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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Day’s Work, by Rudyard Kipling
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Day’s Work
+
+Author: Rudyard Kipling
+
+Release Date: March, 2001 [eBook #2569]
+[Most recently updated: February 11, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: An Anonymous Project Gutenberg Volunteer and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DAY’S WORK ***
+
+
+
+
+The Day’s Work
+
+by Rudyard Kipling
+
+
+Contents
+
+ THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS
+ A WALKING DELEGATE
+ THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF
+ THE TOMB OF HIS ANCESTORS
+ THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA
+ WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR
+ PART I
+ PART II
+ ･007
+ THE MALTESE CAT
+ “BREAD UPON THE WATERS”
+ AN ERROR IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION
+ MY SUNDAY AT HOME
+ THE BRUSHWOOD BOY
+
+
+
+
+THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS
+
+
+The least that Findlayson, of the Public Works Department, expected was
+a C. I. E.; he dreamed of a C. S. I.: indeed, his friends told him that
+he deserved more. For three years he had endured heat and cold,
+disappointment, discomfort, danger, and disease, with responsibility
+almost too heavy for one pair of shoulders; and day by day, through
+that time, the great Kashi Bridge over the Ganges had grown under his
+charge. Now, in less than three months, if all went well, his
+Excellency the Viceroy would open the bridge in state, an archbishop
+would bless it, and the first trainload of soldiers would come over it,
+and there would be speeches.
+
+Findlayson, C. E., sat in his trolley on a construction line that ran
+along one of the main revetments—the huge stone-faced banks that flared
+away north and south for three miles on either side of the river—and
+permitted himself to think of the end. With its approaches, his work
+was one mile and three-quarters in length; a lattice-girder bridge,
+trussed with the Findlayson truss, standing on seven-and-twenty brick
+piers. Each one of those piers was twenty-four feet in diameter, capped
+with red Agra stone and sunk eighty feet below the shifting sand of the
+Ganges’ bed. Above them was a railway-line fifteen feet broad; above
+that, again, a cart-road of eighteen feet, flanked with footpaths. At
+either end rose towers of red brick, loopholed for musketry and pierced
+for big guns, and the ramp of the road was being pushed forward to
+their haunches. The raw earth-ends were crawling and alive with
+hundreds upon hundreds of tiny asses climbing out of the yawning
+borrow-pit below with sackfuls of stuff; and the hot afternoon air was
+filled with the noise of hooves, the rattle of the drivers’ sticks, and
+the swish and roll-down of the dirt. The river was very low, and on the
+dazzling white sand between the three centre piers stood squat cribs of
+railway-sleepers, filled within and daubed without with mud, to support
+the last of the girders as those were riveted up. In the little deep
+water left by the drought, an overhead-crane travelled to and fro along
+its spile-pier, jerking sections of iron into place, snorting and
+backing and grunting as an elephant grunts in the timber-yard. Riveters
+by the hundred swarmed about the lattice side-work and the iron roof of
+the railway-line, hung from invisible staging under the bellies of the
+girders, clustered round the throats of the piers, and rode on the
+overhang of the footpath-stanchions; their fire-pots and the spurts of
+flame that answered each hammer-stroke showing no more than pale yellow
+in the sun’s glare. East and west and north and south the
+construction-trains rattled and shrieked up and down the embankments,
+the piled trucks of brown and white stone banging behind them till the
+side-boards were unpinned, and with a roar and a grumble a few thousand
+tons more material were flung out to hold the river in place.
+
+Findlayson, C. E., turned on his trolley and looked over the face of
+the country that he had changed for seven miles around. Looked back on
+the humming village of five thousand workmen; up stream and down, along
+the vista of spurs and sand; across the river to the far piers,
+lessening in the haze; overhead to the guard-towers—and only he knew
+how strong those were—and with a sigh of contentment saw that his work
+was good. There stood his bridge before him in the sunlight, lacking
+only a few weeks’ work on the girders of the three middle piers—his
+bridge, raw and ugly as original sin, but _pukka_—permanent—to endure
+when all memory of the builder, yea, even of the splendid Findlayson
+truss, had perished. Practically, the thing was done.
+
+Hitchcock, his assistant, cantered along the line on a little
+switch-tailed Kabuli pony who through long practice could have trotted
+securely over a trestle, and nodded to his chief.
+
+“All but,” said he, with a smile.
+
+“I’ve been thinking about it,” the senior answered. “Not half a bad job
+for two men, is it?”
+
+“One—and a half. Gad, what a Cooper’s Hill cub I was when I came on the
+works!” Hitchcock felt very old in the crowded experiences of the past
+three years, that had taught him power and responsibility.
+
+“You _were_ rather a colt,” said Findlayson. “I wonder how you’ll like
+going back to office-work when this job’s over.”
+
+“I shall hate it!” said the young man, and as he went on his eye
+followed Findlayson’s, and he muttered, “Isn’t it damned good?”
+
+“I think we’ll go up the service together,” Findlayson said to himself.
+“You’re too good a youngster to waste on another man. Cub thou wast;
+assistant thou art. Personal assistant, and at Simla, thou shalt be, if
+any credit comes to me out of the business!”
+
+Indeed, the burden of the work had fallen altogether on Findlayson and
+his assistant, the young man whom he had chosen because of his rawness
+to break to his own needs. There were labour contractors by the
+half-hundred—fitters and riveters, European, borrowed from the railway
+workshops, with, perhaps, twenty white and half-caste subordinates to
+direct, under direction, the bevies of workmen—but none knew better
+than these two, who trusted each other, how the underlings were not to
+be trusted. They had been tried many times in sudden crises—by slipping
+of booms, by breaking of tackle, failure of cranes, and the wrath of
+the river—but no stress had brought to light any man among men whom
+Findlayson and Hitchcock would have honoured by working as
+remorselessly as they worked themselves. Findlayson thought it over
+from the beginning: the months of office-work destroyed at a blow when
+the Government of India, at the last moment, added two feet to the
+width of the bridge, under the impression that bridges were cut out of
+paper, and so brought to ruin at least half an acre of calculations—and
+Hitchcock, new to disappointment, buried his head in his arms and wept;
+the heart-breaking delays over the filling of the contracts in England;
+the futile correspondences hinting at great wealth of commissions if
+one, only one, rather doubtful consignment were passed; the war that
+followed the refusal; the careful, polite obstruction at the other end
+that followed the war, till young Hitchcock, putting one month’s leave
+to another month, and borrowing ten days from Findlayson, spent his
+poor little savings of a year in a wild dash to London, and there, as
+his own tongue asserted and the later consignments proved, put the fear
+of God into a man so great that he feared only Parliament and said so
+till Hitchcock wrought with him across his own dinner-table, and—he
+feared the Kashi Bridge and all who spoke in its name. Then there was
+the cholera that came in the night to the village by the bridge works;
+and after the cholera smote the smallpox. The fever they had always
+with them. Hitchcock had been appointed a magistrate of the third class
+with whipping powers, for the better government of the community, and
+Findlayson watched him wield his powers temperately, learning what to
+overlook and what to look after. It was a long, long reverie, and it
+covered storm, sudden freshets, death in every manner and shape,
+violent and awful rage against red tape half frenzying a mind that
+knows it should be busy on other things; drought, sanitation, finance;
+birth, wedding, burial, and riot in the village of twenty warring
+castes; argument, expostulation, persuasion, and the blank despair that
+a man goes to bed upon, thankful that his rifle is all in pieces in the
+gun-case. Behind everything rose the black frame of the Kashi
+Bridge—plate by plate, girder by girder, span by span—and each pier of
+it recalled Hitchcock, the all-round man, who had stood by his chief
+without failing from the very first to this last.
+
+So the bridge was two men’s work—unless one counted Peroo, as Peroo
+certainly counted himself. He was a Lascar, a Kharva from Bulsar,
+familiar with every port between Rockhampton and London, who had risen
+to the rank of sarang on the British India boats, but wearying of
+routine musters and clean clothes, had thrown up the service and gone
+inland, where men of his calibre were sure of employment. For his
+knowledge of tackle and the handling of heavy weights, Peroo was worth
+almost any price he might have chosen to put upon his services; but
+custom decreed the wage of the overhead men, and Peroo was not within
+many silver pieces of his proper value. Neither running water nor
+extreme heights made him afraid; and, as an ex-serang, he knew how to
+hold authority. No piece of iron was so big or so badly placed that
+Peroo could not devise a tackle to lift it—a loose-ended, sagging
+arrangement, rigged with a scandalous amount of talking, but perfectly
+equal to the work in hand. It was Peroo who had saved the girder of
+Number Seven pier from destruction when the new wire rope jammed in the
+eye of the crane, and the huge plate tilted in its slings, threatening
+to slide out sideways. Then the native workmen lost their heads with
+great shoutings, and Hitchcock’s right arm was broken by a falling
+T-plate, and he buttoned it up in his coat and swooned, and came to and
+directed for four hours till Peroo, from the top of the crane, reported
+“All’s well,” and the plate swung home. There was no one like Peroo,
+serang, to lash, and guy, and hold to control the donkey-engines, to
+hoist a fallen locomotive craftily out of the borrow-pit into which it
+had tumbled; to strip, and dive, if need be, to see how the concrete
+blocks round the piers stood the scouring of Mother Gunga, or to
+adventure up-stream on a monsoon night and report on the state of the
+embankment-facings. He would interrupt the field-councils of Findlayson
+and Hitchcock without fear, till his wonderful English, or his still
+more wonderful _lingua-franca_, half Portuguese and half Malay, ran out
+and he was forced to take string and show the knots that he would
+recommend. He controlled his own gang of tacklemen—mysterious relatives
+from Kutch Mandvi gathered month by month and tried to the uttermost.
+No consideration of family or kin allowed Peroo to keep weak hands or a
+giddy head on the pay-roll. “My honour is the honour of this bridge,”
+he would say to the about-to-be-dismissed. “What do I care for your
+honour? Go and work on a steamer. That is all you are fit for.”
+
+The little cluster of huts where he and his gang lived centred round
+the tattered dwelling of a sea-priest—one who had never set foot on
+black water, but had been chosen as ghostly counsellor by two
+generations of sea-rovers all unaffected by port missions or those
+creeds which are thrust upon sailors by agencies along Thames bank. The
+priest of the Lascara had nothing to do with their caste, or indeed
+with anything at all. He ate the offerings of his church, and slept and
+smoked, and slept again “for,” said Peroo, who had haled him a thousand
+miles inland, “he is a very holy man. He never cares what you eat so
+long as you do not eat beef, and that is good, because on land we
+worship Shiva, we Kharvas; but at sea on the Kumpani’s boats we attend
+strictly to the orders of the Burra Malum [the first mate], and on this
+bridge we observe what Finlinson Sahib says.”
+
+Finlinson Sahib had that day given orders to clear the scaffolding from
+the guard-tower on the right bank, and Peroo with his mates was casting
+loose and lowering down the bamboo poles and planks as swiftly as ever
+they had whipped the cargo out of a coaster.
+
+From his trolley he could hear the whistle of the serang’s silver pipe
+and the creak and clatter of the pulleys. Peroo was standing on the
+topmost coping of the tower, clad in the blue dungaree of his abandoned
+service, and as Findlayson motioned to him to be careful, for his was
+no life to throw away, he gripped the last pole, and, shading his eyes
+ship-fashion, answered with the long-drawn wail of the fo’c’sle
+lookout: “_Ham dekhta hai_” (“I am looking out”). Findlayson laughed
+and then sighed. It was years since he had seen a steamer, and he was
+sick for home. As his trolley passed under the tower, Peroo descended
+by a rope, ape-fashion, and cried: “It looks well now, Sahib. Our
+bridge is all but done. What think you Mother Gunga will say when the
+rail runs over?”
+
+“She has said little so far. It was never Mother Gunga that delayed
+us.”
+
+“There is always time for her; and none the less there has been delay.
+Has the Sahib forgotten last autumn’s flood, when the stoneboats were
+sunk without warning—or only a half-day’s warning?”
+
+“Yes, but nothing save a big flood could hurt us now. The spurs are
+holding well on the west bank.”
+
+“Mother Gunga eats great allowances. There is always room for more
+stone on the revetments. I tell this to the Chota Sahib”—he meant
+Hitchcock— “and he laughs.”
+
+“No matter, Peroo. Another year thou wilt be able to build a bridge in
+thine own fashion.”
+
+The Lascar grinned. “Then it will not be in this way—with stonework
+sunk under water, as the _Quetta_ was sunk. I like sus-suspen-sheen
+bridges that fly from bank to bank, with one big step, like a
+gang-plank. Then no water can hurt. When does the Lord Sahib come to
+open the bridge?”
+
+“In three months, when the weather is cooler.”
+
+“Ho! ho! He is like the Burra Malum. He sleeps below while the work is
+being done. Then he comes upon the quarter-deck and touches with his
+finger, and says: ‘This is not clean! Dam jibboonwallah!’”
+
+“But the Lord Sahib does not call me a dam jibboonwallah, Peroo.”
+
+“No, Sahib; but he does not come on deck till the work is all finished.
+Even the Burra Malum of the _Nerbudda_ said once at Tuticorin—”
+
+“Bah! Go! I am busy.”
+
+“I, also!” said Peroo, with an unshaken countenance. “May I take the
+light dinghy now and row along the spurs?”
+
+“To hold them with thy hands? They are, I think, sufficiently heavy.”
+
+“Nay, Sahib. It is thus. At sea, on the Black Water, we have room to be
+blown up and down without care. Here we have no room at all. Look you,
+we have put the river into a dock, and run her between stone sills.”
+
+Findlayson smiled at the “we.”
+
+“We have bitted and bridled her. She is not like the sea, that can beat
+against a soft beach. She is Mother Gunga—in irons.” His voice fell a
+little.
+
+“Peroo, thou hast been up and down the world more even than I. Speak
+true talk, now. How much dost thou in thy heart believe of Mother
+Gunga?”
+
+“All that our priest says. London is London, Sahib. Sydney is Sydney,
+and Port Darwin is Port Darwin. Also Mother Gunga is Mother Gunga, and
+when I come back to her banks I know this and worship. In London I did
+poojah to the big temple by the river for the sake of the God within .
+. . . Yes, I will not take the cushions in the dinghy.”
+
+Findlayson mounted his horse and trotted to the shed of a bungalow that
+he shared with his assistant. The place had become home to him in the
+last three years. He had grilled in the heat, sweated in the rains, and
+shivered with fever under the rude thatch roof; the lime-wash beside
+the door was covered with rough drawings and formulae, and the
+sentry-path trodden in the matting of the verandah showed where he had
+walked alone. There is no eight-hour limit to an engineer’s work, and
+the evening meal with Hitchcock was eaten booted and spurred: over
+their cigars they listened to the hum of the village as the gangs came
+up from the river-bed and the lights began to twinkle.
+
+“Peroo has gone up the spurs in your dinghy. He’s taken a couple of
+nephews with him, and he’s lolling in the stern like a commodore,” said
+Hitchcock.
+
+“That’s all right. He’s got something on his mind. You’d think that ten
+years in the British India boats would have knocked most of his
+religion out of him.”
+
+“So it has,” said Hitchcock, chuckling. “I overheard him the other day
+in the middle of a most atheistical talk with that fat old _guru_ of
+theirs. Peroo denied the efficacy of prayer; and wanted the _guru_ to
+go to sea and watch a gale out with him, and see if he could stop a
+monsoon.”
+
+“All the same, if you carried off his _guru_ he’d leave us like a shot.
+He was yarning away to me about praying to the dome of St. Paul’s when
+he was in London.”
+
+“He told me that the first time he went into the engine-room of a
+steamer, when he was a boy, he prayed to the low-pressure cylinder.”
+
+“Not half a bad thing to pray to, either. He’s propitiating his own
+Gods now, and he wants to know what Mother Gunga will think of a bridge
+being run across her. Who’s there?” A shadow darkened the doorway, and
+a telegram was put into Hitchcock’s hand.
+
+“She ought to be pretty well used to it by this time. Only a _tar_. It
+ought to be Ralli’s answer about the new rivets. . . . Great Heavens!”
+Hitchcock jumped to his feet.
+
+“What is it?” said the senior, and took the form. “_That’s_ what Mother
+Gunga thinks, is it,” he said, reading. “Keep cool, young’un. We’ve got
+all our work cut out for us. Let’s see. Muir wired half an hour ago:
+‘_Floods on the Ramgunga. Look out_.’ Well, that gives us—one, two—nine
+and a half for the flood to reach Melipur Ghaut and seven’s sixteen and
+a half to Lataoli—say fifteen hours before it comes down to us.”
+
+“Curse that hill-fed sewer of a Ramgunga! Findlayson, this is two
+months before anything could have been expected, and the left bank is
+littered up with stuff still. Two full months before the time!”
+
+“That’s why it comes. I’ve only known Indian rivers for five-and-twenty
+years, and I don’t pretend to understand. Here comes another _tar_.”
+Findlayson opened the telegram. “Cockran, this time, from the Ganges
+Canal: ‘_Heavy rains here. Bad._’ He might have saved the last word.
+Well, we don’t want to know any more. We’ve got to work the gangs all
+night and clean up the river-bed. You’ll take the east bank and work
+out to meet me in the middle. Get every thing that floats below the
+bridge: we shall have quite enough rivercraft coming down adrift
+anyhow, without letting the stone-boats ram the piers. What have you
+got on the east bank that needs looking after.”
+
+“Pontoon—one big pontoon with the overhead crane on it. T’other
+overhead crane on the mended pontoon, with the cart-road rivets from
+Twenty to Twenty-three piers—two construction lines, and a
+turning-spur. The pilework must take its chance,” said Hitchcock.
+
+“All right. Roll up everything you can lay hands on. We’ll give the
+gang fifteen minutes more to eat their grub.”
+
+Close to the verandah stood a big night-gong, never used except for
+flood, or fire in the village. Hitchcock had called for a fresh horse,
+and was off to his side of the bridge when Findlayson took the
+cloth-bound stick and smote with the rubbing stroke that brings out the
+full thunder of the metal.
+
+Long before the last rumble ceased every night-gong in the village had
+taken up the warning. To these were added the hoarse screaming of
+conches in the little temples; the throbbing of drums and tom-toms;
+and, from the European quarters, where the riveters lived, McCartney’s
+bugle, a weapon of offence on Sundays and festivals, brayed
+desperately, calling to “Stables.” Engine after engine toiling home
+along the spurs at the end of her day’s work whistled in answer till
+the whistles were answered from the far bank. Then the big gong
+thundered thrice for a sign that it was flood and not fire; conch,
+drum, and whistle echoed the call, and the village quivered to the
+sound of bare feet running upon soft earth. The order in all cases was
+to stand by the day’s work and wait instructions. The gangs poured by
+in the dusk; men stopping to knot a loin-cloth or fasten a sandal;
+gang-foremen shouting to their subordinates as they ran or paused by
+the tool-issue sheds for bars and mattocks; locomotives creeping down
+their tracks wheel-deep in the crowd; till the brown torrent
+disappeared into the dusk of the river-bed, raced over the pilework,
+swarmed along the lattices, clustered by the cranes, and stood still,
+each man in his place.
+
+Then the troubled beating of the gong carried the order to take up
+everything and bear it beyond highwater mark, and the flare-lamps broke
+out by the hundred between the webs of dull iron as the riveters began
+a night’s work, racing against the flood that was to come. The girders
+of the three centre piers—those that stood on the cribs—were all but in
+position. They needed just as many rivets as could be driven into them,
+for the flood would assuredly wash out their supports, and the ironwork
+would settle down on the caps of stone if they were not blocked at the
+ends. A hundred crowbars strained at the sleepers of the temporary line
+that fed the unfinished piers. It was heaved up in lengths, loaded into
+trucks, and backed up the bank beyond flood-level by the groaning
+locomotives. The tool-sheds on the sands melted away before the attack
+of shouting armies, and with them went the stacked ranks of Government
+stores, iron-bound boxes of rivets, pliers, cutters, duplicate parts of
+the riveting-machines, spare pumps and chains. The big crane would be
+the last to be shifted, for she was hoisting all the heavy stuff up to
+the main structure of the bridge. The concrete blocks on the fleet of
+stone-boats were dropped overside, where there was any depth of water,
+to guard the piers, and the empty boats themselves were poled under the
+bridge down-stream. It was here that Peroo’s pipe shrilled loudest, for
+the first stroke of the big gong had brought the dinghy back at racing
+speed, and Peroo and his people were stripped to the waist, working for
+the honour and credit which are better than life.
+
+“I knew she would speak,” he cried. “_I_ knew, but the telegraph gives
+us good warning. O sons of unthinkable begetting—children of
+unspeakable shame—are we here for the look of the thing?” It was two
+feet of wire-rope frayed at the ends, and it did wonders as Peroo
+leaped from gunnel to gunnel, shouting the language of the sea.
+
+Findlayson was more troubled for the stone-boats than anything else.
+McCartney, with his gangs, was blocking up the ends of the three
+doubtful spans, but boats adrift, if the flood chanced to be a high
+one, might endanger the girders; and there was a very fleet in the
+shrunken channel.
+
+“Get them behind the swell of the guard-tower,” he shouted down to
+Peroo. “It will be dead-water there. Get them below the bridge.”
+
+“_Accha!_ [Very good.] _I_ know; we are mooring them with wire-rope,”
+was the answer. “Heh! Listen to the Chota Sahib. He is working hard.”
+
+From across the river came an almost continuous whistling of
+locomotives, backed by the rumble of stone. Hitchcock at the last
+minute was spending a few hundred more trucks of Tarakee stone in
+reinforcing his spurs and embankments.
+
+“The bridge challenges Mother Gunga,” said Peroo, with a laugh. “But
+when _she_ talks I know whose voice will be the loudest.”
+
+For hours the naked men worked, screaming and shouting under the
+lights. It was a hot, moonless night; the end of it was darkened by
+clouds and a sudden squall that made Findlayson very grave.
+
+“She moves!” said Peroo, just before the dawn. “Mother Gunga is awake!
+Hear!” He dipped his hand over the side of a boat and the current
+mumbled on it. A little wave hit the side of a pier with a crisp slap.
+
+“Six hours before her time,” said Findlayson, mopping his forehead
+savagely. “Now we can’t depend on anything. We’d better clear all hands
+out of the river-bed.”
+
+Again the big gong beat, and a second time there was the rushing of
+naked feet on earth and ringing iron; the clatter of tools ceased. In
+the silence, men heard the dry yawn of water crawling over thirsty
+sand.
+
+Foreman after foreman shouted to Findlayson, who had posted himself by
+the guard-tower, that his section of the river-bed had been cleaned
+out, and when the last voice dropped Findlayson hurried over the bridge
+till the iron plating of the permanent way gave place to the temporary
+plank-walk over the three centre piers, and there he met Hitchcock.
+
+“All clear your side?” said Findlayson. The whisper rang in the box of
+latticework.
+
+“Yes, and the east channel’s filling now. We’re utterly out of our
+reckoning. When is this thing down on us?”
+
+“There’s no saying. She’s filling as fast as she can. Look!” Findlayson
+pointed to the planks below his feet, where the sand, burned and
+defiled by months of work, was beginning to whisper and fizz.
+
+“What orders?” said Hitchcock.
+
+“Call the roll—count stores—sit on your hunkers—and pray for the
+bridge. That’s all I can think of. Good night. Don’t risk your life
+trying to fish out anything that may go down-stream.”
+
+“Oh, I’ll be as prudent as you are! ’Night. Heavens, how she’s filling!
+Here’s the rain in earnest!” Findlayson picked his way back to his
+bank, sweeping the last of McCartney’s riveters before him. The gangs
+had spread themselves along the embankments, regardless of the cold
+rain of the dawn, and there they waited for the flood. Only Peroo kept
+his men together behind the swell of the guard-tower, where the
+stone-boats lay tied fore and aft with hawsers, wire-rope, and chains.
+
+A shrill wail ran along the line, growing to a yell, half fear and half
+wonder: the face of the river whitened from bank to bank between the
+stone facings, and the faraway spurs went out in spouts of foam. Mother
+Gunga had come bank-high in haste, and a wall of chocolate-coloured
+water was her messenger. There was a shriek above the roar of the
+water, the complaint of the spans coming down on their blocks as the
+cribs were whirled out from under their bellies. The stone-boats
+groaned and ground each other in the eddy that swung round the
+abutment, and their clumsy masts rose higher and higher against the dim
+sky-line.
+
+“Before she was shut between these walls we knew what she would do. Now
+she is thus cramped God only knows what she will do!” said Peroo,
+watching the furious turmoil round the guard-tower. “Ohé! Fight, then!
+Fight hard, for it is thus that a woman wears herself out.”
+
+But Mother Gunga would not fight as Peroo desired. After the first
+down-stream plunge there came no more walls of water, but the river
+lifted herself bodily, as a snake when she drinks in midsummer,
+plucking and fingering along the revetments, and banking up behind the
+piers till even Findlayson began to recalculate the strength of his
+work.
+
+When day came the village gasped. “Only last night,” men said, turning
+to each other, “it was as a town in the river-bed! Look now!”
+
+And they looked and wondered afresh at the deep water, the racing water
+that licked the throat of the piers. The farther bank was veiled by
+rain, into which the bridge ran out and vanished; the spurs up-stream
+were marked by no more than eddies and spoutings, and down-stream the
+pent river, once freed of her guide-lines, had spread like a sea to the
+horizon. Then hurried by, rolling in the water, dead men and oxen
+together, with here and there a patch of thatched roof that melted when
+it touched a pier.
+
+“Big flood,” said Peroo, and Findlayson nodded. It was as big a flood
+as he had any wish to watch. His bridge would stand what was upon her
+now, but not very much more, and if by any of a thousand chances there
+happened to be a weakness in the embankments, Mother Gunga would carry
+his honour to the sea with the other raffle. Worst of all, there was
+nothing to do except to sit still; and Findlayson sat still under his
+macintosh till his helmet became pulp on his head, and his boots were
+over-ankle in mire. He took no count of time, for the river was marking
+the hours, inch by inch and foot by foot, along the embankment, and he
+listened, numb and hungry, to the straining of the stone-boats, the
+hollow thunder under the piers, and the hundred noises that make the
+full note of a flood. Once a dripping servant brought him food, but he
+could not eat; and once he thought that he heard a faint toot from a
+locomotive across the river, and then he smiled. The bridge’s failure
+would hurt his assistant not a little, but Hitchcock was a young man
+with his big work yet to do. For himself the crash meant
+everything—everything that made a hard life worth the living. They
+would say, the men of his own profession. . . he remembered the half
+pitying things that he himself had said when Lockhart’s new waterworks
+burst and broke down in brickheaps and sludge, and Lockhart’s spirit
+broke in him and he died. He remembered what he himself had said when
+the Sumao Bridge went out in the big cyclone by the sea; and most he
+remembered poor Hartopp’s face three weeks later, when the shame had
+marked it. His bridge was twice the size of Hartopp’s, and it carried
+the Findlayson truss as well as the new pier-shoe—the Findlayson bolted
+shoe. There were no excuses in his service. Government might listen,
+perhaps, but his own kind would judge him by his bridge, as that stood
+or fell. He went over it in his head, plate by plate, span by span,
+brick by brick, pier by pier, remembering, comparing, estimating, and
+recalculating, lest there should be any mistake; and through the long
+hours and through the flights of formulae that danced and wheeled
+before him a cold fear would come to pinch his heart. His side of the
+sum was beyond question; but what man knew Mother Gunga’s arithmetic?
+Even as he was making all sure by the multiplication-table, the river
+might be scooping a pot-hole to the very bottom of any one of those
+eighty-foot piers that carried his reputation. Again a servant came to
+him with food, but his mouth was dry, and he could only drink and
+return to the decimals in his brain. And the river was still rising.
+Peroo, in a mat shelter-coat, crouched at his feet, watching now his
+face and now the face of the river, but saying nothing.
+
+At last the Lascar rose and floundered through the mud towards the
+village, but he was careful to leave an ally to watch the boats.
+
+Presently he returned, most irreverently driving before him the priest
+of his creed—a fat old man, with a grey beard that whipped the wind
+with the wet cloth that blew over his shoulder. Never was seen so
+lamentable a _guru_.
+
+“What good are offerings and little kerosene lamps and dry grain,”
+shouted Peroo, “if squatting in the mud is all that thou canst do? Thou
+hast dealt long with the Gods when they were contented and
+well-wishing. Now they are angry. Speak to them!”
+
+“What is a man against the wrath of Gods?” whined the priest, cowering
+as the wind took him. “Let me go to the temple, and I will pray there.”
+
+“Son of a pig, pray _here!_ Is there no return for salt fish and curry
+powder and dried onions? Call aloud! Tell Mother Gunga we have had
+enough. Bid her be still for the night. I cannot pray, but I have been
+serving in the Kumpani’s boats, and when men did not obey my orders I—”
+A flourish of the wire-rope colt rounded the sentence, and the priest,
+breaking free from his disciple, fled to the village.
+
+“Fat pig!” said Peroo. “After all that we have done for him! When the
+flood is down I will see to it that we get a new _guru_. Finlinson
+Sahib, it darkens for night now, and since yesterday nothing has been
+eaten. Be wise, Sahib. No man can endure watching and great thinking on
+an empty belly. Lie down, Sahib. The river will do what the river will
+do.”
+
+“The bridge is mine; I cannot leave it.”
+
+“Wilt thou hold it up with thy hands, then?” said Peroo, laughing. “I
+was troubled for my boats and sheers _before_ the flood came. Now we
+are in the hands of the Gods. The Sahib will not eat and lie down? Take
+these, then. They are meat and good toddy together, and they kill all
+weariness, besides the fever that follows the rain. I have eaten
+nothing else to-day at all.”
+
+He took a small tin tobacco-box from his sodden waistbelt and thrust it
+into Findlayson’s hand, saying, “Nay, do not be afraid. It is no more
+than opium—clean Malwa opium!”
+
+Findlayson shook two or three of the dark-brown pellets into his hand,
+and hardly knowing what he did, swallowed them. The stuff was at least
+a good guard against fever—the fever that was creeping upon him out of
+the wet mud—and he had seen what Peroo could do in the stewing mists of
+autumn on the strength of a dose from the tin box.
+
+Peroo nodded with bright eyes. “In a little—in a little the Sahib will
+find that he thinks well again. I too will—” He dived into his
+treasure-box, resettled the rain-coat over his head, and squatted down
+to watch the boats. It was too dark now to see beyond the first pier,
+and the night seemed to have given the river new strength. Findlayson
+stood with his chin on his chest, thinking. There was one point about
+one of the piers—the seventh—that he had not fully settled in his mind.
+The figures would not shape themselves to the eye except one by one and
+at enormous intervals of time. There was a sound rich and mellow in his
+ears like the deepest note of a double-bass—an entrancing sound upon
+which he pondered for several hours, as it seemed. Then Peroo was at
+his elbow, shouting that a wire hawser had snapped and the stone-boats
+were loose. Findlayson saw the fleet open and swing out fanwise to a
+long-drawn shriek of wire straining across gunnels.
+
+“A tree hit them. They will all go,” cried Peroo. “The main hawser has
+parted. What does the Sahib do?”
+
+An immensely complex plan had suddenly flashed into Findlayson’s mind.
+He saw the ropes running from boat to boat in straight lines and
+angles—each rope a line of white fire. But there was one rope which was
+the master rope. He could see that rope. If he could pull it once, it
+was absolutely and mathematically certain that the disordered fleet
+would reassemble itself in the backwater behind the guard-tower. But
+why, he wondered, was Peroo clinging so desperately to his waist as he
+hastened down the bank? It was necessary to put the Lascar aside,
+gently and slowly, because it was necessary to save the boats, and,
+further, to demonstrate the extreme ease of the problem that looked so
+difficult. And then—but it was of no conceivable importance—a wirerope
+raced through his hand, burning it, the high bank disappeared, and with
+it all the slowly dispersing factors of the problem. He was sitting in
+the rainy darkness—sitting in a boat that spun like a top, and Peroo
+was standing over him.
+
+“I had forgotten,” said the Lascar, slowly, “that to those fasting and
+unused, the opium is worse than any wine. Those who die in Gunga go to
+the Gods. Still, I have no desire to present myself before such great
+ones. Can the Sahib swim?”
+
+“What need? He can fly—fly as swiftly as the wind,” was the thick
+answer.
+
+“He is mad!” muttered Peroo, under his breath. “And he threw me aside
+like a bundle of dung-cakes. Well, he will not know his death. The boat
+cannot live an hour here even if she strike nothing. It is not good to
+look at death with a clear eye.”
+
+He refreshed himself again from the tin box, squatted down in the bows
+of the reeling, pegged, and stitched craft, staring through the mist at
+the nothing that was there. A warm drowsiness crept over Findlayson,
+the Chief Engineer, whose duty was with his bridge. The heavy raindrops
+struck him with a thousand tingling little thrills, and the weight of
+all time since time was made hung heavy on his eyelids. He thought and
+perceived that he was perfectly secure, for the water was so solid that
+a man could surely step out upon it, and, standing still with his legs
+apart to keep his balance—this was the most important point—would be
+borne with great and easy speed to the shore. But yet a better plan
+came to him. It needed only an exertion of will for the soul to hurl
+the body ashore as wind drives paper, to waft it kite-fashion to the
+bank. Thereafter—the boat spun dizzily—suppose the high wind got under
+the freed body? Would it tower up like a kite and pitch headlong on the
+far-away sands, or would it duck about, beyond control, through all
+eternity? Findlayson gripped the gunnel to anchor himself, for it
+seemed that he was on the edge of taking the flight before he had
+settled all his plans. Opium has more effect on the white man than the
+black. Peroo was only comfortably indifferent to accidents. “She cannot
+live,” he grunted. “Her seams open already. If she were even a dinghy
+with oars we could have ridden it out; but a box with holes is no good.
+Finlinson Sahib, she fills.”
+
+“_Accha!_ I am going away. Come thou also.”
+
+In his mind, Findlayson had already escaped from the boat, and was
+circling high in air to find a rest for the sole of his foot. His
+body—he was really sorry for its gross helplessness—lay in the stern,
+the water rushing about its knees.
+
+“How very ridiculous!” he said to himself, from his eyrie—“that is
+Findlayson—chief of the Kashi Bridge. The poor beast is going to be
+drowned, too. Drowned when it’s close to shore. I’m—I’m onshore
+already. Why doesn’t it come along.”
+
+To his intense disgust, he found his soul back in his body again, and
+that body spluttering and choking in deep water. The pain of the
+reunion was atrocious, but it was necessary, also, to fight for the
+body. He was conscious of grasping wildly at wet sand, and striding
+prodigiously, as one strides in a dream, to keep foothold in the
+swirling water, till at last he hauled himself clear of the hold of the
+river, and dropped, panting, on wet earth.
+
+“Not this night,” said Peroo, in his ear. “The Gods have protected us.”
+The Lascar moved his feet cautiously, and they rustled among dried
+stumps. “This is some island of last year’s indigo-crop,” he went on.
+“We shall find no men here; but have great care, Sahib; all the snakes
+of a hundred miles have been flooded out. Here comes the lightning, on
+the heels of the wind. Now we shall be able to look; but walk
+carefully.”
+
+Findlayson was far and far beyond any fear of snakes, or indeed any
+merely human emotion. He saw, after he had rubbed the water from his
+eyes, with an immense clearness, and trod, so it seemed to himself,
+with world-encompassing strides. Somewhere in the night of time he had
+built a bridge—a bridge that spanned illimitable levels of shining
+seas; but the Deluge had swept it away, leaving this one island under
+heaven for Findlayson and his companion, sole survivors of the breed of
+Man.
+
+An incessant lightning, forked and blue, showed all that there was to
+be seen on the little patch in the flood—a clump of thorn, a clump of
+swaying creaking bamboos, and a grey gnarled peepul overshadowing a
+Hindoo shrine, from whose dome floated a tattered red flag. The holy
+man whose summer resting-place it was had long since abandoned it, and
+the weather had broken the red-daubed image of his god. The two men
+stumbled, heavy limbed and heavy-eyed, over the ashes of a brick-set
+cooking-place, and dropped down under the shelter of the branches,
+while the rain and river roared together.
+
+The stumps of the indigo crackled, and there was a smell of cattle, as
+a huge and dripping Brahminee bull shouldered his way under the tree.
+The flashes revealed the trident mark of Shiva on his flank, the
+insolence of head and hump, the luminous stag-like eyes, the brow
+crowned with a wreath of sodden marigold blooms, and the silky dewlap
+that almost swept the ground. There was a noise behind him of other
+beasts coming up from the floodline through the thicket, a sound of
+heavy feet and deep breathing.
+
+“Here be more beside ourselves,” said Findlayson, his head against the
+tree-pole, looking through half-shut eyes, wholly at ease.
+
+“Truly,” said Peroo, thickly, “and no small ones.”
+
+“What are they, then? I do not see clearly.”
+
+“The Gods. Who else? Look!”
+
+“Ah, true! The Gods surely—the Gods.” Findlayson smiled as his head
+fell forward on his chest. Peroo was eminently right. After the Flood,
+who should be alive in the land except the Gods that made it—the Gods
+to whom his village prayed nightly—the Gods who were in all men’s
+mouths and about all men’s ways. He could not raise his head or stir a
+finger for the trance that held him, and Peroo was smiling vacantly at
+the lightning.
+
+The Bull paused by the shrine, his head lowered to the damp earth. A
+green Parrot in the branches preened his wet wings and screamed against
+the thunder as the circle under the tree filled with the shifting
+shadows of beasts. There was a black Buck at the Bull’s heels—such a
+Buck as Findlayson in his far-away life upon earth might have seen in
+dreams—a Buck with a royal head, ebon back, silver belly, and gleaming
+straight horns. Beside him, her head bowed to the ground, the green
+eyes burning under the heavy brows, with restless tail switching the
+dead grass, paced a Tigress, full-bellied and deep-jowled.
+
+The Bull crouched beside the shrine, and there leaped from the darkness
+a monstrous grey Ape, who seated himself man-wise in the place of the
+fallen image, and the rain spilled like jewels from the hair of his
+neck and shoulders.
+
+Other shadows came and went behind the circle, among them a drunken Man
+flourishing staff and drinking-bottle. Then a hoarse bellow broke out
+from near the ground. “The flood lessens even now,” it cried. “Hour by
+hour the water falls, and their bridge still stands!”
+
+“My bridge,” said Findlayson to himself. “That must be very old work
+now. What have the Gods to do with my bridge?”
+
+His eyes rolled in the darkness following the roar. A Mugger—the
+blunt-nosed, ford-haunting Mugger of the Ganges—draggled herself before
+the beasts, lashing furiously to right and left with her tail.
+
+“They have made it too strong for me. In all this night I have only
+torn away a handful of planks. The walls stand. The towers stand. They
+have chained my flood, and the river is not free any more. Heavenly
+Ones, take this yoke away! Give me clear water between bank and bank!
+It is I, Mother Gunga, that speak. The Justice of the Gods! Deal me the
+Justice of the Gods!”
+
+“What said I?” whispered Peroo. “This is in truth a Punchayet of the
+Gods. Now we know that all the world is dead, save you and I, Sahib.”
+
+The Parrot screamed and fluttered again, and the Tigress, her ears flat
+to her head, snarled wickedly.
+
+Somewhere in the shadow, a great trunk and gleaming tusks swayed to and
+fro, and a low gurgle broke the silence that followed on the snarl.
+
+“We be here,” said a deep voice, “the Great Ones. One only and very
+many. Shiv, my father, is here, with Indra. Kali has spoken already.
+Hanuman listens also.”
+
+“Kashi is without her Kotwal tonight,” shouted the Man with the
+drinking-bottle, flinging his staff to the ground, while the island
+rang to the baying of hounds. “Give her the Justice of the Gods.”
+
+“Ye were still when they polluted my waters,” the great Crocodile
+bellowed. “Ye made no sign when my river was trapped between the walls.
+I had no help save my own strength, and that failed—the strength of
+Mother Gunga failed—before their guard-towers. What could I do? I have
+done everything. Finish now, Heavenly Ones!”
+
+“I brought the death; I rode the spotted sickness from hut to hut of
+their workmen, and yet they would not cease.” A nose-slitten, hide-worn
+Ass, lame, scissor-legged, and galled, limped forward. “I cast the
+death at them out of my nostrils, but they would not cease.”
+
+Peroo would have moved, but the opium lay heavy upon him.
+
+“Bah!” he said, spitting. “Here is Sitala herself; Mata—the smallpox.
+Has the Sahib a handkerchief to put over his face?”
+
+“Little help! They fed me the corpses for a month, and I flung them out
+on my sand-bars, but their work went forward. Demons they are, and sons
+of demons! And ye left Mother Gunga alone for their fire-carriage to
+make a mock of. The Justice of the Gods on the bridge-builders!”
+
+The Bull turned the cud in his mouth and answered slowly: “If the
+Justice of the Gods caught all who made a mock of holy things there
+would be many dark altars in the land, mother.”
+
+“But this goes beyond a mock,” said the Tigress, darting forward a
+griping paw. “Thou knowest, Shiv, and ye, too, Heavenly Ones; ye know
+that they have defiled Gunga. Surely they must come to the Destroyer.
+Let Indra judge.”
+
+The Buck made no movement as he answered: “How long has this evil
+been?”
+
+“Three years, as men count years,” said the Mugger, close pressed to
+the earth.
+
+“Does Mother Gunga die, then, in a year, that she is so anxious to see
+vengeance now? The deep sea was where she runs but yesterday, and
+tomorrow the sea shall cover her again as the Gods count that which men
+call time. Can any say that this their bridge endures till tomorrow?”
+said the Buck.
+
+There was along hush, and in the clearing of the storm the full moon
+stood up above the dripping trees.
+
+“Judge ye, then,” said the River, sullenly. “I have spoken my shame.
+The flood falls still. I can do no more.”
+
+“For my own part”—it was the voice of the great Ape seated within the
+shrine—“it pleases me well to watch these men, remembering that I also
+builded no small bridge in the world’s youth.”
+
+“They say, too,” snarled the Tiger, “that these men came of the wreck
+of thy armies, Hanuman, and therefore thou hast aided—”
+
+“They toil as my armies toiled in Lanka, and they believe that their
+toil endures. Indra is too high, but Shiv, thou knowest how the land is
+threaded with their fire-carriages.”
+
+“Yea, I know,” said the Bull. “Their Gods instructed them in the
+matter.”
+
+A laugh ran round the circle.
+
+“Their Gods! What should their Gods know? They were born yesterday, and
+those that made them are scarcely yet cold,” said the Mugger, “tomorrow
+their Gods will die.”
+
+“Ho!” said Peroo. “Mother Gunga talks good talk. I told that to the
+padre-sahib who preached on the _Mombassa_, and he asked the Burra
+Malum to put me in irons for a great rudeness.”
+
+“Surely they make these things to please their Gods,” said the Bull
+again.
+
+“Not altogether,” the Elephant rolled forth. “It is for the profit of
+my mahajuns —my fat money-lenders that worship me at each new year,
+when they draw my image at the head of the account-books. I, looking
+over their shoulders by lamplight, see that the names in the books are
+those of men in far places—for all the towns are drawn together by the
+fire-carriage, and the money comes and goes swiftly, and the
+account-books grow as fat as myself. And I, who am Ganesh of Good Luck,
+I bless my peoples.”
+
+“They have changed the face of the land-which is my land. They have
+killed and made new towns on my banks,” said the Mugger.
+
+“It is but the shifting of a little dirt. Let the dirt dig in the dirt
+if it pleases the dirt,” answered the Elephant.
+
+“But afterwards?” said the Tiger. “Afterwards they will see that Mother
+Gunga can avenge no insult, and they fall away from her first, and
+later from us all, one by one. In the end, Ganesh, we are left with
+naked altars.”
+
+The drunken Man staggered to his feet, and hiccupped vehemently.
+
+“Kali lies. My sister lies. Also this my stick is the Kotwal of Kashi,
+and he keeps tally of my pilgrims. When the time comes to worship
+Bhairon—and it is always time—the fire-carriages move one by one, and
+each bears a thousand pilgrims. They do not come afoot any more, but
+rolling upon wheels, and my honour is increased.”
+
+“Gunga, I have seen thy bed at Pryag black with the pilgrims,” said the
+Ape, leaning forward, “and but for the fire-carriage they would have
+come slowly and in fewer numbers. Remember.”
+
+“They come to me always,” Bhairon went on thickly. “By day and night
+they pray to me, all the Common People in the fields and the roads. Who
+is like Bhairon today? What talk is this of changing faiths? Is my
+staff Kotwal of Kashi for nothing? He keeps the tally, and he says that
+never were so many altars as today, and the fire carriage serves them
+well. Bhairon am I—Bhairon of the Common People, and the chiefest of
+the Heavenly Ones today. Also my staff says—”
+
+“Peace, thou!” lowed the Bull. “The worship of the schools is mine, and
+they talk very wisely, asking whether I be one or many, as is the
+delight of my people, and ye know what I am. Kali, my wife, thou
+knowest also.”
+
+“Yea, I know,” said the Tigress, with lowered head.
+
+“Greater am I than Gunga also. For ye know who moved the minds of men
+that they should count Gunga holy among the rivers. Who die in that
+water—ye know how men say—come to us without punishment, and Gunga
+knows that the fire-carriage has borne to her scores upon scores of
+such anxious ones; and Kali knows that she has held her chiefest
+festivals among the pilgrimages that are fed by the fire-carriage. Who
+smote at Pooree, under the Image there, her thousands in a day and a
+night, and bound the sickness to the wheels of the fire-carriages, so
+that it ran from one end of the land to the other? Who but Kali? Before
+the fire-carriage came it was a heavy toil. The fire-carriages have
+served thee well, Mother of Death. But I speak for mine own altars, who
+am not Bhairon of the Common Folk, but Shiv. Men go to and fro, making
+words and telling talk of strange Gods, and I listen. Faith follows
+faith among my people in the schools, and I have no anger; for when all
+words are said, and the new talk is ended, to Shiv men return at the
+last.”
+
+“True. It is true,” murmured Hanuman. “To Shiv and to the others,
+mother, they return. I creep from temple to temple in the North, where
+they worship one God and His Prophet; and presently my image is alone
+within their shrines.”
+
+“Small thanks,” said the Buck, turning his head slowly. “I am that One
+and His Prophet also.”
+
+“Even so, father,” said Hanuman. “And to the South I go who am the
+oldest of the Gods as men know the Gods, and presently I touch the
+shrines of the new faith and the Woman whom we know is hewn
+twelve-armed, and still they call her Mary.”
+
+“Small thanks, brother,” said the Tigress. “I am that Woman.”
+
+“Even so, sister; and I go West among the fire-carriages, and stand
+before the bridge-builders in many shapes, and because of me they
+change their faiths and are very wise. Ho! ho! I am the builder of
+bridges, indeed—bridges between this and that, and each bridge leads
+surely to Us in the end. Be content, Gunga.
+
+“Neither these men nor those that follow them mock thee at all.”
+
+“Am I alone, then, Heavenly Ones? Shall I smooth out my flood lest
+unhappily I bear away their walls? Will Indra dry my springs in the
+hills and make me crawl humbly between their wharfs? Shall I bury me in
+the sand ere I offend?”
+
+“And all for the sake of a little iron bar with the fire-carriage atop.
+Truly, Mother Gunga is always young!” said Ganesh the Elephant. “A
+child had not spoken more foolishly. Let the dirt dig in the dirt ere
+it return to the dirt. I know only that my people grow rich and praise
+me. Shiv has said that the men of the schools do not forget; Bhairon is
+content for his crowd of the Common People; and Hanuman laughs.”
+
+“Surely I laugh,” said the Ape. “My altars are few beside those of
+Ganesh or Bhairon, but the fire-carriages bring me new worshippers from
+beyond the Black Water—the men who believe that their God is toil. I
+run before them beckoning, and they follow Hanuman.”
+
+“Give them the toil that they desire, then,” said the River. “Make a
+bar across my flood and throw the water back upon the bridge. Once thou
+wast strong in Lanka, Hanuman. Stoop and lift my bed.”
+
+“Who gives life can take life.” The Ape scratched in the mud with a
+long forefinger. “And yet, who would profit by the killing? Very many
+would die.”
+
+There came up from the water a snatch of a love-song such as the boys
+sing when they watch their cattle in the noon heats of late spring. The
+Parrot screamed joyously, sidling along his branch with lowered head as
+the song grew louder, and in a patch of clear moonlight stood revealed
+the young herd, the darling of the Gopis, the idol of dreaming maids
+and of mothers ere their children are born—Krishna the Well-beloved. He
+stooped to knot up his long wet hair, and the parrot fluttered to his
+shoulder.
+
+“Fleeting and singing, and singing and fleeting,” hiccupped Bhairon.
+“Those make thee late for the council, brother.”
+
+“And then?” said Krishna, with a laugh, throwing back his head. “Ye can
+do little without me or Karma here.” He fondled the Parrot’s plumage
+and laughed again. “What is this sitting and talking together? I heard
+Mother Gunga roaring in the dark, and so came quickly from a hut where
+I lay warm. And what have ye done to Karma, that he is so wet and
+silent? And what does Mother Gunga here? Are the heavens full that ye
+must come paddling in the mud beast-wise? Karma, what do they do?”
+
+“Gunga has prayed for a vengeance on the bridgebuilders, and Kali is
+with her. Now she bids Hanuman whelm the bridge, that her honour may be
+made great,” cried the Parrot. “I waited here, knowing that thou
+wouldst come, O my master!”
+
+“And the Heavenly Ones said nothing? Did Gunga and the Mother of
+Sorrows out-talk them? Did none speak for my people?”
+
+“Nay,” said Ganesh, moving uneasily from foot to foot; “I said it was
+but dirt at play, and why should we stamp it flat?”
+
+“I was content to let them toil—well content,” said Hanuman.
+
+“What had I to do with Gunga’s anger?” said the Bull.
+
+“I am Bhairon of the Common Folk, and this my staff is Kotwal of all
+Kashi. I spoke for the Common People.”
+
+“Thou?” The young God’s eyes sparkled.
+
+“Am I not the first of the Gods in their mouths today?” returned
+Bhairon, unabashed. “For the sake of the Common People I said very many
+wise things which I have now forgotten, but this my staff—”
+
+Krishna turned impatiently, saw the Mugger at his feet, and kneeling,
+slipped an arm round the cold neck. “Mother,” he said gently, “get thee
+to thy flood again. This matter is not for thee. What harm shall thy
+honour take of this live dirt? Thou hast given them their fields new
+year after year, and by thy flood they are made strong. They come all
+to thee at the last. What need to slay them now? Have pity, mother, for
+a little and it is only for a little.”
+
+“If it be only for a little—” the slow beast began.
+
+“Are they Gods, then?” Krishna, returned with a laugh, his eyes looking
+into the dull eyes of the River. “Be certain that it is only for a
+little. The Heavenly Ones have heard thee, and presently justice will
+be done. Go now, mother, to the flood again. Men and cattle are thick
+on the waters—the banks fall—the villages melt because of thee.”
+
+“But the bridge—the bridge stands.” The Mugger turned grunting into the
+undergrowth as Krishna rose.
+
+“It is ended,” said the Tigress, viciously. “There is no more justice
+from the Heavenly Ones. Ye have made shame and sport of Gunga, who
+asked no more than a few score lives.”
+
+“Of _my_ people—who lie under the leaf-roofs of the village yonder—of
+the young girls, and the young men who sing to them in the dark of the
+child that will be born next morn—of that which was begotten tonight,”
+said Krishna. “And when all is done, what profit? Tomorrow sees them at
+work. Ay, if ye swept the bridge out from end to end they would begin
+anew. Hear me! Bhairon is drunk always. Hanuman mocks his people with
+new riddles.”
+
+“Nay, but they are very old ones,” the Ape said, laughing.
+
+“Shiv hears the talk of the schools and the dreams of the holy men;
+Ganesh thinks only of his fat traders; but I—I live with these my
+people, asking for no gifts, and so receiving them hourly.”
+
+“And very tender art thou of thy people,” said the Tigress.
+
+“They are my own. The old women dream of me turning in their sleep; the
+maids look and listen for me when they go to fill their lotahs by the
+river. I walk by the young men waiting without the gates at dusk, and I
+call over my shoulder to the whitebeards. Ye know, Heavenly Ones, that
+I alone of us all walk upon the earth continually, and have no pleasure
+in our heavens so long as a green blade springs here, or there are two
+voices at twilight in the standing crops. Wise are ye, but ye live far
+off, forgetting whence ye came. So do I not forget. And the
+fire-carriage feeds your shrines, ye say? And the fire-carriages bring
+a thousand pilgrims where but ten came in the old years? True. That is
+true, today.”
+
+“But tomorrow they are dead, brother,” said Ganesh.
+
+“Peace!” said the Bull, as Hanuman leaned forward again. “And tomorrow,
+beloved—what of tomorrow?”
+
+“This only. A new word creeping from mouth to mouth among the Common
+Folk—a word that neither man nor God can lay hold of—an evil word—a
+little lazy word among the Common Folk, saying (and none know who set
+that word afoot) that they weary of ye, Heavenly Ones.”
