +These Web sites include award-winning information about Project +Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new +eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!). + + +Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement +can get to them as follows, and just download by date. This is +also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the +indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an +announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter. + +http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or +ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03 + +Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90 + +Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want, +as it appears in our Newsletters. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours +to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. Our +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If the value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text +files per month: 1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+ +We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002 +If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total +will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks! +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users. + +Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated): + +eBooks Year Month + + 1 1971 July + 10 1991 January + 100 1994 January + 1000 1997 August + 1500 1998 October + 2000 1999 December + 2500 2000 December + 3000 2001 November + 4000 2001 October/November + 6000 2002 December* + 9000 2003 November* +10000 2004 January* + + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created +to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people +and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, +Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, +Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, +Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New +Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, +Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South +Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West +Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. + +We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones +that have responded. + +As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list +will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states. +Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state. + +In answer to various questions we have received on this: + +We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally +request donations in all 50 states. If your state is not listed and +you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have, +just ask. + +While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are +not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting +donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to +donate. + +International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about +how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made +deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are +ways. + +Donations by check or money order may be sent to: + +Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +PMB 113 +1739 University Ave. +Oxford, MS 38655-4109 + +Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment +method other than by check or money order. + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by +the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN +[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154. Donations are +tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law. As fund-raising +requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be +made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +You can get up to date donation information online at: + +http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html + + +*** + +If you can't reach Project Gutenberg, +you can always email directly to: + +Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com> + +Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message. + +We would prefer to send you information by email. + + +**The Legal Small Print** + + +(Three Pages) + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks, +is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart +through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project"). +Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook +under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market +any commercial products without permission. + +To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may +receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims +all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation, +and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated +with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including +legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the +following that you do or cause: [1] distribution of this eBook, +[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook, +or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + eBook or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word + processing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the eBook (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the + gross profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation" + the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were + legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent + periodic) tax return. Please contact us beforehand to + let us know your plans and to work out the details. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of +public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed +in machine readable form. + +The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time, +public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses. +Money should be paid to the: +"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or +software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at: +hart@pobox.com + +[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only +when distributed free of all fees. Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by +Michael S. Hart. Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be +used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be +they hardware or software or any other related product without +express permission.] + +*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END* diff --git a/old/8tdsc10.zip b/old/8tdsc10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..850683b --- /dev/null +++ b/old/8tdsc10.zip diff --git a/old/9790-8.txt b/old/9790-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..54cdbc0 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/9790-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11383 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Traffics and Discoveries, by Rudyard Kipling + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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 + + +Title: Traffics and Discoveries + +Author: Rudyard Kipling + +Posting Date: December 11, 2011 [EBook #9790] +Release Date: January, 2006 +First Posted: October 17, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAFFICS AND DISCOVERIES *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Keith M. Eckrich and PG +Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + + + + + +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 COOPER + +_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 Foxhunting.' + +"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 manoeuvres 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 manoeuvre +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 obligate,' '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 manoeuvres 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, [Footnote: Mount Nelson?] +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. + +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 so 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 arow! 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 is 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" + +PART I + + ... "And a security for such as pass on the seas upon + their lawful occasions."--_Navy Prayer_. + +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 manoeuvres. 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 manoeuvres in the _Pedantic_," I replied. + +"Ho!" said Mr. Pyecroft. "An' what manner o' manoeuvres 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 manoeuvres 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 manoeuvres, 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 manoeuvres 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 manoeuvre 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 manoeuvres 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 manoeuvre +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 is 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 manoeuvre." + +"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 Cooper 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 wont 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. Proceed." + +"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 manoeuvred up the hill. + +"I'll teach you to come alongside properly, if I keep you 'tiffies out all +night!" shouted Pyecroft. It was evidently a quotation. Hinchcliffe's face +grew livid, and, his hand ever so slightly working on the throttle, the +car buzzed twenty yards uphill. + +"That's enough. We'll take your word for it. The mountain will go to +Ma'ommed. Stand _fast_!" + +Pyecroft and I and the rug marched up where she and Hinchcliffe fumed +together. + +"Not as easy as it looks--eh, Hinch?" + +"It is dead easy. I'm going to drive her to Instead Wick--aren't I?" said +the first-class 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 sake 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 tunbellied 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, 'heefs' 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 manoeuvres 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 manoeuvres. 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 manoeuvre 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 manoeuvres 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 timel 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 manoeuvres 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 conies 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 manoeuvre 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 tke 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 that 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. + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Traffics and Discoveries, by Rudyard Kipling + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAFFICS AND DISCOVERIES *** + +***** This file should be named 9790-8.txt or 9790-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/9/7/9/9790/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Keith M. Eckrich and PG +Distributed Proofreaders + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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 + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/old/9790-8.zip b/old/9790-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ddbb76c --- /dev/null +++ b/old/9790-8.zip diff --git a/old/9790.txt b/old/9790.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0eda17b --- /dev/null +++ b/old/9790.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11383 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Traffics and Discoveries, by Rudyard Kipling + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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 + + +Title: Traffics and Discoveries + +Author: Rudyard Kipling + +Posting Date: December 11, 2011 [EBook #9790] +Release Date: January, 2006 +First Posted: October 17, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAFFICS AND DISCOVERIES *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Keith M. Eckrich and PG +Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + + + + + +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 COOPER + +_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 Foxhunting.' + +"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 manoeuvres 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 manoeuvre +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 _resume_ 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' +aeolian 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 obligate,' '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 manoeuvres 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 _rel_ +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 Nihal Seyn, [Footnote: Mount Nelson?] +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. + +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 so 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 arow! 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 is 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" + +PART I + + ... "And a security for such as pass on the seas upon + their lawful occasions."--_Navy Prayer_. + +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 manoeuvres. 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 manoeuvres in the _Pedantic_," I replied. + +"Ho!" said Mr. Pyecroft. "An' what manner o' manoeuvres 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 +_resume_-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 manoeuvres 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 manoeuvres, 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 manoeuvres 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-pensee_--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 manoeuvre 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 manoeuvres 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 manoeuvre +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 is 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--hanmerin' 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 curacoa 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 manoeuvre." + +"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 Cooper 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 wont 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. Proceed." + +"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 manoeuvred up the hill. + +"I'll teach you to come alongside properly, if I keep you 'tiffies out all +night!" shouted Pyecroft. It was evidently a quotation. Hinchcliffe's face +grew livid, and, his hand ever so slightly working on the throttle, the +car buzzed twenty yards uphill. + +"That's enough. We'll take your word for it. The mountain will go to +Ma'ommed. Stand _fast_!" + +Pyecroft and I and the rug marched up where she and Hinchcliffe fumed +together. + +"Not as easy as it looks--eh, Hinch?" + +"It is dead easy. I'm going to drive her to Instead Wick--aren't I?" said +the first-class 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 sake 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 tunbellied 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, 'heefs' 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 manoeuvres 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 manoeuvres. 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 manoeuvre 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 manoeuvres 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 timel 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 manoeuvres 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 etat 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 etat 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 etat 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 etat 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 etat 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 AEsculapius, 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 conies 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 manoeuvre 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 tke 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 that 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. + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Traffics and Discoveries, by Rudyard Kipling + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAFFICS AND DISCOVERIES *** + +***** This file should be named 9790.txt or 9790.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/9/7/9/9790/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Keith M. Eckrich and PG +Distributed Proofreaders + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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 + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/old/9790.zip b/old/9790.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..79ebe88 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/9790.zip |