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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Soldiers Three, Part II., 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: Soldiers Three, Part II.
+
+Author: Rudyard Kipling
+
+Release Date: June, 2000 [EBook #2227]
+Last Updated: July 21, 2012
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOLDIERS THREE, PART II. ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bill Stoddard
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SOLDIERS THREE
+
+Part II.
+
+By Rudyard Kipling
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     "LOVE-O'-WOMEN"--from "Many Inventions"
+     THE BIG DRUNK DRAF'
+     THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS
+     THE MAN WHO WAS
+     ONLY A SUBALTERN
+     IN THE MATTER OF A PRIVATE
+     THE LOST LEGION--from "Many Inventions"
+     THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT
+     JUDSON AND THE EMPIRE--from "Many Inventions"
+     A CONFERENCE OF THE POWERS--from "Many Inventions"
+
+
+
+
+'LOVE-O'WOMEN'
+
+     A lamentable tale of things
+     Done long ago, and ill done.
+
+The horror, the confusion, and the separation of the murderer from
+his comrades were all over before I came. There remained only on the
+barrack-square the blood of man calling from the ground. The hot sun had
+dried it to a dusky gold-beater-skin film, cracked lozenge-wise by the
+heat, and as the wind rose each lozenge, rising a little, curled up at
+the edges as if it were a dumb tongue. Then a heavier gust blew all away
+down wind in grains of dark-coloured dust. It was too hot to stand in
+the sunshine before breakfast. The men were all in barracks talking the
+matter over. A knot of soldiers' wives stood by one of the entrances
+to the married quarters, while inside a woman shrieked and raved with
+wicked filthy words.
+
+A quiet and well-conducted sergeant had shot down in broad daylight
+just after early parade one of his own corporals, had then returned
+to barracks and sat on a cot till the guard came for him. He would,
+therefore, in due time be handed over to the High Court for trial.
+Further, but this he could hardly have considered in his scheme of
+revenge, he would horribly upset my work; for the reporting of the trial
+would fall on me without a relief. What that trial would be like I knew
+even to weariness. There would be the rifle carefully uncleaned, with
+the fouling marks about breech and muzzle, to be sworn to by half a
+dozen superfluous privates; there would be heat, reeking heat, till the
+wet pencil slipped sideways between the fingers; and the punkah would
+swish and the pleaders would jabber in the verandahs, and his Commanding
+Officer would put in certificates of the prisoner's moral character,
+while the jury would pant and the summer uniforms of the witnesses would
+smell of dye and soaps; and some abject barrack-sweeper would lose his
+head in cross-examination, and the young barrister who always defended
+soldiers' cases for the credit that they never brought him, would say
+and do wonderful things, and would then quarrel with me because I had
+not reported him correctly. At the last, for he surely would not be
+hanged, I might meet the prisoner again, ruling blank account-forms in
+the Central Jail, and cheer him with the hope of a wardership in the
+Andamans.
+
+The Indian Penal Code and its interpreters do not treat murder, under
+any provocation whatever, in a spirit of jest. Sergeant Raines would
+be very lucky indeed if he got off with seven years, I thought. He had
+slept the night upon his wrongs, and had killed his man at twenty yards
+before any talk was possible. That much I knew. Unless, therefore,
+the case was doctored a little, seven years would be his least; and I
+fancied it was exceedingly well for Sergeant Raines that he had been
+liked by his Company.
+
+That same evening--no day is so long as the day of a murder--I met
+Ortheris with the dogs, and he plunged defiantly into the middle of the
+matter. "I'll be one o' the witnesses," said he. "I was in the verandah
+when Mackie came along. 'E come from Mrs. Raines's quarters. Quigley,
+Parsons, an' Trot, they was in the inside verandah, so they couldn't
+'ave 'eard nothing. Sergeant Raines was in the verandah talkin' to me,
+an' Mackie 'e come along acrost the square an' 'e sez, 'Well,' sez 'e,
+''ave they pushed your 'elmet off yet, Sergeant?' 'e sez. An' at that
+Raines 'e catches 'is breath an' 'e sez, 'My Gawd, I can't stand this!'
+sez 'e, an' 'e picks up my rifle an' shoots Mackie. See?"
+
+"But what were you doing with your rifle in the outer verandah an hour
+after parade?"
+
+"Cleanin' 'er," said Ortheris, with the sullen brassy stare that always
+went with his choice lies.
+
+He might as well have said that he was dancing naked, for at no time did
+his rifle need hand or rag on her twenty minutes after parade. Still the
+High Court would not know his routine.
+
+"Are you going to stick to that--on the Book?" I asked.
+
+"Yes. Like a bloomin' leech."
+
+"All right, I don't want to know any more. Only remember that Quigley,
+Parsons, and Trot couldn't have been where you say without hearing
+something; and there's nearly certain to be a barrack-sweeper who was
+knocking about the square at the time. There always is."
+
+"Twasn't the sweeper. It was the beastie. 'E's all right."
+
+Then I knew that there was going to be some spirited doctoring, and
+I felt sorry for the Government Advocate who would conduct the
+prosecution.
+
+When the trial came on I pitied him more, for he was always quick to
+lose his temper, and made a personal matter of each lost cause. Raines's
+young barrister had for once put aside his unslaked and Welling passion
+for alibis and insanity, had forsworn gymnastics and fireworks, and
+worked soberly for his client. Mercifully the hot weather was yet young,
+and there had been no flagrant cases of barrack-shootings up to the
+time; and the jury was a good one, even for an Indian jury, where nine
+men out of every twelve are accustomed to weighing evidence. Ortheris
+stood firm and was not shaken by any cross-examination. The one weak
+point in his tale--the presence of his rifle in the outer verandah--went
+unchallenged by civilian wisdom, though some of the witnesses could not
+help smiling. The Government Advocate called for the rope; contending
+throughout that the murder had been a deliberate one. Time had passed,
+he argued, for that reflection which comes so naturally to a man whose
+honour is lost. There was also the Law, ever ready and anxious to right
+the wrongs of the common soldier if, in deed, wrong had been done. But
+he doubted much whether there had been any sufficient wrong. Causeless
+suspicion over-long brooded upon had led, by his theory, to deliberate
+crime. But his attempts to minimise the motive failed. The most
+disconnected witness knew--had known for weeks--the causes of offence,
+and the prisoner, who naturally was the last of all to know, groaned
+in the dock while he listened. The one question that the trial circled
+round was whether Raines had fired under sudden and blinding provocation
+given that very morning, and in the summing up it was clear that
+Ortheris's evidence told. He had contrived, most artistically, to
+suggest that he personally hated the Sergeant, who had come into the
+verandah to give him a talking to for insubordination. In a weak moment
+the Government Advocate asked one question too many, "Beggin' your
+pardon, sir," Ortheris replied, "'e was callin' me a dam' impudent
+little lawyer." The Court shook. The jury brought it in a killing, but
+with every provocation and extenuation known to God or man, and the
+Judge put his hand to his brow before giving sentence, and the Adam's
+apple in the prisoner's throat went up and down mercury-pumping before a
+cyclone.
+
+In consideration of all considerations, from his Commanding Officer's
+certificate of good conduct to the sure loss of pension, service,
+and honour, the prisoner would get two years, to be served in India,
+and--there need be no demonstration in Court. The Government Advocate
+scowled and picked up his papers; the guard wheeled with a clash, and
+the prisoner was relaxed to the Secular Arm, and driven to the jail in a
+broken-down ticca-gharri.
+
+His guard and some ten or twelve military witnesses, being less
+important, were ordered to wait till what was officially called the
+cool of the evening before marching back to cantonments. They gathered
+together in one of the deep red brick verandahs of a disused lock-up and
+congratulated Ortheris, who bore his honours modestly. I sent my
+work into the office and joined them. Ortheris watched the Government
+Advocate driving off lunch.
+
+"That's a nasty little bald-'eaded little butcher, that is," he said.
+"'E don't please me. 'E's got a colley dog wot do, though. I'm goin' up
+to Murree in a week. That dawg'll bring fifteen rupees anywheres."
+
+"You had better spend it in Masses," said Terence, unbuckling his belt,
+for he had been on the prisoner's guard, standing helmeted and bolt up
+right for three long hours.
+
+"Not me," said Ortheris cheerfully. "Gawd'll put it down to B Comp'ny's
+barrick damages one o' these days. You look strapped, Terence."
+
+"Faith, I'm not so young as I was. That guard-mountin' wears on the
+sole av the fut, and this"--he sniffed contemptuously at the brick
+verandah--"is as hard setting as standin'!"
+
+"Wait a minute. I'll get the cushions out of my cart," I said.
+
+"Strewth--sofies! We're going it gay," said Ortheris, as Terence dropped
+himself section by section on the leather cushions, saying prettily,
+"May you niver want a soft place wheriver you go, an' power to share
+utt wid a frind. Another for yourself? That's good. It lets me sit long
+ways. Stanley, pass me a poipe. Augrrh! An' that's another man gone
+all to pieces bekaze av a woman. I must ha' been on forty or fifty
+prisoners' gyards, first an' last, an' I hate ut new ivry time."
+
+"Let's see. You were on Losson's, Lancey's, Dugard's, and Stebbins's,
+that I can remember," I said.
+
+"Ay, an' before that an' before that--scores av thim," he answered with
+a worn smile. "Tis betther to die than to live for thim, though. Whin
+Raines comes out--he'll be changin' his kit at the jail now--he'll think
+that too. He shud ha' shot himself an' the woman by rights, an' made a
+clean bill av all. Now he's left the woman--she tuk tay wid Dinah Sunday
+gone last--an' he's left himself. Mackie's the lucky man."
+
+"He's probably getting it hot where he is," I ventured, for I knew
+something of the dead Corporal's record.
+
+"Be sure av that," said Terence, spitting over the edge of the verandah.
+"But fwhat he'll get there is light marchin'-ordher to fwhat he'd ha'
+got here if he'd lived."
+
+"Surely not. He'd have gone on and forgotten like the others."
+
+"Did ye know Mackie well, Sorr?" said Terence.
+
+"He was on the Pattiala guard of honour last winter, and I went out
+shooting with him in an ekka for the day, and I found him rather an
+amusing man."
+
+"Well, he'll ha' got shut av amusemints, excipt turnin' from wan side to
+the other, these few years come. I knew Mackie, an' I've seen too many
+to be mistuk in the muster av wan man. He might ha' gone on an' forgot,
+as you say, Sorr, but was a man wid an educashin, an' he used ut for his
+schames, an' the same educashin, an' talk an' all that made him able to
+do fwhat he had a mind to wid a woman, that same wud turn back again in
+the long run an' tear him alive. I can't say fwhat that I mane to say
+bekaze I don't know how, but Mackie was the spit an' livin' image av
+a man that I saw march the same march all but; an' 'twas worse for him
+that he did not come by Mackie's ind. Wait while I remimber now. 'Twas
+fwhin I was in the Black Tyrone, an' he was drafted us from Portsmouth;
+an' fwhat was his misbegotten name? Larry--Larry Tighe ut was; an' wan
+of the draft said he was a gentleman ranker, an' Larry tuk an' three
+parts killed him for saying so. An' he was a big man, an' a strong man,
+an' a handsome man, an' that tells heavy in practice wid some women,
+but, takin' thim by an' large, not wid all. Yet 'twas wid all that Larry
+dealt--all--for he 'ud put the comether on any woman that trod the green
+earth av God, an' he knew ut. Like Mackie that's roastin' now, he knew
+ut; an' niver did he put the comether on any woman save an' excipt for
+the black shame. 'Tis not me that shud be talkin', dear knows, dear
+knows, but the most av my mis--misalli'nces was for pure devilry, an'
+mighty sorry I have been whin harm came; an' time an' again wid a girl,
+ay, an' a woman too, for the matter av that, whin I have seen by the
+eyes av her that I was makin' more throuble than I talked, I have hild
+off an' let be for the sake av the mother that bore me. But Larry, I'm
+thinkin', he was suckled by a she-devil, for he niver let wan go that
+came nigh to listen to him. 'Twas his business, as if it might ha'
+bin sinthry-go. He was a good soldier too. Now there was the Colonel's
+governess--an' he a privit too!--that was never known in barricks; an'
+wan av the Major's maids, and she was promised to a man; an' some more
+outside; an' fwhat ut was amongst us we'll never know till Judgment
+Day! 'Twas the nature av the baste to put the comether on the best av
+thim--not the prettiest by any manner av manes--but the like av such
+woman as you cud lay your band on the Book an' swear there was niver
+thought av foolishness in. An' for that very reason, mark you, he was
+niver caught. He came close to ut wanst or twice, but caught he niver
+was, an' that cost him more at the ind than the beginnin'. He talked
+to me more than most, bekaze he tould me, barrin' the accident av my
+educashin, I'd ha' been the same kind av divil he was. 'An' is ut
+like,' he wud say, houldin' his head high--'is ut like that I'd iver be
+thrapped? For fwhat am I when all's said an' done?' he sez. 'A damned
+privit,' sez he. 'An' is ut like, think you, that thim I know wud be
+connect wid a privit like me? Number tin thousand four hundred an'
+sivin,' he sez, grinnin'. I knew by the turn av his spache whin he was
+not takin' care to talk rough that he was a gentleman ranker.
+
+"'I do not undherstan' ut at all,' I sez; 'but I know,' sez I, 'that the
+divil looks out av your eyes, an' I'll have no share wid you. A little
+fun by way av amusemint where 't will do no harm, Larry, is right and
+fair, but I am mistook if 'tis any amusemint to you,' I sez.
+
+"'You are much mistook,' he sez. 'An' I counsel you not to judge your
+betters.'
+
+"'My betthers!' I sez. 'God help you, Larry. There's no betther in this.
+'Tis all bad, as you will find for yoursilf.'
+
+"You're not like me,' he says, tossin' his head.
+
+"'Praise the Saints, I am not,' I sez. 'Fwhat I have done I have done
+an' been crool sorry for. Fwhin your time comes,' sez I, 'ye'll remimber
+fwhat I say.'
+
+"'An' whin that time comes,' sez he, 'I'll come to you for ghostly
+consolation, Father Terence,' an' at that he wint off afther some
+more divil's business--for to get expayrience, he tould me. He was
+wicked--rank wicked--wicked as all Hell! I'm not construct by nature to
+go in fear av any man, but, begad, I was afraid av Larry. He'd come in
+to barricks wid his cap on three hairs, an' lie on his cot and stare at
+the ceilin', and now an' again he'd fetch a little laugh, the like av a
+splash in the bottom av a well, an' by that I knew he was schamin' new
+wickedness, an' I'd be afraid. All this was long an' long ago, but ut
+hild me straight--for a while.
+
+"I tould you, did I not, Sorr, that I was caressed an' pershuaded to
+lave the Tyrone on account av a throuble?"
+
+"Something to do with a belt and a man's head, wasn't it?" Terence had
+never given me the exact facts.
+
+"It was. Faith, ivry time I go on prisoner's gyard in coort I wondher
+fwhy I am not where the pris'ner is. But the man I struk tuk it in fair
+fight, an' he had the good sinse not to die. Considher now, fwhat wud
+ha' come to the Arrmy if he had! I was enthreated to exchange, an' my
+Commandin' Orf'cer pled wid me. I wint, not to be disobligin', an' Larry
+tould me he was powerful sorry to lose me, though fwhat I'd done to make
+him sorry I do not know. So to the Ould Rig'mint I came, lavin' Larry to
+go to the divil his own way, an' niver expectin' to see him again except
+as a shootin'-case in barricks.... Who's that lavin' the compound?"
+Terence's quick eye had caught sight of a white uniform skulking behind
+hedge.
+
+"The Sergeant's gone visiting," said a voice.
+
+"Thin I command here, an' I will have no sneakin' away to the bazar, an'
+huntin' for you wid a pathrol at midnight. Nalson, for I know ut's you,
+come back to the verandah."
+
+Nalson, detected, slunk back to his fellows. There was a grumble that
+died away in a minute or two, and Terence, turning on the other side,
+went on:--
+
+"That was the last I saw av Larry for a while. Exchange is the same as
+death for not thinkin', an' by token I married Dinah, an' that kept me
+from remimberin' ould times. Thin we wint up to the Front, an' ut tore
+my heart in tu to lave Dinah at the Depot in Pindi. Consequint whin
+was at the Front I fought circumspectuous till I warrmed up, an thin I
+fought double tides. You remimber fwhat I tould you in the gyard-gate av
+the fight at Silver's Theatre."
+
+"Wot's that about Silver's Theayter!" said Ortheris quickly, over his
+shoulder.
+
+"Nothin', little man. A tale that ye know. As I was sayin', afther that
+fight us av the Ould Rig'mint an' the Tyrone was all mixed together
+takin' shtock ay the dead, an' av coorse I wint about to find if there
+was any man that remimbered me. The second man I came acrost--an' how
+I'd missed him in the fight I do not know--was Larry, an' a fine man he
+looked, but oulder, by token that he had a call to be. 'Larry,' sez I,
+'how is ut wid you?'
+
+"'Ye're callin' the wrong man,' he sez, wid his gentleman's smile;
+'Larry has been dead these three years. They call him "Love-o'-Women"
+now,' he sez. By that I knew the ould divil was in him yet, but the ind
+av a fight is no time for the beginnin' av confession, so we sat down
+an' talked av times.'
+
+"'They tell me you're a married man,' he sez, puffing slow at his poipe.
+'Are ye happy?'
+
+"'I will be whin I get back to Depot,' I sez. ''Tis a reconnaissance
+honeymoon now.'
+
+"'I'm married too,' he sez, puffin' slow an' more slow, an' stopperin'
+wid his forefinger.
+
+"'Sind you happiness,' I sez. 'That's the best hearin' for a long time.'
+
+"'Are ye av that opinion?' he sez; an' thin he began talkin' av the
+campaign. The sweat av Silver's Theatre was not dhry upon him, an' he
+was prayin' for more work. I was well contint to lie and listen to the
+cook-pot lids.
+
+"Whin he got up off the ground he shtaggered a little, an' laned over
+all twisted.
+
+"'Ye've got more than ye bargained for,' I sez. 'Take an inventory,
+Larry. 'Tis like you're hurt.'
+
+"He turned round stiff as a ramrod an' damned the eyes av me up an' down
+for an impartinent Irish-faced ape. If that had been in barricks, I'd
+ha' stretched him an' no more said; but 'twas at the Front, an' afther
+such a fight as Silver's Theatre I knew there was no callin' a man to
+account for his timpers. He might as well ha' kissed me. Aftherwards
+I was well pleased I kept my fistes home. Then our Captain
+Crook--Cruik-na-bul-leen--came up. He'd been talkin' to the little
+orf'cer bhoy av the Tyrone. 'We're all cut to windystraws,' he sez, 'but
+the Tyrone are damned short for noncoms. Go you over there, Mulvaney,
+an' be Deputy-Sergeant, Corp'ral, Lance, an' everything else ye can lay
+hands on till I bid you stop.'
+
+"'I wint over an' tuk hould. There was wan sergeant left standin', an'
+they'd pay no heed to him. The remnint was me, an' 'twas high time I
+came. Some I talked to, an' some I did not, but before night the bhoys
+av the Tyrone stud to attention, begad, if I sucked on my poipe above a
+whishper. Betune you an' me an' Bobs, I was commandin' the company, an'
+that was what Cruik had thransferred me for, an' the little orf'cer bhoy
+knew ut, and I knew ut, but the comp'ny did not. And there, mark you, is
+the vartue that no money an' no dhrill can buy--the vartue av the ould
+soldier that knows his orf'cer's work an' does ut--at the salute!
+
+"Thin the Tyrone, wid the Ould Rig'mint in touch, was sint maraudin'
+and prowlin' acrost the hills promishcuous an' unsatisfactory. 'Tis my
+privit opinion that a gin'ral does not know half his time fwhat to do
+wid three-quarthers his command. So he shquats on his hunkers an' bids
+thim run round an' round forninst him while he considhers on ut. Whin by
+the process av nature they get sejuced into a big fight that was none av
+their seekin', he sez: 'Obsarve my shuparior janius! I meant ut to come
+so.' We ran round an' about, an' all we got was shootin' into the camp
+at night, an' rushin' empty sungars wid the long bradawl, an' bein' hit
+from behind rocks till we was wore out--all except Love-o'-Women. That
+puppy-dog business was mate an' dhrink to him. Begad, he cud niver
+get enough av ut. Me well knowin' that it is just this desultorial
+campaignin' that kills the best men, an' suspicionin' that if I was cut
+the little orf'cer bhoy wud expind all his men in thryin' to get out, I
+wud lie most powerful doggo whin I heard a shot, an' curl my long legs
+behind a bowlder, an' run like blazes whin the ground was clear.
+Faith, if I led the Tyrone in rethreat wanst I led them forty times.
+Love-o'-Women wud stay pottin' an' pottin' from behind a rock, and wait
+till the fire was heaviest, an' thin stand up an' fire man-height clear.
+He wud lie out in camp too at night snipin' at the shadows, for he
+niver tuk a mouthful av slape. My commandin' orf'cer--save his little
+soul!--cud not see the beauty av of my strategims, an' whin the Ould
+Rig'mint crossed us, an' that was wanst a week, he'd throt off to
+Cruik, wid his big blue eyes as round as saucers, an' lay an information
+against me. I heard thim wanst talkin' through the tent-wall, an' I
+nearly laughed.
+
+"'He runs--runs like a hare,' sez the little orf'cer bhoy. ''Tis
+demoralisin' my men.'
+
+"'Ye damned little fool,' sez Cruik, laughin'. 'He's larnin' you your
+business. Have ye been rushed at night yet?'
+
+"'No,' sez the child, wishful that he had been.
+
+"'Have you any wounded?' sez Cruik.
+
+"'No,' he sez. 'There was no chanst for that. They follow Mulvaney too
+quick,' he sez.
+
+"'Fwhat more do you want, thin?' sez Cruik. 'Terence is bloodin' you
+neat an' handy,' he sez. 'He knows fwhat you do not, an' that's that
+there's a time for ivrything. He'll not lead you wrong,' he sez, 'but
+I'd give a month's pay to larn fwhat he thinks av you.'
+
+"That kept the babe quiet, but Love-o'-Women was pokin' at me for
+ivrything I did, an' specially my manoeuvres.
+
+"'Mr. Mulvaney,' he sez wan evenin', very contempshus, 'you're growin'
+very jeldy wid your feet. Among gentlemen,' he sez, 'among gentlemen
+that's called no pretty name.'
+
+"'Among privits 'tis different,' I sez. 'Get back to your tent. I'm
+sergeant here,' I sez.
+
+"There was just enough in the voice av me to tell him he was playin' wid
+his life betune his teeth. He wint off, an' I noticed that this man that
+was contempshus set off from the halt wid a shunt as tho' he was bein'
+kicked behind. That same night there was a Paythan picnic in the hills
+about, an' firin' into our tents fit to wake the livin' dead. 'Lie
+down all,' I sez. 'Lie down an' kape still. They'll no more than waste
+ammunition.'
+
+"I heard a man's feet on the ground, an' thin a 'Tini joinin' in the
+chorus. I'd been lyin' warm, thinkin' av Dinah an' all, but I crup out
+wid the bugle for to look round in case there was a rush, an' the 'Tini
+was flashin' at the fore-ind av the camp, an' the hill near by was
+fair flickerin' wid long-range fire. Undher the starlight I beheld
+Love-o'-Women settin' on a rock wid his belt and helmet off. He shouted
+wanst or twice, an' thin I heard him say: 'They should ha' got the range
+long ago. Maybe they'll fire at the flash.' Thin he fired again, an'
+that dhrew a fresh volley, and the long slugs that they chew in their
+teeth came floppin' among the rocks like tree-toads av a hot night.
+'That's better,' sez Love-o'-Women. 'Oh Lord, how long, how long!' he
+sez, an' at that he lit a match an' held ut above his head.
+
+"'Mad,' thinks I, 'mad as a coot,' an' I tuk wan stip forward, an' the
+nixt I knew was the sole av my boot flappin' like a cavalry gydon an'
+the funny-bone av my toes tinglin'. 'Twas a clane-cut shot--a slug--that
+niver touched sock or hide, but set me bare-fut on the rocks. At that I
+tuk Love-o'-Women by the scruff an' threw him under a bowlder, an' whin
+I sat down I heard the bullets patterin' on that good stone.
+
+"'Ye may dhraw your own wicked fire,' I sez, shakin' him, 'but I'm not
+goin' to be kilt too.'
+
+"Ye've come too soon,' he sez. 'Ye've come too soon. In another minute
+they cud not ha' missed me. Mother av God,' he sez, 'fwhy did ye not
+lave me be? Now 'tis all to do again,' an' he hides his face in his
+hands.
+
+"'So that's it,' I sez, shakin' him again. 'That's th manin' av your
+disobeyin' ordhers.'
+
+"'I dare not kill meself,' he sez, rockin' to and fro. 'My own hand wud
+not let me die, and there's not a bullet this month past wud touch me.
+I'm to die slow,' he sez. 'I'm to die slow. But I'm in hell now,' he
+sez, shriekin' like a woman. 'I'm in hell now!'
+
+"'God be good to us all,' I sez, for I saw his face. 'Will ye tell a man
+the throuble. If 'tis not murder, maybe we'll mend it yet.'
+
+"At that he laughed. 'D'you remimber fwhat I said in the Tyrone barricks
+about comin' to you for ghostly consolation. I have not forgot,' he sez.
+'That came back, an' the rest av my time is on me now, Terence. I've
+fought ut off for months an' months, but the liquor will not bite any
+more, Terence,' he sez. 'I can't get dhrunk.'
+
+"Thin I knew he spoke the truth about bein' in hell, for whin liquor
+does not take hould, the sowl av a man is rotten in him. But me bein'
+such as I was, fwhat could I say to him?
+
+"'Di'monds an' pearls,' he begins again. 'Di'monds and pearls I have
+thrown away wid both hands--an' fwhat have I left? Oh, fwhat have I
+left?'
+
+"He was shakin' an' thremblin' up against my shouldher, an' the slugs
+was singin' overhead, an' I was wonderin' whether my little bhoy wud
+have sinse enough to kape his men quiet through all this firin'.
+
+"'So long as I did not think,' sez Love-o'-Women, 'so long I did not
+see--I wud not see--but I can now, what I've lost. The time an' the
+place,' he sez, 'an' the very words I said whin ut pleased me to go off
+alone to hell. But thin, even thin,' he sez, wrigglin' tremenjus, 'I
+wud not ha' been happy. There was too much behind av me. How cud I ha'
+believed her sworn oath--me that have bruk mine again an' again for the
+sport av seein' thim cry. An' there are the others,' he sez. 'Oh, what
+will I do--what will I do'?' He rocked back an' forward again, an' I
+think he was cryin' like wan av the women he dealt wid.
+
+"The full half av fwhat he said was Brigade Ordhers to me, but from the
+rest an' the remnint I suspicioned somethin' av his throuble. 'Twas the
+judgmint av God had grup the heel av him, as I tould him 'twould in the
+Tyrone barricks. The slugs was singin' over our rock more an' more, an'
+I sez for to divart him: 'Let bad alone,' I sez. 'They'll be thryin' to
+rush the camp in a minut'.'
+
+"I had no more than said that whin a Paythan man crep' up on his belly
+wid his knife betune his teeth, not twinty yards from us. Love-o'-Women
+jumped up an' fetched a yell, an' the man saw him an' ran at him (he'd
+left his rifle under the rock) wid the knife. Love-o'-Women niver turned
+a hair, but by the Living Power, for I saw ut, a stone twisted under
+the Paythan man's feet an' he came down full sprawl, an' his knife wint
+tinklin' acrost the rocks! 'I tould you I was Cain,' sez Love-o'-Women.'
+'Fwhat's the use av killin' him? He's an honest man--by compare.'
+
+"I was not dishputin' about the morils av Paythans that tide, so I
+dhropped Love-o'-Women's burt acrost the man's face, an' 'Hurry into
+camp,' I sez, 'for this may be the first av a rush.'
+
+"There was no rush afther all, though we waited undher arms to give
+thim a chanst. The Paythan man must ha' come alone for the mischief,
+an' afther a while Love-o'-Women wint back to his tint wid that quare
+lurchin' sind-off in his walk that I cud niver undherstand. Begad, I
+pitied him, an' the more bekaze he made me think for the rest av the
+night av the day whin I was confirmed Corp'ril, not actin' Lef'tenant,
+an' my thoughts was not good.
+
+"Ye can undherstand that afther that night we came to talkin' a dale
+together, an' bit by bit ut came out fwhat I'd suspicioned. The whole
+av his carr'in's on an' divilmints had come back on him hard as liquor
+comes back whin you've been on the dhrink for a wake. All he'd said an'
+all he'd done, an' only he cud tell how much that was, come back, an'
+there was niver a minut's peace in his sowl. 'Twas the Horrors widout
+any cause to see, an' yet, an' yet--fwhat am I talkin' av? He'd ha'
+taken the Horrors wid thankfulness. Beyon' the repentince av the man,
+an' that was beyon' the natur av man--awful, awful, to behould!--there
+was more that was worst than any repentince. Av the scores an' scores
+that he called over in his mind (an' they were dhrivin' him mad), there
+was, mark you, wan woman av all, an' she was not his wife, that cut him
+to the quick av his marrow. 'Twas there he said that he'd thrown away
+di'monds an' pearls past count, an' thin he'd begin again like a blind
+byle in an oil-mill, walkin' round an' round, to considher (him that was
+beyond all touch av being happy this side hell!) how happy he wud ha'
+been wid her. The more he considhered, the more he'd consate himself
+that he'd lost mighty happiness, an' thin he wud work ut all backwards,
+an' cry that he niver cud ha' been happy anyways.
+
+"Time an' time an' again in camp, on p'rade, ay, an' in action, I've
+seen that man shut his eyes an' duck his head as you wud duck to the
+flicker av a bay'nit. For 'twas thin he tould me that the thought av all
+he'd missed came an' stud forninst him like red-hot irons. For what
+he'd done wid the others he was sorry, but he did not care; but this wan
+woman that I've tould of, by the Hilts av God she made him pay for
+all the others twice over! Niver did I know that a man cud enjure such
+tormint widout his heart crackin' in his ribs, an' I have been"--Terence
+turned the pipe-stem slowly between his teeth--"I have been in some
+black cells. All I iver suffered tho' was not to be talked of alongside
+av him... an' what could I do? Paternosters was no more than peas for
+his sorrow.
+
+"Evenshually we finished our prom'nade acrost the hills, and thanks to
+me for the same, there was no casualties an' no glory. The campaign was
+comin' to an ind, an' all the rig'mints was bein' drawn together for to
+be sint back home. Love-o'-Women was mighty sorry bekaze he had no work
+to do, an' all his time to think in. I've heard that man talkin' to
+his belt-plate an' his side-arms while he was soldierin' thim, all to
+prevint himself from thinkin', an' ivry time he got up afther he had
+been settin' down or wint on from the halt, he'd start wid that kick an'
+traverse that I tould you of--his legs sprawlin' all ways to wanst. He
+wud niver go see the docthor, tho' I tould him to be wise. He'd curse
+me up an' down for my advice; but I knew he was no more a man to be
+reckoned wid than the little bhoy was a commandin' orf'cer, so I let his
+tongue run if it aised him.
+
+"Wan day--'twas on the way back--I was walkin' round camp wid him,
+an' he stopped an' struck ground wid his right fut three or four times
+doubtful. 'Fwhat is ut?' I sez. 'Is that ground?' sez he; an' while
+I was thinkin' his mind was goin', up comes the docthor, who'd been
+anatomisin' a dead bullock. Love-o'-Women starts to go on quick, an'
+lands me a kick on the knee while his legs was gettin' into marchin'
+ordher.
+
+"Hould on there,' sez the docthor; an' Love-o'-Women's face, that was
+lined like a gridiron, turns red as brick.
+
+"'Tention,' says the docthor; an' Love-o'-Women stud so. 'Now shut your
+eyes,' sez the docthor. 'No, ye must not hould by your comrade.'
+
+"'Tis all up,' sez Love-o'-Women, trying to smile. 'I'd fall, docthor,
+an' you know ut.'
+
+"'Fall?' I sez. 'Fall at attention wid your eyes shut! Fwhat do you
+mane?'
+
+"The docthor knows,' he sez. 'I've hild up as long as I can, but begad
+I'm glad 'tis all done. But I will die slow,' he sez, 'I will die very
+slow.'
+
+"I cud see by the docthor's face that he was mortial sorry for the
+man, an' he ordhered him to hospital. We wint back together, an' I was
+dumbstruck; Love-o'-Women was cripplin' and crumblin' at ivry step. He
+walked wid a hand on my shoulder all slued sideways, an' his right leg
+swingin' like a lame camel. Me not knowin' more than the dead fwhat
+ailed him, 'twas just as though the docthor's word had done ut all--as
+if Love-o'-Women had but been waitin' for the ordher to let go.
+
+"In hospital he sez somethin' to the docthor that I could not catch.
+
+"'Holy shmoke!' sez the docthor, 'an' who are you to be givin' names to
+your diseases? 'Tis ag'in' all the regulations.'
+
+"'I'll not be a privit much longer,' sez Love-o'-Women in his
+gentleman's voice, an' the docthor jumped.
+
+"'Thrate me as a study, Docthor Lowndes,' he sez; an' that was the first
+time I'd iver heard a docthor called his name.
+
+"'Good-bye, Terence,' sez Love-o'-Women. ''Tis a dead man I am widout the
+pleasure av dyin'. You'll come an' set wid me sometimes for the peace av
+my soul.'
+
+"Now I had been minded to ask Cruik to take me back to the Ould
+Rig'mint, for the fightin' was over, an' I was wore out wid the ways av
+the bhoys in the Tyrone; but I shifted my will, an' hild on, an' wint
+to set wid Love-o'-Women in the hospital. As I have said, Sorr, the man
+bruk all to little pieces undher my hand. How long he had hild up an'
+forced himself fit to march I cannot tell, but in hospital but two days
+later he was such as I hardly knew. I shuk hands wid him, an' his grip
+was fair strong, but his hands wint all ways to wanst, an' he cud not
+button his tunic.
+
+"'I'll take long an' long to die yet,' he sez, 'for the ways av sin
+they're like interest in the rig'mintal savin's-bank--sure, but a damned
+long time bein' paid.'
+
+"The docthor sez to me quiet one day, 'Has Tighe there anythin' on his
+mind?' he sez. 'He's burnin' himself out.'
+
+"'How shud I know, Sorr?' I sez, as innocent as putty.
+
+"They call him Love-o'-Women in the Tyrone, do they not?' he sez. 'I
+was a fool to ask. Be wid him all you can. He's houldin' on to your
+strength.'
+
+"'But what ails him, docthor,' I sez.
+
+"'They call ut Locomotus attacks us,' he sez, 'bekaze,' sez he, 'ut
+attacks us like a locomotive, if ye know fwhat that manes. An'
+ut comes,' sez he, lookin' at me, 'ut comes from bein' called
+Love-o'-Women.'
+
+"'You're jokin', docthor,' I sez.
+
+"'Jokin'!' sez he. 'If iver you feel that you've got a felt sole in your
+boot instead av a Government bull's-wool, come to me,' he sez, 'an' I'll
+show you whether 'tis a joke.'
+
+"You would not belave ut, Sorr, but that an' seein' Love-o'-Women
+overtuk widout warnin' put the cowld fear av attacks us on me so strong
+that for a week an' more I was kickin' my toes against stones an' stumps
+for the pleasure av feelin' them hurt.
+
+"An' Love-o'-Women lay in the cot (he might have gone down wid the
+wounded before an' before, but he asked to stay wid me), and fwhat there
+was in his mind had full swing at him night an' day an' ivry hour av the
+day an' the night, an' he withered like beef rations in a hot sun, an'
+his eyes was like owls' eyes, an' his hands was mut'nous.
+
+"They was gettin' the rig'mints away wan by wan, the campaign bein'
+inded, but as ushuil they was behavin' as if niver a rig'mint had been
+moved before in the mem'ry av man. Now, fwhy is that, Sorr? There's
+fightin' in an' out nine months av the twelve somewhere in the Army.
+There has been--for years an' years an' years, an' I wud ha' thought
+they'd begin to get the hang av providin' for throops. But no! Ivry time
+it's like a girls' school meetin' a big red bull whin they're goin' to
+church; an' 'Mother av God,' sez the Commissariat an' the railways an'
+the Barrick-masters, 'fwhat will we do now?' The ordhers came to us av
+the Tyrone an' the Ould Rig'mint an' half a dozen more to go down, and
+there the ordhers stopped dumb. We wint down, by the special grace av
+God--down the Khaiber anyways. There was sick wid us, an' I'm thinkin'
+that some av them was jolted to death in the doolies, but they was
+anxious to be kilt so if they cud get to Peshawur alive the sooner. I
+walked by Love-o'-Women--there was no marchin', an' Love-o'-Women was
+not in a stew to get on. 'If I'd only ha' died up there!' sez he through
+the doolie-curtains, an' then he'd twist up his eyes an' duck his head
+for the thoughts that came to him.
+
+"Dinah was in Depot at Pindi, but I wint circumspectuous, for well I
+knew 'tis just at the rump-ind av all things that his luck turns on
+a man. By token I ad seen a dhriver of a batthery goin' by at a trot
+singin' 'Home, swate home' at the top av his shout, and takin' no heed
+o his bridle-hand--I had seen that man dhrop under the gun in the middle
+of a word, and come out by the limber like--like a frog on a pave-stone.
+No. I wud not hurry, though, God knows, my heart was all in Pindi.
+Love-o'-Women saw fwhat was in my mind, an' 'Go on, Terence,' h sez, 'I
+know fwhat's waitin' for you.' 'I will not,' I sez. ''Twill kape a little
+yet.'
+
+"Ye know the turn of the pass forninst Jumrood and the nine mile road
+on the flat to Peshawur? All Peshawur was along that road day and night
+waitin' for frinds--men, women, childer, and bands. Some av the throops
+was camped round Jumrood, an' some went on to Peshawur to get away down
+to their cantonmints. We came through in the early mornin', havin' been
+awake the night through, and we dhruv sheer into the middle av the mess.
+Mother av Glory, will I ever forget that comin' back? The light was not
+fair lifted, and the furst we heard was 'For 'tis my delight av a shiny
+night,' frum a band that thought we was the second four comp'nies av the
+Lincolnshire. At that we was forced to sind them a yell to say who we
+was, an' thin up wint 'The wearin' av the Green.' It made me crawl all
+up my backbone, not havin' taken my brequist. Thin, right smash into our
+rear, came fwhat was left av the Jock Elliotts--wid four pipers an' not
+half a kilt among thim, playin' for the dear life, an' swingin' their
+rumps like buck rabbits, an' a native rig'mint shrieking blue murther.
+Ye niver heard the like. There was men cryin' like women that did--an'
+faith I do not blame thim. Fwhat bruk me down was the Lancers'
+Band--shinin' an' spick like angels, wid the ould dhrum-horse at the
+head an' the silver kettle-dhrums an' all an' all, waitin' for their
+men that was behind us. They shtruck up the Cavalry Canter, an', begad,
+those poor ghosts that had not a sound fut in a throop they answered to
+ut, the men rockin' in their saddles. We thried to cheer them as they
+wint by, but ut came out like a big gruntin' cough, so there must have
+been many that was feelin' like me. Oh, but I'm forgettin'! The
+Fly-by-Nights was waitin' for their second battalion, an' whin ut came
+out, there was the Colonel's horse led at the head--saddle-empty. The
+men fair worshipped him, an' he'd died at Au Musjid on the road down.
+They waited till the remnint av the battalion was up, and thin--clane
+against ordhers, for who wanted that chune that day?--they wint back to
+Peshawur slow-time an' tearin' the bowils out av ivry man that heard,
+wid 'The Dead March.' Right across our line they wint, an' ye know their
+uniforms are as black as the Sweeps, crawlin' past like the dead, an'
+the other bands damnin' them to let be.
+
+"Little they cared. The carpse was wid them, an' they'd ha' taken ut so
+through a Coronation. Our ordhers was to go into Peshawur, an' we wint
+hot-fut past the Fly-by-Nights, not singin', to lave that chune behind
+us. That was how we tuk the road of the other corps.
+
+"'Twas ringin' in my ears still whin I felt in the bones of me that
+Dinah was comin', an' I heard a shout, an' thin I saw a horse an' a
+tattoo latherin' down the road, hell to shplit, under women. I knew--I
+knew! Wan was the Tyrone Colonel's wife--ould Beeker's lady--her gray
+hair flyin' an' her fat round carkiss rowlin' in the saddle, an' the
+other was Dinah, that shud ha' been at Pindi. The Colonel's lady she
+charged at the head av our column like a stone wall, an' she all but
+knocked Beeker off his horse throwin' her arms round his neck an'
+blubberin', 'Me bhoy! Me bhoy!' an' Dinah wheeled left an' came down
+our flank, an' I let a yell that had suffered inside av me for months,
+and--Dinah came. Will I iver forget that while I live! She'd come on
+pass from Pindi, an' the Colonel's lady had lint her the tattoo. They'd
+been huggin' an' cryin' in each other's arms all the long night.
+
+"So she walked along wid her hand in mine, askin' forty questions to
+wanst, an' beggin' me on the Virgin to make oath that there was not
+a bullet consaled in me, unbeknownst somewhere, an' thin I remimbered
+Love-o'-Women. He was watchin' us, an' his face was like the face av a
+divil that has been cooked too long. I did not wish Dinah to see ut, for
+whin a woman's runnin' over wid happiness she's like to be touched,
+for harm aftherwards, by the laste little thing in life. So I dhrew the
+curtain, an' Love-o'-Women lay back and groaned.