+
+The Gods laughed together softly. “And then, beloved?” they said.
+
+“And to cover that weariness they, my people, will bring to thee, Shiv,
+and to thee, Ganesh, at first greater offerings and a louder noise of
+worship. But the word has gone abroad, and, after, they will pay fewer
+dues to our fat Brahmins. Next they will forget your altars, but so
+slowly that no man can say how his forgetfulness began.
+
+“I knew—I knew! I spoke this also, but they would not hear,” said the
+Tigress. “We should have slain—we should have slain!”
+
+“It is too late now. Ye should have slain at the beginning when the men
+from across the water had taught our folk nothing. Now my people see
+their work, and go away thinking. They do not think of the Heavenly
+Ones altogether. They think of the fire-carriage and the other things
+that the bridge-builders have done, and when your priests thrust
+forward hands asking alms, they give a little unwillingly. That is the
+beginning, among one or two, or five or ten—for I, moving among my
+people, know what is in their hearts.”
+
+“And the end, Jester of the Gods? What shall the end be?” said Ganesh.
+
+“The end shall be as it was in the beginning, O slothful son of Shiv!
+The flame shall die upon the altars and the prayer upon the tongue till
+ye become little Gods again—Gods of the jungle—names that the hunters
+of rats and noosers of dogs whisper in the thicket and among the
+caves—rag-Gods, pot Godlings of the tree, and the village-mark, as ye
+were at the beginning. That is the end, Ganesh, for thee, and for
+Bhairon—Bhairon of the Common People.”
+
+“It is very far away,” grunted Bhairon. “Also, it is a lie.”
+
+“Many women have kissed Krishna. They told him this to cheer their own
+hearts when the grey hairs came, and he has told us the tale,” said the
+Bull, below his breath.
+
+“Their Gods came, and we changed them. I took the Woman and made her
+twelve-armed. So shall we twist all their Gods,” said Hanuman.
+
+“Their Gods! This is no question of their Gods—one or three—man or
+woman. The matter is with the people. _They_ move, and not the Gods of
+the bridgebuilders,” said Krishna.
+
+“So be it. I have made a man worship the fire-carriage as it stood
+still breathing smoke, and he knew not that he worshipped me,” said
+Hanuman the Ape. “They will only change a little the names of their
+Gods. I shall lead the builders of the bridges as of old; Shiv shall be
+worshipped in the schools by such as doubt and despise their fellows;
+Ganesh shall have his mahajuns, and Bhairon the donkey-drivers, the
+pilgrims, and the sellers of toys. Beloved, they will do no more than
+change the names, and that we have seen a thousand times.”
+
+“Surely they will do no more than change the names,” echoed Ganesh; but
+there was an uneasy movement among the Gods.
+
+“They will change more than the names. Me alone they cannot kill, so
+long as a maiden and a man meet together or the spring follows the
+winter rains. Heavenly Ones, not for nothing have I walked upon the
+earth. My people know not now what they know; but I, who live with
+them, I read their hearts. Great Kings, the beginning of the end is
+born already. The fire-carriages shout the names of new Gods that are
+_not_ the old under new names. Drink now and eat greatly! Bathe your
+faces in the smoke of the altars before they grow cold! Take dues and
+listen to the cymbals and the drums, Heavenly Ones, while yet there are
+flowers and songs. As men count time the end is far off; but as we who
+know reckon it is today. I have spoken.”
+
+The young God ceased, and his brethren looked at each other long in
+silence.
+
+“This I have not heard before,” Peroo whispered in his companion’s ear.
+“And yet sometimes, when I oiled the brasses in the engine-room of the
+_Goorkha_, I have wondered if our priests were so wise—so wise. The day
+is coming, Sahib. They will be gone by the morning.”
+
+A yellow light broadened in the sky, and the tone of the river changed
+as the darkness withdrew.
+
+Suddenly the Elephant trumpeted aloud as though man had goaded him.
+
+“Let Indra judge. Father of all, speak thou! What of the things we have
+heard? Has Krishna lied indeed? Or—”
+
+“Ye know,” said the Buck, rising to his feet. “Ye know the Riddle of
+the Gods. When Brahm ceases to dream, the Heavens and the Hells and
+Earth disappear. Be content. Brahm dreams still. The dreams come and
+go, and the nature of the dreams changes, but still Brahm dreams.
+Krishna has walked too long upon earth, and yet I love him the more for
+the tale he has told. The Gods change, beloved—all save One!”
+
+“Ay, all save one that makes love in the hearts of men,” said Krishna,
+knotting his girdle. “It is but a little time to wait, and ye shall
+know if I lie.”
+
+“Truly it is but a little time, as thou sayest, and we shall know. Get
+thee to thy huts again, beloved, and make sport for the young things,
+for still Brahm dreams. Go, my children! Brahm dreams—and till he wakes
+the Gods die not.”
+
+“Whither went they?” said the Lascar, awe-struck, shivering a little
+with the cold.
+
+“God knows!” said Findlayson. The river and the island lay in full
+daylight now, and there was never mark of hoof or pug on the wet earth
+under the peepul. Only a parrot screamed in the branches, bringing down
+showers of water-drops as he fluttered his wings.
+
+“Up! We are cramped with cold! Has the opium died out? Canst thou move,
+Sahib?”
+
+Findlayson staggered to his feet and shook himself. His head swam and
+ached, but the work of the opium was over, and, as he sluiced his
+forehead in a pool, the Chief Engineer of the Kashi Bridge was
+wondering how he had managed to fall upon the island, what chances the
+day offered of return, and, above all, how his work stood.
+
+“Peroo, I have forgotten much. I was under the guard-tower watching the
+river; and then. . . . Did the flood sweep us away?”
+
+“No. The boats broke loose, Sahib, and” (if the Sahib had forgotten
+about the opium, decidedly Peroo would not remind him) “in striving to
+retie them, so it seemed to me—but it was dark—a rope caught the Sahib
+and threw him upon a boat. Considering that we two, with Hitchcock
+Sahib, built, as it were, that bridge, I came also upon the boat, which
+came riding on horseback, as it were, on the nose of this island, and
+so, splitting, cast us ashore. I made a great cry when the boat left
+the wharf, and without doubt Hitchcock Sahib will come for us. As for
+the bridge, so many have died in the building that it cannot fall.”
+
+A fierce sun, that drew out all the smell of the sodden land, had
+followed the storm, and in that clear light there was no room for a man
+to think of the dreams of the dark. Findlayson stared up-stream, across
+the blaze of moving water, till his eyes ached. There was no sign of
+any bank to the Ganges, much less of a bridgeline.
+
+“We came down far,” he said. “It was wonderful that we were not drowned
+a hundred times.”
+
+“That was the least of the wonder, for no man dies before his time. I
+have seen Sydney, I have seen London, and twenty great ports,
+but”—Peroo looked at the damp, discoloured shrine under the
+peepul—“never man has seen that we saw here.”
+
+“What?”
+
+“Has the Sahib forgotten; or do we black men only see the Gods?”
+
+“There was a fever upon me.” Findlayson was still looking uneasily
+across the water. “It seemed that the island was full of beasts and men
+talking, but I do not remember. A boat could live in this water now, I
+think.”
+
+“Oho! Then it is true.‘When Brahm ceases to dream, the Gods die.’ Now I
+know, indeed, what he meant. Once, too, the _guru_ said as much to me;
+but then I did not understand. Now I am wise.”
+
+“What?” said Findlayson, over his shoulder.
+
+Peroo went on as if he were talking to himself. “Six—seven—ten monsoons
+since, I was watch on the fo’c’sle of the _Rewah_—the Kumpani’s big
+boat—and there was a big _tufan_, green and black water beating, and I
+held fast to the life-lines, choking under the waters. Then I thought
+of the Gods—of Those whom we saw tonight”—he stared curiously at
+Findlayson’s back, but the white man was looking across the flood.
+“Yes, I say of Those whom we saw this night past, and I called upon
+Them to protect me. And while I prayed, still keeping my lookout, a big
+wave came and threw me forward upon the ring of the great black
+bowianchor, and the _Rewah_ rose high and high, leaning towards the
+lefthand side, and the water drew away from beneath her nose, and I lay
+upon my belly, holding the ring, and looking down into those great
+deeps. Then I thought, even in the face of death: If I lose hold I die,
+and for me neither the _Rewah_ nor my place by the galley where the
+rice is cooked, nor Bombay, nor Calcutta, nor even London, will be any
+more for me. ‘How shall I be sure,’ I said, that the Gods to whom I
+pray will abide at all?’ This I thought, and the _Rewah_ dropped her
+nose as a hammer falls, and all the sea came in and slid me backwards
+along the fo’c’sle and over the break of the fo’c’sle, and I very badly
+bruised my shin against the donkey-engine: but I did not die, and I
+have seen the Gods. They are good for live men, but for the dead. . .
+They have spoken Themselves. Therefore, when I come to the village I
+will beat the _guru_ for talking riddles which are no riddles. When
+Brahm ceases to dream the Gods go.”
+
+“Look up-stream. The light blinds. Is there smoke yonder?”
+
+Peroo shaded his eyes with his hands. “He is a wise man and quick.
+Hitchcock Sahib would not trust a rowboat. He has borrowed the Rao
+Sahib’s steam launch, and comes to look for us. I have always said that
+there should have been a steam-launch on the bridge works for us.”
+
+The territory of the Rao of Baraon lay within ten miles of the bridge;
+and Findlayson and Hitchcock had spent a fair portion of their scanty
+leisure in playing billiards and shooting black-buck with the young
+man. He had been bear-led by an English tutor of sporting tastes for
+some five or six years, and was now royally wasting the revenues
+accumulated during his minority by the Indian Government. His
+steam-launch, with its silver-plated rails, striped silk awning, and
+mahogany decks, was a new toy which Findlayson had found horribly in
+the way when the Rao came to look at the bridge works.
+
+“It’s great luck,” murmured Findlayson, but he was none the less
+afraid, wondering what news might be of the bridge.
+
+The gaudy blue and white funnel came down-stream swiftly. They could
+see Hitchcock in the bows, with a pair of opera-glasses, and his face
+was unusually white. Then Peroo hailed, and the launch made for the
+tail of the island. The Rao Sahib, in tweed shooting-suit and a
+seven-hued turban, waved his royal hand, and Hitchcock shouted. But he
+need have asked no questions, for Findlayson’s first demand was for his
+bridge.
+
+“All serene! Gad, I never expected to see you again, Findlayson. You’re
+seven koss down-stream. Yes; there’s not a stone shifted anywhere; but
+how are you? I borrowed the Rao Sahib’s launch, and he was good enough
+to come along. Jump in.”
+
+“Ah, Finlinson, you are very well, eh? That was most unprecedented
+calamity last night, eh? My royal palace, too, it leaks like the devil,
+and the crops will also be short all about my country. Now you shall
+back her out, Hitchcock. I—I do not understand steam engines. You are
+wet? You are cold, Finlinson? I have some things to eat here, and you
+will take a good drink.”
+
+“I’m immensely grateful, Rao Sahib. I believe you’ve saved my life. How
+did Hitchcock—”
+
+“Oho! His hair was upon end. He rode to me in the middle of the night
+and woke me up in the arms of Morpheus. I was most truly concerned,
+Finlinson, so I came too. My head-priest he is very angry just now. We
+will go quick, Mister Hitchcock. I am due to attend at twelve
+forty-five in the state temple, where we sanctify some new idol. If not
+so I would have asked you to spend the day with me. They are dam-bore,
+these religious ceremonies, Finlinson, eh?”
+
+Peroo, well known to the crew, had possessed himself of the inlaid
+wheel, and was taking the launch craftily up-stream. But while he
+steered he was, in his mind, handling two feet of partially untwisted
+wire-rope; and the back upon which he beat was the back of his _guru_.
+
+
+
+
+A WALKING DELEGATE
+
+
+According to the custom of Vermont, Sunday afternoon is salting-time on
+the farm, and, unless something very important happens, we attend to
+the salting ourselves. Dave and Pete, the red oxen, are treated first;
+they stay in the home meadow ready for work on Monday. Then come the
+cows, with Pan, the calf, who should have been turned into veal long
+ago, but survived on account of his manners; and lastly the horses,
+scattered through the seventy acres of the Back Pasture.
+
+You must go down by the brook that feeds the clicking, bubbling
+water-ram; up through the sugar-bush, where the young maple undergrowth
+closes round you like a shallow sea; next follow the faint line of an
+old county-road running past two green hollows fringed with wild rose
+that mark the cellars of two ruined houses; then by Lost Orchard, where
+nobody ever comes except in cider-time; then across another brook, and
+so into the Back Pasture. Half of it is pine and hemlock and spruce,
+with sumach and little juniper bushes, and the other half is grey rock
+and boulder and moss, with green streaks of brake and swamp; but the
+horses like it well enough—our own, and the others that are turned down
+there to feed at fifty cents a week. Most people walk to the Back
+Pasture, and find it very rough work; but one can get there in a buggy,
+if the horse knows what is expected of him. The safest conveyance is
+our coupé. This began life as a buckboard, and we bought it for five
+dollars from a sorrowful man who had no other sort of possessions; and
+the seat came off one night when we were turning a corner in a hurry.
+After that alteration it made a beautiful salting-machine, if you held
+tight, because there was nothing to catch your feet when you fell out,
+and the slats rattled tunes.
+
+One Sunday afternoon we went out with the salt as usual. It was a
+broiling hot day, and we could not find the horses anywhere till we let
+Tedda Gabler, the bobtailed mare who throws up the dirt with her big
+hooves exactly as a tedder throws hay, have her head. Clever as she is,
+she tipped the coupé over in a hidden brook before she came out on a
+ledge of rock where all the horses had gathered, and were switching
+flies. The Deacon was the first to call to her. He is a very dark
+iron-grey four-year-old, son of Grandee. He has been handled since he
+was two, was driven in a light cart before he was three, and now ranks
+as an absolutely steady lady’s horse—proof against steam-rollers,
+grade-crossings, and street processions.
+
+“Salt!” said the Deacon, joyfully. “You’re dreffle late, Tedda.”
+
+“Any—any place to cramp the coupé?” Tedda panted. “It weighs turr’ble
+this weather. I’d ’a’ come sooner, but they didn’t know what they
+wanted—ner haow. Fell out twice, both of ’em. I don’t understand sech
+foolishness.”
+
+“You look consider’ble het up. Guess you’d better cramp her under them
+pines, an’ cool off a piece.”
+
+Tedda scrambled on the ledge, and cramped the coupé in the shade of a
+tiny little wood of pines, while my companion and I lay down among the
+brown, silky needles, and gasped. All the home horses were gathered
+round us, enjoying their Sunday leisure.
+
+There were Rod and Rick, the seniors on the farm. They were the regular
+road-pair, bay with black points, full brothers, aged, sons of a
+Hambletonian sire and a Morgan dam. There were Nip and Tuck,
+seal-browns, rising six, brother and sister, Black Hawks by birth,
+perfectly matched, just finishing their education, and as handsome a
+pair as man could wish to find in a forty-mile drive. There was
+Muldoon, our ex-car-horse, bought at a venture, and any colour you
+choose that is not white; and Tweezy, who comes from Kentucky, with an
+affliction of his left hip, which makes him a little uncertain how his
+hind legs are moving. He and Muldoon had been hauling gravel all the
+week for our new road. The Deacon you know already. Last of all, and
+eating something, was our faithful Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, the black
+buggy-horse, who had seen us through every state of weather and road,
+the horse who was always standing in harness before some door or
+other—a philosopher with the appetite of a shark and the manners of an
+archbishop. Tedda Gabler was a new “trade,” with a reputation for vice
+which was really the result of bad driving. She had one working gait,
+which she could hold till further notice; a Roman nose; a large,
+prominent eye; a shaving-brush of a tail; and an irritable temper. She
+took her salt through her bridle; but the others trotted up nuzzling
+and wickering for theirs, till we emptied it on the clean rocks. They
+were all standing at ease, on three legs for the most part, talking the
+ordinary gossip of the Back Pasture—about the scarcity of water, and
+gaps in the fence, and how the early windfalls tasted that season—when
+little Rick blew the last few grains of his allowance into a crevice,
+and said:
+
+“Hurry, boys! Might ha’ knowed that ‘Livery-plug’ would be around.”
+
+We heard a clatter of hooves, and there climbed up from the ravine
+below a fifty-center transient—a wall-eyed, yellow frame-house of a
+horse, sent up to board from a livery-stable in town, where they called
+him “The Lamb,” and never let him out except at night and to strangers.
+My companion, who knew and had broken most of the horses, looked at the
+ragged hammer-head as it rose, and said quietly:
+
+“Ni-ice beast. Man-eater, if he gets the chance—see his eye. Kicker,
+too—see his hocks. Western horse.”
+
+The animal lumbered up, snuffling and grunting. His feet showed that he
+had not worked for weeks and weeks, and our creatures drew together
+significantly.
+
+“As usual,” he said, with an underhung sneer—“bowin’ your heads before
+the Oppressor that comes to spend his leisure gloatin’ over you.”
+
+“Mine’s done,” said the Deacon; he licked up the remnant of his salt,
+dropped his nose in his master’s hand, and sang a little grace all to
+himself. The Deacon has the most enchanting manners of any one I know.
+
+“An’ fawnin’ on them for what is your inalienable right. It’s
+humiliatin’,” said the yellow horse, sniffing to see if he could find a
+few spare grains.
+
+“Go daown hill, then, Boney,” the Deacon replied. “Guess you’ll find
+somethin’ to eat still, if yer hain’t hogged it all. You’ve ett more’n
+any three of us to-day—an’ day ’fore that—an’ the last two months—sence
+you’ve been here.”
+
+“I am not addressin’ myself to the young an’ immature. I am speakin’ to
+those whose opinion _an_’ experience commands respect.”
+
+I saw Rod raise his head as though he were about to make a remark; then
+he dropped it again, and stood three-cornered, like a plough-horse. Rod
+can cover his mile in a shade under three minutes on an ordinary road
+to an ordinary buggy. He is tremendously powerful behind, but, like
+most Hambletonians, he grows a trifle sullen as he gets older. No one
+can love Rod very much; but no one can help respecting him.
+
+“I wish to wake _those_,” the yellow horse went on, “to an abidin’
+sense o’ their wrongs an’ their injuries an’ their outrages.”
+
+“Haow’s that?” said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, dreamily. He thought
+Boney was talking of some kind of feed.
+
+“An’ when I say outrages and injuries”—Boney waved his tail
+furiously—“I mean ’em, too. Great Oats! That’s just what I _do_ mean,
+plain an’ straight.”
+
+“The gentleman talks quite earnest,” said Tuck, the mare, to Nip, her
+brother. “There’s no doubt thinkin’ broadens the horizons o’ the mind.
+His language is quite lofty.”
+
+“Hesh, sis,” Nip answered. “He hain’t widened nothin’ ’cep’ the circle
+he’s ett in pasture. They feed words fer beddin’ where he comes from.”
+
+“It’s elegant talkin’, though,” Tuck returned, with an unconvinced toss
+of her pretty, lean little head.
+
+The yellow horse heard her, and struck an attitude which he meant to be
+extremely impressive. It made him look as though he had been badly
+stuffed.
+
+“Now I ask you, I ask you without prejudice an’ without favour,—what
+has Man the Oppressor ever done for you?—Are you not inalienably
+entitled to the free air o’ heaven, blowin’ acrost this boundless
+prairie?”
+
+“Hev ye ever wintered here?” said the Deacon, merrily, while the others
+snickered. “It’s kinder cool.”
+
+“Not yet,” said Boney. “I come from the boundless confines o’ Kansas,
+where the noblest of our kind have their abidin’ place among the
+sunflowers on the threshold o’ the settin’ sun in his glory.”
+
+“An’ they sent you ahead as a sample?” said Rick, with an amused quiver
+of his long, beautifully groomed tail, as thick and as fine and as wavy
+as a quadroon’s back hair.
+
+“Kansas, sir, needs no adver_tise_ment. Her native sons rely on
+themselves an’ their native sires. Yes, sir.”
+
+Then Tweezy lifted up his wise and polite old head. His affliction
+makes him bashful as a rule, but he is ever the most courteous of
+horses.
+
+“Excuse me, suh,” he said slowly, “but, unless I have been misinfohmed,
+most of your prominent siahs, suh, are impo’ted from Kentucky; an’
+_I_’m from Paduky.”
+
+There was the least little touch of pride in the last words.
+
+“Any horse dat knows beans,” said Muldoon, suddenly (he had been
+standing with his hairy chin on Tweezy’s broad quarters), “gits outer
+Kansas ’fore dey crip his shoes. I blew in dere from Ioway in de days
+o’ me youth an’ innocence, an’ I wuz grateful when dey boxed me fer N’
+York. You can’t tell _me_ anything about Kansas I don’t wanter fergit.
+De Belt Line stables ain’t no Hoffman House, but dey’re Vanderbilts
+’longside o’ Kansas.”
+
+“What the horses o’ Kansas think to-day, the horses of America will
+think to-morrow; an’ I tell _you_ that when the horses of America rise
+in their might, the day o’ the Oppressor is ended.”
+
+There was a pause, till Rick said, with a little grunt:
+
+“Ef you put it that way, every one of us has riz in his might, ’cep’
+Marcus, mebbe. Marky, ’j ever rise in yer might?”
+
+“Nope,” said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, thoughtfully quidding over a
+mouthful of grass. “I seen a heap o’ fools try, though.”
+
+“You admit that you riz?” said the Kansas horse, excitedly. “Then
+why—why in Kansas did you ever go under again?”
+
+“Horse can’t walk on his hind legs _all_ the time,” said the Deacon.
+
+“Not when he’s jerked over on his back ’fore he knows what fetched him.
+We’ve all done it, Boney,” said Rick. “Nip an’ Tuck they tried it,
+spite o’ what the Deacon told ’em; an’ the Deacon he tried it, spite o’
+what me an’ Rod told him; an’ me an’ Rod tried it, spite o’ what
+Grandee told us; an’ I guess Grandee he tried it, spite o’ what his dam
+told him. It’s the same old circus from generation to generation. ’Colt
+can’t see why he’s called on to back. Same old rearin’ on end—straight
+up. Same old feelin’ that you’ve bested ’em this time. Same old little
+yank at your mouth when you’re up good an’ tall. Same old Pegasus-act,
+wonderin’ where you’ll ’light. Same old wop when you hit the dirt with
+your head where your tail should be, and your in’ards shook up like a
+bran-mash. Same old voice in your ear: ‘Waal, ye little fool, an’ what
+did you reckon to make by that?’ We’re through with risin’ in our might
+on this farm. We go to pole er single, accordin’ ez we’re hitched.”
+
+“An’ Man the Oppressor sets an’ gloats over you, same as he’s settin’
+now. Hain’t that been your experience, madam?”
+
+This last remark was addressed to Tedda; and any one could see with
+half an eye that poor, old anxious, fidgety Tedda, stamping at the
+flies, must have left a wild and tumultuous youth behind her.
+
+“’Pends on the man,” she answered, shifting from one foot to the other,
+and addressing herself to the home horses. “They abused me dreffle when
+I was young. I guess I was sperrity an’ nervous some, but they didn’t
+allow for that. ’Twas in Monroe County, Noo York, an’ sence then till I
+come here, I’ve run away with more men than ’u’d fill a boardin’-house.
+Why, the man that sold me here he says to the boss, s’ he: ‘Mind, now,
+I’ve warned you. ’Twon’t be none of my fault if she sheds you daown the
+road. Don’t you drive her in a top-buggy, ner ’thout winkers,’ s’ he,
+‘ner ’thout this bit ef you look to come home behind her.’ ’N’ the fust
+thing the boss did was to git the top-buggy.
+
+“Can’t say as I like top-buggies,” said Rick; “they don’t balance
+good.”
+
+“Suit me to a ha’ar,” said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. “Top-buggy means
+the baby’s in behind, an’ I kin stop while she gathers the pretty
+flowers—yes, an’ pick a maouthful, too. The women-folk all say I hev to
+be humoured, an’ I don’t kerry things to the sweatin’-point.”
+
+“’Course I’ve no pre_jud_ice against a top-buggy s’ long’s I can see
+it,” Tedda went on quickly. “It’s ha’f-seein’ the pesky thing bobbin’
+an’ balancin’ behind the winkers gits on _my_ nerves. Then the boss
+looked at the bit they’d sold with me, an’ s’ he: ‘Jiminy Christmas!
+This ’u’d make a clothes-horse stan’ ’n end!’ Then he gave me a plain
+bar bit, an’ fitted it’s if there was some feelin’ to my maouth.”
+
+“Hain’t ye got any, Miss Tedda?” said Tuck, who has a mouth like
+velvet, and knows it.
+
+“Might ’a’ had, Miss Tuck, but I’ve forgot. Then he give me an open
+bridle,—my style’s an open bridle—an’—I dunno as I ought to tell this
+by rights—he—give—me—a kiss.”
+
+“My!” said Tuck, “I can’t tell fer the shoes o’ me what makes some men
+so fresh.”
+
+“Pshaw, sis,” said Nip, “what’s the sense in actin’ so? _You_ git a
+kiss reg’lar’s hitchin’-up time.”
+
+“Well, you needn’t tell, smarty,” said Tuck, with a squeal and a kick.
+
+“I’d heard o’ kisses, o’ course,” Tedda went on, “but they hadn’t come
+my way specially. I don’t mind tellin’ I was that took aback at that
+man’s doin’s he might ha’ lit fire-crackers on my saddle. Then we went
+out jest’s if a kiss was nothin’, an’ I wasn’t three strides into my
+gait ’fore I felt the boss knoo his business, an’ was trustin’ me. So I
+studied to please him, an’ he never took the whip from the dash—a whip
+drives me plumb distracted—an’ the upshot was that—waal, I’ve come up
+the Back Pasture to-day, an’ the coupé’s tipped clear over twice, an’
+I’ve waited till ’twuz fixed each time. You kin judge for yourselves. I
+don’t set up to be no better than my neighbours,—specially with my tail
+snipped off the way ’tis,—but I want you all to know Tedda’s quit
+fightin’ in harness or out of it, ’cep’ when there’s a born fool in the
+pasture, stuffin’ his stummick with board that ain’t rightly hisn,
+’cause he hain’t earned it.”
+
+“Meanin’ me, madam?” said the yellow horse.
+
+“Ef the shoe fits, clinch it,” said Tedda, snorting. “_I_ named no
+names, though, to be sure, some folks are mean enough an’ greedy enough
+to do ’thout ’em.”
+
+“There’s a deal to be forgiven to ignorance,” said the yellow horse,
+with an ugly look in his blue eye.
+
+“Seemin’ly, yes; or some folks ’u’d ha’ been kicked raound the pasture
+’bout onct a minute sence they came—board er no board.”
+
+“But what you do _not_ understand, if you will excuse me, madam, is
+that the whole principle o’ servitood, which includes keep an’ feed,
+starts from a radically false basis; an’ I am proud to say that me an’
+the majority o’ the horses o’ Kansas think the entire concern should be
+relegated to the limbo of exploded superstitions. I say we’re too
+progressive for that. I say we’re too enlightened for that. ’Twas good
+enough’s long’s we didn’t think, but naow—but naow—a new loominary has
+arisen on the horizon!”
+
+“Meanin’ you?” said the Deacon.
+
+“The horses o’ Kansas are behind me with their multitoodinous
+thunderin’ hooves, an’ we say, simply but grandly, that we take our
+stand with all four feet on the inalienable rights of the horse, pure
+and simple,—the high-toned child o’ nature, fed by the same wavin’
+grass, cooled by the same ripplin’ brook—yes, an’ warmed by the same
+gen’rous sun as falls impartially on the outside an’ the _in_side of
+the pampered machine o’ the trottin’-track, or the bloated coupé-horses
+o’ these yere Eastern cities. Are we not the same flesh an’ blood?”
+
+“Not by a bushel an’ a half,” said the Deacon, under his breath.
+“Grandee never was in Kansas.”
+
+“My! Ain’t that elegant, though, abaout the wavin’ grass an’ the
+ripplin’ brooks?” Tuck whispered in Nip’s ear. “The gentleman’s real
+convincin’, _I_ think.”
+
+“I say we _are_ the same flesh an’ blood! Are we to be separated, horse
+from horse, by the artificial barriers of a trottin’-record, or are we
+to look down upon each other on the strength o’ the gifts o’ nature—an
+extry inch below the knee, or slightly more powerful quarters? What’s
+the use o’ them advantages to you? Man the Oppressor comes along, an’
+sees you’re likely an’ good-lookin’, an’ grinds you to the face o’ the
+earth. What for? For his own pleasure: for his own convenience! Young
+an’ old, black an’ bay, white an’ grey, there’s no distinctions made
+between us. We’re ground up together under the remorseless teeth o’ the
+engines of oppression!”
+
+“Guess his breechin’ must ha’ broke goin’ daown-hill,” said the Deacon.
+“Slippery road, maybe, an’ the buggy come onter him, an’ he didn’t know
+’nough to hold back. That don’t feel like teeth, though. Maybe he
+busted a shaft, an’ it pricked him.”
+
+“An’ I come to you from Kansas, wavin’ the tail o’ friendship to all
+an’ sundry, an’ in the name of the uncounted millions o’ pure-minded,
+high-toned horses now strugglin’ towards the light o’ freedom, I say to
+you, Rub noses with us in our sacred an’ holy cause. The power is
+yourn. Without you, I say, Man the Oppressor cannot move himself from
+place to place. Without you he cannot reap, he cannot sow, he cannot
+plough.”
+
+“Mighty odd place, Kansas!” said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. “Seemin’ly
+they reap in the spring an’ plough in the fall. ’Guess it’s right fer
+them, but ’twould make me kinder giddy.”
+
+“The produc’s of your untirin’ industry would rot on the ground if you
+did not weakly consent to help him. _Let_ ’em rot, I say! Let him call
+you to the stables in vain an’ nevermore! Let him shake his ensnarin’
+oats under your nose in vain! Let the Brahmas roost in the buggy, an’
+the rats run riot round the reaper! Let him walk on his two hind feet
+till they blame well drop off! Win no more soul-destroin’ races for his
+pleasure! Then, an’ not till then, will Man the Oppressor know where
+he’s at. Quit workin’, fellow-sufferers an’ slaves! Kick! Rear! Plunge!
+Lie down on the shafts, an’ woller! Smash an’ destroy! The conflict
+will be but short, an’ the victory is certain. After that we can press
+our inalienable rights to eight quarts o’ oats a day, two good
+blankets, an’ a fly-net an’ the best o’ stablin’.”
+
+The yellow horse shut his yellow teeth with a triumphant snap; and Tuck
+said, with a sigh: “Seems’s if somethin’ ought to be done. Don’t seem
+right, somehow,—oppressin’ us an all,—to my way o’ thinkin’.”
+
+Said Muldoon, in a far-away and sleepy voice:
+
+“Who in Vermont’s goin’ to haul de inalienable oats? Dey weigh like Sam
+Hill, an’ sixty bushel at dat allowance ain’t goin’ to last t’ree weeks
+here. An’ dere’s de winter hay for five mont’s!”
+
+“We can settle those minor details when the great cause is won,” said
+the yellow horse. “Let us return simply but grandly to our inalienable
+rights—the right o’ freedom on these yere verdant hills, an’ no
+invijjus distinctions o’ track an’ pedigree:”
+
+“What in stables ’jer call an invijjus distinction?” said the Deacon,
+stiffly.
+
+“Fer one thing, bein’ a bloated, pampered trotter jest because you
+happen to be raised that way, an’ couldn’t no more help trottin’ than
+eatin’.”
+
+“Do ye know anythin’ about trotters?” said the Deacon.
+
+“I’ve seen ’em trot. That was enough for me. _I_ don’t want to know any
+more. Trottin’s immoral.”
+
+“Waal, I’ll tell you this much. They don’t bloat, an’ they don’t
+pamp—much. I don’t hold out to be no trotter myself, though I am free
+to say I had hopes that way—onct. But I _do_ say, fer I’ve seen ’em
+trained, that a trotter don’t trot with his feet: he trots with his
+head; an’ he does more work—ef you know what _that_ is—in a week than
+you er your sire ever done in all your lives. He’s everlastingly at it,
+a trotter is; an’ when he isn’t, he’s studyin’ haow. You seen ’em trot?
+Much you hev! You was hitched to a rail, back o’ the stand, in a
+buckboard with a soap-box nailed on the slats, an’ a frowzy buff’lo
+atop, while your man peddled rum fer lemonade to little boys as thought
+they was actin’ manly, till you was both run off the track an’
+jailed—you intoed, shufflin’, sway-backed, wind-suckin’ skate, you!”
+
+“Don’t get het up, Deacon,” said Tweezy, quietly. “Now, suh, would you
+consider a fox-trot, an’ single-foot, an’ rack, an’ pace, _an_’ amble,
+distinctions not worth distinguishin’? I assuah you, gentlemen, there
+was a time befo’ I was afflicted in my hip, if you’ll pardon me, Miss
+Tuck, when I was quite celebrated in Paduky for _all_ those gaits; an’
+in my opinion the Deacon’s co’rect when he says that a ho’se of any
+position in society gets his gaits by his haid, an’ not by—his, ah,
+limbs, Miss Tuck. I reckon I’m very little good now, but I’m
+rememberin’ the things I used to do befo’ I took to transpo’tin’ real
+estate with the help an’ assistance of this gentleman here.” He looked
+at Muldoon.
+
+“Invijjus arterficial hind legs!” said the ex-car-horse, with a grunt
+of contempt. “On de Belt Line we don’t reckon no horse wuth his keep
+’less he kin switch de car off de track, run her round on de cobbles,
+an’ dump her in ag’in ahead o’ de truck what’s blockin’ him. Dere is a
+way o’ swingin’ yer quarters when de driver says,‘Yank her out, boys!’
+dat takes a year to learn. Onct yer git onter it, youse kin yank a
+cable-car outer a manhole. I don’t advertise myself for no
+circus-horse, but I knew dat trick better than most, an’ dey was good
+to me in de stables, fer I saved time on de Belt—an’ time’s what dey
+hunt in N’ York.”
+
+“But the simple child o’ nature—” the yellow horse began.
+
+“Oh, go an’ unscrew yer splints! You’re talkin’ through yer bandages,”
+said Muldoon, with a horse-laugh. “Dere ain’t no loose-box for de
+simple child o’ nature on de Belt Line, wid de _Paris_ comin’ in an’ de
+_Teutonic_ goin’ out, an’ de trucks an’ de coupé’s sayin’ things, an’
+de heavy freight movin’ down fer de Boston boat ’bout t’ree o’clock of
+an August afternoon, in de middle of a hot wave when de fat Kanucks an’
+Western horses drops dead on de block. De simple child o’ nature had
+better chase himself inter de water. Every man at de end of his lines
+is mad or loaded or silly, an’ de cop’s madder an’ loadeder an’ sillier
+than de rest. Dey all take it outer de horses. Dere’s no wavin’ brooks
+ner ripplin’ grass on de Belt Line. Run her out on de cobbles wid de
+sparks flyin’, an’ stop when de cop slugs you on de bone o’ yer nose.
+Dat’s N’York; see?
+
+“I was always told s’ciety in Noo York was dreffle refined an’
+high-toned,” said Tuck. “We’re lookin’ to go there one o’ these days,
+Nip an’ me.”
+
+“Oh, _you_ won’t see no Belt business where you’ll go, miss. De man dat
+wants you’ll want you bad, an’ he’ll summer you on Long Island er at
+Newport, wid a winky-pinky silver harness an’ an English coachman.
+You’ll make a star-hitch, you an’ yer brother, miss. But I guess you
+won’t have no nice smooth bar bit. Dey checks ’em, an’ dey bangs deir
+tails, an’ dey bits ’em, de city folk, an’ dey says it’s English, ye
+know, an’ dey darsen’t cut a horse loose ’ca’se o’ de cops. N’ York’s
+no place fer a horse, ’less he’s on de Belt, an’ can go round wid de
+boys. Wisht _I_ was in de Fire Department!”
+
+“But did you never stop to consider the degradin’ servitood of it all?”
+said the yellow horse.
+
+“You don’t stop on de Belt, cully. You’re stopped. An’ we was all in de
+servitood business, man an’ horse, an’ Jimmy dat sold de papers. Guess
+de passengers weren’t out to grass neither, by de way dey acted. I done
+my turn, an’ I’m none o’ Barnum’s crowd; but any horse dat’s worked on
+de Belt four years don’t train wid no simple child o’ nature—not by de
+whole length o’ N’ York.”
+
+“But can it be possible that with your experience, and at your time of
+life, you do not believe that all horses are free and equal?” said the
+yellow horse.
+
+“Not till they’re dead,” Muldoon answered quietly. “An’ den it depends
+on de gross total o’ buttons an’ mucilage dey gits outer youse at
+Barren Island.”
+
+“They tell me you’re a prominent philosopher.” The yellow horse turned
+to Marcus. “Can _you_ deny a basic and pivotal statement such as this?”
+
+“I don’t deny anythin’,” said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, cautiously;
+“but ef you _ast_ me, I should say ’twuz more different sorts o’
+clipped oats of a lie than anythin’ I’ve had my teeth into sence I wuz
+foaled.”
+
+“Are you a horse?” said the yellow horse.
+
+“Them that knows me best ’low I am.”
+
+“Ain’t _I_ a horse?”
+
+“Yep; one kind of.”
+
+“Then ain’t you an’ me equal?”
+
+“How fer kin you go in a day to a loaded buggy, drawin’ five hundred
+pounds?” Marcus asked carelessly.
+
+“That has nothing to do with the case,” the yellow horse answered
+excitedly.
+
+“There’s nothing I know hez more to do with the case,” Marcus replied.
+
+“Kin ye yank a full car outer de tracks ten times in de mornin’?” said
+Muldoon.
+
+“Kin ye go to Keene—forty-two mile in an afternoon—with a mate,” said
+Rick; “an’ turn out bright an’ early next mornin’?”
+
+“Was there evah any time in your careah, suh—I am not referrin’ to the
+present circumstances, but our mutual glorious past—when you could
+carry a pretty girl to market hahnsome, an’ let her knit all the way on
+account o’ the smoothness o’ the motion?” said Tweezy.
+
+“Kin you keep your feet through the West River Bridge, with the
+narrer-gage comin’ in on one side, an’ the Montreal flyer the other,
+an’ the old bridge teeterin’ between?” said the Deacon. “Kin you put
+your nose down on the cow-catcher of a locomotive when you’re waitin’
+at the depot an’ let ’em play ‘Curfew shall not ring to-night’ with the
+big brass bell?”
+
+“Kin you hold back when the brichin’ breaks? Kin you stop fer orders
+when your nigh hind leg’s over your trace an’ ye feel good of a frosty
+mornin’?” said Nip, who had only learned that trick last winter, and
+thought it was the crown of horsely knowledge.
+
+“What’s the use o’ talkin’?” said Tedda Gabler, scornfully. “What kin
+ye do?”
+
+“I rely on my simple rights—the inalienable rights o’ my unfettered
+horsehood. An’ I am proud to say I have never, since my first shoes,
+lowered myself to obeyin’ the will o’ man.”
+
+“Must ha’ had a heap o’ whips broke over yer yaller back,” said Tedda.
+“Hev ye found it paid any?”
+
+“Sorrer has been my portion since the day I was foaled. Blows an’ boots
+an’ whips an’ insults—injury, outrage, an’ oppression. I would not
+endoor the degradin’ badges o’ servitood that connect us with the buggy
+an’ the farm-wagon.”
+
+“It’s amazin’ difficult to draw a buggy ’thout traces er collar er
+breast-strap er somefin’,” said Marcus. “A Power-machine for sawin’
+wood is most the only thing there’s no straps to. I’ve helped saw ’s
+much as three cord in an afternoon in a Power-machine. Slep’, too, most
+o’ the time, I did; but ’tain’t half as inte_res_tin’ ez goin’
+daown-taown in the Concord.”
+
+“Concord don’t hender _you_ goin’ to sleep any,” said Nip. “My
+throat-lash! D’you remember when you lay down in the sharves last week,
+waitin’ at the piazza?”
+
+“Pshaw! That didn’t hurt the sharves. They wuz good an’ wide, an’ I lay
+down keerful. The folks kep’ me hitched up nigh an hour ’fore they
+started; an’ larfed—why, they all but lay down themselves with larfin’.
+Say, Boney, if you’ve got to be hitched _to_ anything that goes on
+wheels, you’ve got to be hitched _with_ somefin’.”
+
+“Go an’ jine a circus,” said Muldoon, “an’ walk on your hind legs. All
+de horses dat knows too much to work [he pronounced it ‘woik,’ New York
+fashion] jine de circus.”
+
+“I am not sayin’ anythin’ again’ work,” said the yellow horse; “work is
+the finest thing in the world.”
+
+“Seems too fine fer some of us,” Tedda snorted.
+
+“I only ask that each horse should work for himself, an’ enjoy the
+profit of his labours. Let him work intelligently, an’ not as a
+machine.”
+
+“There ain’t no horse that works like a machine,” Marcus began.
+
+“There’s no way o’ workin’ that doesn’t mean goin’ to pole er
+single—they never put me in the Power-machine—er under saddle,” said
+Rick.
+
+“Oh, shucks! We’re talkin’ same ez we graze,” said Nip, “raound an’
+raound in circles. Rod, we hain’t heard from you yet, an’ you’ve more
+know-how than any span here.”
+
+Rod, the off-horse of the pair, had been standing with one hip lifted,
+like a tired cow; and you could only tell by the quick flutter of the
+haw across his eye, from time to time, that he was paying any attention
+to the argument. He thrust his jaw out sidewise, as his habit is when
+he pulls, and changed his leg. His voice was hard and heavy, and his
+ears were close to his big, plain Hambletonian head.
+
+“How old are you?” he said to the yellow horse.
+
+“Nigh thirteen, I guess.”
+
+“Mean age; ugly age; I’m gettin’ that way myself. How long hev ye been
+pawin’ this firefanged stable-litter?”
+
+“If you mean my principles, I’ve held ’em sence I was three.”
+
+“Mean age; ugly age; teeth give heaps o’ trouble then. Set a colt to
+actin’ crazy fer a while. _You_’ve kep’ it up, seemin’ly. D’ye talk
+much to your neighbours fer a steady thing?”
+
+“I uphold the principles o’ the Cause wherever I am pastured.”
+
+“Done a heap o’ good, I guess?”
+
+“I am proud to say I have taught a few of my companions the principles
+o’ freedom an’ liberty.”
+
+“Meanin’ they ran away er kicked when they got the chanst?”
+
+“I was talkin’ in the abstrac’, an’ not in the concrete. My teachin’s
+educated them.”
+
+“What a horse, specially a young horse, hears in the abstrac’, he’s
+liable to do in the Concord. You was handled late, I presoom.”
+
+“Four, risin’ five.”
+
+“That’s where the trouble began. Driv’ by a woman, like ez not—eh?”
+
+“Not fer long,” said the yellow horse, with a snap of his teeth.
+
+“Spilled her?”
+
+“I heerd she never drove again.”
+
+“Any childern?”
+
+“Buckboards full of ’em.”
+
+“Men too?”
+
+“I have shed conside’ble men in my time.”
+
+“By kickin’?”
+
+“Any way that come along. Fallin’ back over the dash is as handy as
+most.”
+
+“They must be turr’ble afraid o’ you daown taown?”
+
+“They’ve sent me here to get rid o’ me. I guess they spend their time
+talkin’ over my campaigns.”
+
+“_I_ wanter know!”
+
+“Yes, _sir_. Now, all you gentlemen have asked me what I can do. I’ll
+just show you. See them two fellers lyin’ down by the buggy?”
+
+“Yep; one of ’em owns me. T’other broke me,” said Rod.
+
+“Get ’em out here in the open, an’ I’ll show you something. Lemme hide
+back o’ you peoples, so’s they won’t see what I’m at.”
+
+“Meanin’ ter kill ’em?” Rod drawled. There was a shudder of horror
+through the others; but the yellow horse never noticed.
+
+“I’ll catch ’em by the back o’ the neck, an’ pile-drive ’em a piece.
+They can suit ’emselves about livin’ when I’m through with ’em.”
+
+“Shouldn’t wonder ef they did,” said Rod.
+
+The yellow horse had hidden himself very cleverly behind the others as
+they stood in a group, and was swaying his head close to the ground
+with a curious scythe-like motion, looking side-wise out of his wicked
+eyes. You can never mistake a man-eater getting ready to knock a man
+down. We had had one to pasture the year before.
+
+“See that?” said my companion, turning over on the pine-needles. “Nice
+for a woman walking ’cross lots, wouldn’t it be?”
+
+“Bring ’em out!” said the yellow horse, hunching his sharp back.
+“There’s no chance among them tall trees. Bring out the—oh! Ouch!”
+
+It was a right-and-left kick from Muldoon. I had no idea that the old
+car-horse could lift so quickly. Both blows caught the yellow horse
+full and fair in the ribs, and knocked the breath out of him.
+
+“What’s that for?” he said angrily, when he recovered himself; but I
+noticed he did not draw any nearer to Muldoon than was necessary.
+
+Muldoon never answered, but discoursed to himself in the whining grunt
+that he uses when he is going down-hill in front of a heavy load. We
+call it singing; but I think it’s something much worse, really. The
+yellow horse blustered and squealed a little, and at last said that, if
+it was a horse-fly that had stung Muldoon, he would accept an apology.
+
+“You’ll get it,” said Muldoon, “in de sweet by-and-bye—all de apology
+you’ve any use for. Excuse me interruptin’ you, Mr. Rod, but I’m like
+Tweezy—I’ve a Southern drawback in me hind legs.”
+
+“Naow, I want you all here to take notice, an’ you’ll learn something,”
+Rod went on. “This yaller-backed skate comes to our pastur’-”
+
+“Not havin’ paid his board,” put in Tedda.
+
+“Not havin’ earned his board, an’ talks smooth to us abaout ripplin’
+brooks an’ wavin’ grass, an’ his high-toned, pure-souled horsehood,
+which don’t hender him sheddin’ women an’ childern, an’ fallin’ over
+the dash onter men. You heard his talk, an’ you thought it mighty fine,
+some o’ you.”
+
+Tuck looked guilty here, but she did not say anything.
+
+“Bit by bit he goes on ez you have heard.”
+
+“I was talkin’ in the abstrac’,” said the yellow horse, in an altered
+voice.
+
+“Abstrac’ be switched! Ez I’ve said, it’s this yer blamed abstrac’
+business that makes the young uns cut up in the Concord; an’ abstrac’
+or no abstrac’, he crep’ on an’ on till he come to killin’ plain an’
+straight—killin’ them as never done him no harm, jest beca’se they
+owned horses.”
+
+“An’ knowed how to manage ’em,” said Tedda. “That makes it worse.”
+
+“Waal, he didn’t kill ’em, anyway,” said Marcus. “He’d ha’ been half
+killed ef he had tried.”
+
+“Makes no differ,” Rod answered. “He meant to; an’ ef he hadn’t—s’pose
+we want the Back Pasture turned into a biffin’-ground on our only day
+er rest? ’S’pose _we_ want _our_ men walkin’ round with bits er lead
+pipe an’ a twitch, an’ their hands full o’ stones to throw at us,
+same’s if we wuz hogs er hooky keows? More’n that, leavin’ out Tedda
+here—an’ I guess it’s more her maouth than her manners stands in her
+light—there ain’t a horse on this farm that ain’t a woman’s horse, an’
+proud of it. An’ this yer bogspavined Kansas sunflower goes up an’
+daown the length o’ the country, traded off an’ traded on, boastin’ as
+he’s shed women—an’ childern. I don’t say as a woman in a buggy ain’t a
+fool. I don’t say as she ain’t the lastin’est kind er fool, ner I don’t
+say a child ain’t worse—spattin’ the lines an’ standin’ up an’
+hollerin’—but I _do_ say, ’tain’t none of our business to shed ’em
+daown the road.”
+
+“We don’t,” said the Deacon. “The baby tried to git some o’ my tail for
+a sooveneer last fall when I was up to the haouse, an’ I didn’t kick.
+Boney’s talk ain’t goin’ to hurt us any. We ain’t colts.”
+
+“Thet’s what you _think_. Bimeby you git into a tight corner, ’Lection
+day er Valley Fair, like’s not, daown-taown, when you’re all het an’
+lathery, an’ pestered with flies, an’ thirsty, an’ sick o’ bein’ worked
+in an aout ’tween buggies. _Then_ somethin’ whispers inside o’ your
+winkers, bringin’ up all that talk abaout servitood an’ inalienable
+truck an’ sech like, an’ jest then a Militia gun goes off; er your
+wheels hit, an’—waal, you’re only another horse ez can’t be trusted.
+I’ve been there time an’ again. Boys—fer I’ve seen you all bought er
+broke—on my solemn repitation fer a three-minute clip, I ain’t givin’
+you no bran-mash o’ my own fixin’. I’m tellin’ you my experiences, an’
+I’ve had ez heavy a load an’ ez high a check’s any horse here. I wuz
+born with a splint on my near fore ez big’s a walnut, an’ the cussed,
+three-cornered Hambletonian temper that sours up an’ curdles daown ez
+you git older. I’ve favoured my splint; even little Rick he don’t know
+what it’s cost me to keep my end up sometimes; an’ I’ve fit my temper
+in stall an’ harness, hitched up an’ at pasture, till the sweat
+trickled off my hooves, an’ they thought I wuz off condition, an’
+drenched me.”
+
+“When my affliction came,” said Tweezy, gently, “I was very near to
+losin’ my manners. Allow me to extend to you my sympathy, suh.”
+
+Rick said nothing, but he looked at Rod curiously. Rick is a
+sunny-tempered child who never bears malice, and I don’t think he quite
+understood. He gets his temper from his mother, as a horse should.
+
+“I’ve been there too, Rod,” said Tedda. “Open confession’s good for the
+soul, an’ all Monroe County knows I’ve had my experriences.”
+
+“But if you will excuse me, suh, that pusson”—Tweezy looked unspeakable
+things at the yellow horse—“that pusson who has insulted our
+intelligences comes from Kansas. An’ what a ho’se of his position, an’
+Kansas at that, says cannot, by any stretch of the halter, concern
+gentlemen of _our_ position. There’s no shadow of equal’ty, suh, not
+even for one kick. He’s beneath our contempt.”
+
+“Let him talk,” said Marcus. “It’s always inte_res_tin’ to know what
+another horse thinks. It don’t tech us.”
+
+“An’ he talks so, too,” said Tuck. “I’ve never heard anythin’ so smart
+for a long time.”
+
+Again Rod stuck out his jaws sidewise, and went on slowly, as though he
+were slugging on a plain bit at the end of a thirty-mile drive:
+
+“I want all you here ter understand thet ther ain’t no Kansas, ner no
+Kentucky, ner yet no Vermont, in _our_ business. There’s jest two kind
+o’ horse in the United States—them ez can an’ will do their work after
+bein’ properly broke an’ handled, an’ them as won’t. I’m sick an’ tired
+o’ this everlastin’ tail-switchin’ an’ wickerin’ abaout one State er
+another. A horse kin be proud o’ his State, an’ swap lies abaout it in
+stall or when he’s hitched to a block, ef he keers to put in fly-time
+that way; but he hain’t no right to let that pride o’ hisn interfere
+with his work, ner to make it an excuse fer claimin’ he’s different.
+That’s colts’ talk, an’ don’t you fergit it, Tweezy. An’, Marcus, you
+remember that bein’ a philosopher, an’ anxious to save trouble,—fer you
+_are_,—don’t excuse you from jumpin’ with all your feet on a
+slack-jawed, crazy clay-bank like Boney here. It’s leavin’ ’em alone
+that gives ’em their chance to ruin colts an’ kill folks. An’, Tuck,
+waal, you’re a mare anyways—but when a horse comes along an’ covers up
+all his talk o’ killin’ with ripplin’ brooks, an wavin grass, an’ eight
+quarts of oats a day free, _after_ killin’ his man, don’t you be run
+away with by his yap. You’re too young an’ too nervous.”
+
+“I’ll—I’ll have nervous prostration sure ef there’s a fight here,” said
+Tuck, who saw what was in Rod’s eye; “I’m—I’m that sympathetic I’d run
+away clear to next caounty.”
+
+“Yep; I know that kind o’ sympathy. Jest lasts long enough to start a
+fuss, an’ then lights aout to make new trouble. I hain’t been ten years
+in harness fer nuthin’. Naow, we’re goin’ to keep school with Boney fer
+a spell.”
+
+“Say, look a-here, you ain’t goin’ to hurt me, are you? Remember, I
+belong to a man in town,” cried the yellow horse, uneasily. Muldoon
+kept behind him so that he could not run away.
+
+“I know it. There must be some pore delooded fool in this State hez a
+right to the loose end o’ your hitchin’-strap. I’m blame sorry fer him,
+but he shall hev his rights when we’re through with you,” said Rod.
+
+“If it’s all the same, gentlemen, I’d ruther change pasture. Guess I’ll
+do it now.”