+
+"Whin we marched into Peshawur, Dinah wint to barracks to wait for me,
+an' me feelin' so rich that tide, I wint on to take Love-o'-Women to
+hospital. It was the last I cud do, an' to save him the dust an' the
+smother I turned the doolie-men down a road well clear av the rest av
+the throops, an we wint along, me talkin' through the curtains. Av a
+sudden I heard him say:--
+
+"'Let me look. For the Mercy av Hiven, let me look!' I had been so tuk
+up wid gettin' him out av the dust and thinkin' of Dinah that I had not
+kept my eyes about me. There was a woman ridin' a little behind av us,
+an', talkin' ut over wid Dinah aftherwards, that same woman must ha' rid
+not far on the Jumrood road. Dinah said that she had been hoverin' like
+a kite on the left flank av the column.
+
+"I halted the doolie to set the curtains, an' she rode by walkin'-pace,
+an' Love-o'-Women's eyes wint afther her as if he would fair haul her
+down from the saddle.
+
+"'Follow there,' was all he sez, but I niver heard a man spake in that
+voice before or since, an' I knew by those two wan words an' the look
+in his face that she was Di'monds-an'-Pearls that he'd talked av in his
+disthresses.
+
+"We followed till she turned into the gate av a little house that stud
+near the Edwardes's Gate. There was two girls in the verandah, an' they
+ran in whin they saw us. Faith, at long eye-range ut did not take me a
+wink to see fwhat kind av house ut was. The throops bein' there an' all,
+there was three or four such, but aftherwards the polis bade them go.
+At the verandah Love-o'-Women sez, catchin' his breath, 'Stop here,'
+an' thin, an' thin, wid a grunt that must ha' tore the heart up from his
+stomach, he swung himself out av the doolie, an' my troth he stud up on
+his feet wid the sweat pourin' down his face. If Mackie was to walk in
+here now I'd be less tuk back than I was thin. Where he'd dhrawn his
+power from, God knows or the divil--but 't was a dead man walkin' in the
+sun wid the face av a dead man and the breath av a dead man held up by
+the Power, an' the legs an' the arms of the carpse obeyin' ordhers!
+
+"The woman stud in the verandah. She'd been a beauty too, though her
+eyes was sunk in her head, an' she looked Love-o'-Women up an' down
+terrible. 'An',' she sez, kickin' back the tail av her habit,--'An','
+she sez, 'fwhat are you doin' here, married man?'
+
+"Love-o'-Women said nothin', but a little froth came to his lips, an'
+he wiped ut off wid his hand an' looked at her an' the paint on her, an'
+looked, an' looked, an' looked.
+
+"'An' yet,' she sez, wid a laugh. (Did you hear Mrs. Raines laugh whin
+Mackie died? Ye did not? Well for you.) 'An' yet,' she sez, 'who but you
+have betther right,' sez she. 'You taught me the road. You showed me the
+way,' she sez. 'Ay, look,' she sez, 'for 'tis your work; you that tould
+me--d'you remimber it?--that a woman who was false to wan man cud be
+false to two. I have been that,' she sez, 'that an' more, for you always
+said I was a quick learner, Ellis. Look well,' she sez, 'for it is
+me that you called your wife in the sight av God long since!' An' she
+laughed.
+
+"Love-o'-Women stud still in the sun widout answerin'. Thin he groaned
+an' coughed to wanst, an' I thought 'twas the death-rattle, but he
+niver tuk his eyes off her face not for a wink. Ye cud ha' put her
+eyelashes through the flies av an E. P. tent, they were so long.
+
+"'Fwhat do you do here?' she sez, word by word, 'that have taken away my
+joy in my man this five years gone--that have broken my rest an' killed
+my body an' damned my soul for the sake av seem' how 'twas done? Did
+your expayrience aftherwards bring you acrost any woman that gave more
+than I did? Wud I not ha' died for you an' wid you, Ellis? Ye know that,
+man! If ever your lyin' sowl saw truth in uts life ye know that.'
+
+"An' Love-o'-Women lifted up his head and said, 'I knew,' an' that was
+all. While she was spakin' the Power hild him up parade-set in the 'sun,
+an the sweat dhropped undher his helmet. 'Twas more an' more throuble
+for him to talk, an' his mouth was runnin' twistways.
+
+"Fwhat do you do here?' she sez, an' her voice whit up. 'Twas like
+bells tollin' before. 'Time was whin you were quick enough wid your
+words,--you that talked me down to hell. Are ye dumb now?' An' Love-o'-W
+omen got his tongue, an' sez simple, like a little child, 'May I come
+in?' he sez.
+
+"The house is open day an' night,' she sez, wid a laugh; an'
+Love-o'-Women ducked his head an' hild up his hand as tho' he was
+gyardin'. The Power was on him still--it hild him up still, for, by my
+sowl, as I'll never save ut, he walked up the verandah steps that had
+been a livin' corpse in hospital for a month!
+
+"'An' now'?' she sez, lookin' at him; an' the red paint stud lone on the
+white av her face like a bull's-eye on a target.
+
+"He lifted up his eyes, slow an' very slow, an' he looked at her long
+an' very long, an' he tuk his spache betune his teeth wid a wrench that
+shuk him.
+
+"'I'm dyin', Aigypt--dyin',' he sez; ay, those were his words, for I
+remimber the name he called her. He was turnin' the death-colour, but
+his eyes niver rowled. They were set--set on her. Widout word or warnin'
+she opened her arms full stretch, an' 'Here!' she sez. (Oh, fwhat
+a golden mericle av a voice ut was!) 'Die here,' she sez; an'
+Love-o'-Women dhropped forward, an' she hild him up, for she was a fine
+big woman.
+
+"I had no time to turn, bekaze that minut I heard the sowl quit
+him--tore out in the death-rattle--an' she laid him back in a long
+chair, an' she sez to me, 'Misther soldier,' she sez, 'will ye not go in
+an' talk to wan av the girls. This sun's too much for him.'
+
+"Well I knew there was no sun he'd iver see, but I cud not spake, so
+I wint away wid the empty doolie to find the docthor. He'd been
+breakfastin' an' lunchin' ever since we'd come in, an' he was as full as
+a tick.
+
+"Faith ye've got dhrunk mighty soon,' he sez, whin I'd tould him, 'to
+see that man walk. Barrin' a puff or two av life, he was a corpse before
+we left Jumrood. I've a great mind,' he sez, 'to confine you.'
+
+"There's a dale av liquor runnin' about, docthor,' I sez, solemn as a
+hard-boiled egg. 'Maybe 'tis so, but will ye not come an' see the corpse
+at the house?'
+
+"Tis dishgraceful,' he sez, 'that I would be expected to go to a place
+like that. Was she a pretty woman?'' he sez, an' at that he set off
+double quick.
+
+"I cud see that the two was in the verandah were I'd left them, an'
+I knew by the hang av her head an' the noise av the crows fwhat had
+happened. 'Twas the first and the last time that I'd ever known woman to
+use the pistol. They dread the shot as a rule, but Di'monds-an'-Pearls
+she did not--she did not.
+
+"The docthor touched the long black hair av her head ('twas all loose
+upon Love-o'-Women's chest), an' that cleared the liquor out av him. He
+stud considherin' a long time, his hands in his pockets, an' at last
+he sez to me, 'Here's a double death from naturil causes, most naturil
+causes; an' in the presint state av affairs the rig'mint will be
+thankful for wan grave the less to dig. Issiwasti,' he sez, 'Issiwasti,
+Privit Mulvaney, these two will be buried together in the Civil Cemet'ry
+at my expinse, an' may the good God,' he sez, 'make it SO much for me
+whin my time comes. Go to your wife,' he sez; 'go an' be happy. I'll see
+to this all.'
+
+"I left him still considherin'. They was buried in the Civil Cemet'ry
+together, wid a Church of England service. There was too many buryin's
+thin to ask questions, an' the docthor--he ran away wid Major--Major Van
+Dyce's lady that year--he saw to ut all. Fwhat the right an' the wrong
+av Love-o'-Women an' Di'monds-an'-Pearls was I niver knew, an' I will
+niver know; but I've tould ut as I came acrost ut--here an' there in
+little pieces. So, being fwhat I am, an' knowin' fwhat I know, that's
+fwhy I say in this shootin'-case here, Mackie that's dead an' in hell is
+the lucky man. There are times, Sorr, whin 'tis betther for the man to
+die than to live, an' by consequince forty million times betther for the
+woman."
+
+"H'up there!" said Ortheris. "It's time to go." The witnesses and guard
+formed up in the thick white dust of the parched twilight and swung off,
+marching easy and whistling. Down the road to the green by the church
+I could hear Ortheris, the black Book-lie still uncleansed on his
+lips, setting, with a fine sense of the fitness of things, the shrill
+quick-step that runs--
+
+     "Oh, do not despise the advice of the wise,
+     Learn wisdom from those that are older,
+     And don't try for things that are out of your reach--
+     An' that's what the Girl told the Soldier
+     Soldier! Soldier!
+     Oh, that's what the Girl told the Soldier!"
+
+
+
+
+THE BIG DRUNK DRAF'
+
+     We're goin' 'ome, we're goin' 'ome--
+     Our ship is at the shore,
+     An' you mus' pack your 'aversack,
+     For we won't come back no more.
+     Ho, don't you grieve for me,
+     My lovely Mary Ann,
+     For I'll marry you yet on a fourp'ny bit,
+     As a time-expired ma-a-an
+
+     Barrack Room Ballad.
+
+
+AN awful thing has happened! My friend, Private Mulvaney, who went home
+in the Serapis, time-expired, not very long ago, has come back to India
+as a civilian! It was all Dinah Shadd's fault. She could not stand the
+poky little lodgings, and she missed her servant Abdullah more than
+words could tell. The fact was that the Mulvaneys had been out here too
+long, and had lost touch of England.
+
+Mulvaney knew a contractor on one of the new Central India lines, and
+wrote to him for some sort of work. The contractor said that if Mulvaney
+could pay the passage he would give him command of a gang of coolies for
+old sake's sake. The pay was eighty-five rupees a month, and Dinah Shadd
+said that if Terence did not accept she would make his life a "basted
+purgathory." Therefore the Mulvaneys came out as "civilians," which
+was a great and terrible fall; though Mulvaney tried to disguise it by
+saying that he was "Ker'nel on the railway line, an' a consequinshal
+man."
+
+He wrote me an invitation, on a tool-indent form, to visit him; and I
+came down to the funny little "construction" bungalow at the side of
+the line. Dinah Shadd had planted peas about and about, and nature had
+spread all manner of green stuff round the place. There was no change in
+Mulvaney except the change of clothing, which was deplorable, but could
+not be helped. He was standing upon his trolly, haranguing a gangman,
+and his shoulders were as well drilled and his big, thick chin was as
+clean-shaven as ever.
+
+"I'm a civilian now," said Mulvaney. "Cud you tell that I was iver
+a martial man'? Don't answer, Sorr, av you're strainin' betune a
+complimint an' a lie. There's no houldin' Dinah Shadd now she's got
+a house av her own. Go inside, an' dhrink tay out av chiny in the
+drrrrawin'-room, an' thin we'll dhrink like Christians undher the tree
+here. Scutt, ye naygur-folk! There's a Sahib come to call on me, an'
+that's more than he'll iver do for you onless you run! Get out, an' go
+on pilin' up the earth, quick, till sundown."
+
+
+When we three were comfortably settled under the big sisham in front of
+the bungalow, and the first rush of questions and answers about Privates
+Ortheris and Learoyd and old times and places had died away, Mulvaney
+said, reflectively--"Glory be, there's no p'rade to-morrow, an' no
+bun-headed Corp'ril-bhoy to give you his lip. An' yit I don't know. 'Tis
+harrd to be something ye niver were an' niver meant to be, an' all the
+ould days shut up along wid your papers. Eyah! I'm growin' rusty, an'
+'tis the will av God that a man mustn't serve his Quane for time an'
+all."
+
+He helped himself to a fresh peg, and sighed furiously.
+
+"Let your beard grow, Mulvaney," said I, "and then you won't be troubled
+with those notions. You'll be a real civilian."
+
+Dinah Shadd had told me in the drawing-room of her desire to coax
+Mulvaney into letting his beard grow. "'Twas so civilian-like," said
+poor Dinah, who hated her husband's hankering for his old life.
+
+"Dinah Shadd, you're a dishgrace to an honust, clane-scraped man!"
+said Mulvaney, without replying to me. "Grow a beard on your own chin,
+darlint, and lave my razors alone. They're all that stand betune me
+and dis-ris-pect-ability. Av I didn't shave, I wud be torminted wid an
+outrajis thurrst; for there's nothin' so dhryin' to the throat as a
+big billy-goat beard waggin' undher the chin. Ye wudn't have me dhrink
+always, Dinah Shadd'? By the same token, you're kapin' me crool dhry
+now. Let me look at that whiskey."
+
+The whiskey was lent and returned, but Dinah Shadd, who had been just as
+eager as her husband in asking after old friends, rent me with--
+
+"I take shame for you, Sorr, coming down here though the Saints know
+you're as welkim as the daylight whin you do come--an' upsettin'
+Terence's head wid your nonsense about--about fwhat's much betther
+forgotten. He bein' a civilian now, an' you niver was aught else. Can
+you not let the Arrmy rest? 'Tis not good for Terence."
+
+I took refuge by Mulvaney, for Dinah Shadd has a temper of her own.
+
+"Let be--let be," said Mulvaney. "'Tis only wanst in a way I can talk
+about the ould days." Then to me--"Ye say Dhrumshticks is well, an' his
+lady tu'? I niver knew how I liked the gray garron till I was shut
+av him an' Asia."--"Dhrumshticks" was the nickname of the Colonel
+commanding Mulvaney's old regiment.--"Will you be seein' him again? You
+will. Thin tell him"--Mulvaney's eyes began to twinkle--"tell him wid
+Privit--"
+
+"Mister, Terence," interrupted Dinah Shadd. "Now the Divil an' all his
+angils an' the Firmament av Hiven fly away wid the 'Mister,' an' the sin
+av makin' me swear be on your confession, Dinah Shadd! Privit, I tell
+ye. Wid Privit Mulvaney's best obedience, that but for me the last
+time-expired wud be still pullin' hair on their way to the sea."
+
+He threw himself back in the chair, chuckled, and was silent.
+
+"Mrs. Mulvaney," I said, "please take up the whiskey, and don't let him
+have it until he has told the story."
+
+Dinah Shadd dexterously whipped the bottle away, saying at the same
+time, "'Tis nothing to be proud av," and thus captured by the enemy,
+Mulvaney spake:--
+
+"'Twas on Chuseday week. I was behaderin' round wid the gangs on
+the 'bankmint--I've taught the hoppers how to kape step an' stop
+screechin'--whin a head-gangman comes up to me, wid about two inches av
+shirt-tail hanging round his neck an' a disthressful light in his oi.
+'Sahib,' sez he, 'there's a reg'mint an' a half av soldiers up at the
+junction, knockin' red cinders out av ivrything an' ivrybody! They
+thried to hang me in my cloth,' he sez, 'an' there will be murdher an'
+ruin an' rape in the place before nightfall! They say they're comin'
+down here to wake us up. What will we do wid our women-folk?'
+
+"'Fetch my throlly!' sez I; 'my heart's sick in my ribs for a wink at
+anything wid the Quane's uniform on ut. Fetch my throlly, an' six av the
+jildiest men, and run me up in shtyle.'"
+
+"He tuk his best coat," said Dinah Shadd, reproachfully.
+
+"'Twas to do honour to the Widdy. I cud ha' done no less, Dinah Shadd.
+You and your digresshins interfere wid the coorse av the narrative. Have
+you iver considhered fwhat I wud look like wid me head shaved as well as
+me chin? You bear that in your mind, Dinah darlin'.
+
+"I was throllied up six miles, all to get a shquint at that draf'.
+I knew 'twas a spring draf' goin' home, for there's no rig'mint
+hereabouts, more's the pity."
+
+"Praise the Virgin!" murmured Dinah Shadd. But Mulvaney did not hear.
+
+"Whin I was about three-quarters av a mile off the rest-camp, powtherin'
+along fit to burrst, I heard the noise av the men, an', on my sowl,
+Sorr, I cud catch the voice av Peg Barney bellowin' like a bison wid the
+belly-ache. You remimber Peg Barney that was in D Comp'ny--a red, hairy
+scraun, wid a scar on his jaw? Peg Barney that cleared out the Blue
+Lights' Jubilee meetin' wid the cook-room mop last year?
+
+"Thin I knew ut was a draf' av the Ould Rig'mint, an' I was conshumed
+wid sorrow for the bhoy that was in charge. We was harrd scrapin's at
+any time. Did I iver tell you how Horker Kelley wint into clink nakid as
+Phoebus Apollonius, wid the shirts av the Corp'ril an' file undher his
+arrum? An' he was a moild man! But I'm digresshin'. 'Tis a shame both
+to the rig'mints and the Arrmy sendin' down little orf'cer bhoys wid
+a draf' av strong men mad wid liquor an' the chanst av gettin' shut av
+India, an' niver a punishment that's fit to be given right down an' away
+from cantonmints to the dock! 'Tis this nonsinse. Whin I am servin' my
+time, I'm undher the Articles av War, an' can be whipped on the peg for
+thim. But whin I've served my time, I'm a Reserve man, an' the Articles
+av War haven't any hould on me. An orf'cer can't do anythin' to a
+time-expired savin' confinin' him to barricks. 'Tis a wise rig'lation,
+bekaze a time-expired does not have any barricks; bein' on the move
+all the time. 'Tis a Solomon av a rig'lation, is that. I wud like to
+be inthroduced to the man that made ut. 'Tis easier to get colts from a
+Kibbereen horse-fair into Galway than to take a bad draf' over ten miles
+av counthry. Consiquintly that rig'lation--for fear that the men wud be
+hurt by the little orf'cer bhoy. No matther. The nearer my throlly came
+to the rest-camp, the woilder was the shine, an' the louder was the
+voice of Peg Barney. ''Tis good I am here,' thinks I to mysilf, 'for Peg
+alone is employmint for two or three.' He bein', I well knew, as copped
+as a dhrover.
+
+"Faith, that rest-camp was a sight! The tent-ropes was all skew-nosed,
+an' the pegs looked as dhrunk as the men--fifty av thim--the scourin's,
+an' rinsin's, an' Divil's lavin's av the Ould Rig'mint. I tell you,
+Sorr, they were dhrunker than any men you've ever seen in your mortial
+life. How does a draf' get dhrunk? How does a frog get fat? They suk ut
+in through their shkins.
+
+"There was Peg Barney sittin' on the groun' in his shirt--wan shoe off
+an' wan shoe on--whackin' a tent-peg over the head wid his boot, an'
+singin' fit to wake the dead. 'Twas no clane song that he sung, though.
+'Twas the Divil's Mass."
+
+"What's that?" I asked.
+
+"Whin a bad egg is shut av the Army, he sings the Divil's Mass for
+a good riddance; an' that manes swearin' at ivrything from the
+Commandher-in-Chief down to the Room-Corp'ril, such as you niver in your
+days heard. Some men can swear so as to make green turf crack! Have you
+iver heard the Curse in an Orange Lodge? The Divil's Mass is ten times
+worse, an' Peg Barney was singin' ut, whackin' the tent-peg on the head
+wid his boot for each man that he cursed. A powerful big voice had Peg
+Barney, an' a hard swearer he was whin sober. I stood forninst him, an'
+'twas not me oi alone that cud tell Peg was dhrunk as a coot.
+
+"Good mornin', Peg,' I sez, whin he dhrew breath afther dursin' the
+Adj'tint-Gen'ral; 'I've put on my best coat to see you, Peg Barney,' sez
+I.
+
+"Thin take Ut off again,' sez Peg Barney, latherin' away wid the boot;
+'take ut off an' dance, ye lousy civilian!'
+
+"Wid that he begins cursin' ould Dhrumshticks, being so full he dane
+disrernimbers the Brigade-Major an' the Judge-Advokit-Gen'ral.
+
+"Do you not know me, Peg?' sez I, though me blood was hot in me wid
+being called a civilian."
+
+"An' him a decent married man!" wailed Dinah Shadd.
+
+"I do not," sez Peg, "but dhrunk or sober I'll tear the hide off your
+back wid a shovel whin I've stopped singin."
+
+"'Say you so, Peg Barney?' sez I. ''Tis clear as mud you've forgotten
+me. I'll assist your autobiography.' Wid that I stretched Peg Barney,
+boot an' all, an' wint into the camp. An awful sight ut was!
+
+"'Where's the orf'cer in charge av the detachment?' sez I to Scrub
+Greene--the manest little worm that ever walked.
+
+"'There's no orf'cer, ye ould cook,' sez Scrub; 'we're a bloomin'
+Republic.'
+
+"'Are you that?' sez I; 'thin I'm O'Connell the Dictator, an' by this
+you will larn to kape a civil tongue in your rag-box.'
+
+"Wid that I stretched Scrub Greene an' wint to the orf'cer's tent. 'Twas
+a new little bhoy--not wan I'd iver seen before. He was sittin' in his
+tent, purtendin' not to 'ave ear av the racket.
+
+"I saluted--but for the life av me I mint to shake hands whin I went in.
+'Twas the sword hangin' on the tent-pole changed my will.
+
+"'Can't I help, Sorr?' sez I; ''tis a strong man's job they've given
+you, an' you'll be wantin' help by sundown.' He was a bhoy wid bowils,
+that child, an' a rale gintleman.
+
+"'Sit down,' sez he.
+
+"'Not before my orf'cer,' sez I; an' I tould him fwhat my service was.
+
+"'I've heard av you,' sez he. 'You tuk the town av Lungtungpen nakid.'
+
+"'Faith,' thinks I, 'that's Honour an' Glory'; for 'twas Lift'nint
+Brazenose did that job. 'I'm wid ye, Sorr,' sez I, 'if I'm av use. They
+shud niver ha' sent you down wid the draf'. Savin' your presince, Sorr,'
+I sez, ''tis only Lift'nint Hackerston in the Ould Rig'mint can manage a
+Home draf'.'
+
+"'I've niver had charge of men like this before,' sez he, playin' wid
+the pens on the table; 'an' I see by the Rig'lations--'
+
+"'Shut your oi to the Rig'lations, Sorr,' I sez, 'till the throoper's
+into blue wather. By the Rig'lations you've got to tuck thim up for the
+night, or they'll be runnin' foul av my coolies an' makin' a shiverarium
+half through the counthry. Can you trust your noncoms, Sorr?'
+
+"'Yes,' sez he.
+
+"'Good,' sez I; 'there'll be throuble before the night. Are you
+marchin', Sorr?'
+
+"'To the next station,' sez he.
+
+"'Betther still,' sez I; 'there'll be big throuble.'
+
+"'Can't be too hard on a Home draf,' sez he; 'the great thing is to get
+thim in-ship.'
+
+"'Faith, you've larnt the half av your lesson, Sorr,' sez I, 'but av you
+shtick to the Rig'lations you'll niver get thim inship at all, at all.
+Or there won't be a rag av kit betune thim whin you do.'
+
+"'Twas a dear little orf'cer bhoy, an' by way av kapin' his heart up, I
+tould him fwhat I saw wanst in a draf in Egypt."
+
+"What was that, Mulvaney?" said I.
+
+"Sivin an' fifty men sittin' on the bank av a canal, laughin' at a poor
+little squidgereen av an orf'cer that they'd made wade into the slush
+an' pitch things out av the boats for their Lord High Mightinesses. That
+made me orf'cer bhoy woild wid indignation.
+
+"'Soft an' aisy, Sorr,' sez I; 'you've niver had your draf' in hannd
+since you left cantonmints Wait till the night, an' your work will be
+ready to you. Wid your permission, Sorr, I will investigate the camp,
+an' talk to me ould frinds. 'Tis no manner av use thryin' to shtop the
+divilmint now.'
+
+"Wid that I wint out into the camp an' inthrojuced mysilf to ivry man
+sober enough to remimber me. I was some wan in the ould days, an' the
+bhoys was glad to see me--all excipt Peg Barney wid a eye like a tomata
+five days in the bazar, an' a nose to match. They come round me an' shuk
+me, an' I tould thim I was in privit employ wid an income av me own,
+an' a drrrawin'-room fit to bate the Quane's; an' wid me lies an'
+me shtories an' nonsinse gin'rally, I kept 'em quiet in wan way an'
+another, knockin' roun' the camp. 'Twas bad even thin whin I was the
+Angil av Peace.
+
+"I talked to me ould non-coms--they was sober--an' betune me an' thim
+we wore the draf' over into their tents at the proper time. The little
+orf'cer bhoy he conies round, dacint an' civil-spoken as might be.
+
+"'Rough quarthers, men,' sez he, 'but you can't look to be as
+comfortable as in barricks. We must make the best av things. I've shut
+my eyes to a dale av dog's thricks to-day, an' now there must be no more
+av ut.'
+
+"No more we will. Come an' have a dhrink, me son,' sez Peg Barney,
+staggerin' where he stud. Me little orf'cer bhoy kep' his timper.
+
+"'You're a sulky swine, you are,' sez Peg Barney, an' at that the men in
+the tent began to laugh.
+
+"I tould you me orf'cer bhoy had bowils. He cut Peg Barney as near as
+might be on the oi that I'd squshed whin we first met. Peg wint spinnin'
+acrost the tent.
+
+"Peg him out, Sorr,' sez I, in a whishper.
+
+"Peg him out!' sez me orf'cer bhoy, up loud, just as if 'twas battalion
+p'rade an' he pickin' his wurrds from the Sargint.
+
+"The non-coms tuk Peg Barney--a howlin' handful he was--an' in three
+minut's he was pegged out--chin down, tight-dhrawn--on his stummick, a
+tent-peg to each arm an' leg, swearin' fit to turn a naygur white.
+
+"I tuk a peg an'' jammed ut into his ugly jaw--'Bite on that, Peg
+Barney,' I sez; 'the night is settin' frosty, an' you'll be wantin'
+divarsion before the mornin'. But for the Rig'lations you'd be bitin' on
+a bullet now at the thriangles, Peg Barney,' sez I.
+
+"All the draf' was out av their tents watchin' Barney bein' pegged.
+
+"''Tis agin the Rig'lations! He strook him!' screeches out Scrub Greene,
+who was always a lawyer; an' some of the men tuk up the shoutin'.
+
+"'Peg out that man!' sez me orf'cer bhoy, niver losin' his timper; an'
+the non-coms wint in and pegged out Scrub Greene by the side av Peg
+Barney.
+
+"I cud see that the draf' was comin' roun'. The men stud not knowin'
+fwhat to do.
+
+"'Get to your tents!' sez me orf'cer bhoy. 'Sargint, put a sinthry over
+these two men.'
+
+"The men wint back into the tents like jackals, an' the rest av the
+night there was no noise at all excipt the stip av the sinthry over the
+two, an' Scrub Greene blubberin' like a child. 'Twas a chilly night, an'
+faith, ut sobered Peg Barney.
+
+"Just before Revelly, me orf'cer bhoy comes out an' sez: 'Loose those
+men an' send thim to their tents!' Scrub Greene wint away widout a word,
+but Peg Barney, stiff wid the cowld, stud like a sheep, thryin' to make
+his orf'cer undherstand he was sorry for playin' the goat.
+
+"There was no tucker in the draf' whin ut fell in for the march, an'
+divil a wurrd about 'illegality' cud I hear.
+
+"I wint to the ould Colour-Sargint and I sez:--'Let me die in glory,'
+sez I. 'I've seen a man this day!'
+
+"'A man he is,' sez ould Hother; 'the draf's as sick as a herrin'.
+They'll all go down to the sea like lambs. That bhoy has the bowils av a
+cantonmint av Gin'rals.'
+
+"'Amin,' sez I, 'an' good luck go wid him, wheriver he be, by land or by
+sea. Let me know how the draf' gets clear.'
+
+"An' do you know how they did? That bhoy, so I was tould by letter from
+Bombay, bully-damned 'em down to the dock, till they cudn't call their
+sowls their own. From the time they left me oi till they was 'tween
+decks, not wan av thim was more than dacintly dhrunk. An' by the Holy
+Articles av War, whin they wint aboord they cheered him till they cudn't
+spake, an' that, mark you, has not come about wid a draf' in the mlm'ry
+av livin' man! You look to that little orf'cer bhoy. He has bowils. 'Tis
+not ivry child that wud chuck the Rig'lations to Flanders an' stretch
+Peg Barney on a wink from a brokin an' dilapidated ould carkiss like
+mysilf. I'd be proud to serve--"
+
+"Terence, you're a civilian," said Dinah Shadd warningly.
+
+"So I am--so I am. Is ut likely I wud forget ut? But he was a gran' bhoy
+all the same, an' I'm only a mudtipper wid a hod on me shoulthers.
+The whiskey's in the heel av your hand, Sorr. Wid your good lave we'll
+dhrink to the Ould Rig'mint--three fingers--standin' up!" And we drank.
+
+
+
+
+THE MUTINEY OF THE MAVERICKS
+
+Sec. 7 (1)--Causing or Conspiring with other persons to cause a mutiny
+or sedition in forces belonging to Her Majesty's Regular forces, Reserve
+forces, Auxiliary forces, or Navy.
+
+When three obscure gentlemen in San Francisco argued on insufficient
+premises they condemned a fellow-creature to a most unpleasant death in
+a far country which had nothing whatever to do with the United States.
+They foregathered at the top of a tenement-house in Tehama Street, an
+unsavoury quarter of the city, and, there calling for certain drinks,
+they conspired because they were conspirators by trade, officially known
+as the Third Three of the I. A. A.--an institution for the propagation
+of pure light, not to be confounded with any others, though it is
+affiliated to many. The Second Three live in Montreal, and work among
+the poor there; the First Three have their home in New York, not far
+from Castle Garden, and write regularly once a week to a small house
+near one of the big hotels at Boulogne. What happens after that, a
+particular section of Scotland Yard knows too well and laughs at. A
+conspirator detests ridicule. More men have been stabbed with Lucrezia
+Borgia daggers and dropped into the Thames for laughing at Head Centres
+and Triangles than for betraying secrets; for this is human nature.
+
+The Third Three conspired over whiskey cocktails and a clean sheet of
+note-paper against the British Empire and all that lay therein. This
+work is very like what men without discernment call politics before a
+general election. You pick out and discuss, in the company of congenial
+friends, all the weak points in your opponents' organisation, and
+unconsciously dwell upon and exaggerate all their mishaps, till it seems
+to you a miracle that the hated party holds together for an hour.
+
+"Our principle is not so much active demonstration--that we leave to
+others--as passive embarrassment, to weaken and unnerve," said the first
+man. "Wherever an organisation is crippled, wherever confusion is thrown
+into any branch of any department, we gain a step for those who take on
+the work; we are but the forerunners." He was a German enthusiast, and
+editor of a newspaper, from whose leading articles he quoted frequently.
+
+"That cursed Empire makes so many blunders of her own that unless we
+doubled the year's average I guess it wouldn't strike her anything
+special had occurred," said the second man. "Are you prepared to
+say that all our resources are equal to blowing off the muzzle of a
+hundred-ton gun or spiking a ten-thousand-ton ship on a plain rock in
+clear daylight? They can beat us at our own game. Better join hands
+with the practical branches; we're in funds now. Try a direct scare in a
+crowded street. They value their greasy hides." He was the drag upon the
+wheel, and an Americanised Irishman of the second generation, despising
+his own race and hating the other. He had learned caution.
+
+The third man drank his cocktail and spoke no word. He was the
+strategist, but unfortunately his knowledge of life was limited. He
+picked a letter from his breast-pocket and threw it across the table.
+That epistle to the heathen contained some very concise directions from
+the First Three in New York. It said--
+
+"The boom in black iron has already affected the eastern markets, where
+our agents have been forcing down the English-held stock among the
+smaller buyers who watch the turn of shares. Any immediate operations,
+such as western bears, would increase their willingness to unload.
+This, however, cannot be expected till they see clearly that foreign
+iron-masters are willing to co-operate. Mulcahy should be dispatched
+to feel the pulse of the market, and act accordingly. Mavericks are at
+present the best for our purpose.--P. D. Q."
+
+As a message referring to an iron crisis in Pennsylvania, it was
+interesting, if not lucid. As a new departure in organized attack on an
+outlying English dependency, it was more than interesting.
+
+The second man read it through and murmured--"Already? Surely they are
+in too great a hurry. All that Dhulip Singh could do in India he has
+done, down to the distribution of his photographs among the peasantry.
+Ho! Ho! The Paris firm arranged that, and he has no substantial money
+backing from the Other Power. Even our agents in India know he hasn't.
+What is the use of our organisation wasting men on work that is already
+done? Of course the Irish regiments in India are half mutinous as they
+stand."
+
+This shows how near a lie may come to the truth. An Irish regiment, for
+just so long as it stands still, is generally a hard handful to control,
+being reckless and rough. When, however, it is moved in the direction of
+musketry-firing, it becomes strangely and unpatriotically content with
+its lot. It has even been heard to cheer the Queen with enthusiasm on
+these occasions.
+
+But the notion of tampering with the army was, from the point of view of
+Tehama Street, an altogether sound one. There is no shadow of stability
+in the policy of an English Government, and the most sacred oaths of
+England would, even if engrossed on vellum, find very few buyers among
+colonies and dependencies that have suffered from vain beliefs. But
+there remains to England always her army. That cannot change except
+in the matter of uniform and equipment. The officers may write to the
+papers demanding the heads of the Horse Guards in default of cleaner
+redress for grievances; the men may break loose across a country town
+and seriously startle the publicans; but neither officers nor men have
+it in their composition to mutiny after the continental manner. The
+English people, when they trouble to think about the army at all, are,
+and with justice, absolutely assured that it is absolutely trustworthy.
+Imagine for a moment their emotions on realising that such and such
+a regiment was in open revolt from causes directly due to England's
+management of Ireland. They would probably send the regiment to the
+polls forthwith and examine their own consciences as to their duty to
+Erin; but they would never be easy any more. And it was this vague,
+unhappy mistrust that the I. A. A. were labouring to produce.
+
+"Sheer waste of breath," said the second man after a pause in the
+council. "I don't see the use of tampering with their fool-army, but
+it has been tried before and we must try it again. It looks well in the
+reports. If we send one man from here you may bet your life that other
+men are going too. Order up Mulcahy."
+
+They ordered him up--a slim, slight, dark-haired young man, devoured
+with that blind rancorous hatred of England that only reaches its full
+growth across the Atlantic. He had sucked it from his mother's breast in
+the little cabin at the back of the northern avenues of New York; he had
+been taught his rights and his wrongs, in German and Irish, on the canal
+fronts of Chicago; and San Francisco held men who told him strange and
+awful things of the great blind power over the seas. Once, when business
+took him across the Atlantic, he had served in an English regiment, and
+being insubordinate had suffered extremely. He drew all his ideas of
+England that were not bred by the cheaper patriotic prints from one
+iron-fisted colonel and an unbending adjutant. He would go to the
+mines if need be to teach his gospel. And he went, as his instructions
+advised, p. d. q.--which means "with speed"--to introduce embarrassment
+into an Irish regiment, "already half-mutinous, quartered among Sikh
+peasantry, all wearing miniatures of His Highness Dhulip Singh,
+Maharaja of the Punjab, next their hearts, and all eagerly expecting
+his arrival." Other information equally valuable was given him by his
+masters. He was to be cautious, but never to grudge expense in winning
+the hearts of the men in the regiment. His mother in New York would
+supply funds, and he was to write to her once a month. Life is pleasant
+for a man who has a mother in New York to send him two hundred pounds a
+year over and above his regimental pay.
+
+In process of time, thanks to his intimate knowledge of drill and
+musketry exercise, the excellent Mulcahy, wearing the corporal's stripe,
+went out in a troopship and joined Her Majesty's Royal Loyal Musketeers,
+commonly known as the "Mavericks," because they were masterless and
+unbranded cattle--sons of small farmers in County Clare, shoeless
+vagabonds of Kerry, herders of Ballyvegan, much wanted "moonlighters"
+from the bare rainy headlands of the south coast, officered by O'Mores,
+Bradys, Hills, Kilreas, and the like. Never to outward seeming was there
+more promising material to work on. The First Three had chosen their
+regiment well. It feared nothing that moved or talked save the colonel
+and the regimental Roman Catholic chaplain, the fat Father Dennis, who
+held the keys of heaven and hell, and blared like an angry bull when
+he desired to be convincing. Him also it loved because on occasions of
+stress he was used to tuck up his cassock and charge with the rest into
+the merriest of the fray, where he always found, good man, that the
+saints sent him a revolver when there was a fallen private to be
+protected, or--but this came as an afterthought his own gray head to be
+guarded.
+
+Cautiously as he had been instructed, tenderly and with much beer,
+Mulcahy opened his projects to such as he deemed fittest to listen.
+And these were, one and all, of that quaint, crooked, sweet, profoundly
+irresponsible and profoundly lovable race that fight like fiends, argue
+like children, reason like women, obey like men, and jest like their own
+goblins of the rath through rebellion, loyalty, want, woe, or war. The
+underground work of a conspiracy is always dull and very much the same
+the world over. At the end of six months--the seed always falling on
+good ground--Mulcahy spoke almost explicitly, hinting darkly in the
+approved fashion at dread powers behind him, and advising nothing more
+nor less than mutiny. Were they not dogs, evilly treated? had they not
+all their own and their national revenges to satisfy? Who in these days
+would do aught to nine hundred men in rebellion? Who, again, could stay
+them if they broke for the sea, licking up on their way other regiments
+only too anxious to join? And afterwards... here followed windy promises
+of gold and preferment, office and honour, ever dear to a certain type
+of Irishman.
+
+As he finished his speech, in the dusk of a twilight, to his chosen
+associates, there was a sound of a rapidly unslung belt behind him. The
+arm of one Dan Grady flew out in the gloom and arrested something. Then
+said Dan--
+
+"Mulcahy, you're a great man, an' you do credit to whoever sent you.
+Walk about a bit while we think of it." Mulcahy departed elate. He knew
+his words would sink deep.
+
+"Why the triple-dashed asterisks did ye not let me belt him'?" grunted a
+voice.
+
+"Because I'm not a fat-headed fool. Boys, 'tis what he's been driving
+at these six months--our superior corp'ril with his education and his
+copies of the Irish papers and his everlasting beer. He's been sent for
+the purpose, and that's where the money comes from. Can ye not see? That
+man's a gold-mine, which Horse Egan here would have destroyed with a
+belt-buckle. It would be throwing away the gifts of Providence not to
+fall in with his little plans. Of coorse we'll mut'ny till all's dry.
+Shoot the colonel on the parade-ground, massacree the company officers,
+ransack the arsenal, and then--Boys, did he tell you what next? He told
+me the other night when he was beginning to talk wild. Then we're to
+join with the niggers, and look for help from Dhulip Singh and the
+Russians!"
+
+"And spoil the best campaign that ever was this side of Hell! Danny, I'd
+have lost the beer to ha' given him the belting he requires."
+
+"Oh, let him go this awhile, man! He's got no--no constructiveness, but
+that's the egg-meat of his plan, and you must understand that I'm
+in with it, an' so are you. We'll want oceans of beer to convince
+us--firmaments full. We'll give him talk for his money, and one by one
+all the boys'll come in and he'll have a nest of nine hundred mutineers
+to squat in an' give drink to."
+
+"What makes me killing-mad is his wanting us to do what the niggers
+did thirty years gone. That an' his pig's cheek in saying that other
+regiments would come along," said a Kerry man.
+
+"That's not so bad as hintin' we should loose off on the colonel."
+
+"Colonel be sugared! I'd as soon as not put a shot through his helmet
+to see him jump and clutch his old horse's head. But Mulcahy talks o'
+shootin' our comp'ny orf'cers accidental."
+
+"He said that, did he?" said Horse Egan.
+
+"Somethin' like that, anyways. Can't ye fancy ould Barber Brady wid a
+bullet in his lungs, coughin' like a sick monkey, an' sayin', 'Bhoys,
+I do not mind your gettin' dhrunk, but you must hould your liquor like
+men. The man that shot me is dhrunk. I'll suspend investigations for six
+hours, while I get this bullet cut out, and then--'"
+
+"'An' then," continued Horse Egan, for the peppery Major's peculiarities
+of speech and manner were as well known as his tanned face; "'an' then,
+ye dissolute, half-baked, putty-faced scum o' Connemara, if I find a
+man so much as lookin' confused, begad, I'll coort-martial the whole
+company. A man that can't get over his liquor in six hours is not fit to
+belong to the Mavericks!'"
+
+A shout of laughter bore witness to the truth of the sketch.
+
+"It's pretty to think of," said the Kerry man slowly. "Mulcahy would
+have us do all the devilmint, and get clear himself, someways. He wudn't
+be takin' all this fool's throuble in shpoilin' the reputation of the
+regimint--"
+
+"Reputation of your grandmother's pig!" said Dan.
+
+"Well, an' he had a good reputation tu; so it's all right. Mulcahy
+must see his way to clear out behind him, or he'd not ha' come so far,
+talkin' powers of darkness."
+
+"Did you hear anything of a regimental coortmartial among the Black
+Boneens, these days? Half a company of 'em took one of the new draft
+an' hanged him by his arms with a tent-rope from a third-story verandah.
+They gave no reason for so doin', but he was half dead. I'm thinking
+that the Boneens are short-sighted. It was a friend of Mulcahy's, or
+a man in the same trade. They'd a deal better ha' taken his beer,"
+returned Dan reflectively.
+
+"Better still ha' handed him up to the Colonel," said Horse Egan,
+"onless--but sure the news wud be all over the counthry an' give the
+reg'ment a bad name."
+
+"An' there'd be no reward for that man--he but went about talkin'," said
+the Kerry man artlessly.
+
+"You speak by your breed," said Dan, with a laugh. "There was never a
+Kerry man yet that wudn't sell his brother for a pipe o' tobacco an' a
+pat on the back from a p'liceman."
+
+"Praise God I'm not a bloomin' Orangeman," was the answer.
+
+"No, nor never will be," said Dan. "They breed men in Ulster. Would you
+like to thry the taste of one?"
+
+The Kerry man looked and longed, but forbore. The odds of battle were
+too great. "Then you'll not even give Mulcahy a--a strike for his
+money," said the voice of Horse Egan, who regarded what he called
+"trouble" of any kind as the pinnacle of felicity.
+
+Dan answered not at all, but crept on tip-toe, with long strides, to
+the mess-room, the men following. The room was empty. In a corner, cased
+like the King of Dahomey's state umbrella, stood the regimental Colours.
+Dan lifted them tenderly and unrolled in the light of the candles the
+record of the Mavericks--tattered, worn, and hacked. The white satin
+was darkened everywhere with big brown stains, the gold threads on the
+crowned harp were frayed and discoloured, and the Red Bull, the totem
+of the Mavericks, was coffee-hued. The stiff, embroidered folds, whose
+price is human life, rustled down slowly. The Mavericks keep their
+colours long and guard them very sacredly.
+
+"Vittoria, Salamanca, Toulouse, Waterloo, Moodkee, Ferozshah, an'
+Sobraon--that was fought close next door here, against the very beggars
+he wants us to join. Inkerman, The Alma, Sebastopol! 'What are those
+little businesses compared to the campaigns of General Mulcahy? The
+Mut'ny, think o' that; the Mut'ny an' some dirty little matters in
+Afghanistan; an' for that an' these an' those"--Dan pointed to the names
+of glorious battles--"that Yankee man with the partin' in his hair comes
+an' says as easy as 'have a drink'... Holy Moses, there's the captain!"
+
+But it was the mess-sergeant who came in just as the men clattered out,
+and found the colours uncased.
+
+From that day dated the mutiny of the Mavericks, to the joy of Mulcahy
+and the pride of his mother in New York--the good lady who sent the
+money for the beer. Never, so far as words went, was such a mutiny. The
+conspirators, led by Dan Grady and Horse Egan, poured in daily. They
+were sound men, men to be trusted, and they all wanted blood; but first
+they must have beer. They cursed the Queen, they mourned over Ireland,
+they suggested hideous plunder of the Indian country-side, and then,
+alas--some of the younger men would go forth and wallow on the ground
+in spasms of wicked laughter The genius of the Irish for conspiracies is
+remarkable. None the less they would swear no oaths but those of their
+own making, which were rare and curious, and they were always at pains
+to impress Mulcahy with the risks they ran. Naturally the flood of beer
+wrought demoralisation. But Mulcahy confused the causes of things, and
+when a very muzzy Maverick smote a sergeant on the nose or called his
+commanding officer a bald-headed old lard-bladder and even worse
+names, he fancied that rebellion and not liquor was at the bottom of
+the outbreak. Other gentlemen who have concerned themselves in larger
+conspiracies have made the same error.
+
+The hot season, in which they protested no man could rebel, came to an
+end, and Mulcahy suggested a visible return for his teachings. As to the
+actual upshot of the mutiny he cared nothing. It would be enough if the
+English, infatuatedly trusting to the integrity of their army, should
+be startled with news of an Irish regiment revolting from political
+considerations. His persistent demands would have ended, at Dan's
+instigation, in a regimental belting which in all probability would
+have killed him and cut off the supply of beer, had not he been sent on
+special duty some fifty miles away from the Cantonment to cool his heels
+in a mud fort and dismount obsolete artillery. Then the colonel of
+the Mavericks, reading his newspaper diligently, and scenting Frontier
+trouble from afar, posted to the army headquarters and pled with the
+Commander-in-chief for certain privileges, to be granted under certain
+contingencies; which contingencies came about only a week later, when
+the annual little war on the border developed itself and the colonel
+returned to carry the good news to the Mavericks. He held the promise of
+the Chief for active service, and the men must get ready.
+
+On the evening of the same day, Mulcahy, an unconsidered corporal--yet
+great in conspiracy--returned to cantonments, and heard sounds of strife
+and howlings from afar off. The mutiny had broken out and the barracks
+of the Mavericks were one white-washed pandemonium. A private tearing
+through the barrack-square, gasped in his ear, "Service! Active service.
+It's a burnin' shame." Oh joy, the Mavericks had risen on the eve of
+battle! They would not--noble and loyal sons of Ireland--serve the
+Queen longer. The news would flash through the country-side and over to
+England, and he--Mulcahy--the trusted of the Third Three, had brought
+about the crash. The private stood in the middle of the square and
+cursed colonel, regiment, officers, and doctor, particularly the doctor,
+by his gods. An orderly of the native cavalry regiment clattered through
+the mob of soldiers. He was half lifted, half dragged from his horse,
+beaten on the back with mighty hand-claps till his eyes watered, and
+called all manner of endearing names. Yes, the Mavericks had fraternized
+with the native troops. Who then was the agent among the latter that had
+blindly wrought with Mulcahy so well?
+
+An officer slunk, almost ran, from the mess to a barrack. He was mobbed
+by the infuriated soldiery, who closed round but did not kill him, for
+he fought his way to shelter, flying for the life. Mulcahy could
+have wept with pure joy and thankfulness. The very prisoners in the
+guard-room were shaking the bars of their cells and howling like wild
+beasts, and from every barrack poured the booming as of a big war-drum.
+
+Mulcahy hastened to his own barrack. He could hardly hear himself
+speak. Eighty men were pounding with fist and heel the tables and
+trestles--eighty men, flushed with mutiny, stripped to their shirt
+sleeves, their knapsacks half-packed for the march to the sea, made the
+two-inch boards thunder again as they chanted, to a tune that Mulcahy
+knew well, the Sacred War Song of the Mavericks--
+
+     Listen in the north, my boys, there's trouble on the wind;
+     Tramp o' Cossack hooves in front, gray great-coats behind,
+     Trouble on the Frontier of a most amazin' kind,
+     Trouble on the waters o' the Oxus!
+
+Then, as the table broke under the furious accompaniment--
+
+     Hurrah! hurrah! it's north by west we go;
+     Hurrah! hurrah! the chance we wanted so;
+     Let 'em hear the chorus from Umballa to Moscow,
+     As we go marchin' to the Kremling.
+
+"Mother of all the saints in bliss and all the devils in cinders,
+where's my fine new sock widout the heel?" howled Horse Egan, ransacking
+everybody's valise but his own. He was engaged in making up deficiencies
+of kit preparatory to a campaign, and in that work he steals best who
+steals last. "Ah, Mulcahy, you're in good time," he shouted, "We've got
+the route, and we're off on Thursday for a pic-nic wid the Lancers next
+door."
+
+An ambulance orderly appeared with a huge basket full of lint rolls,
+provided by the forethought of the Queen for such as might need
+them later on. Horse Egan unrolled his bandage, and flicked it under
+Mulcahy's nose, chanting--
+
+     "Sheepskin an' bees' wax, thunder, pitch, and plaster,
+     The more you try to pull it off, the more it sticks the faster.
+     As I was goin' to New Orleans--
+
+"You know the rest of it, my Irish American-Jew boy. By gad, ye have to
+fight for the Queen in the inside av a fortnight, my darlin."
+
+A roar of laughter interrupted. Mulcahy looked vacantly down the room.
+Bid a boy defy his father when the pantomime-cab is at the door, or
+a girl develop a will of her own when her mother is putting the last
+touches to the first ball-dress, but do not ask an Irish regiment to
+embark upon mutiny on the eve of a campaign, when it has fraternised
+with the native regiment that accompanies it, and driven its officers
+into retirement with ten thousand clamorous questions, and the prisoners
+dance for joy, and the sick men stand in the open calling down all known
+diseases on the head of the doctor, who has certified that they are
+"medically unfit for active service." At even the Mavericks might have
+been mistaken for mutineers by one so unversed in their natures as
+Mulcahy. At dawn a girls' school might have learned deportment from
+them. They knew that their colonel's hand had closed, and that he who
+broke that iron discipline would not go to the front: nothing in the
+world will persuade one of our soldiers, when he is ordered to the north
+on the smallest of affairs, that he is not immediately going gloriously
+to slay Cossacks and cook his kettles in the palace of the Czar. A few
+of the younger men mourned for Mulcahy's beer, because the campaign was
+to be conducted on strict temperance principles, but as Dan and Horse
+Egan said sternly, "We've got the beer-man with us. He shall drink now
+on his own hook."
+
+Mulcahy had not taken into account the possibility of being sent on
+active service. He had made up his mind that he would not go under any
+circumstances, but fortune was against him.
+
+"Sick-you?" said the doctor, who had served an unholy apprenticeship
+to his trade in Tralee poorhouses. "You're only home-sick, and what you
+call varicose veins come from over-eating. A little gentle exercise will
+cure that." And later, "Mulcahy, my man, everybody is allowed to apply
+for a sick-certificate once. If he tries it twice we call him by an ugly
+name. Go back to your duty, and let's hear no more of your diseases."
+
+I am ashamed to say that Horse Egan enjoyed the study of Mulcahy's
+soul in those days, and Dan took an equal interest. Together they would
+communicate to their corporal all the dark lore of death which is the
+portion of those who have seen men die. Egan had the larger experience,
+but Dan the finer imagination. Mulcahy shivered when the former spoke of
+the knife as an intimate acquaintance, or the latter dwelt with loving
+particularity on the fate of those who, wounded and helpless, had been
+overlooked by the ambulances, and had fallen into the hands of the
+Afghan women-folk.
+
+Mulcahy knew that the mutiny, for the present at least, was dead; knew,
+too, that a change had come over Dan's usually respectful attitude
+towards him, and Horse Egan's laughter and frequent allusions to
+abortive conspiracies emphasised all that the conspirator had guessed.
+The horrible fascination of the death-stories, however, made him seek
+the men's society. He learned much more than he had bargained for; and
+in this manner. It was on the last night before the regiment entrained
+to the front. The barracks were stripped of everything movable, and the
+men were too excited to sleep. The bare walls gave out a heavy hospital
+smell of chloride of lime.
+
+"And what," said Mulcahy in an awe-stricken whisper, after some
+conversation on the eternal subject, "are you going to do to me, Dan?"
+This might have been the language of an able conspirator conciliating a
+weak spirit.
+
+"You'll see," said Dan grimly, turning over in his cot, "or I rather
+shud say you'll not see."
+
+This was hardly the language of a weak spirit. Mulcahy shook under the
+bed-clothes.
+
+"Be easy with him," put in Egan from the next cot. "He has got his
+chanst o' goin' clean. Listen, Mulcahy, all we want is for the good sake
+of the regiment that you take your death standing up, as a man shud.
+There's be heaps an' heaps of enemy--plenshus heaps. Go there an' do all
+you can and die decent. You'll die with a good name there. 'Tis not a
+hard thing considerin'."
+
+Again Mulcahy shivered.
+
+"An' how could a man wish to die better than fightin'?" added Dan
+consolingly.
+
+"And if I won't?" said the corporal in a dry whisper.
+
+"There'll be a dale of smoke," returned Dan, sitting up and ticking off
+the situation on his fingers, "sure to be, an' the noise of the firin'll
+be tremenjus, an' we'll be running about up and down, the regiment will.
+But we, Horse and I--we'll stay by you, Mulcahy, and never let you go.
+Maybe there'll be an accident."
+
+"It's playing it low on me. Let me go. For pity's sake, let me go. I
+never did you harm, and--and I stood you as much beer as I could. Oh,
+don't be hard on me, Dan! You are--you were in it too. You won't kill me
+up there, will you?"
+
+"I'm not thinkin' of the treason; though you shud be glad any honest
+boys drank with you. It's for the regiment. We can't have the shame o'
+you bringin' shame on us. You went to the doctor quiet as a sick cat
+to get and stay behind an' live with the women at the depot--you that
+wanted us to run to the sea in wolf-packs like the rebels none of your
+black blood dared to be! But we knew about your goin' to the doctor, for
+he told in mess, and it's all over the regiment. Bein', as we are, your
+best friends, we didn't allow any one to molest you yet. We will see to
+you ourselves. Fight which you will--us or the enemy you'll never lie
+in that cot again, and there's more glory and maybe less kicks from
+fightin' the enemy. That's fair speakin'."
+
+"And he told us by word of mouth to go and join with the niggers--you've
+forgotten that, Dan," said Horse Egan, to justify sentence.
+
+"What's the use of plaguin' the man? One shot pays for all. Sleep ye
+sound, Mulcahy. But you onderstand, do ye not?"
+
+Mulcahy for some weeks understood very little of anything at all save
+that ever at his elbow, in camp or at parade, stood two big men with
+soft voices adjuring him to commit hari-kari lest a worse thing should
+happen--to die for the honour of the regiment in decency among the
+nearest knives. But Mulcahy dreaded death. He remembered certain things
+that priests had said in his infancy, and his mother--not the one at New
+York--starting from her sleep with shrieks to pray for a husband's soul
+in torment. It is well to be of a cultured intelligence, but in time
+of trouble the weak human mind returns to the creed it sucked in at the
+breast, and if that creed be not a pretty one trouble follows. Also,
+the death he would have to face would be physically painful. Most
+conspirators have large imaginations. Mulcahy could see himself, as he
+lay on the earth in the night, dying by various causes. They were all
+horrible; the mother in New York was very far away, and the Regiment,
+the engine that, once you fall in its grip, moves you forward whether
+you will or won't, was daily coming closer to the enemy!
+
+They were brought to the field of Marzun Katai, and with the Black
+Boneens to aid, they fought a fight that has never been set down in the
+newspapers. In response, many believe, to the fervent prayers of Father
+Dennis, the enemy not only elected to fight in the open, but made a
+beautiful fight, as many weeping Irish mothers knew later. They gathered
+behind walls or flickered across the open in shouting masses, and were
+pot-valiant in artillery. It was expedient to hold a large reserve
+and wait for the psychological moment that was being prepared by the
+shrieking shrapnel. Therefore the Mavericks lay down in open order on
+the brow of a hill to watch the play till their call should come.
+Father Dennis, whose duty was in the rear, to smooth the trouble of the
+wounded, had naturally managed to make his way to the foremost of his
+boys, and lay like a black porpoise, at length on the grass. To him
+crawled Mulcahy, ashen-gray, demanding absolution.
+
+"'Wait till you're shot," said Father Dennis sweetly. "There's a time
+for everything."
+
+Dan Grady chuckled as he blew for the fiftieth time into the breech of
+his speckless rifle. Mulcahy groaned and buried his head in his arms
+till a stray shot spoke like a snipe immediately above his head, and a
+general heave and tremour rippled the line. Other shots followed and a
+few took effect, as a shriek or a grunt attested. The officers, who had
+been lying down with the men, rose and began to walk steadily up and
+down the front of their companies.
+
+This manoeuvre, executed, not for publication, but as a guarantee of
+good faith, to soothe men, demands nerve. You must not hurry, you must
+not look nervous, though you know that you are a mark for every rifle
+within extreme range, and above all if you are smitten you must make as
+little noise as possible and roll inwards through the files. It is at
+this hour, when the breeze brings the first salt whiff of the powder
+to noses rather cold at the tip, and the eye can quietly take in the
+appearance of each red casualty, that the strain on the nerves is
+strongest. Scotch regiments can endure for half a day and abate no
+whit of their zeal at the end; English regiments sometimes sulk under
+punishment, while the Irish, like the French, are apt to run forward
+by ones and twos, which is just as bad as running back. The truly wise
+commandant of highly-strung troops allows them, in seasons of waiting,
+to hear the sound of their own voices uplifted in song. There is a
+legend of an English regiment that lay by its arms under fire chaunting
+"Sam Hall," to the horror of its newly appointed and pious colonel. The
+Black Boneens, who were suffering more than the Mavericks, on a hill
+half a mile away, began presently to explain to all who cared to
+listen--
+
+     We'll sound the jubilee, from the centre to the sea,
+     And Ireland shall be free, says the Shan-van Vogh.
+
+"Sing, boys," said Father Dennis softly. "It looks as if we cared for
+their Afghan peas."
+
+Dan Grady raised himself to his knees and opened his mouth in a song
+imparted to him, as to most of his comrades, in the strictest confidence
+by Mulcahy--that Mulcahy then lying limp and fainting on the grass, the
+chill fear of death upon him.
+
+Company after company caught up the words which, the I. A. A. say, are
+to herald the general rising of Erin, and to breathe which, except to
+those duly appointed to hear, is death. Wherefore they are printed in
+this place.
+
+     The Saxon in Heaven's just balance is weighed,
+     His doom like Belshazzar's in death has been cast,
+     And the hand of the venger shall never be stayed
+     Till his race, faith, and speech are a dream of the past.
+
+They were heart-filling lines and they ran with a swirl; the I. A. A.
+are better served by their pens than their petards. Dan clapped Mulcahy
+merrily on the back, asking him to sing up. The officers lay down again.
+There was no need to walk any more. Their men were soothing themselves
+thunderously, thus--
+
+     St. Mary in Heaven has written the vow
+     That the land shall not rest till the heretic blood,
+     From the babe at the breast to the hand at the plough,
+     Has rolled to the ocean like Shannon in flood!
+
+"I'll speak to you after all's over," said Father Dennis authoritatively
+in Dan's ear. "What's the use of confessing to me when you do this
+foolishness? Dan, you've been playing with fire! I'll lay you more
+penance in a week than--"
+
+"Come along to Purgatory with us, Father dear. The Boneens are on the
+move; they'll let us go now!"
+
+The regiment rose to the blast of the bugle as one man; but one man
+there was who rose more swiftly than all the others, for half an inch of
+bayonet was in the fleshy part of his leg.
+
+"You've got to do it," said Dan grimly. "Do it decent, anyhow;" and
+the roar of the rush drowned his words, for the rear companies thrust
+forward the first, still singing as they swung down the slope--
+
+     From the child at the breast to the hand at the plough
+     Shall roll to the ocean like Shannon in flood!
+
+They should have sung it in the face of England, not of the Afghans,
+whom it impressed as much as did the wild Irish yell.
+
+"They came down singing," said the unofficial report of the enemy, borne
+from village to village the next day. "They continued to sing, and it
+was written that our men could not abide when they came. It is believed
+that there was magic in the aforesaid song."
+
+Dan and Horse Egan kept themselves in the neighbourhood of Mulcahy.
+Twice the man would have bolted back in the confusion. Twice he was
+heaved, kicked, and shouldered back again into the unpaintable inferno
+of a hotly contested charge.
+
+At the end, the panic excess of his fear drove him into madness beyond
+all human courage. His eyes staring at nothing, his mouth open and
+frothing, and breathing as one in a cold bath, he went forward demented,
+while Dan toiled after him. The charge checked at a high mud wall. It
+was Mulcahy who scrambled up tooth and nail and hurled down among the
+bayonets the amazed Afghan who barred his way. It was Mulcahy, keeping
+to the straight line of the rabid dog, who led a collection of ardent
+souls at a newly unmasked battery and flung himself on the muzzle of a
+gun as his companions danced among the gunners. It was Mulcahy who ran
+wildly on from that battery into the open plain, where the enemy were
+retiring in sullen groups. His hands were empty, he had lost helmet and
+belt, and he was bleeding from a wound in the neck. Dan and Horse Egan,
+panting and distressed, had thrown themselves down on the ground by the
+captured guns, when they noticed Mulcahy's charge.
+
+"Mad," said Horse Egan critically. "Mad with fear! He's going straight
+to his death, an' shouting's no use."
+
+"Let him go. Watch now! If we fire we'll hit him maybe."
+
+The last of a hurrying crowd of Afghans turned at the noise of shod feet
+behind him, and shifted his knife ready to hand. This, he saw, was no
+time to take prisoners. Mulcahy tore on, sobbing; the straight-held
+blade went home through the defenceless breast, and the body pitched
+forward almost before a shot from Dan's rifle brought down the slayer
+and still further hurried the Afghan retreat. The two Irishmen went out
+to bring in their dead.
+
+"He was given the point, and that was an easy death," said Horse Egan,
+viewing the corpse. "But would you ha' shot him, Danny, if he had
+lived?"
+
+"He didn't live, so there's no sayin'. But I doubt I wud have bekaze
+of the fun he gave us--let alone the beer. Hike up his legs, Horse, and
+we'll bring him in. Perhaps 'tis better this way."
+
+They bore the poor limp body to the mass of the regiment, lolling
+open-mouthed on their rifles; and there was a general snigger when one
+of the younger subalterns said, "That was a good man!"
+
+"Phew," said Horse Egan, when a burial-party had taken over the burden.
+"I'm powerful dhry, and this reminds me there'll be no more beer at
+all."
+
+"Fwhy not?" said Dan, with a twinkle in his eye as he stretched himself
+for rest. "Are we not conspirin' all we can, an' while we conspire are
+we not entitled to free dhrinks? Sure his ould mother in New York would
+not let her son's comrades perish of drouth--if she can be reached at
+the end of a letter."
+
+"You're a janius," said Horse Egan. "0' coorse she will not. I wish
+this crool war was over, an' we'd get back to canteen. Faith, the
+Commander-in-chief ought to be hanged in his own little sword-belt for
+makin' us work on wather."
+
+The Mavericks were generally of Horse Egan's opinion. So they made
+haste to get their work done as soon as possible, and their industry was
+rewarded by unexpected peace. "We can fight the sons of Adam," said the
+tribesmen, "but we cannot fight the sons of Eblis, and this regiment
+never stays still in one place. Let us therefore come in." They came
+in, and "this regiment" withdrew to conspire under the leadership of Dan
+Grady.
+
+Excellent as a subordinate, Dan failed altogether as a
+chief-in-command--possibly because he was too much swayed by the advice
+of the only man in the regiment who could manufacture more than one kind
+of handwriting. The same mail that bore to Mulcahy's mother in New York
+a letter from the colonel telling her how valiantly her son had fought
+for the Queen, and how assuredly he would have been recommended for the
+Victoria Cross had he survived, carried a communication signed, I grieve
+to say, by that same colonel and all the officers of the regiment,
+explaining their willingness to do "anything which is contrary to the
+regulations and all kinds of revolutions" if only a little money could
+be forwarded to cover incidental expenses. Daniel Grady, Esquire, would
+receive funds, vice Mulcahy, who "was unwell at this present time of
+writing."
+
+Both letters were forwarded from New York to Tehama Street, San
+Francisco, with marginal comments as brief as they were bitter.
+The Third Three read and looked at each other. Then the Second
+Conspirator--he who believed in "joining hands with the practical
+branches"--began to laugh, and on recovering his gravity said,
+"Gentlemen, I consider this will be a lesson to us. We're left again.
+Those cursed Irish have let us down. I knew they would, but"--here he
+laughed afresh--"I'd give considerable to know what was at the back of
+it all."
+
+His curiosity would have been satisfied had he seen Dan Grady,
+discredited regimental conspirator, trying to explain to his thirsty
+comrades in India the non-arrival of funds from New York.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WHO WAS
+
+     The Earth gave up her dead that tide,
+     Into our camp he came,
+     And said his say, and went his way,
+     And left our hearts aflame.
+
+     Keep tally--on the gun-butt score
+     The vengeance we must take,
+     When God shall bring full reckoning,
+     For our dead comrade's sake.
+
+     Ballad.
+
+Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person
+till he tucks in his shirt. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only
+when he insists upon being treated as the most easterly of western
+peoples instead of the most westerly of easterns that he becomes a
+racial anomaly extremely difficult to handle. The host never knows which
+side of his nature is going to turn up next.
+
+Dirkovitch was a Russian--a Russian of the Russians--who appeared to get
+his bread by serving the Czar as an officer in a Cossack regiment, and
+corresponding for a Russian newspaper with a name that was never twice
+alike. He was a handsome young Oriental, fond of wandering through
+unexplored portions of the earth, and he arrived in India from nowhere
+in particular. At least no living man could ascertain whether it was by
+way of Balkh, Badakshan, Chitral, Beluchistan, or Nepaul, or anywhere
+else. The Indian Government, being in an unusually affable mood, gave
+orders that he was to be civilly treated and shown everything that was
+to be seen. So he drifted, talking bad English and worse French, from
+one city to another, till he foregathered with Her Majesty's White
+Hussars in the city of Peshawur, which stands at the mouth of that
+narrow swordcut in the hills that men call the Khyber Pass. He was
+undoubtedly an officer, and he was decorated after the manner of the
+Russians with little enamelled crosses, and he could talk, and (though
+this has nothing to do with his merits) he had been given up as a
+hopeless task, or cask, by the Black Tyrone, who individually and
+collectively, with hot whiskey and honey, mulled brandy, and mixed
+spirits of every kind, had striven in all hospitality to make him drunk.
+And when the Black Tyrone, who are exclusively Irish, fail to disturb
+the peace of head of a foreigner--that foreigner is certain to be a
+superior man.
+
+The White Hussars were as conscientious in choosing their wine as in
+charging the enemy. All that they possessed, including some wondrous
+brandy, was placed at the absolute disposition of Dirkovitch, and he
+enjoyed himself hugely--even more than among the Black Tyrones.
+
+But he remained distressingly European through it all. The White Hussars
+were "My dear true friends," "Fellow-soldiers glorious," and "Brothers
+inseparable." He would unburden himself by the hour on the glorious
+future that awaited the combined arms of England and Russia when their
+hearts and their territories should run side by side, and the great
+mission of civilising Asia should begin. That was unsatisfactory,
+because Asia is not going to be civilised after the methods of the West.
+There is too much Asia and she is too old. You cannot reform a lady of
+many lovers, and Asia has been insatiable in her flirtations aforetime.
+She will never attend Sunday-school or learn to vote save with swords
+for tickets.
+
+Dirkovitch knew this as well as any one else, but it suited him to talk
+special-correspondently and to make himself as genial as he could. Now
+and then he volunteered a little, a very little, information about
+his own sotnia of Cossacks, left apparently to look after themselves
+somewhere at the back of beyond. He had done rough work in Central Asia,
+and had seen rather more help-yourself fighting than most men of his
+years. But he was careful never to betray his superiority, and more than
+careful to praise on all occasions the appearance, drill, uniform, and
+organisation of Her Majesty's White Hussars. And indeed they were a
+regiment to be admired. When Lady Durgan, widow of the late Sir John
+Durgan, arrived in their station, and after a short time had been
+proposed to by every single man at mess, she put the public sentiment
+very neatly when she explained that they were all so nice that unless
+she could marry them all, including the colonel and some majors already
+married, she was not going to content herself with one hussar.
+Wherefore she wedded a little man in a rifle regiment, being by nature
+contradictious; and the White Hussars were going to wear crape on their
+arms, but compromised by attending the wedding in full force, and lining
+the aisle with unutterable reproach. She had jilted them all--from
+Basset-Holmer the senior captain to little Mildred the junior subaltern,
+who could have given her four thousand a year and a title.
+
+The only persons who did not share the general regard for the White
+Hussars were a few thousand gentlemen of Jewish extraction who lived
+across the border, and answered to the name of Pathan. They had once met
+the regiment officially and for something less than twenty minutes, but
+the interview, which was complicated with many casualties, had filled
+them with prejudice. They even called the White Hussars children of the
+devil and sons of persons whom it would be perfectly impossible to meet
+in decent society. Yet they were not above making their aversion
+fill their money-belts. The regiment possessed carbines--beautiful
+Martini-Henry carbines that would lob a bullet into an enemy's camp at
+one thousand yards, and were even handier than the long rifle. Therefore
+they were coveted all along the border, and since demand inevitably
+breeds supply, they were supplied at the risk of life and limb for
+exactly their weight in coined silver--seven and one half pounds' weight
+of rupees, or sixteen pounds sterling reckoning the rupee at par.
+They were stolen at night by snaky-haired thieves who crawled on their
+stomachs under the nose of the sentries; they disappeared mysteriously
+from locked arm-racks, and in the hot weather, when all the barrack
+doors and windows were open, they vanished like puffs of their
+own smoke. The border people desired them for family vendettas and
+contingencies. But in the long cold nights of the northern Indian winter
+they were stolen most extensively. The traffic of murder was liveliest
+among the hills at that season, and prices ruled high. The regimental
+guards were first doubled and then trebled. A trooper does not much
+care if he loses a weapon--Government must make it good--but he deeply
+resents the loss of his sleep. The regiment grew very angry, and one
+rifle-thief bears the visible marks of their anger upon him to this
+hour. That incident stopped the burglaries for a time, and the guards
+were reduced accordingly, and the regiment devoted itself to polo with
+unexpected results; for it beat by two goals to one that very terrible
+polo corps the Lushkar Light Horse, though the latter had four ponies
+apiece for a short hour's fight, as well as a native officer who played
+like a lambent flame across the ground.
+
+They gave a dinner to celebrate the event. The Lushkar team came, and
+Dirkovitch came, in the fullest full uniform of a Cossack officer, which
+is as full as a dressing-gown, and was introduced to the Lushkars, and
+opened his eyes as he regarded. They were lighter men than the Hussars,
+and they carried themselves with the swing that is the peculiar right of
+the Punjab Frontier Force and all Irregular Horse. Like everything else
+in the Service it has to be learnt, but, unlike many things, it is never
+forgotten, and remains on the body till death.
+
+The great beam-roofed mess-room of the White Hussars was a sight to be
+remembered. All the mess plate was out on the long table--the same table
+that had served up the bodies of five officers after a forgotten fight
+long and long ago--the dingy, battered standards faced the door of
+entrance, clumps of winter-roses lay between the silver candlesticks,
+and the portraits of eminent officers deceased looked down on their
+successors from between the heads of sambhur, nilghai, markhor,
+and, pride of all the mess, two grinning snow-leopards that had cost
+Basset-Holmer four months' leave that he might have spent in England,
+instead of on the road to Thibet and the daily risk of his life by
+ledge, snow-slide, and grassy slope.
+
+The servants in spotless white muslin and the crest of their regiments
+on the brow of their turbans waited behind their masters, who were clad
+in the scarlet and gold of the White Hussars, and the cream and silver
+of the Lushkar Light Horse. Dirkovitch's dull green uniform was the only
+dark spot at the board, but his big onyx eyes made up for it. He was
+fraternising effusively with the captain of the Lushkar team, who was
+wondering how many of Dirkovitch's Cossacks his own dark wiry
+down-countrymen could account for in a fair charge. But one does not
+speak of these things openly.
+
+The talk rose higher and higher, and the regimental band played between
+the courses, as is the immemorial custom, till all tongues ceased for
+a moment with the removal of the dinner-slips and the first toast of
+obligation, when an officer rising said, "Mr. Vice, the Queen," and
+little Mildred from the bottom of the table answered, "The Queen, God
+bless her," and the big spurs clanked as the big men heaved themselves
+up and drank the Queen upon whose pay they were falsely supposed to
+settle their mess-bills. That Sacrament of the Mess never grows old, and
+never ceases to bring a lump into the throat of the listener wherever he
+be by sea or by land. Dirkovitch rose with his "brothers glorious," but
+he could not understand. No one but an officer can tell what the toast
+means; and the bulk have more sentiment than comprehension. Immediately
+after the little silence that follows on the ceremony there entered the
+native officer who had played for the Lushkar team. He could not, of
+course, eat with the mess, but he came in at dessert, all six feet
+of him, with the blue and silver turban atop, and the big black boots
+below. The mess rose joyously as he thrust forward the hilt of his sabre
+in token of fealty for the colonel of the White Hussars to touch, and
+dropped into a vacant chair amid shouts of: "Rung ho, Hira Singh!"
+(which being translated means "Go in and win"). "Did I whack you over
+the knee, old man?" "Ressaidar Sahib, what the devil made you play that
+kicking pig of a pony in the last ten minutes?" "Shabash, Ressaidar
+Sahib!" Then the voice of the colonel, "The health of Ressaidar Hira
+Singh!"
+
+After the shouting had died away Hira Singh rose to reply, for he was
+the cadet of a royal house, the son of a king's son, and knew what was
+due on these occasions. Thus he spoke in the vernacular:--"Colonel Sahib
+and officers of this regiment. Much honour have you done me. This will I
+remember. We came down from afar to play you. But we were beaten." ("No
+fault of yours, Ressaidar Sahib. Played on our own ground, y' know.
+Your ponies were cramped from the railway. Don't apologise!") "Therefore
+perhaps we will come again if it be so ordained." ("Hear! Hear! Hear,
+indeed! Bravo! Hsh!") "Then we will play you afresh" ("Happy to meet
+you.") "till there are left no feet upon our ponies. Thus far for
+sport." He dropped one hand on his sword-hilt and his eye wandered to
+Dirkovitch lolling back in his chair. "But if by the will of God there
+arises any other game which is not the polo game, then be assured,
+Colonel Sahib and officers, that we will play it out side by side,
+though they," again his eye sought Dirkovitch, "though they, I say, have
+fifty ponies to our one horse." And with a deep-mouthed Rung ho!
+that sounded like a musket-butt on flagstones he sat down amid leaping
+glasses.
+
+Dirkovitch, who had devoted himself steadily to the brandy--the terrible
+brandy aforementioned--did not understand, nor did the expurgated
+translations offered to him at all convey the point. Decidedly Hira
+Singh's was the speech of the evening, and the clamour might have
+continued to the dawn had it not been broken by the noise of a shot
+without that sent every man feeling at his defenseless left side. Then
+there was a scuffle and a yell of pain.
+
+"Carbine-stealing again!" said the adjutant, calmly sinking back in
+his chair. "This comes of reducing the guards. I hope the sentries have
+killed him."
+
+The feet of armed men pounded on the verandah flags, and it was as
+though something was being dragged.
+
+"Why don't they put him in the cells till the morning?" said the colonel
+testily. "See if they've damaged him, sergeant."
+
+The mess sergeant fled out into the darkness and returned with two
+troopers and a corporal, all very much perplexed.
+
+"Caught a man stealin' carbines, sir," said the corporal. "Leastways 'e
+was crawlin' towards the barricks, sir, past the main road sentries, an'
+the sentry 'e sez, sir--"
+
+The limp heap of rags upheld by the three men groaned. Never was seen so
+destitute and demoralised an Afghan. He was turbanless, shoeless, caked
+with dirt, and all but dead with rough handling. Hira Singh started
+slightly at the sound of the man's pain. Dirkovitch took another glass
+of brandy.
+
+"What does the sentry say?" said the colonel.
+
+"Sez 'e speaks English, sir," said the corporal.
+
+"So you brought him into mess instead of handing him over to the
+sergeant! If he spoke all the Tongues of the Pentecost you've no
+business--"
+
+Again the bundle groaned and muttered. Little Mildred had risen from his
+place to inspect. He jumped back as though he had been shot.
+
+"Perhaps it would be better, sir, to send the men away," said he to the
+colonel, for he was a much privileged subaltern. He put his arms round
+the rag-bound horror as he spoke, and dropped him into a chair. It may
+not have been explained that the littleness of Mildred lay in his being
+six feet four and big in proportion. The corporal seeing that an officer
+was disposed to look after the capture, and that the colonel's eye was
+beginning to blaze, promptly removed himself and his men. The mess was
+left alone with the carbine-thief, who laid his head on the table and
+wept bitterly, hopelessly, and inconsolably as little children weep.
+
+Hira Singh leapt to his feet. "Colonel Sahib," said he, "that man is no
+Afghan, for they weep Ai! Ai! Nor is he of Hindustan, for they weep Oh!
+Ho! He weeps after the fashion of the white men, who say Ow! Ow!"
+
+"Now where the dickens did you get that knowledge, Hira Singh?" said the
+captain of the Lushkar team.
+
+"Hear him!" said Hira Singh simply, pointing at the crumpled figure that
+wept as though it would never cease.
+
+"He said, 'My God!" said little Mildred. "I heard him say it."
+
+The colonel and the mess-room looked at the man in silence. It is a
+horrible thing to hear a man cry. A woman can sob from the top--of
+her palate, or her lips, or anywhere else, but a man must cry from his
+diaphragm, and it rends him to pieces.
+
+"Poor devil!" said the colonel, coughing tremendously. "We ought to send
+him to hospital. He's been man-handled."
+
+Now the adjutant loved his carbines. They were to him as his
+grandchildren, the men standing in the first place. He grunted
+rebelliously: "I can understand an Afghan stealing, because he's built
+that way. But I can't understand his crying. That makes it worse."
+
+The brandy must have affected Dirkovitch, for he lay back in his chair
+and stared at the ceiling. There was nothing special in the ceiling
+beyond a shadow as of a huge black coffin. Owing to some peculiarity in
+the construction of the mess-room, this shadow was always thrown when
+the candles were lighted. It never disturbed the digestion of the White
+Hussars. They were in fact rather proud of it.
+
+"Is he going to cry all night?" said the colonel, "or are we supposed to
+sit up with little Mildred's guest until he feels better?"
+
+The man in the chair threw up his head and stared at the mess. "Oh, my
+God!" he said, and every soul in the mess rose to his feet. Then the
+Lushkar captain did a deed for which he ought to have been given the
+Victoria Cross--distinguished gallantry in a fight against overwhelming
+curiosity. He picked up his team with his eyes as the hostess picks up
+the ladies at the opportune moment, and pausing only by the colonel's
+chair to say, "This isn't our affair, you know, sir," led them into the
+verandah and the gardens. Hira Singh was the last to go, and he looked
+at Dirkovitch. But Dirkovitch had departed into a brandy-paradise of his
+own. His lips moved without sound and he was studying the coffin on the
+ceiling.
+
+"White--white all over," said Basset-Holmer, the adjutant. "What a
+pernicious renegade he must be! I wonder where he came from?"
+
+The colonel shook the man gently by the arm, and "Who are you?" said he.
+
+There was no answer. The man stared round the mess-room and smiled in
+the colonel's face. Little Mildred, who was always more of a woman than
+a man till "Boot and saddle" was sounded, repeated the question in a
+voice that would have drawn confidences from a geyser. The man only
+smiled. Dirkovitch at the far end of the table slid gently from his
+chair to the floor. No son of Adam in this present imperfect world can
+mix the Hussars' champagne with the Hussars' brandy by five and eight
+glasses of each without remembering the pit whence he was digged and
+descending thither. The band began to play the tune with which the
+White Hussars from the date of their formation have concluded all their
+functions. They would sooner be disbanded than abandon that tune; it is
+a part of their system. The man straightened himself in his chair and
+drummed on the table with his fingers.
+
+"I don't see why we should entertain lunatics," said the colonel. "Call
+a guard and send him off to the cells. We'll look into the business in
+the morning. Give him a glass of wine first, though."
+
+Little Mildred filled a sherry-glass with the brandy and thrust it over
+to the man. He drank, and the tune rose louder, and he straightened
+himself yet more. Then he put out his long-taloned hands to a piece of
+plate opposite and fingered it lovingly. There was a mystery connected
+with that piece of plate, in the shape of a spring which converted what
+was a seven-branched candlestick, three springs on each side and one in
+the middle, into a sort of wheel-spoke candelabrum. He found the spring,
+pressed it, and laughed weakly. He rose from his chair and inspected a
+picture on the wall, then moved on to another picture, the mess watching
+him without a word. When he came to the mantelpiece he shook his head
+and seemed distressed. A piece of plate representing a mounted hussar
+in full uniform caught his eye. He pointed to it, and then to the
+mantelpiece with inquiry in his eyes.
+
+"What is it--Oh, what is it?" said little Mildred. Then as a mother
+might speak to a child, "That is a horse. Yes, a horse."
+
+Very slowly came the answer in a thick, passionless guttural--"Yes,
+I--have seen. But--where is the horse?"
+
+You could have heard the hearts of the mess beating as the men drew back
+to give the stranger full room in his wanderings. There was no question
+of calling the guard.
+
+Again he spoke--very slowly, "Where is our horse?"
+
+There is but one horse in the White Hussars, and his portrait hangs
+outside the door of the mess-room. He is the piebald drum-horse,
+the king of the regimental band, that served the regiment for
+seven-and-thirty years, and in the end was shot for old age. Half the
+mess tore the thing down from its place and thrust it into the man's
+hands. He placed it above the mantelpiece, it clattered on the ledge as
+his poor hands dropped it, and he staggered towards the bottom of the
+table, falling into Mildred's chair. Then all the men spoke to one
+another something after this fashion, "The drum-horse hasn't hung over
+the mantelpiece since '67." "How does he know?" "Mildred, go and speak
+to him again." "Colonel, what are you going to do?" "Oh, dry up, and
+give the poor devil a chance to pull himself together." "It isn't
+possible anyhow. The man's a lunatic."
+
+Little Mildred stood at the colonel's side, talking in his ear. "Will
+you be good enough to take your seats please, gentlemen!" he said, and
+the mess dropped into the chairs. Only Dirkovitch's seat, next to little
+Mildred's, was blank, and little Mildred himself had found Hira Singh's
+place. The wide-eyed mess-sergeant filled the glasses in dead silence.
+Once more the colonel rose, but his hand shook, and the port spilled on
+the table as he looked straight at the man in little Mildred's chair and
+said hoarsely, "Mr. Vice, the Queen." There was a little pause, but the
+man sprung to his feet and answered without hesitation, "The Queen,
+God bless her!" and as he emptied the thin glass he snapped the shank
+between his fingers.
+
+Long and long ago, when the Empress of India was a young woman, and
+there were no unclean ideals in the land, it was the custom of a few
+messes to drink the Queen's toast in broken glass, to the vast delight
+of the mess-contractors. The custom is now dead, because there is
+nothing to break anything for, except now and again the word of a
+Government, and that has been broken already.
+
+"That settles it," said the colonel, with a gasp. "He's not a sergeant.
+What in the world is he?"
+
+The entire mess echoed the word, and the volley of questions would have
+scared any man. It was no wonder that the ragged, filthy invader could
+only smile and shake his head.
+
+From under the table, calm and smiling, rose Dirkovitch, who had been
+roused from healthful slumber by feet upon his body. By the side of
+the man he rose, and the man shrieked and grovelled. It was a horrible
+sight, coming so swiftly upon the pride and glory of the toast that had
+brought the strayed wits together.