+
+“Can’t always have your ’druthers. Guess you won’t,” said Rod.
+
+“But look a-here. All of you ain’t so blame unfriendly to a stranger.
+S’pose we count noses.”
+
+“What in Vermont fer?” said Rod, putting up his eyebrows. The idea of
+settling a question by counting noses is the very last thing that ever
+enters the head of a well-broken horse.
+
+“To see how many’s on my side. Here’s Miss Tuck, anyway; an’ Colonel
+Tweezy yonder’s neutral; an’ Judge Marcus, an’ I guess the Reverend
+[the yellow horse meant the Deacon] might see that I had my rights.
+He’s the likeliest-lookin’ Trotter I’ve ever set eyes on. Pshaw. Boys.
+You ain’t goin’ to pound _me_, be you? Why, we’ve gone round in
+pasture, all colts together, this month o’ Sundays, hain’t we, as
+friendly as could be. There ain’t a horse alive I don’t care who he
+is—has a higher opinion o’ you, Mr. Rod, than I have. Let’s do it fair
+an’ true an’ above the exe. Let’s count noses same’s they do in
+Kansas.” Here he dropped his voice a little and turned to Marcus: “Say,
+Judge, there’s some green food I know, back o’ the brook, no one hain’t
+touched yet. After this little _fraças_ is fixed up, you an’ me’ll make
+up a party an’ ’tend to it.”
+
+Marcus did not answer for a long time, then he said: “There’s a pup up
+to the haouse ’bout eight weeks old. He’ll yap till he gits a lickin’,
+an’ when he sees it comin’ he lies on his back, an’ yowls. But he don’t
+go through no cir_kit_uous nose-countin’ first. I’ve seen a noo light
+sence Rod spoke. You’ll better stand up to what’s served. I’m goin’ to
+philosophise all over your carcass.”
+
+“_I_’m goin’ to do yer up in brown paper,” said Muldoon. “I can fit you
+on apologies.”
+
+“Hold on. Ef we all biffed you now, these same men you’ve been so dead
+anxious to kill ’u’d call us off. Guess we’ll wait till they go back to
+the haouse, an’ you’ll have time to think cool an’ quiet,” said Rod.
+
+“Have you no respec’ whatever fer the dignity o’ our common horsehood?”
+the yellow horse squealed.
+
+“Nary respec’ onless the horse kin do something. America’s paved with
+the kind er horse you are—jist plain yaller-dog horse—waitin’ ter be
+whipped inter shape. We call ’em yearlings an’ colts when they’re
+young. When they’re aged we pound ’em—in this pastur’. Horse, sonny, is
+what you start from. We know all about horse here, an’ he ain’t any
+high-toned, pure souled child o’ nature. Horse, plain horse, same ez
+you, is chock-full o’ tricks, an’ meannesses, an’ cussednesses, an’
+shirkin’s, an’ monkey-shines, which he’s took over from his sire an’
+his dam, an’ thickened up with his own special fancy in the way o’
+goin’ crooked. Thet’s _horse,_ an’ thet’s about his dignity an’ the
+size of his soul ’fore he’s been broke an’ rawhided a piece. Now we
+ain’t goin’ to give ornery unswitched _horse_, that hain’t done
+nawthin’ wuth a quart of oats sence he wuz foaled, pet names that would
+be good enough fer Nancy Hanks, or Alix, or Directum, who _hev_. Don’t
+you try to back off acrost them rocks. Wait where you are! Ef I let my
+Hambletonian temper git the better o’ me I’d frazzle you out finer than
+rye-straw inside o’ three minutes, you woman-scarin’, kid-killin’,
+dash-breakin’, unbroke, unshod, ungaited, pastur’-hoggin’, saw-backed,
+shark-mouthed, hair-trunk-thrown-in-in-trade son of a bronco an’ a
+sewin’-machine!”
+
+“I think we’d better get home,” I said to my companion, when Rod had
+finished; and we climbed into the coupé, Tedda whinnying, as we bumped
+over the ledges: “Well, I’m dreffle sorry I can’t stay fer the
+sociable; but I hope an’ trust my friends’ll take a ticket fer me.”
+
+“Bet your natchul!” said Muldoon, cheerfully, and the horses scattered
+before us, trotting into the ravine.
+
+Next morning we sent back to the livery-stable what was left of the
+yellow horse. It seemed tired, but anxious to go.
+
+
+
+
+THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF
+
+
+It was her first voyage, and though she was but a cargo-steamer of
+twenty-five hundred tons, she was the very best of her kind, the
+outcome of forty years of experiments and improvements in framework and
+machinery; and her designers and owner thought as much of her as though
+she had been the _Lucania_. Any one can make a floating hotel that will
+pay expenses, if he puts enough money into the saloon, and charges for
+private baths, suites of rooms, and such like; but in these days of
+competition and low freights every square inch of a cargo-boat must be
+built for cheapness, great hold-capacity, and a certain steady speed.
+This boat was, perhaps, two hundred and forty feet long and thirty-two
+feet wide, with arrangements that enabled her to carry cattle on her
+main and sheep on her upper deck if she wanted to; but her great glory
+was the amount of cargo that she could store away in her holds. Her
+owners—they were a very well known Scotch firm—came round with her from
+the north, where she had been launched and christened and fitted, to
+Liverpool, where she was to take cargo for New York; and the owner’s
+daughter, Miss Frazier, went to and fro on the clean decks, admiring
+the new paint and the brass work, and the patent winches, and
+particularly the strong, straight bow, over which she had cracked a
+bottle of champagne when she named the steamer the _Dimbula_. It was a
+beautiful September afternoon, and the boat in all her newness—she was
+painted lead-colour with a red funnel—looked very fine indeed. Her
+house-flag was flying, and her whistle from time to time acknowledged
+the salutes of friendly boats, who saw that she was new to the High and
+Narrow Seas and wished to make her welcome.
+
+“And now,” said Miss Frazier, delightedly, to the captain, “she’s a
+real ship, isn’t she? It seems only the other day father gave the order
+for her, and now—and now—isn’t she a beauty!” The girl was proud of the
+firm, and talked as though she were the controlling partner.
+
+“Oh, she’s no so bad,” the skipper replied cautiously. “But I’m sayin’
+that it takes more than christenin’ to mak’ a ship. In the nature o’
+things, Miss Frazier, if ye follow me, she’s just irons and rivets and
+plates put into the form of a ship. She has to find herself yet.”
+
+“I thought father said she was exceptionally well found.”
+
+“So she is,” said the skipper, with a laugh. “But it’s this way wi’
+ships, Miss Frazier. She’s all here, but the parrts of her have not
+learned to work together yet. They’ve had no chance.”
+
+“The engines are working beautifully. I can hear them.”
+
+“Yes, indeed. But there’s more than engines to a ship. Every inch of
+her, ye’ll understand, has to be livened up and made to work wi’ its
+neighbour—sweetenin’ her, we call it, technically.”
+
+“And how will you do it?” the girl asked.
+
+“We can no more than drive and steer her and so forth; but if we have
+rough weather this trip—it’s likely—she’ll learn the rest by heart! For
+a ship, ye’ll obsairve, Miss Frazier, is in no sense a reegid body
+closed at both ends. She’s a highly complex structure o’ various an’
+conflictin’ strains, wi’ tissues that must give an’ tak’ accordin’ to
+her personal modulus of elasteecity.” Mr. Buchanan, the chief engineer,
+was coming towards them. “I’m sayin’ to Miss Frazier, here, that our
+little _Dimbula_ has to be sweetened yet, and nothin’ but a gale will
+do it. How’s all wi’ your engines, Buck?”
+
+“Well enough—true by plumb an’ rule, o’ course; but there’s no
+spontaneeity yet.” He turned to the girl. “Take my word, Miss Frazier,
+and maybe ye’ll comprehend later; even after a pretty girl’s christened
+a ship it does not follow that there’s such a thing as a ship under the
+men that work her.”
+
+“I was sayin’ the very same, Mr. Buchanan,” the skipper interrupted.
+
+“That’s more metaphysical than I can follow,” said Miss Frazier,
+laughing.
+
+“Why so? Ye’re good Scotch, an’—I knew your mother’s father, he was
+fra’ Dumfries—ye’ve a vested right in metapheesics, Miss Frazier, just
+as ye have in the _Dimbula_,” the engineer said.
+
+“Eh, well, we must go down to the deep watters, an’ earn Miss Frazier
+her deevidends. Will you not come to my cabin for tea?” said the
+skipper. “We’ll be in dock the night, and when you’re goin’ back to
+Glasgie ye can think of us loadin’ her down an’ drivin’ her forth—all
+for your sake.”
+
+In the next few days they stowed some four thousand tons dead-weight
+into the _Dimbula_, and took her out from Liverpool. As soon as she met
+the lift of the open water, she naturally began to talk. If you lay
+your ear to the side of the cabin, the next time you are in a steamer,
+you will hear hundreds of little voices in every direction, thrilling
+and buzzing, and whispering and popping, and gurgling and sobbing and
+squeaking exactly like a telephone in a thunder-storm. Wooden ships
+shriek and growl and grunt, but iron vessels throb and quiver through
+all their hundreds of ribs and thousands of rivets. The _Dimbula_ was
+very strongly built, and every piece of her had a letter or a number,
+or both, to describe it; and every piece had been hammered, or forged,
+or rolled, or punched by man, and had lived in the roar and rattle of
+the shipyard for months. Therefore, every piece had its own separate
+voice, in exact proportion to the amount of trouble spent upon it.
+Cast-iron, as a rule, says very little; but mild steel plates and
+wrought-iron, and ribs and beams that have been much bent and welded
+and riveted, talk continuously. Their conversation, of course, is not
+half as wise as our human talk, because they are all, though they do
+not know it, bound down one to the other in a black darkness, where
+they cannot tell what is happening near them, nor what will overtake
+them next.
+
+As soon as she had cleared the Irish coast, a sullen, grey-headed old
+wave of the Atlantic climbed leisurely over her straight bows, and sat
+down on the steam-capstan used for hauling up the anchor. Now the
+capstan and the engine that drove it had been newly painted red and
+green; besides which, nobody likes being ducked.
+
+“Don’t you do that again,” the capstan sputtered through the teeth of
+his cogs. “Hi! Where’s the fellow gone?”
+
+The wave had slouched overside with a plop and a chuckle; but “Plenty
+more where he came from,” said a brother-wave, and went through and
+over the capstan, who was bolted firmly to an iron plate on the iron
+deck-beams below.
+
+“Can’t you keep still up there?” said the deckbeams. “What’s the matter
+with you? One minute you weigh twice as much as you ought to, and the
+next you don’t!”
+
+“It isn’t my fault,” said the capstan. “There’s a green brute outside
+that comes and hits me on the head.”
+
+“Tell that to the shipwrights. You’ve been in position for months and
+you’ve never wriggled like this before. If you aren’t careful you’ll
+strain _us_.”
+
+“Talking of strain,” said a low, rasping, unpleasant voice, “are any of
+you fellows—you deck-beams, we mean—aware that those exceedingly ugly
+knees of yours happen to be riveted into our structure—_ours?_”
+
+“Who might you be?” the deck-beams inquired.
+
+“Oh, nobody in particular,” was the answer. “We’re only the port and
+starboard upper-deck stringers; and if you persist in heaving and
+hiking like this, we shall be reluctantly compelled to take steps.”
+
+Now the stringers of the ship are long iron girders, so to speak, that
+run lengthways from stern to bow. They keep the iron frames (what are
+called ribs in a wooden ship) in place, and also help to hold the ends
+of the deck-beams, which go from side to side of the ship. Stringers
+always consider themselves most important, because they are so long.
+
+“You will take steps—will you?” This was a long echoing rumble. It came
+from the frames—scores and scores of them, each one about eighteen
+inches distant from the next, and each riveted to the stringers in four
+places. “We think you will have a certain amount of trouble in _that_”;
+and thousands and thousands of the little rivets that held everything
+together whispered: “You Will! You will! Stop quivering and be quiet.
+Hold on, brethren! Hold on! Hot Punches! What’s that?”
+
+Rivets have no teeth, so they cannot chatter with fright; but they did
+their best as a fluttering jar swept along the ship from stern to bow,
+and she shook like a rat in a terrier’s mouth.
+
+An unusually severe pitch, for the sea was rising, had lifted the big
+throbbing screw nearly to the surface, and it was spinning round in a
+kind of soda-water—half sea and half air—going much faster than was
+proper, because there was no deep water for it to work in. As it sank
+again, the engines—and they were triple expansion, three cylinders in a
+row—snorted through all their three pistons. “Was that a joke, you
+fellow outside? It’s an uncommonly poor one. How are we to do our work
+if you fly off the handle that way?”
+
+“I didn’t fly off the handle,” said the screw, twirling huskily at the
+end of the screw-shaft. “If I had, you’d have been scrap-iron by this
+time. The sea dropped away from under me, and I had nothing to catch on
+to. That’s all.”
+
+“That’s all, d’you call it?” said the thrust-block, whose business it
+is to take the push of the screw; for if a screw had nothing to hold it
+back it would crawl right into the engine-room. (It is the holding back
+of the screwing action that gives the drive to a ship.) “I know I do my
+work deep down and out of sight, but I warn you I expect justice. All I
+ask for is bare justice. Why can’t you push steadily and evenly,
+instead of whizzing like a whirligig, and making me hot under all my
+collars?” The thrust-block had six collars, each faced with brass, and
+he did not wish to get them heated.
+
+All the bearings that supported the fifty feet of screw-shaft as it ran
+to the stern whispered: “Justice—give us justice.”
+
+“I can only give you what I can get,” the screw answered. “Look out!
+It’s coming again!”
+
+He rose with a roar as the _Dimbula_ plunged, and
+“whack—flack—whack—whack” went the engines, furiously, for they had
+little to check them.
+
+“I’m the noblest outcome of human ingenuity—Mr. Buchanan says so,”
+squealed the high-pressure cylinder. “This is simply ridiculous!” The
+piston went up savagely, and choked, for half the steam behind it was
+mixed with dirty water. “Help! Oiler! Fitter! Stoker! Help! I’m
+choking,” it gasped. “Never in the history of maritime invention has
+such a calamity over-taken one so young and strong. And if I go, who’s
+to drive the ship?”
+
+“Hush! oh, hush!” whispered the Steam, who, of course, had been to sea
+many times before. He used to spend his leisure ashore in a cloud, or a
+gutter, or a flower-pot, or a thunder-storm, or anywhere else where
+water was needed. “That’s only a little priming, a little
+carrying-over, as they call it. It’ll happen all night, on and off. I
+don’t say it’s nice, but it’s the best we can do under the
+circumstances.”
+
+“What difference can circumstances make? I’m here to do my work—on
+clean, dry steam. Blow circumstances!” the cylinder roared.
+
+“The circumstances will attend to the blowing. I’ve worked on the North
+Atlantic run a good many times—it’s going to be rough before morning.”
+
+“It isn’t distressingly calm now,” said the extra strong frames—they
+were called web-frames—in the engine-room. “There’s an upward thrust
+that we don’t understand, and there’s a twist that is very bad for our
+brackets and diamond-plates, and there’s a sort of west-northwesterly
+pull, that follows the twist, which seriously annoys us. We mention
+this because we happened to cost a good deal of money, and we feel sure
+that the owner would not approve of our being treated in this frivolous
+way.”
+
+“I’m afraid the matter is out of owner’s hands for the present,” said
+the Steam, slipping into the condenser. “You’re left to your own
+devices till the weather betters.”
+
+“I wouldn’t mind the weather,” said a flat bass voice below; “it’s this
+confounded cargo that’s breaking my heart. I’m the garboard-strake, and
+I’m twice as thick as most of the others, and I ought to know
+something.”
+
+The garboard-strake is the lowest plate in the bottom of a ship, and
+the _Dimbula’s_ garboard-strake was nearly three-quarters of an inch
+mild steel.
+
+“The sea pushes me up in a way I should never have expected,” the
+strake grunted, “and the cargo pushes me down, and, between the two, I
+don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
+
+“When in doubt, hold on,” rumbled the Steam, making head in the
+boilers.
+
+“Yes; but there’s only dark, and cold, and hurry, down here; and how do
+I know whether the other plates are doing their duty? Those
+bulwark-plates up above, I’ve heard, ain’t more than five-sixteenths of
+an inch thick—scandalous, I call it.”
+
+“I agree with you,” said a huge web-frame, by the main cargo-hatch. He
+was deeper and thicker than all the others, and curved half-way across
+the ship in the shape of half an arch, to support the deck where
+deck-beams would have been in the way of cargo coming up and down. “I
+work entirely unsupported, and I observe that I am the sole strength of
+this vessel, so far as my vision extends. The responsibility, I assure
+you, is enormous. I believe the money-value of the cargo is over one
+hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Think of that!”
+
+“And every pound of it is dependent on my personal exertions.” Here
+spoke a sea-valve that communicated directly with the water outside,
+and was seated not very far from the garboard-strake. “I rejoice to
+think that I am a Prince-Hyde Valve, with best Para rubber facings.
+Five patents cover me—I mention this without pride—five separate and
+several patents, each one finer than the other. At present I am screwed
+fast. Should I open, you would immediately be swamped. This is
+incontrovertible!”
+
+Patent things always use the longest words they can. It is a trick that
+they pick up from their inventors.
+
+“That’s news,” said a big centrifugal bilge-pump. “I had an idea that
+you were employed to clean decks and things with. At least, I’ve used
+you for that more than once. I forget the precise number, in thousands,
+of gallons which I am guaranteed to throw per hour; but I assure you,
+my complaining friends, that there is not the least danger. I alone am
+capable of clearing any water that may find its way here. By my Biggest
+Deliveries, we pitched then!”
+
+The sea was getting up in workmanlike style. It was a dead westerly
+gale, blown from under a ragged opening of green sky, narrowed on all
+sides by fat, grey clouds; and the wind bit like pincers as it fretted
+the spray into lacework on the flanks of the waves.
+
+“I tell you what it is,” the foremast telephoned down its wire-stays.
+“I’m up here, and I can take a dispassionate view of things. There’s an
+organised conspiracy against us. I’m sure of it, because every single
+one of these waves is heading directly for our bows. The whole sea is
+concerned in it—and so’s the wind. It’s awful!”
+
+“What’s awful?” said a wave, drowning the capstan for the hundredth
+time.
+
+“This organised conspiracy on your part,” the capstan gurgled, taking
+his cue from the mast. “Organised bubbles and spindrift! There has been
+a depression in the Gulf of Mexico. Excuse me!” He leaped overside; but
+his friends took up the tale one after another.
+
+“Which has advanced—” That wave hove green water over the funnel.
+
+“As far as Cape Hatteras—” He drenched the bridge.
+
+“And is now going out to sea—to sea—to sea!” The third went out in
+three surges, making a clean sweep of a boat, which turned bottom up
+and sank in the darkening troughs alongside, while the broken falls
+whipped the davits.
+
+“That’s all there is to it,” seethed the white water roaring through
+the scuppers. “There’s no animus in our proceedings. We’re only
+meteorological corollaries.”
+
+“Is it going to get any worse?” said the bow-anchor chained down to the
+deck, where he could only breathe once in five minutes.
+
+“Not knowing, can’t say. Wind may blow a bit by midnight. Thanks
+awfully. Good-bye.”
+
+The wave that spoke so politely had travelled some distance aft, and
+found itself all mixed up on the deck amidships, which was a well-deck
+sunk between high bulwarks. One of the bulwark-plates, which was hung
+on hinges to open outward, had swung out, and passed the bulk of the
+water back to the sea again with a clean smack.
+
+“Evidently that’s what I’m made for,” said the plate, closing again
+with a sputter of pride. “Oh, no, you don’t, my friend!” The top of a
+wave was trying to get in from the outside, but as the plate did not
+open in that direction, the defeated water spurted back.
+
+“Not bad for five-sixteenths of an inch,” said the bulwark-plate. “My
+work, I see, is laid down for the night”; and it began opening and
+shutting, as it was designed to do, with the motion of the ship.
+
+“We are not what you might call idle,” groaned all the frames together,
+as the _Dimbula_ climbed a big wave, lay on her side at the top, and
+shot into the next hollow, twisting in the descent. A huge swell pushed
+up exactly under her middle, and her bow and stern hung free with
+nothing to support them. Then one joking wave caught her up at the bow,
+and another at the stern, while the rest of the water slunk away from
+under her just to see how she would like it; so she was held up at her
+two ends only, and the weight of the cargo and the machinery fell on
+the groaning iron keels and bilge-stringers.
+
+“Ease off! Ease off, there!” roared the garboard-strake. “I want
+one-eighth of an inch fair play. D’ you hear me, you rivets!”
+
+“Ease off! Ease off!” cried the bilge-stringers. “Don’t hold us so
+tight to the frames!”
+
+“Ease off!” grunted the deck-beams, as the _Dimbula_ rolled fearfully.
+“You’ve cramped our knees into the stringers, and we can’t move. Ease
+off, you flat-headed little nuisances.”
+
+Then two converging seas hit the bows, one on each side, and fell away
+in torrents of streaming thunder.
+
+“Ease off!” shouted the forward collision-bulkhead. “I want to crumple
+up, but I’m stiffened in every direction. Ease off, you dirty little
+forge-filings. Let me breathe!”
+
+All the hundreds of plates that are riveted to the frames, and make the
+outside skin of every steamer, echoed the call, for each plate wanted
+to shift and creep a little, and each plate, according to its position,
+complained against the rivets.
+
+“We can’t help it! _We_ can’t help it!” they murmured in reply. “We’re
+put here to hold you, and we’re going to do it; you never pull us twice
+in the same direction. If you’d say what you were going to do next,
+we’d try to meet your views.
+
+“As far as I could feel,” said the upper-deck planking, and that was
+four inches thick, “every single iron near me was pushing or pulling in
+opposite directions. Now, what’s the sense of that? My friends, let us
+all pull together.”
+
+“Pull any way you please,” roared the funnel, “so long as you don’t try
+your experiments on _me_. I need fourteen wire-ropes, all pulling in
+different directions, to hold me steady. Isn’t that so?”
+
+“We believe you, my boy!” whistled the funnel-stays through their
+clinched teeth, as they twanged in the wind from the top of the funnel
+to the deck.
+
+“Nonsense! We must all pull together,” the decks repeated. “Pull
+lengthways.”
+
+“Very good,” said the stringers; “then stop pushing sideways when you
+get wet. Be content to run gracefully fore and aft, and curve in at the
+ends as we do.”
+
+“No—no curves at the end. A very slight workmanlike curve from side to
+side, with a good grip at each knee, and little pieces welded on,” said
+the deck-beams.
+
+“Fiddle!” cried the iron pillars of the deep, dark hold. “Who ever
+heard of curves? Stand up straight; be a perfectly round column, and
+carry tons of good solid weight—like that! There!” A big sea smashed on
+the deck above, and the pillars stiffened themselves to the load.
+
+“Straight up and down is not bad,” said the frames, who ran that way in
+the sides of the ship, “but you must also expand yourselves sideways.
+Expansion is the law of life, children. Open out! open out!”
+
+“Come back!” said the deck-beams, savagely, as the upward heave of the
+sea made the frames try to open. “Come back to your bearings, you
+slack-jawed irons!”
+
+“Rigidity! Rigidity! Rigidity!” thumped the engines. “Absolute,
+unvarying rigidity—rigidity!”
+
+“You see!” whined the rivets, in chorus. “No two of you will ever pull
+alike, and—and you blame it all on us. We only know how to go through a
+plate and bite down on both sides so that it can’t, and mustn’t, and
+sha’n’t move.”
+
+“I’ve got one fraction of an inch play, at any rate,” said the
+garboard-strake, triumphantly. So he had, and all the bottom of the
+ship felt the easier for it.
+
+“Then we’re no good,” sobbed the bottom rivets. “We were ordered—we
+were ordered—never to give; and we’ve given, and the sea will come in,
+and we’ll all go to the bottom together! First we’re blamed for
+everything unpleasant, and now we haven’t the consolation of having
+done our work.”
+
+“Don’t say I told you,” whispered the Steam, consolingly; “but, between
+you and me and the last cloud I came from, it was bound to happen
+sooner or later. You _had_ to give a fraction, and you’ve given without
+knowing it. Now, hold on, as before.”
+
+“What’s the use?” a few hundred rivets chattered. “We’ve given—we’ve
+given; and the sooner we confess that we can’t keep the ship together,
+and go off our little heads, the easier it will be. No rivet forged can
+stand this strain.”
+
+“No one rivet was ever meant to. Share it among you,” the Steam
+answered.
+
+“The others can have my share. I’m going to pull out,” said a rivet in
+one of the forward plates.
+
+“If you go, others will follow,” hissed the Steam. “There’s nothing so
+contagious in a boat as rivets going. Why, I knew a little chap like
+you—he was an eighth of an inch fatter, though—on a steamer—to be sure,
+she was only twelve hundred tons, now I come to think of it—in exactly
+the same place as you are. He pulled out in a bit of a bobble of a sea,
+not half as bad as this, and he started all his friends on the same
+butt-strap, and the plates opened like a furnace door, and I had to
+climb into the nearest fog-bank, while the boat went down.”
+
+“Now that’s peculiarly disgraceful,” said the rivet. “Fatter than me,
+was he, and in a steamer not half our tonnage? Reedy little peg! I
+blush for the family, sir.” He settled himself more firmly than ever in
+his place, and the Steam chuckled.
+
+“You see,” he went on, quite gravely, “a rivet, and especially a rivet
+in your position, is really the one indispensable part of the ship.”
+
+The Steam did not say that he had whispered the very same thing to
+every single piece of iron aboard. There is no sense in telling too
+much.
+
+And all that while the little _Dimbula_ pitched and chopped, and swung
+and slewed, and lay down as though she were going to die, and got up as
+though she had been stung, and threw her nose round and round in
+circles half a dozen times as she dipped, for the gale was at its
+worst. It was inky black, in spite of the tearing white froth on the
+waves, and, to top everything, the rain began to fall in sheets, so
+that you could not see your hand before your face. This did not make
+much difference to the ironwork below, but it troubled the foremast a
+good deal.
+
+“Now it’s all finished,” he said dismally. “The conspiracy is too
+strong for us. There is nothing left but to—”
+
+“_Hurraar! Brrrraaah! Brrrrrrp!_” roared the Steam through the
+fog-horn, till the decks quivered. “Don’t be frightened, below. It’s
+only me, just throwing out a few words, in case any one happens to be
+rolling round to-night.”
+
+“You don’t mean to say there’s any one except us on the sea in such
+weather?” said the funnel, in a husky snuffle.
+
+“Scores of ’em,” said the Steam, clearing its throat. “_Rrrrrraaa!
+Brraaaaa! Prrrrp!_ It’s a trifle windy up here; and, Great Boilers! how
+it rains!”
+
+“We’re drowning,” said the scuppers. They had been doing nothing else
+all night, but this steady thrash of rain above them seemed to be the
+end of the world.
+
+“That’s all right. We’ll be easier in an hour or two. First the wind
+and then the rain. Soon you may make sail again! _Grrraaaaaah!
+Drrrraaaa! Drrrp!_ I have a notion that the sea is going down already.
+If it does you’ll learn something about rolling. We’ve only pitched
+till now. By the way, aren’t you chaps in the hold a little easier than
+you were?”
+
+There was just as much groaning and straining as ever, but it was not
+so loud or squeaky in tone; and when the ship quivered she did not jar
+stiffly, like a poker hit on the floor, but gave with a supple little
+waggle, like a perfectly balanced golf-club.
+
+“We have made a most amazing discovery,” said the stringers, one after
+another. “A discovery that entirely changes the situation. We have
+found, for the first time in the history of ship-building, that the
+inward pull of the deck-beams and the outward thrust of the frames
+locks us, as it were, more closely in our places, and enables us to
+endure a strain which is entirely without parallel in the records of
+marine architecture.”
+
+The Steam turned a laugh quickly into a roar up the fog-horn. “What
+massive intellects you great stringers have,” he said softly, when he
+had finished.
+
+“We also,” began the deck-beams, “are discoverers and geniuses. We are
+of opinion that the support of the hold-pillars materially helps us. We
+find that we lock up on them when we are subjected to a heavy and
+singular weight of sea above.”
+
+Here the _Dimbula_ shot down a hollow, lying almost on her side;
+righting at the bottom with a wrench and a spasm.
+
+“In these cases—are you aware of this, Steam?—the plating at the bows,
+and particularly at the stern—we would also mention the floors beneath
+us—help us to resist any tendency to spring.” The frames spoke, in the
+solemn awed voice which people use when they have just come across
+something entirely new for the very first time.
+
+“I’m only a poor puffy little flutterer,” said the Steam, “but I have
+to stand a good deal of pressure in my business. It’s all tremendously
+interesting. Tell us some more. You fellows are so strong.”
+
+“Watch us and you’ll see,” said the bow-plates, proudly. “Ready, behind
+there! Here’s the father and mother of waves coming! Sit tight, rivets
+all!” A great sluicing comber thundered by, but through the scuffle and
+confusion the Steam could hear the low, quick cries of the ironwork as
+the various strains took them—cries like these: “Easy, now—easy! _Now_
+push for all your strength! Hold out! Give a fraction! Hold up! Pull
+in! Shove crossways! Mind the strain at the ends! Grip, now! Bite
+tight! Let the water get away from under—and there she goes!”
+
+The wave raced off into the darkness, shouting, “Not bad, that, if it’s
+your first run!” and the drenched and ducked ship throbbed to the beat
+of the engines inside her. All three cylinders were white with the salt
+spray that had come down through the engine-room hatch; there was white
+fur on the canvas-bound steam-pipes, and even the bright-work deep
+below was speckled and soiled; but the cylinders had learned to make
+the most of steam that was half water, and were pounding along
+cheerfully.
+
+“How’s the noblest outcome of human ingenuity hitting it?” said the
+Steam, as he whirled through the engine-room.
+
+“Nothing for nothing in this world of woe,” the cylinders answered, as
+though they had been working for centuries, “and precious little for
+seventy-five pounds head. We’ve made two knots this last hour and a
+quarter! Rather humiliating for eight hundred horse-power, isn’t it?”
+
+“Well, it’s better than drifting astern, at any rate. You seem rather
+less—how shall I put it—stiff in the back than you were.”
+
+“If you’d been hammered as we’ve been this night, you wouldn’t be
+stiff—iff—iff; either. Theoreti—retti—retti—cally, of course, rigidity
+is the thing. Purrr—purr—practically, there has to be a little give and
+take. _We_ found that out by working on our sides for five minutes at a
+stretch—chch—chh. How’s the weather?”
+
+“Sea’s going down fast,” said the Steam.
+
+“Good business,” said the high-pressure cylinder. “Whack her up, boys.
+They’ve given us five pounds more steam”; and he began humming the
+first bars of “Said the young Obadiah to the old Obadiah,” which, as
+you may have noticed, is a pet tune among engines not built for high
+speed. Racing-liners with twin-screws sing “The Turkish Patrol” and the
+overture to the “Bronze Horse,” and “Madame Angot,” till something goes
+wrong, and then they render Gounod’s “Funeral March of a Marionette,”
+with variations.
+
+“You’ll learn a song of your own some fine day,” said the Steam, as he
+flew up the fog-horn for one last bellow.
+
+Next day the sky cleared and the sea dropped a little, and the
+_Dimbula_ began to roll from side to side till every inch of iron in
+her was sick and giddy. But luckily they did not all feel ill at the
+same time: otherwise she would have opened out like a wet paper box.
+
+The Steam whistled warnings as he went about his business: it is in
+this short, quick roll and tumble that follows a heavy sea that most of
+the accidents happen, for then everything thinks that the worst is over
+and goes off guard. So he orated and chattered till the beams and
+frames and floors and stringers and things had learned how to lock down
+and lock up on one another, and endure this new kind of strain.
+
+They found ample time to practise, for they were sixteen days at sea,
+and it was foul weather till within a hundred miles of New York. The
+_Dimbula_ picked up her pilot, and came in covered with salt and red
+rust. Her funnel was dirty-grey from top to bottom; two boats had been
+carried away; three copper ventilators looked like hats after a fight
+with the police; the bridge had a dimple in the middle of it; the house
+that covered the steam steering-gear was split as with hatchets; there
+was a bill for small repairs in the engine-room almost as long as the
+screw-shaft; the forward cargo-hatch fell into bucket-staves when they
+raised the iron cross-bars; and the steam-capstan had been badly
+wrenched on its bed. Altogether, as the skipper said, it was “a pretty
+general average.”
+
+“But she’s soupled,” he said to Mr. Buchanan. “For all her dead-weight
+she rode like a yacht. Ye mind that last blow off the Banks—I am proud
+of her, Buck.”
+
+“It’s vera good,” said the chief engineer, looking along the
+dishevelled decks. “Now, a man judgin’ superfeecially would say we were
+a wreck, but we know otherwise—by experience.”
+
+Naturally everything in the _Dimbula_ fairly stiffened with pride, and
+the foremast and the forward collision-bulkhead, who are pushing
+creatures, begged the Steam to warn the Port of New York of their
+arrival. “Tell those big boats all about us,” they said. “They seem to
+take us quite as a matter of course.”
+
+It was a glorious, clear, dead calm morning, and in single file, with
+less than half a mile between each, their bands playing and their
+tugboats shouting and waving handkerchiefs, were the _Majestic_, the
+_Paris_, the _Touraine_, the _Servia_, the _Kaiser Wilhelm II._, and
+the _Werkendam_, all statelily going out to sea. As the _Dimbula_
+shifted her helm to give the great boats clear way, the Steam (who
+knows far too much to mind making an exhibition of himself now and
+then) shouted:
+
+“Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Princes, Dukes, and Barons of the High Seas! Know ye
+by these presents, we are the _Dimbula_, fifteen days nine hours from
+Liverpool, having crossed the Atlantic with four thousand ton of cargo
+for the first time in our career! We have not foundered. We are here.
+’_Eer! ’Eer!_ We are not disabled. But we have had a time wholly
+unparalleled in the annals of ship-building! Our decks were swept! We
+pitched; we rolled! We thought we were going to die! _Hi! Hi!_ But we
+didn’t. We wish to give notice that we have come to New York all the
+way across the Atlantic, through the worst weather in the world; and we
+are the _Dimbula!_ We are—arr—ha—ha—ha-r-r-r!”
+
+The beautiful line of boats swept by as steadily as the procession of
+the Seasons. The _Dimbula_ heard the _Majestic_ say, “Hmph!” and the
+_Paris_ grunted, “How!” and the _Touraine_ said, “Oui!” with a little
+coquettish flicker of steam; and the _Servia_ said, “Haw!” and the
+_Kaiser_ and the _Werkendam_ said, “Hoch!” Dutch fashion—and that was
+absolutely all.
+
+“I did my best,” said the Steam, gravely, “but I don’t think they were
+much impressed with us, somehow. Do you?”
+
+“It’s simply disgusting,” said the bow-plates. “They might have seen
+what we’ve been through. There isn’t a ship on the sea that has
+suffered as we have—is there, now?”
+
+“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as that,” said the Steam, “because I’ve
+worked on some of those boats, and sent them through weather quite as
+bad as the fortnight that we’ve had, in six days; and some of them are
+a little over ten thousand tons, I believe. Now I’ve seen the
+_Majestic_, for instance, ducked from her bows to her funnel; and I’ve
+helped the _Arizona_, I think she was, to back off an iceberg she met
+with one dark night; and I had to run out of the _Paris’s_ engine-room,
+one day, because there was thirty foot of water in it. Of course, I
+don’t deny—” The Steam shut off suddenly, as a tugboat, loaded with a
+political club and a brass band, that had been to see a New York
+Senator off to Europe, crossed their bows, going to Hoboken. There was
+a long silence that reached, without a break, from the cut-water to the
+propeller-blades of the _Dimbula_.
+
+Then a new, big voice said slowly and thickly, as though the owner had
+just waked up: “It’s my conviction that I have made a fool of myself.”
+
+The Steam knew what had happened at once; for when a ship finds herself
+all the talking of the separate pieces ceases and melts into one voice,
+which is the soul of the ship.
+
+“Who are you?” he said, with a laugh. “I am the _Dimbula_, of course.
+I’ve never been anything else except that—and a fool!”
+
+The tugboat, which was doing its very best to be run down, got away
+just in time; its band playing clashily and brassily a popular but
+impolite air:
+
+In the days of old Rameses—are you on?
+In the days of old Rameses—are you on?
+In the days of old Rameses,
+That story had paresis,
+Are you on—are you on—are you on?
+
+
+“Well, I’m glad you’ve found yourself,” said the Steam. “To tell the
+truth, I was a little tired of talking to all those ribs and stringers.
+Here’s Quarantine. After that we’ll go to our wharf and clean up a
+little, and—next month we’ll do it all over again.”
+
+
+
+
+THE TOMB OF HIS ANCESTORS
+
+
+Some people will tell you that if there were but a single loaf of bread
+in all India it would be divided equally between the Plowdens, the
+Trevors, the Beadons, and the Rivett-Carnacs. That is only one way of
+saying that certain families serve India generation after generation,
+as dolphins follow in line across the open sea.
+
+Let us take a small and obscure case. There has been at least one
+representative of the Devonshire Chinns in or near Central India since
+the days of Lieutenant-Fireworker Humphrey Chinn, of the Bombay
+European Regiment, who assisted at the capture of Seringapatam in 1799.
+Alfred Ellis Chinn, Humphrey’s younger brother, commanded a regiment of
+Bombay grenadiers from 1804 to 1813, when he saw some mixed fighting;
+and in 1834 John Chinn of the same family—we will call him John Chinn
+the First—came to light as a level-headed administrator in time of
+trouble at a place called Mundesur. He died young, but left his mark on
+the new country, and the Honourable the Board of Directors of the
+Honourable the East India Company embodied his virtues in a stately
+resolution, and paid for the expenses of his tomb among the Satpura
+hills.
+
+He was succeeded by his son, Lionel Chinn, who left the little old
+Devonshire home just in time to be severely wounded in the Mutiny. He
+spent his working life within a hundred and fifty miles of John Chinn’s
+grave, and rose to the command of a regiment of small, wild hill-men,
+most of whom had known his father. His son John was born in the small
+thatched-roofed, mud-walled cantonment, which is even to-day eighty
+miles from the nearest railway, in the heart of a scrubby, tigerish
+country. Colonel Lionel Chinn served thirty years and retired. In the
+Canal his steamer passed the outward-bound troop-ship, carrying his son
+eastward to the family duty.
+
+The Chinns are luckier than most folk, because they know exactly what
+they must do. A clever Chinn passes for the Bombay Civil Service, and
+gets away to Central India, where everybody is glad to see him. A dull
+Chinn enters the Police Department or the Woods and Forest, and sooner
+or later he, too, appears in Central India, and that is what gave rise
+to the saying, “Central India is inhabited by Bhils, Mairs, and Chinns,
+all very much alike.” The breed is small-boned, dark, and silent, and
+the stupidest of them are good shots. John Chinn the Second was rather
+clever, but as the eldest son he entered the army, according to Chinn
+tradition. His duty was to abide in his father’s regiment for the term
+of his natural life, though the corps was one which most men would have
+paid heavily to avoid. They were irregulars, small, dark, and blackish,
+clothed in rifle-green with black-leather trimmings; and friends called
+them the “Wuddars,” which means a race of low-caste people who dig up
+rats to eat. But the Wuddars did not resent it. They were the only
+Wuddars, and their points of pride were these:
+
+Firstly, they had fewer English officers than any native regiment.
+Secondly, their subalterns were not mounted on parade, as is the
+general rule, but walked at the head of their men. A man who can hold
+his own with the Wuddars at their quickstep must be sound in wind and
+limb. Thirdly, they were the most _pukka shikarries_ (out-and-out
+hunters) in all India. Fourthly-up to one-hundredthly—they were the
+Wuddars—Chinn’s Irregular Bhil Levies of the old days, but now,
+henceforward and for ever, the Wuddars.
+
+No Englishman entered their mess except for love or through family
+usage. The officers talked to their soldiers in a tongue not two
+hundred white folk in India understood; and the men were their
+children, all drawn from the Bhils, who are, perhaps, the strangest of
+the many strange races in India. They were, and at heart are, wild men,
+furtive, shy, full of untold superstitions. The races whom we call
+natives of the country found the Bhil in possession of the land when
+they first broke into that part of the world thousands of years ago.
+The books call them Pre-Aryan, Aboriginal, Dravidian, and so forth;
+and, in other words, that is what the Bhils call themselves. When a
+Rajput chief whose bards can sing his pedigree backwards for twelve
+hundred years is set on the throne, his investiture is not complete
+till he has been marked on the forehead with blood from the veins of a
+Bhil. The Rajputs say the ceremony has no meaning, but the Bhil knows
+that it is the last, last shadow of his old rights as the long-ago
+owner of the soil.
+
+Centuries of oppression and massacre made the Bhil a cruel and
+half-crazy thief and cattle-stealer, and when the English came he
+seemed to be almost as open to civilisation as the tigers of his own
+jungles. But John Chinn the First, father of Lionel, grandfather of our
+John, went into his country, lived with him, learned his language, shot
+the deer that stole his poor crops, and won his confidence, so that
+some Bhils learned to plough and sow, while others were coaxed into the
+Company’s service to police their friends.
+
+When they understood that standing in line did not mean instant
+execution, they accepted soldiering as a cumbrous but amusing kind of
+sport, and were zealous to keep the wild Bhils under control. That was
+the thin edge of the wedge. John Chinn the First gave them written
+promises that, if they were good from a certain date, the Government
+would overlook previous offences; and since John Chinn was never known
+to break his word—he promised once to hang a Bhil locally esteemed
+invulnerable, and hanged him in front of his tribe for seven proved
+murders—the Bhils settled down as steadily as they knew how. It was
+slow, unseen work, of the sort that is being done all over India
+to-day; and though John Chinn’s only reward came, as I have said, in
+the shape of a grave at Government expense, the little people of the
+hills never forgot him.
+
+Colonel Lionel Chinn knew and loved them, too, and they were very
+fairly civilised, for Bhils, before his service ended. Many of them
+could hardly be distinguished from low-caste Hindoo farmers; but in the
+south, where John Chinn the First was buried, the wildest still clung
+to the Satpura ranges, cherishing a legend that some day Jan Chinn, as
+they called him, would return to his own. In the mean time they
+mistrusted the white man and his ways. The least excitement would
+stampede them, plundering, at random, and now and then killing; but if
+they were handled discreetly they grieved like children, and promised
+never to do it again.
+
+The Bhils of the regiment—the uniformed men—were virtuous in many ways,
+but they needed humouring. They felt bored and homesick unless taken
+after tiger as beaters; and their cold-blooded daring—all Wuddars shoot
+tigers on foot: it is their caste-mark—made even the officers wonder.
+They would follow up a wounded tiger as unconcernedly as though it were
+a sparrow with a broken wing; and this through a country full of caves
+and rifts and pits, where a wild beast could hold a dozen men at his
+mercy. Now and then some little man was brought to barracks with his
+head smashed in or his ribs torn away; but his companions never learned
+caution; they contented themselves with settling the tiger.
+
+Young John Chinn was decanted at the verandah of the Wuddars’ lonely
+mess-house from the back seat of a two-wheeled cart, his gun-cases
+cascading all round him. The slender little, hookey-nosed boy looked
+forlorn as a strayed goat when he slapped the white dust off his knees,
+and the cart jolted down the glaring road. But in his heart he was
+contented. After all, this was the place where he had been born, and
+things were not much changed since he had been sent to England, a
+child, fifteen years ago.
+
+There were a few new buildings, but the air and the smell and the
+sunshine were the same; and the little green men who crossed the
+parade-ground looked very familiar. Three weeks ago John Chinn would
+have said he did not remember a word of the Bhil tongue, but at the
+mess door he found his lips moving in sentences that he did not
+understand—bits of old nursery rhymes, and tail-ends of such orders as
+his father used to give the men.
+
+The Colonel watched him come up the steps, and laughed.
+
+“Look!” he said to the Major. “No need to ask the young un’s breed.
+He’s a _pukka_ Chinn. Might be his father in the Fifties over again.”
+
+“Hope he’ll shoot as straight,” said the Major. “He’s brought enough
+ironmongery with him.”
+
+“Wouldn’t be a Chinn if he didn’t. Watch him blowin’ his nose. Regular
+Chinn beak. Flourishes his handkerchief like his father. It’s the
+second edition—line for line.”
+
+“Fairy tale, by Jove!” said the Major, peering through the slats of the
+jalousies. “If he’s the lawful heir, he’ll.... Now old Chinn could no
+more pass that chick without fiddling with it than....”
+
+“His son!” said the Colonel, jumping up.
+
+“Well, I be blowed!” said the Major. The boy’s eye had been caught by a
+split-reed screen that hung on a slew between the veranda pillars, and,
+mechanically, he had tweaked the edge to set it level. Old Chinn had
+sworn three times a day at that screen for many years; he could never
+get it to his satisfaction.
+
+His son entered the anteroom in the middle of a fivefold silence. They
+made him welcome for his father’s sake and, as they took stock of him,
+for his own. He was ridiculously like the portrait of the Colonel on
+the wall, and when he had washed a little of the dust from his throat
+he went to his quarters with the old man’s short, noiseless
+jungle-step.
+
+“So much for heredity,” said the Major. “That comes of four generations
+among the Bhils.”
+
+“And the men know it,” said a Wing officer. “They’ve been waiting for
+this youth with their tongues hanging out. I am persuaded that, unless
+he absolutely beats ’em over the head, they’ll lie down by companies
+and worship him.”
+
+“Nothin’ like havin’ a father before you,” said the Major. “I’m a
+parvenu with my chaps. I’ve only been twenty years in the regiment, and
+my revered parent he was a simple squire. There’s no getting at the
+bottom of a Bhil’s mind. Now, _why_ is the superior bearer that young
+Chinn brought with him fleeing across country with his bundle?” He
+stepped into the verandah, and shouted after the man—a typical
+new-joined subaltern’s servant who speaks English and cheats in
+proportion.
+
+“What is it?” he called.
+
+“Plenty bad man here. I going, sar,” was the reply. “Have taken Sahib’s
+keys, and say will shoot.”
+
+“Doocid lucid—doocid convincin’. How those up-country thieves can leg
+it! He has been badly frightened by some one.” The Major strolled to
+his quarters to dress for mess.
+
+Young Chinn, walking like a man in a dream, had fetched a compass round
+the entire cantonment before going to his own tiny cottage. The
+captain’s quarters, in which he had been born, delayed him for a
+little; then he looked at the well on the parade-ground, where he had
+sat of evenings with his nurse, and at the ten-by-fourteen church,
+where the officers went to service if a chaplain of any official creed
+happened to come along. It seemed very small as compared with the
+gigantic buildings he used to stare up at, but it was the same place.
+
+From time to time he passed a knot of silent soldiers, who saluted.
+They might have been the very men who had carried him on their backs
+when he was in his first knickerbockers. A faint light burned in his
+room, and, as he entered, hands clasped his feet, and a voice murmured
+from the floor.
+
+“Who is it?” said young Chinn, not knowing he spoke in the Bhil tongue.
+
+“I bore you in my arms, Sahib, when I was a strong man and you were a
+small one—crying, crying, crying! I am your servant, as I was your
+father’s before you. We are all your servants.”
+
+Young Chinn could not trust himself to reply, and the voice went on:
+
+“I have taken your keys from that fat foreigner, and sent him away; and
+the studs are in the shirt for mess. Who should know, if I do not know?
+And so the baby has become a man, and forgets his nurse; but my nephew
+shall make a good servant, or I will beat him twice a day.”
+
+Then there rose up, with a rattle, as straight as a Bhil arrow, a
+little white-haired wizened ape of a man, with medals and orders on his
+tunic, stammering, saluting, and trembling. Behind him a young and wiry
+Bhil, in uniform, was taking the trees out of Chinn’s mess-boots.
+
+Chinn’s eyes were full of tears. The old man held out his keys.
+
+“Foreigners are bad people. He will never come back again. We are all
+servants of your father’s son. Has the Sahib forgotten who took him to
+see the trapped tiger in the village across the river, when his mother
+was so frightened and he was so brave?”
+
+The scene came back to Chinn in great magic-lantern flashes. “Bukta!”
+he cried; and all in a breath: “You promised nothing should hurt me.
+_Is_ it Bukta?”
+
+The man was at his feet a second time. “He has not forgotten. He
+remembers his own people as his father remembered. Now can I die. But
+first I will live and show the Sahib how to kill tigers. That _that_
+yonder is my nephew. If he is not a good servant, beat him and send him
+to me, and I will surely kill him, for now the Sahib is with his own
+people. Ai, Jan _baba_—Jan _baba!_ My Jan _baba!_ I will stay here and
+see that this does his work well. Take off his boots, fool. Sit down
+upon the bed, Sahib, and let me look. It _is_ Jan _baba_.”
+
+He pushed forward the hilt of his sword as a sign of service, which is
+an honour paid only to viceroys, governors, generals, or to little
+children whom one loves dearly. Chinn touched the hilt mechanically
+with three fingers, muttering he knew not what. It happened to be the
+old answer of his childhood, when Bukta in jest called him the little
+General Sahib.
+
+The Major’s quarters were opposite Chinn’s, and when he heard his
+servant gasp with surprise he looked across the room. Then the Major
+sat on the bed and whistled; for the spectacle of the senior native
+commissioned officer of the regiment, an “unmixed” Bhil, a Companion of
+the Order of British India, with thirty-five years’ spotless service in
+the army, and a rank among his own people superior to that of many
+Bengal princelings, valeting the last-joined subaltern, was a little
+too much for his nerves.
+
+The throaty bugles blew the Mess-call that has a long legend behind it.
+First a few piercing notes like the shrieks of beaters in a far-away
+cover, and next, large, full, and smooth, the refrain of the wild song:
+“And oh, and oh, the green pulse of Mundore—Mundore!”
+
+“All little children were in bed when the Sahib heard that call last,”
+said Bukta, passing Chinn a clean handkerchief. The call brought back
+memories of his cot under the mosquito-netting, his mother’s kiss, and
+the sound of footsteps growing fainter as he dropped asleep among his
+men. So he hooked the dark collar of his new mess-jacket, and went to
+dinner like a prince who has newly inherited his father’s crown.
+
+Old Bukta swaggered forth curling his whiskers. He knew his own value,
+and no money and no rank within the gift of the Government would have
+induced him to put studs in young officers’ shirts, or to hand them
+clean ties. Yet, when he took off his uniform that night, and squatted
+among his fellows for a quiet smoke, he told them what he had done, and
+they said that he was entirely right. Thereat Bukta propounded a theory
+which to a white mind would have seemed raving insanity; but the
+whispering, level-headed little men of war considered it from every
+point of view, and thought that there might be a great deal in it.
+
+At mess under the oil-lamps the talk turned as usual to the unfailing
+subject of _shikar_—big game-shooting of every kind and under all sorts
+of conditions. Young Chinn opened his eyes when he understood that each
+one of his companions had shot several tigers in the Wuddar style—on
+foot, that is—making no more of the business than if the brute had been
+a dog.
+
+“In nine cases out of ten,” said the Major, “a tiger is almost as
+dangerous as a porcupine. But the tenth time you come home feet first.”
+
+That set all talking, and long before midnight Chinn’s brain was in a
+whirl with stories of tigers—man-eaters and cattle-killers each
+pursuing his own business as methodically as clerks in an office; new
+tigers that had lately come into such-and-such a district; and old,
+friendly beasts of great cunning, known by nicknames in the mess—such
+as “Puggy,” who was lazy, with huge paws, and “Mrs. Malaprop,” who
+turned up when you never expected her, and made female noises. Then
+they spoke of Bhil superstitions, a wide and picturesque field, till
+young Chinn hinted that they must be pulling his leg.
+
+“’Deed, we aren’t,” said a man on his left. “We know all about you.
+You’re a Chinn and all that, and you’ve a sort of vested right here;
+but if you don’t believe what we’re telling you, what will you do when
+old Bukta begins his stories? He knows about ghost-tigers, and tigers
+that go to a hell of their own; and tigers that walk on their hind
+feet; and your grandpapa’s riding-tiger, as well. Odd he hasn’t spoken
+of that yet.”
+
+“You know you’ve an ancestor buried down Satpura way, don’t you?” said
+the Major, as Chinn smiled irresolutely.
+
+“Of course I do,” said Chinn, who had the chronicle of the Book of
+Chinn by heart. It lies in a worn old ledger on the Chinese lacquer
+table behind the piano in the Devonshire home, and the children are
+allowed to look at it on Sundays.
+
+“Well, I wasn’t sure. Your revered ancestor, my boy, according to the
+Bhils, has a tiger of his own—a saddle-tiger that he rides round the
+country whenever he feels inclined. _I_ don’t call it decent in an
+ex-Collector’s ghost; but that is what the Southern Bhils believe. Even
+our men, who might be called moderately cool, don’t care to beat that
+country if they hear that Jan Chinn is running about on his tiger. It
+is supposed to be a clouded animal—not stripy, but blotchy, like a
+tortoise-shell tom-cat. No end of a brute, it is, and a sure sign of
+war or pestilence or—or something. There’s a nice family legend for
+you.”
+
+“What’s the origin of it, d’ you suppose?” said Chinn.
+
+“Ask the Satpura Bhils. Old Jan Chinn was a mighty hunter before the
+Lord. Perhaps it was the tiger’s revenge, or perhaps he’s huntin’ ’em
+still. You must go to his tomb one of these days and inquire. Bukta
+will probably attend to that. He was asking me before you came whether
+by any ill-luck you had already bagged your tiger. If not, he is going
+to enter you under his own wing. Of course, for you of all men it’s
+imperative. You’ll have a first-class time with Bukta.”
+
+The Major was not wrong. Bukta kept an anxious eye on young Chinn at
+drill, and it was noticeable that the first time the new officer lifted
+up his voice in an order the whole line quivered. Even the Colonel was
+taken aback, for it might have been Lionel Chinn returned from
+Devonshire with a new lease of life. Bukta had continued to develop his
+peculiar theory among his intimates, and it was accepted as a matter of
+faith in the lines, since every word and gesture on young Chinn’s part
+so confirmed it.
+
+The old man arranged early that his darling should wipe out the
+reproach of not having shot a tiger; but he was not content to take the
+first or any beast that happened to arrive. In his own villages he
+dispensed the high, low, and middle justice, and when his people—naked
+and fluttered—came to him with word of a beast marked down, he bade
+them send spies to the kills and the watering-places, that he might be
+sure the quarry was such an one as suited the dignity of such a man.
+
+Three or four times the reckless trackers returned, most truthfully
+saying that the beast was mangy, undersized—a tigress worn with
+nursing, or a broken-toothed old male—and Bukta would curb young
+Chinn’s impatience.
+
+At last, a noble animal was marked down—a ten-foot cattle-killer with a
+huge roll of loose skin along the belly, glossy-hided, full-frilled
+about the neck, whiskered, frisky, and young. He had slain a man in
+pure sport, they said.
+
+“Let him be fed,” quoth Bukta, and the villagers dutifully drove out a
+cow to amuse him, that he might lie up near by.
+
+Princes and potentates have taken ship to India and spent great moneys
+for the mere glimpse of beasts one-half as fine as this of Bukta’s.
+
+“It is not good,” said he to the Colonel, when he asked for
+shooting-leave, “that my Colonel’s son who may be—that my Colonel’s son
+should lose his maidenhead on any small jungle beast. That may come
+after. I have waited long for this which is a tiger. He has come in
+from the Mair country. In seven days we will return with the skin.”
+
+The mess gnashed their teeth enviously. Bukta, had he chosen, might
+have invited them all. But he went out alone with Chinn, two days in a
+shooting-cart and a day on foot, till they came to a rocky, glary
+valley with a pool of good water in it. It was a parching day, and the
+boy very naturally stripped and went in for a bathe, leaving Bukta by
+the clothes. A white skin shows far against brown jungle, and what
+Bukta beheld on Chinn’s back and right shoulder dragged him forward
+step by step with staring eyeballs.
+
+“I’d forgotten it isn’t decent to strip before a man of his position,”
+said Chinn, flouncing in the water. “How the little devil stares! What
+is it, Bukta?” “The Mark!” was the whispered answer.
+
+“It is nothing. You know how it is with my people!” Chinn was annoyed.
+The dull-red birth-mark on his shoulder, something like a
+conventionalised Tartar cloud, had slipped his memory or he would not
+have bathed. It occurred, so they said at home, in alternate
+generations, appearing, curiously enough, eight or nine years after
+birth, and, save that it was part of the Chinn inheritance, would not
+be considered pretty. He hurried ashore, dressed again, and went on
+till they met two or three Bhils, who promptly fell on their faces. “My
+people,” grunted Bukta, not condescending to notice them. “And so your
+people, Sahib. When I was a young man we were fewer, but not so weak.
+Now we are many, but poor stock. As may be remembered. How will you
+shoot him, Sahib? From a tree; from a shelter which my people shall
+build; by day or by night?”
+
+“On foot and in the daytime,” said young Chinn.
+
+“That was your custom, as I have heard,” said Bukta to himself. “I will
+get news of him. Then you and I will go to him. I will carry one gun.
+You have yours. There is no need of more. What tiger shall stand
+against _thee?_”
+
+He was marked down by a little water-hole at the head of a ravine,
+full-gorged and half asleep in the May sunlight. He was walked up like
+a partridge, and he turned to do battle for his life. Bukta made no
+motion to raise his rifle, but kept his eyes on Chinn, who met the
+shattering roar of the charge with a single shot—it seemed to him hours
+as he sighted—which tore through the throat, smashing the backbone
+below the neck and between the shoulders. The brute couched, choked,
+and fell, and before Chinn knew well what had happened Bukta bade him
+stay still while he paced the distance between his feet and the ringing
+jaws.
+
+“Fifteen,” said Bukta. “Short paces. No need for a second shot, Sahib.
+He bleeds cleanly where he lies, and we need not spoil the skin. I said
+there would be no need of these, but they came—in case.”
+
+Suddenly the sides of the ravine were crowned with the heads of Bukta’s
+people—a force that could have blown the ribs out of the beast had
+Chinn’s shot failed; but their guns were hidden, and they appeared as
+interested beaters, some five or six waiting the word to skin. Bukta
+watched the life fade from the wild eyes, lifted one hand, and turned
+on his heel.
+
+“No need to show that _we_ care,” said he. “Now, after this, we can
+kill what we choose. Put out your hand, Sahib.”
+
+Chinn obeyed. It was entirely steady, and Bukta nodded. “That also was
+your custom. My men skin quickly. They will carry the skin to
+cantonments. Will the Sahib come to my poor village for the night and,
+perhaps, forget that I am his officer?”
+
+“But those men—the beaters. They have worked hard, and perhaps—”
+
+“Oh, if they skin clumsily, we will skin them. They are my people. In
+the lines I am one thing. Here I am another.”
+
+This was very true. When Bukta doffed uniform and reverted to the
+fragmentary dress of his own people, he left his civilisation of drill
+in the next world. That night, after a little talk with his subjects,
+he devoted to an orgie; and a Bhil orgie is a thing not to be safely
+written about. Chinn, flushed with triumph, was in the thick of it, but
+the meaning of the mysteries was hidden. Wild folk came and pressed
+about his knees with offerings. He gave his flask to the elders of the
+village. They grew eloquent, and wreathed him about with flowers. Gifts
+and loans, not all seemly, were thrust upon him, and infernal music
+rolled and maddened round red fires, while singers sang songs of the
+ancient times, and danced peculiar dances. The aboriginal liquors are
+very potent, and Chinn was compelled to taste them often, but, unless
+the stuff had been drugged, how came he to fall asleep suddenly, and to
+waken late the next day—half a march from the village?
+
+“The Sahib was very tired. A little before dawn he went to sleep,”
+Bukta explained. “My people carried him here, and now it is time we
+should go back to cantonments.”
+
+The voice, smooth and deferential, the step, steady and silent, made it
+hard to believe that only a few hours before Bukta was yelling and
+capering with naked fellow-devils of the scrub.
+
+“My people were very pleased to see the Sahib. They will never forget.
+When next the Sahib goes out recruiting, he will go to my people, and
+they will give him as many men as we need.”
+
+Chinn kept his own counsel, except as to the shooting of the tiger, and
+Bukta embroidered that tale with a shameless tongue. The skin was
+certainly one of the finest ever hung up in the mess, and the first of
+many. When Bukta could not accompany his boy on shooting-trips, he took
+care to put him in good hands, and Chinn learned more of the mind and
+desire of the wild Bhil in his marches and campings, by talks at
+twilight or at wayside pools, than an uninstructed man could have come
+at in a lifetime.
+
+Presently his men in the regiment grew bold to speak of their
+relatives—mostly in trouble—and to lay cases of tribal custom before
+him. They would say, squatting in his verandah at twilight, after the
+easy, confidential style of the Wuddars, that such-and-such a bachelor
+had run away with such-and-such a wife at a far-off village. Now, how
+many cows would Chinn Sahib consider a just fine? Or, again, if written
+order came from the Government that a Bhil was to repair to a walled
+city of the plains to give evidence in a law-court, would it be wise to
+disregard that order? On the other hand, if it were obeyed, would the
+rash voyager return alive?
+
+“But what have I to do with these things?” Chinn demanded of Bukta,
+impatiently. “I am a soldier. I do not know the law.”
+
+“Hoo! Law is for fools and white men. Give them a large and loud order,
+and they will abide by it. Thou art their law.”
+
+“But wherefore?”
+
+Every trace of expression left Bukta’s countenance. The idea might have
+smitten him for the first time. “How can I say?” he replied. “Perhaps
+it is on account of the name. A Bhil does not love strange things. Give
+them orders, Sahib—two, three, four words at a time such as they can
+carry away in their heads. That is enough.”
+
+Chinn gave orders then, valiantly, not realising that a word spoken in
+haste before mess became the dread unappealable law of villages beyond
+the smoky hills was, in truth, no less than the Law of Jan Chinn the
+First, who, so the whispered legend ran, had come back to earth, to
+oversee the third generation, in the body and bones of his grandson.
+
+There could be no sort of doubt in this matter. All the Bhils knew that
+Jan Chinn reincarnated had honoured Bukta’s village with his presence
+after slaying his first—in this life—tiger; that he had eaten and drunk
+with the people, as he was used; and—Bukta must have drugged Chinn’s
+liquor very deeply—upon his back and right shoulder all men had seen
+the same angry red Flying Cloud that the high Gods had set on the flesh
+of Jan Chinn the First when first he came to the Bhil. As concerned the
+foolish white world which has no eyes, he was a slim and young officer
+in the Wuddars; but his own people knew he was Jan Chinn, who had made
+the Bhil a man; and, believing, they hastened to carry his words,
+careful never to alter them on the way.
+
+Because the savage and the child who plays lonely games have one horror
+of being laughed at or questioned, the little folk kept their
+convictions to themselves; and the Colonel, who thought he knew his
+regiment, never guessed that each one of the six hundred quick-footed,
+beady-eyed rank-and-file, to attention beside their rifles, believed
+serenely and unshakenly that the subaltern on the left flank of the
+line was a demi-god twice born—tutelary deity of their land and people.
+The Earth-gods themselves had stamped the incarnation, and who would
+dare to doubt the handiwork of the Earth-gods?
+
+Chinn, being practical above all things, saw that his family name
+served him well in the lines and in camp. His men gave no trouble—one
+does not commit regimental offences with a god in the chair of
+justice—and he was sure of the best beaters in the district when he
+needed them. They believed that the protection of Jan Chinn the First
+cloaked them, and were bold in that belief beyond the utmost daring of
+excited Bhils.
+
+His quarters began to look like an amateur natural-history museum, in
+spite of duplicate heads and horns and skulls that he sent home to
+Devonshire. The people, very humanly, learned the weak side of their
+god. It is true he was unbribable, but bird-skins, butterflies,
+beetles, and, above all, news of big game pleased him. In other
+respects, too, he lived up to the Chinn tradition. He was fever-proof.
+A night’s sitting out over a tethered goat in a damp valley, that would
+have filled the Major with a month’s malaria, had no effect on him. He
+was, as they said, “salted before he was born.”
+
+Now in the autumn of his second year’s service an uneasy rumour crept
+out of the earth and ran about among the Bhils. Chinn heard nothing of
+it till a brother-officer said across the mess-table: “Your revered
+ancestor’s on the rampage in the Satpura country. You’d better look him
+up.”
+
+“I don’t want to be disrespectful, but I’m a little sick of my revered
+ancestor. Bukta talks of nothing else. What’s the old boy supposed to
+be doing now?”
+
+“Riding cross-country by moonlight on his processional tiger. That’s
+the story. He’s been seen by about two thousand Bhils, skipping along
+the tops of the Satpuras, and scaring people to death. They believe it
+devoutly, and all the Satpura chaps are worshipping away at his
+shrine—tomb, I mean—like good ’uns. You really ought to go down there.
+Must be a queer thing to see your grandfather treated as a god.”
+
+“What makes you think there’s any truth in the tale?” said Chinn.
+
+“Because all our men deny it. They say they’ve never heard of Chinn’s
+tiger. Now that’s a manifest lie, because every Bhil _has_.”
+
+“There’s only one thing you’ve overlooked,” said the Colonel,
+thoughtfully. “When a local god reappears on earth, it’s always an
+excuse for trouble of some kind; and those Satpura Bhils are about as
+wild as your grandfather left them, young ’un. It means something.”
+
+“Meanin’ they may go on the war-path?” said Chinn.
+
+“Can’t say—as yet. Shouldn’t be surprised a little bit.”
+
+“I haven’t been told a syllable.”
+
+“Proves it all the more. They are keeping something back.”
+
+“Bukta tells me everything, too, as a rule. Now, why didn’t he tell me
+that?”
+
+Chinn put the question directly to the old man that night, and the
+answer surprised him.
+
+“Why should I tell what is well known? Yes, the Clouded Tiger is out in
+the Satpura country.”
+
+“What do the wild Bhils think that it means?”
+
+“They do not know. They wait. Sahib, what _is_ coming? Say only one
+little word, and we will be content.”
+
+“We? What have tales from the south, where the jungly Bhils live, to do
+with drilled men?”
+
+“When Jan Chinn wakes is no time for any Bhil to be quiet.”
+
+“But he has not waked, Bukta.”
+
+“Sahib”—the old man’s eyes were full of tender reproof—“if he does not
+wish to be seen, why does he go abroad in the moonlight? We know he is
+awake, but we do not know what he desires. Is it a sign for all the
+Bhils, or one that concerns the Satpura folk alone? Say one little
+word, Sahib, that I may carry it to the lines, and send on to our
+villages. Why does Jan Chinn ride out? Who has done wrong? Is it
+pestilence? Is it murrain? Will our children die? Is it a sword?
+Remember, Sahib, we are thy people and thy servants, and in this life I
+bore thee in my arms—not knowing.”
+
+“Bukta has evidently looked on the cup this evening,” Chinn thought;
+“but if I can do anything to soothe the old chap I must. It’s like the
+Mutiny rumours on a small scale.”
+
+He dropped into a deep wicker chair, over which was thrown his first
+tiger-skin, and his weight on the cushion flapped the clawed paws over
+his shoulders. He laid hold of them mechanically as he spoke, drawing
+the painted hide, cloak-fashion, about him.
+
+“Now will I tell the truth, Bukta,” he said, leaning forward, the dried
+muzzle on his shoulder, to invent a specious lie.
+
+“I see that it is the truth,” was the answer, in a shaking voice.
+
+“Jan Chinn goes abroad among the Satpuras, riding on the Clouded Tiger,
+ye say? Be it so. Therefore the sign of the wonder is for the Satpura
+Bhils only, and does not touch the Bhils who plough in the north and
+east, the Bhils of the Khandesh, or any others, except the Satpura
+Bhils, who, as we know, are wild and foolish.”
+
+“It is, then, a sign for _them_. Good or bad?”
+
+“Beyond doubt, good. For why should Jan Chinn make evil to those whom
+he has made men? The nights over yonder are hot; it is ill to lie in
+one bed over-long without turning, and Jan Chinn would look again upon
+his people. So he rises, whistles his Clouded Tiger, and goes abroad a
+little to breathe the cool air. If the Satpura Bhils kept to their
+villages, and did not wander after dark, they would not see him.
+Indeed, Bukta, it is no more than that he would see the light again in
+his own country. Send this news south, and say that it is my word.”
+
+Bukta bowed to the floor. “Good Heavens!” thought Chinn, “and this
+blinking pagan is a first-class officer, and as straight as a die! I
+may as well round it off neatly.” He went on:
+
+“If the Satpura Bhils ask the meaning of the sign, tell them that Jan
+Chinn would see how they kept their old promises of good living.
+Perhaps they have plundered; perhaps they mean to disobey the orders of
+the Government; perhaps there is a dead man in the jungle; and so Jan
+Chinn has come to see.”
+
+“Is he, then, angry?”
+
+“Bah! Am _I_ ever angry with my Bhils? I say angry words, and threaten
+many things. _Thou_ knowest, Bukta. I have seen thee smile behind the
+hand. I know, and thou knowest. The Bhils are my children. I have said
+it many times.”
+
+“Ay. We be thy children,” said Bukta.
+
+“And no otherwise is it with Jan Chinn, my father’s father. He would
+see the land he loved and the people once again. It is a good ghost,
+Bukta. I say it. Go and tell them. And I do hope devoutly,” he added,
+“that it will calm ’em down.” Flinging back the tiger-skin, he rose
+with a long, unguarded yawn that showed his well-kept teeth.
+
+Bukta fled, to be received in the lines by a knot of panting inquirers.
+
+“It is true,” said Bukta. “He wrapped himself in the skin, and spoke
+from it. He would see his own country again. The sign is not for us;
+and, indeed, he is a young man. How should he lie idle of nights? He
+says his bed is too hot and the air is bad. He goes to and fro for the
+love of night-running. He has said it.”
+
+The grey-whiskered assembly shuddered.
+
+“He says the Bhils are his children. Ye know he does not lie. He has
+said it to me.”
+
+“But what of the Satpura Bhils? What means the sign for them?”
+
+“Nothing. It is only night-running, as I have said. He rides to see if
+they obey the Government, as he taught them to do in his first life.”
+
+“And what if they do not?”
+
+“He did not say.”
+
+The light went out in Chinn’s quarters.
+
+“Look,” said Bukta. “Now he goes away. None the less it is a good
+ghost, as he has said. How shall we fear Jan Chinn, who made the Bhil a
+man? His protection is on us; and ye know Jan Chinn never broke a
+protection spoken or written on paper. When he is older and has found
+him a wife he will lie in his bed till morning.”
+
+A commanding officer is generally aware of the regimental state of mind
+a little before the men; and this is why the Colonel said, a few days
+later, that some one had been putting the Fear of God into the Wuddars.
+As he was the only person officially entitled to do this, it distressed
+him to see such unanimous virtue. “It’s too good to last,” he said. “I
+only wish I could find out what the little chaps mean.”
+
+The explanation, as it seemed to him, came at the change of the moon,
+when he received orders to hold himself in readiness to “allay any
+possible excitement” among the Satpura Bhils, who were, to put it
+mildly, uneasy because a paternal Government had sent up against them a
+Mahratta State-educated vaccinator, with lancets, lymph, and an
+officially registered calf. In the language of State, they had
+“manifested a strong objection to all prophylactic measures,” had
+“forcibly detained the vaccinator,” and “were on the point of
+neglecting or evading their tribal obligations.”
+
+“That means they are in a blue funk—same as they were at census-time,”
+said the Colonel; “and if we stampede them into the hills we’ll never
+catch ’em, in the first place, and, in the second, they’ll whoop off
+plundering till further orders. Wonder who the God-forsaken idiot is
+who is trying to vaccinate a Bhil. I knew trouble was coming. One good
+thing is that they’ll only use local corps, and we can knock up
+something we’ll call a campaign, and let them down easy. Fancy us
+potting our best beaters because they don’t want to be vaccinated!
+They’re only crazy with fear.”
+
+“Don’t you think, sir,” said Chinn, the next day, “that perhaps you
+could give me a fortnight’s shooting-leave?”
+
+“Desertion in the face of the enemy, by Jove!” The Colonel laughed. “I
+might, but I’d have to antedate it a little, because we’re warned for
+service, as you might say. However, we’ll assume that you applied for
+leave three days ago, and are now well on your way south.”
+
+“I’d like to take Bukta with me.”
+
+“Of course, yes. I think that will be the best plan. You’ve some kind
+of hereditary influence with the little chaps, and they may listen to
+you when a glimpse of our uniforms would drive them wild. You’ve never
+been in that part of the world before, have you? Take care they don’t
+send you to your family vault in your youth and innocence. I believe
+you’ll be all right if you can get ’em to listen to you.”
+
+“I think so, sir; but if—if they should accidentally put an—make asses
+of ’emselves—they might, you know—I hope you’ll represent that they
+were only frightened. There isn’t an ounce of real vice in ’em, and I
+should never forgive myself if any one of—of my name got them into
+trouble.”
+
+The Colonel nodded, but said nothing.
+
+Chinn and Bukta departed at once. Bukta did not say that, ever since
+the official vaccinator had been dragged into the hills by indignant
+Bhils, runner after runner had skulked up to the lines, entreating,
+with forehead in the dust, that Jan Chinn should come and explain this
+unknown horror that hung over his people.
+
+The portent of the Clouded Tiger was now too clear. Let Jan Chinn
+comfort his own, for vain was the help of mortal man. Bukta toned down
+these beseechings to a simple request for Chinn’s presence. Nothing
+would have pleased the old man better than a rough-and-tumble campaign
+against the Satpuras, whom he, as an “unmixed” Bhil, despised; but he
+had a duty to all his nation as Jan Chinn’s interpreter; and he
+devoutly believed that forty plagues would fall on his village if he
+tampered with that obligation. Besides, Jan Chinn knew all things, and
+he rode the Clouded Tiger.
+
+They covered thirty miles a day on foot and pony, raising the blue
+wall-like line of the Satpuras as swiftly as might be. Bukta was very
+silent.
+
+They began the steep climb a little after noon, but it was near sunset
+ere they reached the stone platform clinging to the side of a rifted,
+jungle-covered hill, where Jan Chinn the First was laid, as he had
+desired, that he might overlook his people. All India is full of
+neglected graves that date from the beginning of the eighteenth
+century—tombs of forgotten colonels of corps long since disbanded;
+mates of East India men who went on shooting expeditions and never came
+back; factors, agents, writers, and ensigns of the Honourable the East
+India Company by hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands. English
+folk forget quickly, but natives have long memories, and if a man has
+done good in his life it is remembered after his death. The weathered
+marble four-square tomb of Jan Chinn was hung about with wild flowers
+and nuts, packets of wax and honey, bottles of native spirits, and
+infamous cigars, with buffalo horns and plumes of dried grass. At one
+end was a rude clay image of a white man, in the old-fashioned top-hat,
+riding on a bloated tiger.
+
+Bukta salamed reverently as they approached. Chinn bared his head and
+began to pick out the blurred inscription. So far as he could read it
+ran thus—word for word, and letter for letter:
+
+To the Memory of JOHN CHINN, Esq.
+Late Collector of............
+....ithout Bloodshed or ... error of Authority
+Employ . only .. eans of Conciliat ... and Confiden.
+accomplished the ...tire Subjection...
+a Lawless and Predatory Peop...
+....taching them to ... ish Government
+by a Conque.. over .... Minds
+The most perma... and rational Mode of Domini..
+...Governor General and Counc ... engal
+have ordered thi ..... erected
+....arted this Life Aug. 19, 184. Ag...
+
+
+On the other side of the grave were ancient verses, also very worn. As
+much as Chinn could decipher said:
+
+.... the savage band
+Forsook their Haunts and b..... is Command
+....mended .. rals check a ...st for spoil.
+And . s . ing Hamlets prove his gene.... toil.
+Humanit ... survey ......ights restor..
+A Nation ..ield .. subdued without a Sword.
+
+
+For some little time he leaned on the tomb thinking of this dead man of
+his own blood, and of the house in Devonshire; then, nodding to the
+plains: “Yes; it’s a big work—all of it—even my little share. He must
+have been worth knowing.... Bukta, where are my people?”
+
+“Not here, Sahib. No man comes here except in full sun. They wait
+above. Let us climb and see.”
+
+But Chinn, remembering the first law of Oriental diplomacy, in an even
+voice answered: “I have come this far only because the Satpura folk are
+foolish, and dared not visit our lines. Now bid them wait on me _here_.
+I am not a servant, but the master of Bhils.”
+
+“I go—I go,” clucked the old man. Night was falling, and at any moment
+Jan Chinn might whistle up his dreaded steed from the darkening scrub.
+
+Now for the first time in a long life Bukta disobeyed a lawful command
+and deserted his leader; for he did not come back, but pressed to the
+flat table-top of the hill, and called softly. Men stirred all about
+him—little trembling men with bows and arrows who had watched the two
+since noon.
+
+“Where is he?” whispered one.
+
+“At his own place. He bids you come,” said Bukta.
+
+“Now?”
+
+“Now.”
+
+“Rather let him loose the Clouded Tiger upon us. We do not go.”
+
+“Nor I, though I bore him in my arms when he was a child in this his
+life. Wait here till the day.”
+
+“But surely he will be angry.”
+
+“He will be very angry, for he has nothing to eat. But he has said to
+me many times that the Bhils are his children. By sunlight I believe
+this, but—by moonlight I am not so sure. What folly have ye Satpura
+pigs compassed that ye should need him at all?”
+
+“One came to us in the name of the Government with little ghost-knives
+and a magic calf, meaning to turn us into cattle by the cutting off of
+our arms. We were greatly afraid, but we did not kill the man. He is
+here, bound—a black man; and we think he comes from the west. He said
+it was an order to cut us all with knives—especially the women and the
+children. We did not hear that it was an order, so we were afraid, and
+kept to our hills. Some of our men have taken ponies and bullocks from
+the plains, and others pots and cloths and ear-rings.”
+
+“Are any slain?”
+
+“By our men? Not yet. But the young men are blown to and fro by many
+rumours like flames upon a hill. I sent runners asking for Jan Chinn
+lest worse should come to us. It was this fear that he foretold by the
+sign of the Clouded Tiger.”
+
+“He says it is otherwise,” said Bukta; and he repeated, with
+amplifications, all that young Chinn had told him at the conference of
+the wicker chair.
+
+“Think you,” said the questioner, at last, “that the Government will
+lay hands on us?”
+
+“Not I,” Bukta rejoined. “Jan Chinn will give an order, and ye will
+obey. The rest is between the Government and Jan Chinn. I myself know
+something of the ghost-knives and the scratching. It is a charm against
+the Smallpox. But how it is done I cannot tell. Nor need that concern
+you.”
+
+“If he stands by us and before the anger of the Government we will most
+strictly obey Jan Chinn, except—except we do not go down to that place
+to-night.”
+
+They could hear young Chinn below them shouting for Bukta; but they
+cowered and sat still, expecting the Clouded Tiger. The tomb had been
+holy ground for nearly half a century. If Jan Chinn chose to sleep
+there, who had better right? But they would not come within eyeshot of
+the place till broad day.
+
+At first Chinn was exceedingly angry, till it occurred to him that
+Bukta most probably had a reason (which, indeed, he had), and his own
+dignity might suffer if he yelled without answer. He propped himself
+against the foot of the grave, and, alternately dozing and smoking,
+came through the warm night proud that he was a lawful, legitimate,
+fever-proof Chinn.
+
+He prepared his plan of action much as his grandfather would have done;
+and when Bukta appeared in the morning with a most liberal supply of
+food, said nothing of the overnight desertion. Bukta would have been
+relieved by an outburst of human anger; but Chinn finished his victual
+leisurely, and a cheroot, ere he made any sign.
+
+“They are very much afraid,” said Bukta, who was not too bold himself.
+“It remains only to give orders. They said they will obey if thou wilt
+only stand between them and the Government.”
+
+“That I know,” said Chinn, strolling slowly to the table-land. A few of
+the elder men stood in an irregular semicircle in an open glade; but
+the ruck of people—women and children were hidden in the thicket. They
+had no desire to face the first anger of Jan Chinn the First.
+
+Seating himself on a fragment of split rock, he smoked his cheroot to
+the butt, hearing men breathe hard all about him. Then he cried, so
+suddenly that they jumped:
+
+“Bring the man that was bound!”
+
+A scuffle and a cry were followed by the appearance of a Hindoo
+vaccinator, quaking with fear, bound hand and foot, as the Bhils of old
+were accustomed to bind their human sacrifices. He was pushed
+cautiously before the presence; but young Chinn did not look at him.
+
+“I said—the man that _was_ bound. Is it a jest to bring me one tied
+like a buffalo? Since when could the Bhil bind folk at his pleasure?
+Cut!”
+
+Half a dozen hasty knives cut away the thongs, and the man crawled to
+Chinn, who pocketed his case of lancets and tubes of lymph. Then,
+sweeping the semicircle with one comprehensive forefinger, and in the
+voice of compliment, he said, clearly and distinctly: “Pigs!”
+
+“Ai!” whispered Bukta. “Now he speaks. Woe to foolish people!”
+
+“I have come on foot from my house” (the assembly shuddered) “to make
+clear a matter which any other Satpura Bhil would have seen with both
+eyes from a distance. Ye know the Smallpox who pits and scars your
+children so that they look like wasp-combs. It is an order of the
+Government that whoso is scratched on the arm with these little knives
+which I hold up is charmed against her. All Sahibs are thus charmed,
+and very many Hindoos. This is the mark of the charm. Look!”
+
+He rolled back his sleeve to the armpit and showed the white scars of
+the vaccination-mark on his white skin. “Come, all, and look.”
+
+A few daring spirits came up, and nodded their heads wisely. There was
+certainly a mark, and they knew well what other dread marks were hidden
+by the shirt. Merciful was Jan Chinn, that then and there proclaimed
+his godhead!
+
+“Now all these things the man whom ye bound told you.”
+
+“I did—a hundred times; but they answered with blows,” groaned the
+operator, chafing his wrists and ankles.
+
+“But, being pigs, ye did not believe; and so came I here to save you,
+first from Smallpox, next from a great folly of fear, and lastly, it
+may be, from the rope and the jail. It is no gain to me; it is no
+pleasure to me: but for the sake of that one who is yonder, who made
+the Bhil a man”—he pointed down the hill—“I, who am of his blood, the
+son of his son, come to turn your people. And I speak the truth, as did
+Jan Chinn.”
+
+The crowd murmured reverently, and men stole out of the thicket by twos
+and threes to join it. There was no anger in their god’s face.
+
+“These are my orders. (Heaven send they’ll take ’em, but I seem to have
+impressed ’em so far!) I myself will stay among you while this man
+scratches your arms with the knives, after the order of the Government.
+In three, or it may be five or seven, days, your arms will swell and
+itch and burn. That is the power of Smallpox fighting in your base
+blood against the orders of the Government. I will therefore stay among
+you till I see that Smallpox is conquered, and I will not go away till
+the men and the women and the little children show me upon their arms
+such marks as I have even now showed you. I bring with me two very good
+guns, and a man whose name is known among beasts and men. We will hunt
+together, I and he and your young men, and the others shall eat and lie
+still. This is my order.”
+
+There was a long pause while victory hung in the balance. A
+white-haired old sinner, standing on one uneasy leg, piped up:
+
+“There are ponies and some few bullocks and other things for which we
+need a _kowl_ [protection]. They were not taken in the way of trade.”
+
+The battle was won, and John Chinn drew a breath of relief. The young
+Bhils had been raiding, but if taken swiftly all could be put straight.
+
+“I will write a _kowl_ so soon as the ponies, the bullocks, and the
+other things are counted before me and sent back whence they came. But
+first we will put the Government mark on such as have not been visited
+by Smallpox.” In an undertone, to the vaccinator: “If you show you are
+afraid you’ll never see Poona again, my friend.”
+
+“There is not sufficient ample supply of vaccination for all this
+population,” said the man. “They destroyed the offeecial calf.”
+
+“They won’t know the difference. Scrape ’em and give me a couple of
+lancets; I’ll attend to the elders.”
+
+The aged diplomat who had demanded protection was the first victim. He
+fell to Chinn’s hand and dared not cry out. As soon as he was freed he
+dragged up a companion, and held him fast, and the crisis became, as it
+were, a child’s sport; for the vaccinated chased the unvaccinated to
+treatment, vowing that all the tribe must suffer equally. The women
+shrieked, and the children ran howling; but Chinn laughed, and waved
+the pink-tipped lancet.
+
+“It is an honour,” he cried. “Tell them, Bukta, how great an honour it
+is that I myself mark them. Nay, I cannot mark every one—the Hindoo
+must also do his work—but I will touch all marks that he makes, so
+there will be an equal virtue in them. Thus do the Rajputs stick pigs.
+Ho, brother with one eye! Catch that girl and bring her to me. She need
+not run away yet, for she is not married, and I do not seek her in
+marriage. She will not come? Then she shall be shamed by her little
+brother, a fat boy, a bold boy. He puts out his arm like a soldier.
+Look! _He_ does not flinch at the blood. Some day he shall be in my
+regiment. And now, mother of many, we will lightly touch thee, for
+Smallpox has been before us here. It is a true thing, indeed, that this
+charm breaks the power of Mata. There will be no more pitted faces
+among the Satpuras, and so ye can ask many cows for each maid to be
+wed.”
+
+And so on and so on—quick-poured showman’s patter, sauced in the Bhil
+hunting-proverbs and tales of their own brand of coarse humour till the
+lancets were blunted and both operators worn out.
+
+But, nature being the same the world over, the unvaccinated grew
+jealous of their marked comrades, and came near to blows about it. Then
+Chinn declared himself a court of justice, no longer a medical board,
+and made formal inquiry into the late robberies.
+
+“We are the thieves of Mahadeo,” said the Bhils, simply. “It is our
+fate, and we were frightened. When we are frightened we always steal.”
+
+Simply and directly as children, they gave in the tale of the plunder,
+all but two bullocks and some spirits that had gone amissing (these
+Chinn promised to make good out of his own pocket), and ten ringleaders
+were despatched to the lowlands with a wonderful document, written on
+the leaf of a note-book, and addressed to an Assistant District
+Superintendent of Police. There was warm calamity in that note, as Jan
+Chinn warned them, but anything was better than loss of liberty.
+
+Armed with this protection, the repentant raiders went down-hill. They
+had no desire whatever to meet Mr. Dundas Fawne of the Police, aged
+twenty-two, and of a cheerful countenance, nor did they wish to revisit
+the scene of their robberies. Steering a middle course, they ran into
+the camp of the one Government chaplain allowed to the various
+irregular corps through a district of some fifteen thousand square
+miles, and stood before him in a cloud of dust. He was by way of being
+a priest, they knew, and, what was more to the point, a good sportsman
+who paid his beaters generously.
+
+When he read Chinn’s note he laughed, which they deemed a lucky omen,
+till he called up policemen, who tethered the ponies and the bullocks
+by the piled house-gear, and laid stern hands upon three of that
+smiling band of the thieves of Mahadeo. The chaplain himself addressed
+them magisterially with a riding-whip. That was painful, but Jan Chinn
+had prophesied it. They submitted, but would not give up the written
+protection, fearing the jail. On their way back they met Mr. D. Fawne,
+who had heard about the robberies, and was not pleased.
+
+“Certainly,” said the eldest of the gang, when the second interview was
+at an end, “certainly Jan Chinn’s protection has saved us our liberty,
+but it is as though there were many beatings in one small piece of
+paper. Put it away.”
+
+One climbed into a tree, and stuck the letter into a cleft forty feet
+from the ground, where it could do no harm. Warmed, sore, but happy,
+the ten returned to Jan Chinn next day, where he sat among uneasy
+Bhils, all looking at their right arms, and all bound under terror of
+their god’s disfavour not to scratch.
+
+“It was a good _kowl_,” said the leader. “First the chaplain, who
+laughed, took away our plunder, and beat three of us, as was promised.
+Next, we meet Fawne Sahib, who frowned, and asked for the plunder. We
+spoke the truth, and so he beat us all, one after another, and called
+us chosen names. He then gave us these two bundles”—they set down a
+bottle of whisky and a box of cheroots—“and we came away. The _kowl_ is
+left in a tree, because its virtue is that so soon as we show it to a
+Sahib we are beaten.”
+
+“But for that _kowl_,” said Jan Chinn, sternly, “ye would all have been
+marching to jail with a policeman on either side. Ye come now to serve
+as beaters for me. These people are unhappy, and we will go hunting
+till they are well. To-night we will make a feast.”
+
+It is written in the chronicles of the Satpura Bhils, together with
+many other matters not fit for print, that through five days, after the
+day that he had put his mark upon them, Jan Chinn the First hunted for
+his people; and on the five nights of those days the tribe was
+gloriously and entirely drunk. Jan Chinn bought country spirits of an
+awful strength, and slew wild pig and deer beyond counting, so that if
+any fell sick they might have two good reasons.
+
+Between head- and stomach-aches they found no time to think of their
+arms, but followed Jan Chinn obediently through the jungles, and with
+each day’s returning confidence men, women, and children stole away to
+their villages as the little army passed by. They carried news that it
+was good and right to be scratched with ghost-knives; that Jan Chinn
+was indeed reincarnated as a god of free food and drink, and that of
+all nations the Satpura Bhils stood first in his favour, if they would
+only refrain from scratching. Henceforward that kindly demi-god would
+be connected in their minds with great gorgings and the vaccine and
+lancets of a paternal Government.
+
+“And to-morrow I go back to my home,” said Jan Chinn to his faithful
+few, whom neither spirits, overeating, nor swollen glands could
+conquer. It is hard for children and savages to behave reverently at
+all times to the idols of their make-belief; and they had frolicked
+excessively with Jan Chinn. But the reference to his home cast a gloom
+on the people.
+
+“And the Sahib will not come again?” said he who had been vaccinated
+first.
+
+“That is to be seen,” answered Chinn, warily.
+
+“Nay, but come as a white man—come as a young man whom we know and
+love; for, as thou alone knowest, we are a weak people. If we again saw
+thy—thy horse—” They were picking up their courage.
+
+“I have no horse. I came on foot with Bukta, yonder. What is this?”
+
+“Thou knowest—the thing that thou hast chosen for a night-horse.” The
+little men squirmed in fear and awe.
+
+“Night-horses? Bukta, what is this last tale of children?”
+
+Bukta had been a silent leader in Chinn’s presence since the night of
+his desertion, and was grateful for a chance-flung question.
+
+“They know, Sahib,” he whispered. “It is the Clouded Tiger. That that
+comes from the place where thou didst once sleep. It is thy horse—as it
+has been these three generations.”
+
+“My horse! That was a dream of the Bhils.”
+
+“It is no dream. Do dreams leave the tracks of broad pugs on earth? Why
+make two faces before thy people? They know of the night-ridings, and
+they—and they—”
+
+“Are afraid, and would have them cease.”
+
+Bukta nodded. “If thou hast no further need of him. He is thy horse.”
+
+“The thing leaves a trail, then?” said Chinn.
+
+“We have seen it. It is like a village road under the tomb.”
+
+“Can ye find and follow it for me?”
+
+“By daylight—if one comes with us, and, above all, stands near by.”
+
+“I will stand close, and we will see to it that Jan Chinn does not ride
+any more.”
+
+The Bhils shouted the last words again and again.
+
+From Chinn’s point of view the stalk was nothing more than an ordinary
+one—down-hill, through split and crannied rocks, unsafe, perhaps, if a
+man did not keep his wits by him, but no worse than twenty others he
+had undertaken. Yet his men—they refused absolutely to beat, and would
+only trail—dripped sweat at every move. They showed the marks of
+enormous pugs that ran, always down-hill, to a few hundred feet below
+Jan Chinn’s tomb, and disappeared in a narrow-mouthed cave. It was an
+insolently open road, a domestic highway, beaten without thought of
+concealment.
+
+“The beggar might be paying rent and taxes,” Chinn muttered ere he
+asked whether his friend’s taste ran to cattle or man.
+
+“Cattle,” was the answer. “Two heifers a week. We drive them for him at
+the foot of the hill. It is his custom. If we did not, he might seek
+us.”
+
+“Blackmail and piracy,” said Chinn. “I can’t say I fancy going into the
+cave after him. What’s to be done?”
+
+The Bhils fell back as Chinn lodged himself behind a rock with his
+rifle ready. Tigers, he knew, were shy beasts, but one who had been
+long cattle-fed in this sumptuous style might prove overbold.
+
+“He speaks!” some one whispered from the rear. “He knows, too.”
+
+“Well, of _all_ the infernal cheek!” said Chinn. There was an angry
+growl from the cave—a direct challenge.
+
+“Come out, then,” Chinn shouted. “Come out of that. Let’s have a look
+at you.” The brute knew well enough that there was some connection
+between brown nude Bhils and his weekly allowance; but the white helmet
+in the sunlight annoyed him, and he did not approve of the voice that
+broke his rest. Lazily as a gorged snake, he dragged himself out of the
+cave, and stood yawning and blinking at the entrance. The sunlight fell
+upon his flat right side, and Chinn wondered. Never had he seen a tiger
+marked after this fashion. Except for his head, which was staringly
+barred, he was dappled—not striped, but dappled like a child’s
+rocking-horse in rich shades of smoky black on red gold. That portion
+of his belly and throat which should have been white was orange, and
+his tail and paws were black.
+
+He looked leisurely for some ten seconds, and then deliberately lowered
+his head, his chin dropped and drawn in, staring intently at the man.
+The effect of this was to throw forward the round arch of his skull,
+with two broad bands across it, while below the bands glared the
+unwinking eyes; so that, head on, as he stood, he showed something like
+a diabolically scowling pantomime-mask. It was a piece of natural
+mesmerism that he had practised many times on his quarry, and though
+Chinn was by no means a terrified heifer, he stood for a while, held by
+the extraordinary oddity of the attack. The head—the body seemed to
+have been packed away behind it—the ferocious, skull-like head, crept
+nearer to the switching of an angry tail-tip in the grass. Left and
+right the Bhils had scattered to let John Chinn subdue his own horse.
+
+“My word!” he thought. “He’s trying to frighten me!” and fired between
+the saucer-like eyes, leaping aside upon the shot.
+
+A big coughing mass, reeking of carrion, bounded past him up the hill,
+and he followed discreetly. The tiger made no attempt to turn into the
+jungle; he was hunting for sight and breath—nose up, mouth open, the
+tremendous fore-legs scattering the gravel in spurts.
+
+“Scuppered!” said John Chinn, watching the flight. “Now if he was a
+partridge he’d tower. Lungs must be full of blood.”
+
+The brute had jerked himself over a boulder and fallen out of sight the
+other side. John Chinn looked over with a ready barrel. But the red
+trail led straight as an arrow even to his grandfather’s tomb, and
+there, among the smashed spirit-bottles and the fragments of the mud
+image, the life left, with a flurry and a grunt.
+
+“If my worthy ancestor could see that,” said John Chinn, “he’d have
+been proud of me. Eyes, lower jaw, and lungs. A very nice shot.” He
+whistled for Bukta as he drew the tape over the stiffening bulk.
+
+“Ten—six—eight—by Jove! It’s nearly eleven—call it eleven. Fore-arm,
+twenty-four—five—seven and a half. A short tail, too: three feet one.
+But _what_ a skin! Oh, Bukta! Bukta! The men with the knives swiftly.”
+
+“Is he beyond question dead?” said an awe-stricken voice behind a rock.
+
+“That was not the way I killed my first tiger,” said Chinn. “I did not
+think that Bukta would run. I had no second gun.”
+
+“It—it is the Clouded Tiger,” said Bukta, un-heeding the taunt.
+
+“He is dead.”
+
+Whether all the Bhils, vaccinated and unvaccinated, of the Satpuras had
+lain by to see the kill, Chinn could not say; but the whole hill’s
+flank rustled with little men, shouting, singing, and stamping. And
+yet, till he had made the first cut in the splendid skin, not a man
+would take a knife; and, when the shadows fell, they ran from the
+red-stained tomb, and no persuasion would bring them back till dawn. So
+Chinn spent a second night in the open, guarding the carcass from
+jackals, and thinking about his ancestor.
+
+He returned to the lowlands to the triumphal chant of an escorting army
+three hundred strong, the Mahratta vaccinator close at his elbow, and
+the rudely dried skin a trophy before him. When that army suddenly and
+noiselessly disappeared, as quail in high corn, he argued he was near
+civilisation, and a turn in the road brought him upon the camp of a
+wing of his own corps. He left the skin on a cart-tail for the world to
+see, and sought the Colonel.
+
+“They’re perfectly right,” he explained earnestly. “There isn’t an
+ounce of vice in ’em. They were only frightened. I’ve vaccinated the
+whole boiling, and they like it awfully. What are—what are we doing
+here, sir?”
+
+“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” said the Colonel. “I don’t know
+yet whether we’re a piece of a brigade or a police force. However, I
+think we’ll call ourselves a police force. How did you manage to get a
+Bhil vaccinated?”
+
+“Well, sir,” said Chinn, “I’ve been thinking it over, and, as far as I
+can make out, I’ve got a sort of hereditary influence over ’em.”
+
+“So I know, or I wouldn’t have sent you; but _what_, exactly?”
+
+“It’s rather rummy. It seems, from what I can make out, that I’m my own
+grandfather reincarnated, and I’ve been disturbing the peace of the
+country by riding a pad-tiger of nights. If I hadn’t done that, I don’t
+think they’d have objected to the vaccination; but the two together
+were more than they could stand. And so, sir, I’ve vaccinated ’em, and
+shot my tiger-horse as a sort o’ proof of good faith. You never saw
+such a skin in your life.”
+
+The Colonel tugged his moustache thought-fully. “Now, how the deuce,”
+said he, “am I to include that in my report?”
+
+Indeed, the official version of the Bhils’ anti-vaccination stampede
+said nothing about Lieutenant John Chinn, his godship. But Bukta knew,
+and the corps knew, and every Bhil in the Satpura hills knew.
+
+And now Bukta is zealous that John Chinn shall swiftly be wedded and
+impart his powers to a son; for if the Chinn succession fails, and the
+little Bhils are left to their own imaginings, there will be fresh
+trouble in the Satpuras.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA
+
+
+All supplies very bad and dear, and there are no facilities for even
+the smallest repairs.—SAILING DIRECTIONS.
+
+
+Her nationality was British, but you will not find her house-flag in
+the list of our mercantile marine. She was a nine-hundred-ton, iron,
+schooner-rigged, screw cargo-boat, differing externally in no way from
+any other tramp of the sea. But it is with steamers as it is with men.
+There are those who will for a consideration sail extremely close to
+the wind; and, in the present state of a fallen world, such people and
+such steamers have their use. From the hour that the _Aglaia_ first
+entered the Clyde—new, shiny, and innocent, with a quart of cheap
+champagne trickling down her cut-water—Fate and her owner, who was also
+her captain, decreed that she should deal with embarrassed crowned
+heads, fleeing Presidents, financiers of over-extended ability, women
+to whom change of air was imperative, and the lesser law-breaking
+Powers. Her career led her sometimes into the Admiralty Courts, where
+the sworn statements of her skipper filled his brethren with envy. The
+mariner cannot tell or act a lie in the face of the sea, or mislead a
+tempest; but, as lawyers have discovered, he makes up for chances
+withheld when he returns to shore, an affidavit in either hand.
+
+The _Aglaia_ figured with distinction in the great _Mackinaw_
+salvage-case. It was her first slip from virtue, and she learned how to
+change her name, but not her heart, and to run across the sea. As the
+_Guiding Light_ she was very badly wanted in a South American port for
+the little matter of entering harbour at full speed, colliding with a
+coal-hulk and the State’s only man-of-war, just as that man-of-war was
+going to coal. She put to sea without explanations, though three forts
+fired at her for half an hour. As the _Julia M’Gregor_ she had been
+concerned in picking up from a raft certain gentlemen who should have
+stayed in Noumea, but who preferred making themselves vastly unpleasant
+to authority in quite another quarter of the world; and as the
+_Shah-in-Shah_ she had been overtaken on the high seas, indecently full
+of munitions of war, by the cruiser of an agitated Power at issue with
+its neighbour. That time she was very nearly sunk, and her riddled hull
+gave eminent lawyers of two countries great profit. After a season she
+reappeared as the _Martin Hunt_ painted a dull slate-colour, with pure
+saffron funnel, and boats of robin’s-egg blue, engaging in the Odessa
+trade till she was invited (and the invitation could not well be
+disregarded) to keep away from Black Sea ports altogether.
+
+She had ridden through many waves of depression. Freights might drop
+out of sight, Seamen’s Unions throw spanners and nuts at certificated
+masters, or stevedores combine till cargo perished on the dock-head;
+but the boat of many names came and went, busy, alert, and
+inconspicuous always. Her skipper made no complaint of hard times, and
+port officers observed that her crew signed and signed again with the
+regularity of Atlantic liner boatswains. Her name she changed as
+occasion called; her well-paid crew never; and a large percentage of
+the profits of her voyages was spent with an open hand on her
+engine-room. She never troubled the underwriters, and very seldom
+stopped to talk with a signal-station, for her business was urgent and
+private.
+
+But an end came to her tradings, and she perished in this manner. Deep
+peace brooded over Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Australasia, and
+Polynesia. The Powers dealt together more or less honestly; banks paid
+their depositors to the hour; diamonds of price came safely to the
+hands of their owners; Republics rested content with their Dictators;
+diplomats found no one whose presence in the least incommoded them;
+monarchs lived openly with their lawfully wedded wives. It was as
+though the whole earth had put on its best Sunday bib and tucker; and
+business was very bad for the _Martin Hunt_. The great, virtuous calm
+engulfed her, slate sides, yellow funnel, and all, but cast up in
+another hemisphere the steam whaler _Haliotis_, black and rusty, with a
+manure-coloured funnel, a litter of dingy white boats, and an enormous
+stove, or furnace, for boiling blubber on her forward well-deck. There
+could be no doubt that her trip was successful, for she lay at several
+ports not too well known, and the smoke of her trying-out insulted the
+beaches.
+
+Anon she departed, at the speed of the average London four-wheeler, and
+entered a semi-inland sea, warm, still, and blue, which is, perhaps,
+the most strictly preserved water in the world. There she stayed for a
+certain time, and the great stars of those mild skies beheld her
+playing puss-in-the-corner among islands where whales are never found.
+All that while she smelt abominably, and the smell, though fishy, was
+not whalesome. One evening calamity descended upon her from the island
+of Pygang-Watai, and she fled, while her crew jeered at a fat
+black-and-brown gunboat puffing far behind. They knew to the last
+revolution the capacity of every boat, on those seas, that they were
+anxious to avoid. A British ship with a good conscience does not, as a
+rule, flee from the man-of-war of a foreign Power, and it is also
+considered a breach of etiquette to stop and search British ships at
+sea. These things the skipper of the _Haliotis_ did not pause to prove,
+but held on at an inspiriting eleven knots an hour till nightfall. One
+thing only he overlooked.
+
+The Power that kept an expensive steam-patrol moving up and down those
+waters (they had dodged the two regular ships of the station with an
+ease that bred contempt) had newly brought up a third and a
+fourteen-knot boat with a clean bottom to help the work; and that was
+why the _Haliotis_, driving hard from the east to the west, found
+herself at daylight in such a position that she could not help seeing
+an arrangement of four flags, a mile and a half behind, which read:
+“Heave to, or take the consequences!”
+
+She had her choice, and she took it. The end came when, presuming on
+her lighter draught, she tried to draw away northward over a friendly
+shoal. The shell that arrived by way of the Chief Engineer’s cabin was
+some five inches in diameter, with a practice, not a bursting, charge.
+It had been intended to cross her bows, and that was why it knocked the
+framed portrait of the Chief Engineer’s wife—and she was a very pretty
+girl—on to the floor, splintered his wash-hand stand, crossed the
+alleyway into the engine-room, and striking on a grating, dropped
+directly in front of the forward engine, where it burst, neatly
+fracturing both the bolts that held the connecting-rod to the forward
+crank.
+
+What follows is worth consideration. The forward engine had no more
+work to do. Its released piston-rod, therefore, drove up fiercely, with
+nothing to check it, and started most of the nuts of the
+cylinder-cover. It came down again, the full weight of the steam behind
+it, and the foot of the disconnected connecting-rod, useless as the leg
+of a man with a sprained ankle, flung out to the right and struck the
+starboard, or right-hand, cast-iron supporting-column of the forward
+engine, cracking it clean through about six inches above the base, and
+wedging the upper portion outwards three inches towards the ship’s
+side. There the connecting-rod jammed. Meantime, the after-engine,
+being as yet unembarrassed, went on with its work, and in so doing
+brought round at its next revolution the crank of the forward engine,
+which smote the already jammed connecting-rod, bending it and therewith
+the piston-rod cross-head—the big cross-piece that slides up and down
+so smoothly.
+
+The cross-head jammed sideways in the guides, and, in addition to
+putting further pressure on the already broken starboard
+supporting-column, cracked the port, or left-hand, supporting-column in
+two or three places. There being nothing more that could be made to
+move, the engines brought up, all standing, with a hiccup that seemed
+to lift the _Haliotis_ a foot out of the water; and the engine-room
+staff, opening every steam outlet that they could find in the
+confusion, arrived on deck somewhat scalded, but calm. There was a
+sound below of things happening—a rushing, clicking, purring, grunting,
+rattling noise that did not last for more than a minute. It was the
+machinery adjusting itself, on the spur of the moment, to a hundred
+altered conditions. Mr. Wardrop, one foot on the upper grating,
+inclined his ear sideways, and groaned. You cannot stop engines working
+at twelve knots an hour in three seconds without disorganising them.