+
+Dirkovitch made no offer to raise him, but little Mildred heaved him
+up in an instant. It is not good that a gentleman who can answer to the
+Queen's toast should lie at the feet of a subaltern of Cossacks.
+
+The hasty action tore the wretch's upper clothing nearly to the waist,
+and his body was seamed with dry black scars. There is only one weapon
+in the world that cuts in parallel lines, and it is neither the cane nor
+the cat. Dirkovitch saw the marks, and the pupils of his eyes dilated.
+Also his face changed. He said something that sounded like Shto ve
+takete, and the man fawning answered, Chetyre.
+
+"What's that?" said everybody together.
+
+"His number. That is number four, you know." Dirkovitch spoke very
+thickly.
+
+"What has a Queen's officer to do with a qualified number?" said the
+Colonel, and an unpleasant growl ran round the table.
+
+"How can I tell?" said the affable Oriental with a sweet smile. "He
+is a--how you have it?--escape--run-a-way, from over there." He nodded
+towards the darkness of the night.
+
+"Speak to him if he'll answer you, and speak to him gently," said little
+Mildred, settling the man in a chair. It seemed most improper to all
+present that Dirkovitch should sip brandy as he talked in purring,
+spitting Russian to the creature who answered so feebly and with such
+evident dread. But since Dirkovitch appeared to understand, no one said
+a word. All breathed heavily, leaning forward, in the long gaps of the
+conversation. The next time that they have no engagements on hand the
+White Hussars intend to go to St. Petersburg in a body to learn Russian.
+
+"He does not know how many years ago," said Dirkovitch, facing the mess,
+"but he says it was very long ago in a war. I think that there was an
+accident. He says he was of this glorious and distinguished regiment in
+the war."
+
+"The rolls! The rolls! Holmer, get the rolls!" said little Mildred,
+and the adjutant dashed off bare-headed to the orderly-room, where the
+muster-rolls of the regiment were kept. He returned just in time to hear
+Dirkovitch conclude, "Therefore, my dear friends, I am most sorry to
+say there was an accident which would have been reparable if he had
+apologised to that our colonel, which he had insulted."
+
+Then followed another growl which the colonel tried to beat down. The
+mess was in no mood just then to weigh insults to Russian colonels.
+
+"He does not remember, but I think that there was an accident, and so
+he was not exchanged among the prisoners, but he was sent to another
+place--how do you say?--the country. So, he says, he came here. He does
+not know how he came. Eh? He was at Chepany,"--the man caught the word,
+nodded, and shivered,--"at Zhigansk and Irkutsk. I cannot understand how
+he escaped. He says, too, that he was in the forests for many years,
+but how many years he has forgotten--that with many things. It was an
+accident; done because he did not apologise to that our colonel. Ah!"
+
+Instead of echoing Dirkovitch's sigh of regret, it is sad to record
+that the White Hussars livelily exhibited un-Christian delight and other
+emotions, hardly restrained by their sense of hospitality. Holmer flung
+the frayed and yellow regimental rolls on the table, and the men flung
+themselves at these.
+
+"Steady! Fifty-six--fifty-five--fifty-four," said Holmer. "Here we are.
+'Lieutenant Austin Limmason. Missing.' That was before Sebastopol.
+What an infernal shame! Insulted one of their colonels, and was quietly
+shipped off. Thirty years of his life wiped out."
+
+"But he never apologised. Said he'd see him damned first," chorused the
+mess.
+
+"Poor chap! I suppose he never had the chance afterwards. How did he
+come here?" said the colonel.
+
+The dingy heap in the chair could give no answer.
+
+"Do you know who you are?"
+
+It laughed weakly.
+
+"Do you know that you are Limmason--Lieutenant Limmason of the White
+Hussars?"
+
+Swiftly as a shot came the answer, in a slightly surprised tone, "Yes,
+I'm--Limmason, of course." The light died out in his eyes, and the man
+collapsed, watching every motion of Dirkovitch with terror. A flight
+from Siberia may fix a few elementary facts in the mind, but it does not
+seem to lead to continuity of thought. The man could not explain how,
+like a homing pigeon, he had found his way to his own old mess again.
+Of what he had suffered or seen he knew nothing. He cringed before
+Dirkovitch as instinctively as he had pressed the spring of the
+candlestick, sought the picture of the drum-horse, and answered to the
+toast of the Queen. The rest was a blank that the dreaded Russian tongue
+could only in part remove. His head bowed on his breast, and he giggled
+and cowered alternately.
+
+The devil that lived in the brandy prompted Dirkovitch at this extremely
+inopportune moment to make a speech. He rose, swaying slightly, gripped
+the table-edge, while his eyes glowed like opals, and began:
+
+"Fellow-soldiers glorious--true friends and hospitables. It was an
+accident, and deplorable--most deplorable." Here he smiled sweetly all
+round the mess. "But you will think of this little, little thing. So
+little, is it not? The Czar! Posh! I slap my fingers--I snap my fingers
+at him. Do I believe in him? No! But in us Slav who has done nothing,
+him I believe. Seventy--how much--millions peoples that have done
+nothing--not one thing. Posh! Napoleon was an episode." He banged a
+hand on the table. "Hear you, old peoples, we have done nothing in
+the world--out here. All our work is to do; and it shall be done, old
+peoples. Get a-way!" He waved his hand imperiously, and pointed to the
+man. "You see him. He is not good to see. He was just one little--oh, so
+little--accident, that no one remembered. Now he is----"
+
+"That! So will you be, brother soldiers so brave so will you be. But you
+will never come back. You will all go where he is gone, or"--he pointed
+to the great coffin-shadow on the ceiling, and muttering, "Seventy
+millions--get a-way, you old peoples," fell asleep.
+
+"Sweet, and to the point," said little Mildred. "What's the use of
+getting wroth? Let's make this poor devil comfortable."
+
+But that was a matter suddenly and swiftly taken from the loving hands
+of the White Hussars. The lieutenant had returned only to go away again
+three days later, when the wail of the Dead March, and the tramp of the
+squadrons, told the wondering Station, who saw no gap in the mess-table,
+that an officer of the regiment had resigned his new-found commission.
+
+And Dirkovitch, bland, supple, and always genial, went away too by a
+night train. Little Mildred and another man saw him off, for he was the
+guest of the mess, and even had he smitten the colonel with the open
+hand, the law of that mess allowed no relaxation of hospitality.
+
+"Good-bye, Dirkovitch, and a pleasant journey," said little Mildred.
+
+"Au revoir," said the Russian.
+
+"Indeed! But we thought you were going home?"
+
+"Yes, but I will come again. My dear friends, is that road shut?" He
+pointed to where the North Star burned over the Khyber Pass.
+
+"By Jove! I forgot. Of course. Happy to meet you, old man, any time you
+like. Got everything you want? Cheroots, ice, bedding? That's all right.
+Well, au revoir, Dirkovitch."
+
+"Um," said the other man, as the tail-lights of the train grew small.
+"Of--all--the--unmitigated!"
+
+Little Mildred answered nothing, but watched the North Star and hummed a
+selection from recent Simla burlesque that had much delighted the White
+Hussars. It ran--
+
+     I'm sorry for Mister Bluebeard,
+     I'm sorry to cause him pain;
+     But a terrible spree there's sure to be
+     When he comes back again.
+
+
+
+
+ONLY A SUBALTERN
+
+     Not only to enforce by command but to encourage by example
+     the energetic discharge of duty and the steady endurance of
+     the difficulties and privations inseparable from Military
+     Service.--Bengal Army Regulations.
+
+They made Bobby Wick pass an examination at Sandhurst. He was a
+gentleman before he was gazetted, so, when the Empress announced that
+"Gentleman-Cadet Robert Hanna Wick" was posted as Second Lieutenant to
+the Tyneside Tail Twisters at Krab Bokhar, he became an officer and a
+gentleman, which is an enviable thing; and there was joy in the house
+of Wick, where Mamma Wick and all the little Wicks fell upon their knees
+and offered incense to Bobby by virtue of his achievements.
+
+Papa Wick had been a Commissioner in his day, holding authority over
+three millions of men in the Chota-Buldana Division, building great
+works for the good of the land, and doing his best to make two blades
+of grass grow where there was but one before. Of course, nobody knew
+anything about this in the little English village where he was just "old
+Mr. Wick" and had forgotten that he was a Companion of the Order of the
+Star of India.
+
+He patted Bobby on the shoulder and said: "Well done, my boy!"
+
+There followed, while the uniform was being prepared, an interval of
+pure delight, during which Bobby took brevet-rank as a "man" at the
+women-swamped tennis-parties and tea-fights of the village, and, I
+daresay, had his joining-time been extended, would have fallen in love
+with several girls at once. Little country villages at Home are very
+full of nice girls, because all the young men come out to India to make
+their fortunes.
+
+"India," said Papa Wick, "is the place. I've had thirty years of it,
+and, begad, I'd like to go back again. When you join the Tail Twisters
+you'll be among friends, if every one hasn't forgotten Wick of
+Chota-Buldana, and a lot of people will be kind to you for our sakes.
+The mother will tell you more about outfit than I can, but remember
+this. Stick to your Regiment, Bobby--stick to your Regiment. You'll see
+men all round you going into the Staff Corps, and doing every possible
+sort of duty but regimental, and you may be tempted to follow suit. Now
+so long as you keep within your allowance, and I haven't stinted you
+there, stick to the Line, the whole Line, and nothing but the Line. Be
+careful how you back another young fool's bill, and if you fall in love
+with a woman twenty years older than yourself, don't tell me about it,
+that's all."
+
+With these counsels, and many others equally valuable, did Papa Wick
+fortify Bobby ere that last awful night at Portsmouth when the Officers'
+Quarters held more inmates than were provided for by the Regulations,
+and the liberty-men of the ships fell foul of the drafts for India, and
+the battle raged from the Dockyard Gates even to the slums of Longport,
+while the drabs of Fratton came down and scratched the faces of the
+Queen's Officers.
+
+Bobby Wick, with an ugly bruise on his freckled nose, a sick and shaky
+detachment to manoeuvre inship, and the comfort of fifty scornful
+females to attend to, had no time to feel homesick till the Malabar
+reached mid-Channel, when he doubled his emotions with a little
+guard-visiting and a great many other matters.
+
+The Tail Twisters were a most particular Regiment. Those who knew them
+least said that they were eaten up with "side." But their reserve and
+their internal arrangements generally were merely protective diplomacy.
+Some five years before, the Colonel commanding had looked into the
+fourteen fearless eyes of seven plump and juicy subalterns who had all
+applied to enter the Staff Corps, and had asked them why the three
+stars should he, a colonel of the Line, command a dashed nursery for
+double-dashed bottle-suckers who put on condemned tin spurs and rode
+qualified mokes at the hiatused heads of forsaken Black Regiments. He
+was a rude man and a terrible. Wherefore the remnant took measures
+(with the half-butt as an engine of public opinion) till the rumour
+went abroad that young men who used the Tail Twisters as a crutch to the
+Staff Corps had many and varied trials to endure. However, a regiment
+has just as much right to its own secrets as a woman.
+
+When Bobby came up from Deolali and took his place among the Tail
+Twisters, it was gently but firmly borne in upon him that the Regiment
+was his father and his mother and his indissolubly wedded wife, and
+that there was no crime under the canopy of heaven blacker than that
+of bringing shame on the Regiment, which was the best-shooting,
+best-drilled, best set-up, bravest, most illustrious, and in all
+respects most desirable Regiment within the compass of the Seven Seas.
+He was taught the legends of the Mess Plate, from the great grinning
+Golden Gods that had come out of the Summer Palace in Pekin to the
+silver-mounted markhor-horn snuffmull presented by the last C. O. (he
+who spake to the seven subalterns). And every one of those legends told
+him of battles fought at long odds, without fear as without support; of
+hospitality catholic as an Arab's; of friendships deep as the sea and
+steady as the fighting-line; of honour won by hard roads for honour's
+sake; and of instant and unquestioning devotion to the Regiment--the
+Regiment that claims the lives of all and lives forever.
+
+More than once, too, he came officially into contact with the Regimental
+colours, which looked like the lining of a bricklayer's hat on the end
+of a chewed stick. Bobby did not kneel and worship them, because British
+subalterns are not constructed in that manner. Indeed, he condemned them
+for their weight at the very moment that they were filling him with awe
+and other more noble sentiments.
+
+But best of all was the occasion when he moved with the Tail Twisters
+in review order at the breaking of a November day. Allowing for duty-men
+and sick, the Regiment was one thousand and eighty strong, and Bobby
+belonged to them; for was he not a Subaltern of the Line,--the whole
+Line and nothing but the Line,--as the tramp of two thousand one hundred
+and sixty sturdy ammunition boots attested? He would not have changed
+places with Deighton of the Horse Battery, whirling by in a pillar of
+cloud to a chorus of "Strong right! Strong left!" or Hogan-Yale of the
+White Hussars, leading his squadron for all it was worth, with the price
+of horseshoes thrown in; or "Tick" Boileau, trying to live up to his
+fierce blue and gold turban while the wasps of the Bengal Cavalry
+stretched to a gallop in the wake of the long, lollopping Walers of the
+White Hussars.
+
+They fought through the clear cool day, and Bobby felt a little thrill
+run down his spine when he heard the tinkle-tinkle-tinkle of the empty
+cartridge-cases hopping from the breech-blocks after the roar of the
+volleys; for he knew that he should live to hear that sound in action.
+The review ended in a glorious chase across the plain--batteries
+thundering after cavalry to the huge disgust of the White Hussars, and
+the Tyneside Tail Twisters hunting a Sikh Regiment till the lean, lathy
+Singhs panted with exhaustion. Bobby was dusty and dripping long before
+noon, but his enthusiasm was merely focused--not diminished.
+
+He returned to sit at the feet of Revere, his "skipper," that is to say,
+the Captain of his Company, and to be instructed in the dark art and
+mystery of managing men, which is a very large part of the Profession of
+Arms.
+
+"If you haven't a taste that way," said Revere between his puffs of
+his cheroot, "you'll never be able to get the hang of it, but remember,
+Bobby, 'tisn't the best drill, though drill is nearly everything, that
+hauls a Regiment through Hell and out on the other side. It's the man
+who knows how to handle men--goat-men, swine-men, dog-men, and so on."
+
+"Dormer, for instance," said Bobby; "I think he comes under the head of
+fool-men. He mopes like a sick owl."
+
+"That 's where you make your mistake, my son. Dormer isn't a fool yet,
+but he's a dashed dirty soldier, and his room corporal makes fun of his
+socks before kit-inspection. Dormer, being two-thirds pure brute, goes
+into a corner and growls."
+
+"How do you know'?" said Bobby admiringly.
+
+"Because a Company commander has to know these things--because, if he
+does not know, he may have crime--ay, murder--brewing under his very
+nose and yet not see that it's there. Dormer is being badgered out of
+his mind--big as he is--and he hasn't intellect enough to resent it.
+He's taken to quiet boozing, and, Bobby, when the butt of a room goes on
+the drink, or takes to moping by himself, measures are necessary to pull
+him out of himself."
+
+"What measures? Man can't run round coddling his men for ever."
+
+"No. The men would precious soon show him that he was not wanted. You've
+got to--"
+
+Here the Colour-sergeant entered with some papers; Bobby reflected for a
+while as Revere looked through the Company forms.
+
+"Does Dormer do anything, Sergeant?" Bobby asked with the air of one
+continuing an interrupted conversation.
+
+"No, sir. Does 'is dooty like a hortomato," said the Sergeant, who
+delighted in long words. "A dirty soldier, and 'e's under full stoppages
+for new kit. It's covered with scales, sir."
+
+"Scales? What scales?"
+
+"Fish-scales, sir. 'E's always pokin' in the mud by the river an'
+a-cleanin' them muchly-fish with 'is thumbs." Revere was still absorbed
+in the Company papers, and the Sergeant, who was sternly fond of Bobby,
+continued,--"'E generally goes down there when 'e's got 'is skinful,
+beggin' your pardon, sir, an' they do say that the more lush--inebriated
+'e is, the more fish 'e catches. They call 'im the Looney Fishmonger in
+the Comp'ny, sir."
+
+Revere signed the last paper and the Sergeant retreated.
+
+"It's a filthy amusement," sighed Bobby to himself. Then aloud to
+Revere: "Are you really worried about Dormer?"
+
+"A little. You see he's never mad enough to send to hospital, or drunk
+enough to run in, but at any minute he may flare up, brooding and
+sulking as he does. He resents any interest being shown in him, and the
+only time I took him out shooting he all but shot me by accident."
+
+"I fish," said Bobby, with a wry face. "I hire a country-boat and go
+down river from Thursday to Sunday, and the amiable Dormer goes with
+me--if you can spare us both."
+
+"You blazing young fool!" said Revere, but his heart was full of much
+more pleasant words.
+
+Bobby, the Captain of a dhoni, with Private Dormer for mate, dropped
+down the river on Thursday morning--the Private at the bow, the
+Subaltern at the helm. The Private glared uneasily at the Subaltern, who
+respected the reserve of the Private.
+
+After six hours, Dormer paced to the stern, saluted, and said--"Beg
+y' pardon, sir, but was you ever on the Durh'm Canal?"
+
+"No," said Bobby Wick. "Come and have some tiffin."
+
+They ate in silence. As the evening fell, Private Dormer broke forth,
+speaking to himself--
+
+"Hi was on the Durh'm Canal, jes' such a night, come next week
+twelvemonth, a-trailin' of my toes in the water." He smoked and said no
+more till bedtime.
+
+The witchery of the dawn turned the gray river-reaches to purple, gold,
+and opal; and it was as though the lumbering dhoni crept across the
+splendours of a new heaven.
+
+Private Dormer popped his head out of his blanket and gazed at the glory
+below and around.
+
+"Well--damn--my eyes!" said Private Dormer in an awed whisper. "This
+'ere is like a bloomin' gallantry-show!" For the rest of the day he was
+dumb, but achieved an ensanguined filthiness through the cleaning of big
+fish.
+
+The boat returned on Saturday evening. Dormer had been struggling with
+speech since noon. As the lines and luggage were being disembarked, he
+found tongue.
+
+"Beg y' pardon, sir," he said, "but would you--would you min' shakin'
+'ands with me, sir?"
+
+"Of course not," said Bobby, and he shook accordingly. Dormer returned
+to barracks and Bobby to mess.
+
+"He wanted a little quiet and some fishing, I think," said Bobby. "My
+aunt, but he's a filthy sort of animal! Have you ever seen him clean
+'them muchly-fish with 'is thumbs?"
+
+"Anyhow," said Revere three weeks later, "he's doing his best to keep
+his things clean."
+
+When the spring died, Bobby joined in the general scramble for Hill
+leave, and to his surprise and delight secured three months.
+
+"As good a boy as I want," said Revere, the admiring skipper.
+
+"The best of the batch," said the Adjutant to the Colonel. "Keep back
+that young skrimshanker Porkiss, sir, and let Revere make him sit up."
+
+So Bobby departed joyously to Simla Pahar with a tin box of gorgeous
+raiment.
+
+"Son of Wick--old Wick of Chota-Buldana? Ask him to dinner, dear," said
+the aged men.
+
+"What a nice boy!" said the matrons and the maids.
+
+"First-class place, Simla. Oh, ri----ipping!" said Bobby Wick, and
+ordered new white cord breeches on the strength of it.
+
+"We're in a bad way," wrote Revere to Bobby at the end of two months.
+"Since you left, the Regiment has taken to fever and is fairly rotten
+with it--two hundred in hospital, about a hundred in cells--drinking to
+keep off fever--and the Companies on parade fifteen file strong at the
+outside. There's rather more sickness in the out-villages than I care
+for, but then I'm so blistered with prickly-heat that I'm ready to hang
+myself. What's the yarn about your mashing a Miss Haverley up there? Not
+serious, I hope? You're over-young to hang millstones round your neck,
+and the Colonel will turf you out of that in double-quick time if you
+attempt it."
+
+It was not the Colonel that brought Bobby out of Simla, but a much more
+to be respected Commandant. The sickness in the out-villages spread,
+the Bazar was put out of bounds, and then came the news that the
+Tail Twisters must go into camp. The message flashed to the Hill
+stations.--"Cholera--Leave stopped--Officers recalled." Alas, for the
+white gloves in the neatly soldered boxes, the rides and the dances and
+picnics that were to be, the loves half spoken, and the debts unpaid!
+Without demur and without question, fast as tonga could fly or pony
+gallop, back to their Regiments and their Batteries, as though they were
+hastening to their weddings, fled the subalterns.
+
+Bobby received his orders on returning from a dance at Viceregal Lodge,
+where he had but only the Haverley girl knows what Bobby had said or how
+many waltzes he had claimed for the next ball. Six in the morning saw
+Bobby at the Tonga Office in the drenching rain, the whirl of the last
+waltz still in his ears, and an intoxication due neither to wine nor
+waltzing in his brain.
+
+"Good man!" shouted Deighton of the Horse Battery through the mists.
+"Whar you raise dat tonga? I'm coming with you. Ow! But I've a head and
+half. I didn't sit out all night. They say the Battery's awful bad," and
+he hummed dolorously--
+
+     "Leave the what at the what's-its-name,
+     Leave the flock without shelter,
+     Leave the corpse uninterred,
+     Leave the bride at the altar
+
+
+"My faith! It'll be more bally corpse than bride, though, this journey.
+Jump in, Bobby. Get on, Coachwan!"
+
+On the Umballa platform waited a detachment of officers discussing the
+latest news from the stricken cantonment, and it was here that Bobby
+learned the real condition of the Tail Twisters.
+
+"They went into camp," said an elderly Major recalled from the
+whist-tables at Mussoorie to a sickly Native Regiment, "they went into
+camp with two hundred and ten sick in carts. Two hundred and ten fever
+cases only, and the balance looking like so many ghosts with sore eyes.
+A Madras Regiment could have walked through 'em."
+
+"But they were as fit as be-damned when I left them!" said Bobby.
+
+"Then you'd better make them as fit as be-damned when you rejoin," said
+the Major brutally.
+
+Bobby pressed his forehead against the rain-splashed window-pane as the
+train lumbered across the sodden Doab, and prayed for the health of the
+Tyneside Tail Twisters. Naini Tal had sent down her contingent with
+all speed; the lathering ponies of the Dalhousie Road staggered into
+Pathankot, taxed to the full stretch of their strength; while from
+cloudy Darjiling the Calcutta Mail whirled up the last straggler of the
+little army that was to fight a fight, in which was neither medal nor
+honour for the winning, against an enemy none other than "the sickness
+that destroyeth in the noonday."
+
+And as each man reported himself, he said: "This is a bad business,"
+and went about his own forthwith, for every Regiment and Battery in the
+cantonment was under canvas, the sickness bearing them company.
+
+Bobby fought his way through the rain to the Tail Twisters' temporary
+mess, and Revere could have fallen on the boy's neck for the joy of
+seeing that ugly, wholesome phiz once more.
+
+"Keep 'em amused and interested," said Revere. "They went on the drink,
+poor fools, after the first two cases, and there was no improvement. Oh,
+it's good to have you back, Bobby! Porkiss is a--never mind."
+
+Deighton came over from the Artillery camp to attend a dreary mess
+dinner, and contributed to the general gloom by nearly weeping over the
+condition of his beloved Battery. Porkiss so far forgot himself as to
+insinuate that the presence of the officers could do no earthly good,
+and that the best thing would be to send the entire Regiment into
+hospital and "let the doctors look after them." Porkiss was demoralised
+with fear, nor was his peace of mind restored when Revere said coldly:
+"Oh! The sooner you go out the better, if that's your way of thinking.
+Any public school could send us fifty good men in your place, but it
+takes time, time, Porkiss, and money, and a certain amount of trouble,
+to make a Regiment. S'pose you're the person we go into camp for, eh?"
+
+Whereupon Porkiss was overtaken with a great and chilly fear which a
+drenching in the rain did not allay, and, two days later, quitted this
+world for another where, men do fondly hope, allowances are made for the
+weaknesses of the flesh. The Regimental Sergeant-Major looked wearily
+across the Sergeants' Mess tent when the news was announced.
+
+"There goes the worst of them," he said. "It'll take the best, and then,
+please God, it'll stop." The Sergeants were silent till one said: "It
+couldn't be him!" and all knew of whom Travis was thinking.
+
+Bobby Wick stormed through the tents of his Company, rallying,
+rebuking, mildly, as is consistent with the Regulations, chaffing the
+fainthearted; haling the sound into the watery sunlight when there was
+a break in the weather, and bidding them be of good cheer, for their
+trouble was nearly at an end; scuttling on his dun pony round the
+outskirts of the camp and heading back men who, with the innate
+perversity of British soldiers, were always wandering into infected
+villages, or drinking deeply from rain-flooded marshes; comforting the
+panic-stricken with rude speech, and more than once tending the dying
+who had no friends--the men without "townies"; organizing, with banjos
+and burnt cork, Sing-songs which should allow the talent of the
+Regiment full play; and generally, as he explained, "playing the giddy
+garden-goat all round."
+
+"You're worth half a dozen of us, Bobby," said Revere in a moment of
+enthusiasm. "How the devil do you keep it up?"
+
+Bobby made no answer, but had Revere looked into the breast-pocket of
+his coat he might have seen there a sheaf of badly-written letters which
+perhaps accounted for the power that possessed the boy. A letter came
+to Bobby every other day. The spelling was not above reproach, but the
+sentiments must have been most satisfactory, for on receipt Bobby's eyes
+softened marvellously, and he was wont to fall into a tender abstraction
+for a while ere, shaking his cropped head, he charged into his work.
+
+By what power he drew after him the hearts of the roughest, and the
+Tail Twisters counted in their ranks some rough diamonds indeed, was
+a mystery to both skipper and C. O., who learned from the regimental
+chaplain that Bobby was considerably more in request in the hospital
+tents than the Reverend John Emery.
+
+"The men seem fond of you. Are you in the hospitals much?" said the
+Colonel, who did his daily round and ordered the men to get well with a
+hardness that did not cover his bitter grief.
+
+"A little, sir," said Bobby.
+
+"Shouldn't go there too often if I were you. They say it's not
+contagious, but there's no use in running unnecessary risks. We can't
+afford to have you down, y' know."
+
+Six days later, it was with the utmost difficulty that the post-runner
+plashed his way out to the camp with the mail-bags, for the rain was
+falling in torrents. Bobby received a letter, bore it off to his tent,
+and, the programme for the next week's Sing-song being satisfactorily
+disposed of, sat down to answer it. For an hour the unhandy pen toiled
+over the paper, and where sentiment rose to more than normal tide-level,
+Bobby Wick stuck out his tongue and breathed heavily. He was not used to
+letter-writing.
+
+"Beg y' pardon, sir," said a voice at the tent door; "but Dormer's
+'orrid bad, sir, an' they've taken him orf, sir."
+
+"Damn Private Dormer and you too!" said Bobby Wick, running the blotter
+over the half-finished letter. "Tell him I'll come in the morning."
+
+"'E's awful bad, sir," said the voice hesitatingly. There was an
+undecided squelching of heavy boots.
+
+"Well?" said Bobby impatiently.
+
+"Excusin' 'imself before 'and for takin' the liberty, 'e says it would
+be a comfort for to assist 'im, sir, if--tattoo lao! Get my pony! Here,
+come in out of the rain till I'mready. What blasted nuisances you are!
+That's brandy. Drink some; you want it. Hang on to my stirrup and tell
+me if I go too fast."
+
+Strengthened by a four-finger "nip" which he swallowed without a wink,
+the Hospital Orderly kept up with the slipping, mud-stained, and very
+disgusted pony as it shambled to the hospital tent.
+
+Private Dormer was certainly "'orrid bad." He had all but reached the
+stage of collapse, and was not pleasant to look upon.
+
+"What's this, Dormer?" said Bobby, bending over the man. "You're not
+going out this time. You've got to come fishing with me once or twice
+more yet."
+
+The blue lips parted and in the ghost of a whisper said,--"Beg y'
+pardon, sir, disturbin' of you now, but would you min' 'oldin' my 'and,
+sir'?"
+
+Bobby sat on the side of the bed, and the icy-cold hand closed on his
+own like a vice, forcing a lady's ring which was on the little finger
+deep into the flesh. Bobby set his lips and waited, the water dripping
+from the hem of his trousers. An hour passed, and the grasp of the hand
+did not relax, nor did the expression of the drawn face change. Bobby
+with infinite craft lit himself a cheroot with the left hand (his right
+arm was numbed to the elbow), and resigned himself to a night of pain.
+
+Dawn showed a very white-faced Subaltern sitting on the side of a
+sick man's cot, and a Doctor in the doorway using language unfit for
+publication.
+
+"Have you been here all night, you young ass?" said the Doctor.
+
+"There or thereabouts," said Bobby ruefully. "He's frozen on to me."
+
+Dormer's mouth shut with a click. He turned his head and sighed. The
+clinging hand opened, and Bobby's arm fell useless at his side.
+
+"He'll do," said the Doctor quietly. "It must have been a toss-up all
+through the night. 'Think you're to be congratulated on this case."
+
+"Oh, bosh!" said Bobby. "I thought the man had gone out long
+ago--only--only I didn't care to take my hand away. Rub my arm down,
+there's a good chap. What a grip the brute has! I'm chilled to the
+marrow!" He passed out of the tent shivering.
+
+Private Dormer was allowed to celebrate his repulse of Death by strong
+waters. Four days later, he sat on the side of his cot and said to the
+patients mildly: "I'd 'a' liken to 'a' spoken to 'im--so I should."
+
+But at that time Bobby was reading yet another letter,--he had the most
+persistent correspondent of any man in camp,--and was even then about to
+write that the sickness had abated, and in another week at the outside
+would be gone. He did not intend to say that the chill of a sick man's
+hand seemed to have struck into the heart whose capacities for affection
+he dwelt on at such length. He did intend to enclose the illustrated
+programme of the forthcoming Sing-song, whereof he was not a little
+proud. He also intended to write on many other matters which do not
+concern us, and doubtless would have done so but for the slight feverish
+headache which made him dull and unresponsive at mess.
+
+"You are overdoing it, Bobby," said his skipper. "'Might give the rest
+of us credit of doing a little work. You go on as if you were the whole
+Mess rolled into one. Take it easy."
+
+"I will," said Bobby. "I'm feeling done up, somehow." Revere looked at
+him anxiously and said nothing.
+
+There was a flickering of lanterns about the camp that night, and a
+rumour that brought men out of their cots to the tent doors, a paddling
+of the naked feet of doolie-bearers, and the rush of a galloping horse.
+
+"Wot's up?" asked twenty tents; and through twenty tents ran the
+answer--"Wick, 'e's down."
+
+They brought the news to Revere and he groaned. "Any one but Bobby and I
+shouldn't have cared! The Sergeant-Major was right."
+
+"Not going out this journey," gasped Bobby, as he was lifted from
+the doolie. "Not going out this journey." Then with an air of supreme
+conviction--"I can't, you see."
+
+"Not if I can do anything!" said the Surgeon-Major, who had hastened
+over from the mess where he had been dining.
+
+He and the Regimental Surgeon fought together with Death for the life
+of Bobby Wick. Their work was interrupted by a hairy apparition in a
+blue-gray dressing-gown, who stared in horror at the bed and cried--"Oh,
+my Gawd! It can't be 'im!" until an indignant Hospital Orderly whisked
+him away.
+
+If care of man and desire to live could have done aught, Bobby would
+have been saved. As it was, he made a fight of three days, and the
+Surgeon-Major's brow uncreased. "We'll save him yet," he said; and the
+Surgeon, who, though he ranked with the Captain, had a very youthful
+heart, went out upon the word and pranced joyously in the mud.
+
+"Not going out this journey," whispered Bobby Wick gallantly, at the end
+of the third day.
+
+"Bravo!" said the Surgeon-Major. "That's the way to look at it, Bobby."
+
+As evening fell a gray shade gathered round Bobby's mouth, and he turned
+his face to the tent-wall wearily. The Surgeon-Major frowned.
+
+"I'm awfully tired," said Bobby, very faintly. "What's the use of
+bothering me with medicine? I--don't--want--it. Let me alone."
+
+The desire for life had departed, and Bobby was content to drift away on
+the easy tide of Death.
+
+"It's no good," said the Surgeon-Major. "He doesn't want to live. He's
+meeting it, poor child." And he blew his nose.
+
+Half a mile away, the regimental band was playing the overture to the
+Sing-song, for the men had been told that Bobby was out of danger. The
+clash of the brass and the wail of the horns reached Bobby's ears.
+
+     Is there a single joy or pain,
+     That I should never kno-ow?
+     You do not love me, 'tis in vain,
+     Bid me good-bye and go!
+
+An expression of hopeless irritation crossed the boy's face, and he
+tried to shake his head.
+
+The Surgeon-Major bent down--"What is it, Bobby?"---"Not that waltz,"
+muttered Bobby. "That's our own--our very ownest own... Mummy dear."
+
+With this he sank into the stupor that gave place to death early next
+morning.
+
+Revere, his eyes red at the rims and his nose very white, went into
+Bobby's tent to write a letter to Papa Wick which should bow the white
+head of the ex-Commissioner of Chota-Buldana in the keenest sorrow of
+his life. Bobby's little store of papers lay in confusion on the table,
+and among them a half-finished letter. The last sentence ran: "So you
+see, darling, there is really no fear, because as long as I know you
+care for me and I care for you, nothing can touch me."
+
+Revere stayed in the tent for an hour. When he came out, his eyes were
+redder than ever.
+
+Private Conklin sat on a turned-down bucket, and listened to a not
+unfamiliar tune. Private Conklin was a convalescent and should have been
+tenderly treated.
+
+"Ho!" said Private Conklin. "There's another bloomin' orf'cer da-ed."
+
+The bucket shot from under him, and his eyes filled with a smithyful of
+sparks. A tall man in a blue-gray bedgown was regarding him with deep
+disfavour.
+
+"You ought to take shame for yourself, Conky! Orf'cer?--bloomin'
+orf'cer? I'll learn you to misname the likes of 'im. Hangel! Bloomin'
+Hangel! That's wot 'e is!"
+
+And the Hospital Orderly was so satisfied with the justice of the
+punishment that he did not even order Private Dormer back to his cot.
+
+
+
+
+IN THE MATTER OF A PRIVATE
+
+     Hurrah! hurrah! a soldier's life for me!
+     Shout, boys, shout! for it makes you jolly and free.
+
+     The Ramrod Corps.
+
+People who have seen say that one of the quaintest spectacles of human
+frailty is an outbreak of hysterics in a girls' school. It starts
+without warning, generally on a hot afternoon, among the elder pupils. A
+girl giggles till the giggle gets beyond control. Then she throws up
+her head and cries, "Honk, honk, honk," like a wild goose, and tears mix
+with the laughter. If the mistress be wise, she will rap out something
+severe at this point to check matters. If she be tender-hearted, and
+send for a drink of water, the chances are largely in favour of another
+girl laughing at the afflicted one and herself collapsing. Thus the
+trouble spreads, and may end in half of what answers to the Lower Sixth
+of a boys' school rocking and whooping together. Given a week of warm
+weather, two stately promenades per diem, a heavy mutton and rice meal
+in the middle of the day, a certain amount of nagging from the teachers,
+and a few other things, some amazing effects develop. At least, this is
+what folk say who have had experience.
+
+Now, the Mother Superior of a Convent and the Colonel of a British
+Infantry Regiment would be justly shocked at any comparison being made
+between their respective charges. But it is a fact that, under certain
+circumstances, Thomas in bulk can be worked up into ditthering, rippling
+hysteria. He does not weep, but he shows his trouble unmistakably, and
+the consequences get into the newspapers, and all the good people
+who hardly know a Martini from a Snider say: "Take away the brute's
+ammunition!"
+
+Thomas isn't a brute, and his business, which is to look after the
+virtuous people, demands that he shall have his ammunition to his hand.
+He doesn't wear silk stockings, and he really ought to be supplied with
+a new Adjective to help him to express his opinions: but, for all that,
+he is a great man. If you call him "the heroic defender of the national
+honour" one day, and "a brutal and licentious soldiery" the next, you
+naturally bewilder him, and he looks upon you with suspicion. There is
+nobody to speak for Thomas except people who have theories to work off
+on him, and nobody understands Thomas except Thomas, and he does not
+always know what is the matter with himself.
+
+That is the prologue. This is the story:--
+
+Corporal Slane was engaged to be married to Miss Jhansi M'Kenna,
+whose history is well known in the regiment and elsewhere. He had his
+Colonel's permission, and, being popular with the men, every arrangement
+had been made to give the wedding what Private Ortheris called "eeklar."
+It fell in the heart of the hot weather, and, after the wedding,
+Slane was going up to the Hills with the bride. None the less, Slane's
+grievance was that the affair would be only a hired-carriage wedding,
+and he felt that the "eeklar" of that was meagre. Miss M'Kenna did
+not care so much. The Sergeant's wife was helping her to make her
+wedding-dress, and she was very busy. Slane was, just then, the only
+moderately contented man in barracks. All the rest were more or less
+miserable.
+
+And they had so much to make them happy, too. All their work was over
+at eight in the morning, and for the rest of the day they could lie on
+their backs and smoke Canteen-plug and swear at the punkah-coolies. They
+enjoyed a fine, full flesh meal in the middle of the day, and then threw
+themselves down on their cots and sweated and slept till it was cool
+enough to go out with their "towny," whose vocabulary contained less
+than six hundred words, and the Adjective, and whose views on every
+conceivable question they had heard many times before.
+
+There was the Canteen, of course, and there was the Temperance Room with
+the second-hand papers in it; but a man of any profession cannot read
+for eight hours a day in a temperature of 96 deg. or 98 deg. in the shade,
+running up sometimes to 103 deg. at midnight. Very few men, even though they
+get a pannikin of flat, stale, muddy beer and hide it under their cots,
+can continue drinking for six hours a day. One man tried, but he died,
+and nearly the whole regiment went to his funeral because it gave
+them something to do. It was too early for the excitement of fever or
+cholera. The men could only wait and wait and wait, and watch the shadow
+of the barrack creeping across the blinding white dust. That was a gay
+life.
+
+They lounged about cantonments--it was too hot for any sort of game,
+and almost too hot for vice--and fuddled themselves in the evening,
+and filled themselves to distension with the healthy nitrogenous food
+provided for them, and the more they stoked the less exercise they took
+and more explosive they grew. Then tempers began to wear away, and men
+fell a-brooding over insults real or imaginary, for they had nothing
+else to think of. The tone of the repartees changed, and instead
+of saying light-heartedly: "I'll knock your silly face in," men grew
+laboriously polite and hinted that the cantonments were not big enough
+for themselves and their enemy, and that there would be more space for
+one of the two in another Place.
+
+It may have been the Devil who arranged the thing, but the fact of the
+case is that Losson had for a long time been worrying Simmons in an
+aimless way. It gave him occupation. The two had their cots side by
+side, and would sometimes spend a long afternoon swearing at each other;
+but Simmons was afraid of Losson and dared not challenge him to a fight.
+He thought over the words in the hot still nights, and half the hate he
+felt towards Losson he vented on the wretched punkah-coolie.
+
+Losson bought a parrot in the bazar, and put it into a little cage,
+and lowered the cage into the cool darkness of a well, and sat on the
+well-curb, shouting bad language down to the parrot. He taught it to
+say: "Simmons, ye so-oor," which means swine, and several other things
+entirely unfit for publication. He was a big gross man, and he shook
+like a jelly when the parrot had the sentence correctly. Simmons,
+however, shook with rage, for all the room were laughing at him--the
+parrot was such a disreputable puff of green feathers and it looked so
+human when it chattered. Losson used to sit, swinging his fat legs, on
+the side of the cot, and ask the parrot what it thought of Simmons. The
+parrot would answer: "Simmons, ye so-oor." "Good boy," Losson used to
+say, scratching the parrot's head; "ye 'ear that, Sim?" And Simmons
+used to turn over on his stomach and make answer: "I 'ear. Take 'eed you
+don't 'ear something one of these days."
+
+In the restless nights, after he had been asleep all day, fits of blind
+rage came upon Simmons and held him till he trembled all over, while he
+thought in how many different ways he would slay Losson. Sometimes
+he would picture himself trampling the life out of the man with heavy
+ammunition-boots, and at others smashing in his face with the butt, and
+at others jumping on his shoulders and dragging the head back till the
+neckbone cracked. Then his mouth would feel hot and fevered, and he
+would reach out for another sup of the beer in the pannikin.
+
+But the fancy that came to him most frequently and stayed with him
+longest was one connected with the great roll of fat under Losson's
+right ear. He noticed it first on a moonlight night, and thereafter
+it was always before his eyes. It was a fascinating roll of fat. A man
+could get his hand upon it and tear away one side of the neck; or he
+could place the muzzle of a rifle on it and blow away all the head in
+a flash. Losson had no right to be sleek and contented and well-to-do,
+when he, Simmons, was the butt of the room. Some day, perhaps, he would
+show those who laughed at the "Simmons, ye so-oor" joke, that he was as
+good as the rest, and held a man's life in the crook of his forefinger.
+When Losson snored, Simmons hated him more bitterly than ever. Why
+should Losson be able to sleep when Simmons had to stay awake hour after
+hour, tossing and turning on the tapes, with the dull liver pain gnawing
+into his right side and his head throbbing and aching after Canteen?
+He thought over this for many, many nights, and the world became
+unprofitable to him. He even blunted his naturally fine appetite with
+beer and tobacco; and all the while the parrot talked at and made a mock
+of him.
+
+The heat continued and the tempers wore away more quickly than before.
+A Sergeant's wife died of heat-apoplexy in the night, and the rumour ran
+abroad that it was cholera. Men rejoiced openly, hoping that it would
+spread and send them into camp. But that was a false alarm.