+The _Haliotis_ slid forward in a cloud of steam, shrieking like a
+wounded horse. There was nothing more to do. The five-inch shell with a
+reduced charge had settled the situation. And when you are full, all
+three holds, of strictly preserved pearls; when you have cleaned out
+the Tanna Bank, the Sea-Horse Bank, and four other banks from one end
+to the other of the Amanala Sea—when you have ripped out the very heart
+of a rich Government monopoly so that five years will not repair your
+wrong-doings—you must smile and take what is in store. But the skipper
+reflected, as a launch put out from the man-of-war, that he had been
+bombarded on the high seas, with the British flag—several of
+them—picturesquely disposed above him, and tried to find comfort from
+the thought.
+
+“Where,” said the stolid naval lieutenant hoisting himself aboard,
+“where are those dam’ pearls?”
+
+They were there beyond evasion. No affidavit could do away with the
+fearful smell of decayed oysters, the diving-dresses, and the
+shell-littered hatches. They were there to the value of seventy
+thousand pounds, more or less; and every pound poached.
+
+The man-of-war was annoyed; for she had used up many tons of coal, she
+had strained her tubes, and, worse than all, her officers and crew had
+been hurried. Every one on the _Haliotis_ was arrested and rearrested
+several times, as each officer came aboard; then they were told by what
+they esteemed to be the equivalent of a midshipman that they were to
+consider themselves prisoners, and finally were put under arrest.
+
+“It’s not the least good,” said the skipper, suavely. “You’d much
+better send us a tow—”
+
+“Be still—you are arrest!” was the reply.
+
+“Where the devil do you expect we are going to escape to? We’re
+helpless. You’ve got to tow us into somewhere, and explain why you
+fired on us. Mr. Wardrop, we’re helpless, aren’t we?”
+
+“Ruined from end to end,” said the man of machinery. “If she rolls, the
+forward cylinder will come down and go through her bottom. Both columns
+are clean cut through. There’s nothing to hold anything up.”
+
+The council of war clanked off to see if Mr. Wardrop’s words were true.
+He warned them that it was as much as a man’s life was worth to enter
+the engine-room, and they contented themselves with a distant
+inspection through the thinning steam. The _Haliotis_ lifted to the
+long, easy swell, and the starboard supporting-column ground a trifle,
+as a man grits his teeth under the knife. The forward cylinder was
+depending on that unknown force men call the pertinacity of materials,
+which now and then balances that other heartbreaking power, the
+perversity of inanimate things.
+
+“You see!” said Mr. Wardrop, hurrying them away. “The engines aren’t
+worth their price as old iron.”
+
+“We tow,” was the answer. “Afterwards we shall confiscate.”
+
+The man-of-war was short-handed, and did not see the necessity for
+putting a prize-crew aboard the _Haliotis_. So she sent one
+sublieutenant, whom the skipper kept very drunk, for he did not wish to
+make the tow too easy, and, moreover, he had an inconspicuous little
+rope hanging from the stem of his ship.
+
+Then they began to tow at an average speed of four knots an hour. The
+_Haliotis_ was very hard to move, and the gunnery-lieutenant, who had
+fired the five-inch shell, had leisure to think upon consequences. Mr.
+Wardrop was the busy man. He borrowed all the crew to shore up the
+cylinders with spars and blocks from the bottom and sides of the ship.
+It was a day’s risky work; but anything was better than drowning at the
+end of a tow-rope; and if the forward cylinder had fallen, it would
+have made its way to the sea-bed, and taken the _Haliotis_ after.
+
+“Where are we going to, and how long will they tow us?” he asked of the
+skipper.
+
+“God knows! and this prize-lieutenant’s drunk. What do you think you
+can do?”
+
+“There’s just the bare chance,” Mr. Wardrop whispered, though no one
+was within hearing—“there’s just the bare chance o’ repairin’ her, if a
+man knew how. They’ve twisted the very guts out of her, bringing her up
+with that jerk; but I’m saying that, with time and patience, there’s
+just the chance o’ making steam yet. _We_ could do it.”
+
+The skipper’s eye brightened. “Do you mean,” he began, “that she is any
+good?”
+
+“Oh, no,” said Mr. Wardrop. “She’ll need three thousand pounds in
+repairs, at the lowest, if she’s to take the sea again, an’ that apart
+from any injury to her structure. She’s like a man fallen down five
+pair o’ stairs. We can’t tell for months what has happened; but we know
+she’ll never be good again without a new inside. Ye should see the
+condenser-tubes an’ the steam connections to the donkey, for two things
+only. I’m not afraid of them repairin’ her. I’m afraid of them stealin’
+things.”
+
+“They’ve fired on us. They’ll have to explain that.”
+
+“Our reputation’s not good enough to ask for explanations. Let’s take
+what we have and be thankful. Ye would not have consuls remembern’ the
+_Guidin’ Light_, an’ the _Shah-in-Shah_, an’ the _Aglaia_, at this most
+alarmin’ crisis. We’ve been no better than pirates these ten years.
+Under Providence we’re no worse than thieves now. We’ve much to be
+thankful for—if we e’er get back to her.”
+
+“Make it your own way, then,” said the skipper. “If there’s the least
+chance—”
+
+“I’ll leave none,” said Mr. Wardrop—“none that they’ll dare to take.
+Keep her heavy on the tow, for we need time.”
+
+The skipper never interfered with the affairs of the engine-room, and
+Mr. Wardrop—an artist in his profession—turned to and composed a work
+terrible and forbidding. His background was the dark-grained sides of
+the engine-room; his material the metals of power and strength, helped
+out with spars, baulks, and ropes. The man-of-war towed sullenly and
+viciously. The _Haliotis_ behind her hummed like a hive before
+swarming. With extra and totally unneeded spars her crew blocked up the
+space round the forward engine till it resembled a statue in its
+scaffolding, and the butts of the shores interfered with every view
+that a dispassionate eye might wish to take. And that the dispassionate
+mind might be swiftly shaken out of its calm, the well-sunk bolts of
+the shores were wrapped round untidily with loose ends of ropes, giving
+a studied effect of most dangerous insecurity. Next, Mr. Wardrop took
+up a collection from the after-engine, which, as you will remember, had
+not been affected in the general wreck. The cylinder escape-valve he
+abolished with a flogging-hammer. It is difficult in far-off ports to
+come by such valves, unless, like Mr. Wardrop, you keep duplicates in
+store. At the same time men took off the nuts of two of the great
+holding-down bolts that serve to keep the engines in place on their
+solid bed. An engine violently arrested in mid-career may easily jerk
+off the nut of a holding-down bolt, and this accident looked very
+natural.
+
+Passing along the tunnel, he removed several shaft coupling-bolts and
+nuts, scattering other and ancient pieces of iron underfoot.
+Cylinder-bolts he cut off to the number of six from the after-engine
+cylinder, so that it might match its neighbour, and stuffed the bilge-
+and feed-pumps with cotton-waste. Then he made up a neat bundle of the
+various odds and ends that he had gathered from the engines—little
+things like nuts and valve-spindles, all carefully tallowed—and retired
+with them under the floor of the engine-room, where he sighed, being
+fat, as he passed from manhole to manhole of the double bottom, and in
+a fairly dry submarine compartment hid them. Any engineer, particularly
+in an unfriendly port, has a right to keep his spare stores where he
+chooses; and the foot of one of the cylinder shores blocked all
+entrance into the regular store-room, even if that had not been already
+closed with steel wedges. In conclusion, he disconnected the
+after-engine, laid piston and connecting-rod, carefully tallowed, where
+it would be most inconvenient to the casual visitor, took out three of
+the eight collars of the thrust-block, hid them where only he could
+find them again, filled the boilers by hand, wedged the sliding doors
+of the coal-bunkers, and rested from his labours. The engine-room was a
+cemetery, and it did not need the contents of the ash-lift through the
+skylight to make it any worse.
+
+He invited the skipper to look at the completed work.
+
+“Saw ye ever such a forsaken wreck as that?” said he, proudly. “It
+almost frights _me_ to go under those shores. Now, what d’ you think
+they’ll do to us?”
+
+“Wait till we see,” said the skipper. “It’ll be bad enough when it
+comes.”
+
+He was not wrong. The pleasant days of towing ended all too soon,
+though the _Haliotis_ trailed behind her a heavily weighted jib stayed
+out into the shape of a pocket; and Mr. Wardrop was no longer an artist
+of imagination, but one of seven-and-twenty prisoners in a prison full
+of insects. The man-of-war had towed them to the nearest port, not to
+the headquarters of the colony, and when Mr. Wardrop saw the dismal
+little harbour, with its ragged line of Chinese junks, its one crazy
+tug, and the boat-building shed that, under the charge of a
+philosophical Malay, represented a dockyard, he sighed and shook his
+head.
+
+“I did well,” he said. “This is the habitation o’ wreckers an’ thieves.
+We’re at the uttermost ends of the earth. Think you they’ll ever know
+in England?”
+
+“Doesn’t look like it,” said the skipper.
+
+They were marched ashore with what they stood up in, under a generous
+escort, and were judged according to the customs of the country, which,
+though excellent, are a little out of date. There were the pearls;
+there were the poachers; and there sat a small but hot Governor. He
+consulted for a while, and then things began to move with speed, for he
+did not wish to keep a hungry crew at large on the beach, and the
+man-of-war had gone up the coast. With a wave of his hand—a stroke of
+the pen was not necessary—he consigned them to the _blackgang-tana_,
+the back-country, and the hand of the Law removed them from his sight
+and the knowledge of men. They were marched into the palms, and the
+back-country swallowed them up—all the crew of the _Haliotis_.
+
+Deep peace continued to brood over Europe, Asia, Africa, America,
+Australasia, and Polynesia.
+
+It was the firing that did it. They should have kept their counsel; but
+when a few thousand foreigners are bursting with joy over the fact that
+a ship under the British flag has been fired at on the high seas, news
+travels quickly; and when it came out that the pearl-stealing crew had
+not been allowed access to their consul (there was no consul within a
+few hundred miles of that lonely port) even the friendliest of Powers
+has a right to ask questions. The great heart of the British public was
+beating furiously on account of the performance of a notorious
+race-horse, and had not a throb to waste on distant accidents; but
+somewhere deep in the hull of the ship of State there is machinery
+which more or less accurately takes charge of foreign affairs. That
+machinery began to revolve, and who so shocked and surprised as the
+Power that had captured the _Haliotis?_ It explained that colonial
+governors and far-away men-of-war were difficult to control, and
+promised that it would most certainly make an example both of the
+Governor and the vessel. As for the crew reported to be pressed into
+military service in tropical climes, it would produce them as soon as
+possible, and it would apologise, if necessary. Now, no apologies were
+needed. When one nation apologises to another, millions of amateurs who
+have no earthly concern with the difficulty hurl themselves into the
+strife and embarrass the trained specialist. It was requested that the
+crew be found, if they were still alive—they had been eight months
+beyond knowledge—and it was promised that all would be forgotten.
+
+The little Governor of the little port was pleased with himself.
+Seven-and-twenty white men made a very compact force to throw away on a
+war that had neither beginning nor end—a jungle and stockade fight that
+flickered and smouldered through the wet hot years in the hills a
+hundred miles away, and was the heritage of every wearied official. He
+had, he thought, deserved well of his country; and if only some one
+would buy the unhappy _Haliotis_, moored in the harbour below his
+verandah, his cup would be full. He looked at the neatly silvered lamps
+that he had taken from her cabins, and thought of much that might be
+turned to account. But his countrymen in that moist climate had no
+spirit. They would peep into the silent engine-room, and shake their
+heads. Even the men-of-war would not tow her further up the coast,
+where the Governor believed that she could be repaired. She was a bad
+bargain; but her cabin carpets were undeniably beautiful, and his wife
+approved of her mirrors.
+
+Three hours later cables were bursting round him like shells, for,
+though he knew it not, he was being offered as a sacrifice by the
+nether to the upper millstone, and his superiors had no regard for his
+feelings. He had, said the cables, grossly exceeded his power, and
+failed to report on events. He would, therefore—at this he cast himself
+back in his hammock—produce the crew of the _Haliotis_. He would send
+for them, and, if that failed, he would put his dignity on a pony and
+fetch them himself. He had no conceivable right to make pearl-poachers
+serve in any war. He would be held responsible.
+
+Next morning the cables wished to know whether he had found the crew of
+the _Haliotis_. They were to be found, freed and fed—he was to feed
+them—till such time as they could be sent to the nearest English port
+in a man-of-war. If you abuse a man long enough in great words flashed
+over the sea-beds, things happen. The Governor sent inland swiftly for
+his prisoners, who were also soldiers; and never was a militia regiment
+more anxious to reduce its strength. No power short of death could make
+these mad men wear the uniform of their service. They would not fight,
+except with their fellows, and it was for that reason the regiment had
+not gone to war, but stayed in a stockade, reasoning with the new
+troops. The autumn campaign had been a fiasco, but here were the
+Englishmen. All the regiment marched back to guard them, and the hairy
+enemy, armed with blow-pipes, rejoiced in the forest. Five of the crew
+had died, but there lined up on the Governor’s verandah two-and-twenty
+men marked about the legs with the scars of leech-bites. A few of them
+wore fringes that had once been trousers; the others used loin-cloths
+of gay patterns; and they existed beautifully but simply in the
+Governor’s verandah, and when he came out they sang at him. When you
+have lost seventy thousand pounds’ worth of pearls, your pay, your
+ship, and all your clothes, and have lived in bondage for five months
+beyond the faintest pretences of civilisation, you know what true
+independence means, for you become the happiest of created
+things—natural man.
+
+The Governor told the crew that they were evil, and they asked for
+food. When he saw how they ate, and when he remembered that none of the
+pearl patrol-boats were expected for two months, he sighed. But the
+crew of the _Haliotis_ lay down in the verandah, and said that they
+were pensioners of the Governor’s bounty. A grey-bearded man, fat and
+bald-headed, his one garment a green-and-yellow loin-cloth, saw the
+_Haliotis_ in the harbour, and bellowed for joy. The men crowded to the
+verandah-rail, kicking aside the long cane chairs. They pointed,
+gesticulated, and argued freely, without shame. The militia regiment
+sat down in the Governor’s garden. The Governor retired to his
+hammock—it was as easy to be killed lying as standing—and his women
+squeaked from the shuttered rooms.
+
+“She sold?” said the grey-bearded man, pointing to the _Haliotis_. He
+was Mr. Wardrop.
+
+“No good,” said the Governor, shaking his head. “No one come buy.”
+
+“He’s taken my lamps, though,” said the skipper. He wore one leg of a
+pair of trousers, and his eye wandered along the verandah. The Governor
+quailed. There were cuddy camp-stools and the skipper’s writing-table
+in plain sight.
+
+“They’ve cleaned her out, o’ course,” said Mr. Wardrop. “They would.
+We’ll go aboard and take an inventory. See!” He waved his hands over
+the harbour. “We—live—there—now. Sorry?”
+
+The Governor smiled a smile of relief.
+
+“He’s glad of that,” said one of the crew, reflectively. “I shouldn’t
+wonder.”
+
+They flocked down to the harbour-front, the militia regiment clattering
+behind, and embarked themselves in what they found—it happened to be
+the Governor’s boat. Then they disappeared over the bulwarks of the
+_Haliotis_, and the Governor prayed that they might find occupation
+inside.
+
+Mr. Wardrop’s first bound took him to the engine-room; and when the
+others were patting the well-remembered decks, they heard him giving
+God thanks that things were as he had left them. The wrecked engines
+stood over his head untouched; no inexpert hand had meddled with his
+shores; the steel wedges of the store-room were rusted home; and, best
+of all, the hundred and sixty tons of good Australian coal in the
+bunkers had not diminished.
+
+“I don’t understand it,” said Mr. Wardrop. “Any Malay knows the use o’
+copper. They ought to have cut away the pipes. And with Chinese junks
+coming here, too. It’s a special interposition o’ Providence.”
+
+“You think so,” said the skipper, from above. “There’s only been one
+thief here, and he’s cleaned her out of all _my_ things, anyhow.”
+
+Here the skipper spoke less than the truth, for under the planking of
+his cabin, only to be reached by a chisel, lay a little money which
+never drew any interest—his sheet-anchor to windward. It was all in
+clean sovereigns that pass current the world over, and might have
+amounted to more than a hundred pounds.
+
+“He’s left me alone. Let’s thank God,” repeated Mr. Wardrop.
+
+“He’s taken everything else; look!”
+
+The _Haliotis_, except as to her engine-room, had been systematically
+and scientifically gutted from one end to the other, and there was
+strong evidence that an unclean guard had camped in the skipper’s cabin
+to regulate that plunder. She lacked glass, plate, crockery, cutlery,
+mattresses, cuddy carpets and chairs, all boats, and her copper
+ventilators. These things had been removed, with her sails and as much
+of the wire rigging as would not imperil the safety of the masts.
+
+“He must have sold those,” said the skipper. “The other things are in
+his house, I suppose.”
+
+Every fitting that could be pried or screwed out was gone. Port,
+starboard, and masthead lights; teak gratings; sliding sashes of the
+deckhouse; the captain’s chest of drawers, with charts and chart-table;
+photographs, brackets, and looking-glasses; cabin doors; rubber cuddy
+mats; hatch-irons; half the funnel-stays; cork fenders; carpenter’s
+grindstone and tool-chest; holystones, swabs, squeegees; all cabin and
+pantry lamps; galley-fittings _en bloc;_ flags and flag-locker; clocks,
+chronometers; the forward compass and the ship’s bell and belfry, were
+among the missing.
+
+There were great scarred marks on the deck-planking over which the
+cargo-derricks had been hauled. One must have fallen by the way, for
+the bulwark-rails were smashed and bent and the side-plates bruised.
+
+“It’s the Governor,” said the skipper “He’s been selling her on the
+instalment plan.”
+
+“Let’s go up with spanners and shovels, and kill ’em all,” shouted the
+crew. “Let’s drown him, and keep the woman!”
+
+“Then we’ll be shot by that black-and-tan regiment—_our_ regiment.
+What’s the trouble ashore? They’ve camped our regiment on the beach.”
+
+“We’re cut off; that’s all. Go and see what they want,” said Mr.
+Wardrop. “You’ve the trousers.”
+
+In his simple way the Governor was a strategist. He did not desire that
+the crew of the _Haliotis_ should come ashore again, either singly or
+in detachments, and he proposed to turn their steamer into a
+convict-hulk. They would wait—he explained this from the quay to the
+skipper in the barge—and they would continue to wait till the
+man-of-war came along, exactly where they were. If one of them set foot
+ashore, the entire regiment would open fire, and he would not scruple
+to use the two cannon of the town. Meantime food would be sent daily in
+a boat under an armed escort. The skipper, bare to the waist, and
+rowing, could only grind his teeth; and the Governor improved the
+occasion, and revenged himself for the bitter words in the cables, by
+saying what he thought of the morals and manners of the crew. The barge
+returned to the _Haliotis_ in silence, and the skipper climbed aboard,
+white on the cheek-bones and blue about the nostrils.
+
+“I knew it,” said Mr. Wardrop; “and they won’t give us good food,
+either. We shall have bananas morning, noon, and night, an’ a man can’t
+work on fruit. _We_ know that.”
+
+Then the skipper cursed Mr. Wardrop for importing frivolous side-issues
+into the conversation; and the crew cursed one another, and the
+_Haliotis_, the voyage, and all that they knew or could bring to mind.
+They sat down in silence on the empty decks, and their eyes burned in
+their heads. The green harbour water chuckled at them overside. They
+looked at the palm-fringed hills inland, at the white houses above the
+harbour road, at the single tier of native craft by the quay, at the
+stolid soldiery sitting round the two cannon, and, last of all, at the
+blue bar of the horizon. Mr. Wardrop was buried in thought, and
+scratched imaginary lines with his untrimmed finger-nails on the
+planking.
+
+“I make no promise,” he said, at last, “for I can’t say what may or may
+not have happened to them. But here’s the ship, and here’s us.”
+
+There was a little scornful laughter at this, and Mr. Wardrop knitted
+his brows. He recalled that in the days when he wore trousers he had
+been Chief Engineer of the _Haliotis_.
+
+“Harland, Mackesy, Noble, Hay, Naughton, Fink, O’Hara, Trumbull.”
+
+“Here, sir!” The instinct of obedience waked to answer the roll-call of
+the engine-room.
+
+“Below!”
+
+They rose and went.
+
+“Captain, I’ll trouble you for the rest of the men as I want them.
+We’ll get my stores out, and clear away the shores we don’t need, and
+then we’ll patch her up. _My_ men will remember that they’re in the
+_Haliotis_,—under me.”
+
+He went into the engine-room, and the others stared. They were used to
+the accidents of the sea, but this was beyond their experience. None
+who had seen the engine-room believed that anything short of new
+engines from end to end could stir the _Haliotis_ from her moorings.
+
+The engine-room stores were unearthed, and Mr. Wardrop’s face, red with
+the filth of the bilges and the exertion of travelling on his stomach,
+lit with joy. The spare gear of the _Haliotis_ had been unusually
+complete, and two-and-twenty men, armed with screw-jacks, differential
+blocks, tackle, vices, and a forge or so, can look Kismet between the
+eyes without winking. The crew were ordered to replace the holding-down
+and shaft-bearing bolts, and return the collars of the thrust-block.
+When they had finished, Mr. Wardrop delivered a lecture on repairing
+compound engines without the aid of the shops, and the men sat about on
+the cold machinery. The cross-head jammed in the guides leered at them
+drunkenly, but offered no help. They ran their fingers hopelessly into
+the cracks of the starboard supporting-column, and picked at the ends
+of the ropes round the shores, while Mr. Wardrop’s voice rose and fell
+echoing, till the quick tropic night closed down over the engine-room
+skylight.
+
+Next morning the work of reconstruction began. It has been explained
+that the foot of the connecting-rod was forced against the foot of the
+starboard supporting-column, which it had cracked through and driven
+outward towards the ship’s skin. To all appearance the job was more
+than hopeless, for rod and column seemed to have been welded into one.
+But herein Providence smiled on them for one moment to hearten them
+through the weary weeks ahead. The second engineer—more reckless than
+resourceful—struck at random with a cold chisel into the cast-iron of
+the column, and a greasy, grey flake of metal flew from under the
+imprisoned foot of the connecting-rod, while the rod itself fell away
+slowly, and brought up with a thunderous clang somewhere in the dark of
+the crank-pit. The guides-plates above were still jammed fast in the
+guides, but the first blow had been struck. They spent the rest of the
+day grooming the donkey-engine, which stood immediately forward of the
+engine-room hatch. Its tarpaulin, of course, had been stolen, and eight
+warm months had not improved the working parts. Further, the last dying
+hiccup of the _Haliotis_ seemed—or it might have been the Malay from
+the boat-house—to have lifted the thing bodily on its bolts, and set it
+down inaccurately as regarded its steam connections.
+
+“If we only had one single cargo-derrick!” Mr. Wardrop sighed. “We can
+take the cylinder-cover off by hand, if we sweat; but to get the rod
+out o’ the piston’s not possible unless we use steam. Well, there’ll be
+steam the morn, if there’s nothing else. She’ll fizzle!”
+
+Next morning men from the shore saw the _Haliotis_ through a cloud, for
+it was as though the deck smoked. Her crew were chasing steam through
+the shaken and leaky pipes to its work in the forward donkey-engine;
+and where oakum failed to plug a crack, they stripped off their
+loin-cloths for lapping, and swore, half-boiled and mother-naked. The
+donkey-engine worked—at a price—the price of constant attention and
+furious stoking—worked long enough to allow a wire-rope (it was made up
+of a funnel and a foremast-stay) to be led into the engine-room and
+made fast on the cylinder-cover of the forward engine. That rose easily
+enough, and was hauled through the skylight and on to the deck, many
+hands assisting the doubtful steam. Then came the tug of war, for it
+was necessary to get to the piston and the jammed piston-rod. They
+removed two of the piston junk-ring studs, screwed in two strong iron
+eye-bolts by way of handles, doubled the wire-rope, and set half a
+dozen men to smite with an extemporised battering-ram at the end of the
+piston-rod, where it peered through the piston, while the donkey-engine
+hauled upwards on the piston itself. After four hours of this furious
+work, the piston-rod suddenly slipped, and the piston rose with a jerk,
+knocking one or two men over into the engine-room. But when Mr. Wardrop
+declared that the piston had not split, they cheered, and thought
+nothing of their wounds; and the donkey-engine was hastily stopped; its
+boiler was nothing to tamper with.
+
+And day by day their supplies reached them by boat. The skipper humbled
+himself once more before the Governor, and as a concession had leave to
+get drinking-water from the Malay boat-builder on the quay. It was not
+good drinking-water, but the Malay was anxious to supply anything in
+his power, if he were paid for it.
+
+Now when the jaws of the forward engine stood, as it were, stripped and
+empty, they began to wedge up the shores of the cylinder itself. That
+work alone filled the better part of three days—warm and sticky days,
+when the hands slipped and sweat ran into the eyes. When the last wedge
+was hammered home there was no longer an ounce of weight on the
+supporting-columns; and Mr. Wardrop rummaged the ship for boiler-plate
+three-quarters of an inch thick, where he could find it. There was not
+much available, but what there was was more than beaten gold to him. In
+one desperate forenoon the entire crew, naked and lean, haled back,
+more or less into place, the starboard supporting-column, which, as you
+remember, was cracked clean through. Mr. Wardrop found them asleep
+where they had finished the work, and gave them a day’s rest, smiling
+upon them as a father while he drew chalk-marks about the cracks. They
+woke to new and more trying labour; for over each one of those cracks a
+plate of three-quarter-inch boiler-iron was to be worked hot, the
+rivet-holes being drilled by hand. All that time they were fed on
+fruits, chiefly bananas, with some sago.
+
+Those were the days when men swooned over the ratchet-drill and the
+hand-forge, and where they fell they had leave to lie unless their
+bodies were in the way of their fellows’ feet. And so, patch upon
+patch, and a patch over all, the starboard supporting-column was
+clouted; but when they thought all was secure, Mr. Wardrop decreed that
+the noble patchwork would never support working engines; at the best,
+it could only hold the guide-bars approximately true. The dead weight
+of the cylinders must be borne by vertical struts; and, therefore, a
+gang would repair to the bows, and take out, with files, the big
+bow-anchor davits, each of which was some three inches in diameter.
+They threw hot coals at Wardrop, and threatened to kill him, those who
+did not weep (they were ready to weep on the least provocation); but he
+hit them with iron bars heated at the end, and they limped forward, and
+the davits came with them when they returned. They slept sixteen hours
+on the strength of it, and in three days two struts were in place,
+bolted from the foot of the starboard supporting-column to the under
+side of the cylinder. There remained now the port, or condenser-column,
+which, though not so badly cracked as its fellow, had also been
+strengthened in four places with boiler-plate patches, but needed
+struts. They took away the main stanchions of the bridge for that work,
+and, crazy with toil, did not see till all was in place that the
+rounded bars of iron must be flattened from top to bottom to allow the
+air-pump levers to clear them. It was Wardrop’s oversight, and he wept
+bitterly before the men as he gave the order to unbolt the struts and
+flatten them with hammer and the flame. Now the broken engine was
+underpinned firmly, and they took away the wooden shores from under the
+cylinders, and gave them to the robbed bridge, thanking God for even
+half a day’s work on gentle, kindly wood instead of the iron that had
+entered into their souls. Eight months in the back-country among the
+leeches, at a temperature of 85° moist, is very bad for the nerves.
+
+They had kept the hardest work to the last, as boys save Latin prose,
+and, worn though they were, Mr. Wardrop did not dare to give them rest.
+The piston-rod and connecting-rod were to be straightened, and this was
+a job for a regular dockyard with every appliance. They fell to it,
+cheered by a little chalk showing of work done and time consumed which
+Mr. Wardrop wrote up on the engine-room bulkhead. Fifteen days had
+gone—fifteen days of killing labour—and there was hope before them.
+
+It is curious that no man knows how the rods were straightened. The
+crew of the _Haliotis_ remember that week very dimly, as a fever
+patient remembers the delirium of a long night. There were fires
+everywhere, they say; the whole ship was one consuming furnace, and the
+hammers were never still. Now, there could not have been more than one
+fire at the most, for Mr. Wardrop distinctly recalls that no
+straightening was done except under his own eye. They remember, too,
+that for many years voices gave orders which they obeyed with their
+bodies, but their minds were abroad on all the seas. It seems to them
+that they stood through days and nights slowly sliding a bar backwards
+and forwards through a white glow that was part of the ship. They
+remember an intolerable noise in their burning heads from the walls of
+the stoke-hole, and they remember being savagely beaten by men whose
+eyes seemed asleep. When their shift was over they would draw straight
+lines in the air, anxiously and repeatedly, and would question one
+another in their sleep, crying, “Is she straight?”
+
+At last—they do not remember whether this was by day or by night—Mr.
+Wardrop began to dance clumsily, and wept the while; and they too
+danced and wept, and went to sleep twitching all over; and when they
+woke, men said that the rods were straightened, and no one did any work
+for two days, but lay on the decks and ate fruit. Mr. Wardrop would go
+below from time to time, and pat the two rods where they lay, and they
+heard him singing hymns.
+
+Then his trouble of mind went from him, and at the end of the third
+day’s idleness he made a drawing in chalk upon the deck, with letters
+of the alphabet at the angles. He pointed out that, though the
+piston-rod was more or less straight, the piston-rod cross-head—the
+thing that had been jammed sideways in the guides—had been badly
+strained, and had cracked the lower end of the piston-rod. He was going
+to forge and shrink a wrought-iron collar on the neck of the piston-rod
+where it joined the cross-head, and from the collar he would bolt a
+Y-shaped piece of iron whose lower arms should be bolted into the
+cross-head. If anything more were needed, they could use up the last of
+the boiler-plate.
+
+So the forges were lit again, and men burned their bodies, but hardly
+felt the pain. The finished connection was not beautiful, but it seemed
+strong enough—at least, as strong as the rest of the machinery; and
+with that job their labours came to an end. All that remained was to
+connect up the engines, and to get food and water. The skipper and four
+men dealt with the Malay boat-builder by night chiefly; it was no time
+to haggle over the price of sago and dried fish. The others stayed
+aboard and replaced piston, piston-rod, cylinder-cover, cross-head, and
+bolts, with the aid of the faithful donkey-engine. The cylinder-cover
+was hardly steam-proof, and the eye of science might have seen in the
+connecting-rod a flexure something like that of a Christmas-tree candle
+which has melted and been straightened by hand over a stove, but, as
+Mr. Wardrop said, “She didn’t hit anything.”
+
+As soon as the last bolt was in place, men tumbled over one another in
+their anxiety to get to the hand starting-gear, the wheel and worm, by
+which some engines can be moved when there is no steam aboard. They
+nearly wrenched off the wheel, but it was evident to the blindest eye
+that the engines stirred. They did not revolve in their orbits with any
+enthusiasm, as good machines should; indeed, they groaned not a little;
+but they moved over and came to rest in a way which proved that they
+still recognised man’s hand. Then Mr. Wardrop sent his slaves into the
+darker bowels of the engine-room and the stoke-hole, and followed them
+with a flare-lamp. The boilers were sound, but would take no harm from
+a little scaling and cleaning. Mr. Wardrop would not have any one
+over-zealous, for he feared what the next stroke of the tool might
+show. “The less we know about her now,” said he, “the better for us
+all, I’m thinkin’. Ye’ll understand me when I say that this is in no
+sense regular engineerin’.”
+
+As his raiment, when he spoke, was his grey beard and uncut hair, they
+believed him. They did not ask too much of what they met, but polished
+and tallowed and scraped it to a false brilliancy.
+
+“A lick of paint would make me easier in my mind,” said Mr. Wardrop,
+plaintively. “I know half the condenser-tubes are started; and the
+propeller-shaftin’ ’s God knows how far out of the true, and we’ll need
+a new air-pump, an’ the main-steam leaks like a sieve, and there’s
+worse each way I look; but—paint’s like clothes to a man, an’ ours is
+near all gone.”
+
+The skipper unearthed some stale ropy paint of the loathsome green that
+they used for the galleys of sailing-ships, and Mr. Wardrop spread it
+abroad lavishly to give the engines self-respect.
+
+His own was returning day by day, for he wore his loin-cloth
+continuously; but the crew, having worked under orders, did not feel as
+he did. The completed work satisfied Mr. Wardrop. He would at the last
+have made shift to run to Singapore, and gone home without vengeance
+taken to show his engines to his brethren in the craft; but the others
+and the captain forbade him. They had not yet recovered their
+self-respect.
+
+“It would be safer to make what ye might call a trial trip, but beggars
+mustn’t be choosers; an if the engines will go over to the hand-gear,
+the probability—I’m only saying it’s a probability—the chance is that
+they’ll hold up when we put steam on her.”
+
+“How long will you take to get steam?” said the skipper.
+
+“God knows! Four hours—a day—half a week. If I can raise sixty pound
+I’ll not complain.”
+
+“Be sure of her first; we can’t afford to go out half a mile, and break
+down.”
+
+“My soul and body, man, we’re one continuous breakdown, fore an’ aft!
+We might fetch Singapore, though.”
+
+“We’ll break down at Pygang-Watai, where we can do good,” was the
+answer, in a voice that did not allow argument. “She’s _my_ boat,
+and—I’ve had eight months to think in.”
+
+No man saw the _Haliotis_ depart, though many heard her. She left at
+two in the morning, having cut her moorings, and it was none of her
+crew’s pleasure that the engines should strike up a thundering
+half-seas-over chanty that echoed among the hills. Mr. Wardrop wiped
+away a tear as he listened to the new song.
+
+“She’s gibberin’—she’s just gibberin’,” he whimpered. “Yon’s the voice
+of a maniac.”
+
+And if engines have any soul, as their masters believe, he was quite
+right. There were outcries and clamours, sobs and bursts of chattering
+laughter, silences where the trained ear yearned for the clear note,
+and torturing reduplications where there should have been one deep
+voice. Down the screw-shaft ran murmurs and warnings, while a
+heart-diseased flutter without told that the propeller needed
+re-keying.
+
+“How does she make it?” said the skipper.
+
+“She moves, but—but she’s breakin’ my heart. The sooner we’re at
+Pygang-Watai, the better. She’s mad, and we’re waking the town.”
+
+“Is she at all near safe?”
+
+“What do _I_ care how safe she is? She’s mad. Hear that, now! To be
+sure, nothing’s hittin’ anything, and the bearin’s are fairly cool,
+but—can ye not hear?”
+
+“If she goes,” said the skipper, “I don’t care a curse. And she’s _my_
+boat, too.”
+
+She went, trailing a fathom of weed behind her. From a slow two knots
+an hour she crawled up to a triumphant four. Anything beyond that made
+the struts quiver dangerously, and filled the engine-room with steam.
+Morning showed her out of sight of land, and there was a visible ripple
+under her bows; but she complained bitterly in her bowels, and, as
+though the noise had called it, there shot along across the purple sea
+a swift, dark proa, hawk-like and curious, which presently ranged
+alongside and wished to know if the _Haliotis_ were helpless. Ships,
+even the steamers of the white men, had been known to break down in
+those waters, and the honest Malay and Javanese traders would sometimes
+aid them in their own peculiar way. But this ship was not full of lady
+passengers and well-dressed officers. Men, white, naked and savage,
+swarmed down her sides—some with red-hot iron bars, and others with
+large hammers—threw themselves upon those innocent inquiring strangers,
+and, before any man could say what had happened, were in full
+possession of the proa, while the lawful owners bobbed in the water
+overside. Half an hour later the proa’s cargo of sago and trepang, as
+well as a doubtful-minded compass, was in the _Haliotis_. The two huge
+triangular mat sails, with their seventy-foot yards and booms, had
+followed the cargo, and were being fitted to the stripped masts of the
+steamer.
+
+They rose, they swelled, they filled, and the empty steamer visibly
+laid over as the wind took them. They gave her nearly three knots an
+hour, and what better could men ask? But if she had been forlorn
+before, this new purchase made her horrible to see. Imagine a
+respectable charwoman in the tights of a ballet-dancer rolling drunk
+along the streets, and you will come to some faint notion of the
+appearance of that nine-hundred-ton, well-decked, once schooner-rigged
+cargo-boat as she staggered under her new help, shouting and raving
+across the deep. With steam and sail that marvellous voyage continued;
+and the bright-eyed crew looked over the rail, desolate, unkempt,
+unshorn, shamelessly clothed beyond the decencies.
+
+At the end of the third week she sighted the island of Pygang-Watai,
+whose harbour is the turning-point of a pearl sea-patrol. Here the
+gun-boats stay for a week ere they retrace their line. There is no
+village at Pygang-Watai; only a stream of water, some palms, and a
+harbour safe to rest in till the first violence of the southeast
+monsoon has blown itself out.
+
+They opened up the low coral beach, with its mound of whitewashed coal
+ready for supply, the deserted huts for the sailors, and the flagless
+flagstaff.
+
+Next day there was no _Haliotis_—only a little proa rocking in the warm
+rain at the mouth of the harbour, whose crew watched with hungry eyes
+the smoke of a gunboat on the horizon.
+
+Months afterwards there were a few lines in an English newspaper to the
+effect that some gunboat of some foreign Power had broken her back at
+the mouth of some far-away harbour by running at full speed into a
+sunken wreck.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+I have done one braver thing
+    Than all the worthies did;
+And yet a braver thence doth spring,
+    Which is to keep that hid.
+
+                    THE UNDERTAKING.
+
+
+“Is it officially declared yet?”
+
+“They’ve gone as far as to admit ‘extreme local scarcity,’ and they’ve
+started relief-works in one or two districts, the paper says.”
+
+“That means it will be declared as soon as they can make sure of the
+men and the rolling-stock. Shouldn’t wonder if it were as bad as the
+’78 Famine.”
+
+“Can’t be,” said Scott, turning a little in the long cane chair.
+
+“We’ve had fifteen-anna crops in the north, and Bombay and Bengal
+report more than they know what to do with. They’ll be able to check it
+before it gets out of hand. It will only be local.”
+
+Martyn picked the “_Pioneer_” from the table, read through the
+telegrams once more, and put up his feet on the chair-rests. It was a
+hot, dark, breathless evening, heavy with the smell of the newly
+watered Mall. The flowers in the Club gardens were dead and black on
+their stalks, the little lotus-pond was a circle of caked mud, and the
+tamarisk-trees were white with the dust of weeks. Most of the men were
+at the band-stand in the public gardens—from the Club verandah you
+could hear the native Police band hammering stale waltzes—or on the
+polo-ground, or in the high-walled fives-court, hotter than a Dutch
+oven. Half a dozen grooms, squatted at the heads of their ponies,
+waited their masters’ return. From time to time a man would ride at a
+foot-pace into the Club compound, and listlessly loaf over to the
+whitewashed barracks beside the main building. These were supposed to
+be chambers. Men lived in them, meeting the same white faces night
+after night at dinner, and drawing out their office-work till the
+latest possible hour, that they might escape that doleful company.
+
+“What are you going to do?” said Martyn, with a yawn. “Let’s have a
+swim before dinner.”
+
+“Water’s hot. I was at the bath to-day.”
+
+“Play you game o’ billiards—fifty up.”
+
+“It’s a hundred and five in the hall now. Sit still and don’t be so
+abominably energetic.”
+
+A grunting camel swung up to the porch, his badged and belted rider
+fumbling a leather pouch.
+
+“_Kubber-kargaz-ki-yektraaa_,” the man whined, handing down the
+newspaper extra—a slip printed on one side only, and damp from the
+press. It was pinned up on the green-baize board, between notices of
+ponies for sale and fox-terriers missing.
+
+Martyn rose lazily, read it, and whistled. “It’s declared!” he cried.
+“One, two, three—eight districts go under the operations of the Famine
+Code _ek dum_. They’ve put Jimmy Hawkins in charge.”
+
+“Good business!” said Scott, with the first sign of interest he had
+shown. “When in doubt hire a Punjabi. I worked under Jimmy when I first
+came out and he belonged to the Punjab. He has more _bundobust_ than
+most men.”
+
+“Jimmy’s a Jubilee Knight now,” said Martyn. “He’s a good chap, even
+though he is a thrice-born civilian and went to the Benighted
+Presidency. What unholy names these Madras districts rejoice in—all
+_ungas_ or _rungas_ or _pillays_ or _polliums_.”
+
+A dog-cart drove up in the dusk, and a man entered, mopping his head.
+He was editor of the one daily paper at the capital of a Province of
+twenty-five million natives and a few hundred white men: as his staff
+was limited to himself and one assistant, his office-hours ran
+variously from ten to twenty a day.
+
+“Hi, Raines; you’re supposed to know everything,” said Martyn, stopping
+him. “How’s this Madras ‘scarcity’ going to turn out?”
+
+“No one knows as yet. There’s a message as long as your arm coming in
+on the telephone. I’ve left my cub to fill it out. Madras has owned she
+can’t manage it alone, and Jimmy seems to have a free hand in getting
+all the men he needs. Arbuthnot’s warned to hold himself in readiness.”
+
+“‘Badger’ Arbuthnot?”
+
+“The Peshawur chap. Yes: and the _Pi_ wires that Ellis and Clay have
+been moved from the Northwest already, and they’ve taken half a dozen
+Bombay men, too. It’s _pukka_ famine, by the looks of it.”
+
+“They’re nearer the scene of action than we are; but if it comes to
+indenting on the Punjab this early, there’s more in this than meets the
+eye,” said Martyn.
+
+“Here to-day and gone to-morrow. Didn’t come to stay for ever,” said
+Scott, dropping one of Marryat’s novels, and rising to his feet.
+“Martyn, your sister’s waiting for you.”
+
+A rough grey horse was backing and shifting at the edge of the
+verandah, where the light of a kerosene lamp fell on a brown-calico
+habit and a white face under a grey-felt hat.
+
+“Right, O!” said Martyn. “I’m ready. Better come and dine with us, if
+you’ve nothing to do, Scott. William, is there any dinner in the
+house?”
+
+“I’ll go home and see,” was the rider’s answer. “You can drive him
+over—at eight, remember.”
+
+Scott moved leisurely to his room, and changed into the evening-dress
+of the season and the country: spotless white linen from head to foot,
+with a broad silk _cummerbund_. Dinner at the Martyns’ was a decided
+improvement on the goat-mutton, twiney-tough fowl, and tinned entrées
+of the Club. But it was a great pity that Martyn could not afford to
+send his sister to the hills for the hot weather. As an Acting District
+Superintendent of Police, Martyn drew the magnificent pay of six
+hundred depreciated silver rupees a month, and his little four-roomed
+bungalow said just as much. There were the usual blue-and-white-striped
+jail-made rugs on the uneven floor; the usual glass-studded Amritsar
+_phulkaris_ draped on nails driven into the flaking whitewash of the
+walls; the usual half-dozen chairs that did not match, picked up at
+sales of dead men’s effects; and the usual streaks of black grease
+where the leather punka-thong ran through the wall. It was as though
+everything had been unpacked the night before to be repacked next
+morning. Not a door in the house was true on its hinges. The little
+windows, fifteen feet up, were darkened with wasp-nests, and lizards
+hunted flies between the beams of the wood-ceiled roof. But all this
+was part of Scott’s life. Thus did people live who had such an income;
+and in a land where each man’s pay, age, and position are printed in a
+book, that all may read, it is hardly worth while to play at pretence
+in word or deed. Scott counted eight years’ service in the Irrigation
+Department, and drew eight hundred rupees a month, on the understanding
+that if he served the State faithfully for another twenty-two years he
+could retire on a pension of some four hundred rupees a month. His
+working-life, which had been spent chiefly under canvas or in temporary
+shelters where a man could sleep, eat, and write letters, was bound up
+with the opening and guarding of irrigation canals, the handling of two
+or three thousand workmen of all castes and creeds, and the payment of
+vast sums of coined silver.
+
+He had finished that spring, not without credit, the last section of
+the great Mosuhl Canal, and—much against his will, for he hated
+office-work—had been sent in to serve during the hot weather on the
+accounts and supply side of the Department, with sole charge of the
+sweltering sub-office at the capital of the Province. Martyn knew this;
+William, his sister, knew it; and everybody knew it. Scott knew, too,
+as well as the rest of the world, that Miss Martyn had come out to
+India four years ago to keep house for her brother, who, as every one
+knew, had borrowed the money to pay for her passage, and that she
+ought, as all the world said, to have married at once. In stead of
+this, she had refused some half a dozen subalterns, a Civilian twenty
+years her senior, one Major, and a man in the Indian Medical
+Department. This, too, was common property. She had “stayed down three
+hot weathers,” as the saying is, because her brother was in debt and
+could not afford the expense of her keep at even a cheap hill-station.
+Therefore her face was white as bone, and in the centre of her forehead
+was a big silvery scar about the size of a shilling—the mark of a Delhi
+sore, which is the same as a “Bagdad date.” This comes from drinking
+bad water, and slowly eats into the flesh till it is ripe enough to be
+burned out.
+
+None the less William had enjoyed herself hugely in her four years.
+Twice she had been nearly drowned while fording a river; once she had
+been run away with on a camel; had witnessed a midnight attack of
+thieves on her brother’s camp; had seen justice administered, with long
+sticks, in the open under trees; could speak Urdu and even rough
+Punjabi with a fluency that was envied by her seniors; had entirely
+fallen out of the habit of writing to her aunts in England, or cutting
+the pages of the English magazines; had been through a very bad cholera
+year, seeing sights unfit to be told; and had wound up her experiences
+by six weeks of typhoid fever, during which her head had been shaved
+and hoped to keep her twenty-third birthday that September. It is
+conceivable that the aunts would not have approved of a girl who never
+set foot on the ground if a horse were within hail; who rode to dances
+with a shawl thrown over her skirt; who wore her hair cropped and
+curling all over her head; who answered indifferently to the name of
+William or Bill; whose speech was heavy with the flowers of the
+vernacular; who could act in amateur theatricals, play on the banjo,
+rule eight servants and two horses, their accounts and their diseases,
+and look men slowly and deliberately between the eyes—even after they
+had proposed to her and been rejected.
+
+“I like men who do things,” she had confided to a man in the
+Educational Department, who was teaching the sons of cloth-merchants
+and dyers the beauty of Wordsworth’s “Excursion” in annotated
+cram-books; and when he grew poetical, William explained that she
+“didn’t understand poetry very much; it made her head ache,” and
+another broken heart took refuge at the Club. But it was all William’s
+fault. She delighted in hearing men talk of their own work, and that is
+the most fatal way of bringing a man to your feet.
+
+Scott had known her for some three years, meeting her, as a rule, under
+canvass, when his camp and her brother’s joined for a day on the edge
+of the Indian Desert. He had danced with her several times at the big
+Christmas gatherings, when as many as five hundred white people came in
+to the station; and had always a great respect for her housekeeping and
+her dinners.
+
+She looked more like a boy than ever when, the meal ended, she sat,
+rolling cigarettes, her low forehead puckered beneath the dark curls as
+she twiddled the papers and stuck out her rounded chin when the tobacco
+stayed in place, or, with a gesture as true as a school-boy’s throwing
+a stone, tossed the finished article across the room to Martyn, who
+caught it with one hand, and continued his talk with Scott. It was all
+“shop,”—canals and the policing of canals; the sins of villagers who
+stole more water than they had paid for, and the grosser sin of native
+constables who connived at the thefts; of the transplanting bodily of
+villages to newly irrigated ground, and of the coming fight with the
+desert in the south when the Provincial funds should warrant the
+opening of the long-surveyed Luni Protective Canal System. And Scott
+spoke openly of his great desire to be put on one particular section of
+the work where he knew the land and the people; and Martyn sighed for a
+billet in the Himalayan foot-hills, and said his mind of his superiors,
+and William rolled cigarettes and said nothing, but smiled gravely on
+her brother because he was happy.
+
+At ten Scott’s horse came to the door, and the evening was ended. The
+lights of the two low bungalows in which the daily paper was printed
+showed bright across the road. It was too early to try to find sleep,
+and Scott drifted over to the editor. Raines, stripped to the waist
+like a sailor at a gun, lay half asleep in a long chair, waiting for
+night telegrams. He had a theory that if a man did not stay by his work
+all day and most of the night he laid himself open to fever: so he ate
+and slept among his files.
+
+“Can you do it?” he said drowsily. “I didn’t mean to bring you over.”
+
+“About what? I’ve been dining at the Martyns’.”
+
+“The Madras famine, of course. Martyn’s warned, too. They’re taking men
+where they can find ’em. I sent a note to you at the Club just now,
+asking if you could do us a letter once a week from the south—between
+two and three columns, say. Nothing sensational, of course, but just
+plain facts about who is doing what, and so forth. Our regular
+rates—ten rupees a column.”
+
+“Sorry, but it’s out of my line,” Scott answered, staring absently at
+the map of India on the wall. “It’s rough on Martyn—very. Wonder what
+he’ll do with his sister? Wonder what the deuce they’ll do with me?
+I’ve no famine experience. This is the first I’ve heard of it. _Am_ I
+ordered?”
+
+“Oh, yes. Here’s the wire. They’ll put you on to relief-works,” Raines
+said, “with a horde of Madrassis dying like flies; one native
+apothecary and half a pint of cholera-mixture among the ten thousand of
+you. It comes of your being idle for the moment. Every man who isn’t
+doing two men’s work seems to have been called upon. Hawkins evidently
+believes in Punjabis. It’s going to be quite as bad as anything they
+have had in the last ten years.”
+
+“It’s all in the day’s work, worse luck. I suppose I shall get my
+orders officially some time to-morrow. I’m awfully glad I happened to
+drop in. Better go and pack my kit now. Who relieves me here—do you
+know?”
+
+Raines turned over a sheaf of telegrams. “McEuan,” said he, “from
+Murree.”
+
+Scott chuckled. “He thought he was going to be cool all summer. He’ll
+be very sick about this. Well, no good talking. ’Night.”
+
+Two hours later, Scott, with a clear conscience, laid himself down to
+rest on a string cot in a bare room. Two worn bullock trunks, a leather
+water-bottle, a tin ice-box, and his pet saddle sewed up in sacking
+were piled at the door, and the Club secretary’s receipt for last
+month’s bill was under his pillow. His orders came next morning, and
+with them an unofficial telegram from Sir James Hawkins; who was not in
+the habit of forgetting good men when he had once met them, bidding him
+report himself with all speed at some unpronounceable place fifteen
+hundred miles to the south, for the famine was sore in the land, and
+white men were needed.
+
+A pink and fattish youth arrived in the red-hot noonday, whimpering a
+little at fate and famines, which never allowed any one three months’
+peace. He was Scott’s successor—another cog in the machinery, moved
+forward behind his fellow whose services, as the official announcement
+ran, “were placed at the disposal of the Madras Government for famine
+duty until further orders.” Scott handed over the funds in his charge,
+showed him the coolest corner in the office, warned him against excess
+of zeal, and, as twilight fell, departed from the Club in a hired
+carriage, with his faithful body-servant, Faiz Ullah, and a mound of
+disordered baggage atop, to catch the southern mail at the loopholed
+and bastioned railway-station. The heat from the thick brick walls
+struck him across the face as if it had been a hot towel; and he
+reflected that there were at least five nights and four days of this
+travel before him. Faiz Ullah, used to the chances of service, plunged
+into the crowd on the stone platform, while Scott, a black cheroot
+between his teeth, waited till his compartment should be set away. A
+dozen native policemen, with their rifles and bundles, shouldered into
+the press of Punjabi farmers, Sikh craftsmen, and greasy-locked
+Afreedee pedlars, escorting with all pomp Martyn’s uniform-case,
+water-bottles, ice-box, and bedding-roll. They saw Faiz Ullah’s lifted
+hand, and steered for it.
+
+“My Sahib and your Sahib,” said Faiz Ullah to Martyn’s man, “will
+travel together. Thou and I, O brother, will thus secure the servants’
+places close by; and because of our masters’ authority none will dare
+to disturb us.”
+
+When Faiz Ullah reported all things ready, Scott settled down at full
+length, coatless and bootless, on the broad leather-covered bunk. The
+heat under the iron-arched roof of the station might have been anything
+over a hundred degrees. At the last moment Martyn entered, dripping.
+
+“Don’t swear,” said Scott, lazily; “it’s too late to change your
+carriage; and we’ll divide the ice.”
+
+“What are you doing here?” said the police-man.
+
+“I’m lent to the Madras Government, same as you. By Jove, it’s a bender
+of a night! Are you taking any of your men down?”
+
+“A dozen. I suppose I shall have to superintend relief distributions.
+Didn’t know you were under orders too.”
+
+“I didn’t till after I left you last night. Raines had the news first.
+My orders came this morning. McEuan relieved me at four, and I got off
+at once. Shouldn’t wonder if it wouldn’t be a good thing—this famine—if
+we come through it alive.”
+
+“Jimmy ought to put you and me to work together,” said Martyn; and
+then, after a pause: “My sister’s here.”
+
+“Good business,” said Scott, heartily. “Going to get off at Umballa, I
+suppose, and go up to Simla. Who’ll she stay with there?”
+
+“No-o; that’s just the trouble of it. She’s going down with me.”
+
+Scott sat bolt upright under the oil-lamps as the train jolted past
+Tarn-Taran. “What! You don’t mean you couldn’t afford—”
+
+“’Tain’t that. I’d have scraped up the money somehow.”