+
+It was late on a Tuesday evening, and the men were waiting in the deep
+double verandahs for "Last Post," when Simmons went to the box at the
+foot of his bed, took out his pipe, and slammed the lid down with a
+bang that echoed through the deserted barrack like the crack of a rifle.
+Ordinarily speaking, the men would have taken no notice; but their
+nerves were fretted to fiddle-strings. They jumped up, and three or four
+clattered into the barrack-room only to find Simmons kneeling by his
+box.
+
+"Ow! It's you, is it?" they said, and laughed foolishly. "We thought
+'twas--"
+
+Simmons rose slowly. If the accident had so shaken his fellows, what
+would not the reality do?
+
+"You thought it was--did you? And what makes you think?" he said,
+lashing himself into madness as he went on; "to Hell with your thinking,
+ye dirty spies!"
+
+"Simmons, ye so-oor," chuckled the parrot in the verandah sleepily,
+recognising a well-known voice. Now that was absolutely all.
+
+The tension snapped. Simmons fell back on the arm-rack
+deliberately,--the men were at the far end of the room,--and took out
+his rifle and packet of ammunition. "Don't go playing the goat, Sim!"
+said Losson. "Put it down," but there was a quaver in his voice. Another
+man stooped, slipped his boot, and hurled it at Simmons's head. The
+prompt answer was a shot which, fired at random, found its billet in
+Losson's throat. Losson fell forward without a word, and the others
+scattered.
+
+"You thought it was!" yelled Simmons. "You're drivin' me to it! I tell
+you you're drivin' me to it! Get up, Losson, an' don't lie shammin'
+there--you an' your blasted parrit that druv me to it!"
+
+But there was an unaffected reality about Losson's pose that showed
+Simmons what he had done. The men were still clamouring in the verandah.
+Simmons appropriated two more packets of ammunition and ran into the
+moonlight, muttering: "I'll make a night of it. Thirty roun's, an' the
+last for myself. Take you that, you dogs!"
+
+He dropped on one knee and fired into the brown of the men on the
+verandah, but the bullet flew high, and landed in the brickwork with a
+vicious phwit that made some of the younger ones turn pale. It is, as
+musketry theorists observe, one thing to fire and another to be fired
+at.
+
+Then the instinct of the chase flared up. The news spread from barrack
+to barrack, and the men doubled out intent on the capture of Simmons,
+the wild beast, who was heading for the Cavalry parade-ground, stopping
+now and again to send back a shot and a curse in the direction of his
+pursuers.
+
+"I'll learn you to spy on me!" he shouted; "I'll learn you to give me
+dorg's names! Come on, the 'ole lot o' you! Colonel John Anthony Deever,
+C. B.!"--he turned towards the Infantry Mess and shook his rifle--"you
+think yourself the devil of a man--but I tell you that if you put your
+ugly old carcass outside o' that door, I'll make you the poorest-lookin'
+man in the army. Come out, Colonel John Anthony Deever, C. B.! Come
+Out and see me practiss on the rainge. I'm the crack shot of the 'ole
+bloomin' battalion." In proof of which statement Simmons fired at the
+lighted windows of the mess-house.
+
+"Private Simmons, E Comp'ny, on the Cavalry p'rade-ground, Sir, with
+thirty rounds," said a Sergeant breathlessly to the Colonel. "Shootin'
+right and lef', Sir. Shot Private Losson. What's to be done, Sir?"
+
+Colonel John Anthony Deever, C. B., sallied out, only to be saluted by a
+spurt of dust at his feet.
+
+"Pull up!" said the Second in Command; "I don't want my step in that
+way, Colonel. He's as dangerous as a mad dog."
+
+"Shoot him like one, then," said the Colonel bitterly, "if he won't take
+his chance. My regiment, too! If it had been the Towheads I could have
+understood."
+
+Private Simmons had occupied a strong position near a well on the edge
+of the parade-ground, and was defying the regiment to come on. The
+regiment was not anxious to comply, for there is small honour in being
+shot by a fellow-private. Only Corporal Slane, rifle in hand, threw
+himself down on the ground, and wormed his way towards the well.
+
+"Don't shoot," said he to the men round him; "like as not you'll 'it me.
+I'll catch the beggar livin'."
+
+Simmons ceased shouting for a while, and th noise of trap-wheels could
+be heard across the plain. Major Oldyne, Commanding the Horse Battery,
+was coming back from a dinner in the Civil Lines; was driving after his
+usual custom--that is to say, as fast as the horse could go.
+
+"A orf'cer! A blooming spangled orf'cer!" shrieked Simmons; "I'll make a
+scarecrow of that orf'cer!" The trap stopped.
+
+"What's this?" demanded the Major of Gunners. "You there, drop your
+rifle."
+
+"Why, it's Jerry Blazes! I ain't got no quarrel with you, Jerry Blazes.
+Pass, frien', an' all's well!"
+
+But Jerry Blazes had not the faintest intention of passing a dangerous
+murderer. He was, as his adoring Battery swore long and fervently,
+without knowledge of fear, and they were surely the best judges, for
+Jerry Blazes, it was notorious, had done his possible to kill a man each
+time the Battery went out.
+
+He walked towards Simmons, with the intention of rushing him and
+knocking him down.
+
+"Don't make me do it, Sir," said Simmons; "I ain't got nothing ag'in'
+you. Ah! you would?"--the Major broke into a run--"Take that, then!"
+
+The Major dropped with a bullet through his shoulder, and Simmons stood
+over him. He had lost the satisfaction of killing Losson in the desired
+way: but here was a helpless body to his hand. Should he slip in another
+cartridge, and blow off the head, or with the butt smash in the white
+face? He stopped to consider, and a cry went up from the far side of
+the parade-ground: "He's killed Jerry Blazes!" But in the shelter of the
+well-pillars Simmons was safe, except when he stepped out to fire. "I'll
+blow yer 'andsome 'ead off, Jerry Blazes," said Simmons reflectively.
+"Six and three is nine an' one is ten, an' that leaves me another
+nineteen, an' one for myself" He tugged at the string of the second
+packet of ammunition. Corporal Slane crawled out of the shadow of a bank
+into the moonlight.
+
+"I see you!" said Simmons. "Come a bit furder on an' I'll do for you."
+
+"I'm comin'," said Corporal Slane briefly; "you've done a bad day's
+work, Sim. Come out 'ere an' come back with me."
+
+"Come to," laughed Simmons, sending a cartridge home with his thumb.
+"Not before I've settled you an' Jerry Blazes."
+
+The Corporal was lying at full length in the dust of the parade-ground,
+a rifle under him. Some of the less cautious men in the distance
+shouted: "Shoot 'im! Shoot 'im, Slane!"
+
+"You move 'and or foot, Slane," said Simmons, "an' I'll kick Jerry
+Blazes' 'ead in, and shoot you after."
+
+"I ain't movin'," said the Corporal, raising his head; "you daren't 'it
+a man on 'is legs. Let go o' Jerry Blazes an' come out o' that with your
+fistes. Come an' 'it me. You daren't, you bloomin' dog-shooter!"
+
+"I dare."
+
+"You lie, you man-sticker. You sneakin', Sheeny butcher, you lie. See
+there!" Slane kicked the rifle away, and stood up in the peril of his
+life. "Come on, now!"
+
+The temptation was more than Simmons could resist, for the Corporal in
+his white clothes offered a perfect mark.
+
+"Don't misname me," shouted Simmons, firing as he spoke. The shot
+missed, and the shooter, blind with rage, threw his rifle down and
+rushed at Slane from the protection of the well. Within striking
+distance, he kicked savagely at Slane's stomach, but the weedy Corporal
+knew something of Simmons's weakness, and knew, too, the deadly guard
+for that kick. Bowing forward and drawing up his right leg till the heel
+of the right foot was set some three inches above the inside of the left
+knee-cap, he met the blow standing on one leg--exactly as Gonds stand
+when they meditate--and ready for the fall that would follow. There
+was an oath, the Corporal fell over to his own left as shinbone met
+shinbone, and the Private collapsed, his right leg broken an inch above
+the ankle.
+
+"Pity you don't know that guard, Sim," said Slane, spitting out the dust
+as he rose. Then raising his voice--"Come an' take him on. I've bruk 'is
+leg." This was not strictly true, for the Private had accomplished his
+own downfall, since it is the special merit of that leg-guard that the
+harder the kick the greater the kicker's discomfiture.
+
+Slane walked to Jerry Blazes and hung over him with ostentatious
+anxiety, while Simmons, weeping with pain, was carried away. "'Ope you
+ain't 'urt badly, Sir," said Slane. The Major had fainted, and there was
+an ugly, ragged hole through the top of his arm. Slane knelt down
+and murmured: "S'elp me, I believe 'e's dead. Well, if that ain't my
+blooming luck all over!"
+
+But the Major was destined to lead his Battery afield for many a long
+day with unshaken nerve. He was removed, and nursed and petted into
+convalescence, while the Battery discussed the wisdom of capturing
+Simmons and blowing him from a gun. They idolised their Major, and his
+reappearance on parade brought about a scene nowhere provided for in the
+Army Regulations.
+
+Great, too, was the glory that fell to Slane's share. The Gunners would
+have made him drunk thrice a day for at least a fortnight. Even the
+Colonel of his own regiment complimented him upon his coolness, and the
+local paper called him a hero. These things did not puff him up. When
+the Major offered him money and thanks, the virtuous Corporal took the
+one and put aside the other. But he had a request to make and prefaced
+it with many a "Beg y' pardon, Sir." Could the Major see his way to
+letting the Slane-M'Kenna wedding be adorned by the presence of four
+Battery horses to pull a hired barouche? The Major could, and so could
+the Battery. Excessively so. It was a gorgeous wedding.
+
+"Wot did I do it for?" said Corporal Slane. "For the 'orses o' course.
+Jhansi ain't a beauty to look at, but I wasn't goin' to 'ave a hired
+turnout. Jerry Blazes? If I 'adn't 'a' wanted something, Sim might ha'
+blowed Jerry Blazes' blooming 'ead into Hirish stew for aught I'd 'a'
+cared."
+
+
+And they hanged Private Simmons--hanged him as high as Haman in hollow
+square of the regiment; and the Colonel said it was Drink; and the
+Chaplain was sure it was the Devil; and Simmons fancied it was both,
+but he didn't know, and only hoped his fate would be a warning to
+his companions; and half a dozen "intelligent publicists" wrote six
+beautiful leading articles on "The Prevalence of Crime in the Army."
+
+But not a soul thought of comparing the "bloody-minded Simmons" to the
+squawking, gaping school-girl with which this story opens.
+
+
+
+
+THE LOST LEGION
+
+When the Indian Mutiny broke out, and a little time before the siege of
+Delhi, a regiment of Native Irregular Horse was stationed at Peshawur on
+the frontier of India. That regiment caught what John Lawrence called
+at the time "the prevalent mania," and would have thrown in its lot with
+the mutineers, had it been allowed to do so. The chance never came, for,
+as the regiment swept off down south, it was headed off by a remnant
+of an English corps into the hills of Afghanistan, and there the newly
+conquered tribesmen turned against it as wolves turn against buck. It
+was hunted for the sake of its arms and accoutrements from hill to hill,
+from ravine to ravine, up and down the dried beds of rivers and round
+the shoulders of bluffs, till it disappeared as water sinks in the
+sand--this officerless rebel regiment. The only trace left of its
+existence to-day is a nominal roll drawn up in neat round hand and
+countersigned by an officer who called himself, "Adjutant, late
+Irregular Cavalry." The paper is yellow with years and dirt, but on the
+back of it you can still read a pencil-note by John Lawrence, to this
+effect: "See that the two native officers who remained loyal are not
+deprived of their estates.--J. L." Of six hundred and fifty sabres only
+two stood strain, and John Lawrence in the midst of all the agony of the
+first months of the Mutiny found time to think about their merits.
+
+That was more than thirty years ago, and the tribesmen across the Afghan
+border who helped to annihilate the regiment are now old men. Sometimes
+a graybeard speaks of his share in the massacre. "They came," he will
+say, "across the border, very proud, calling upon us to rise and kill
+the English, and go down to the sack of Delhi. But we who had just been
+conquered by the same English knew that they were over-bold, and that
+the Government could account easily for those down-country dogs. This
+Hindustani regiment, therefore, we treated with fair words, and kept
+standing in one place till the redcoats came after them very hot and
+angry. Then this regiment ran forward a little more into our hills to
+avoid the wrath of the English, and we lay upon their flanks watching
+from the sides of the hills till we were well assured that their path
+was lost behind them. Then we came down, for we desired their clothes,
+and their bridles, and their rifles, and their boots--more especially
+their boots. That was a great killing--done slowly." Here the old man
+will rub his nose, and shake his long snaky locks, and lick his bearded
+lips, and grin till the yellow tooth-stumps show. "Yea, we killed them
+because we needed their gear, and we knew that their lives had been
+forfeited to God on account of their sin--the sin of treachery to the
+salt which they had eaten. They rode up and down the valleys, stumbling
+and rocking in their saddles, and howling for mercy. We drove them
+slowly like cattle till they were all assembled in one place, the flat
+wide valley of Sheor Kit. Many had died from want of water, but there
+still were many left, and they could not make any stand. We went among
+them pulling them down with our hands two at a time, and our boys killed
+them who were new to the sword. My share of the plunder was such and
+such--so many guns, and so many saddles. The guns were good in those
+days. Now we steal the Government rifles, and despise smooth barrels.
+Yes, beyond doubt we wiped that regiment from off the face of the earth,
+and even the memory of the deed is now dying. But men say--"
+
+At this point the tale would stop abruptly, and it was impossible to
+find out what men said across the border. The Afghans were always a
+secretive race, and vastly preferred doing something wicked to saying
+anything at all. They would be quiet and well-behaved for months, till
+one night, without word or warning, they would rush a police-post, cut
+the throats of a constable or two, dash through a village, carry away
+three or four women, and withdraw, in the red glare of burning thatch,
+driving the cattle and goats before them to their own desolate hills.
+The Indian Government would become almost tearful on these occasions.
+First it would say, "Please be good and we'll forgive you." The tribe
+concerned in the latest depredation would collectively put its thumb to
+its nose and answer rudely. Then the Government would say: "Hadn't you
+better pay up a little money for those few corpses you left behind you
+the other night?" Here the tribe would temporise, and lie and bully,
+and some of the younger men, merely to show contempt of authority, would
+raid another police-post and fire into some frontier mud-fort, and, if
+lucky, kill a real English officer. Then the Government would say:--
+
+"Observe; if you really persist in this line of conduct, you will be
+hurt." If the tribe knew exactly what was going on in India, it would
+apologise or be rude, according as it learned whether the Government
+was busy with other things or able to devote its full attention to
+their performances. Some of the tribes knew to one corpse how far to go.
+Others became excited, lost their heads, and told the Government to come
+on. With sorrow and tears, and one eye on the British taxpayer at home,
+who insisted on regarding these exercises as brutal wars of annexation,
+the Government would prepare an expensive little field-brigade and some
+guns, and send all up into the hills to chase the wicked tribe out of
+the valleys, where the corn grew, into the hill-tops, where there was
+nothing to eat. The tribe would turn out in full strength and enjoy the
+campaign, for they knew that their women would never be touched, that
+their wounded would be nursed, not mutilated, and that as soon as each
+man's bag of corn was spent they could surrender and palaver with the
+English General as though they had been a real enemy. Afterwards, years
+afterwards, they would pay the blood-money, driblet by driblet, to the
+Government, and tell their children how they had slain the redcoats by
+thousands. The only drawback to this kind of picnic-war was the weakness
+of the redcoats for solemnly blowing up with powder their fortified
+towers and keeps. This the tribes always considered mean.
+
+Chief among the leaders of the smaller tribes--the little clans who
+knew to a penny the expense of moving white troops against them--was
+a priest-bandit-chief whom we will call the Gulla Kutta Mullah. His
+enthusiasm for Border murder as an art was almost dignified. He would
+cut down a mail-runner from pure wantonness, or bombard a mud-fort with
+rifle-fire when he knew that our men needed to sleep. In his leisure
+moments he would go on circuit among his neighbours, and try to
+incite other tribes to devilry. Also, he kept a kind of hotel for
+fellow-outlaws in his own village, which lay in a valley called Bersund.
+Any respectable murderer on that section of the frontier was sure to lie
+up at Bersund, for it was reckoned an exceedingly safe place. The sole
+entry to it ran through a narrow gorge which could be converted into a
+death-trap in five minutes. It was surrounded by high hills, reckoned
+inaccessible to all save born mountaineers, and here the Gulla Kutta
+Mullah lived in great state, the head of a colony of mud and stone huts,
+and in each mud hut hung some portion of a red uniform and the plunder
+of dead men. The Government particularly wished for his capture, and
+once invited him formally to come out and be hanged on account of the
+many murders in which he had taken a direct part. He replied:--
+
+"I am only twenty miles, as the crow flies, from your border. Come and
+fetch me."
+
+"Some day we will come," said the Government, "and hanged you will be."
+
+The Gulla Kutta Mullah let the matter slip from his mind. He knew that
+the patience of the Government was as long as a summer day; but he
+did not realise that its arm was as long as a winter night. Months
+afterwards, when there was peace on the border, and all India was quiet,
+the Indian Government turned in its sleep and remembered the Gulla Kutta
+Mullah at Bersund, with his thirteen outlaws. The movement against him
+of one single regiment--which the telegrams would have translated as
+war--would have been highly impolitic. This was a time for silence and
+speed, and, above all, absence of bloodshed.
+
+You must know that all along the north-west frontier of India there is
+spread a force of some thirty thousand foot and horse, whose duty it is
+to quietly and unostentatiously shepherd the tribes in front of them.
+They move up and down, and down and up, from one desolate little post to
+another; they are ready to take the field at ten minutes' notice; they
+are always half in and half out of a difficulty somewhere along the
+monotonous line; their lives are as hard as their own muscles, and the
+papers never say anything about them. It was from this force that the
+Government picked its men.
+
+One night, at a station where the mounted Night Patrol fire as they
+challenge, and the wheat rolls in great blue-green waves under our cold
+northern moon, the officers were playing billiards in the mud-walled
+club-house, when orders came to them that they were to go on parade at
+once for a night-drill. They grumbled, and went to turn out their men--a
+hundred English troops, let us say, two hundred Goorkhas, and about a
+hundred cavalry of the finest native cavalry in the world.
+
+When they were on the parade-ground, it was explained to them in
+whispers that they must set off at once across the hills to Bersund. The
+English troops were to post themselves round the hills at the side of
+the valley; the Goorkhas would command the gorge and the death-trap, and
+the cavalry would fetch a long march round and get to the back of the
+circle of hills, whence, if there were any difficulty, they could charge
+down on the Mullah's men. But orders were very strict that there should
+be no fighting and no noise. They were to return in the morning with
+every round of ammunition intact, and the Mullah and the thirteen
+outlaws bound in their midst. If they were successful, no one would know
+or care anything about their work; but failure meant probably a small
+border war, in which the Gulla Kutta Mullah would pose as a popular
+leader against a big bullying power, instead of a common Border
+murderer.
+
+Then there was silence, broken only by the clicking of the
+compass-needles and snapping of watch-cases, as the heads of columns
+compared bearings and made appointments for the rendezvous. Five minutes
+later the parade-ground was empty; the green coats of the Goorkhas and
+the overcoats of the English troops had faded into the darkness, and the
+cavalry were cantering away in the face of a blinding drizzle.
+
+What the Goorkhas and the English did will be seen later on. The heavy
+work lay with the horses, for they had to go far and pick their way
+clear of habitations. Many of the troopers were natives of that part of
+the world, ready and anxious to fight against their kin, and some of
+the officers had made private and unofficial excursions into those hills
+before. They crossed the border, found a dried river-bed, cantered up
+that, walked through a stony gorge, risked crossing a low hill under
+cover of the darkness, skirted another hill, leaving their hoof-marks
+deep in some ploughed ground, felt their way along another water-course,
+ran over the neck of a spur praying that no one would hear their horses
+grunting, and so worked on in the rain and the darkness till they had
+left Bersund and its crater of hills a little behind them, and to the
+left, and it was time to swing round. The ascent commanding the back
+of Bersund was steep, and they halted to draw breath in a broad level
+valley below the height. That is to say, the men reined up, but the
+horses, blown as they were, refused to halt. There was unchristian
+language, the worse for being delivered in a whisper, and you heard the
+saddles squeaking in the darkness as the horses plunged.
+
+The subaltern at the rear of one troop turned in his saddle and said
+very softly:--
+
+"Carter, what the blessed heavens are you doing at the rear? Bring your
+men up, man."
+
+There was no answer, till a trooper replied:--
+
+"Carter Sahib is forward--not here. There is nothing behind us."
+
+"There is," said the subaltern. "The squadron's walking on its own
+tail."
+
+Then the Major in command moved down to the rear, swearing softly and
+asking for the blood of Lieutenant Halley--the subaltern who had just
+spoken.
+
+"Look after your rearguard," said the Major. "Some of your infernal
+thieves have got lost. They're at the head of the squadron, and you're a
+several kinds of idiot."
+
+"Shall I tell off my men, sir?" said the subaltern sulkily, for he was
+feeling wet and cold.
+
+"Tell 'em off!" said the Major. "Whip 'em off, by Gad! You're
+squandering them all over the place. There's a troop behind you now!"
+
+"So I was thinking," said the subaltern calmly. "I have all my men here,
+sir. Better speak to Carter."
+
+"Carter Sahib sends salaam and wants to know why the regiment is
+stopping," said a trooper to Lieutenant Halley.
+
+"Where under heaven is Carter," said the Major.
+
+"Forward with his troop," was the answer.
+
+"Are we walking in a ring, then, or are we the centre of a blessed
+brigade?" said the Major.
+
+By this time there was silence all along the column. The horses were
+still; but, through the drive of the fine rain, men could hear the feet
+of many horses moving over stony ground.
+
+"We're being stalked," said Lieutenant Halley.
+
+"They've no horses here. Besides they'd have fired before this," said
+the Major. "It's--it's villagers' ponies."
+
+"Then our horses would have neighed and spoilt the attack long ago. They
+must have been near us for half an hour," said the subaltern.
+
+"Queer that we can't smell the horses," said the Major, damping his
+finger and rubbing it on his nose as he sniffed up wind.
+
+"Well, it's a bad start," said the subaltern, shaking the wet from his
+overcoat. "What shall we do, sir?"
+
+"Get on," said the Major. "We shall catch it to-night."
+
+The column moved forward very gingerly for a few paces. Then there was
+an oath, a shower of blue sparks as shod hooves crashed on small stones,
+and a man rolled over with a jangle of accoutrements that would have
+waked the dead.
+
+"Now we've gone and done it," said Lieutenant Halley. "All the hillside
+awake and all the hillside to climb in the face of musketry-fire! This
+comes of trying to do night-hawk work."
+
+The trembling trooper picked himself up and tried to explain that his
+horse had fallen over one of the little cairns that are built of loose
+stones on the spot where a man has been murdered. There was no need to
+give reasons. The Major's big Australian charger blundered next, and the
+column came to a halt in what seemed to be a very graveyard of little
+cairns, all about two feet high. The manoeuvres of the squadron are not
+reported. Men said that it felt like mounted quadrilles without training
+and without the music; but at last the horses, breaking rank and
+choosing their own way, walked clear of the cairns, till every man of
+the squadron reformed and drew rein a few yards up the slope of the
+hill. Then, according to Lieutenant Halley, there was another scene very
+like the one which has been described. The Major and Carter insisted
+that all the men had not joined rank, and that there were more of
+them in the rear, clicking and blundering among the dead men's cairns.
+Lieutenant Halley told off his own troopers again and resigned himself
+to wait. Later on he said to me:
+
+"I didn't much know and I didn't much care what was going on. The row of
+that trooper falling ought to have scared half the country, and I would
+take my oath that we were being stalked by a full regiment in the rear,
+and they were making row enough to rouse all Afghanistan. I sat tight,
+but nothing happened."
+
+The mysterious part of the night's work was the silence on the hillside.
+Everybody knew that the Gulla Kutta Mullah had his outpost-huts on the
+reverse side of the hill, and everybody expected, by the time that the
+Major had sworn himself into quiet, that the watchmen there would open
+fire. When nothing happened, they said that the gusts of the rain had
+deadened the sound of the horses, and thanked Providence. At last the
+Major satisfied himself (a) that he had left no one behind among the
+cairns, and (b) that he was not being taken in the rear by a large and
+powerful body of cavalry. The men's tempers were thoroughly spoiled,
+the horses were lathered and unquiet, and one and all prayed for the
+daylight.
+
+They set themselves to climb up the hill, each man leading his mount
+carefully. Before they had covered the lower slopes or the breast-plates
+had begun to tighten, a thunderstorm came up behind, rolling across the
+low hills and drowning any noise less than that of cannon. The
+first flash of the lightning showed the bare ribs of the ascent, the
+hill-crest standing steely-blue against the black sky, the little
+falling lines of the rain, and, a few yards to their left flank, an
+Afghan watch-tower, two-storied, built of stone, and entered by a ladder
+from the upper story. The ladder was up, and a man with a rifle was
+leaning from the window. The darkness and the thunder rolled down in
+an instant, and, when the lull followed, a voice from the watch-tower
+cried, "Who goes there?"
+
+The cavalry were very quiet, but each man gripped his carbine and stood
+beside his horse. Again the voice called, "Who goes there?" and in a
+louder key, "O brothers, give the alarm!" Now, every man in the cavalry
+would have died in his long boots sooner than have asked for quarter,
+but it is a fact that the answer to the second call was a long wail of
+"Marf karo! Marf karo!" which means, "Have mercy! Have mercy!" It came
+from the climbing regiment.
+
+The cavalry stood dumbfoundered, till the big troopers had time to
+whisper one to another: "Mir Khan, was that thy voice? Abdullah, didst
+thou call?" Lieutenant Halley stood beside his charger and waited.
+So long as no firing was going on he was content. Another flash of
+lightning showed the horses with heaving flanks and nodding heads; the
+men, white eye-balled, glaring beside them, and the stone watch-tower
+to the left. This time there was no head at the window, and the rude
+iron-clamped shutter that could turn a rifle-bullet was closed.
+
+"Go on, men," said the Major. "Get up to the top at any rate!" The
+squadron toiled forward, the horses wagging their tails and the men
+pulling at the bridles, the stones rolling down the hillside and the
+sparks flying. Lieutenant Halley declares that he never heard a squadron
+make so much noise in his life. They scrambled up, he said, as though
+each horse had eight legs and a spare horse to follow him. Even then
+there was no sound from the watch-tower, and the men stopped exhausted
+on the ridge that overlooked the pit of darkness in which the village
+of Bersund lay. Girths were loosed, curb-chains shifted, and saddles
+adjusted, and the men dropped down among the stones. Whatever might
+happen now, they held the upper ground of any attack.
+
+The thunder ceased, and with it the rain, and the soft thick darkness of
+a winter night before the dawn covered them all. Except for the sound of
+falling water among the ravines below, everything was still. They heard
+the shutter of the watch-tower below them thrown back with a clang, and
+the voice of the watcher calling, "Oh, Hafiz Ullah!"
+
+The echoes took up the call, "La-la-la!" and an answer came from the
+watch-tower hidden round the curve of the hill, "What is it, Shahbaz
+Khan?"
+
+Shahbaz Khan replied in the high-pitched voice of the mountaineer: "Hast
+thou seen?"
+
+The answer came back: "Yes. God deliver us from all evil spirits!"
+
+There was a pause, and then: "Hafiz Ullah, I am alone! Come to me."
+
+"Shahbaz Khan, I am alone also; but I dare not leave my post!"
+
+"That is a lie; thou art afraid."
+
+A longer pause followed, and then: "I am afraid. Be silent! They are
+below us still. Pray to God and sleep."
+
+The troopers listened and wondered, for they could not understand what
+save earth and stone could lie below the watch-towers.
+
+Shahbaz Khan began to call again: "They are below us. I can see them!
+For the pity of God come over to me, Hafiz Ullah! My father slew ten of
+them. Come over!"
+
+Hafiz Ullah answered in a very loud voice, "Mine was guiltless. Hear,
+ye Men of the Night, neither my father nor my blood had any part in that
+sin. Bear thou thine own punishment, Shahbaz Khan."
+
+"Oh, some one ought to stop those two chaps crowing away like cocks
+there," said the Lieutenant, shivering under his rock.
+
+He had hardly turned round to expose a new side of him to the rain
+before a bearded, long-locked, evil-smelling Afghan rushed up the hill,
+and tumbled into his arms. Halley sat upon him, and thrust as much of a
+sword-hilt as could be spared down the man's gullet. "If you cry out, I
+kill you," he said cheerfully.
+
+The man was beyond any expression of terror. He lay and quaked, gasping.
+When Halley took the sword-hilt from between his teeth, he was still
+inarticulate, but clung to Halley's arm, feeling it from elbow to wrist.
+
+"The Rissala! The dead Rissala!" he gasped, "It is down there!"
+
+"No; the Rissala, the very much alive Rissala. It is up here," said
+Halley, unshipping his watering-bridle and fastening the man's hands.
+"Why were you in the towers so foolish as to let us pass?"
+
+"The valley is full of the dead," said the Afghan. "It is better to fall
+into the hands of the English than the hands of the dead. They march to
+and fro below there. I saw them in the lightning."
+
+He recovered his composure after a little, and whispering, because
+Halley's pistol was at his stomach, said: "What is this? There is no war
+between us now, and the Mullah will kill me for not seeing you pass!"
+
+"Rest easy," said Halley; "we are coming to kill the Mullah, if God
+please. His teeth have grown too long. No harm will come to thee unless
+the daylight shows thee as a face which is desired by the gallows for
+crime done. But what of the dead regiment?"
+
+"I only kill within my own border," said the man, immensely relieved.
+"The dead regiment is below. The men must have passed through it on
+their journey--four hundred dead on horses, stumbling among their own
+graves, among the little heaps--dead men all, whom we slew."
+
+"Whew!" said Halley. "That accounts for my cursing Carter and the Major
+cursing me. Four hundred sabres, eh? No wonder we thought there were
+a few extra men in the troop. Kurruk Shah," he whispered to a grizzled
+native officer that lay within a few feet of him, "hast thou heard
+anything of a dead Rissala in these hills?
+
+"Assuredly," said Kurruk Shah with a grim chuckle. "Otherwise, why did
+I, who have served the Queen for seven-and-twenty years, and killed many
+hill-dogs, shout aloud for quarter when the lightning revealed us to the
+watch-towers? When I was a young man I saw the killing in the valley of
+Sheor-Kit there at our feet, and I know the tale that grew up therefrom.
+But how can the ghosts of unbelievers prevail against us who are of the
+Faith? Strap that dog's hands a little tighter, Sahib. An Afghan is like
+an eel."
+
+"But a dead Rissala," said Halley, jerking his captive's wrist. "That
+is foolish talk, Kurruk Shah. The dead are dead. Hold still, Sag." The
+Afghan wriggled.
+
+"The dead are dead, and for that reason they walk at night. What need to
+talk? We be men; we have our eyes and ears. Thou canst both see and hear
+them down the hillside," said Kurruk Shah composedly.
+
+Halley stared and listened long and intently. The valley was full of
+stifled noises, as every valley must be at night; but whether he saw or
+heard more than was natural Halley alone knows, and he does not choose
+to speak on the subject.
+
+At last, and just before the dawn, a green rocket shot up from the far
+side of the valley of Bersund, at the head of the gorge, to show that
+the Goorkhas were in position. A red light from the infantry at left
+and right answered it, and the cavalry burnt a white flare. Afghans in
+winter are late sleepers, and it was not till full day that the Gulla
+Kutta Mullah's men began to straggle from their huts, rubbing their
+eyes. They saw men in green, and red, and brown uniforms, leaning on
+their arms, neatly arranged all round the crater of the village of
+Bersund, in a cordon that not even a wolf could have broken. They rubbed
+their eyes the more when a pink-faced young man, who was not even in
+the Army, but represented the Political Department, tripped down the
+hillside with two orderlies, rapped at the door of the Gulla Kutta
+Mullah's house, and told him quietly to step out and be tied up for safe
+transport. That same young man passed on through the huts, tapping here
+one cateran and there another lightly with his cane; and as each was
+pointed out, so he was tied up, staring hopelessly at the crowned
+heights around where the English soldiers looked down with incurious
+eyes. Only the Mullah tried to carry it off with curses and high words,
+till a soldier who was tying his hands said:--
+
+"None o' your lip! Why didn't you come out when you was ordered,
+instead o' keeping us awake all night? You're no better than my own
+barrack-sweeper, you white-'eaded old polyanthus! Kim up!"
+
+Half an hour later the troops had gone away with the Mullah and his
+thirteen friends. The dazed villagers were looking ruefully at a pile of
+broken muskets and snapped swords, and wondering how in the world they
+had come so to miscalculate the forbearance of the Indian Government.
+
+It was a very neat little affair, neatly carried out, and the men
+concerned were unofficially thanked for their services.
+
+Yet it seems to me that much credit is also due to another regiment
+whose name did not appear in brigade orders, and whose very existence is
+in danger of being forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT
+
+In the Army List they still stand as "The Fore and Fit Princess
+Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen-Anspach's Merther-Tydfilshire Own Royal Loyal
+Light Infantry, Regimental District 329A," but the Army through all its
+barracks and canteens knows them now as the "Fore and Aft." They may
+in time do something that shall make their new title honourable, but at
+present they are bitterly ashamed, and the man who calls them "Fore and
+Aft" does so at the risk of the head which is on his shoulders.
+
+Two words breathed into the stables of a certain Cavalry Regiment will
+bring the men out into the streets with belts and mops and bad language;
+but a whisper of "Fore and Aft" will bring out this regiment with
+rifles.
+
+Their one excuse is that they came again and did their best to finish
+the job in style. But for a time all their world knows that they were
+openly beaten, whipped, dumb-cowed, shaking and afraid. The men know it;
+their officers know it; the Horse Guards know it, and when the next war
+comes the enemy will know it also. There are two or three regiments of
+the Line that have a black mark against their names which they will then
+wipe out; and it will be excessively inconvenient for the troops upon
+whom they do their wiping.
+
+The courage of the British soldier is officially supposed to be above
+proof, and, as a general rule, it is so. The exceptions are decently
+shovelled out of sight, only to be referred to in the freshest of
+unguarded talk that occasionally swamps a Mess-table at midnight.
+Then one hears strange and horrible stories of men not following their
+officers, of orders being given by those who had no right to give them,
+and of disgrace that, but for the standing luck of the British Army,
+might have ended in brilliant disaster. These are unpleasant stories to
+listen to, and the Messes tell them under their breath, sitting by
+the big wood fires, and the young officer bows his head and thinks to
+himself, please God, his men shall never behave unhandily.
+
+The British soldier is not altogether to be blamed for occasional
+lapses; but this verdict he should not know. A moderately intelligent
+General will waste six months in mastering the craft of the particular
+war that he may be waging; a Colonel may utterly misunderstand the
+capacity of his regiment for three months after it has taken the field,
+and even a Company Commander may err and be deceived as to the temper
+and temperament of his own handful: wherefore the soldier, and the
+soldier of to-day more particularly, should not be blamed for falling
+back. He should be shot or hanged afterwards--to encourage the others;
+but he should not be vilified in newspapers, for that is want of tact
+and waste of space.
+
+He has, let us say, been in the service of the Empress for, perhaps,
+four years. He will leave in another two years. He has no inherited
+morals, and four years are not sufficient to drive toughness into his
+fibre, or to teach him how holy a thing is his Regiment. He wants to
+drink, he wants to enjoy himself--in India he wants to save money--and
+he does not in the least like getting hurt. He has received just
+sufficient education to make him understand half the purport of the
+orders he receives, and to speculate on the nature of clean, incised,
+and shattering wounds. Thus, if he is told to deploy under fire
+preparatory to an attack, he knows that he runs a very great risk of
+being killed while he is deploying, and suspects that he is being thrown
+away to gain ten minutes' time. He may either deploy with desperate
+swiftness, or he may shuffle, or bunch, or break, according to the
+discipline under which he has lain for four years.
+
+Armed with imperfect knowledge, cursed with the rudiments of an
+imagination, hampered by the intense selfishness of the lower classes,
+and unsupported by any regimental associations, this young man is
+suddenly introduced to an enemy who in eastern lands is always ugly,
+generally tall and hairy, and frequently noisy. If he looks to the right
+and the left and sees old soldiers--men of twelve years' service,
+who, he knows, know what they are about--taking a charge, rush, or
+demonstration without embarrassment, he is consoled and applies his
+shoulder to the butt of his rifle with a stout heart. His peace is the
+greater if he hears a senior, who has taught him his soldiering and
+broken his head on occasion, whispering: "They'll shout and carry on
+like this for five minutes. Then they'll rush in, and then we've got 'em
+by the short hairs!"
+
+But, on the other hand, if he sees only men of his own term of service,
+turning white and playing with their triggers and saying: "What the
+Hell's up now?" while the Company Commanders are sweating into
+their sword-hilts and shouting: "Front rank, fix bayonets. Steady
+there--steady! Sight for three hundred--no, for five! Lie down, all!
+Steady! Front rank kneel!" and so forth, he becomes unhappy, and grows
+acutely miserable when he hears a comrade turn over with the rattle of
+fire-irons falling into the fender, and the grunt of a pole-axed ox. If
+he can be moved about a little and allowed to watch the effect of his
+own fire on the enemy he feels merrier, and may be then worked up to
+the blind passion of fighting, which is, contrary to general belief,
+controlled by a chilly Devil and shakes men like ague. If he is not
+moved about, and begins to feel cold at the pit of the stomach, and in
+that crisis is badly mauled and hears orders that were never given, he
+will break, and he will break badly, and of all things under the
+light of the Sun there is nothing more terrible than a broken British
+regiment. When the worst comes to the worst and the panic is really
+epidemic, the men must be e'en let go, and the Company Commanders had
+better escape to the enemy and stay there for safety's sake. If they can
+be made to come again they are not pleasant men to meet; because they
+will not break twice.
+
+About thirty years from this date, when we have succeeded in
+half-educating everything that wears trousers, our Army will be a
+beautifully unreliable machine. It will know too much and it will do too
+little. Later still, when all men are at the mental level of the officer
+of to-day, it will sweep the earth. Speaking roughly, you must employ
+either blackguards or gentlemen, or, best of all, blackguards commanded
+by gentlemen, to do butcher's work with efficiency and despatch. The
+ideal soldier should, of course, think for himself--the "Pocket-book"
+says so. Unfortunately, to attain this virtue, he has to pass through
+the phase of thinking of himself, and that is misdirected genius. A
+blackguard may be slow to think for himself, but he is genuinely anxious
+to kill, and a little punishment teaches him how to guard his own skin
+and perforate another's. A powerfully prayerful Highland Regiment,
+officered by rank Presbyterians, is, perhaps, one degree more terrible
+in action than a hard-bitten thousand of irresponsible Irish ruffians
+led by most improper young unbelievers. But these things prove the
+rule--which is that the midway men are not to be trusted alone. They have
+ideas about the value of life and an upbringing that has not taught them
+to go on and take the chances. They are carefully unprovided with a
+backing of comrades who have been shot over, and until that backing is
+re-introduced, as a great many Regimental Commanders intend it shall be,
+they are more liable to disgrace themselves than the size of the Empire
+or the dignity of the Army allows. Their officers are as good as good
+can be, because their training begins early, and God has arranged that a
+clean-run youth of the British middle classes shall, in the matter of
+backbone, brains, and bowels, surpass all other youths. For this reason
+a child of eighteen will stand up, doing nothing, with a tin sword in
+his hand and joy in his heart until he is dropped. If he dies, he dies
+like a gentleman. If he lives, he writes Home that he has been "potted,"
+"sniped," "chipped," or "cut over," and sits down to besiege Government
+for a wound-gratuity until the next little war breaks out, when he
+perjures himself before a Medical Board, blarneys his Colonel, burns
+incense round his Adjutant, and is allowed to go to the Front once more.
+
+Which homily brings me directly to a brace of the most finished little
+fiends that ever banged drum or tootled fife in the Band of a British
+Regiment. They ended their sinful career by open and flagrant mutiny
+and were shot for it. Their names were Jakin and Lew--Piggy Lew and
+they were bold, bad drummer-boys, both of them frequently birched by the
+Drum-Major of the Fore and Aft.
+
+Jakin was a stunted child of fourteen, and Lew was about the same age.
+When not looked after, they smoked and drank. They swore habitually
+after the manner of the Barrack-room, which is cold swearing and comes
+from between clenched teeth, and they fought religiously once a week.
+Jakin had sprung from some London gutter, and may or may not have
+passed through Dr. Barnardo's hands ere he arrived at the dignity of
+drummer-boy. Lew could remember nothing except the Regiment and the
+delight of listening to the Band from his earliest years. He hid
+somewhere in his grimy little soul a genuine love for music, and was
+most mistakenly furnished with the head of a cherub: insomuch that
+beautiful ladies who watched the Regiment in church were wont to speak
+of him as a "darling." They never heard his vitriolic comments on their
+manners and morals, as he walked back to barracks with the Band and
+matured fresh causes of offence against Jakin.
+
+The other drummer-boys hated both lads on account of their illogical
+conduct. Jakin might be pounding Lew, or Lew might be rubbing Jakin's
+head in the dirt, but any attempt at aggression on the part of an
+outsider was met by the combined forces of Lew and Jakin; and the
+consequences were painful. The boys were the Ishmaels of the corps, but
+wealthy Ishmaels, for they sold battles in alternate weeks for the sport
+of the barracks when they were not pitted against other boys; and thus
+amassed money.
+
+On this particular day there was dissension in the camp. They had just
+been convicted afresh of smoking, which is bad for little boys who use
+plug-tobacco, and Lew's contention was that Jakin had "stunk so
+'orrid bad from keepin' the pipe in pocket," that he and he alone was
+responsible for the birching they were both tingling under.
+
+"I tell you I 'id the pipe back o' barracks," said Jakin pacifically.
+
+"You're a bloomin' liar," said Lew without heat.
+
+"You're a bloomin' little barstard," said Jakin, strong in the knowledge
+that his own ancestry was unknown.
+
+Now there is one word in the extended vocabulary of barrack-room abuse
+that cannot pass without comment. You may call a man a thief and risk
+nothing. You may even call him a coward without finding more than a boot
+whiz past your ear, but you must not call a man a bastard unless you are
+prepared to prove it on his front teeth.
+
+"You might ha' kep' that till I wasn't so sore," said Lew sorrowfully,
+dodging round Jakin's guard.
+
+"I'll make you sorer," said Jakin genially, and got home on Lew's
+alabaster forehead. All would have gone well and this story, as the
+books say, would never have been written, had not his evil fate prompted
+the Bazar-Sergeant's son, a long, employless man of five-and-twenty, to
+put in an appearance after the first round. He was eternally in need of
+money, and knew that the boys had silver.
+
+"Fighting again," said he. "I'll report you to my father, and he'll
+report you to the Colour-Sergeant."
+
+"What's that to you?" said Jakin with an unpleasant dilation of the
+nostrils.
+
+"Oh! nothing to me. You'll get into trouble, and you've been up too
+often to afford that."
+
+"What the Hell do you know about what we've done?" asked Lew the Seraph.
+"You aren't in the Army, you lousy, cadging civilian."
+
+He closed in on the man's left flank.
+
+"Jes' 'cause you find two gentlemen settlin' their diff'rences with
+their fistes you stick in your ugly nose where you aren't wanted. Run
+'ome to your 'arf-caste slut of a Ma--or we'll give you what-for," said
+Jakin.
+
+The man attempted reprisals by knocking the boys' heads together. The
+scheme would have succeeded had not Jakin punched him vehemently in
+the stomach, or had Lew refrained from kicking his shins. They fought
+together, bleeding and breathless, for half an hour, and, after heavy
+punishment, triumphantly pulled down their opponent as terriers pull
+down a jackal.
+
+"Now," gasped Jakin, "I'll give you what-for." He proceeded to pound
+the man's features while Lew stamped on the outlying portions of his
+anatomy. Chivalry is not a strong point in the composition of the
+average drummer-boy. He fights, as do his betters, to make his mark.
+
+Ghastly was the ruin that escaped, and awful was the wrath of the
+Bazar-Sergeant. Awful too was the scene in Orderly-room when the two
+reprobates appeared to answer the charge of half-murdering a "civilian."
+The Bazar-Sergeant thirsted for a criminal action, and his son lied. The
+boys stood to attention while the black clouds of evidence accumulated.
+
+"You little devils are more trouble than the rest of the Regiment
+put together," said the Colonel angrily. "One might as well admonish
+thistledown, and I can't well put you in cells or under stoppages. You
+must be birched again."
+
+"Beg y' pardon, Sir. Can't we say nothin' in our own defence, Sir?"
+shrilled Jakin.
+
+"Hey! What? Are you going to argue with me?" said the Colonel.
+
+"No, Sir," said Lew. "But if a man come to you, Sir, and said he was
+going to report you, Sir, for 'aving a bit of a turn-up with a friend,
+Sir, an' wanted to get money out o' you, Sir-"
+
+The Orderly-room exploded in a roar of laughter. "Well?" said the
+Colonel.
+
+"That was what that measly jarnwar there did, Sir, and 'e'd 'a' done it,
+Sir, if we 'adn't prevented 'im. We didn't 'it 'im much, Sir. 'E 'adn't
+no manner o' right to interfere with us, Sir. I don't mind bein' birched
+by the Drum-Major, Sir, nor yet reported by any Corp'ral, but I'm--but
+I don't think it's fair, Sir, for a civilian to come an' talk over a man
+in the Army."
+
+A second shout of laughter shook the Orderly-room, but the Colonel was
+grave.
+
+"What sort of characters have these boys?" he asked of the Regimental
+Sergeant-Major.
+
+"Accordin' to the Bandmaster, Sir," returned that revered official--the
+only soul in the Regiment whom the boys feared--"they do everything but
+lie, Sir."
+
+"Is it like we'd go for that man for fun, Sir?" said Lew, pointing to
+the plaintiff.
+
+"Oh, admonished--admonished!" said the Colonel testily, and when the
+boys had gone he read the Bazar-Sergeant's son a lecture on the sin of
+unprofitable meddling, and gave orders that the Bandmaster should keep
+the Drums in better discipline.
+
+"If either of you come to practice again with so much as a scratch on
+your two ugly little faces," thundered the Bandmaster, "I'll tell the
+Drum-Major to take the skin off your backs. Understand that, you young
+devils."
+
+Then he repented of his speech for just the length of time that Lew,
+looking like a seraph in red worsted embellishments, took the place
+of one of the trumpets--in hospital--and rendered the echo of a
+battle-piece. Lew certainly was a musician, and had often in his more
+exalted moments expressed a yearning to master every instrument of the
+Band.
+
+"There's nothing to prevent your becoming a Bandmaster, Lew," said the
+Bandmaster, who had composed waltzes of his own, and worked day and
+night in the interests of the Band.
+
+"What did he say?" demanded Jakin after practice.
+
+"Said I might be a bloomin' Bandmaster, an' be asked in to 'ave a glass
+o' sherry wine on Mess-nights."
+
+"Ho! 'Said you might be a bloomin' noncombatant, did 'e! That's just
+about wot 'e would say. When I've put in my boy's service it's a
+bloomin' shame that doesn't count for pension--I'll take on as a privit.
+Then I'll be a Lance in a year--knowin' what I know about the ins an'
+outs o' things. In three years I'll be a bloomin' Sergeant. I won't
+marry then, not I! I'll 'old on and learn the orf'cers' ways an' apply
+for exchange into a reg'ment that doesn't know all about me. Then I'll
+be a bloomin' orf'cer. Then I'll ask you to 'ave a glass o' sherry wine,
+Mister Lew, an' you'll bloomin' well 'ave to stay in the hanty-room
+while the Mess-Sergeant brings it to your dirty 'ands."
+
+"S'pose I'm going to be a Bandmaster? Not I, quite. I'll be a orf'cer
+too. There's nothin' like takin' to a thing an' stickin' to it, the
+Schoolmaster says. The Reg'ment don't go 'ome for another seven years.
+I'll be a Lance then or near to."
+
+Thus the boys discussed their futures, and conducted themselves
+piously for a week. That is to say, Lew started a flirtation with the
+Colour-Sergeant's daughter, aged thirteen--"not," as he explained to
+Jakin, "with any intention o' matrimony, but by way o' keep in' my 'and
+in." And the black-haired Cris Delighan enjoyed that flirtation more
+than previous ones, and the other drummer-boys raged furiously together,
+and Jakin preached sermons on the dangers of bein' tangled along o'
+petticoats.
+
+But neither love nor virtue would have held Lew long in the paths of
+propriety had not the rumour gone abroad that the Regiment was to be
+sent on active service, to take part in a war which, for the sake of
+brevity, we will call "The War of the Lost Tribes."
+
+The barracks had the rumour almost before the Mess-room, and of all the
+nine hundred men in barracks, not ten had seen a shot fired in anger.
+The Colonel had, twenty years ago, assisted at a Frontier expedition;
+one of the Majors had seen service at the Cape; a confirmed deserter in
+E Company had helped to clear streets in Ireland; but that was all. The
+Regiment had been put by for many years. The overwhelming mass of
+its rank and file had from three to four years' service; the
+non-commissioned officers were under thirty years old; and men and
+sergeants alike had forgotten to speak of the stories written in brief
+upon the Colours--the New Colours that had been formally blessed by an
+Archbishop in England ere the Regiment came away. They wanted to go to
+the Front--they were enthusiastically anxious to go--but they had no
+knowledge of what war meant, and there was none to tell them. They were
+an educated regiment, the percentage of school-certificates in their
+ranks was high, and most of the men could do more than read and write.
+They had been recruited in loyal observance of the territorial idea; but
+they themselves had no notion of that idea. They were made up of drafts
+from an over-populated manufacturing district. The system had put flesh
+and muscle upon their small bones, but it could not put heart into the
+sons of those who for generations had done overmuch work for overscanty
+pay, had sweated in drying-rooms, stooped over looms, coughed among
+white-lead, and shivered on lime-barges. The men had found food and rest
+in the Army, and now they were going to fight "niggers"--people who ran
+away if you shook a stick at them. Wherefore they cheered lustily
+when the rumour ran, and the shrewd, clerkly non-commissioned officers
+speculated on the chances of batta and of saving their pay. At
+Headquarters men said: "The Fore and Fit have never been under fire
+within the last generation. Let us, therefore, break them in easily by
+setting them to guard lines of communication." And this would have
+been done but for the fact that British Regiments were wanted--badly
+wanted--at the Front, and there were doubtful Native Regiments that
+could fill the minor duties. "Brigade 'em with two strong Regiments,"
+said Headquarters. "They may be knocked about a bit, but they'll learn
+their business before they come through. Nothing like a night-alarm and
+a little cutting-up of stragglers to make a Regiment smart in the field.
+Wait till they've had half a dozen sentries' throats cut."
+
+The Colonel wrote with delight that the temper of his men was excellent,
+that the Regiment was all that could be wished, and as sound as a bell.
+The Majors smiled with a sober joy, and the subalterns waltzed in
+pairs down the Mess-room after dinner, and nearly shot themselves at
+revolver-practice. But there was consternation in the hearts of Jakin
+and Lew. What was to be done with the Drums? Would the Band go to the
+Front? How many of the Drums would accompany the Regiment?
+
+They took counsel together, sitting in a tree and smoking.
+
+"It's more than a bloomin' toss-up they'll leave us be'ind at the Depot
+with the women. You'll like that," said Jakin sarcastically.
+
+"Cause o' Cris, y' mean? Wot's a woman, or a 'ole bloomin' depot o'
+women, 'longside o' the chanst of field-service? You know I'm as keen on
+goin' as you," said Lew.
+
+"Wish I was a bloomin' bugler," said Jakin sadly. "They'll take Tom Kidd
+along, that I can plaster a wall with, an' like as not they won't take
+us."
+
+"Then let's go an' make Tom Kidd so bloomin' sick 'e can't bugle no
+more. You 'old 'is 'ands an' I'll kick him," said Lew, wriggling on the
+branch.
+
+"That ain't no good neither. We ain't the sort o' characters to presoom
+on our rep'tations--they're bad. If they have the Band at the Depot we
+don't go, and no error there. If they take the Band we may get cast for
+medical unfitness. Are you medical fit, Piggy?" said Jakin, digging Lew
+in the ribs with force.
+
+"Yus," said Lew with an oath. "The Doctor says your 'eart's weak through
+smokin' on an empty stummick. Throw a chest an' I'll try yer."
+
+Jakin threw out his chest, which Lew smote with all his might. Jakin
+turned very pale, gasped, crowed, screwed up his eyes, and said--"That's
+all right."
+
+"You'll do," said Lew. "I've 'eard o' men dying when you 'it 'em fair on
+the breastbone."
+
+"Don't bring us no nearer goin', though," said Jakin. "Do you know where
+we're ordered?"
+
+"Gawd knows, an' 'E won't split on a pal. Somewheres up to the Front to
+kill Paythans--hairy big beggars that turn you inside out if they get
+'old o' you. They say their women are good-looking, too."
+
+"Any loot?" asked the abandoned Jakin.
+
+"Not a bloomin' anna, they say, unless you dig up the ground an' see
+what the niggers 'ave 'id. They're a poor lot." Jakin stood upright on
+the branch and gazed across the plain.
+
+"Lew," said he, "there's the Colonel coming. 'Colonel's a good old
+beggar. Let's go an' talk to 'im."
+
+Lew nearly fell out of the tree at the audacity of the suggestion. Like
+Jakin he feared not God, neither regarded he Man, but there are limits
+even to the audacity of a drummer-boy, and to speak to a Colonel was--
+
+But Jakin had slid down the trunk and doubled in the direction of the
+Colonel. That officer was walking wrapped in thought and visions of a
+C. B. yes, even a K. C. B., for had he not at command one of the best
+Regiments of the Line--the Fore and Fit? And he was aware of two small
+boys charging down upon him. Once before it had been solemnly reported
+to him that "the Drums were in a state of mutiny," Jakin and Lew being
+the ringleaders. This looked like an organised conspiracy.
+
+The boys halted at twenty yards, walked to the regulation four paces,
+and saluted together, each as well set-up as a ramrod and little taller.
+
+The Colonel was in a genial mood; the boys appeared very forlorn and
+unprotected on the desolate plain, and one of them was handsome.
+
+"Well!" said the Colonel, recognising them. "Are you going to pull me
+down in the open? I'm sure I never interfere with you, even though"--he
+sniffed suspiciously--"you have been smoking."
+
+It was time to strike while the iron was hot. Their hearts beat
+tumultuously.
+
+"Beg y' pardon, Sir," began Jakin. "The Reg'ment's ordered on active
+service, Sir?"
+
+"So I believe," said the Colonel courteously.
+
+"Is the Band goin', Sir?" said both together. Then, without pause,
+"We're goin', Sir, ain't we?"
+
+"You!" said the Colonel, stepping back the more fully to take in the two
+small figures. "You! You'd die in the first march."
+
+"No, we wouldn't, Sir. We can march with the Reg'ment anywheres--p'rade
+an' anywhere else," said Jakin.
+
+"If Tom Kidd goes 'e'll shut up like a clasp-knife," said Lew. "Tom 'as
+very-close veins in both 'is legs, Sir."
+
+"Very how much?"
+
+"Very-close veins, Sir. That's why they swells after long p'rade, Sir.
+If 'e can go, we can go, Sir."
+
+Again the Colonel looked at them long and intently.
+
+"Yes, the Band is going," he said as gravely as though he had been
+addressing a brother officer. "Have you any parents, either of you two?"
+
+"No, Sir," rejoicingly from Lew and Jakin. "We're both orphans, Sir.
+There's no one to be considered of on our account, Sir."
+
+"You poor little sprats, and you want to go up to the Front with the
+Regiment, do you? Why?"
+
+"I've wore the Queen's Uniform for two years," said Jakin. "It's very
+'ard, Sir, that a man don't get no recompense for doin' of 'is dooty,
+Sir."
+
+"An'--an' if I don't go, Sir," interrupted Lew, "the Bandmaster 'e says
+'e'll catch an' make a bloo--a blessed musician o' me, Sir. Before I've
+seen any service, Sir."
+
+The Colonel made no answer for a long time. Then he said quietly: "If
+you're passed by the Doctor I dare say you can go. I shouldn't smoke if
+I were you."
+
+The boys saluted and disappeared. The Colonel walked home and told
+the story to his wife, who nearly cried over it. The Colonel was well
+pleased. If that was the temper of the children, what would not the men
+do?
+
+Jakin and Lew entered the boys' barrack-room with great stateliness, and
+refused to hold any conversation with their comrades for at least ten
+minutes. Then, bursting with pride, Jakin drawled: "I've bin intervooin'
+the Colonel. Good old beggar is the Colonel. Says I to 'im, 'Colonel,'
+says I, 'let me go to the Front, along o' the Reg'ment.--'To the Front
+you shall go,' says 'e, 'an' I only wish there was more like you among
+the dirty little devils that bang the bloomin' drums.' Kidd, if you
+throw your 'courtrements at me for tellin' you the truth to your own
+advantage, your legs'll swell."
+
+None the less there was a Battle-Royal in the barrack-room, for the boys
+were consumed with envy and hate, and neither Jakin nor Lew behaved in
+conciliatory wise.
+
+"I'm goin' out to say adoo to my girl," said Lew, to cap the climax.
+"Don't none o' you touch my kit because it's wanted for active service;
+me bein' specially invited to go by the Colonel."
+
+He strolled forth and whistled in the clump of trees at the back of
+the Married Quarters till Cris came to him, and, the preliminary kisses
+being given and taken, Lew began to explain the situation.
+
+"I'm goin' to the Front with the Reg'ment," he said valiantly.
+
+"Piggy, you're a little liar," said Cris, but her heart misgave her, for
+Lew was not in the habit of lying.
+
+"Liar yourself, Cris," said Lew, slipping an arm round her. "I'm goin'.
+When the Reg'ment marches out you'll see me with 'em, all galliant and
+gay. Give us another kiss, Cris, on the strength of it."
+
+"If you'd on'y a-stayed at the Depot--where you ought to ha' bin--you
+could get as many of 'em as--as you dam please," whimpered Cris, putting
+up her mouth.
+
+"It's 'ard, Cris. I grant you it's 'ard, But what's a man to do? If I'd
+a-stayed at the Depot, you wouldn't think anything of me."
+
+"Like as not, but I'd 'ave you with me, Piggy. An' all the thinkin' in
+the world isn't like kissin'."
+
+"An' all the kissin' in the world isn't like 'avin' a medal to wear on
+the front o' your coat."
+
+"You won't get no medal."
+
+"Oh, yus, I shall though. Me an' Jakin are the only acting-drummers
+that'll be took along. All the rest is full men, an' we'll get our
+medals with them."
+
+"They might ha' taken anybody but you, Piggy. You'll get killed--you're
+so venturesome. Stay with me, Piggy darlin', down at the Depot, an' I'll
+love you true, for ever."
+
+"Ain't you goin' to do that now, Cris? You said you was."
+
+"O' course I am, but th' other's more comfortable. Wait till you've
+growed a bit, Piggy. You aren't no taller than me now."
+
+"I've bin in the Army for two years, an' I'm not goin' to get out of a
+chanst o' seein' service, an' don't you try to make me do so. I'll come
+back, Cris, an' when I take on as a man I'll marry you--marry you when
+I'm a Lance."
+
+"Promise, Piggy."
+
+Lew reflected on the future as arranged by Jakin a short time
+previously, but Cris's mouth was very near to his own.
+
+"I promise, s'elp me Gawd!" said he.
+
+Cris slid an arm round his neck.
+
+"I won't 'old you back no more, Piggy. Go away an' get your medal, an'
+I'll make you a new button-bag as nice as I know how," she whispered.
+
+"Put some o' your 'air into it, Cris, an' I'll keep it in my pocket so
+long's I'm alive."
+
+Then Cris wept anew, and the interview ended. Public feeling among the
+drummer-boys rose to fever pitch, and the lives of Jakin and Lew became
+unenviable. Not only had they been permitted to enlist two years before
+the regulation boy's age--fourteen--but, by virtue, it seemed, of their
+extreme youth, they were allowed to go to the Front--which thing had not
+happened to acting-drummers within the knowledge of boy. The Band which
+was to accompany the Regiment had been cut down to the regulation twenty
+men, the surplus returning to the ranks. Jakin and Lew were attached to
+the Band as supernumeraries, though they would much have preferred being
+company buglers.
+
+"Don't matter much," said Jakin after the medical inspection. "Be
+thankful that we're 'lowed to go at all. The Doctor 'e said that if we
+could stand what we took from the Bazar-Sergeant's son we'd stand pretty
+nigh anything."
+
+"Which we will," said Lew, looking tenderly at the ragged and ill-made
+housewife that Cris had given him, with a lock of her hair worked into a
+sprawling "L" upon the cover.
+
+"It was the best I could," she sobbed. "I wouldn't let mother nor the
+Sergeant's tailor 'elp me. Keep it always, Piggy, an' remember I love
+you true."
+
+They marched to the railway station, nine hundred and sixty strong,
+and every soul in cantonments turned out to see them go. The drummers
+gnashed their teeth at Jakin and Lew marching with the Band, the married
+women wept upon the platform, and the Regiment cheered its noble self
+black in the face.
+
+"A nice level lot," said the Colonel to the Second-in-Command as they
+watched the first four companies entraining.
+
+"Fit to do anything," said the Second-in-Command enthusiastically. "But
+it seems to me they're a thought too young and tender for the work in
+hand. It's bitter cold up at the Front now."
+
+"They're sound enough," said the Colonel. "We must take our chance of
+sick casualties."
+
+So they went northward, ever northward, past droves and droves of
+camels, armies of camp-followers, and legions of laden mules, the throng
+thickening day by day, till with a shriek the train pulled up at
+a hopelessly congested junction where six lines of temporary track
+accommodated six forty-waggon trains; where whistles blew, Babus
+sweated, and Commissariat officers swore from dawn till far into the
+night, amid the wind-driven chaff of the fodder-bales and the lowing of
+a thousand steers.
+
+"Hurry up--you're badly wanted at the Front," was the message that
+greeted the Fore and Aft, and the occupants of the Red Cross carriages
+told the same tale.
+
+"Tisn't so much the bloomin' fightin'," gasped a headbound trooper
+of Hussars to a knot of admiring Fore and Afts. "Tisn't so much the
+bloomin' fightin', though there's enough o' that. It's the bloomin'
+food an' the bloomin' climate. Frost all night 'cept when it hails, and
+b'iling sun all day, and the water stinks fit to knock you down. I got
+my 'ead chipped like a egg; I've got pneumonia too, an' my guts is all
+out o' order. 'Tain't no bloomin' picnic in those parts, I can tell
+you."
+
+"Wot are the niggers like?" demanded a private.
+
+"There's some prisoners in that train yonder. Go an' look at 'em.
+They're the aristocracy o' the country. The common folk are a dashed
+sight uglier. If you want to know what they fight with, reach under my
+seat an' pull out the long knife that's there."
+
+They dragged out and beheld for the first time the grim, bone-handled,
+triangular Afghan knife. It was almost as long as Lew.
+
+"That's the thing to j'int ye," said the trooper feebly. "It can take
+off a man's arm at the shoulder as easy as slicing butter. I halved the
+beggar that used that un, but there's more of his likes up above. They
+don't understand thrustin', but they're devils to slice."
+
+The men strolled across the tracks to inspect the Afghan prisoners.
+They were unlike any "niggers" that the Fore and Aft had ever met--these
+huge, black-haired, scowling sons of the Beni-Israel. As the men stared
+the Afghans spat freely and muttered one to another with lowered eyes.
+
+"My eyes! Wot awful swine!" said Jakin, who was in the rear of the
+procession. "Say, ole man, how you got puckrowed, eh? Kiswasti you
+wasn't hanged for your ugly face, hey?"
+
+The tallest of the company turned, his leg-irons clanking at the
+movement, and stared at the boy. "See!" he cried to his fellows in
+Pushto. "They send children against us. What a people, and what fools!"
+
+"Hya." said Jakin, nodding his head cheerily. "You go down-country.
+Khana get, peenikapanee get--live like a bloomin' Raja ke marfik. That's
+a better bandobust than baynit get it in your innards. Good-bye, ole
+man. Take care o' your beautiful figure'ead, an' try to look kushy."
+
+The men laughed and fell in for their first march, when they began to
+realise that a soldier's life is not all beer and skittles. They were
+much impressed with the size and bestial ferocity of the niggers whom
+they had now learned to call "Paythans," and more with the exceeding
+discomfort of their own surroundings. Twenty old soldiers in the corps
+would have taught them how to make themselves moderately snug at night,
+but they had no old soldiers, and, as the troops on the line of march
+said, "they lived like pigs." They learned the heart-breaking cussedness
+of camp-kitchens and camels and the depravity of an E. P. tent and a
+wither-wrung mule. They studied animalculae in water, and developed a
+few cases of dysentery in their study.
+
+At the end of their third march they were disagreeably surprised by the
+arrival in their camp of a hammered iron slug which, fired from a steady
+rest at seven hundred yards, flicked out the brains of a private seated
+by the fire. This robbed them of their peace for a night, and was the
+beginning of a long-range fire carefully calculated to that end. In the
+daytime they saw nothing except an unpleasant puff of smoke from a crag
+above the line of march. At night there were distant spurts of flame and
+occasional casualties, which set the whole camp blazing into the gloom
+and, occasionally, into opposite tents. Then they swore vehemently and
+vowed that this was magnificent but not war.
+
+Indeed it was not. The Regiment could not halt for reprisals against the
+sharpshooters of the country-side. Its duty was to go forward and
+make connection with the Scotch and Goorkha troops with which it
+was brigaded. The Afghans knew this, and knew too, after their first
+tentative shots, that they were dealing with a raw regiment Thereafter
+they devoted themselves to the task of keeping the Fore and Aft on the
+strain. Not for anything would they have taken equal liberties with a
+seasoned corps--with the wicked little Goorkhas, whose delight it was to
+lie out in the open on a dark night and stalk their stalkers--with the
+terrible big men dressed in women's clothes, who could be heard praying
+to their God in the night-watches, and whose peace of mind no amount
+of "sniping" could shake--or with those vile Sikhs, who marched so
+ostentatiously unprepared and who dealt out such grim reward to those
+who tried to profit by that unpreparedness. This white regiment was
+different--quite different. It slept like a hog, and, like a hog,
+charged in every direction when it was roused. Its sentries walked with
+a footfall that could be heard for a quarter of a mile; would fire at
+anything that moved--even a driven donkey--and when they had once fired,
+could be scientifically "rushed" and laid out a horror and an offence
+against the morning sun. Then there were camp-followers who straggled
+and could be cut up without fear. Their shrieks would disturb the white
+boys, and the loss of their services would inconvenience them sorely.
+
+Thus, at every march, the hidden enemy became bolder and the Regiment
+writhed and twisted under attacks it could not avenge. The crowning
+triumph was a sudden night-rush ending in the cutting of many
+tent-ropes, the collapse of the sodden canvas, and a glorious knifing
+of the men who struggled and kicked below. It was a great deed, neatly
+carried out, and it shook the already shaken nerves of the Fore and Aft.
+All the courage that they had been required to exercise up to this point
+was the "two o'clock in the morning courage"; and, so far, they had only
+succeeded in shooting their comrades and losing their sleep.
+
+Sullen, discontented, cold, savage, sick, with their uniforms dulled and
+unclean, the Fore and Aft joined their Brigade.
+
+"I hear you had a tough time of it coming up," said the Brigadier. But
+when he saw the hospital-sheets his face fell.
+
+"This is bad," said he to himself. "They're as rotten as sheep." And
+aloud to the Colonel--"I'm afraid we can't spare you just yet. We want
+all we have, else I should have given you ten days to recover in."
+
+The Colonel winced. "On my honour, Sir," he returned, "there is not the
+least necessity to think of sparing us. My men have been rather mauled
+and upset without a fair return. They only want to go in somewhere where
+they can see what's before them."
+
+"Can't say I think much of the Fore and Fit," said the Brigadier in
+confidence to his Brigade-Major. "They've lost all their soldiering,
+and, by the trim of them, might have marched through the country from
+the other side. A more fagged-out set of men I never put eyes on."
+
+"Oh, they'll improve as the work goes on. The parade gloss has been
+rubbed off a little, but they'll put on field polish before long," said
+the Brigade-Major. "They've been mauled, and they don't quite understand
+it."
+
+They did not. All the hitting was on one side, and it was cruelly hard
+hitting with accessories that made them sick. There was also the real
+sickness that laid hold of a strong man and dragged him howling to the
+grave. Worst of all, their officers knew just as little of the country
+as the men themselves, and looked as if they did. The Fore and Aft were
+in a thoroughly unsatisfactory condition, but they believed that
+all would be well if they could once get a fair go-in at the enemy.
+Pot-shots up and down the valleys were unsatisfactory, and the bayonet
+never seemed to get a chance. Perhaps it was as well, for a long-limbed
+Afghan with a knife had a reach of eight feet, and could carry away lead
+that would disable three Englishmen.
+
+The Fore and Aft would like some rifle-practice at the enemy--all seven
+hundred rifles blazing together. That wish showed the mood of the men.
+
+The Goorkhas walked into their camp, and in broken, barrack-room English
+strove to fraternise with them: offered them pipes of tobacco and stood
+them treat at the canteen. But the Fore and Aft, not knowing much of
+the nature of the Goorkhas, treated them as they would treat any other
+"niggers," and the little men in green trotted back to their firm
+friends the Highlanders, and with many grins confided to them: "That
+dam white regiment no dam use. Sulky--ugh! Dirty--ugh! Hya, any tot for
+Johnny?" Whereat the Highlanders smote the Goorkhas as to the head, and
+told them not to vilify a British Regiment, and the Goorkhas grinned
+cavernously, for the Highlanders were their elder brothers and entitled
+to the privileges of kinship. The common soldier who touches a Goorkha
+is more than likely to have his head sliced open.
+
+Three days later the Brigadier arranged a battle according to the rules
+of war and the peculiarity of the Afghan temperament. The enemy were
+massing in inconvenient strength among the hills, and the moving of
+many green standards warned him that the tribes were "up" in aid of
+the Afghan regular troops. A squadron and a half of Bengal Lancers
+represented the available Cavalry, and two screw-guns, borrowed from a
+column thirty miles away, the Artillery at the General's disposal.
+
+"If they stand, as I've a very strong notion that they will, I fancy
+we shall see an infantry fight that will be worth watching," said the
+Brigadier. "We'll do it in style. Each regiment shall be played into
+action by its Band, and we'll hold the Cavalry in reserve."
+
+"For all the reserve?" somebody asked.
+
+"For all the reserve; because we're going to crumple them up," said the
+Brigadier, who was an extraordinary Brigadier, and did not believe in
+the value of a reserve when dealing with Asiatics. Indeed, when you come
+to think of it, had the British Army consistently waited for reserves in
+all its little affairs, the boundaries of Our Empire would have stopped
+at Brighton beach.
+
+The battle was to be a glorious battle.
+
+The three regiments debouching from three separate gorges, after duly
+crowning the heights above, were to converge from the centre, left, and
+right upon what we will call the Afghan army, then stationed towards
+the lower extremity of a flat-bottomed valley. Thus it will be seen that
+three sides of the valley practically belonged to the English, while the
+fourth was strictly Afghan property. In the event of defeat the Afghans
+had the rocky hills to fly to, where the fire from the guerrilla tribes
+in aid would cover their retreat. In the event of victory these same
+tribes would rush down and lend their weight to the rout of the British.
+
+The screw-guns were to shell the head of each Afghan rush that was
+made in close formation, and the Cavalry, held in reserve in the right
+valley, were to gently stimulate the break-up which would follow on
+the combined attack. The Brigadier, sitting upon a rock overlooking the
+valley, would watch the battle unrolled at his feet. The Fore and Aft
+would debouch from the central gorge, the Goorkhas from the left, and
+the Highlanders from the right, for the reason that the left flank of
+the enemy seemed as though it required the most hammering. It was not
+every day that an Afghan force would take ground in the open, and the
+Brigadier was resolved to make the most of it.
+
+"If we only had a few more men," he said plaintively, "we could surround
+the creatures and crumple 'em up thoroughly. As it is, I'm afraid we can
+only cut them up as they run. It's a great pity."
+
+The Fore and Aft had enjoyed unbroken peace for five days, and were
+beginning, in spite of dysentery, to recover their nerve. But they were
+not happy, for they did not know the work in hand, and had they known,
+would not have known how to do it. Throughout those five days in
+which old soldiers might have taught them the craft of the game, they
+discussed together their misadventures in the past--how such an one was
+alive at dawn and dead ere the dusk, and with what shrieks and struggles
+such another had given up his soul under the Afghan knife. Death was
+a new and horrible thing to the sons of mechanics who were used to die
+decently of zymotic disease; and their careful conservation in barracks
+had done nothing to make them look upon it with less dread.
+
+Very early in the dawn the bugles began to blow, and the Fore and Aft,
+filled with a misguided enthusiasm, turned out without waiting for a cup
+of coffee and a biscuit; and were rewarded by being kept under arms in
+the cold while the other regiments leisurely prepared for the fray. All
+the world knows that it is ill taking the breeks off a Highlander. It
+is much iller to try to make him stir unless he is convinced of the
+necessity for haste. 507 The Fore and Aft waited, leaning upon their
+rifles and listening to the protests of their empty stomachs. The
+Colonel did his best to remedy the default of lining as soon as it was
+borne in upon him that the affair would not begin at once, and so well
+did he succeed that the coffee was just ready when--the men moved off,
+their Band leading. Even then there had been a mistake in time, and
+the Fore and Aft came out into the valley ten minutes before the proper
+hour. Their Band wheeled to the right after reaching the open, and
+retired behind a little rocky knoll still playing while the Regiment
+went past.
+
+It was not a pleasant sight that opened on the uninstructed view,
+for the lower end of the valley appeared to be filled by an army in
+position--real and actual regiments attired in red coats, and--of this
+there was no doubt--firing Martini-Henry bullets which cut up the ground
+a hundred yards in front of the leading company. Over that pock-marked
+ground the Regiment had to pass, and it opened the ball with a general
+and profound courtesy to the piping pickets; ducking in perfect time, as
+though it had been brazed on a rod. Being half capable of thinking for
+itself, it fired a volley by the simple process of pitching its
+rifle into its shoulder and pulling the trigger. The bullets may have
+accounted for some of the watchers on the hill side, but they certainly
+did not affect the mass of enemy in front, while the noise of the rifles
+drowned any orders that might have been given.
+
+"Good God!" said the Brigadier, sitting on the rock high above all.
+"That Regiment has spoilt the whole show. Hurry up the others, and let
+the screw-guns get off."
+
+But the screw-guns, in working round the heights, had stumbled upon
+a wasp's nest of a small mud fort which they incontinently shelled at
+eight hundred yards, to the huge discomfort of the occupants, who were
+unaccustomed to weapons of such devilish precision.
+
+The Fore and Aft continued to go forward, but with shortened stride.
+Where were the other regiments, and why did these niggers use Martinis?
+They took open order instinctively, lying down and firing at random,
+rushing a few paces forward and lying down again, according to the
+regulations. Once in this formation, each man felt himself desperately
+alone, and edged in towards his fellow for comfort's sake.
+
+Then the crack of his neighbor's rifle at his ear led him to fire as
+rapidly as he could--again for the sake of the comfort of the noise. The
+reward was not long delayed. Five volleys plunged the files in banked
+smoke impenetrable to the eye, and the bullets began to take ground
+twenty or thirty yards in front of the firers, as the weight of the
+bayonet dragged down and to the right arms wearied with holding the kick
+of the leaping Martini. The Company Commanders peered helplessly through
+the smoke, the more nervous mechanically trying to fan it away with
+their helmets.
+
+"High and to the left!" bawled a Captain till he was hoarse. "No good!
+Cease firing, and let it drift away a bit."
+
+Three and four times the bugles shrieked the order, and when it was
+obeyed the Fore and Aft looked that their foe should be lying before
+them in mown swaths of men. A light wind drove the smoke to leeward, and
+showed the enemy still in position and apparently unaffected. A quarter
+of a ton of lead had been buried a furlong in front of them, as the
+ragged earth attested.
+
+That was not demoralizing to the Afghans, who have not European nerves.
+They were waiting for the mad riot to die down, and were firing quietly
+into the heart of the smoke. A private of the Fore and Aft spun up his
+company shrieking with agony, another was kicking the earth and gasping,
+and a third, ripped through the lower intestines by a jagged bullet, was
+calling aloud on his comrades to put him out of his pain. These were the
+casualties, and they were not soothing to hear or see. The smoke cleared
+to a dull haze.
+
+Then the foe began to shout with a great shouting, and a mass--a black
+mass--detached itself from the main body, and rolled over the ground at
+horrid speed. It was composed of, perhaps, three hundred men, who would
+shout and fire and slash if the rush of their fifty comrades who were
+determined to die carried home. The fifty were Ghazis, half maddened
+with drugs and wholly mad with religious fanaticism. When they rushed
+the British fire ceased, and in the lull the order was given to close
+ranks and meet them with the bayonet.
+
+Any one who knew the business could have told the Fore and Aft that
+the only way of dealing with a Ghazi rush is by volleys at long ranges;
+because a man who means to die, who desires to die, who will gain heaven
+by dying, must, in nine cases out of ten, kill a man who has a lingering
+prejudice in favour of life. Where they should have closed and gone
+forward, the Fore and Aft opened out and skirmished, and where they
+should have opened out and fired, they closed and waited.
+
+A man dragged from his blankets half awake and unfed is never in a
+pleasant frame of mind. Nor does his happiness increase when he watches
+the whites of the eyes of three hundred six-foot fiends upon whose
+beards the foam is lying, upon whose tongues is a roar of wrath, and in
+whose hands are yard-long knives.
+
+The Fore and Aft heard the Goorkha bugles bringing that regiment forward
+at the double, while the neighing of the Highland pipes came from the
+left. They strove to stay where they were, though the bayonets wavered
+down the line like the oars of a ragged boat. Then they felt body to
+body the amazing physical strength of their foes; a shriek of pain
+ended the rush, and the knives fell amid scenes not to be told. The
+men clubbed together and smote blindly--as often as not at their own
+fellows. Their front crumpled like paper, and the fifty Ghazis passed
+on; their backers, now drunk with success, fighting as madly as they.
+
+Then the rear ranks were bidden to close up, and the subalterns dashed
+into the stew--alone. For the rear-ranks had heard the clamour in front,
+the yells and the howls of pain, and had seen the dark stale blood that
+makes afraid. They were not going to stay. It was the rushing of the
+camps over again. Let their officers go to Hell, if they chose; they
+would get away from the knives.
+
+"Come on!" shrieked the subalterns, and their men, cursing them, drew
+back, each closing in to his neighbour and wheeling round.
+
+Charteris and Devlin, subalterns of the last company, faced their death
+alone in the belief that their men would follow.
+
+"You've killed me, you cowards," sobbed Devlin and dropped, cut from the
+shoulder-strap to the centre of the chest; and a fresh detachment of his
+men retreating, always retreating, trampled him under foot as they made
+for the pass whence they had emerged.
+
+I kissed her in the kitchen and I kissed her in the hall Child'un,
+child'un, follow me! Oh Golly, said the cook, is he gwine to kiss us
+all? Halla--Halla--Halla--Hallelujah!
+
+The Goorkhas were pouring through the left gorge and over the heights at
+the double to the invitation of their Regimental Quick-step. The black
+rocks were crowned with dark green spiders as the bugles gave tongue
+jubilantly:--
+
+     In the morning! In the morning by the bright light!
+     When Gabriel blows his trumpet in the morning!
+
+The Goorkha rear companies tripped and blundered over loose stones.
+The front files halted for a moment to take stock of the valley and to
+settle stray boot-laces. Then a happy little sigh of contentment soughed
+down the ranks, and it was as though the land smiled, for behold there
+below was the enemy, and it was to meet them that the Goorkhas had
+doubled so hastily. There was much enemy. There would be amusement. The
+little men hitched their kukris well to hand, and gaped expectantly at
+their officers as terriers grin ere the stone is cast for them to fetch.
+The Goorkhas' ground sloped downward to the valley, and they enjoyed a
+fair view of the proceedings. They sat upon the boulders to watch,
+for their officers were not going to waste their wind in assisting to
+repulse a Ghazi rush more than half a mile away. Let the white men look
+to their own front.
+
+"Hi! yi!" said the Subadar-Major, who was sweating profusely. "Dam fools
+yonder, stand close order! This is no time for close order, it is the
+time for volleys. Ugh!"
+
+Horrified, amused, and indignant, the Goorkhas beheld the retirement of
+the Fore and Aft with a running chorus of oaths and commentaries.
+
+"They run! The white men run! Colonel Sahib, may we also do a little
+running?" murmured Runbir Thappa, the Senior Jemadar.
+
+But the Colonel would have none of it. "Let the beggars be cut up a
+little," said he wrathfully. "Serves 'em right. They'll be prodded into
+facing round in a minute." He looked through his field-glasses, and
+caught the glint of an officer's sword.
+
+"Beating 'em with the flat--damned conscripts! How the Ghazis are
+walking into them!" said he.
+
+The Fore and Aft, heading back, bore with them their officers. The
+narrowness of the pass forced the mob into solid formation, and the rear
+ranks delivered some sort of a wavering volley. The Ghazis drew off, for
+they did not know what reserve the gorge might hide. Moreover, it was
+never wise to chase white men too far. They returned as wolves return
+to cover, satisfied with the slaughter that they had done, and only
+stopping to slash at the wounded on the ground. A quarter of a mile had
+the Fore and Aft retreated, and now, jammed in the pass, was quivering
+with pain, shaken and demoralised with fear, while the officers,
+maddened beyond control, smote the men with the hilts and the flats of
+their swords.
+
+"Get back! Get back, you cowards--you women! Right about face--column
+of companies, form--you hounds!" shouted the Colonel, and the subalterns
+swore aloud. But the Regiment wanted to go--to go anywhere out of the
+range of those merciless knives. It swayed to and fro irresolutely with
+shouts and outcries, while from the right the Goorkhas dropped volley
+after volley of cripple-stopper Snider bullets at long range into the
+mob of the Ghazis returning to their own troops.
+
+The Fore and Aft Band, though protected from direct fire by the rocky
+knoll under which it had sat down, fled at the first rush. Jakin and Lew
+would have fled also, but their short legs left them fifty yards in the
+rear, and by the time the Band had mixed with the Regiment, they were
+painfully aware that they would have to close in alone and unsupported.
+
+"Get back to that rock," gasped Jakin. "They won't see us there."
+
+And they returned to the scattered instruments of the Band, their hearts
+nearly bursting their ribs.
+
+"Here's a nice show for us," said Jakin, throwing himself full length on
+the ground. "A bloomin' fine show for British Infantry! Oh, the devils!
+They've gone and left us alone here! Wot'll we do?"
+
+Lew took possession of a cast-off water-bottle, which naturally was full
+of canteen rum, and drank till he coughed again.
+
+"Drink," said he shortly. "They'll come back in a minute or two--you
+see."
+
+Jakin drank, but there was no sign of the Regiment's return. They could
+hear a dull clamour from the head of the valley of retreat, and saw the
+Ghazis slink back, quickening their pace as the Goorkhas fired at them.
+
+"We're all that's left of the Band, an' we'll be cut up as sure as
+death," said Jakin.