+
+“You might have come to me, to begin with,” said Scott, stiffly; “we
+aren’t altogether strangers.”
+
+“Well, you needn’t be stuffy about it. I might, but—you don’t know my
+sister. I’ve been explaining and exhorting and all the rest of it all
+day—lost my temper since seven this morning, and haven’t got it back
+yet—but she wouldn’t hear of any compromise. A woman’s entitled to
+travel with her husband if she wants to; and William says she’s on the
+same footing. You see, we’ve been together all our lives, more or less,
+since my people died. It isn’t as if she were an ordinary sister.”
+
+“All the sisters I’ve ever heard of would have stayed where they were
+well off.”
+
+“She’s as clever as a man, confound her,” Martyn went on. “She broke up
+the bungalow over my head while I was talking at her. Settled the whole
+_subchiz_ [outfit] in three hours—servants, horses, and all. I didn’t
+get my orders till nine.”
+
+“Jimmy Hawkins won’t be pleased,” said Scott. “A famine’s no place for
+a woman.”
+
+“Mrs. Jim—I mean Lady Jim’s in camp with him. At any rate, she says she
+will look after my sister. William wired down to her on her own
+responsibility, asking if she could come, and knocked the ground from
+under me by showing me her answer.”
+
+Scott laughed aloud. “If she can do that she can take care of herself,
+and Mrs. Jim won’t let her run into any mischief. There aren’t many
+women, sisters or wives, who would walk into a famine with their eyes
+open. It isn’t as if she didn’t know what these things mean. She was
+through the Jalo cholera last year.”
+
+The train stopped at Amritsar, and Scott went back to the ladies’
+compartment, immediately behind their carriage. William, with a cloth
+riding-cap on her curls, nodded affably.
+
+“Come in and have some tea,” she said. “Best thing in the world for
+heat-apoplexy.”
+
+“Do I look as if I were going to have heat-apoplexy?”
+
+“Never can tell,” said William, wisely. “It’s always best to be ready.”
+
+She had arranged her compartment with the knowledge of an old
+campaigner. A felt-covered water-bottle hung in the draught of one of
+the shuttered windows; a tea-set of Russian china, packed in a wadded
+basket, stood on the seat; and a travelling spirit-lamp was clamped
+against the woodwork above it.
+
+William served them generously, in large cups, hot tea, which saves the
+veins of the neck from swelling inopportunely on a hot night. It was
+characteristic of the girl that, her plan of action once settled, she
+asked for no comments on it. Life among men who had a great deal of
+work to do, and very little time to do it in, had taught her the wisdom
+of effacing, as well as of fending for, herself. She did not by word or
+deed suggest that she would be useful, comforting, or beautiful in
+their travels, but continued about her business serenely: put the cups
+back without clatter when tea was ended, and made cigarettes for her
+guests.
+
+“This time last night,” said Scott, “we didn’t expect—er—this kind of
+thing, did we?”
+
+“I’ve learned to expect anything,” said William. “You know, in our
+service, we live at the end of the telegraph; but, of course, this
+ought to be a good thing for us all, departmentally—if we live.”
+
+“It knocks us out of the running in our own Province,” Scott replied,
+with equal gravity. “I hoped to be put on the Luni Protective Works
+this cold weather, but there’s no saying how long the famine may keep
+us.”
+
+“Hardly beyond October, I should think,” said Martyn. “It will be
+ended, one way or the other, then.”
+
+“And we’ve nearly a week of this,” said William. “Sha’n’t we be dusty
+when it’s over?”
+
+For a night and a day they knew their surroundings, and for a night and
+a day, skirting the edge of the great Indian Desert on a narrow-gauge
+railway, they remembered how in the days of their apprenticeship they
+had come by that road from Bombay. Then the languages in which the
+names of the stations were written changed, and they launched south
+into a foreign land, where the very smells were new. Many long and
+heavily laden grain-trains were in front of them, and they could feel
+the hand of Jimmy Hawkins from far off. They waited in extemporised
+sidings while processions of empty trucks returned to the north, and
+were coupled on to slow, crawling trains, and dropped at midnight,
+Heaven knew where; but it was furiously hot, and they walked to and fro
+among sacks, and dogs howled. Then they came to an India more strange
+to them than to the untravelled Englishman—the flat, red India of
+palm-tree, palmyra-palm, and rice—the India of the picture-books, of
+“_Little Henry and His Bearer_”—all dead and dry in the baking heat.
+They had left the incessant passenger-traffic of the north and west far
+and far behind them. Here the people crawled to the side of the train,
+holding their little ones in their arms; and a loaded truck would be
+left behind, the men and women clustering round it like ants by spilled
+honey. Once in the twilight they saw on a dusty plain a regiment of
+little brown men, each bearing a body over his shoulder; and when the
+train stopped to leave yet another truck, they perceived that the
+burdens were not corpses, but only foodless folk picked up beside dead
+oxen by a corps of Irregular troops. Now they met more white men, here
+one and there two, whose tents stood close to the line, and who came
+armed with written authorities and angry words to cut off a truck. They
+were too busy to do more than nod at Scott and Martyn, and stare
+curiously at William, who could do nothing except make tea, and watch
+how her men staved off the rush of wailing, walking skeletons, putting
+them down three at a time in heaps, with their own hands uncoupling the
+marked trucks, or taking receipts from the hollow-eyed, weary white
+men, who spoke another argot than theirs. They ran out of ice, out of
+soda-water, and out of tea; for they were six days and seven nights on
+the road, and it seemed to them like seven times seven years.
+
+At last, in a dry, hot dawn, in a land of death, lit by long red fires
+of railway-sleepers, where they were burning the dead, they came to
+their destination, and were met by Jim Hawkins, the Head of the Famine,
+unshaven, unwashed, but cheery, and entirely in command of affairs.
+
+Martyn, he decreed then and there, was to live on trains till further
+orders; was to go back with empty trucks, filling them with starving
+people as he found them, and dropping them at a famine-camp on the edge
+of the Eight Districts. He would pick up supplies and return, and his
+constables would guard the loaded grain-cars, also picking up people,
+and would drop them at a camp a hundred miles south. Scott—Hawkins was
+very glad to see Scott again—would that same hour take charge of a
+convoy of bullock-carts, and would go south, feeding as he went, to yet
+another famine-camp, where he would leave his starving—there would be
+no lack of starving on the route—and wait for orders by telegraph.
+Generally, Scott was in all small things to act as he thought best.
+
+William bit her under lip. There was no one in the wide world like her
+one brother, but Martyn’s orders gave him no discretion.
+
+She came out on the platform, masked with dust from head to foot, a
+horse-shoe wrinkle on her forehead, put here by much thinking during
+the past week, but as self-possessed as ever. Mrs. Jim—who should have
+been Lady Jim but that no one remembered the title—took possession of
+her with a little gasp.
+
+“Oh, I’m so glad you’re here,” she almost sobbed. “You oughtn’t to, of
+course, but there—there isn’t another woman in the place, and we must
+help each other, you know; and we’ve all the wretched people and the
+little babies they are selling.”
+
+“I’ve seen some,” said William.
+
+“Isn’t it ghastly? I’ve bought twenty; they’re in our camp; but won’t
+you have something to eat first? We’ve more than ten people can do
+here; and I’ve got a horse for you. Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come, dear.
+You’re a Punjabi, too, you know.”
+
+“Steady, Lizzie,” said Hawkins, over his shoulder. “We’ll look after
+you, Miss Martyn. Sorry I can’t ask you to breakfast, Martyn. You’ll
+have to eat as you go. Leave two of your men to help Scott. These poor
+devils can’t stand up to load carts. Saunders” (this to the
+engine-driver, who was half asleep in the cab), “back down and get
+those empties away. You’ve ‘line clear’ to Anundrapillay; they’ll give
+you orders north of that. Scott, load up your carts from that B. P. P.
+truck, and be off as soon as you can. The Eurasian in the pink shirt is
+your interpreter and guide. You’ll find an apothecary of sorts tied to
+the yoke of the second wagon. He’s been trying to bolt; you’ll have to
+look after him. Lizzie, drive Miss Martyn to camp, and tell them to
+send the red horse down here for me.”
+
+Scott, with Faiz Ullah and two policemen, was already busied with the
+carts, backing them up to the truck and unbolting the sideboards
+quietly, while the others pitched in the bags of millet and wheat.
+Hawkins watched him for as long as it took to fill one cart.
+
+“That’s a good man,” he said. “If all goes well I shall work him hard.”
+This was Jim Hawkins’s notion of the highest compliment one human being
+could pay another.
+
+An hour later Scott was under way; the apothecary threatening him with
+the penalties of the law for that he, a member of the Subordinate
+Medical Department, had been coerced and bound against his will and all
+laws governing the liberty of the subject; the pink-shirted Eurasian
+begging leave to see his mother, who happened to be dying some three
+miles away: “Only verree, verree short leave of absence, and will
+presently return, sar—“; the two constables, armed with staves,
+bringing up the rear; and Faiz Ullah, a Mohammedan’s contempt for all
+Hindoos and foreigners in every line of his face, explaining to the
+drivers that though Scott Sahib was a man to be feared on all fours,
+he, Faiz Ullah, was Authority Itself.
+
+The procession creaked past Hawkins’s camp—three stained tents under a
+clump of dead trees, behind them the famine-shed, where a crowd of
+hopeless ones tossed their arms around the cooking-kettles.
+
+“Wish to Heaven William had kept out of it,” said Scott to himself,
+after a glance. “We’ll have cholera, sure as a gun, when the Rains
+break.”
+
+But William seemed to have taken kindly to the operations of the Famine
+Code, which, when famine is declared, supersede the workings of the
+ordinary law. Scott saw her, the centre of a mob of weeping women, in a
+calico riding-habit, and a blue-grey felt hat with a gold puggaree.
+
+“I want fifty rupees, please. I forgot to ask Jack before he went away.
+Can you lend it me? It’s for condensed-milk for the babies,” said she.
+
+Scott took the money from his belt, and handed it over without a word.
+“For goodness sake, take care of yourself,” he said.
+
+“Oh, I shall be all right. We ought to get the milk in two days. By the
+way, the orders are, I was to tell you, that you’re to take one of Sir
+Jim’s horses. There’s a grey Cabuli here that I thought would be just
+your style, so I’ve said you’d take him. Was that right?”
+
+“That’s awfully good of you. We can’t either of us talk much about
+style, I am afraid.”
+
+Scott was in a weather-stained drill shooting-kit, very white at the
+seams and a little frayed at the wrists. William regarded him
+thoughtfully, from his pith helmet to his greased ankle-boots. “You
+look very nice, I think. Are you sure you’ve everything you’ll
+need—quinine, chlorodyne, and so on?”
+
+“Think so,” said Scott, patting three or four of his shooting-pockets
+as he mounted and rode alongside his convoy.
+
+“Good-bye,” he cried.
+
+“Good-bye, and good luck,” said William. “I’m awfully obliged for the
+money.” She turned on a spurred heel and disappeared into the tent,
+while the carts pushed on past the famine-sheds, past the roaring lines
+of the thick, fat fires, down to the baked Gehenna of the South.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+So let us melt and make no noise,
+    No tear-floods nor sigh-tempests move;
+’Twere profanation of our joys
+    To tell the Laity our love.
+
+                    A VALEDICTION.
+
+
+It was punishing work, even though he travelled by night and camped by
+day; but within the limits of his vision there was no man whom Scott
+could call master. He was as free as Jimmy Hawkins—freer, in fact, for
+the Government held the Head of the Famine tied neatly to a
+telegraph-wire, and if Jimmy had ever regarded telegrams seriously, the
+death-rate of that famine would have been much higher than it was.
+
+At the end of a few days’ crawling Scott learned something of the size
+of the India which he served, and it astonished him. His carts, as you
+know, were loaded with wheat, millet, and barley, good food-grains
+needing only a little grinding. But the people to whom he brought the
+life-giving stuffs were rice-eaters. They could hull rice in their
+mortars, but they knew nothing of the heavy stone querns of the North,
+and less of the material that the white man convoyed so laboriously.
+They clamoured for rice—unhusked paddy, such as they were accustomed
+to—and, when they found that there was none, broke away weeping from
+the sides of the cart. What was the use of these strange hard grains
+that choked their throats? They would die. And then and there very many
+of them kept their word. Others took their allowance, and bartered
+enough millet to feed a man through a week for a few handfuls of rotten
+rice saved by some less unfortunate. A few put their share into the
+rice-mortars, pounded it, and made a paste with foul water; but they
+were very few. Scott understood dimly that many people in the India of
+the South ate rice, as a rule, but he had spent his service in a grain
+Province, had seldom seen rice in the blade or ear, and least of all
+would have believed that in time of deadly need men could die at arm’s
+length of plenty, sooner than touch food they did not know. In vain the
+interpreters interpreted; in vain his two policemen showed in vigorous
+pantomime what should be done. The starving crept away to their bark
+and weeds, grubs, leaves, and clay, and left the open sacks untouched.
+But sometimes the women laid their phantoms of children at Scott’s
+feet, looking back as they staggered away.
+
+Faiz Ullah opined it was the will of God that these foreigners should
+die, and it remained only to give orders to burn the dead. None the
+less there was no reason why the Sahib should lack his comforts, and
+Faiz Ullah, a campaigner of experience, had picked up a few lean goats
+and had added them to the procession. That they might give milk for the
+morning meal, he was feeding them on the good grain that these
+imbeciles rejected. “Yes,” said Faiz Ullah; “if the Sahib thought fit,
+a little milk might be given to some of the babies”; but, as the Sahib
+well knew, babies were cheap, and, for his own part, Faiz Ullah held
+that there was no Government order as to babies. Scott spoke forcefully
+to Faiz Ullah and the two policemen, and bade them capture goats where
+they could find them. This they most joyfully did, for it was a
+recreation, and many ownerless goats were driven in. Once fed, the poor
+brutes were willing enough to follow the carts, and a few days’ good
+food—food such as human beings died for lack of—set them in milk again.
+
+“But I am no goatherd,” said Faiz Ullah. “It is against my _izzat_ [my
+honour].”
+
+“When we cross the Bias River again we will talk of _izzat_,” Scott
+replied. “Till that day thou and the policemen shall be sweepers to the
+camp, if I give the order.”
+
+“Thus, then, it is done,” grunted Faiz Ullah, “if the Sahib will have
+it so”; and he showed how a goat should be milked, while Scott stood
+over him.
+
+“Now we will feed them,” said Scott; “twice a day we will feed them”;
+and he bowed his back to the milking, and took a horrible cramp.
+
+When you have to keep connection unbroken between a restless mother of
+kids and a baby who is at the point of death, you suffer in all your
+system. But the babies were fed. Each morning and evening Scott would
+solemnly lift them out one by one from their nest of gunny-bags under
+the cart-tilts. There were always many who could do no more than
+breathe, and the milk was dropped into their toothless mouths drop by
+drop, with due pauses when they choked. Each morning, too, the goats
+were fed; and since they would straggle without a leader, and since the
+natives were hirelings, Scott was forced to give up riding, and pace
+slowly at the head of his flocks, accommodating his step to their
+weaknesses. All this was sufficiently absurd, and he felt the absurdity
+keenly; but at least he was saving life, and when the women saw that
+their children did not die, they made shift to eat a little of the
+strange foods, and crawled after the carts, blessing the master of the
+goats.
+
+“Give the women something to live for,” said Scott to himself, as he
+sneezed in the dust of a hundred little feet, “and they’ll hang on
+somehow. This beats William’s condensed-milk trick all to pieces. I
+shall never live it down, though.”
+
+He reached his destination very slowly, found that a rice-ship had come
+in from Burmah, and that stores of paddy were available; found also an
+overworked Englishman in charge of the shed, and, loading the carts,
+set back to cover the ground he had already passed. He left some of the
+children and half his goats at the famine-shed. For this he was not
+thanked by the Englishman, who had already more stray babies than he
+knew what to do with. Scott’s back was suppled to stooping now, and he
+went on with his wayside ministrations in addition to distributing the
+paddy. More babies and more goats were added unto him; but now some of
+the babies wore rags, and beads round their wrists or necks. “_That_”
+said the interpreter, as though Scott did not know, “signifies that
+their mothers hope in eventual contingency to resume them offeecially.”
+
+“The sooner, the better,” said Scott; but at the same time he marked,
+with the pride of ownership, how this or that little Ramasawmy was
+putting on flesh like a bantam. As the paddy-carts were emptied he
+headed for Hawkins’s camp by the railway, timing his arrival to fit in
+with the dinner-hour, for it was long since he had eaten at a cloth. He
+had no desire to make any dramatic entry, but an accident of the sunset
+ordered it that when he had taken off his helmet to get the evening
+breeze, the low light should fall across his forehead, and he could not
+see what was before him; while one waiting at the tent door beheld with
+new eyes a young man, beautiful as Paris, a god in a halo of golden
+dust, walking slowly at the head of his flocks, while at his knee ran
+small naked Cupids. But she laughed—William, in a slate-coloured
+blouse, laughed consumedly till Scott, putting the best face he could
+upon the matter, halted his armies and bade her admire the
+kindergarten. It was an unseemly sight, but the proprieties had been
+left ages ago, with the tea-party at Amritsar Station, fifteen hundred
+miles to the north.
+
+“They are coming on nicely,” said William. “We’ve only five-and-twenty
+here now. The women are beginning to take them away again.”
+
+“Are you in charge of the babies, then?”
+
+“Yes—Mrs. Jim and I. We didn’t think of goats, though. We’ve been
+trying condensed-milk and water.”
+
+“Any losses?”
+
+“More than I care to think of;” said William, with a shudder. “And
+you?”
+
+Scott said nothing. There had been many little burials along his
+route—one cannot burn a dead baby—many mothers who had wept when they
+did not find again the children they had trusted to the care of the
+Government.
+
+Then Hawkins came out carrying a razor, at which Scott looked hungrily,
+for he had a beard that he did not love. And when they sat down to
+dinner in the tent he told his tale in few words, as it might have been
+an official report. Mrs. Jim snuffled from time to time, and Jim bowed
+his head judicially; but William’s grey eyes were on the clean-shaven
+face, and it was to her that Scott seemed to appeal.
+
+“Good for the Pauper Province!” said William, her chin on her hand, as
+she leaned forward among the wine-glasses. Her cheeks had fallen in,
+and the scar on her forehead was more prominent than ever, but the
+well-turned neck rose roundly as a column from the ruffle of the blouse
+which was the accepted evening-dress in camp.
+
+“It was awfully absurd at times,” said Scott. “You see, I didn’t know
+much about milking or babies. They’ll chaff my head off, if the tale
+goes up North.”
+
+“Let ’em,” said William, haughtily. “We’ve all done coolie-work since
+we came. I know Jack has.” This was to Hawkins’s address, and the big
+man smiled blandly.
+
+“Your brother’s a highly efficient officer, William,” said he, “and
+I’ve done him the honour of treating him as he deserves. Remember, I
+write the confidential reports.”
+
+“Then you must say that William’s worth her weight in gold,” said Mrs.
+Jim. “I don’t know what we should have done without her. She has been
+everything to us.” She dropped her hand upon William’s, which was rough
+with much handling of reins, and William patted it softly. Jim beamed
+on the company. Things were going well with his world. Three of his
+more grossly incompetent men had died, and their places had been filled
+by their betters. Every day brought the Rains nearer. They had put out
+the famine in five of the Eight Districts, and, after all, the
+death-rate had not been too heavy—things considered. He looked Scott
+over carefully, as an ogre looks over a man, and rejoiced in his thews
+and iron-hard condition.
+
+“He’s just the least bit in the world tucked up,” said Jim to himself,
+“but he can do two men’s work yet.” Then he was aware that Mrs. Jim was
+telegraphing to him, and according to the domestic code the message
+ran: “A clear case. Look at them!”
+
+He looked and listened. All that William was saying was: “What can you
+expect of a country where they call a _bhistee_ [a water-carrier] a
+_tunni-cutch?_” and all that Scott answered was: “I shall be glad to
+get back to the Club. Save me a dance at the Christmas Ball, won’t
+you?”
+
+“It’s a far cry from here to the Lawrence Hall,” said Jim. “Better turn
+in early, Scott. It’s paddy-carts to-morrow; you’ll begin loading at
+five.”
+
+“Aren’t you going to give Mr. Scott a single day’s rest?”
+
+“Wish I could, Lizzie, ’Fraid I can’t. As long as he can stand up we
+must use him.”
+
+“Well, I’ve had one Europe evening, at least. By Jove, I’d nearly
+forgotten! What do I do about those babies of mine?”
+
+“Leave them here,” said William—“we are in charge of that—and as many
+goats as you can spare. I must learn how to milk now.”
+
+“If you care to get up early enough to-morrow I’ll show you. I have to
+milk, you see. Half of ’em have beads and things round their necks. You
+must be careful not to take ’em off; in case the mothers turn up.”
+
+“You forget I’ve had some experience here.”
+
+“I hope to goodness you won’t overdo.” Scott’s voice was unguarded.
+
+“I’ll take care of her,” said Mrs. Jim, telegraphing hundred-word
+messages as she carried William off; while Jim gave Scott his orders
+for the coming campaign. It was very late—nearly nine o’clock.
+
+“Jim, you’re a brute,” said his wife, that night; and the Head of the
+Famine chuckled.
+
+“Not a bit of it, dear. I remember doing the first Jandiala Settlement
+for the sake of a girl in a crinoline, and she was slender, Lizzie.
+I’ve never done as good a piece of work since. _He_’ll work like a
+demon.”
+
+“But you might have given him one day.”
+
+“And let things come to a head now? No, dear; it’s their happiest
+time.”
+
+“I don’t believe either of the darlings know what’s the matter with
+them. Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t it lovely?”
+
+“Getting up at three to learn to milk, bless her heart! Oh, ye Gods,
+why must we grow old and fat?”
+
+“She’s a darling. She has done more work under me—”
+
+“Under _you!_ The day after she came she was in charge and you were her
+subordinate. You’ve stayed there ever since; she manages you almost as
+well as you manage me.”
+
+“She doesn’t, and that’s why I love her. She’s as direct as a man—as
+her brother.”
+
+“Her brother’s weaker than she is. He’s always to me for orders; but
+he’s honest, and a glutton for work. I confess I’m rather fond of
+William, and if I had a daughter—”
+
+The talk ended. Far away in the Derajat was a child’s grave more than
+twenty years old, and neither Jim nor his wife spoke of it any more.
+
+“All the same, you’re responsible,” Jim added, a moment’s silence.
+
+“Bless ’em!” said Mrs. Jim, sleepily.
+
+Before the stars paled, Scott, who slept in an empty cart, waked and
+went about his work in silence; it seemed at that hour unkind to rouse
+Faiz Ullah and the interpreter. His head being close to the ground, he
+did not hear William till she stood over him in the dingy old
+riding-habit, her eyes still heavy with sleep, a cup of tea and a piece
+of toast in her hands. There was a baby on the ground, squirming on a
+piece of blanket, and a six-year-old child peered over Scott’s
+shoulder.
+
+“Hai, you little rip,” said Scott, “how the deuce do you expect to get
+your rations if you aren’t quiet?”
+
+A cool white hand steadied the brat, who forthwith choked as the milk
+gurgled into his mouth.
+
+“Mornin’,” said the milker. “You’ve no notion how these little fellows
+can wriggle.”
+
+“Oh, yes, I have.” She whispered, because the world was asleep. “Only I
+feed them with a spoon or a rag. Yours are fatter than mine. And you’ve
+been doing this day after day?” The voice was almost lost.
+
+“Yes; it was absurd. Now you try,” he said, giving place to the girl.
+“Look out! A goat’s not a cow.”
+
+The goat protested against the amateur, and there was a scuffle, in
+which Scott snatched up the baby. Then it was all to do over again, and
+William laughed softly and merrily. She managed, however, to feed two
+babies, and a third.
+
+“Don’t the little beggars take it well?” said Scott. “I trained ’em.”
+
+They were very busy and interested, when lo! it was broad daylight, and
+before they knew, the camp was awake, and they kneeled among the goats,
+surprised by the day, both flushed to the temples. Yet all the round
+world rolling up out of the darkness might have heard and seen all that
+had passed between them.
+
+“Oh,” said William, unsteadily, snatching up the tea and toast, “I had
+this made for you. It’s stone-cold now. I thought you mightn’t have
+anything ready so early. Better not drink it. It’s—it’s stone-cold.”
+
+“That’s awfully kind of you. It’s just right. It’s awfully good of you,
+really. I’ll leave my kids and goats with you and Mrs. Jim, and, of
+course, any one in camp can show you about the milking.”
+
+“Of course,” said William; and she grew pinker and pinker and statelier
+and more stately, as she strode back to her tent, fanning herself with
+the saucer.
+
+There were shrill lamentations through the camp when the elder children
+saw their nurse move off without them. Faiz Ullah unbent so far as to
+jest with the policemen, and Scott turned purple with shame because
+Hawkins, already in the saddle, roared.
+
+A child escaped from the care of Mrs. Jim, and, running like a rabbit,
+clung to Scott’s boot, William pursuing with long, easy strides.
+
+“I will not go—I will not go!” shrieked the child, twining his feet
+round Scott’s ankle. “They will kill me here. I do not know these
+people.”
+
+“I say,” said Scott, in broken Tamil, “I say, she will do you no harm.
+Go with her and be well fed.”
+
+“Come!” said William, panting, with a wrathful glance at Scott, who
+stood helpless and, as it were, hamstrung.
+
+“Go back,” said Scott quickly to William. “I’ll send the little chap
+over in a minute.”
+
+The tone of authority had its effect, but in a way Scott did not
+exactly intend. The boy loosened his grasp, and said with gravity: “I
+did not know the woman was thine. I will go.” Then he cried to his
+companions, a mob of three-, four-, and five-year-olds waiting on the
+success of his venture ere they stampeded: “Go back and eat. It is our
+man’s woman. She will obey his orders.”
+
+Jim collapsed where he sat; Faiz Ullah and the two policemen grinned;
+and Scott’s orders to the cartmen flew like hail.
+
+“That is the custom of the Sahibs when truth is told in their
+presence,” said Faiz Ullah. “The time comes that I must seek new
+service. Young wives, especially such as speak our language and have
+knowledge of the ways of the Police, make great trouble for honest
+butlers in the matter of weekly accounts.”
+
+What William thought of it all she did not say, but when her brother,
+ten days later, came to camp for orders, and heard of Scott’s
+performances, he said, laughing: “Well, that settles it. He’ll be
+_Bakri_ Scott to the end of his days.” (_Bakri_ in the Northern
+vernacular, means a goat.) “What a lark! I’d have given a month’s pay
+to have seen him nursing famine babies. I fed some with _conjee_
+[rice-water], but that was all right.”
+
+“It’s perfectly disgusting,” said his sister, with blazing eyes. “A man
+does something like—like that—and all you other men think of is to give
+him an absurd nickname, and then you laugh and think it’s funny.”
+
+“Ah,” said Mrs. Jim, sympathetically.
+
+“Well, _you_ can’t talk, William. You christened little Miss Demby the
+Button-quail, last cold weather; you know you did. India’s the land of
+nicknames.”
+
+“That’s different,” William replied. “She was only a girl, and she
+hadn’t done anything except walk like a quail, and she _does_. But it
+isn’t fair to make fun of a man.”
+
+“Scott won’t care,” said Martyn. “You can’t get a rise out of old
+Scotty. I’ve been trying for eight years, and you’ve only known him for
+three. How does he look?”
+
+“He looks very well,” said William, and went away with a flushed cheek.
+“_Bakri_ Scott, indeed!” Then she laughed to herself, for she knew her
+country. “But it will be _Bakri_ all the same”; and she repeated it
+under her breath several times slowly, whispering it into favour.
+
+When he returned to his duties on the railway, Martyn spread the name
+far and wide among his associates, so that Scott met it as he led his
+paddy-carts to war. The natives believed it to be some English title of
+honour, and the cart-drivers used it in all simplicity till Faiz Ullah,
+who did not approve of foreign japes, broke their heads. There was very
+little time for milking now, except at the big camps, where Jim had
+extended Scott’s idea and was feeding large flocks on the useless
+northern grains. Sufficient paddy had come now into the Eight Districts
+to hold the people safe, if it were only distributed quickly, and for
+that purpose no one was better than the big Canal officer, who never
+lost his temper, never gave an unnecessary order, and never questioned
+an order given. Scott pressed on, saving his cattle, washing their
+galled necks daily, so that no time should be lost on the road;
+reported himself with his rice at the minor famine-sheds, unloaded, and
+went back light by forced night-march to the next distributing centre,
+to find Hawkins’s unvarying telegram: “Do it again.” And he did it
+again and again, and yet again, while Jim Hawkins, fifty miles away,
+marked off on a big map the tracks of his wheels gridironing the
+stricken lands. Others did well—Hawkins reported at the end they all
+did well—but Scott was the most excellent, for he kept good coined
+rupees by him, settled for his own cart-repairs on the spot, and ran to
+meet all sorts of unconsidered extras, trusting to be recouped later
+on. Theoretically, the Government should have paid for every shoe and
+linchpin, for every hand employed in the loading; but Government
+vouchers cash themselves slowly, and intelligent and efficient clerks
+write at great length, contesting unauthorised expenditures of eight
+annas. The man who wants to make his work a success must draw on his
+own bank-account of money or other things as he goes.
+
+“I told you he’d work,” said Jimmy to his wife, at the end of six
+weeks. “He’s been in sole charge of a couple of thousand men up north,
+on the Mosuhl Canal, for a year; but he gives less trouble than young
+Martyn with his ten constables; and I’m morally certain—only Government
+doesn’t recognise moral obligations—he’s spent about half his pay to
+grease his wheels. Look at this, Lizzie, for one week’s work! Forty
+miles in two days with twelve carts; two days’ halt building a
+famine-shed for young Rogers. (Rogers ought to have built it himself,
+the idiot!) Then forty miles back again, loading six carts on the way,
+and distributing all Sunday. Then in the evening he pitches in a
+twenty-page Demi-Official to me, saying the people where he is might be
+‘advantageously employed on relief-work,’ and suggesting that he put
+’em to work on some broken-down old reservoir he’s discovered, so as to
+have a good water-supply when the Rains break. He thinks he can cauk
+the dam in a fortnight. Look at his marginal sketches—aren’t they clear
+and good? I knew he was _pukka_, but I didn’t know he was as _pukka_ as
+this!”
+
+“I must show these to William,” said Mrs. Jim. “The child’s wearing
+herself out among the babies.”
+
+“Not more than you are, dear. Well, another two months ought to see us
+out of the wood. I’m sorry it’s not in my power to recommend you for a
+V. C.”
+
+William sat late in her tent that night, reading through page after
+page of the square handwriting, patting the sketches of proposed
+repairs to the reservoir, and wrinkling her eyebrows over the columns
+of figures of estimated water-supply. “And he finds time to do all
+this,” she cried to herself, “and—well, I also was present. I’ve saved
+one or two babies.”
+
+She dreamed for the twentieth time of the god in the golden dust, and
+woke refreshed to feed loathsome black children, scores of them,
+wastrels picked up by the wayside, their bones almost breaking their
+skin, terrible and covered with sores.
+
+Scott was not allowed to leave his cart-work, but his letter was duly
+forwarded to the Government, and he had the consolation, not rare in
+India, of knowing that another man was reaping where he had sown. That
+also was discipline profitable to the soul.
+
+“He’s much too good to waste on canals,” said Jimmy. “Any one can
+oversee coolies. You needn’t be angry, William; he can—but I need my
+pearl among bullock-drivers, and I’ve transferred him to the Khanda
+district, where he’ll have it all to do over again. He should be
+marching now.
+
+“He’s _not_ a coolie,” said William, furiously. “He ought to be doing
+his regulation work.”
+
+“He’s the best man in his service, and that’s saying a good deal; but
+if you _must_ use razors to cut grindstones, why, I prefer the best
+cutlery.”
+
+“Isn’t it almost time we saw him again?” said Mrs. Jim. “I’m sure the
+poor boy hasn’t had a respectable meal for a month. He probably sits on
+a cart and eats sardines with his fingers.”
+
+“All in good time, dear. Duty before decency—wasn’t it Mr. Chucks said
+that?”
+
+“No; it was Midshipman Easy,” William laughed. “I sometimes wonder how
+it will feel to dance or listen to a band again, or sit under a roof. I
+can’t believe I ever wore a ball-frock in my life.”
+
+“One minute,” said Mrs. Jim, who was thinking. “If he goes to Khanda,
+he passes within five miles of us. Of course he’ll ride in.”
+
+“Oh, no, he won’t,” said William.
+
+“How do you know, dear?”
+
+“It will take him off his work. He won’t have time.”
+
+“He’ll make it,” said Mrs. Jim, with a twinkle.
+
+“It depends on his own judgment. There’s absolutely no reason why he
+shouldn’t, if he thinks fit,” said Jim.
+
+“He won’t see fit,” William replied, without sorrow or emotion. “It
+wouldn’t be him if he did.”
+
+“One certainly gets to know people rather well in times like these,”
+said Jim, drily; but William’s face was serene as ever, and even as she
+prophesied, Scott did not appear.
+
+The Rains fell at last, late, but heavily; and the dry, gashed earth
+was red mud, and servants killed snakes in the camp, where every one
+was weather-bound for a fortnight—all except Hawkins, who took horse
+and plashed about in the wet, rejoicing. Now the Government decreed
+that seed-grain should be distributed to the people, as well as
+advances of money for the purchase of new oxen; and the white men were
+doubly worked for this new duty, while William skipped from brick to
+brick laid down on the trampled mud, and dosed her charges with warming
+medicines that made them rub their little round stomachs; and the milch
+goats throve on the rank grass. There was never a word from Scott in
+the Khanda district, away to the southeast, except the regular
+telegraphic report to Hawkins. The rude country roads had disappeared;
+his drivers were half mutinous; one of Martyn’s loaned policemen had
+died of cholera; and Scott was taking thirty grains of quinine a day to
+fight the fever that comes with the rain: but those were things Scott
+did not consider necessary to report. He was, as usual, working from a
+base of supplies on a railway line, to cover a circle of fifteen miles
+radius, and since full loads were impossible, he took quarter-loads,
+and toiled four times as hard by consequence; for he did not choose to
+risk an epidemic which might have grown uncontrollable by assembling
+villagers in thousands at the relief-sheds. It was cheaper to take
+Government bullocks, work them to death, and leave them to the crows in
+the wayside sloughs.
+
+That was the time when eight years of clean living and hard condition
+told, though a man’s head were ringing like a bell from the cinchona,
+and the earth swayed under his feet when he stood and under his bed
+when he slept. If Hawkins had seen fit to make him a bullock-driver,
+that, he thought, was entirely Hawkins’s own affair. There were men in
+the North who would know what he had done; men of thirty years’ service
+in his own department who would say that it was “not half bad”; and
+above, immeasurably above, all men of all grades, there was William in
+the thick of the fight, who would approve because she understood. He
+had so trained his mind that it would hold fast to the mechanical
+routine of the day, though his own voice sounded strange in his own
+ears, and his hands, when he wrote, grew large as pillows or small as
+peas at the end of his wrists. That steadfastness bore his body to the
+telegraph-office at the railway-station, and dictated a telegram to
+Hawkins saying that the Khanda district was, in his judgment, now safe,
+and he “waited further orders.”
+
+The Madrassee telegraph-clerk did not approve of a large, gaunt man
+falling over him in a dead faint, not so much because of the weight as
+because of the names and blows that Faiz Ullah dealt him when he found
+the body rolled under a bench. Then Faiz Ullah took blankets, quilts,
+and coverlets where he found them, and lay down under them at his
+master’s side, and bound his arms with a tent-rope, and filled him with
+a horrible stew of herbs, and set the policeman to fight him when he
+wished to escape from the intolerable heat of his coverings, and shut
+the door of the telegraph-office to keep out the curious for two nights
+and one day; and when a light engine came down the line, and Hawkins
+kicked in the door, Scott hailed him weakly but in a natural voice, and
+Faiz Ullah stood back and took all the credit.
+
+“For two nights, Heaven-born, he was _pagal_” said Faiz Ullah. “Look at
+my nose, and consider the eye of the policeman. He beat us with his
+bound hands; but we sat upon him, Heaven-born, and though his words
+were _tez_, we sweated him. Heaven-born, never has been such a sweat!
+He is weaker now than a child; but the fever has gone out of him, by
+the grace of God. There remains only my nose and the eye of the
+constabeel. Sahib, shall I ask for my dismissal because my Sahib has
+beaten me?” And Faiz Ullah laid his long thin hand carefully on Scott’s
+chest to be sure that the fever was all gone, ere he went out to open
+tinned soups and discourage such as laughed at his swelled nose.
+
+“The district’s all right,” Scott whispered. “It doesn’t make any
+difference. You got my wire? I shall be fit in a week. ’Can’t
+understand how it happened. I shall be fit in a few days.”
+
+“You’re coming into camp with us,” said Hawkins.
+
+“But look here—but—”
+
+“It’s all over except the shouting. We sha’n’t need you Punjabis any
+more. On my honour, we sha’n’t. Martyn goes back in a few weeks;
+Arbuthnot’s returned already; Ellis and Clay are putting the last
+touches to a new feeder-line the Government’s built as relief-work.
+Morten’s dead—he was a Bengal man, though; you wouldn’t know him. ’Pon
+my word, you and Will—Miss Martyn—seem to have come through it as well
+as anybody.”
+
+“Oh, how is she, by-the-way?” The voice went up and down as he spoke.
+
+“Going strong when I left her. The Roman Catholic Missions are adopting
+the unclaimed babies to turn them into little priests; the Basil
+Mission is taking some, and the mothers are taking the rest. You should
+hear the little beggars howl when they’re sent away from William. She’s
+pulled down a bit, but so are we all. Now, when do you suppose you’ll
+be able to move?”
+
+“I can’t come into camp in this state. I won’t,” he replied pettishly.
+
+“Well, you _are_ rather a sight, but from what I gathered there it
+seemed to me they’d be glad to see you under any conditions. I’ll look
+over your work here, if you like, for a couple of days, and you can
+pull yourself together while Faiz Ullah feeds you up.”
+
+Scott could walk dizzily by the time Hawkins’s inspection was ended,
+and he flushed all over when Jim said of his work that it was “not half
+bad,” and volunteered, further, that he had considered Scott his
+right-hand man through the famine, and would feel it his duty to say as
+much officially.
+
+So they came back by rail to the old camp; but there were no crowds
+near it; the long fires in the trenches were dead and black, and the
+famine-sheds were almost empty.
+
+“You see!” said Jim. “There isn’t much more to do. Better ride up and
+see the wife. They’ve pitched a tent for you. Dinner’s at seven. I’ve
+some work here.”
+
+Riding at a foot-pace, Faiz Ullah by his stirrup, Scott came to William
+in the brown-calico riding-habit, sitting at the dining-tent door, her
+hands in her lap, white as ashes, thin and worn, with no lustre in her
+hair. There did not seem to be any Mrs. Jim on the horizon, and all
+that William could say was: “My word, how pulled down you look!”
+
+“I’ve had a touch of fever. You don’t look very well yourself.”
+
+“Oh, I’m fit enough. We’ve stamped it out. I suppose you know?”
+
+Scott nodded. “We shall all be returned in a few weeks. Hawkins told
+me.”
+
+“Before Christmas, Mrs. Jim says. Sha’n’t you be glad to go back? I can
+smell the wood-smoke already”; William sniffed. “We shall be in time
+for all the Christmas doings. I don’t suppose even the Punjab
+Government would be base enough to transfer Jack till the new year?”
+
+“It seems hundreds of years ago—the Punjab and all that—doesn’t it? Are
+you glad you came?”
+
+“Now it’s all over, yes. It has been ghastly here, though. You know we
+had to sit still and do nothing, and Sir Jim was away so much.”
+
+“Do nothing! How did you get on with the milking?”
+
+“I managed it somehow—after you taught me.”
+
+Then the talk stopped with an almost audible jar. Still no Mrs. Jim.
+
+“That reminds me, I owe you fifty rupees for the condensed-milk. I
+thought perhaps you’d be coming here when you were transferred to the
+Khanda district, and I could pay you then; but you didn’t.”
+
+“I passed within five miles of the camp, but it was in the middle of a
+march, you see, and the carts were breaking down every few minutes, and
+I couldn’t get ’em over the ground till ten o’clock that night. I
+wanted to come awfully. You knew I did, didn’t you?”
+
+“I—believe—I—did,” said William, facing him with level eyes. She was no
+longer white.
+
+“Did you understand?”
+
+“Why you didn’t ride in? Of course I did.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because you couldn’t, of course. I knew that.”
+
+“Did you care?”
+
+“If you had come in—but I knew you wouldn’t—but if you _had_, I should
+have cared a great deal. You know I should.”
+
+“Thank God I didn’t! Oh, but I wanted to! I couldn’t trust myself to
+ride in front of the carts, because I kept edging ’em over here, don’t
+you know?”
+
+“I knew you wouldn’t,” said William, contentedly. “Here’s your fifty.”
+
+Scott bent forward and kissed the hand that held the greasy notes. Its
+fellow patted him awkwardly but very tenderly on the head.
+
+“And _you_ knew, too, didn’t you?” said William, in a new voice.
+
+“No, on my honour, I didn’t. I hadn’t the—the cheek to expect anything
+of the kind, except... I say, were you out riding anywhere the day I
+passed by to Khanda?”
+
+William nodded, and smiled after the manner of an angel surprised in a
+good deed.
+
+“Then it was just a speck I saw of your habit in the—”
+
+“Palm-grove on the Southern cart-road. I saw your helmet when you came
+up from the mullah by the temple—just enough to be sure that you were
+all right. D’ you care?”
+
+This time Scott did not kiss her hand, for they were in the dusk of the
+dining-tent, and, because William’s knees were trembling under her, she
+had to sit down in the nearest chair, where she wept long and happily,
+her head on her arms; and when Scott imagined that it would be well to
+comfort her, she needing nothing of the kind, she ran to her own tent;
+and Scott went out into the world, and smiled upon it largely and
+idiotically. But when Faiz Ullah brought him a drink, he found it
+necessary to support one hand with the other, or the good whisky and
+soda would have been spilled abroad. There are fevers and fevers.
+
+But it was worse—much worse—the strained, eye-shirking talk at dinner
+till the servants had withdrawn, and worst of all when Mrs. Jim, who
+had been on the edge of weeping from the soup down, kissed Scott and
+William, and they drank one whole bottle of champagne, hot, because
+there was no ice, and Scott and William sat outside the tent in the
+starlight till Mrs. Jim drove them in for fear of more fever.
+
+Apropos of these things and some others William said: “Being engaged is
+abominable, because, you see, one has no official position. We must be
+thankful we’ve lots of things to do.”
+
+“Things to do!” said Jim, when that was reported to him. “They’re
+neither of them any good any more. I can’t get five hours’ work a day
+out of Scott. He’s in the clouds half the time.”
+
+“Oh, but they’re so beautiful to watch, Jimmy. It will break my heart
+when they go. Can’t you do anything for him?”
+
+“I’ve given the Government the impression—at least, I hope I have—that
+he personally conducted the entire famine. But all he wants is to get
+on to the Luni Canal Works, and William’s just as bad. Have you ever
+heard ’em talking of barrage and aprons and wastewater? It’s their
+style of spooning, I suppose.”
+
+Mrs. Jim smiled tenderly. “Ah, that’s in the intervals—bless ’em.”
+
+And so Love ran about the camp unrebuked in broad daylight, while men
+picked up the pieces and put them neatly away of the Famine in the
+Eight Districts.
+
+Morning brought the penetrating chill of the Northern December, the
+layers of wood-smoke, the dusty grey-blue of the tamarisks, the domes
+of ruined tombs, and all the smell of the white Northern plains, as the
+mail-train ran on to the mile-long Sutlej Bridge. William, wrapped in a
+_poshteen_—a silk-embroidered sheepskin jacket trimmed with rough
+astrakhan—looked out with moist eyes and nostrils that dilated
+joyously. The South of pagodas and palm-trees, the overpopulated Hindu
+South, was done with. Here was the land she knew and loved, and before
+her lay the good life she understood, among folk of her own caste and
+mind.
+
+They were picking them up at almost every station now—men and women
+coming in for the Christmas Week, with racquets, with bundles of
+polo-sticks, with dear and bruised cricket-bats, with fox-terriers and
+saddles. The greater part of them wore jackets like William’s, for the
+Northern cold is as little to be trifled with as the Northern heat. And
+William was among them and of them, her hands deep in her pockets, her
+collar turned up over her ears, stamping her feet on the platforms as
+she walked up and down to get warm, visiting from carriage to carriage
+and everywhere being congratulated. Scott was with the bachelors at the
+far end of the train, where they chaffed him mercilessly about feeding
+babies and milking goats; but from time to time he would stroll up to
+William’s window, and murmur: “Good enough, isn’t it?” and William
+would answer with sighs of pure delight: “Good enough, indeed.” The
+large open names of the home towns were good to listen to. Umballa,
+Ludianah, Phillour, Jullundur, they rang like the coming marriage-bells
+in her ears, and William felt deeply and truly sorry for all strangers
+and outsiders—visitors, tourists, and those fresh-caught for the
+service of the country.
+
+It was a glorious return, and when the bachelors gave the Christmas
+Ball, William was, unofficially, you might say, the chief and honoured
+guest among the Stewards, who could make things very pleasant for their
+friends. She and Scott danced nearly all the dances together, and sat
+out the rest in the big dark gallery overlooking the superb teak floor,
+where the uniforms blazed, and the spurs clinked, and the new frocks
+and four hundred dancers went round and round till the draped flags on
+the pillars flapped and bellied to the whirl of it.
+
+About midnight half a dozen men who did not care for dancing came over
+from the Club to play “Waits,” and that was a surprise the Stewards had
+arranged—before any one knew what had happened, the band stopped, and
+hidden voices broke into “Good King Wenceslaus,” and William in the
+gallery hummed and beat time with her foot:
+
+“Mark my footsteps well, my page,
+    Tread thou in them boldly.
+Thou shalt feel the winter’s rage
+    Freeze thy blood less coldly!”
+
+
+“Oh, I hope they are going to give us another! Isn’t it pretty, coming
+out of the dark in that way? Look—look down. There’s Mrs. Gregory
+wiping her eyes!”
+
+“It’s like Home, rather,” said Scott. “I remember—”
+
+“Hsh! Listen!—dear.” And it began again:
+
+“When shepherds watched their flocks by night—”
+
+
+“A-h-h!” said William, drawing closer to Scott.
+
+All seated on the ground,
+The Angel of the Lord came down,
+And glory shone around.
+‘Fear not,’ said he (for mighty dread
+Had seized their troubled mind);
+‘Glad tidings of great joy I bring
+To you and all mankind.’
+
+
+This time it was William that wiped her eyes.
+
+
+
+
+･007
+
+
+A locomotive is, next to a marine engine, the most sensitive thing man
+ever made; and No. ･007, besides being sensitive, was new. The red
+paint was hardly dry on his spotless bumper-bar, his headlight shone
+like a fireman’s helmet, and his cab might have been a hard-wood-finish
+parlour. They had run him into the round-house after his trial—he had
+said good-bye to his best friend in the shops, the overhead
+travelling-crane—the big world was just outside; and the other locos
+were taking stock of him. He looked at the semicircle of bold,
+unwinking headlights, heard the low purr and mutter of the steam
+mounting in the gauges—scornful hisses of contempt as a slack valve
+lifted a little—and would have given a month’s oil for leave to crawl
+through his own driving-wheels into the brick ash-pit beneath him. ･007
+was an eight-wheeled “American” loco, slightly different from others of
+his type, and as he stood he was worth ten thousand dollars on the
+Company’s books. But if you had bought him at his own valuation, after
+half an hour’s waiting in the darkish, echoing round-house, you would
+have saved exactly nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars
+and ninety-eight cents.
+
+A heavy Mogul freight, with a short cow-catcher and a fire-box that
+came down within three inches of the rail, began the impolite game,
+speaking to a Pittsburgh Consolidation, who was visiting.
+
+“Where did this thing blow in from?” he asked, with a dreamy puff of
+light steam.
+
+“it’s all I can do to keep track of our makes,” was the answer,
+“without lookin’ after _your_ back-numbers. Guess it’s something Peter
+Cooper left over when he died.”
+
+･007 quivered; his steam was getting up, but he held his tongue. Even a
+hand-car knows what sort of locomotive it was that Peter Cooper
+experimented upon in the far-away Thirties. It carried its coal and
+water in two apple-barrels, and was not much bigger than a bicycle.
+
+Then up and spoke a small, newish switching-engine, with a little step
+in front of his bumper-timber, and his wheels so close together that he
+looked like a broncho getting ready to buck.
+
+“Something’s wrong with the road when a Pennsylvania gravel-pusher
+tells us anything about our stock, _I_ think. That kid’s all right.
+Eustis designed him, and Eustis designed me. Ain’t that good enough?”
+
+･007 could have carried the switching-loco round the yard in his
+tender, but he felt grateful for even this little word of consolation.
+
+“We don’t use hand-cars on the Pennsylvania,” said the Consolidation.
+“That—er—peanut-stand is old enough and ugly enough to speak for
+himself.”
+
+“He hasn’t bin spoken to yet. He’s bin spoke _at_. Hain’t ye any
+manners on the Pennsylvania?” said the switching-loco.
+
+“You ought to be in the yard, Poney,” said the Mogul, severely. “We’re
+all long-haulers here.”
+
+“That’s what you think,” the little fellow replied. “You’ll know more
+’fore the night’s out. I’ve bin down to Track 17, and the freight
+there—oh, Christmas!”
+
+“I’ve trouble enough in my own division,” said a lean, light suburban
+loco with very shiny brake-shoes. “My commuters wouldn’t rest till they
+got a parlourcar. They’ve hitched it back of all, and it hauls worsen a
+snow-plough. I’ll snap her off someday sure, and then they’ll blame
+every one except their foolselves. They’ll be askin’ me to haul a
+vestibuled next!”
+
+“They made you in New Jersey, didn’t they?” said Poney. “Thought so.
+Commuters and truck-wagons ain’t any sweet haulin’, but I tell _you_
+they’re a heap better ’n cuttin’ out refrigerator-cars or oil-tanks.
+Why, I’ve hauled—”
+
+“Haul! You?” said the Mogul, contemptuously. “It’s all you can do to
+bunt a cold-storage car up the yard. Now, I—” he paused a little to let
+the words sink in—“I handle the Flying Freight—e-leven cars worth just
+anything you please to mention. On the stroke of eleven I pull out; and
+I’m timed for thirty-five an hour. Costly-perishable-fragile,
+immediate—that’s me! Suburban traffic’s only but one degree better than
+switching. Express freight’s what pays.”
+
+“Well, I ain’t given to blowing, as a rule,” began the Pittsburgh
+Consolidation.
+
+“No? You was sent in here because you grunted on the grade,” Poney
+interrupted.
+
+“Where I grunt, you’d lie down, Poney: but, as I was saying, I don’t
+blow much. Notwithstandin’, _if_ you want to see freight that is
+freight moved lively, you should see me warbling through the
+Alleghanies with thirty-seven ore-cars behind me, and my brakemen
+fightin’ tramps so’s they can’t attend to my tooter. I have to do all
+the holdin’ back then, and, though I say it, I’ve never had a load get
+away from me yet. _No_, sir. Haulin’s’s one thing, but judgment and
+discretion’s another. You want judgment in my business.”
+
+“Ah! But—but are you not paralysed by a sense of your overwhelming
+responsibilities?” said a curious, husky voice from a corner.
+
+“Who’s that?” ･007 whispered to the Jersey commuter.
+
+“Compound—experiment—N.G. She’s bin switchin’ in the B. & A. yards for
+six months, when she wasn’t in the shops. She’s economical (_I_ call it
+mean) in her coal, but she takes it out in repairs. Ahem! I presume you
+found Boston somewhat isolated, madam, after your New York season?”
+
+“I am never so well occupied as when I am alone.” The Compound seemed
+to be talking from half-way up her smoke-stack.
+
+“Sure,” said the irreverent Poney, under his breath. “They don’t hanker
+after her any in the yard.”
+
+“But, with my constitution and temperament—my work lies in Boston—I
+find your _outrecuidance_—”
+
+“Outer which?” said the Mogul freight. “Simple cylinders are good
+enough for me.”
+
+“Perhaps I should have said _faroucherie_,” hissed the Compound.
+
+“I don’t hold with any make of papier-mache wheel,” the Mogul insisted.
+
+The Compound sighed pityingly, and said no more.
+
+“Git ’em all shapes in this world, don’t ye?” said Poney, “that’s
+Mass’chusetts all over. They half start, an’ then they stick on a
+dead-centre, an’ blame it all on other folk’s ways o’ treatin’ them.
+Talkin’ o’ Boston, Comanche told me, last night, he had a hot-box just
+beyond the Newtons, Friday. That was why, _he_ says, the Accommodation
+was held up. Made out no end of a tale, Comanche did.”
+
+“If I’d heard that in the shops, with my boiler out for repairs, I’d
+know ’t was one o’ Comanche’s lies,” the New Jersey commuter snapped.