+
+"I'll die game, then," said Lew thickly, fumbling with his tiny
+drummer's sword. The drink was working on his brain as it was on
+Jakin's.
+
+"'Old on! I know something better than fightin'," said Jakin, stung by
+the splendour of a sudden thought due chiefly to rum. "Tip our bloomin'
+cowards yonder the word to come back. The Paythan beggars are well away.
+Come on, Lew! We won't get hurt. Take the fife an' give me the drum. The
+Old Step for all your bloomin' guts are worth! There's a few of our
+men coming back now. Stand up, ye drunken little defaulter. By your
+right--quick march!"
+
+He slipped the drum-sling over his shoulder, thrust the fife into Lew's
+hand, and the two boys marched out of the cover of the rock into
+the open, making a hideous hash of the first bars of the "British
+Grenadiers."
+
+As Lew had said, a few of the Fore and Aft were coming back sullenly
+and shamefacedly under the stimulus of blows and abuse; their red coats
+shone at the head of the valley, and behind them were wavering bayonets.
+But between this shattered line and the enemy, who with Afghan suspicion
+feared that the hasty retreat meant an ambush, and had not moved
+therefore, lay half a mile of level ground dotted only by the wounded.
+
+The tune settled into full swing and the boys kept shoulder to shoulder,
+Jakin banging the drum as one possessed. The one fife made a thin and
+pitiful squeaking, but the tune carried far, even to the Goorkhas.
+
+"Come on, you dogs!" muttered Jakin to himself. "Are we to play
+forhever?" Lew was staring straight in front of him and marching more
+stiffly than ever he had done on parade.
+
+And in bitter mockery of the distant mob, the old tune of the Old Line
+shrilled and rattled:--
+
+     Some talk of Alexander,
+     And some of Hercules;
+     Of Hector and Lysander,
+     And such great names as these!
+
+There was a far-off clapping of hands from the Goorkhas, and a roar from
+the Highlanders in the distance, but never a shot was fired by British
+or Afghan. The two little red dots moved forward in the open parallel to
+the enemy's front.
+
+     But of all the world's great heroes
+     There's none that can compare,
+     With a tow-row-row-row-row-row,
+     To the British Grenadier!
+
+The men of the Fore and Aft were gathering thick at the entrance into
+the plain. The Brigadier on the heights far above was speechless with
+rage. Still no movement from the enemy. The day stayed to watch the
+children.
+
+Jakin halted and beat the long roll of the Assembly, while the fife
+squealed despairingly.
+
+"Right about face! Hold up, Lew, you're drunk," said Jakin. They wheeled
+and marched back:--
+
+     'hose heroes of antiquity
+     Ne'er saw a cannon-ball,
+     Nor knew the force o' powder,
+
+"Here they come!" said Jakin. "Go on, Lew":--
+
+     To scare their foes withal!
+
+The Fore and Aft were pouring out of the valley. What officers had said
+to men in that time of shame and humiliation will never be known; for
+neither officers nor men speak of it now.
+
+"They are coming anew!" shouted a priest among the Afghans. "Do not kill
+the boys! Take them alive, and they shall be of our faith."
+
+But the first volley had been fired, and Lew dropped on his face. Jakin
+stood for a minute, spun round and collapsed, as the Fore and Aft came
+forward, the curses of their officers in their ears, and in their hearts
+the shame of open shame.
+
+Half the men had seen the drummers die, and they made no sign. They
+did not even shout. They doubled out straight across the plain in open
+order, and they did not fire.
+
+"This," said the Colonel of Goorkhas, softly, "is the real attack, as it
+should have been delivered. Come on, my children."
+
+"Ulu-lu-lu-lu!" squealed the Goorkhas, and came down with a joyful
+clicking of kukris--those vicious Goorkha knives.
+
+On the right there was no rush. The Highlanders, cannily commending
+their souls to God (for it matters as much to a dead man whether he
+has been shot in a Border scuffle or at Waterloo), opened out and fired
+according to their custom, that is to say without heat and without
+intervals, while the screw-guns, having disposed of the impertinent mud
+fort aforementioned, dropped shell after shell into the clusters round
+the flickering green standards on the heights.
+
+"Charrging is an unfortunate necessity," murmured the Colour-Sergeant
+of the right company of the Highlanders. "It makes the men sweer so, but
+I am thinkin' that it will come to a charrge if these black devils stand
+much longer. Stewarrt, man, you're firing into the eye of the sun, and
+he'll not take any harm for Government ammuneetion. A foot lower and a
+great deal slower! What are the English doing? They're very quiet, there
+in the center. Running again?"
+
+The English were not running. They were hacking and hewing and stabbing,
+for though one white man is seldom physically a match for an Afghan in
+a sheepskin or wadded coat, yet, through the pressure of many white
+men behind, and a certain thirst for revenge in his heart, he becomes
+capable of doing much with both ends of his rifle. The Fore and Aft held
+their fire till one bullet could drive through five or six men, and the
+front of the Afghan force gave on the volley. They then selected
+their men, and slew them with deep gasps and short hacking coughs, and
+groanings of leather belts against strained bodies, and realised for the
+first time that an Afghan attacked is far less formidable than an Afghan
+attacking; which fact old soldiers might have told them.
+
+But they had no old soldiers in their ranks.
+
+The Goorkhas' stall at the bazar was the noisiest, for the men were
+engaged--to a nasty noise as of beef being cut on the block--with the
+kukri, which they preferred to the bayonet; well knowing how the Afghan
+hates the half-moon blade.
+
+As the Afghans wavered, the green standards on the mountain moved down
+to assist them in a last rally. This was unwise. The Lancers, chafing in
+the right gorge, had thrice despatched their only subaltern as galloper
+to report on the progress of affairs. On the third occasion he returned,
+with a bullet-graze on his knee, swearing strange oaths in Hindustani,
+and saying that all things were ready. So that squadron swung round the
+right of the Highlanders with a wicked whistling of wind in the pennons
+of its lances, and fell upon the remnant just when, according to all the
+rules of war, it should have waited for the foe to show more signs of
+wavering.
+
+But it was a dainty charge, deftly delivered, and it ended by the
+Cavalry finding itself at the head of the pass by which the Afghans
+intended to retreat; and down the track that the lances had made
+streamed two companies of the Highlanders, which was never intended by
+the Brigadier. The new development was successful. It detached the enemy
+from his base as a sponge is torn from a rock, and left him ringed about
+with fire in that pitiless plain. And as a sponge is chased round the
+bath-tub by the hand of the bather, so were the Afghans chased till they
+broke into little detachments much more difficult to dispose of than
+large masses.
+
+"See!" quoth the Brigadier. "Everything has come as I arranged. We've
+cut their base, and now we'll bucket 'em to pieces."
+
+A direct hammering was all that the Brigadier had dared to hope for,
+considering the size of the force at his disposal; but men who stand or
+fall by the errors of their opponents may be forgiven for turning Chance
+into Design. The bucketing went forward merrily. The Afghan forces were
+upon the run--the run of wearied wolves who snarl and bite over their
+shoulders. The red lances dipped by twos and threes, and, with a shriek,
+uprose the lance-butt, like a spar on a stormy sea, as the trooper
+cantering forward cleared his point. The Lancers kept between their prey
+and the steep hills, for all who could were trying to escape from the
+valley of death. The Highlanders gave the fugitives two hundred yards'
+law, and then brought them down, gasping and choking ere they could
+reach the protection of the boulders above. The Goorkhas followed suit;
+but the Fore and Aft were killing on their own account, for they had
+penned a mass of men between their bayonets and a wall of rock, and the
+flash of the rifles was lighting the wadded coats.
+
+"We cannot hold them, Captain Sahib!" panted a Ressaidar of Lancers.
+"Let us try the carbine. The lance is good, but it wastes time."
+
+They tried the carbine, and still the enemy melted away--fled up the
+hills by hundreds when there were only twenty bullets to stop them.
+On the heights the screw-guns ceased firing--they had run out of
+ammunition--and the Brigadier groaned, for the musketry fire could not
+sufficiently smash the retreat. Long before the last volleys were fired,
+the doolies were out in force looking for the wounded. The battle was
+over, and, but for want of fresh troops, the Afghans would have been
+wiped off the earth. As it was, they counted their dead by hundreds, and
+nowhere were the dead thicker than in the track of the Fore and Aft.
+
+But the Regiment did not cheer with the Highlanders, nor did they dance
+uncouth dances with the Goorkhas among the dead. They looked under their
+brows at the Colonel as they leaned upon their rifles and panted.
+
+"Get back to camp, you. Haven't you disgraced yourself enough for one
+day! Go and look to the wounded. It's all you're fit for," said the
+Colonel. Yet for the past hour the Fore and Aft had been doing all that
+mortal commander could expect. They had lost heavily because they did
+not know how to set about their business with proper skill, but they had
+borne themselves gallantly, and this was their reward.
+
+A young and sprightly Colour-Sergeant, who had begun to imagine himself
+a hero, offered his water-bottle to a Highlander whose tongue was black
+with thirst. "I drink with no cowards," answered the youngster huskily,
+and, turning to a Goorkha, said, "Hya, Johnny! Drink water got it?" The
+Goorkha grinned and passed his bottle. The Fore and Aft said no word.
+
+They went back to camp when the field of strife had been a little mopped
+up and made presentable, and the Brigadier, who saw himself a Knight
+in three months, was the only soul who was complimentary to them. The
+Colonel was heartbroken, and the officers were savage and sullen.
+
+"Well," said the Brigadier, "they are young troops, of course, and it
+was not unnatural that they should retire in disorder for a bit."
+
+"Oh, my only Aunt Maria!" murmured a junior Staff Officer. "Retire in
+disorder! It was a bally run!"
+
+"But they came again, as we all know," cooed the Brigadier, the
+Colonel's ashy-white face before him, "and they behaved as well as could
+possibly be expected. Behaved beautifully, indeed. I was watching them.
+It's not a matter to take to heart, Colonel. As some German General said
+of his men, they wanted to be shooted over a little, that was all." To
+himself he said--"Now they're blooded I can give 'em responsible work.
+It's as well that they got what they did. 'Teach 'em more than half a
+dozen rifle flirtations, that will--later--run alone and bite. Poor old
+Colonel, though."
+
+All that afternoon the heliograph winked and flickered on the hills,
+striving to tell the good news to a mountain forty miles away And in
+the evening there arrived, dusty, sweating, and sore, a misguided
+Correspondent who had gone out to assist at a trumpery village-burning,
+and who had read off the message from afar, cursing his luck the while.
+
+"Let's have the details somehow--as full as ever you can, please.
+It's the first time I've ever been left this campaign," said the
+Correspondent to the Brigadier; and the Brigadier, nothing loth, told
+him how an Army of Communication had been crumpled up, destroyed, and
+all but annihilated by the craft, strategy, wisdom, and foresight of the
+Brigadier.
+
+But some say, and among these be the Goorkhas who watched on the
+hillside, that that battle was won by Jakin and Lew, whose little
+bodies were borne up just in time to fit two gaps at the head of the big
+ditch-grave for the dead under the heights of Jagai.
+
+
+
+
+JUDSON AND THE EMPIRE
+
+     Gloriana! The Don may attack us
+     Whenever his stomach be fain;
+     He must reach us before he can rack us...
+     And where are the galleons of Spain?
+
+     Dobson.
+
+
+One of the many beauties of a democracy is its almost superhuman skill
+in developing troubles with other countries and finding its honour
+abraded in the process. A true democracy has a large contempt for all
+other lands that are governed by Kings and Queens and Emperors, and
+knows little and thinks less of their internal affairs. All it regards
+is its own dignity, which is its King, Queen, and Knave. So, sooner or
+later, an international difference ends in the common people, who have
+no dignity, shouting the common abuse of the street, which also has no
+dignity, across the seas in order to vindicate their own dignity. The
+consequences may or may not be war, but the chances do not favour peace.
+
+An advantage in living in a civilised land which is really governed lies
+in the fact that all the Kings and Queens and Emperors of the continent
+are closely related by blood or marriage--are, in fact, one large
+family. A wise head of them knows that what appears to be a studied
+insult may be no more than some man's indigestion or woman's
+indisposition to be treated as such, and explained in quiet talk. Again,
+a popular demonstration, headed by King and Court, may mean nothing
+more than that so-and-so's people are out of hand for the minute. When
+a horse falls to kicking in a hunt-crowd at a gate, the rider does not
+dismount, but puts his open hand behind him, and the others draw aside.
+It is so with the rulers of men. In the old days they cured their own
+and their people's bad temper with fire and slaughter; but now that
+the fire is so long of range and the slaughter so large, they do other
+things, and few among their people guess how much they owe in mere
+life and money to what the slang of the minute calls "puppets" and
+"luxuries."
+
+Once upon a time there was a little Power, the half-bankrupt wreck of a
+once great empire, that lost its temper with England, the whipping-boy
+of all the world, and behaved, as every one knows, most scandalously.
+But it is not generally known that that Power fought a pitched battle
+with England and won a glorious victory. The trouble began with the
+people. Their own misfortunes had been many, and for private rage it
+is always refreshing to find a vent in public swearing. Their national
+vanity had been deeply injured, and they thought of their ancient
+glories and the days when their fleets had first rounded the Cape of
+Storms, and their own newspapers called upon Camoens and urged them to
+extravagances. It was the gross, smooth, sleek, lying England that was
+checking their career of colonial expansion. They assumed at once that
+their ruler was in league with that country, and consequently they,
+his people, would forthwith become a Republic and colonially expand
+themselves as a free people should. This made plain, the people threw
+stones at the English Consuls and spat at English ladies, and cut off
+drunken sailors of our fleet in their ports and hammered them with
+oars, and made things very unpleasant for tourists at their customs, and
+threatened awful deaths to the consumptive invalids at Madeira, while
+the junior officers of the Army drank fruit-extracts and entered into
+blood-curdling conspiracies against their monarch, all with the object
+of being a Republic. Now the history of all the South American Republics
+shows that it is not good that Southern Europeans should be also
+Republicans. They glide too quickly into military despotism; and the
+propping of men against walls and shooting them in detachments can be
+arranged much more economically and with less effect on the death-rate
+by a hide-bound monarchy. Still the performances of the Power as
+represented by its people were extremely inconvenient. It was the
+kicking horse in the crowd, and probably the rider explained that he
+could not check it. The people enjoyed all the glory of war with none
+of the risks, and the tourists who were stoned in their travels returned
+stolidly to England and told the "Times" that the police arrangements of
+foreign towns were defective.
+
+This then was the state of affairs north of the Line. South it was more
+strained, for there the Powers were at direct issue: England, unable to
+go back because of the pressure of adventurous children behind her,
+and the actions of far-away adventurers who would not come to heel,
+but offering to buy out her rival; and the other Power, lacking men or
+money, stiff in the conviction that three hundred years of slave-holding
+and intermingling with the nearest natives gave an inalienable right to
+hold slaves and issue half-castes to all eternity. They had built no
+roads. Their towns were rotting under their hands; they had no trade
+worth the freight of a crazy steamer, and their sovereignty ran almost
+one musket-shot inland when things were peaceful. For these very reasons
+they raged all the more, and the things that they said and wrote about
+the manners and customs of the English would have driven a younger
+nation to the guns with a long red bill for wounded honour.
+
+It was then that Fate sent down in a twin-screw shallow-draft gunboat,
+designed for the defence of rivers, of some two hundred and seventy
+tons' displacement, Lieutenant Harrison Edward Judson, to be known for
+the future as Bai-Jove-Judson. His type of craft looked exactly like
+a flat-iron with a match stuck up in the middle; it drew five feet of
+water or less, carried a four-inch gun forward, which was trained by the
+ship, and, on account of its persistent rolling, was to live in three
+degrees worse than a torpedo-boat. When Judson was appointed to take
+charge of the thing on her little trip of six or seven thousand miles
+southward, his first remark as he went to look her over in dock was,
+"Bai Jove, that topmast wants staying forward!" The topmast was a stick
+about as thick as a clothes-prop, but the flat-iron was Judson's first
+command, and he would not have exchanged his position for second post on
+the "Anson" or the "Howe". He navigated her, under convoy, tenderly and
+lovingly to the Cape (the story of the topmast came with him), and he
+was so absurdly in love with his wallowing wash-tub when he reported
+himself, that the Admiral of the station thought it would be a pity to
+kill a new man on her, and allowed Judson to continue in his unenvied
+rule.
+
+The Admiral visited her once in Simon's Bay, and she was bad, even for
+a flat-iron gunboat strictly designed for river and harbour defence. She
+sweated clammy drops of dew between decks in spite of a preparation of
+powdered cork that was sprinkled over her inside paint. She rolled in
+the long Cape swell like a buoy; her foc's'le was a dog-kennel; Judson's
+cabin was practically under the water-line; not one of her dead-bights
+could ever be opened; and her compasses, thanks to the influence of
+the four-inch gun, were a curiosity even among Admiralty compasses. But
+Bai-Jove-Judson was radiant and enthusiastic. He had even contrived to
+fill Mr. Davies, the second-class engine-room artificer, who was
+his chief engineer, with the glow of his passion. The Admiral, who
+remembered his own first command, when pride forbade him to slacken off
+a single rope on a dewy night, and he had racked his rigging to pieces
+in consequence, looked at the flat-iron keenly. Her fenders were done
+all over with white sennit which was truly white; her big gun was
+varnished with a better composition than the Admiralty allowed; the
+spare sights were cased as carefully as the chronometers; the chocks for
+spare spars, two of them, were made of four-inch Burma teak carved with
+dragons' heads that was one result of Bai-Jove-Judson's experiences
+with the Naval Brigade in the Burmese war; the bow-anchor was varnished
+instead of being painted, and there were charts more than the Admiralty
+scale supplied. The Admiral was well pleased, for he loved a ship's
+husband--a man who had a little money of his own and was willing to
+spend it on his command. Judson looked at him hopefully. He was only a
+Junior Navigating Lieutenant under eight years' standing. He might be
+kept in Simon's Bay for six months, and his ship at sea was his delight.
+The dream of his heart was to enliven her dismal official gray with
+a line of gold-leaf and perhaps a little scroll-work at her blunt
+barge-like bows.
+
+"There's nothing like a first command, is there?" said the Admiral,
+reading his thoughts. "You seem to have rather queer compasses, though.
+Better get them adjusted."
+
+"It's no use, sir," said Judson. "The gun would throw out the Pole
+itself. But--but I've got the hang of most of their weaknesses."
+
+"Will you be good enough to lay that gun over thirty degrees, please?"
+The gun was put over. Round and round and round went the needle merrily,
+and the Admiral whistled.
+
+"You must have kept close to your convoy?"
+
+"Saw her twice between here and Madeira, sir," said Judson with a flush,
+for he resented the slur on his seamanship. "It's--it's a little out of
+hand, now, but she'll settle down after a while."
+
+The Admiral went over the side, according to the rules of the Service,
+but the Staff-Captain must have told the other men of the squadron in
+Simon's Bay, for they one and all made light of the flat-iron for many
+days. "What can you shake out of her, Judson?" said the Lieutenant of
+the "Mongoose", a real white-painted, ram-bow gunboat with quick-firing
+guns, as he came into the upper verandah of the little naval Club
+overlooking the dockyard one hot afternoon. It is in that Club as the
+captains come and go that you hear all the gossip of all the Seven Seas.
+
+"Ten point four," said Bai-Jove-Judson.
+
+"Ah! That was on her trial trip. She's too deep by the head now. I told
+you staying that topmast would throw her out of trim."
+
+"You leave my top-hamper alone," said Judson, for the joke was beginning
+to pall on him.
+
+"Oh, my soul! Listen to him. Juddy's top-hamper! Keate, have you heard
+of the flat-iron's top-hamper? You're to leave it alone. Commodore
+Judson's feelings are hurt."
+
+Keate was the Torpedo Lieutenant of the big "Vortigern", and he despised
+small things. "His top-hamper," said he slowly. "Oh, ah yes, of course.
+Juddy, there's a shoal of mullet in the bay, and I think they're foul of
+your screws. Better go down, or they'll carry away something."
+
+"I don't let things carry away as a rule. You see I've no Torpedo
+Lieutenant on board, thank God!"
+
+Keate within the past week had so managed to bungle the slinging in of
+a small torpedo-boat on the "Vortigern", that the boat had broken the
+crutches in which she rested, and was herself being repaired in the
+dockyard under the Club windows.
+
+"One for you, Keate. Never mind, Juddy; you're hereby appointed
+dockyard-tender for the next three years, and if you're very good and
+there's no sea on, you shall take me round the harbour. Waitabeechee,
+Commodore. What'll you take? Vanderhum for the 'Cook and the captain
+bold, And the mate o' the Nancy brig, And the bo'sun tight' (Juddy, put
+that cue down or I'll put you under arrest for insulting the lieutenant
+of the real ship) 'And the midshipmite, And the crew of the captain's
+gig."
+
+By this time Judson had pinned him in a corner, and was prodding him
+with the half-butt. The Admiral's Secretary entered, and saw the scuffle
+from afar.
+
+"Ouch! Juddy, I apologise. Take that--er topmast of yours away! Here's
+the man with the bow-string. I wish I were a staff-captain instead of
+a bloody lootenant. Sperril sleeps below every night. That's what makes
+Sperril tumble home from the waist uppards. Sperril, I defy you to touch
+me. I'm under orders for Zanzibar. Probably I shall annex it!"
+
+"Judson, the Admiral wants to see you!" said the Staff-Captain,
+disregarding the scoffer of the "Mongoose".
+
+"I told you you'd be a dockyard-tender yet, Juddy. A side of fresh
+beef to-morrow and three dozen snapper on ice. On ice, you understand,
+Juddy?"
+
+Bai-Jove-Judson and the Staff-Captain went out together.
+
+"Now, what does the Admiral want with Judson?" said Keate from the bar.
+
+"Don't know. Juddy's a damned good fellow, though. I wish to goodness he
+was on the Mongoose with us."
+
+The Lieutenant of the "Mongoose" dropped into a chair and read the
+mail papers for an hour. Then he saw Bai-Jove-Judson in the street and
+shouted to him. Judson's eyes were very bright, and his figure was held
+very straight, and he moved joyously. Except for the Lieutenant of the
+"Mongoose", the Club was empty.
+
+"Juddy, there will be a beautiful row," said that young man when he
+had heard the news delivered in an undertone. "You'll probably have to
+fight, and yet I can't see what the Admiral's thinking of to--"
+
+"My orders are not to fight under any circumstances," said Judson.
+
+"Go-look-see? That all? When do you go?"
+
+"To-night if I can. I must go down and see about things. I say, I may
+want a few men for the day."
+
+"Anything on the 'Mongoose' is at your service. There's my gig come in
+now. I know that coast, dead, drunk, or asleep, and you'll need all the
+knowledge you can get. If it had only been us two together! Come over
+with me!"
+
+For one whole hour Judson remained closeted in the stern cabin of the
+"Mongoose", listening, poring over chart upon chart and taking notes,
+and for an hour the marine at the door heard nothing but things like
+these: "Now you'll have to put in here if there's any sea on. That
+current is ridiculously under-estimated, and it sets west at this season
+of the year, remember. Their boats never come south of this, see? So
+it's no good looking out for them." And so on and so forth, while
+Judson lay at length on the locker by the three-pounder, and smoked and
+absorbed it all.
+
+Next morning there was no flat-iron in Simon's Bay, only a little smudge
+of smoke off Cape Hangklip to show that Mr. Davies, the second-class
+engine-room artificer, was giving her all she could carry. At the
+Admiral's house, the ancient and retired bo'sun, who had seen many
+Admirals come and go, brought out his paint and brushes and gave a new
+coat of pure raw pea-green to the two big cannon-balls that stood one
+on each side of the Admiral's entrance-gate. He felt dimly that great
+events were stirring.
+
+And the flat-iron, constructed, as has been before said, solely for the
+defense of rivers, met the great roll off Cape Agulhas and was swept
+from end to end and sat upon her twin-screws and leaped as gracefully
+as a cow in a bog from one sea to another, till Mr. Davies began to fear
+for the safety of his engines, and the Kroo boys that made the majority
+of the crew were deathly sick. She ran along a very badly-lighted coast,
+past bays that were no bays, where ugly flat-topped rocks lay almost
+level with the water, and very many extraordinary things happened that
+have nothing to do with the story, but they were all duly logged by
+Bai-Jove-Judson.
+
+At last the coast changed and grew green and low and exceedingly muddy,
+and there were broad rivers whose bars were little islands standing
+three or four miles out at sea, and Bai-Jove-Judson hugged the
+shore more closely than ever, remembering what the Lieutenant of the
+"Mongoose" had told him. Then he found a river full of the smell of
+fever and mud, with green stuff growing far into its waters, and a
+current that made the flatiron gasp and grunt.
+
+"We will turn up here," said Bai-Jove-Judson, and they turned up
+accordingly; Mr. Davies wondering what in the world it all meant, and
+the Kroo boys grinning. Bai-Jove-Judson went forward to the bows and
+meditated, staring through the muddy waters. After six hours of rooting
+through this desolation at an average rate of five miles an hour, his
+eyes were cheered by the sight of one white buoy in the coffee-hued
+mid-stream. The flat-iron crept up to it cautiously, and a leadsman took
+soundings all around it from a dinghy, while Bai-Jove-Judson smoked and
+thought, with his head on one side.
+
+"About seven feet, isn't there?" said he. "That must be the tail end of
+the shoal. There's four fathom in the fairway. Knock that buoy down with
+axes. I don't think it's picturesque somehow." The Kroo men hacked the
+wooden sides to pieces in three minutes, and the mooring-chain sank
+with the lasst splinters of wood. Bai-Jove Judson laid the flat-iron
+carefully over the site, while Mr. Davies watched, biting his nails
+nervously.
+
+"Can you back her against this current?" said Bai-Jove-Judson. Mr.
+Davies could, inch by inch, but only inch by inch, and Bai-Jove-Judson
+sat in the bows and gazed at various things on the bank as they came
+into line or opened out. The flatiron dropped down over the tail of
+the shoal, exactly where the buoy had been, and backed once before
+Bai-Jove-Judson was satisfied. Then they went up stream for half an
+hour, put into shoal water by the bank and waited, with a slip-rope on
+the anchor.
+
+"Seems to me," said Mr. Davies deferentially, "like as if I heard some
+one a-firing off at intervals, so to say."
+
+There was beyond doubt a dull mutter in the air. "Seems to me," said
+Bai-Jove-Judson, "as if I heard a screw. Stand by to slip her moorings."
+
+Another ten minutes passed and the beat of engines grew plainer.
+Then round the bend of the river came a remarkably prettily built
+white-painted gunboat with a blue and white flag bearing a red boss in
+the centre.
+
+"Unshackle abaft the windlass! Stream both buoys! Easy, astern. Let go,
+all!" The slip-rope flew out, the two buoys bobbed in the water to mark
+where anchor and cable had been left, and the flat-iron waddled out
+into midstream with the white ensign at her one mast-head.
+
+"Give her all you can. That thing has the legs of us," said Judson. "And
+down we go!"
+
+"It's war--bloody war. He's going to fire," said Mr. Davies, looking up
+through the engine-room hatch.
+
+The white gunboat without a word of explanation fired three guns at
+the flat-iron, cutting the trees on the banks into green chips.
+Bai-Jove-Judson was at the wheel, and Mr. Davies and the current helped
+the boat to an almost respectable degree of speed.
+
+It was an exciting chase, but it did not last for more than five
+minutes. The white gunboat fired again, and Mr. Davies in his
+engine-room gave a wild shout.
+
+"What's the matter? Hit?" said Bai-Jove-Judson.
+
+"No, I've just seized of your roos-de-gare. Beg y' pardon, sir."
+
+"Right O! Just the half a fraction of a point more." The wheel turned
+under the steady hand, as Bai-Jove-Judson watched his marks on the bank
+coming in line swiftly as troops anxious to aid. The flat-iron smelt the
+shoal water under her, checked for an instant, and went on. "Now we're
+over. Come along, you thieves, there!"
+
+The white gunboat, too hurried even to fire, was storming in the wake
+of the flat-iron, steering as she steered. This was unfortunate, because
+the lighter craft was dead over the missing buoy.
+
+"What you do here?" shouted a voice from the bows.
+
+"I'm going on. Hold tight. Now you're arranged for!"
+
+There was a crash and a clatter as the white gunboat's nose took the
+shoal, and the brown mud boiled up in oozy circles under her forefoot.
+Then the current caught her stem by the starboard side and drove her
+broadside on to the shoal, slowly and gracefully. There she heeled at an
+undignified angle, and her crew yelled aloud.
+
+"Neat! Oh, damn neat!" quoth Mr. Davies, dancing on the engine-room
+plates, while the Kroo stokers grinned.
+
+The flat-iron turned up-stream again, and passed under the hove-up
+starboard side of the white gunboat, to be received with howls and
+imprecations in a strange tongue. The stranded boat, exposed even to her
+lower strakes, was as defence-less as a turtle on its back, without the
+advantage of the turtle's plating. And the one big blunt gun in the bows
+of the flat-iron was unpleasantly near.
+
+But the captain was valiant and swore mightily. Bai-Jove-Judson took no
+sort of notice. His business was to go up the river.
+
+"We will come in a flotilla of boats and ecrazer your vile tricks," said
+the captain with language that need not be published.
+
+Then said Bai-Jove-Judson, who was a linguist: "You stay o where you are
+o, or I'll leave a hole-o in your bottom o that will make you much os
+perforatados."
+
+There was a great deal of mixed language in reply, but Bai-Jove-Judson
+was out of hearing in a few minutes, and Mr. Davies, himself a man of
+few words, confided to one of his subordinates that Lieutenant Judson
+was "a most remarkable prompt officer in a way of putting it."
+
+For two hours the flat-iron pawed madly through the muddy water, and
+that which had been at first a mutter became a distinct rumble.
+
+"Was war declared?" said Mr. Davies, and Bai-Jove-Judson laughed. "Then,
+damn his eyes, he might have spoilt my pretty little engines. There's
+war up there, though."
+
+The next bend brought them full in sight of a small but lively village,
+built round a whitewashed mud house of some pretensions. There were
+scores and scores of saddle-coloured soldiery on duty, white uniforms
+running to and fro and shouting round a man in a litter, and on a gentle
+slope that ran inland for four or five miles something like a brisk
+battle was raging round a rude stockade. A smell of unburied carcasses
+floated through the air and vexed the sensitive nose of Mr. Davies, who
+spat over the side.
+
+"I want to get this gun on that house," said Bai-Jove-Judson, indicating
+the superior dwelling over whose flat roof floated the blue and white
+flag. The little twin screws kicked up the water exactly as a hen's
+legs kick in the dust before she settles down to a bath. The little boat
+moved un easily from left to right, backed, yawed again, went ahead, and
+at last the gray blunt gun's nose was held as straight as a rifle-barrel
+on the mark indicated. Then Mr. Davies allowed the whistle to speak as
+it is not allowed to speak in Her Majesty's service on account of waste
+of steam. The soldiery of the village gathered into knots and groups
+and bunches, and the firing up the hill ceased, and every one except the
+crew of the flatiron yelled aloud. Something like an English cheer came
+down wind.
+
+"Our chaps in mischief for sure, probably," said Mr. Davies. "They must
+have declared war weeks ago, in a kind of way, seems to me."
+
+"Hold her steady, you son of a soldier!" shouted Bai-Jove-Judson, as the
+muzzle fell off the white house.
+
+Something rang as loudly as a ship's bell on the forward plates of the
+flat-iron, something spluttered in the water, and another thing cut a
+groove in the deck planking an inch in front of Bai-Jove-Judson's left
+foot. The saddle-coloured soldiery were firing as the mood took them,
+and the man in the litter waved a shining sword. The muzzle of the big
+gun kicked down a fraction as it was laid on the mud wall at the bottom
+of the house garden. Ten pounds of gunpowder shut up in a hundred pounds
+of metal was its charge. Three or four yards of the mud wall jumped up a
+little, as a man jumps when he is caught in the small of the back with
+a knee-cap, and then fell forward, spreading fan-wise in the fall. The
+soldiery fired no more that day, and Judson saw an old black woman climb
+to the flat roof of the house. She fumbled for a time with the flag
+halliards, then finding that they were jammed, took off her one garment,
+which happened to be an Isabella-coloured petticoat, and waved it
+impatiently. The man in the litter flourished a white handkerchief, and
+Bai-Jove-Judson grinned. "Now we'll give 'em one up the hill. Round
+with her, Mr. Davies. Curse the man who invented those floating gun
+platforms. Where can I pitch in a notice without slaying one of those
+little devils?"
+
+The side of the slope was speckled with men returning in a disorderly
+fashion to the river front. Behind them marched a small but very compact
+body of men who had filed out of the stockade. These last dragged
+quick-firing guns with them.
+
+"Bai Jove, it's a regular army. I wonder whose," said Bai-Jove-Judson,
+and he waited developments. The descending troops met and mixed with the
+troops in the village, and, with the litter in the centre, crowded down
+to the river, till the men with the quick-firing guns came up behind
+them. Then they divided left and right and the detachment marched
+through.
+
+"Heave these damned things over!" said the leader of the party, and one
+after another ten little gatlings splashed into the muddy water. The
+flatiron lay close to the bank.
+
+"When you're quite done," said Bai-Jove-Judson politely, "would you mind
+telling me what's the matter? I'm in charge here."
+
+"We're the Pioneers of the General Development Company," said the
+leader. "These little bounders have been hammering us in lager for
+twelve hours, and we're getting rid of their gatlings. Had to climb out
+and take them; but they've snaffled the lock-actions. Glad to see you."
+
+"Any one hurt?"
+
+"No one killed exactly, but we're very dry."
+
+"Can you hold your men?"
+
+The man turned round and looked at his command with a grin. There were
+seventy of them, all dusty and unkempt.
+
+"We sha'n't sack this ash-bin, if that's what you mean. We're mostly
+gentlemen here, though we don't look it."
+
+"All right. Send the head of this post, or fort, or village, or whatever
+it is, aboard, and make what arrangements you can for your men."
+
+"We'll find some barrack accommodation somewhere. Hullo! You in the
+litter there, go aboard the gunboat." The command wheeled round, pushed
+through the dislocated soldiery, and began to search through the village
+for spare huts.
+
+The little man in the litter came aboard smiling nervously. He was in
+the fullest of full uniform, with many yards of gold lace and dangling
+chains. Also he wore very large spurs; the nearest horse being not more
+than four hundred miles away. "My children," said he, facing the silent
+soldiery, "lay aside your arms."
+
+Most of the men had dropped them already and were sitting down to smoke.
+"Let nothing," he added in his own tongue, "tempt you to kill these who
+have sought your protection."
+
+"Now," said Bai-Jove-Judson, on whom the last remark was lost, "will
+you have the goodness to explain what the deuce you mean by all this
+nonsense?"
+
+"It was of a necessitate," said the little man. "The operations of war
+are unconformible. I am the Governor and I operate Captain. Be'old my
+little sword."
+
+"Confound your little sword, sir. I don't want it. You've fired on our
+flag. You've been firing at our people here for a week, and I've been
+fired at coming up the river."
+
+"Ah! The 'Guadala'. She have misconstrued you for a slaver possibly. How
+are the 'Guadala'?"
+
+"Mistook a ship of Her Majesty's navy for a slaver! You mistake any
+craft for a slaver! Bai Jove, sir, I've a good mind to hang you at the
+yard-arm!"
+
+There was nothing nearer that terrible spar than the walking-stick in
+the rack of Judson's cabin. The Governor looked at the one mast and
+smiled a deprecating smile.
+
+"The position is embarrassment," he said. "Captain, do you think those
+illustrious traders burn my capital? My people will give them beer."
+
+"Never mind the traders, I want an explanation."
+
+"Hum! There are popular uprising in Europe, Captain--in my country." His
+eye wandered aimlessly round the horizon.
+
+"What has that to do with--"
+
+"Captain, you are very young. There is still uproariment. But!"--here
+he slapped his chest till his epaulets jingled--"I am loyalist to pits
+of all my stomachs."
+
+"Go on," said Judson, and his mouth quivered.
+
+"An order arrive to me to establish a custom-houses here, and to collect
+of the taximent from the traders when she are come here necessarily.
+That was on account of political understandings with your country and
+mine. But on that arrangement there was no money also. Not one damn
+little cowrie. I desire damnably to extend all commercial things, and
+why? I am loyalist and there is rebellion--yes, I tell you--Republics
+in my country for to just begin. You do not believe? See some time how
+it exist. I cannot make this custom-houses and pay the so high-paid
+officials. The people too in my country they say the king she has
+no regardance into Honour of her nation. He throw away
+everything--Gladstone her all, you say, pay?"
+
+"Yes, that's what we say," said Judson with a grin.
+
+"Therefore they say, let us be Republics on hot cakes. But I--I am
+loyalist to all my hands' ends. Captain, once I was attache at Mexico.
+I say the Republics are no good. The peoples have her stomach high. They
+desire--they desire--a course for the bills."
+
+"What on earth is that?"
+
+"The cock-fight for pay at the gate. You give something, pay for see
+bloody row. Do I make its comprehension?"
+
+"A run for their money--is that what you mean? Gad, you're sporting,
+Governor."
+
+"So I say. I am loyalist, too." He smiled more easily. "Now how can
+anything do herself for the customs-houses; but when the Company's mens
+she arrives, then a cock-fight for pay at gate that is quite correct. My
+army he says it will Republic and shoot me off upon walls if I have
+not give her blood. An army, Captain, are terrible in her
+angries--especialment when she are not paid. I know, too," here he laid
+his hand on Judson's shoulder, "I know too we are old friends. Yes!
+Badajos, Almeida, Fuentes d'Onor--time ever since; and a little, little
+cock-fight for pay at gate that is good for my king. More sit her tight
+on throne behind, you see? Now," he waved his hand round the decayed
+village, "I say to my armies, Fight! Fight the Company's men when she
+come, but fight not so very strong that you are any deads. It is all
+in the raporta that I send. But you understand, Captain, we are good
+friends all the time. Ah! Ciudad Rodrigo, you remember? No? Perhaps your
+father, then? So you see no one are deads, and we fight a fight, and
+it is all in the raporta, to please the people in our country, and my
+armies they do not put me against the walls. You see?"
+
+"Yes; but the 'Guadala'. She fired on us. Was that part of your game, my
+joker?"
+
+"The 'Guadala'. Ah! No, I think not. Her captain he is too big fool. But
+I think she have gone down the coast. Those your gunboats poke her nose
+and shove her oar in every place. How is 'Guadala'?"
+
+"On a shoal. Stuck till I take her off." "There are any deads?"
+
+"No."
+
+The Governor drew a breath of deep relief. "There are no deads here. So
+you see none are deads anywhere, and nothing is done. Captain, you talk
+to the Company's mens. I think they are not pleased."
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"They have no sense. I thought to go backwards again they would. I leave
+her stockade alone all night to let them out, but they stay and come
+facewards to me, not backwards. They did not know we must conquer much
+in all these battles, or the king, he is kicked off her throne. Now we
+have won this battle--this great battle," he waved his arms abroad,
+"and I think you will say so that we have won, Captain. You are loyalist
+also. You would not disturb to the peaceful Europe? Captain, I tell you
+this. Your Queen she know too. She would not fight her cousins. It is
+a--a hand-up thing."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Hand-up thing. Jobe you put. How you say?"
+
+"Put-up job?"
+
+"Yes. Put-up job. Who is hurt? We win. You lose. All righta?"
+
+Bai-Jove-Judson had been exploding at intervals for the last five
+minutes. Here he broke down completely and roared aloud.
+
+"But look here, Governor," he said at last, "I've got to think of other
+things than your riots in Europe. You've fired on our flag."
+
+"Captain, if you are me, you would have done how? And also, and also,"
+he drew himself up to his full height, "we are both brave men of bravest
+countries. Our honour is the honour of our King," here he uncovered,
+"and of our Queen," here he bowed low. "Now, Captain, you shall shell my
+palace and I shall be your prisoner."
+
+"Skittles!" said Bai-Jove-Judson. "I can't shell that old hencoop."
+
+"Then come to dinner. Madeira, she are still to us, and I have of the
+best she manufac."
+
+He skipped over the side beaming, and Bai-Jove-Judson went into the
+cabin to laugh his laugh out. When he had recovered a little he sent Mr.
+Davies to the head of the Pioneers, the dusty man with the gatlings, and
+the troops who had abandoned the pursuit of arms watched the disgraceful
+spectacle of two men reeling with laughter on the quarter-deck of a
+gunboat.
+
+"I'll put my men to build him a custom-house," said the head of the
+Pioneers, gasping. "We'll make him one decent road at least. That
+Governor ought to be knighted. I'm glad now that we didn't fight 'em in
+the open, or we'd have killed some of them. So he's won great battles,
+has he? Give him the compliments of the victims, and tell him I'm coming
+to dinner. You haven't such a thing as a dress-suit, have you? I haven't
+seen one for six months."
+
+That evening there was a dinner in the village--a general and
+enthusiastic dinner, whose head was in the Governor's house, and whose
+tail threshed at large throughout all the streets. The Madeira was
+everything that the Governor had said, and more, and it was tested
+against two or three bottles of Bai-Jove-Judson's best Vanderhum, which
+is Cape brandy ten years in the bottle, flavoured with orange-peel and
+spices. Before the coffee was removed (by the lady who had made the flag
+of truce) the Governor had sold the whole of his governorship and its
+appurtenances, once to Bai-Jove-Judson for services rendered by Judson's
+grandfather in the Peninsular War, and once to the head of the Pioneers,
+in consideration of that gentleman's good friendship. After the
+negotiation he retreated for a while into an inner apartment, and there
+evolved a true and complete account of the defeat of the British
+arms, which he read with his cocked hat over one eye to Judson and his
+companion. It was Judson who suggested the sinking of the flat-iron with
+all hands, and the head of the Pioneers who supplied the list of killed
+and wounded (not more than two hundred) in his command.