+“Hot-box! Him! What happened was they’d put an extra car on, and he
+just lay down on the grade and squealed. They had to send 127 to help
+him through. Made it out a hotbox, did he? Time before that he said he
+was ditched! Looked me square in the headlight and told me that as cool
+as—as a water-tank in a cold wave. Hot-box! You ask 127 about
+Comanche’s hot-box. Why, Comanche he was side-tracked, and 127 (_he_
+was just about as mad as they make ’em on account o’ being called out
+at ten o’clock at night) took hold and snapped her into Boston in
+seventeen minutes. Hot-box! Hot fraud! that’s what Comanche is.”
+
+Then ･007 put both drivers and his pilot into it, as the saying is, for
+he asked what sort of thing a hot-box might be?
+
+“Paint my bell sky-blue!” said Poney, the switcher. “Make me a
+surface-railroad loco with a hard-wood skirtin’-board round my wheels.
+Break me up and cast me into five-cent sidewalk-fakirs’ mechanical
+toys! Here’s an eight-wheel coupled ’American’ don’t know what a
+hot-box is! Never heard of an emergency-stop either, did ye? Don’t know
+what ye carry jack-screws for? You’re too innocent to be left alone
+with your own tender. Oh, you—you flatcar!”
+
+There was a roar of escaping steam before any one could answer, and
+･007 nearly blistered his paint off with pure mortification.
+
+“A hot-box,” began the Compound, picking and choosing her words as
+though they were coal, “a hotbox is the penalty exacted from
+inexperience by haste. Ahem!”
+
+“Hot-box!” said the Jersey Suburban. “It’s the price you pay for going
+on the tear. It’s years since I’ve had one. It’s a disease that don’t
+attack shorthaulers, as a rule.”
+
+“We never have hot-boxes on the Pennsylvania,” said the Consolidation.
+“They get ’em in New York—same as nervous prostration.”
+
+“Ah, go home on a ferry-boat,” said the Mogul. “You think because you
+use worse grades than our road ’u’d allow, you’re a kind of Alleghany
+angel. Now, I’ll tell you what you... Here’s my folk. Well, I can’t
+stop. See you later, perhaps.”
+
+He rolled forward majestically to the turn-table, and swung like a
+man-of-war in a tideway, till he picked up his track. “But as for you,
+you pea-green swiveling’ coffee-pot [this to ･007], you go out and
+learn something before you associate with those who’ve made more
+mileage in a week than you’ll roll up in a year.
+Costly-perishable-fragile immediate—that’s me! S’ long.”
+
+“Split my tubes if that’s actin’ polite to a new member o’ the
+Brotherhood,” said Poney. “There wasn’t any call to trample on ye like
+that. But manners was left out when Moguls was made. Keep up your fire,
+kid, an’ burn your own smoke. ’Guess we’ll all be wanted in a minute.”
+
+Men were talking rather excitedly in the roundhouse. One man, in a
+dingy jersey, said that he hadn’t any locomotives to waste on the yard.
+Another man, with a piece of crumpled paper in his hand, said that the
+yard-master said that he was to say that if the other man said
+anything, he (the other man) was to shut his head. Then the other man
+waved his arms, and wanted to know if he was expected to keep
+locomotives in his hip-pocket. Then a man in a black Prince Albert,
+without a collar, came up dripping, for it was a hot August night, and
+said that what _he_ said went; and between the three of them the
+locomotives began to go, too—first the Compound; then the
+Consolidation; then ･007.
+
+Now, deep down in his fire-box, ･007 had cherished a hope that as soon
+as his trial was done, he would be led forth with songs and shoutings,
+and attached to a green-and-chocolate vestibuled flyer, under charge of
+a bold and noble engineer, who would pat him on his back, and weep over
+him, and call him his Arab steed. (The boys in the shops where he was
+built used to read wonderful stories of railroad life, and ･007
+expected things to happen as he had heard.) But there did not seem to
+be many vestibuled fliers in the roaring, rumbling, electric-lighted
+yards, and his engineer only said:
+
+“Now, what sort of a fool-sort of an injector has Eustis loaded on to
+this rig this time?” And he put the lever over with an angry snap,
+crying: “Am I supposed to switch with this thing, hey?”
+
+The collarless man mopped his head, and replied that, in the present
+state of the yard and freight and a few other things, the engineer
+would switch and keep on switching till the cows came home. ･007 pushed
+out gingerly, his heart in his headlight, so nervous that the clang of
+his own bell almost made him jump the track. Lanterns waved, or danced
+up and down, before and behind him; and on every side, six tracks deep,
+sliding backward and forward, with clashings of couplers and squeals of
+hand-brakes, were cars—more cars than ･007 had dreamed of. There were
+oil-cars, and hay-cars, and stock-cars full of lowing beasts, and
+ore-cars, and potato-cars with stovepipe-ends sticking out in the
+middle; cold-storage and refrigerator cars dripping ice water on the
+tracks; ventilated fruit—and milk-cars; flatcars with truck-wagons full
+of market-stuff; flat-cars loaded with reapers and binders, all red and
+green and gilt under the sizzling electric lights; flat-cars piled high
+with strong-scented hides, pleasant hemlock-plank, or bundles of
+shingles; flat-cars creaking to the weight of thirty-ton castings,
+angle-irons, and rivet-boxes for some new bridge; and hundreds and
+hundreds and hundreds of box-cars loaded, locked, and chalked. Men—hot
+and angry—crawled among and between and under the thousand wheels; men
+took flying jumps through his cab, when he halted for a moment; men sat
+on his pilot as he went forward, and on his tender as he returned; and
+regiments of men ran along the tops of the box-cars beside him,
+screwing down brakes, waving their arms, and crying curious things.
+
+He was pushed forward a foot at a time; whirled backward, his rear
+drivers clinking and clanking, a quarter of a mile; jerked into a
+switch (yard-switches are _very_ stubby and unaccommodating), bunted
+into a Red D, or Merchant’s Transport car, and, with no hint or
+knowledge of the weight behind him, started up anew. When his load was
+fairly on the move, three or four cars would be cut off, and ･007 would
+bound forward, only to be held hiccupping on the brake. Then he would
+wait a few minutes, watching the whirled lanterns, deafened with the
+clang of the bells, giddy with the vision of the sliding cars, his
+brake-pump panting forty to the minute, his front coupler lying
+sideways on his cow-catcher, like a tired dog’s tongue in his mouth,
+and the whole of him covered with half-burnt coal-dust.
+
+“’Tisn’t so easy switching with a straight-backed tender,” said his
+little friend of the round-house, bustling by at a trot. “But you’re
+comin’ on pretty fair. Ever seen a flyin’ switch? No? Then watch me.”
+
+Poney was in charge of a dozen heavy flat-cars. Suddenly he shot away
+from them with a sharp “_Whutt!_” A switch opened in the shadows ahead;
+he turned up it like a rabbit as it snapped behind him, and the long
+line of twelve-foot-high lumber jolted on into the arms of a full-sized
+road-loco, who acknowledged receipt with a dry howl.
+
+“My man’s reckoned the smartest in the yard at that trick,” he said,
+returning. “Gives me cold shivers when another fool tries it, though.
+That’s where my short wheel-base comes in. Like as not you’d have your
+tender scraped off if _you_ tried it.”
+
+･007 had no ambitions that way, and said so.
+
+“No? Of course this ain’t your regular business, but say, don’t you
+think it’s interestin’? Have you seen the yard-master? Well, he’s the
+greatest man on earth, an’ don’t you forget it. When are we through?
+Why, kid, it’s always like this, day _an_’ night—Sundays an’ week-days.
+See that thirty-car freight slidin’ in four, no, five tracks off? She’s
+all mixed freight, sent here to be sorted out into straight trains.
+That’s why we’re cuttin’ out the cars one by one.” He gave a vigorous
+push to a west-bound car as he spoke, and started back with a little
+snort of surprise, for the car was an old friend—an M. T. K. box-car.
+
+“Jack my drivers, but it’s Homeless Kate! Why, Kate, ain’t there _no_
+gettin’ you back to your friends? There’s forty chasers out for you
+from your road, if there’s one. Who’s holdin’ you now?”
+
+“Wish I knew,” whimpered Homeless Kate. “I belong in Topeka, but I’ve
+bin to Cedar Rapids; I’ve bin to Winnipeg; I’ve bin to Newport News;
+I’ve bin all down the old Atlanta and West Point; an’ I’ve bin to
+Buffalo. Maybe I’ll fetch up at Haverstraw. I’ve only bin out ten
+months, but I’m homesick—I’m just achin’ homesick.”
+
+“Try Chicago, Katie,” said the switching-loco; and the battered old car
+lumbered down the track, jolting: “I want to be in Kansas when the
+sunflowers bloom.”
+
+“Yard’s full o’ Homeless Kates an’ Wanderin’ Willies,” he explained to
+･007. “I knew an old Fitchburg flat-car out seventeen months; an’ one
+of ours was gone fifteen ’fore ever we got track of her. Dunno quite
+how our men fix it. Swap around, I guess. Anyway, I’ve done _my_ duty.
+She’s on her way to Kansas, via Chicago; but I’ll lay my next boilerful
+she’ll be held there to wait consignee’s convenience, and sent back to
+us with wheat in the fall.”
+
+Just then the Pittsburgh Consolidation passed, at the head of a dozen
+cars.
+
+“I’m goin’ home,” he said proudly.
+
+“Can’t get all them twelve on to the flat. Break ’em in half, Dutchy!”
+cried Poney. But it was ･007 who was backed down to the last six cars,
+and he nearly blew up with surprise when he found himself pushing them
+on to a huge ferry-boat. He had never seen deep water before, and
+shivered as the flat drew away and left his bogies within six inches of
+the black, shiny tide.
+
+After this he was hurried to the freight-house, where he saw the
+yard-master, a smallish, white-faced man in shirt, trousers, and
+slippers, looking down upon a sea of trucks, a mob of bawling truckmen,
+and squadrons of backing, turning, sweating, spark-striking horses.
+
+“That’s shippers’ carts loadin’ on to the receivin’ trucks,” said the
+small engine, reverently. “But _he_ don’t care. He lets ’em cuss. He’s
+the Czar-King-Boss! He says ’Please,’ and then they kneel down an’
+pray. There’s three or four strings o’ today’s freight to be pulled
+before he can attend to _them_. When he waves his hand that way, things
+happen.”
+
+A string of loaded cars slid out down the track, and a string of
+empties took their place. Bales, crates, boxes, jars, carboys, frails,
+cases, and packages flew into them from the freight-house as though the
+cars had been magnets and they iron filings.
+
+“Ki-yah!” shrieked little Poney. “Ain’t it great?”
+
+A purple-faced truckman shouldered his way to the yard-master, and
+shook his fist under his nose. The yard-master never looked up from his
+bundle of freight receipts. He crooked his forefinger slightly, and a
+tall young man in a red shirt, lounging carelessly beside him, hit the
+truckman under the left ear, so that he dropped, quivering and
+clucking, on a hay-bale.
+
+“Eleven, seven, ninety-seven, L. Y. S.; fourteen ought ought three;
+nineteen thirteen; one one four; seventeen ought twenty-one M. B.;
+_and_ the ten westbound. All straight except the two last. Cut ’em off
+at the junction. An’ _that’s_ all right. Pull that string.” The
+yard-master, with mild blue eyes, looked out over the howling truckmen
+at the waters in the moonlight beyond, and hummed:
+
+“All things bright and beautiful,
+    All creatures great and small,
+_All_ things wise and wonderful,
+    The Lawd Gawd He made all!”
+
+
+･007 moved out the cars and delivered them to the regular road-engine.
+He had never felt quite so limp in his life before.
+
+“Curious, ain’t it?” said Poney, puffing, on the next track. “You an’
+me, if we got that man under our bumpers, we’d work him into red waste
+an’ not know what we’d done; but-up there—with the steam hummin’ in his
+boiler that awful quiet way...”
+
+“_I_ know,” said ･007. “Makes me feel as if I’d dropped my Fire an’ was
+getting cold. He _is_ the greatest man on earth.”
+
+They were at the far north end of the yard now, under a switchtower,
+looking down on the four-track way of the main traffic. The Boston
+Compound was to haul ･007’s string to some far-away northern junction
+over an indifferent road-bed, and she mourned aloud for the ninety-six
+pound rails of the B. & A.
+
+“You’re young; you’re young,” she coughed. “You don’t realise your
+responsibilities.”
+
+“Yes, he does,” said Poney, sharply; “but he don’t lie down under ’em.”
+Then, with aside-spurt of steam, exactly like a tough spitting: “There
+ain’t more than fifteen thousand dollars’ worth o’ freight behind her
+anyway, and she goes on as if ’t were a hundred thousand—same as the
+Mogul’s. Excuse me, madam, but you’ve the track.... She’s stuck on a
+dead-centre again—bein’ specially designed not to.”
+
+The Compound crawled across the tracks on a long slant, groaning
+horribly at each switch, and moving like a cow in a snow-drift. There
+was a little pause along the yard after her tail-lights had
+disappeared; switches locked crisply, and every one seemed to be
+waiting.
+
+“Now I’ll show you something worth,” said Poney. “When the Purple
+Emperor ain’t on time, it’s about time to amend the Constitution. The
+first stroke of twelve is—”
+
+“Boom!” went the clock in the big yard-tower, and far away ･007 heard a
+full, vibrating “_Yah! Yah! Yah!_” A headlight twinkled on the horizon
+like a star, grew an overpowering blaze, and whooped up the humming
+track to the roaring music of a happy giant’s song:
+
+“With a michnai—ghignai—shtingal! Yah! Yah! Yah!
+Ein—zwei—drei—Mutter! Yah! Yah! Yah!
+She climb upon der shteeple,
+Und she frighten all der people.
+Singin’ michnai—ghignai—shtingal! Yah! Yah!”
+
+
+The last defiant “yah! yah!” was delivered a mile and a half beyond the
+passenger-depot; but ･007 had caught one glimpse of the superb
+six-wheel-coupled racing-locomotive, who hauled the pride and glory of
+the road—the gilt-edged Purple Emperor, the millionaires’ south-bound
+express, laying the miles over his shoulder as a man peels a shaving
+from a soft board. The rest was a blur of maroon enamel, a bar of white
+light from the electrics in the cars, and a flicker of nickel-plated
+hand-rail on the rear platform.
+
+“Ooh!” said ･007.
+
+“Seventy-five miles an hour these five miles. Baths, I’ve heard;
+barber’s shop; ticker; and a library and the rest to match. Yes, sir;
+seventy-five an hour! But he’ll talk to you in the round-house just as
+democratic as I would. And I—cuss my wheel-base!—I’d kick clean off the
+track at half his gait. He’s the Master of our Lodge. Cleans up at our
+house. I’ll introdooce you some day. He’s worth knowin’! There ain’t
+many can sing that song, either.”
+
+･007 was too full of emotions to answer. He did not hear a raging of
+telephone-bells in the switch-tower, nor the man, as he leaned out and
+called to ･007’s engineer: “Got any steam?”
+
+“’Nough to run her a hundred mile out o’ this, if I could,” said the
+engineer, who belonged to the open road and hated switching.
+
+“Then get. The Flying Freight’s ditched forty mile out, with fifty rod
+o’ track ploughed up. No; no one’s hurt, but both tracks are blocked.
+Lucky the wreckin’-car an’ derrick are this end of the yard. Crew ’ll
+be along in a minute. Hurry! You’ve the track.”
+
+“Well, I could jest kick my little sawed-off self,” said Poney, as ･007
+was backed, with a bang, on to a grim and grimy car like a caboose, but
+full of tools—a flatcar and a derrick behind it. “Some folks are one
+thing, and some are another; but _you_’re in luck, kid. They push a
+wrecking-car. Now, don’t get rattled. Your wheel-base will keep you on
+the track, and there ain’t any curves worth mentionin’. Oh, say!
+Comanche told me there’s one section o’ sawedged track that’s liable to
+jounce ye a little. Fifteen an’ a half out, _after_ the grade at
+Jackson’s crossin’. You’ll know it by a farmhouse an’ a windmill an’
+five maples in the dooryard. Windmill’s west o’ the maples. An’ there’s
+an eighty-foot iron bridge in the middle o’ that section with no
+guard-rails. See you later. Luck!”
+
+Before he knew well what had happened, ･007 was flying up the track
+into the dumb, dark world. Then fears of the night beset him. He
+remembered all he had ever heard of landslides, rain-piled boulders,
+blown trees, and strayed cattle, all that the Boston Compound had ever
+said of responsibility, and a great deal more that came out of his own
+head. With a very quavering voice he whistled for his first
+grade-crossing (an event in the life of a locomotive), and his nerves
+were in no way restored by the sight of a frantic horse and a
+white-faced man in a buggy less than a yard from his right shoulder.
+Then he was sure he would jump the track; felt his flanges mounting the
+rail at every curve; knew that his first grade would make him lie down
+even as Comanche had done at the Newtons. He whirled down the grade to
+Jackson’s crossing, saw the windmill west of the maples, felt the badly
+laid rails spring under him, and sweated big drops all over his boiler.
+At each jarring bump he believed an axle had smashed, and he took the
+eighty-foot bridge without the guard-rail like a hunted cat on the top
+of a fence. Then a wet leaf stuck against the glass of his headlight
+and threw a flying shadow on the track, so that he thought it was some
+little dancing animal that would feel soft if he ran over it; and
+anything soft underfoot frightens a locomotive as it does an elephant.
+But the men behind seemed quite calm. The wrecking-crew were climbing
+carelessly from the caboose to the tender—even jesting with the
+engineer, for he heard a shuffling of feet among the coal, and the
+snatch of a song, something like this:
+
+Oh, the Empire State must learn to wait,
+And the Cannon-ball go hang!
+When the West-bound’s ditched, and the tool-car’s hitched,
+And it’s ’way for the Breakdown Gang (Tare-ra!)
+’Way for the Breakdown Gang!
+
+
+“Say! Eustis knew what he was doin’ when he designed this rig. She’s a
+hummer. New, too.”
+
+“Snff! Phew! She is new. That ain’t paint, that’s—”
+
+A burning pain shot through ･007’s right rear driver—a crippling,
+stinging pain.
+
+“This,” said ･007, as he flew, “is a hot-box. Now I know what it means.
+I shall go to pieces, I guess. My first road-run, too!”
+
+“Het a bit, ain’t she?” the fireman ventured to suggest to the
+engineer.
+
+“She’ll hold for all we want of her. We’re ’most there. Guess you chaps
+back had better climb into your car,” said the engineer, his hand on
+the brake lever. “I’ve seen men snapped off—”
+
+But the crew fled back with laughter. They had no wish to be jerked on
+to the track. The engineer half turned his wrist, and ･007 found his
+drivers pinned firm.
+
+“Now it’s come!” said ･007, as he yelled aloud, and slid like a sleigh.
+For the moment he fancied that he would jerk bodily from off his
+underpinning.
+
+“That must be the emergency-stop that Poney guyed me about,” he gasped,
+as soon as he could think. “Hot-box-emergency-stop. They both hurt; but
+now I can talk back in the round-house.”
+
+He was halted, all hissing hot, a few feet in the rear of what doctors
+would call a compound-comminuted car. His engineer was kneeling down
+among his drivers, but he did not call ･007 his “Arab steed,” nor cry
+over him, as the engineers did in the newspapers. He just bad worded
+･007, and pulled yards of charred cotton-waste from about the axles,
+and hoped he might some day catch the idiot who had packed it. Nobody
+else attended to him, for Evans, the Mogul’s engineer, a little cut
+about the head, but very angry, was exhibiting, by lantern-light, the
+mangled corpse of a slim blue pig.
+
+“’T were n’t even a decent-sized hog,” he said. “’T were a shote.”
+
+“Dangerousest beasts they are,” said one of the crew. “Get under the
+pilot an’ sort o’ twiddle ye off the track, don’t they?”
+
+“Don’t they?” roared Evans, who was a red-headed Welshman. “You talk as
+if I was ditched by a hog every fool-day o’ the week. _I_ ain’t friends
+with all the cussed half-fed shotes in the State o’ New York. No,
+indeed! Yes, this is him—an’ look what he’s done!”
+
+It was not a bad night’s work for one stray piglet. The Flying Freight
+seemed to have flown in every direction, for the Mogul had mounted the
+rails and run diagonally a few hundred feet from right to left, taking
+with him such cars as cared to follow. Some did not. They broke their
+couplers and lay down, while rear cars frolicked over them. In that
+game, they had ploughed up and removed and twisted a good deal of the
+left-hand track. The Mogul himself had waddled into a corn-field, and
+there he knelt—fantastic wreaths of green twisted round his crankpins;
+his pilot covered with solid clods of field, on which corn nodded
+drunkenly; his fire put out with dirt (Evans had done that as soon as
+he recovered his senses); and his broken headlight half full of
+half-burnt moths. His tender had thrown coal all over him, and he
+looked like a disreputable buffalo who had tried to wallow in a general
+store. For there lay scattered over the landscape, from the burst cars,
+type-writers, sewing-machines, bicycles in crates, a consignment of
+silver-plated imported harness, French dresses and gloves, a dozen
+finely moulded hard-wood mantels, a fifteen-foot naphtha-launch, with a
+solid brass bedstead crumpled around her bows, a case of telescopes and
+microscopes, two coffins, a case of very best candies, some gilt-edged
+dairy produce, butter and eggs in an omelette, a broken box of
+expensive toys, and a few hundred other luxuries. A camp of tramps
+hurried up from nowhere, and generously volunteered to help the crew.
+So the brakemen, armed with coupler-pins, walked up and down on one
+side, and the freight-conductor and the fireman patrolled the other
+with their hands in their hip-pockets. A long-bearded man came out of a
+house beyond the corn-field, and told Evans that if the accident had
+happened a little later in the year, all his corn would have been
+burned, and accused Evans of carelessness. Then he ran away, for Evans
+was at his heels shrieking: “’T was his hog done it—his hog done it!
+Let me kill him! Let me kill him!” Then the wrecking-crew laughed; and
+the farmer put his head out of a window and said that Evans was no
+gentleman.
+
+But ･007 was very sober. He had never seen a wreck before, and it
+frightened him. The crew still laughed, but they worked at the same
+time; and ･007 forgot horror in amazement at the way they handled the
+Mogul freight. They dug round him with spades; they put ties in front
+of his wheels, and jack-screws under him; they embraced him with the
+derrick-chain and tickled him with crowbars; while ･007 was hitched on
+to wrecked cars and backed away till the knot broke or the cars rolled
+clear of the track. By dawn thirty or forty men were at work, replacing
+and ramming down the ties, gauging the rails and spiking them. By
+daylight all cars who could move had gone on in charge of another loco;
+the track was freed for traffic; and 007 had hauled the old Mogul over
+a small pavement of ties, inch by inch, till his flanges bit the rail
+once more, and he settled down with a clank. But his spirit was broken,
+and his nerve was gone.
+
+“’T weren’t even a hog,” he repeated dolefully; “’t were a shote; and
+you—_you_ of all of ’em—had to help me on.”
+
+“But how in the whole long road did it happen?” asked 007, sizzling
+with curiosity.
+
+“Happen! It didn’t happen! It just come! I sailed right on top of him
+around that last curve—thought he was a skunk. Yes; he was all as
+little as that. He hadn’t more ’n squealed once ’fore I felt my bogies
+lift (he’d rolled right under the pilot), and I couldn’t catch the
+track again to save me. Swivelled clean off, I was. Then I felt him
+sling himself along, all greasy, under my left leadin’ driver, and, oh,
+Boilers! that mounted the rail. I heard my flanges zippin’ along the
+ties, an’ the next I knew I was playin’ ’Sally, Sally Waters’ in the
+corn, my tender shuckin’ coal through my cab, an’ old man Evans lyin’
+still an’ bleedin’ in front o’ me. Shook? There ain’t a stay or a bolt
+or a rivet in me that ain’t sprung to glory somewhere.”
+
+“Umm!” said 007. “What d’ you reckon you weigh?”
+
+“Without these lumps o’ dirt I’m all of a hundred thousand pound.”
+
+“And the shote?”
+
+“Eighty. Call him a hundred pound at the outside. He’s worth about four
+’n a half dollars. Ain’t it awful? Ain’t it enough to give you nervous
+prostration? Ain’t it paralysin’? Why, I come just around that curve—”
+and the Mogul told the tale again, for he was very badly shaken.
+
+“Well, it’s all in the day’s run, I guess,” said 007, soothingly;
+“an’—an’ a corn-field’s pretty soft fallin’.”
+
+“If it had bin a sixty-foot bridge, an’ I could ha’ slid off into deep
+water an’ blown up an’ killed both men, same as others have done, I
+wouldn’t ha’ cared; but to be ditched by a shote—an’ you to help me
+out—in a corn-field—an’ an old hayseed in his nightgown cussin’ me like
+as if I was a sick truck-horse!... Oh, it’s awful! Don’t call me Mogul!
+I’m a sewin’-machine, they’ll guy my sand-box off in the yard.”
+
+And 007, his hot-box cooled and his experience vastly enlarged, hauled
+the Mogul freight slowly to the roundhouse.
+
+“Hello, old man! Bin out all night, hain’t ye?” said the irrepressible
+Poney, who had just come off duty. “Well, I must say you look it.
+Costly-perishable-fragile-immediate—that’s you! Go to the shops, take
+them vine-leaves out o’ your hair, an’ git ’em to play the hose on
+you.”
+
+“Leave him alone, Poney,” said 007 severely, as he was swung on the
+turn-table, “or I’ll—”
+
+“’Didn’t know the old granger was any special friend o’ yours, kid. He
+wasn’t over-civil to you last time I saw him.”
+
+“I know it; but I’ve seen a wreck since then, and it has about scared
+the paint off me. I’m not going to guy anyone as long as I steam—not
+when they’re new to the business an’ anxious to learn. And I’m not
+goin’ to guy the old Mogul either, though I did find him wreathed
+around with roastin’-ears. ’T was a little bit of a shote—not a
+hog—just a shote, Poney—no bigger’n a lump of anthracite—I saw it—that
+made all the mess. Anybody can be ditched, I guess.”
+
+“Found that out already, have you? Well, that’s a good beginnin’.” It
+was the Purple Emperor, with his high, tight, plate-glass cab and green
+velvet cushion, waiting to be cleaned for his next day’s fly.
+
+“Let me make you two gen’lemen acquainted,” said Poney. “This is our
+Purple Emperor, kid, whom you were admirin’ and, I may say, envyin’
+last night. This is a new brother, worshipful sir, with most of his
+mileage ahead of him, but, so far as a serving-brother can, I’ll answer
+for him.”
+
+“’Happy to meet you,” said the Purple Emperor, with a glance round the
+crowded round-house. “I guess there are enough of us here to form a
+full meetin’. Ahem! By virtue of the authority vested in me as Head of
+the Road, I hereby declare and pronounce No. ･007 a full and accepted
+Brother of the Amalgamated Brotherhood of Locomotives, and as such
+entitled to all shop, switch, track, tank, and round-house privileges
+throughout my jurisdiction, in the Degree of Superior Flier, it bein’
+well known and credibly reported to me that our Brother has covered
+forty-one miles in thirty-nine minutes and a half on an errand of mercy
+to the afflicted. At a convenient time, I myself will communicate to
+you the Song and Signal of this Degree whereby you may be recognised in
+the darkest night. Take your stall, newly entered Brother among
+Locomotives!”
+
+Now, in the darkest night, even as the Purple Emperor said, if you will
+stand on the bridge across the freightyard, looking down upon the
+four-track way, at 2:30 A. M., neither before nor after, when the White
+Moth, that takes the overflow from the Purple Emperor, tears south with
+her seven vestibuled cream-white cars, you will hear, as the yard-clock
+makes the half-hour, a far-away sound like the bass of a violoncello,
+and then, a hundred feet to each word,
+
+“With a michnai—ghignai—shtingal! Yah! Yah! Yah!
+Ein—zwei—drei—Mutter! Yah! Yah! Yah!
+She climb upon der shteeple,
+Und she frighten all der people,
+Singin’ michnai—ghignai—shtingal! Yah! Yah!”
+
+
+That is 007 covering his one hundred and fifty-six miles in two hundred
+and twenty-one minutes.
+
+
+
+
+THE MALTESE CAT
+
+
+They had good reason to be proud, and better reason to be afraid, all
+twelve of them; for though they had fought their way, game by game, up
+the teams entered for the polo tournament, they were meeting the
+Archangels that afternoon in the final match; and the Archangels men
+were playing with half a dozen ponies apiece. As the game was divided
+into six quarters of eight minutes each, that meant a fresh pony after
+every halt. The Skidars’ team, even supposing there were no accidents,
+could only supply one pony for every other change; and two to one is
+heavy odds. Again, as Shiraz, the grey Syrian, pointed out, they were
+meeting the pink and pick of the polo-ponies of Upper India, ponies
+that had cost from a thousand rupees each, while they themselves were a
+cheap lot gathered, often from country-carts, by their masters, who
+belonged to a poor but honest native infantry regiment.
+
+“Money means pace and weight,” said Shiraz, rubbing his black-silk nose
+dolefully along his neat-fitting boot, “and by the maxims of the game
+as I know it—”
+
+“Ah, but we aren’t playing the maxims,” said The Maltese Cat. “We’re
+playing the game; and we’ve the great advantage of knowing the game.
+Just think a stride, Shiraz! We’ve pulled up from bottom to second
+place in two weeks against all those fellows on the ground here. That’s
+because we play with our heads as well as our feet.”
+
+“It makes me feel undersized and unhappy all the same,” said Kittiwynk,
+a mouse-coloured mare with a red brow-band and the cleanest pair of
+legs that ever an aged pony owned. “They’ve twice our style, these
+others.”
+
+Kittiwynk looked at the gathering and sighed. The hard, dusty
+polo-ground was lined with thousands of soldiers, black and white, not
+counting hundreds and hundreds of carriages and drags and dogcarts, and
+ladies with brilliant-coloured parasols, and officers in uniform and
+out of it, and crowds of natives behind them; and orderlies on camels,
+who had halted to watch the game, instead of carrying letters up and
+down the station; and native horse-dealers running about on thin-eared
+Biluchi mares, looking for a chance to sell a few first-class
+polo-ponies. Then there were the ponies of thirty teams that had
+entered for the Upper India Free-for-All Cup—nearly every pony of worth
+and dignity, from Mhow to Peshawar, from Allahabad to Multan; prize
+ponies, Arabs, Syrian, Barb, country-bred, Deccanee, Waziri, and Kabul
+ponies of every colour and shape and temper that you could imagine.
+Some of them were in mat-roofed stables, close to the polo-ground, but
+most were under saddle, while their masters, who had been defeated in
+the earlier games, trotted in and out and told the world exactly how
+the game should be played.
+
+It was a glorious sight, and the come and go of the little, quick
+hooves, and the incessant salutations of ponies that had met before on
+other polo-grounds or race-courses were enough to drive a four-footed
+thing wild.
+
+But the Skidars’ team were careful not to know their neighbours, though
+half the ponies on the ground were anxious to scrape acquaintance with
+the little fellows that had come from the North, and, so far, had swept
+the board.
+
+“Let’s see,” said a soft gold-coloured Arab, who had been playing very
+badly the day before, to The Maltese Cat; “didn’t we meet in Abdul
+Rahman’s stable in Bombay, four seasons ago? I won the Paikpattan Cup
+next season, you may remember?”
+
+“Not me,” said The Maltese Cat, politely. “I was at Malta then, pulling
+a vegetable-cart. I don’t race. I play the game.”
+
+“Oh!” said the Arab, cocking his tail and swaggering off.
+
+“Keep yourselves to yourselves,” said The Maltese Cat to his
+companions. “We don’t want to rub noses with all those goose-rumped
+half-breeds of Upper India. When we’ve won this Cup they’ll give their
+shoes to know us.”
+
+“_We_ sha’n’t win the cup,” said Shiraz. “How do you feel?”
+
+“Stale as last night’s feed when a muskrat has run over it,” said
+Polaris, a rather heavy-shouldered grey; and the rest of the team
+agreed with him.
+
+“The sooner you forget that the better,” said The Maltese Cat,
+cheerfully. “They’ve finished tiffin in the big tent. We shall be
+wanted now. If your saddles are not comfy, kick. If your bits aren’t
+easy, rear, and let the _saises_ know whether your boots are tight.”
+
+Each pony had his _sais_, his groom, who lived and ate and slept with
+the animal, and had betted a good deal more than he could afford on the
+result of the game. There was no chance of anything going wrong, but to
+make sure, each _sais_ was shampooing the legs of his pony to the last
+minute. Behind the _saises_ sat as many of the Skidars’ regiment as had
+leave to attend the match—about half the native officers, and a hundred
+or two dark, black-bearded men with the regimental pipers nervously
+fingering the big, beribboned bagpipes. The Skidars were what they call
+a Pioneer regiment, and the bagpipes made the national music of half
+their men. The native officers held bundles of polo-sticks, long
+cane-handled mallets, and as the grand stand filled after lunch they
+arranged themselves by ones and twos at different points round the
+ground, so that if a stick were broken the player would not have far to
+ride for a new one. An impatient British Cavalry Band struck up “If you
+want to know the time, ask a p’leeceman!” and the two umpires in light
+dust-coats danced out on two little excited ponies. The four players of
+the Archangels’ team followed, and the sight of their beautiful mounts
+made Shiraz groan again.
+
+“Wait till we know,” said The Maltese Cat. “Two of ’em are playing in
+blinkers, and that means they can’t see to get out of the way of their
+own side, or they _may_ shy at the umpires’ ponies. They’ve _all_ got
+white web-reins that are sure to stretch or slip!”
+
+“And,” said Kittiwynk, dancing to take the stiffness out of her, “they
+carry their whips in their hands instead of on their wrists. Hah!”
+
+“True enough. No man can manage his stick and his reins and his whip
+that way,” said The Maltese Cat. “I’ve fallen over every square yard of
+the Malta ground, and _I_ ought to know.”
+
+He quivered his little, flea-bitten withers just to show how satisfied
+he felt; but his heart was not so light. Ever since he had drifted into
+India on a troop-ship, taken, with an old rifle, as part payment for a
+racing debt, The Maltese Cat had played and preached polo to the
+Skidars’ team on the Skidars’ stony polo-ground. Now a polo-pony is
+like a poet. If he is born with a love for the game, he can be made.
+The Maltese Cat knew that bamboos grew solely in order that poloballs
+might be turned from their roots, that grain was given to ponies to
+keep them in hard condition, and that ponies were shod to prevent them
+slipping on a turn. But, besides all these things, he knew every trick
+and device of the finest game in the world, and for two seasons had
+been teaching the others all he knew or guessed.
+
+“Remember,” he said for the hundredth time, as the riders came up, “we
+_must_ play together, and you _must_ play with your heads. Whatever
+happens, follow the ball. Who goes out first?”
+
+Kittiwynk, Shiraz, Polaris, and a short high little bay fellow with
+tremendous hocks and no withers worth speaking of (he was called Corks)
+were being girthed up, and the soldiers in the background stared with
+all their eyes.
+
+“I want you men to keep quiet,” said Lutyens, the captain of the team,
+“and especially _not_ to blow your pipes.”
+
+“Not if we win, Captain Sahib?” asked the piper.
+
+“If we win you can do what you please,” said Lutyens, with a smile, as
+he slipped the loop of his stick over his wrist, and wheeled to canter
+to his place. The Archangels’ ponies were a little bit above themselves
+on account of the many-coloured crowd so close to the ground. Their
+riders were excellent players, but they were a team of crack players
+instead of a crack team; and that made all the difference in the world.
+They honestly meant to play together, but it is very hard for four men,
+each the best of the team he is picked from, to remember that in polo
+no brilliancy in hitting or riding makes up for playing alone. Their
+captain shouted his orders to them by name, and it is a curious thing
+that if you call his name aloud in public after an Englishman you make
+him hot and fretty. Lutyens said nothing to his men, because it had all
+been said before. He pulled up Shiraz, for he was playing “back,” to
+guard the goal. Powell on Polaris was half-back, and Macnamara and
+Hughes on Corks and Kittiwynk were forwards. The tough, bamboo ball was
+set in the middle of the ground, one hundred and fifty yards from the
+ends, and Hughes crossed sticks, heads up, with the Captain of the
+Archangels, who saw fit to play forward; that is a place from which you
+cannot easily control your team. The little click as the cane-shafts
+met was heard all over the ground, and then Hughes made some sort of
+quick wrist-stroke that just dribbled the ball a few yards. Kittiwynk
+knew that stroke of old, and followed as a cat follows a mouse. While
+the Captain of the Archangels was wrenching his pony round, Hughes
+struck with all his strength, and next instant Kittiwynk was away,
+Corks following close behind her, their little feet pattering like
+raindrops on glass.
+
+“Pull out to the left,” said Kittiwynk between her teeth; “it’s coming
+your way, Corks!”
+
+The back and half-back of the Archangels were tearing down on her just
+as she was within reach of the ball. Hughes leaned forward with a loose
+rein, and cut it away to the left almost under Kittiwynk’s foot, and it
+hopped and skipped off to Corks, who saw that, if he was not quick it
+would run beyond the boundaries. That long bouncing drive gave the
+Archangels time to wheel and send three men across the ground to head
+off Corks. Kittiwynk stayed where she was; for she knew the game. Corks
+was on the ball half a fraction of a second before the others came up,
+and Macnamara, with a backhanded stroke, sent it back across the ground
+to Hughes, who saw the way clear to the Archangels’ goal, and smacked
+the ball in before any one quite knew what had happened.
+
+“That’s luck,” said Corks, as they changed ends. “A goal in three
+minutes for three hits, and no riding to speak of.”
+
+“Don’t know,” said Polaris. “We’ve made ’em angry too soon. Shouldn’t
+wonder if they tried to rush us off our feet next time.”
+
+“Keep the ball hanging, then,” said Shiraz. “That wears out every pony
+that is not used to it.”
+
+Next time there was no easy galloping across the ground. All the
+Archangels closed up as one man, but there they stayed, for Corks,
+Kittiwynk, and Polaris were somewhere on the top of the ball, marking
+time among the rattling sticks, while Shiraz circled about outside,
+waiting for a chance.
+
+“_We_ can do this all day,” said Polaris, ramming his quarters into the
+side of another pony. “Where do you think you’re shoving to?”
+
+“I’ll—I’ll be driven in an _ekka_ if I know,” was the gasping reply,
+“and I’d give a week’s feed to get my blinkers off. I can’t see
+anything.”
+
+“The dust is rather bad. Whew! That was one for my off-hock. Where’s
+the ball, Corks?”
+
+“Under my tail. At least, the man’s looking for it there! This is
+beautiful. They can’t use their sticks, and it’s driving ’em wild. Give
+old Blinkers a push and then he’ll go over.”
+
+“Here, don’t touch me! I can’t see. I’ll—I’ll back out, I think,” said
+the pony in blinkers, who knew that if you can’t see all round your
+head, you cannot prop yourself against the shock.
+
+Corks was watching the ball where it lay in the dust, close to his near
+fore-leg, with Macnamara’s shortened stick tap-tapping it from time to
+time. Kittiwynk was edging her way out of the scrimmage, whisking her
+stump of a tail with nervous excitement.
+
+“Ho! They’ve got it,” she snorted. “Let me out!” and she galloped like
+a rifle-bullet just behind a tall lanky pony of the Archangels, whose
+rider was swinging up his stick for a stroke.
+
+“Not to-day, thank you,” said Hughes, as the blow slid off his raised
+stick, and Kittiwynk laid her shoulder to the tall pony’s quarters, and
+shoved him aside just as Lutyens on Shiraz sent the ball where it had
+come from, and the tall pony went skating and slipping away to the
+left. Kittiwynk, seeing that Polaris had joined Corks in the chase for
+the ball up the ground, dropped into Polaris’ place, and then “time”
+was called.
+
+The Skidars’ ponies wasted no time in kicking or fuming. They knew that
+each minute’s rest meant so much gain, and trotted off to the rails and
+their _saises_, who began to scrape and blanket and rub them at once.
+
+“Whew!” said Corks, stiffening up to get all the tickle of the big
+vulcanite scraper. “If we were playing pony for pony, we would bend
+those Archangels double in half an hour. But they’ll bring up fresh
+ones and fresh ones and fresh ones after that—you see.”
+
+“Who cares?” said Polaris. “We’ve drawn first blood. Is my hock
+swelling?”
+
+“Looks puffy,” said Corks. “You must have had rather a wipe. Don’t let
+it stiffen. You ’ll be wanted again in half an hour.”
+
+“What’s the game like?” said The Maltese Cat.
+
+“Ground’s like your shoe, except where they put too much water on it,”
+said Kittiwynk. “Then it’s slippery. Don’t play in the centre. There’s
+a bog there. I don’t know how their next four are going to behave, but
+we kept the ball hanging, and made ’em lather for nothing. Who goes
+out? Two Arabs and a couple of country-breds! That’s bad. What a
+comfort it is to wash your mouth out!”
+
+Kitty was talking with a neck of a lather-covered soda-water bottle
+between her teeth, and trying to look over her withers at the same
+time. This gave her a very coquettish air.
+
+“What’s bad?” said Grey Dawn, giving to the girth and admiring his
+well-set shoulders.
+
+“You Arabs can’t gallop fast enough to keep yourselves warm—that’s what
+Kitty means,” said Polaris, limping to show that his hock needed
+attention. “Are you playing back, Grey Dawn?”
+
+“Looks like it,” said Grey Dawn, as Lutyens swung himself up. Powell
+mounted The Rabbit, a plain bay country-bred much like Corks, but with
+mulish ears. Macnamara took Faiz-Ullah, a handy, short-backed little
+red Arab with a long tail, and Hughes mounted Benami, an old and sullen
+brown beast, who stood over in front more than a polo-pony should.
+
+“Benami looks like business,” said Shiraz. “How’s your temper, Ben?”
+The old campaigner hobbled off without answering, and The Maltese Cat
+looked at the new Archangel ponies prancing about on the ground. They
+were four beautiful blacks, and they saddled big enough and strong
+enough to eat the Skidars’ team and gallop away with the meal inside
+them.
+
+“Blinkers again,” said The Maltese Cat. “Good enough!”
+
+“They’re chargers—cavalry chargers!” said Kittiwynk, indignantly.
+“_They’ll_ never see thirteen-three again.”
+
+“They’ve all been fairly measured, and they’ve all got their
+certificates,” said The Maltese Cat, “or they wouldn’t be here. We must
+take things as they come along, and keep your eyes on the ball.”
+
+The game began, but this time the Skidars were penned to their own end
+of the ground, and the watching ponies did not approve of that.
+
+“Faiz-Ullah is shirking—as usual,” said Polaris, with a scornful grunt.
+
+“Faiz-Ullah is eating whip,” said Corks. They could hear the
+leather-thonged polo-quirt lacing the little fellow’s well-rounded
+barrel. Then The Rabbit’s shrill neigh came across the ground.
+
+“I can’t do all the work,” he cried, desperately.
+
+“Play the game—don’t talk,” The Maltese Cat whickered; and all the
+ponies wriggled with excitement, and the soldiers and the grooms
+gripped the railings and shouted. A black pony with blinkers had
+singled out old Benami, and was interfering with him in every possible
+way. They could see Benami shaking his head up and down, and flapping
+his under lip.
+
+“There’ll be a fall in a minute,” said Polaris. “Benami is getting
+stuffy.”
+
+The game flickered up and down between goal-post and goal-post, and the
+black ponies were getting more confident as they felt they had the legs
+of the others. The ball was hit out of a little scrimmage, and Benami
+and The Rabbit followed it, Faiz-Ullah only too glad to be quiet for an
+instant.
+
+The blinkered black pony came up like a hawk, with two of his own side
+behind him, and Benami’s eye glittered as he raced. The question was
+which pony should make way for the other, for each rider was perfectly
+willing to risk a fall in a good cause. The black, who had been driven
+nearly crazy by his blinkers, trusted to his weight and his temper; but
+Benami knew how to apply his weight and how to keep his temper. They
+met, and there was a cloud of dust. The black was lying on his side,
+all the breath knocked out of his body. The Rabbit was a hundred yards
+up the ground with the ball, and Benami was sitting down. He had slid
+nearly ten yards on his tail, but he had had his revenge, and sat
+cracking his nostrils till the black pony rose.
+
+“That’s what you get for interfering. Do you want any more?” said
+Benami, and he plunged into the game. Nothing was done that quarter,
+because Faiz-Ullah would not gallop, though Macnamara beat him whenever
+he could spare a second. The fall of the black pony had impressed his
+companions tremendously, and so the Archangels could not profit by
+Faiz-Ullah’s bad behaviour.
+
+But as The Maltese Cat said when “time” was called, and the four came
+back blowing and dripping, Faiz-Ullah ought to have been kicked all
+round Umballa. If he did not behave better next time The Maltese Cat
+promised to pull out his Arab tail by the roots and—eat it.
+
+There was no time to talk, for the third four were ordered out.
+
+The third quarter of a game is generally the hottest, for each side
+thinks that the others must be pumped; and most of the winning play in
+a game is made about that time.
+
+Lutyens took over The Maltese Cat with a pat and a hug, for Lutyens
+valued him more than anything else in the world; Powell had Shikast, a
+little grey rat with no pedigree and no manners outside polo; Macnamara
+mounted Bamboo, the largest of the team; and Hughes Who’s Who, _alias_
+The Animal. He was supposed to have Australian blood in his veins, but
+he looked like a clothes-horse, and you could whack his legs with an
+iron crow-bar without hurting him.
+
+They went out to meet the very flower of the Archangels’ team; and when
+Who’s Who saw their elegantly booted legs and their beautiful satin
+skins, he grinned a grin through his light, well-worn bridle.
+
+“My word!” said Who’s Who. “We must give ’em a little football. These
+gentlemen need a rubbing down.”
+
+“No biting,” said The Maltese Cat, warningly; for once or twice in his
+career Who’s Who had been known to forget himself in that way.
+
+“Who said anything about biting? I’m not playing tiddly-winks. I’m
+playing the game.”
+
+The Archangels came down like a wolf on the fold, for they were tired
+of football, and they wanted polo. They got it more and more. Just
+after the game began, Lutyens hit a ball that was coming towards him
+rapidly, and it rolled in the air, as a ball sometimes will, with the
+whirl of a frightened partridge. Shikast heard, but could not see it
+for the minute, though he looked everywhere and up into the air as The
+Maltese Cat had taught him. When he saw it ahead and overhead he went
+forward with Powell as fast as he could put foot to ground. It was then
+that Powell, a quiet and level-headed man, as a rule, became inspired,
+and played a stroke that sometimes comes off successfully after long
+practice. He took his stick in both hands, and, standing up in his
+stirrups, swiped at the ball in the air, Munipore fashion. There was
+one second of paralysed astonishment, and then all four sides of the
+ground went up in a yell of applause and delight as the ball flew true
+(you could see the amazed Archangels ducking in their saddles to dodge
+the line of flight, and looking at it with open mouths), and the
+regimental pipes of the Skidars squealed from the railings as long as
+the pipers had breath. Shikast heard the stroke; but he heard the head
+of the stick fly off at the same time. Nine hundred and ninety-nine
+ponies out of a thousand would have gone tearing on after the ball with
+a useless player pulling at their heads; but Powell knew him, and he
+knew Powell; and the instant he felt Powell’s right leg shift a trifle
+on the saddle-flap, he headed to the boundary, where a native officer
+was frantically waving a new stick. Before the shouts had ended, Powell
+was armed again.
+
+Once before in his life The Maltese Cat had heard that very same stroke
+played off his own back, and had profited by the confusion it wrought.
+This time he acted on experience, and leaving Bamboo to guard the goal
+in case of accidents, came through the others like a flash, head and
+tail low—Lutyens standing up to ease him—swept on and on before the
+other side knew what was the matter, and nearly pitched on his head
+between the Archangels’ goal-post as Lutyens kicked the ball in after a
+straight scurry of a hundred and fifty yards. If there was one thing
+more than another upon which The Maltese Cat prided himself, it was on
+this quick, streaking kind of run half across the ground. He did not
+believe in taking balls round the field unless you were clearly
+overmatched. After this they gave the Archangels five-minuted football;
+and an expensive fast pony hates football because it rumples his
+temper. Who’s Who showed himself even better than Polaris in this game.
+He did not permit any wriggling away, but bored joyfully into the
+scrimmage as if he had his nose in a feed-box and was looking for
+something nice. Little Shikast jumped on the ball the minute it got
+clear, and every time an Archangel pony followed it, he found Shikast
+standing over it, asking what was the matter.
+
+“If we can live through this quarter,” said The Maltese Cat, “I sha’n’t
+care. Don’t take it out of yourselves. Let them do the lathering.”
+
+So the ponies, as their riders explained afterwards, “shut-up.” The
+Archangels kept them tied fast in front of their goal, but it cost the
+Archangels’ ponies all that was left of their tempers; and ponies began
+to kick, and men began to repeat compliments, and they chopped at the
+legs of Who’s Who, and he set his teeth and stayed where he was, and
+the dust stood up like a tree over the scrimmage until that hot quarter
+ended.
+
+They found the ponies very excited and confident when they went to
+their saises; and The Maltese Cat had to warn them that the worst of
+the game was coming.
+
+“Now _we_ are all going in for the second time,” said he, “and _they_
+are trotting out fresh ponies. You think you can gallop, but you’ll
+find you can’t; and then you’ll be sorry.”
+
+“But two goals to nothing is a halter-long lead,” said Kittiwynk,
+prancing.
+
+“How long does it take to get a goal?” The Maltese Cat answered. “For
+pity’s sake, don’t run away with a notion that the game is half-won
+just because we happen to be in luck now! They’ll ride you into the
+grand stand, if they can; you must _not_ give ’em a chance. Follow the
+ball.”
+
+“Football, as usual?” said Polaris. “My hock’s half as big as a
+nose-bag.”
+
+“Don’t let them have a look at the ball, if you can help it. Now leave
+me alone. I must get all the rest I can before the last quarter.”
+
+He hung down his head and let all his muscles go slack, Shikast,
+Bamboo, and Who’s Who copying his example.
+
+“Better not watch the game,” he said. “We aren’t playing, and we shall
+only take it out of ourselves if we grow anxious. Look at the ground
+and pretend it’s fly-time.”
+
+They did their best, but it was hard advice to follow. The hooves were
+drumming and the sticks were rattling all up and down the ground, and
+yells of applause from the English troops told that the Archangels were
+pressing the Skidars hard. The native soldiers behind the ponies
+groaned and grunted, and said things in undertones, and presently they
+heard a long-drawn shout and a clatter of hurrahs!
+
+“One to the Archangels,” said Shikast, without raising his head.
+“Time’s nearly up. Oh, my sire and dam!”
+
+“Faiz-Ullah,” said The Maltese Cat, “if you don’t play to the last nail
+in your shoes this time, I’ll kick you on the ground before all the
+other ponies.”
+
+“I’ll do my best when my time comes,” said the little Arab, sturdily.
+
+The _saises_ looked at each other gravely as they rubbed their ponies’
+legs. This was the time when long purses began to tell, and everybody
+knew it. Kittiwynk and the others came back, the sweat dripping over
+their hooves and their tails telling sad stories.
+
+“They’re better than we are,” said Shiraz. “I knew how it would be.”
+
+“Shut your big head,” said The Maltese Cat; “we’ve one goal to the good
+yet.”
+
+“Yes; but it’s two Arabs and two country-breds to play now,” said
+Corks. “Faiz-Ullah, remember!” He spoke in a biting voice.
+
+As Lutyens mounted Grey Dawn he looked at his men, and they did not
+look pretty. They were covered with dust and sweat in streaks. Their
+yellow boots were almost black, their wrists were red and lumpy, and
+their eyes seemed two inches deep in their heads; but the expression in
+the eyes was satisfactory.
+
+“Did you take anything at tiffin?” said Lutyens; and the team shook
+their heads. They were too dry to talk.
+
+“All right. The Archangels did. They are worse pumped than we are.”
+
+“They’ve got the better ponies,” said Powell. “I sha’n’t be sorry when
+this business is over.”
+
+That fifth quarter was a painful one in every way. Faiz-Ullah played
+like a little red demon, and The Rabbit seemed to be everywhere at
+once, and Benami rode straight at anything and everything that came in
+his way; while the umpires on their ponies wheeled like gulls outside
+the shifting game. But the Archangels had the better mounts,—they had
+kept their racers till late in the game,—and never allowed the Skidars
+to play football. They hit the ball up and down the width of the ground
+till Benami and the rest were outpaced. Then they went forward, and
+time and again Lutyens and Grey Dawn were just, and only just, able to
+send the ball away with a long, spitting backhander. Grey Dawn forgot
+that he was an Arab; and turned from grey to blue as he galloped.