+
+"Gentlemen," said the Governor from under his cocked hat, "the peace of
+Europe are saved by this raporta. You shall all be Knights of the Golden
+Hide. She shall go by the 'Guadala'."
+
+"Great Heavens!" said Bai-Jove Judson, flushed but composed, "that
+reminds me I've left that boat stuck on her broadside down the river.
+I must go down and soothe the commandante. He'll be blue with rage.
+Governor, let us go a sail on the river to cool our heads. A picnic, you
+understand."
+
+"Ya--as, everything I understand. Ho! A picnica! You are all my
+prisoner, but I am good gaoler. We shall picnic on the river, and we
+shall take all the girls. Come on, my prisoners."
+
+"I do hope," said the head of the Pioneers, staring from the verandah
+into the roaring village, "that my chaps won't set the town alight by
+accident. Hullo! Hullo! A guard of honour for His Excellency the most
+illustrious Governor!"
+
+Some thirty men answered the call, made a swaying line upon a more
+swaying course, and bore the Governor most swayingly of all high in the
+arms as they staggered down to the river. And the song that they sang
+bade them, "Swing, swing together their body between their knees"; and
+they obeyed the words of the song faithfully, except that they were
+anything but "steady from stroke to bow." His Excellency the Governor
+slept on his uneasy litter, and did not wake when the chorus dropped him
+on the deck of the flat-iron.
+
+"Good-night and good-bye," said the head of the Pioneers to Judson; "I'd
+give you my card if I had it, but I'm so damned drunk I hardly know
+my own club. Oh, yes! It's the Travellers. If ever we meet in Town,
+remember me. I must stay here and look after my fellows. We're all right
+in the open, now. I s'pose you'll return the Governor some time. This is
+a political crisis. Good-night."
+
+The flat-iron went down stream through the dark. The Governor slept on
+deck, and Judson took the wheel, but how he steered, and why he did
+not run into each bank many times, that officer does not remember. Mr.
+Davies did not note anything unusual, for there are two ways of taking
+too much, and Judson was only ward-room, not foc's'le drunk. As the
+night grew colder the Governor woke up, and expressed a desire for
+whiskey and soda. When that came they were nearly abreast of the
+stranded "Guadala", and His Excellency saluted the flag that he could
+not see with loyal and patriotic strains.
+
+"They do not see. They do not hear," he cried. "Ten thousand saints!
+They sleep, and I have won battles! Ha!"
+
+He started forward to the gun, which, very naturally, was loaded, pulled
+the lanyard, and woke the dead night with the roar of the full charge
+behind a common shell. That shell mercifully just missed the stern
+of the "Guadala", and burst on the bank. "Now you shall salute your
+Governor," said he, as he heard feet running in all directions within
+the iron skin. "Why you demand so base a quarter? I am here with all my
+prisoners."
+
+In the hurly-burly and the general shriek for mercy his reassurances
+were not heard.
+
+"Captain," said a grave voice from the ship, "we have surrendered. Is it
+the custom of the English to fire on a helpless ship'?"
+
+"Surrendered! Holy Virgin! I go to cut off all their heads. You shall be
+ate by wild ants--flogged and drowned. Throw me a balcony. It is I,
+the Governor! You shall never surrender. Judson of my soul, ascend her
+insides, and send me a bed, for I am sleepy; but, oh, I will multiple
+time kill that captain!"
+
+"Oh!" said the voice in the darkness, "I begin to comprehend." And a
+rope-ladder was thrown, up which the Governor scrambled, with Judson at
+his heels.
+
+"Now we will enjoy executions," said the Governor on the deck. "All
+these Republicans shall be shot. Little Judson, if I am not drunk, why
+are so sloping the boards which do not support?"
+
+The deck, as I have said, was at a very stiff cant. His Excellency sat
+down, slid to leeward, and was asleep again.
+
+The captain of the "Guadala" bit his moustache furiously, and muttered
+in his own tongue: "This land is the father of great villains and
+the stepfather of honest men. You see our material, Captain. It is so
+everywhere with us. You have killed some of the rats, I hope?"
+
+"Not a rat," said Judson genially.
+
+"That is a pity. If they were dead, our country might send us men; but
+our country is dead too, and I am dishonoured on a mud-bank through your
+English treachery."
+
+"Well, it seems to me that firing on a little tub of our size without
+a word of warning, when you know that the countries were at peace, is
+treachery enough in a small way."
+
+"If one of my guns had touched you, you would have gone to the bottom,
+all of you. I would have taken the risk with my Government. By that time
+it would have been--"
+
+"A Republic? So you really did mean fighting on your own hook? You're
+rather a dangerous officer to cut loose in a navy like yours. Well, what
+are you going to do now?"
+
+"Stay here. Go away in boats. What does it matter? That drunken cat"--he
+pointed to the shadow in which the Governor slept--"is here. I must
+take him back to his hole."
+
+"Very good. I'll tow you off at daylight if you get steam ready."
+
+"Captain, I warn you that as soon as she floats again I will fight you."
+
+"Humbug! You'll have lunch with me, and then you'll take the Governor up
+the river."
+
+The captain was silent for some time. Then he said: "Let us drink. What
+must be, must be; and after all we have not forgotten the Peninsula.
+You will admit, Captain, that it is bad to be run upon a shoal like a
+mud-dredger?"
+
+"Oh, we'll pull you off before you can say knife. Take care of His
+Excellency. I shall try to get a little sleep now."
+
+They slept on both ships till the morning, and then the work of towing
+off the "Guadala" began. With the help of her own engines, and the
+tugging and puffing of the flat-iron, she slid off the mud-bank sideways
+into the deep water, the flatiron immediately under her stern, and the
+big eye of the four-inch gun almost peering through the window of the
+captain's cabin.
+
+Remorse in the shape of a violent headache had overtaken the Governor.
+He was uneasily conscious that he might, perhaps, have exceeded his
+powers; and the captain of the "Guadala", in spite of all his patriotic
+sentiments, remembered distinctly that no war had been declared between
+the two countries. He did not need the Governor's repeated reminders
+that war, serious war, meant a Republic at home, possible supersession
+in his command, and much shooting of living men against dead walls.
+
+"We have satisfied our honour," said the Governor in confidence. "Our
+army is appeased, and the raporta that you take home will show that we
+were loyal and brave. That other captain? Bah! he is a boy. He will call
+this a--a-. Judson of my soul, how you say this is--all this affairs
+which have transpirated between us?"
+
+Judson was watching the last hawser slipping through the fairlead.
+"Call it? Oh, I should call it rather a lark. Now your boat's all right,
+Captain. When will you come to lunch?"
+
+"I told you," said the Governor, "it would be a larque to him."
+
+"Mother of the Saints! then what is his seriousness?" said the captain.
+"We shall be happy to come when you please. Indeed, we have no other
+choice," he added bitterly.
+
+"Not at all," said Judson, and as he looked at the three or four
+shot-blisters on the bows of his boat a brilliant idea took him. "It
+is we who are at your mercy. See how His Excellency's guns knocked us
+about."
+
+"Senior Captain," said the Governor pityingly, "that is very sad. You
+are most injured, and your deck too, it is all shot over. We shall not
+be too severe on a beat man, shall we, Captain?"
+
+"You couldn't spare us a little paint, could you? I'd like to patch up a
+little after the--action," said Judson meditatively, fingering his upper
+lip to hide a smile.
+
+"Our store-room is at your disposition," said the captain of the
+"Guadala", and his eye brightened; for a few lead splashes on gray paint
+make a big show.
+
+"Mr. Davies, go aboard and see what they have to spare--to spare,
+remember. Their spar-colour with a little working up should be just our
+freeboard tint."
+
+"Oh, yes. I'll spare them," said Mr. Davies savagely. "I don't
+understand this how-d'you-do and damn-your-eyes business coming one atop
+of the other in a manner o' speaking. By all rights, they're our lawful
+prize."
+
+The Governor and the captain came to lunch in the absence of Mr. Davies.
+Bai-Jove-Judson had not much to offer, but what he had was given as by
+a beaten foeman to a generous conqueror. When they were a little
+warmed--the Governor genial and the captain almost effusive--he
+explained, quite casually, over the opening of a bottle that it would
+not be to his interest to report the affair seriously, and it was in the
+highest degree improbable that the Admiral would treat it in any grave
+fashion.
+
+"When my decks are cut up" (there was one groove across four planks),
+"and my plates buckled" (there were five lead patches on three plates),
+"and I meet such a boat as the 'Guadala', and a mere accident saves me
+from being blown out of the water--"
+
+"Yes. A mere accident, Captain. The shoal-buoy has been lost," said the
+captain of the 'Guadala'.
+
+"Ah? I do not know this river. That was very sad. But as I was saying,
+when an accident saves me from being sunk, what can I do but go away--if
+that is possible? But I fear that I have no coal for the sea voyage.
+It is very sad." Judson had compromised on what he knew of the French
+tongue as a working language.
+
+"It is enough," said the Governor, waving a generous hand. "Judson of
+my soul, the coal is yours, and you shall be repaired--yes, repaired all
+over of your battle's wounds. You shall go with all the honours of all
+the wars. Your flag shall fly. Your drum shall beat. Your, ah!--jolly
+boys shall spoke their bayonets. Is it not so, Captain?"
+
+"As you say, Excellency. But the traders in the town. What of them?"
+
+The Governor looked puzzled for an instant. He could not quite remember
+what had happened to those jovial men who had cheered him over night.
+Judson interrupted swiftly: "His Excellency has set them to forced works
+on barracks and magazines, and, I think, a custom-house. When that is
+done they will be released, I hope, Excellency."
+
+"Yes, they shall be released for your sake, little Judson of my heart."
+Then they drank the health of their respective sovereigns, while Mr.
+Davies superintended the removal of the scarred plank and the shot-marks
+on the deck and the bow-plates.
+
+"Oh, this is too bad," said Judson when they went on deck. "That idiot
+has exceeded his instructions, but--but yow must let me pay for this!"
+
+Mr. Davies, his legs in the water as he sat on a staging slung over
+the bows, was acutely conscious that he was being blamed in a foreign
+tongue. He smiled uneasily, and went on with his work.
+
+"What is it?" said the Governor.
+
+"That thick-head has thought that we needed some gold-leaf, and he has
+borrowed that from your storeroom, but I must make it good." Then in
+English, "Stand up, Mr. Davies. What the--in--do you mean by taking
+their gold-leaf? My--, are we a set of pirates to scrape the guts out
+of a Levantine bumboat? Look contrite, you butt-ended, broad-breeched,
+bottle-bellied, swivel-eyed son of a tinker, you! My Soul alive, can't
+I maintain discipline in my own ship without a blacksmith of a
+boiler-riveter putting me to shame before a yellow-nosed picaroon. Get
+off the staging, Mr. Davies, and go to the engine-room. Put down that
+leaf first, though, and leave the books where they are. I'll send for
+you in a minute. Go aft!"
+
+Now, only the upper half of Mr. Davies's round face was above the
+bulwarks when this torrent of abuse descended upon him; and it rose inch
+by inch as the shower continued: blank amazement, bewilderment, rage,
+and injured pride chasing each other across it till he saw his superior
+officer's left eyelid flutter on the cheek twice. Then he fled to the
+engine-room, and wiping his brow with a handful of cotton-waste, sat
+down to overtake circumstances.
+
+"I am desolated," said Judson to his companions, "but you see the
+material that you give us. This leaves me more in your debt than
+before. The stuff I can replace" (gold-leaf is never carried on
+floating gun-platforms), "but for the insolence of that man how shall I
+apologise?"
+
+Mr. Davies's mind moved slowly, but after a while he transferred the
+cotton-waste from his forehead to his mouth and bit on it to prevent
+laughter. He began a second dance on the engine-room plates. "Neat! Oh,
+damned neat!" he chuckled. "I've served with a good few, but there never
+was one so neat as him. And I thought he was the new kind that don't
+know how to put a few words, as it were!"
+
+"Mr. Davies, you can continue your work," said Judson down the
+engine-room hatch. "These officers have been good enough to speak in
+your favour. Make a thorough job of it while you are about it. Slap on
+every man you have. Where did you get hold of it?"
+
+"Their storeroom is a regular theatre, sir. You couldn't miss it.
+There's enough for two first-rates, and I've scoffed the best half of
+it."
+
+"Look sharp, then. We shall be coaling from her this afternoon. You'll
+have to cover it all."
+
+"Neat! Oh, damned neat!" said Mr. Davies under his breath, as he
+gathered his subordinates together, and set about accomplishing the
+long-deferred wish of Judson's heart.
+
+It was the "Martin Frobisher", the flag-ship, a great war-boat when she
+was new, in the days when men built for sail as well as for steam. She
+could turn twelve knots under full sail, and it was under that that she
+stood up the mouth of the river, a pyramid of silver beneath the
+moon. The Admiral, fearing that he had given Judson a task beyond his
+strength, was coming to look for him, and incidentally to do a little
+diplomatic work along the coast. There was hardly wind enough to move
+the "Frobisher" a couple of knots an hour, and the silence of the land
+closed about her as she entered the fairway. Her yards sighed a little
+from time to time, and the ripple under her bows answered the sigh. The
+full moon rose over the steaming swamps, and the Admiral, gazing upon
+it, thought less of Judson and more of the softer emotions. In answer to
+the very mood of his mind, there floated across the silver levels of the
+water, mellowed by distance to a most poignant sweetness, the throb of
+a mandolin, and the voice of one who called upon a genteel Julia--upon
+Julia, and upon love. The song ceased, and the sighing of the yards was
+all that broke the silence of the big ship.
+
+Again the mandolin began, and the commander on the lee side of the
+quarter-deck grinned a grin that was reflected in the face of the
+signal-midshipman. Not a word of the song was lost, and the voice of the
+singer was the voice of Judson.
+
+     "Last week down our alley came a toff,
+     Nice old geyser with a nasty cough,
+     Sees my missus, takes his topper off,
+     Quite in a gentlemanly way "--
+
+and so on to the end of the verse. The chorus was borne by several
+voices, and the signal-midshipman's foot began to tap the deck
+furtively.
+
+     "'What cheer!' all the neighbours cried.
+     ''Oo are you going to meet, Bill?
+     'Ave you bought the street, Bill?'
+     Laugh?--I thought I should ha' died
+     When I knocked 'em in the old Kent Road."
+
+
+It was the Admiral's gig, rowing softly, that came into the midst
+of that merry little smoking-concert. It was Judson, the beribboned
+mandolin round his neck, who received the Admiral as he came up the side
+of the "Guadala", and it may or may not have been the Admiral who stayed
+till two in the morning and delighted the hearts of the Captain and
+the Governor. He had come as an unbidden guest, and he departed as an
+honoured one, but strictly unofficial throughout. Judson told his tale
+next day in the Admiral's cabin as well as he could in the face of the
+Admiral's gales of laughter, but the most amazing tale was that told by
+Mr. Davies to his friends in the dockyard at Simon's Town from the
+point of view of a second-class engine-room artificer, all unversed in
+diplomacy.
+
+And if there be no truth either in my tale, which is Judson's tale, or
+the tale of Mr. Davies, you will not find in harbour at Simon's Town
+to-day a flat-bottomed twin-screw gunboat, designed solely for the
+defence of rivers, about two hundred and seventy tons' displacement and
+five feet draught, wearing in open defiance of the rules of the
+Service a gold line on her gray paint. It follows also that you will
+be compelled to credit that version of the fray which, signed by His
+Excellency the Governor and despatched in the "Guadala", satisfied the
+self-love of a great and glorious people, and saved a monarchy from the
+ill-considered despotism which is called a Republic.
+
+
+
+
+A CONFERENCE OF THE POWERS
+
+     Life liveth but in life, and doth not roam
+     To other lands if all be well at home:
+     "Solid as ocean foam," quoth ocean foam.
+
+The room was blue with the smoke of three pipes and a cigar. The
+leave-season had opened in India, and the first-fruits on this side of
+the water were "Tick" Boileau, of the 45th Bengal Cavalry, who called
+on me, after three years' absence, to discuss old things which had
+happened. Fate, who always does her work handsomely, sent up the same
+staircase within the same hour The Infant, fresh from Upper Burma, and
+he and Boileau looking out of my window saw walking in the street one
+Nevin, late in a Goorkha regiment which had been through the Black
+Mountain Expedition. They yelled to him to come up, and the whole Street
+was aware that they desired him to come up, and he came up, and there
+followed Pandemonium in my room because we had foregathered from the
+ends of the earth, and three of us were on a holiday, and none of us
+were twenty-five, and all the delights of all London lay waiting our
+pleasure.
+
+Boileau took the only other chair, The Infant, by right of his bulk, the
+sofa; and Nevin, being a little man, sat cross-legged on the top of the
+revolving bookcase, and we all said, "Who'd ha' thought it!" and "What
+are you doing here?" till speculation was exhausted and the talk went
+over to inevitable "shop." Boileau was full of a great scheme for
+winning a military attache-ship at St. Petersburg; Nevin had hopes of
+the Staff College, and The Infant had been moving heaven and earth and
+the Horse Guards for a commission in the Egyptian army.
+
+"What's the use o' that?" said Nevin, twirling round on the bookcase.
+
+"Oh, heaps! 'Course if you get stuck with a Fellaheen regiment, you're
+sold; but if you are appointed to a Soudanese lot, you're in clover.
+They are first-class fighting-men--and just think of the eligible
+central position of Egypt in the next row!"
+
+This was putting the match to a magazine. We all began to explain the
+Central Asian question off-hand, flinging army corps from the Helmund to
+Kashmir with more than Russian recklessness. Each of the boys made for
+himself a war to his own liking, and when we had settled all the details
+of Armageddon, killed all our senior officers, handled a division
+apiece, and nearly torn the atlas in two in attempts to explain our
+theories, Boileau needs must lift up his voice above the clamour,
+and cry, "Anyhow it'll be the hell of a row!" in tones that carried
+conviction far down the staircase.
+
+Entered, unperceived in the smoke, William the Silent. "Gen'elman to
+see you, sir," said he, and disappeared, leaving in his stead none other
+than Mr. Eustace Cleever. William would have introduced the Dragon of
+Wantley with equal disregard of present company.
+
+"I--I beg your pardon. I didn't know that there was anybody--with
+you.--"
+
+But it was not seemly to allow Mr. Cleever to depart; he was a great
+man. The boys remained where they were, for any movement would have
+choked up the little room. Only when they saw his gray hairs they stood
+on their feet, and when The Infant caught the name, he said:
+
+"Are you--did you write that book called 'As it was in the Beginning'?"
+
+Mr. Cleever admitted that he had written the book.
+
+"Then--then I don't know how to thank you, sir," said The Infant,
+flushing pink. "I was brought up in the country you wrote about--all my
+people live there; and I read the book in camp on the Hlinedatalone, and
+I knew every stick and stone, and the dialect too; and, by Jove! it was
+just like being at home and hearing the country people talk. Nevin, you
+know 'As it was in the Beginning'? So does Ti--Boileau."
+
+Mr. Cleever has tasted as much praise, public and private, as one man
+may safely swallow; but it seemed to me that the outspoken admiration in
+The Infant's eyes and the little stir in the little company came home to
+him very nearly indeed.
+
+"Won't you take the sofa?" said The Infant. "I'll sit on Boileau's
+chair, and--" here he looked at me to spur me to my duties as a host;
+but I was watching the novelist's face. Cleever had not the least
+intention of going away, but settled himself on the sofa.
+
+Following the first great law of the Army, which says "all property is
+common except money, and you've only got to ask the next man for that,"
+The Infant offered tobacco and drink. It was the least he could do; but
+not the most lavish praise in the world held half as much appreciation
+and reverence as The Infant's simple "Say when, sir," above the long
+glass.
+
+Cleever said "when," and more thereto, for he was a golden talker,
+and he sat in the midst of hero-worship devoid of all taint of
+self-interest. The boys asked him of the birth of his book, and whether
+it was hard to write, and how his notions came to him; and he answered
+with the same absolute simplicity as he was questioned. His big eyes
+twinkled, he dug his long thin hands into his gray beard and tugged
+it as he grew animated. He dropped little by little from the peculiar
+pinching of the broader vowels--the indefinable "euh," that runs through
+the speech of the pundit caste--and the elaborate choice of words,
+to freely-mouthed "ows" and "ois," and, for him at least, unfettered
+colloquialisms. He could not altogether understand the boys, who hung
+upon his words so reverently. The line of the chin-strap, that still
+showed white and untanned on cheekbone and jaw, the steadfast young eyes
+puckered at the corners of the lids with much staring through red-hot
+sunshine, the slow, untroubled breathing, and the curious, crisp, curt
+speech seemed to puzzle him equally. He could create men and women,
+and send them to the uttermost ends of the earth, to help, delight, and
+comfort; he knew every mood of the fields, and could interpret them to
+the cities, and he knew the hearts of many in city and country, but he
+had hardly, in forty years, come into contact with the thing which is
+called a Subaltern of the Line. He told the boys this in his own way.
+
+"Well, how should you?" said The Infant. "You--you're quite different,
+y' see, sir."
+
+The Infant expressed his ideas in his tone rather than his words, but
+Cleever understood the compliment.
+
+"We're only Subs," said Nevin, "and we aren't exactly the sort of men
+you'd meet much in your life, I s'pose."
+
+"That's true," said Cleever. "I live chiefly among men who write,
+and paint, and sculp, and so forth. We have our own talk and our own
+interests, and the outer world doesn't trouble us much."
+
+"That must be awfully jolly," said Boileau, at a venture. "We have our
+own shop, too, but 'tisn't half as interesting as yours, of course. You
+know all the men who've ever done anything; and we only knock about from
+place to place, and we do nothing."
+
+"The Army's a very lazy profession if you choose to make it so," said
+Nevin. "When there's nothing going on, there is nothing going on, and
+you lie up."
+
+"Or try to get a billet somewhere, to be ready for the next show," said
+The Infant with a chuckle.
+
+"To me," said Cleever softly, "the whole idea of warfare seems so
+foreign and unnatural, so essentially vulgar, if I may say so, that I
+can hardly appreciate your sensations. Of course, though, any change
+from idling in garrison towns must be a godsend to you."
+
+Like many home-staying Englishmen, Cleever believed that the newspaper
+phrase he quoted covered the whole duty of the Army whose toils enabled
+him to enjoy his many-sided life in peace. The remark was not a happy
+one, for Boileau had just come off the Frontier, The Infant had been on
+the warpath for nearly eighteen months, and the little red man Nevin
+two months before had been sleeping under the stars at the peril of his
+life. But none of them tried to explain, till I ventured to point out
+that they had all seen service and were not used to idling. Cleever took
+in the idea slowly.
+
+"Seen service?" said he. Then, as a child might ask, "Tell me. Tell me
+everything about everything."
+
+"How do you mean?" said The Infant, delighted at being directly appealed
+to by the great man.
+
+"Good Heavens! How am I to make you understand, if you can't see. In the
+first place, what is your age?"
+
+"Twenty-three next July," said The Infant promptly.
+
+Cleever questioned the others with his eyes.
+
+"I'm twenty-four," said Nevin.
+
+"And I'm twenty-two," said Boileau.
+
+"And you've all seen service?"
+
+"We've all knocked about a little bit, sir, but The Infant's the
+war-worn veteran. He's had two years' work in Upper Burma," said Nevin.
+
+"When you say work, what do you mean, you extraordinary creatures?"
+
+"Explain it, Infant," said Nevin.
+
+"Oh, keeping things in order generally, and running about after little
+dakus--that's dacoits--and so on. There's nothing to explain."
+
+"Make that young Leviathan speak," said Cleever impatiently, above his
+glass.
+
+"How can he speak?" said I. "He's done the work. The two don't go
+together. But, Infant, you're ordered to bukb."
+
+"What about? I'll try."
+
+"Bukb about a daur. You've been on heaps of 'em," said Nevin.
+
+"What in the world does that mean? Has the Army a language of its own?"
+
+The Infant turned very red. He was afraid he was being laughed at, and
+he detested talking before outsiders; but it was the author of "As it
+was in the Beginning" who waited.
+
+"It's all so new to me," pleaded Cleever; "and--and you said you liked
+my book."
+
+This was a direct appeal that The Infant could understand, and he began
+rather flurriedly, with much slang bred of nervousness--
+
+"Pull me up, sir, if I say anything you don't follow. About six months
+before I took my leave out of Burma, I was on the Hlinedatalone, up near
+the Shan States, with sixty Tommies--private soldiers, that is--and
+another subaltern, a year senior to me. The Burmese business was a
+subaltern's war, and our forces were split up into little detachments,
+all running about the country and trying to keep the dacoits quiet. The
+dacoits were having a first-class time, y' know--filling women up with
+kerosene and setting 'em alight, and burning villages, and crucifying
+people."
+
+The wonder in Eustace Cleever's eyes deepened. He could not quite
+realise that the cross still existed in any form.
+
+"Have you ever seen a crucifixion?" said he.
+
+"Of course not. 'Shouldn't have allowed it if I had; but I've seen the
+corpses. The dacoits had a trick of sending a crucified corpse down
+the river on a raft, just to show they were keeping their tail up and
+enjoying themselves. Well, that was the kind of people I had to deal
+with."
+
+"Alone?" said Cleever. Solitude of the soul he could understand--none
+better--but he had never in the body moved ten miles from his fellows.
+
+"I had my men, but the rest of it was pretty much alone. The nearest
+post that could give me orders was fifteen miles away, and we used to
+heliograph to them, and they used to give us orders same way--too many
+orders."
+
+"Who was your C. O.?" said Boileau.
+
+"Bounderby--Major. Pukka Bounderby; more Bounder than pukka. He went out
+up Bhamo way. Shot, or cut down, last year," said The Infant.
+
+"What are these interludes in a strange tongue?" said Cleever to me.
+
+"Professional information--like the Mississippi pilots' talk," said
+I. "He did not approve of his major, who died a violent death. Go on,
+Infant."
+
+"Far too many orders. You couldn't take the Tommies out for a two days'
+daur--that's expedition--without being blown up for not asking leave.
+And the whole country was humming with dacoits. I used to send out
+spies, and act on their information. As soon as a man came in and told
+me of a gang in hiding, I'd take thirty men with some grub, and go out
+and look for them, while the other subaltern lay doggo in camp."
+
+"Lay! Pardon me, but how did he lie?" said Cleever.
+
+"Lay doggo--lay quiet, with the other thirty men. When I came back, he'd
+take out his half of the men, and have a good time of his own."
+
+"Who was he?" said Boileau.
+
+"Carter-Deecey, of the Aurungabadis. Good chap, but too zubberdusty, and
+went bokhar four days out of seven. He's gone out too. Don't interrupt a
+man."
+
+Cleever looked helplessly at me.
+
+"The other subaltern," I translated swiftly, "came from a native
+regiment, and was overbearing in his demeanour. He suffered much from
+the fever of the country, and is now dead. Go on, Infant."
+
+"After a bit, we got into trouble for using the men on frivolous
+occasions, and so I used to put my signaller under arrest to prevent him
+reading the helio-orders. Then I'd go out and leave a message to be sent
+an hour after I got clear of the camp, something like this: 'Received
+important information; start in an hour, unless countermanded.' If I
+was ordered back, it didn't much matter. I swore the C. O.'s watch was
+wrong, or something, when I came back. The Tommies enjoyed the fun,
+and--Oh, yes, there was one Tommy who was the bard of the detachment. He
+used to make up verses on everything that happened."
+
+"What sort of verses?" said Cleever.
+
+"Lovely verses; and the Tommies used to sing 'em. There was one song
+with a chorus, and it said something like this." The Infant dropped into
+the true barrack-room twang:
+
+"Theebaw, the Burma king, did a very foolish thing, When 'e mustered
+'ostile forces in ar-rai, 'E little thought that we, from far across the
+sea, Would send our armies up to Mandalai!"
+
+"O gorgeous!" said Cleever. "And how magnificently direct! The notion of
+a regimental bard is new to me, but of course it must be so."
+
+"He was awfly popular with the men," said The Infant. "He had them all
+down in rhyme as soon as ever they had done anything. He was a great
+bard. He was always ready with an elegy when we picked up a Boh--that's
+a leader of dacoits."
+
+"How did you pick him up?" said Cleever.
+
+"Oh! shot him if he wouldn't surrender."
+
+"You! Have you shot a man?"
+
+There was a subdued chuckle from all three boys, and it dawned on the
+questioner that one experience in life which was denied to himself, and
+he weighed the souls of men in a balance, had been shared by three very
+young gentlemen of engaging appearance. He turned round on Nevin, who
+had climbed to the top of the bookcase and was sitting cross-legged as
+before.
+
+"And have you, too?"
+
+"Think so," said Nevin, sweetly. "In the Black Mountain. He was rolling
+cliffs on to my half-company, and spoiling our formation. I took a rifle
+from a man, and brought him down at the second shot."
+
+"Good Heavens! And how did you feel afterwards?"
+
+"Thirsty. I wanted a smoke, too."
+
+Cleever looked at Boileau--the youngest. Surely his hands were guiltless
+of blood.
+
+Boileau shook his head and laughed. "Go on, Infant," said he.
+
+"And you too?" said Cleever.
+
+"Fancy so. It was a case of cut, cut or be cut, with me; so I cut--one.
+I couldn't do any more, sir."
+
+Cleever looked as though he would like to ask many questions, but The
+Infant swept on in the full tide of his tale.
+
+"Well, we were called insubordinate young whelps at last, and strictly
+forbidden to take the Tommies out any more without orders. I wasn't
+sorry, because Tommy is such an exacting sort of creature. He wants to
+live as though he were in barracks all the time. I was grubbing on fowls
+and boiled corn, but the Tommies wanted their pound of fresh meat, and
+their half ounce of this, and their two ounces of t'other thing, and
+they used to come to me and badger me for plug tobacco when we were four
+days in jungle. I said: 'I can get you Burma tobacco, but I don't keep
+a canteen up my sleeve.' They couldn't see it. They wanted all the
+luxuries of the season, confound 'em!"
+
+"You were alone when you were dealing with these men?" said Cleever,
+watching The Infant's face under the palm of his hand. He was receiving
+new ideas, and they seemed to trouble him.
+
+"Of course, unless you count the mosquitoes. They were nearly as big as
+the men. After I had to lie doggo I began to look for something to do,
+and I was great pals with a man called Hicksey in the Police, the best
+man that ever stepped on earth; a first-class man."
+
+Cleever nodded applause. He knew how to appreciate enthusiasm.
+
+"Hicksey and I were as thick as thieves. He had some Burma mounted
+police--rummy chaps, armed with sword and Snider carbine. They rode
+punchy Burma ponies, with string stirrups, red cloth saddles, and red
+bell-rope headstalls. Hicksey used to lend me six or eight of them when
+I asked him--nippy little devils, keen as mustard. But they told their
+wives too much, and all my plans got known, till I learned to give false
+marching orders overnight, and take the men to quite a different village
+in the morning. Then we used to catch the simple daku before breakfast,
+and made him very sick. It's a ghastly country on the Hlinedatalone; all
+bamboo jungle, with paths about four feet wide winding through it. The
+daku knew all the paths, and potted at us as we came round a corner; but
+the mounted police knew the paths as well as the daku, and we used to go
+stalking 'em in and out. Once we flushed 'em, the men on the ponies had
+the advantage of the men on foot. We held all the country absolutely
+quiet for ten miles round, in about a month. Then we took Boh Na-ghee,
+Hicksey and I and the civil officer. That was a lark!"
+
+"I think I am beginning to understand a little," said Cleever. "It was a
+pleasure to you to administer and fight?"
+
+"Rather! There's nothing nicer than a satisfactory little expedition,
+when you find your plans fit together, and your information's
+teek--correct, you know, and the whole sub-chiz--I mean, when everything
+works out like formulae on a blackboard. Hicksey had all the information
+about the Boh. He had been burning villages and murdering people right
+and left, and cutting up Government convoys, and all that. He was lying
+doggo in a village about fifteen miles off, waiting to get a fresh gang
+together. So we arranged to take thirty mounted police, and turn him
+out before he could plunder into our newly-settled villages. At the last
+minute, the civil officer in our part of the world thought he'd assist
+at the performance."
+
+"Who was he?" said Nevin.
+
+"His name was Dennis," said The Infant slowly. "And we'll let it stay
+so. He's a better man now than he was then."
+
+"But how old was the civil power?" said Cleever. "The situation is
+developing itself."
+
+"He was about six-and-twenty, and he was awf'ly clever. He knew a lot of
+things, but I don't think he was quite steady enough for dacoit-hunting.
+We started overnight for Boh Na-ghee's village, and we got there just
+before morning, without raising an alarm. Dennis had turned out armed
+to his teeth--two revolvers, a carbine, and all sorts of things. I was
+talking to Hicksey about posting the men, and Dennis edged his pony in
+between us, and said, 'What shall I do? What shall I do? Tell me what to
+do, you fellows.' We didn't take much notice; but his pony tried to bite
+me in the leg, and I said, 'Pull out a bit, old man, till we've settled
+the attack.' He kept edging in, and fiddling with his reins and his
+revolvers, and saying, 'Dear me! Dear me! Oh, dear me! What do you
+think I'd better do?' The man was in a deadly funk, and his teeth were
+chattering."
+
+"I sympathise with the civil power," said Cleever. "Continue, young
+Clive."
+
+"The fun of it was, that he was supposed to be our superior officer.
+Hicksey took a good look at him, and told him to attach himself to my
+party. Beastly mean of Hicksey, that. The chap kept on edging in
+and bothering, instead of asking for some men and taking up his own
+position, till I got angry, and the carbines began popping on the other
+side of the village. Then I said, 'For God's sake be quiet, and sit
+down where you are! If you see anybody come out of the village, shoot
+at him.' I knew he couldn't hit a hayrick at a yard. Then I took my men
+over the garden wall--over the palisades, y' know--somehow or
+other, and the fun began. Hicksey had found the Boh in bed under a
+mosquito-curtain, and he had taken a flying jump on to him."
+
+"A flying jump!" said Cleever. "Is that also war?"
+
+"Yes," said The Infant, now thoroughly warmed. "Don't you know how you
+take a flying jump on to a fellow's head at school, when he snores in
+the dormitory? The Boh was sleeping in a bedful of swords and pistols,
+and Hicksey came down like Zazel through the netting, and the net got
+mixed up with the pistols and the Boh and Hicksey, and they all rolled
+on the floor together. I laughed till I couldn't stand, and Hicksey was
+cursing me for not helping him; so I left him to fight it out and went
+into the village. Our men were slashing about and firing, and so were
+the dacoits, and in the thick of the mess some ass set fire to a house,
+and we all had to clear out. I froze on to the nearest daku and ran to
+the palisade, shoving him in front of me. He wriggled loose and bounded
+over the other side. I came after him; but when I had one leg one side
+and one leg the other of the palisade, I saw that the daku had fallen
+flat on Dennis's head. That man had never moved from where I left him.
+They rolled on the ground together, and Dennis's carbine went off and
+nearly shot me. The daku picked himself up and ran, and Dennis buzzed
+his carbine after him, and it caught him on the back of his head and
+knocked him silly. You never saw anything so funny in your life. I
+doubled up on the top of the palisade and hung there, yelling with
+laughter. But Dennis began to weep like anything. 'Oh, I've killed
+a man,' he said. 'I've killed a man, and I shall never know another
+peaceful hour in my life. Is he dead? Oh, is he dead? Good Lord, I've
+killed a man!' I came down and said, 'Don't be a fool;' but he kept on
+shouting, 'Is he dead?' till I could have kicked him. The daku was only
+knocked out of time with the carbine. He came to after a bit, and I
+said, 'Are you hurt much?' He groaned and said, 'No.' His chest was all
+cut with scrambling over the palisade. 'The white man's gun didn't do
+that,' he said; 'I did that, and I knocked the white man over.' Just
+like a Burman, wasn't it? But Dennis wouldn't be happy at any price.
+He said: 'Tie up his wounds. He'll bleed to death. Oh, he'll bleed to
+death!' 'Tie 'em up yourself,' I said, 'if you're so anxious.' 'I can't
+touch him,' said Dennis, 'but here's my shirt.' He took off his shirt,
+and fixed the braces again over his bare shoulders. I ripped the shirt
+up, and bandaged the dacoit quite professionally. He was grinning at
+Dennis all the time; and Dennis's haversack was lying on the ground,
+bursting full of sandwiches. Greedy hog! I took some, and offered some
+to Dennis. 'How can I eat?' he said. 'How can you ask me to eat? His
+very blood is on your hands now, and you're eating my sandwiches!' 'All
+right,' I said; 'I'll give 'em to the daku.' So I did, and the little
+chap was quite pleased, and wolfed 'em down like one o'clock."
+
+Cleever brought his hand down on the table with a thump that made the
+empty glasses dance. "That's Art!" he said. "Flat, flagrant mechanism!
+Don't tell me that happened on the spot!"
+
+The pupils of The Infant's eyes contracted to two pin-points. "I beg
+your pardon," he said slowly and stiffly, "but I am telling this thing
+as it happened."
+
+Cleever looked at him a moment. "My fault entirely," said he; "I should
+have known. Please go on."
+
+"Hicksey came out of what was left of the village with his prisoners
+and captives, all neatly tied up. Boh Na-ghee was first, and one of the
+villagers, as soon as he found the old ruffian helpless, began kicking
+him quietly. The Boh stood it as long as he could, and then groaned, and
+we saw what was going on. Hicksey tied the villager up and gave him a
+half a dozen, good, with a bamboo, to remind him to leave a prisoner
+alone. You should have seen the old Boh grin. Oh! but Hicksey was in
+a furious rage with everybody. He'd got a wipe over the elbow that
+had tickled up his funny-bone, and he was rabid with me for not having
+helped him with the Boh and the mosquito-net. I had to explain that I
+couldn't do anything. If you'd seen 'em both tangled up together on
+the floor in one kicking cocoon, you'd have laughed for a week. Hicksey
+swore that the only decent man of his acquaintance was the Boh, and
+all the way to camp Hicksey was talking to the Boh, and the Boh was
+complaining about the soreness of his bones. When we got back, and
+had had a bath, the Boh wanted to know when he was going to be hanged.
+Hicksey said he couldn't oblige him on the spot, but had to send him to
+Rangoon. The Boh went down on his knees, and reeled off a catalogue of
+his crimes--he ought to have been hanged seventeen times over, by his
+own confession--and implored Hicksey to settle the business out of hand.
+'If I'm sent to Rangoon,' said he, 'they'll keep me in jail all my life,
+and that is a death every time the sun gets up or the wind blows.'
+But we had to send him to Rangoon, and, of course, he was let off down
+there, and given penal servitude for life. When I came to Rangoon I went
+over the jail--I had helped to fill it, y' know--and the old Boh was
+there, and he spotted me at once. He begged for some opium first, and I
+tried to get him some, but that was against the rules. Then he asked me
+to have his Sentence changed to death, because he was afraid of being
+sent to the Andamans. I couldn't do that either, but I tried to cheer
+him, and told him how things were going up-country, and the last thing
+he said was--'Give my compliments to the fat white man who jumped on
+me. If I'd been awake I'd have killed him.' I wrote that to Hicksey next
+mail, and--and that's all. I'm 'fraid I've been gassing awf'ly, sir."
+
+Cleever said nothing for a long time. The Infant looked uncomfortable.
+He feared that, misled by enthusiasm, he had filled up the novelist's
+time with unprofitable recital of trivial anecdotes.
+
+Then said Cleever, "I can't understand. Why should you have seen and
+done all these things before you have cut your wisdom-teeth?"
+
+"Don't know," said The Infant apologetically. "I haven't seen much--only
+Burmese jungle."
+
+"And dead men, and war, and power, and responsibility," said Cleever,
+under his breath. "You won't have any sensations left at thirty, if you
+go on as you have done. But I want to hear more tales--more tales!" He
+seemed to forget that even subalterns might have engagements of their
+own.
+
+"We're thinking of dining out somewhere--the lot of us--and going on to
+the Empire afterwards," said Nevin, with hesitation. He did not like to
+ask Cleever to come too. The invitation might be regarded as perilously
+near to "cheek." And Cleever, anxious not to wag a gray beard unbidden
+among boys at large, said nothing on his side.
+
+Boileau solved the little difficulty by blurting out: "Won't you come
+too, sir?"
+
+Cleever almost shouted "Yes," and while he was being helped into his
+coat continued to murmur "Good Heavens!" at intervals in a way that the
+boys could not understand.
+
+"I don't think I've been to the Empire in my life," said he; "but--what
+is my life after all? Let us go."
+
+They went out with Eustace Cleever, and I sulked at home because they
+had come to see me, but had gone over to the better man; which was
+humiliating. They packed him into a cab with utmost reverence, for was
+he not the author of "As it was in the Beginning," and a person in whose
+company it was an honour to go abroad? From all I gathered later, he
+had taken less interest in the performance before him than in their
+conversations, and they protested with emphasis that he was "as good a
+man as they make; knew what a man was driving at almost before he said
+it; and yet he's so damned simple about things any man knows." That was
+one of many comments.
+
+At midnight they returned, announcing that they were "highly respectable
+gondoliers," and that oysters and stout were what they chiefly needed.
+The eminent novelist was still with them, and I think he was calling
+them by their shorter names. I am certain that he said he had been
+moving in worlds not realised, and that they had shown him the Empire in
+a new light.
+
+Still sore at recent neglect, I answered shortly, "Thank Heaven we have
+within the land ten thousand as good as they," and when he departed,
+asked him what he thought of things generally.
+
+He replied with another quotation, to the effect that though singing
+was a remarkably fine performance, I was to be quite sure that few lips
+would be moved to song if they could find a sufficiency of kissing.
+
+Whereby I understood that Eustace Cleever, decorator and colourman in
+words, was blaspheming his own Art, and would be sorry for this in the
+morning.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Soldiers Three, Part II., by Rudyard Kipling
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