+Indeed, he forgot too well, for he did not keep his eyes on the ground
+as an Arab should, but stuck out his nose and scuttled for the dear
+honour of the game. They had watered the ground once or twice between
+the quarters, and a careless waterman had emptied the last of his
+skinful all in one place near the Skidars’ goal. It was close to the
+end of the play, and for the tenth time Grey Dawn was bolting after the
+ball, when his near hind-foot slipped on the greasy mud, and he rolled
+over and over, pitching Lutyens just clear of the goal-post; and the
+triumphant Archangels made their goal. Then “time” was called—two goals
+all; but Lutyens had to be helped up, and Grey Dawn rose with his near
+hind-leg strained somewhere.
+
+“What’s the damage?” said Powell, his arm around Lutyens.
+
+“Collar-bone, of course,” said Lutyens, between his teeth. It was the
+third time he had broken it in two years, and it hurt him.
+
+Powell and the others whistled.
+
+“Game’s up,” said Hughes.
+
+“Hold on. We’ve five good minutes yet, and it isn’t my right hand. We
+’ll stick it out.”
+
+“I say,” said the Captain of the Archangels, trotting up, “are you
+hurt, Lutyens? We’ll wait if you care to put in a substitute. I wish—I
+mean—the fact is, you fellows deserve this game if any team does. Wish
+we could give you a man, or some of our ponies—or something.”
+
+“You ’re awfully good, but we’ll play it to a finish, I think.”
+
+The Captain of the Archangels stared for a little. “That’s not half
+bad,” he said, and went back to his own side, while Lutyens borrowed a
+scarf from one of his native officers and made a sling of it. Then an
+Archangel galloped up with a big bath-sponge, and advised Lutyens to
+put it under his armpit to ease his shoulder, and between them they
+tied up his left arm scientifically; and one of the native officers
+leaped forward with four long glasses that fizzed and bubbled.
+
+The team looked at Lutyens piteously, and he nodded. It was the last
+quarter, and nothing would matter after that. They drank out the dark
+golden drink, and wiped their moustaches, and things looked more
+hopeful.
+
+The Maltese Cat had put his nose into the front of Lutyens’ shirt and
+was trying to say how sorry he was.
+
+“He knows,” said Lutyens, proudly. “The beggar knows. I’ve played him
+without a bridle before now—for fun.”
+
+“It’s no fun now,” said Powell. “But we haven’t a decent substitute.”
+
+“No,” said Lutyens. “It’s the last quarter, and we’ve got to make our
+goal and win. I’ll trust The Cat.”
+
+“If you fall this time, you’ll suffer a little,” said Macnamara.
+
+“I’ll trust The Cat,” said Lutyens.
+
+“You hear that?” said The Maltese Cat, proudly, to the others. “It’s
+worth while playing polo for ten years to have that said of you. Now
+then, my sons, come along. We’ll kick up a little bit, just to show the
+Archangels _this_ team haven’t suffered.”
+
+And, sure enough, as they went on to the ground, The Maltese Cat, after
+satisfying himself that Lutyens was home in the saddle, kicked out
+three or four times, and Lutyens laughed. The reins were caught up
+anyhow in the tips of his strapped left hand, and he never pretended to
+rely on them. He knew The Cat would answer to the least pressure of the
+leg, and by way of showing off—for his shoulder hurt him very much—he
+bent the little fellow in a close figure-of-eight in and out between
+the goal-posts. There was a roar from the native officers and men, who
+dearly loved a piece of _dugabashi_ (horse-trick work), as they called
+it, and the pipes very quietly and scornfully droned out the first bars
+of a common bazaar tune called “Freshly Fresh and Newly New,” just as a
+warning to the other regiments that the Skidars were fit. All the
+natives laughed.
+
+“And now,” said The Maltese Cat, as they took their place, “remember
+that this is the last quarter, and follow the ball!”
+
+“Don’t need to be told,” said Who’s Who.
+
+“Let me go on. All those people on all four sides will begin to crowd
+in—just as they did at Malta. You’ll hear people calling out, and
+moving forward and being pushed back; and that is going to make the
+Archangel ponies very unhappy. But if a ball is struck to the boundary,
+you go after it, and let the people get out of your way. I went over
+the pole of a four-in-hand once, and picked a game out of the dust by
+it. Back me up when I run, and follow the ball.”
+
+There was a sort of an all-round sound of sympathy and wonder as the
+last quarter opened, and then there began exactly what The Maltese Cat
+had foreseen. People crowded in close to the boundaries, and the
+Archangels’ ponies kept looking sideways at the narrowing space. If you
+know how a man feels to be cramped at tennis—not because he wants to
+run out of the court, but because he likes to know that he can at a
+pinch—you will guess how ponies must feel when they are playing in a
+box of human beings.
+
+“I’ll bend some of those men if I can get away,” said Who’s Who, as he
+rocketed behind the ball; and Bamboo nodded without speaking. They were
+playing the last ounce in them, and The Maltese Cat had left the goal
+undefended to join them. Lutyens gave him every order that he could to
+bring him back, but this was the first time in his career that the
+little wise grey had ever played polo on his own responsibility, and he
+was going to make the most of it.
+
+“What are you doing here?” said Hughes, as The Cat crossed in front of
+him and rode off an Archangel.
+
+“The Cat’s in charge—mind the goal!” shouted Lutyens, and bowing
+forward hit the ball full, and followed on, forcing the Archangels
+towards their own goal.
+
+“No football,” said The Maltese Cat. “Keep the ball by the boundaries
+and cramp ’em. Play open order, and drive ’em to the boundaries.”
+
+Across and across the ground in big diagonals flew the ball, and
+whenever it came to a flying rush and a stroke close to the boundaries
+the Archangel ponies moved stiffly. They did not care to go headlong at
+a wall of men and carriages, though if the ground had been open they
+could have turned on a sixpence.
+
+“Wriggle her up the sides,” said The Cat. “Keep her close to the crowd.
+They hate the carriages. Shikast, keep her up this side.”
+
+Shikast and Powell lay left and right behind the uneasy scuffle of an
+open scrimmage, and every time the ball was hit away Shikast galloped
+on it at such an angle that Powell was forced to hit it towards the
+boundary; and when the crowd had been driven away from that side,
+Lutyens would send the ball over to the other, and Shikast would slide
+desperately after it till his friends came down to help. It was
+billiards, and no football, this time—billiards in a corner pocket; and
+the cues were not well chalked.
+
+“If they get us out in the middle of the ground they’ll walk away from
+us. Dribble her along the sides,” cried The Maltese Cat.
+
+So they dribbled all along the boundary, where a pony could not come on
+their right-hand side; and the Archangels were furious, and the umpires
+had to neglect the game to shout at the people to get back, and several
+blundering mounted policemen tried to restore order, all close to the
+scrimmage, and the nerves of the Archangels’ ponies stretched and broke
+like cob-webs.
+
+Five or six times an Archangel hit the ball up into the middle of the
+ground, and each time the watchful Shikast gave Powell his chance to
+send it back, and after each return, when the dust had settled, men
+could see that the Skidars had gained a few yards.
+
+Every now and again there were shouts of “Side! Off side!” from the
+spectators; but the teams were too busy to care, and the umpires had
+all they could do to keep their maddened ponies clear of the scuffle.
+
+At last Lutyens missed a short easy stroke, and the Skidars had to fly
+back helter-skelter to protect their own goal, Shikast leading. Powell
+stopped the ball with a backhander when it was not fifty yards from the
+goalposts, and Shikast spun round with a wrench that nearly hoisted
+Powell out of his saddle.
+
+“Now’s our last chance,” said The Cat, wheeling like a cockchafer on a
+pin. “We’ve got to ride it out. Come along.”
+
+Lutyens felt the little chap take a deep breath, and, as it were,
+crouch under his rider. The ball was hopping towards the right-hand
+boundary, an Archangel riding for it with both spurs and a whip; but
+neither spur nor whip would make his pony stretch himself as he neared
+the crowd. The Maltese Cat glided under his very nose, picking up his
+hind legs sharp, for there was not a foot to spare between his quarters
+and the other pony’s bit. It was as neat an exhibition as fancy
+figure-skating. Lutyens hit with all the strength he had left, but the
+stick slipped a little in his hand, and the ball flew off to the left
+instead of keeping close to the boundary. Who’s Who was far across the
+ground, thinking hard as he galloped. He repeated stride for stride The
+Cat’s manoeuvres with another Archangel pony, nipping the ball away
+from under his bridle, and clearing his opponent by half a fraction of
+an inch, for Who’s Who was clumsy behind. Then he drove away towards
+the right as The Maltese Cat came up from the left; and Bamboo held a
+middle course exactly between them. The three were making a sort of
+Government-broad-arrow-shaped attack; and there was only the
+Archangels’ back to guard the goal; but immediately behind them were
+three Archangels racing all they knew, and mixed up with them was
+Powell sending Shikast along on what he felt was their last hope. It
+takes a very good man to stand up to the rush of seven crazy ponies in
+the last quarters of a Cup game, when men are riding with their necks
+for sale, and the ponies are delirious. The Archangels’ back missed his
+stroke and pulled aside just in time to let the rush go by. Bamboo and
+Who’s Who shortened stride to give The Cat room, and Lutyens got the
+goal with a clean, smooth, smacking stroke that was heard all over the
+field. But there was no stopping the ponies. They poured through the
+goalposts in one mixed mob, winners and losers together, for the pace
+had been terrific. The Maltese Cat knew by experience what would
+happen, and, to save Lutyens, turned to the right with one last effort,
+that strained a back-sinew beyond hope of repair. As he did so he heard
+the right-hand goalpost crack as a pony cannoned into it—crack,
+splinter and fall like a mast. It had been sawed three parts through in
+case of accidents, but it upset the pony nevertheless, and he blundered
+into another, who blundered into the left-hand post, and then there was
+confusion and dust and wood. Bamboo was lying on the ground, seeing
+stars; an Archangel pony rolled beside him, breathless and angry;
+Shikast had sat down dog-fashion to avoid falling over the others, and
+was sliding along on his little bobtail in a cloud of dust; and Powell
+was sitting on the ground, hammering with his stick and trying to
+cheer. All the others were shouting at the top of what was left of
+their voices, and the men who had been spilt were shouting too. As soon
+as the people saw no one was hurt, ten thousand native and English
+shouted and clapped and yelled, and before any one could stop them the
+pipers of the Skidars broke on to the ground, with all the native
+officers and men behind them, and marched up and down, playing a wild
+Northern tune called “Zakhme Began,” and through the insolent blaring
+of the pipes and the high-pitched native yells you could hear the
+Archangels’ band hammering, “For they are all jolly good fellows,” and
+then reproachfully to the losing team, “Ooh, Kafoozalum! Kafoozalum!
+Kafoozalum!”
+
+Besides all these things and many more, there was a Commander-in-chief,
+and an Inspector-General of Cavalry, and the principal veterinary
+officer of all India standing on the top of a regimental coach, yelling
+like school-boys; and brigadiers and colonels and commissioners, and
+hundreds of pretty ladies joined the chorus. But The Maltese Cat stood
+with his head down, wondering how many legs were left to him; and
+Lutyens watched the men and ponies pick themselves out of the wreck of
+the two goal-posts, and he patted The Maltese Cat very tenderly.
+
+“I say,” said the Captain of the Archangels, spitting a pebble out of
+his mouth, “will you take three thousand for that pony—as he stands?”
+
+“No thank you. I’ve an idea he’s saved my life,” said Lutyens, getting
+off and lying down at full length. Both teams were on the ground too,
+waving their boots in the air, and coughing and drawing deep breaths,
+as the _saises_ ran up to take away the ponies, and an officious
+water-carrier sprinkled the players with dirty water till they sat up.
+
+“My aunt!” said Powell, rubbing his back, and looking at the stumps of
+the goal-posts, “That was a game!”
+
+They played it over again, every stroke of it, that night at the big
+dinner, when the Free-for-All Cup was filled and passed down the table,
+and emptied and filled again, and everybody made most eloquent
+speeches. About two in the morning, when there might have been some
+singing, a wise little, plain little, grey little head looked in
+through the open door.
+
+“Hurrah! Bring him in,” said the Archangels; and his _sais_, who was
+very happy indeed, patted The Maltese Cat on the flank, and he limped
+in to the blaze of light and the glittering uniforms, looking for
+Lutyens. He was used to messes, and men’s bedrooms, and places where
+ponies are not usually encouraged, and in his youth had jumped on and
+off a mess-table for a bet. So he behaved himself very politely, and
+ate bread dipped in salt, and was petted all round the table, moving
+gingerly; and they drank his health, because he had done more to win
+the Cup than any man or horse on the ground.
+
+That was glory and honour enough for the rest of his days, and The
+Maltese Cat did not complain much when the veterinary surgeon said that
+he would be no good for polo any more. When Lutyens married, his wife
+did not allow him to play, so he was forced to be an umpire; and his
+pony on these occasions was a flea-bitten grey with a neat polo-tail,
+lame all round, but desperately quick on his feet, and, as everybody
+knew, Past Pluperfect Prestissimo Player of the Game.
+
+
+
+
+“BREAD UPON THE WATERS”
+
+
+If you remember my improper friend Brugglesmith, you will also bear in
+mind his friend McPhee, Chief Engineer of the _Breslau_, whose dingey
+Brugglesmith tried to steal. His apologies for the performances of
+Brugglesmith may one day be told in their proper place: the tale before
+us concerns McPhee. He was never a racing engineer, and took special
+pride in saying as much before the Liverpool men; but he had a
+thirty-two years’ knowledge of machinery and the humours of ships. One
+side of his face had been wrecked through the bursting of a
+pressure-gauge in the days when men knew less than they do now, and his
+nose rose grandly out of the wreck, like a club in a public riot. There
+were cuts and lumps on his head, and he would guide your forefinger
+through his short iron-grey hair and tell you how he had come by his
+trade-marks. He owned all sorts of certificates of extra-competency,
+and at the bottom of his cabin chest of drawers, where he kept the
+photograph of his wife, were two or three Royal Humane Society medals
+for saving lives at sea. Professionally—it was different when crazy
+steerage-passengers jumped overboard—professionally, McPhee does not
+approve of saving life at sea, and he has often told me that a new Hell
+awaits stokers and trimmers who sign for a strong man’s pay and fall
+sick the second day out. He believes in throwing boots at fourth and
+fifth engineers when they wake him up at night with word that a bearing
+is redhot, all because a lamp’s glare is reflected red from the
+twirling metal. He believes that there are only two poets in the world;
+one being Robert Burns, of course, and the other Gerald Massey. When he
+has time for novels he reads Wilkie Collins and Charles Reade—chiefly
+the latter—and knows whole pages of _Very Hard Cash_ by heart. In the
+saloon his table is next to the captain’s, and he drinks only water
+while his engines work.
+
+He was good to me when we first met, because I did not ask questions,
+and believed in Charles Reade as a most shamefully neglected author.
+Later he approved of my writings to the extent of one pamphlet of
+twenty-four pages that I wrote for Holdock, Steiner & Chase, owners of
+the line, when they bought some ventilating patent and fitted it to the
+cabins of the _Breslau_, _Spandau_, and _Koltzau_. The purser of the
+_Breslau_ recommended me to Holdock’s secretary for the job; and
+Holdock, who is a Wesleyan Methodist, invited me to his house, and gave
+me dinner with the governess when the others had finished, and placed
+the plans and specifications in my hand, and I wrote the pamphlet that
+same afternoon. It was called “Comfort in the Cabin,” and brought me
+seven pound ten, cash down—an important sum of money in those days; and
+the governess, who was teaching Master John Holdock his scales, told me
+that Mrs. Holdock had told her to keep an eye on me, in case I went
+away with coats from the hat-rack. McPhee liked that pamphlet
+enormously, for it was composed in the Bouverie-Byzantine style, with
+baroque and rococo embellishments; and afterwards he introduced me to
+Mrs. McPhee, who succeeded Dinah in my heart; for Dinah was half a
+world away, and it is wholesome and antiseptic to love such a woman as
+Janet McPhee. They lived in a little twelve-pound house, close to the
+shipping. When McPhee was away Mrs. McPhee read the Lloyds column in
+the papers, and called on the wives of senior engineers of equal social
+standing. Once or twice, too, Mrs. Holdock visited Mrs. McPhee in a
+brougham with celluloid fittings, and I have reason to believe that,
+after she had played owner’s wife long enough, they talked scandal. The
+Holdocks lived in an old-fashioned house with a big brick garden not a
+mile from the McPhees, for they stayed by their money as their money
+stayed by them; and in summer you met their brougham solemnly junketing
+by Theydon Bois or Loughton. But I was Mrs. McPhee’s friend, for she
+allowed me to convoy her westward, sometimes, to theatres where she
+sobbed or laughed or shivered with a simple heart; and she introduced
+me to a new world of doctors’ wives, captains’ wives, and engineers’
+wives, whose whole talk and thought centred in and about ships and
+lines of ships you have never heard of. There were sailing-ships, with
+stewards and mahogany and maple saloons, trading to Australia, taking
+cargoes of consumptives and hopeless drunkards for whom a sea-voyage
+was recommended; there were frowzy little West African boats, full of
+rats and cockroaches, where men died anywhere but in their bunks; there
+were Brazilian boats whose cabins could be hired for merchandise, that
+went out loaded nearly awash; there were Zanzibar and Mauritius
+steamers and wonderful reconstructed boats that plied to the other tide
+of Borneo. These were loved and known, for they earned our bread and a
+little butter, and we despised the big Atlantic boats, and made fun of
+the P. & O. and Orient liners, and swore by our respective
+owners—Wesleyan, Baptist, or Presbyterian, as the case might be.
+
+I had only just come back to England when Mrs. McPhee invited me to
+dinner at three o’clock in the afternoon, and the notepaper was almost
+bridal in its scented creaminess. When I reached the house I saw that
+there were new curtains in the window that must have cost forty-five
+shillings a pair; and as Mrs. McPhee drew me into the little
+marble-papered hall, she looked at me keenly, and cried:
+
+“Have ye not heard? What d’ ye think o’ the hat-rack?”
+
+Now, that hat-rack was oak—thirty shillings, at least. McPhee came
+down-stairs with a sober foot—he steps as lightly as a cat, for all his
+weight, when he is at sea—and shook hands in a new and awful manner—a
+parody of old Holdock’s style when he says good-bye to his skippers. I
+perceived at once that a legacy had come to him, but I held my peace,
+though Mrs. McPhee begged me every thirty seconds to eat a great deal
+and say nothing. It was rather a mad sort of meal, because McPhee and
+his wife took hold of hands like little children (they always do after
+voyages), and nodded and winked and choked and gurgled, and hardly ate
+a mouthful.
+
+A female servant came in and waited; though Mrs. McPhee had told me
+time and again that she would thank no one to do her housework while
+she had her health. But this was a servant with a cap, and I saw Mrs.
+McPhee swell and swell under her _garance_-coloured gown. There is no
+small free-board to Janet McPhee, nor is _garance_ any subdued tint;
+and with all this unexplained pride and glory in the air I felt like
+watching fireworks without knowing the festival. When the maid had
+removed the cloth she brought a pineapple that would have cost half a
+guinea at that season (only McPhee has his own way of getting such
+things), and a Canton china bowl of dried lichis, and a glass plate of
+preserved ginger, and a small jar of sacred and Imperial chow-chow that
+perfumed the room. McPhee gets it from a Dutchman in Java, and I think
+he doctors it with liqueurs. But the crown of the feast was some
+Madeira of the kind you can only come by if you know the wine and the
+man. A little maize-wrapped fig of clotted Madeira cigars went with the
+wine, and the rest was a pale blue smoky silence; Janet, in her
+splendour, smiling on us two, and patting McPhee’s hand.
+
+“We’ll drink,” said McPhee, slowly, rubbing his chin, “to the eternal
+damnation o’ Holdock, Steiner & Chase.”
+
+Of course I answered “Amen,” though I had made seven pound ten
+shillings out of the firm. McPhee’s enemies were mine, and I was
+drinking his Madeira.
+
+“Ye’ve heard nothing?” said Janet. “Not a word, not a whisper?”
+
+“Not a word, nor a whisper. On my word, I have not.”
+
+“Tell him, Mac,” said she; and that is another proof of Janet’s
+goodness and wifely love. A smaller woman would have babbled first, but
+Janet is five feet nine in her stockings.
+
+“We’re rich,” said McPhee. I shook hands all round.
+
+“We’re damned rich,” he added. I shook hands all round a second time.
+
+“I’ll go to sea no more—unless—there’s no sayin’—a private yacht,
+maybe—wi’ a small an’ handy auxiliary.”
+
+“It’s not enough for _that_,” said Janet. “We’re fair rich—well-to-do,
+but no more. A new gown for church, and one for the theatre. We’ll have
+it made west.”
+
+“How much is it?” I asked.
+
+“Twenty-five thousand pounds.” I drew a long breath. “An’ I’ve been
+earnin’ twenty-five an’ twenty pound a month!”
+
+The last words came away with a roar, as though the wide world was
+conspiring to beat him down.
+
+“All this time I’m waiting,” I said. “I know nothing since last
+September. Was it left you?”
+
+They laughed aloud together. “It was left,” said McPhee, choking. “Ou,
+ay, it was left. That’s vara good. Of course it was left. Janet, d’ ye
+note that? It was left. Now if you’d put _that_ in your pamphlet it
+would have been vara jocose. It _was_ left.” He slapped his thigh and
+roared till the wine quivered in the decanter.
+
+The Scotch are a great people, but they are apt to hang over a joke too
+long, particularly when no one can see the point but themselves.
+
+“When I rewrite my pamphlet I’ll put it in, McPhee. Only I must know
+something more first.”
+
+McPhee thought for the length of half a cigar, while Janet caught my
+eye and led it round the room to one new thing after another—the new
+vine-pattern carpet, the new chiming rustic clock between the models of
+the Colombo outrigger-boats, the new inlaid sideboard with a purple
+cut-glass flower-stand, the fender of gilt and brass, and last, the new
+black-and-gold piano.
+
+“In October o’ last year the Board sacked me,” began McPhee. “In
+October o’ last year the _Breslau_ came in for winter overhaul. She’d
+been runnin’ eight months—two hunder an’ forty days—an’ I was three
+days makin’ up my indents, when she went to dry-dock. All told, mark
+you, it was this side o’ three hunder pound—to be preceese, two hunder
+an’ eighty-six pound four shillings. There’s not another man could ha’
+nursed the _Breslau_ for eight months to that tune. Never again—never
+again! They may send their boats to the bottom, for aught I care.”
+
+“There’s no need,” said Janet, softly. “We’re done wi’ Holdock, Steiner
+& Chase.”
+
+“It’s irritatin’, Janet, it’s just irritatin’. I ha’ been justified
+from first to last, as the world knows, but—but I canna forgie ’em. Ay,
+wisdom is justified o’ her children; an’ any other man than me wad ha’
+made the indent eight hunder. Hay was our skipper—ye’ll have met him.
+They shifted him to the _Torgau_, an’ bade me wait for the _Breslau_
+under young Bannister. Ye’ll obsairve there’d been a new election on
+the Board. I heard the shares were sellin’ hither an’ yon, an’ the
+major part of the Board was new to me. The old Board would ne’er ha’
+done it. They trusted me. But the new Board were all for
+reorganisation. Young Steiner—Steiner’s son—the Jew, was at the bottom
+of it, an’ they did not think it worth their while to send me word. The
+first I knew—an’ I was Chief Engineer—was the notice of the line’s
+winter sailin’s, and the _Breslau_ timed for sixteen days between port
+an’ port! Sixteen days, man! She’s a good boat, but eighteen is her
+summer time, mark you. Sixteen was sheer flytin’, kitin’ nonsense, an’
+so I told young Bannister.
+
+“We’ve got to make it,’ he said. ’Ye should not ha’ sent in a three
+hunder pound indent.’
+
+“Do they look for their boats to be run on air?’ I said. ‘The Board’s
+daft.’
+
+“‘E’en tell ’em so,’ he says. ‘I’m a married man, an’ my fourth’s on
+the ways now, she says.’”
+
+“A boy—wi’ red hair,” Janet put in. Her own hair is the splendid
+red-gold that goes with a creamy complexion.
+
+“My word, I was an angry man that day! Forbye I was fond o’ the old
+_Breslau_, I looked for a little consideration from the Board after
+twenty years’ service. There was Board-meetin’ on Wednesday, an’ I
+slept overnight in the engine-room, takin’ figures to support my case.
+Well, I put it fair and square before them all. ‘Gentlemen,’ I said,
+‘I’ve run the _Breslau_ eight seasons, an’ I believe there’s no fault
+to find wi’ my wark. But if ye haud to this’—I waggled the
+advertisement at ’em—‘this that _I_’ve never heard of it till I read it
+at breakfast, I do assure you on my professional reputation, she can
+never do it. That is to say, she can for a while, but at a risk no
+thinkin’ man would run.’
+
+“‘What the deil d’ ye suppose we pass your indents for?’ says old
+Holdock. ‘Man, we’re spendin’ money like watter.’
+
+“‘I’ll leave it in the Board’s hands,’ I said, ‘if two hunder an’
+eighty-seven pound is anything beyond right and reason for eight
+months.’ I might ha’ saved my breath, for the Board was new since the
+last election, an’ there they sat, the damned deevidend-huntin’
+ship-chandlers, deaf as the adders o’ Scripture.
+
+“‘We must keep faith wi’ the public,’ said young Steiner.
+
+“‘Keep faith wi’ the _Breslau_, then,’ I said. ‘She’s served you well,
+an’ your father before you. She’ll need her bottom restiffenin’, an’
+new bed-plates, an’ turnin’ out the forward boilers, an’ re-turnin’ all
+three cylinders, an’ refacin’ all guides, to begin with. It’s a three
+months’ job.’
+
+“‘Because one employé is afraid?’ says young Steiner. ‘Maybe a piano in
+the Chief Engineer’s cabin would be more to the point.’
+
+“I crushed my cap in my hands, an’ thanked God we’d no bairns an’ a bit
+put by.
+
+“‘Understand, gentlemen,’ I said. ‘If the _Breslau_ is made a
+sixteen-day boat, ye’ll find another engineer.’
+
+“‘Bannister makes no objection,’ said Holdock.
+
+“‘I’m speakin’ for myself,’ I said. ‘Bannister has bairns.’ An’ then I
+‘Ye can run her into Hell an’ out again if ye pay pilotage,’ I said,
+‘but ye run without me.’
+
+“‘That’s insolence,’ said young Steiner.
+
+“‘At your pleasure,’ I said, turnin’ to go.
+
+“‘Ye can consider yourself dismissed. We must preserve discipline among
+our employés,’ said old Holdock, an’ he looked round to see that the
+Board was with him. They knew nothin’—God forgie ’em—an’ they nodded me
+out o’ the line after twenty years—after twenty years.
+
+“I went out an’ sat down by the hall porter to get my wits again. I’m
+thinkin’ I swore at the Board. Then auld McRimmon—o’ McNaughten &
+McRimmon—came, oot o’ his office, that’s on the same floor, an’ looked
+at me, proppin’ up one eyelid wi’ his forefinger. Ye know they call him
+the Blind Deevil, forbye he onythin’ but blind, an’ no deevil in his
+dealin’s wi’ me—McRimmon o’ the Black Bird Line.
+
+“‘What’s here, Mister McPhee?’ said he.
+
+“I was past prayin’ for by then. ‘A Chief Engineer sacked after twenty
+years’ service because he’ll not risk the _Breslau_ on the new timin’,
+an’ be damned to ye, McRimmon,’ I said.
+
+“The auld man sucked in his lips an’ whistled. ‘Ah,’ said he, ‘the new
+timin’. I see!’ He doddered into the Board-room I’d just left, an’ the
+Dandie-dog that is just his blind man’s leader stayed wi’ me. _That_
+was providential. In a minute he was back again. ‘Ye’ve cast your bread
+on the watter, McPhee, an’ be damned to you,’ he says. ‘Whaur’s my dog?
+My word, is he on your knee? There’s more discernment in a dog than a
+Jew. What garred ye curse your Board, McPhee? It’s expensive.’
+
+“‘They’ll pay more for the _Breslau_,’ I said. ‘Get off my knee, ye
+smotherin’ beast.’
+
+“‘Bearin’s hot, eh?’ said McRimmon. ‘It’s thirty year since a man daur
+curse me to my face. Time was I’d ha’ cast ye doon the stairway for
+that.’
+
+“‘Forgie’s all!’ I said. He was wearin’ to eighty, as I knew. ‘I was
+wrong, McRimmon; but when a man’s shown the door for doin’ his plain
+duty he’s not always ceevil.’
+
+“‘So I hear,’ says McRimmon. ‘Ha’ ye ony objection to a tramp
+freighter? It’s only fifteen a month, but they say the Blind Deevil
+feeds a man better than others. She’s my _Kite_. Come ben. Ye can thank
+Dandie, here. I’m no used to thanks. An’ noo,’ says he, ‘what possessed
+ye to throw up your berth wi’ Holdock?’
+
+“‘The new timin’,’ said I. ‘The _Breslau_ will not stand it.’
+
+“‘Hoot, oot,’ said he. ‘Ye might ha’ crammed her a little—enough to
+show ye were drivin’ her—an’ brought her in twa days behind. What’s
+easier than to say ye slowed for bearin’s, eh? All my men do it, and—I
+believe ’em.’
+
+“‘McRimmon,’ says I, ‘what’s her virginity to a lassie?’
+
+“He puckered his dry face an’ twisted in his chair. ‘The warld an’ a’,’
+says he. ‘My God, the vara warld an’ a’. (But what ha’ you or me to do
+wi’ virginity, this late along?)’
+
+“‘This,’ I said. ‘There’s just one thing that each one of us in his
+trade or profession will _not_ do for ony consideration whatever. If I
+run to time I run to time, barrin’ always the risks o’ the high seas.
+Less than that, under God, I have not done. More than that, by God, I
+will not do! There’s no trick o’ the trade I’m not acquaint wi’—’
+
+“‘So I’ve heard,’ says McRimmon, dry as a biscuit.
+
+“‘But yon matter o’ fair runnin’ s just my Shekinah, ye’ll understand.
+I daurna tamper wi’ _that_. Nursing weak engines is fair craftsmanship;
+but what the Board ask is cheatin’, wi’ the risk o’ manslaughter
+addeetional.’ Ye’ll note I know my business.
+
+“There was some more talk, an’ next week I went aboard the _Kite_,
+twenty-five hunder ton, simple compound, a Black Bird tramp. The deeper
+she rode, the better she’d steam. I’ve snapped as much as eleven out of
+her, but eight point three was her fair normal. Good food forward an’
+better aft, all indents passed wi’out marginal remarks, the best coal,
+new donkeys, and good crews. There was nothin’ the old man would not
+do, except paint. That was his deeficulty. Ye could no more draw paint
+than his last teeth from him. He’d come down to dock, an’ his boats a
+scandal all along the watter, an’ he’d whine an’ cry an’ say they
+looked all he could desire. Every owner has his _non plus ultra_, I’ve
+obsairved. Paint was McRimmon’s. But you could get round his engines
+without riskin’ your life, an’, for all his blindness, I’ve seen him
+reject five flawed intermediates, one after the other, on a nod from
+me; an’ his cattle-fittin’s were guaranteed for North Atlantic winter
+weather. Ye ken what _that_ means? McRimmon an’ the Black Bird Line,
+God bless him!
+
+“Oh, I forgot to say she would lie down an’ fill her forward deck
+green, an’ snore away into a twenty-knot gale forty-five to the minute,
+three an’ a half knots an hour, the engines runnin’ sweet an’ true as a
+bairn breathin’ in its sleep. Bell was skipper; an’ forbye there’s no
+love lost between crews an’ owners, we were fond o’ the auld Blind
+Deevil an’ his dog, an’ I’m thinkin’ he liked us. He was worth the
+windy side o’ twa million sterlin’, an’ no friend to his own blood-kin.
+Money’s an awfu’ thing—overmuch—for a lonely man.
+
+“I’d taken her out twice, there an’ back again, when word came o’ the
+_Breslau’s_ breakdown, just as I prophesied. Calder was her
+engineer—he’s not fit to run a tug down the Solent—and he fairly lifted
+the engines off the bed-plates, an’ they fell down in heaps, by what I
+heard. So she filled from the after stuffin’-box to the after bulkhead,
+an’ lay star-gazing, with seventy-nine squealin’ passengers in the
+saloon, till the _Camaralzaman_ o’ Ramsey & Gold’s Cartagena line gave
+her a tow to the tune o’ five thousand seven hunder an’ forty pound,
+wi’ costs in the Admiralty Court. She was helpless, ye’ll understand,
+an’ in no case to meet ony weather. Five thousand seven hunder an’
+forty pounds, _with_ costs, an’ exclusive o’ new engines! They’d ha’
+done better to ha’ kept me on the old timin’.
+
+“But, even so, the new Board were all for retrenchment. Young Steiner,
+the Jew, was at the bottom of it. They sacked men right an’ left, that
+would not eat the dirt the Board gave ’em. They cut down repairs; they
+fed crews wi’ leavin’s an’ scrapin’s; and, reversin’, McRimmon’s
+practice, they hid their defeeciencies wi’ paint an’ cheap gildin’.
+_Quem Deus vult perrdere prrius dementat_, ye remember.
+
+“In January we went to dry-dock, an’ in the next dock lay the
+_Grotkau_, their big freighter that was the _Dolabella_ o’ Piegan,
+Piegan & Walsh’s line in ’84—a Clyde-built iron boat, a flat-bottomed,
+pigeon-breasted, under-engined, bull-nosed bitch of a five thousand ton
+freighter, that would neither steer, nor steam, nor stop when ye asked
+her. Whiles she’d attend to her helm, whiles she’d take charge, whiles
+she’d wait to scratch herself, an’ whiles she’d buttock into a
+dockhead. But Holdock and Steiner had bought her cheap, and painted her
+all over like the Hoor o’ Babylon, an’ we called her the _Hoor_ for
+short.” (By the way, McPhee kept to that name throughout the rest of
+his tale; so you must read accordingly.) “I went to see young
+Bannister—he had to take what the Board gave him, an’ he an’ Calder
+were shifted together from the _Breslau_ to this abortion—an’ talkin’
+to him I went into the dock under her. Her plates were pitted till the
+men that were paint, paint, paintin’ her laughed at it. But the warst
+was at the last. She’d a great clumsy iron twelve-foot Thresher
+propeller—Aitcheson designed the _Kite’s_’—and just on the tail o’ the
+shaft, behind the boss, was a red weepin’ crack ye could ha’ put a
+penknife to. Man, it was an awful crack!
+
+“‘When d’ ye ship a new tail-shaft?’ I said to Bannister.
+
+“He knew what I meant. ‘Oh, yon’s a superfeecial flaw,’ says he, not
+lookin’ at me.
+
+“‘Superfeecial Gehenna!’ I said. ‘Ye’ll not take her oot wi’ a solution
+o’ continuity that like.’
+
+“‘They’ll putty it up this evening,’ he said. ‘I’m a married man,
+an’—ye used to know the Board.’
+
+“I e’en said what was gie’d me in that hour. Ye know how a drydock
+echoes. I saw young Steiner standin’ listenin’ above me, an’, man, he
+used language provocative of a breach o’ the peace. I was a spy and a
+disgraced employé, an’ a corrupter o’ young Bannister’s morals, an’
+he’d prosecute me for libel. He went away when I ran up the steps—I’d
+ha’ thrown him into the dock if I’d caught him—an’ there I met
+McRimmon, wi’ Dandie pullin’ on the chain, guidin’ the auld man among
+the railway lines.
+
+“‘McPhee,’ said he, ‘ye’re no paid to fight Holdock, Steiner, Chase &
+Company, Limited, when ye meet. What’s wrong between you?’
+
+“‘No more than a tail-shaft rotten as a kail-stump. For ony sakes go
+an’ look, McRimmon. It’s a comedietta.’
+
+“‘I’m feared o’ yon conversational Hebrew,’ said he. ‘Whaur’s the flaw,
+an’ what like?’
+
+“‘A seven-inch crack just behind the boss. There’s no power on earth
+will fend it just jarrin’ off.’
+
+“‘When?’
+
+“‘That’s beyon’ my knowledge,’ I said.
+
+“‘So it is; so it is,’ said McRimmon. ‘We’ve all oor leemitations.
+Ye’re certain it was a crack?’
+
+“‘Man, it’s a crevasse,’ I said, for there were no words to describe
+the magnitude of it. ‘An’ young Bannister’s sayin’ it’s no more than a
+superfeecial flaw!’
+
+“‘Weell, I tak’ it oor business is to mind oor business. If ye’ve ony
+friends aboard her, McPhee, why not bid them to a bit dinner at
+Radley’s?’
+
+“‘I was thinkin’ o’ tea in the cuddy,’ I said. ‘Engineers o’ tramp
+freighters cannot afford hotel prices.’
+
+“‘Na! na!’ says the auld man, whimperin’. ‘Not the cuddy. They’ll laugh
+at my _Kite_, for she’s no plastered with paint like the _Hoor_. Bid
+them to Radley’s, McPhee, an’ send me the bill. Thank Dandie, here,
+man. I’m no used to thanks.’ Then he turned him round. (I was just
+thinkin’ the vara same thing.)
+
+‘Mister McPhee,’ said he, ‘this is _not_ senile dementia.’
+
+“‘Preserve ’s!’ I said, clean jumped oot o’ mysel’. ‘I was but thinkin’
+you’re fey, McRimmon.’
+
+“Dod, the auld deevil laughed till he nigh sat down on Dandie. ‘Send me
+the bill,’ says he. ‘I’m long past champagne, but tell me how it tastes
+the morn.’
+
+“Bell and I bid young Bannister and Calder to dinner at Radley’s.
+They’ll have no laughin’ an’ singin’ there, but we took a private
+room—like yacht-owners fra’ Cowes.”
+
+McPhee grinned all over, and lay back to think.
+
+“And then?” said I.
+
+“We were no drunk in ony preceese sense o’ the word, but Radley’s
+showed me the dead men. There were six magnums o’ dry champagne an’
+maybe a bottle o’ whisky.”
+
+“Do you mean to tell me that you four got away with a magnum and a half
+a piece, besides whisky?” I demanded.
+
+McPhee looked down upon me from between his shoulders with toleration.
+
+“Man, we were not settin’ down to drink,” he said. “They no more than
+made us wutty. To be sure, young Bannister laid his head on the table
+an’ greeted like a bairn, an’ Calder was all for callin’ on Steiner at
+two in the morn an’ painting him galley-green; but they’d been drinkin’
+the afternoon. Lord, how they twa cursed the Board, an’ the _Grotkau_,
+an’ the tail-shaft, an’ the engines, an’ a’! They didna talk o’
+superfeecial flaws that night. I mind young Bannister an’ Calder
+shakin’ hands on a bond to be revenged on the Board at ony reasonable
+cost this side o’ losing their certificates. Now mark ye how false
+economy ruins business. The Board fed them like swine (I have good
+reason to know it), an’ I’ve obsairved wi’ my ain people that if ye
+touch his stomach ye wauken the deil in a Scot. Men will tak’ a dredger
+across the Atlantic if they’re well fed, an’ fetch her somewhere on the
+broadside o’ the Americas; but bad food’s bad service the warld over.
+
+“The bill went to McRimmon, an’ he said no more to me till the
+week-end, when I was at him for more paint, for we’d heard the _Kite_
+was chartered Liverpool-side.
+
+‘Bide whaur ye’re put,’ said the Blind Deevil. ‘Man, do ye wash in
+champagne? The _Kite’s_ no leavin’ here till I gie the order, an’—how
+am I to waste paint on her, wi’ the _Lammergeyer_ docked for who knows
+how long an’ a’?’
+
+“She was our big freighter—McIntyre was engineer—an’ I knew she’d come
+from overhaul not three months. That morn I met McRimmon’s
+head-clerk—ye’ll not know him—fair bitin’ his nails off wi’
+mortification.
+
+“‘The auld man’s gone gyte,’ says he. ‘He’s withdrawn the
+_Lammergeyer_.’
+
+“‘Maybe he has reasons,’ says I.
+
+“‘Reasons! He’s daft!’
+
+“‘He’ll no be daft till he begins to paint,’ I said.
+
+“‘That’s just what he’s done—and South American freights higher than
+we’ll live to see them again. He’s laid her up to paint her—to paint
+her—to paint her!’ says the little clerk, dancin’ like a hen on a hot
+plate. ‘Five thousand ton o’ potential freight rottin’ in drydock, man;
+an’ he dolin’ the paint out in quarter-pound tins, for it cuts him to
+the heart, mad though he is. An’ the _Grotkau_—the _Grotkau_ of all
+conceivable bottoms—soaking up every pound that should be ours at
+Liverpool!’
+
+“I was staggered wi’ this folly—considerin’ the dinner at Radley’s in
+connection wi’ the same.
+
+“‘Ye may well stare, McPhee,’ says the head-clerk. ‘There’s engines,
+an’ rollin’ stock, an’ iron bridges—d’ye know what freights are noo?
+an’ pianos, an’ millinery, an’ fancy Brazil cargo o’ every species
+pourin’ into the _Grotkau_—the _Grotkau_ o’ the Jerusalem firm—and the
+_Lammergeyer_’s bein’ painted!’
+
+“Losh, I thought he’d drop dead wi’ the fits.
+
+“I could say no more than ‘Obey orders, if ye break owners,’ but on the
+_Kite_ we believed McRimmon was mad; an’ McIntyre of the _Lammergeyer_
+was for lockin’ him up by some patent legal process he’d found in a
+book o’ maritime law. An’ a’ that week South American freights rose an’
+rose. It was sinfu’!
+
+“Syne Bell got orders to tak’ the _Kite_ round to Liverpool in
+water-ballast, and McRimmon came to bid’s good-bye, yammerin’ an’
+whinin’ o’er the acres o’ paint he’d lavished on the _Lammergeyer_.
+
+“‘I look to you to retrieve it,’ says he. ‘I look to you to reimburse
+me! ’Fore God, why are ye not cast off? Are ye dawdlin’ in dock for a
+purpose?’
+
+“‘What odds, McRimmon?’ says Bell. ‘We’ll be a day behind the fair at
+Liverpool. The _Grotkau_’s got all the freight that might ha’ been ours
+an’ the _Lammergeyer_’s.’ McRimmon laughed an’ chuckled—the pairfect
+eemage o’ senile dementia. Ye ken his eyebrows wark up an’ down like a
+gorilla’s.
+
+“‘Ye’re under sealed orders,’ said he, tee-heein’ an’ scratchin’
+himself. ‘Yon’s they’—to be opened _seriatim_.
+
+“Says Bell, shufflin’ the envelopes when the auld man had gone ashore:
+‘We’re to creep round a’ the south coast, standin’ in for orders—this
+weather, too. There’s no question o’ his lunacy now.’
+
+“Well, we buttocked the auld _Kite_ along—vara bad weather we
+made—standin’ in all alongside for telegraphic orders, which are the
+curse o’ skippers. Syne we made over to Holyhead, an’ Bell opened the
+last envelope for the last instructions. I was wi’ him in the cuddy,
+an’ he threw it over to me, cryin’: ‘Did ye ever know the like, Mac?’
+
+“I’ll no say what McRimmon had written, but he was far from mad. There
+was a sou’wester brewin’ when we made the mouth o’ the Mersey, a bitter
+cold morn wi’ a grey-green sea and a grey-green sky—Liverpool weather,
+as they say; an’ there we lay choppin’, an’ the crew swore. Ye canna
+keep secrets aboard ship. They thought McRimmon was mad, too.
+
+“Syne we saw the _Grotkau_ rollin’ oot on the top o’ flood, deep an’
+double deep, wi’ her new-painted funnel an’ her new-painted boats an’
+a’. She looked her name, an’, moreover, she coughed like it. Calder
+tauld me at Radley’s what ailed his engines, but my own ear would ha’
+told me twa mile awa’, by the beat o’ them. Round we came, plungin’ an’
+squatterin’ in her wake, an’ the wind cut wi’ good promise o’ more to
+come. By six it blew hard but clear, an’ before the middle watch it was
+a sou’wester in airnest.
+
+“‘She’ll edge into Ireland, this gait,’ says Bell. I was with him on
+the bridge, watchin’ the _Grotkau’s_ port light. Ye canna see green so
+far as red, or we’d ha’ kept to leeward. We’d no passengers to
+consider, an’ (all eyes being on the _Grotkau_) we fair walked into a
+liner rampin’ home to Liverpool. Or, to be preceese, Bell no more than
+twisted the _Kite_ oot from under her bows, and there was a little
+damnin’ betwix’ the twa bridges. “Noo a passenger”—McPhee regarded me
+benignantly—“wad ha’ told the papers that as soon as he got to the
+Customs. We stuck to the _Grotkau’s_ tail that night an’ the next twa
+days—she slowed down to five knot by my reckonin’ and we lapped along
+the weary way to the Fastnet.”
+
+“But you don’t go by the Fastnet to get to any South American port, do
+you?” I said.
+
+“_We_ do not. We prefer to go as direct as may be. But we were
+followin’ the _Grotkau_, an’ she’d no walk into that gale for ony
+consideration. Knowin’ what I did to her discredit, I couldna blame
+young Bannister. It was warkin’ up to a North Atlantic winter gale,
+snow an’ sleet an’ a perishin’ wind. Eh, it was like the Deil walkin’
+abroad o’ the surface o’ the deep, whuppin’ off the top o’ the waves
+before he made up his mind. They’d bore up against it so far, but the
+minute she was clear o’ the Skelligs she fair tucked up her skirts an’
+ran for it by Dunmore Head. Wow, she rolled!
+
+“‘She’ll be makin’ Smerwick,’ says Bell.
+
+“‘She’d ha’ tried for Ventry by noo if she meant that,’ I said.
+
+“‘They’ll roll the funnel oot o’ her, this gait,’ says Bell. ‘Why canna
+Bannister keep her head to sea?’
+
+“It’s the tail-shaft. Ony rollin’s better than pitchin’ wi’
+superfeecial cracks in the tail-shaft. Calder knows that much,’ I said.
+
+“‘It’s ill wark retreevin’ steamers this weather,’ said Bell. His beard
+and whiskers were frozen to his oilskin, an’ the spray was white on the
+weather side of him. Pairfect North Atlantic winter weather!
+
+“One by one the sea raxed away our three boats, an’ the davits were
+crumpled like ram’s horns.
+
+“‘Yon’s bad,’ said Bell, at the last. ‘Ye canna pass a hawser wi’oot a
+boat.’ Bell was a vara judeecious man—for an Aberdonian.
+
+“I’m not one that fashes himself for eventualities outside the
+engine-room, so I e’en slipped down betwixt waves to see how the _Kite_
+fared. Man, she’s the best geared boat of her class that ever left
+Clyde! Kinloch, my second, knew her as well as I did. I found him
+dryin’ his socks on the main-steam, an’ combin’ his whiskers wi’ the
+comb Janet gied me last year, for the warld an’ a’ as though we were in
+port. I tried the feed, speered into the stoke-hole, thumbed all
+bearin’s, spat on the thrust for luck, gied ’em my blessin’, an’ took
+Kinloch’s socks before I went up to the bridge again.
+
+“Then Bell handed me the wheel, an’ went below to warm himself. When he
+came up my gloves were frozen to the spokes an’ the ice clicked over my
+eyelids. Pairfect North Atlantic winter weather, as I was sayin’.
+
+“The gale blew out by night, but we lay in smotherin’ cross-seas that
+made the auld _Kite_ chatter from stem to stern. I slowed to
+thirty-four, I mind—no, thirty-seven. There was a long swell the morn,
+an’ the _Grotkau_ was headin’ into it west awa’.
+
+“‘She’ll win to Rio yet, tail-shaft or no tail-shaft,’ says Bell.
+
+“‘Last night shook her,’ I said. ‘She’ll jar it off yet, mark my word.’
+
+“We were then, maybe, a hunder and fifty mile westsou’west o’ Slyne
+Head, by dead reckonin’. Next day we made a hunder an’ thirty—ye’ll
+note we were not racin-boats—an’ the day after a hunder an’ sixty-one,
+an’ that made us, we’ll say, Eighteen an’ a bittock west, an’ maybe
+Fifty-one an’ a bittock north, crossin’ all the North Atlantic liner
+lanes on the long slant, always in sight o’ the _Grotkau_, creepin’ up
+by night and fallin’ awa’ by day. After the gale it was cold weather
+wi’ dark nights.
+
+“I was in the engine-room on Friday night, just before the middle
+watch, when Bell whustled down the tube: ‘She’s done it’; an’ up I
+came.
+
+“The _Grotkau_ was just a fair distance south, an’ one by one she ran
+up the three red lights in a vertical line—the sign of a steamer not
+under control.
+
+“‘Yon’s a tow for us,’ said Bell, lickin’ his chops. ‘She’ll be worth
+more than the _Breslau_. We’ll go down to her, McPhee!’
+
+“‘Bide a while,’ I said. ‘The seas fair throng wi’ ships here.’
+
+“‘Reason why,’ said Bell. ‘It’s a fortune gaun beggin’. What d’ ye
+think, man?’
+
+“‘Gie her till daylight. She knows we’re here. If Bannister needs help
+he’ll loose a rocket.’
+
+“‘Wha told ye Bannister’s need? We’ll ha’ some rag-an’-bone tramp
+snappin’ her up under oor nose,’ said he; an’ he put the wheel over. We
+were goin’ slow.
+
+“‘Bannister wad like better to go home on a liner an’ eat in the
+saloon. Mind ye what they said o’ Holdock & Steiner’s food that night
+at Radley’s? Keep her awa’, man—keep her awa’. A tow’s a tow, but a
+derelict’s big salvage.’
+
+“‘E-eh!’ said Bell. ‘Yon’s an inshot o’ yours, Mac. I love ye like a
+brother. We’ll bide whaur we are till daylight’; an’ he kept her awa’.
+
+“Syne up went a rocket forward, an’ twa on the bridge, an’ a blue light
+aft. Syne a tar-barrel forward again.
+
+“‘She’s sinkin’,’ said Bell. ‘It’s all gaun, an’ I’ll get no more than
+a pair o’ night-glasses for pickin’ up young Bannister—the fool!’
+
+“‘Fair an’ soft again,’ I said. ‘She’s signallin’ to the south of us.
+Bannister knows as well as I that one rocket would bring the _Kite_.
+He’ll no be wastin’ fireworks for nothin’. Hear her ca’!’
+
+“The _Grotkau_ whustled an’ whustled for five minutes, an’ then there
+were more fireworks—a regular exhibeetion.
+
+“‘That’s no for men in the regular trade,’ says Bell. ‘Ye’re right,
+Mac. That’s for a cuddy full o’ passengers.’ He blinked through the
+night-glasses when it lay a bit thick to southward.
+
+“‘What d’ ye make of it?’ I said.
+
+“‘Liner,’ he says. ‘Yon’s her rocket. Ou, ay; they’ve waukened the
+gold-strapped skipper, an’—noo they’ve waukened the passengers. They’re
+turnin’ on the electrics, cabin by cabin. Yon’s anither rocket! They’re
+comin’ up to help the perishin’ in deep watters.’
+
+“‘Gie me the glass,’ I said. But Bell danced on the bridge, clean
+dementit. ‘Mails-mails-mails!’ said he. ‘Under contract wi’ the
+Government for the due conveyance o’ the mails; an’ as such, Mac, ye’ll
+note, she may rescue life at sea, but she canna tow!—she canna tow!
+Yon’s her night-signal. She’ll be up in half an hour!’
+
+“‘Gowk!’ I said, ‘an’ we blazin’ here wi’ all oor lights. Oh, Bell,
+ye’re a fool!’
+
+“He tumbled off the bridge forward, an’ I tumbled aft, an’ before ye
+could wink our lights were oot, the engine-room hatch was covered, an’
+we lay pitch-dark, watchin’ the lights o’ the liner come up that the
+_Grotkau_’d been signallin’ to. Twenty knot an hour she came, every
+cabin lighted, an’ her boats swung awa’. It was grandly done, an’ in
+the inside of an hour. She stopped like Mrs. Holdock’s machine; down
+went the gangway, down went the boats, an’ in ten minutes we heard the
+passengers cheerin’, an’ awa’ she fled.
+
+“‘They’ll tell o’ this all the days they live,’ said Bell. ‘A rescue at
+sea by night, as pretty as a play. Young Bannister an’ Calder will be
+drinkin’ in the saloon, an’ six months hence the Board o’ Trade ’ll gie
+the skipper a pair o’ binoculars. It’s vara philanthropic all round.’
+
+“We’ll lay by till day—ye may think we waited for it wi’ sore eyes an’
+there sat the _Grotkau_, her nose a bit cocked, just leerin’ at us. She
+looked paifectly ridiculous.
+
+“‘She’ll be fillin’ aft,’ says Bell; ‘for why is she down by the stern?
+The tail-shaft’s punched a hole in her, an’—we ’ve no boats. There’s
+three hunder thousand pound sterlin’, at a conservative estimate,
+droonin’ before our eyes. What’s to do?’ An’ his bearin’s got hot again
+in a minute: he was an incontinent man.
+
+“‘Run her as near as ye daur,’ I said. ‘Gie me a jacket an’ a lifeline,
+an’ I’ll swum for it.’ There was a bit lump of a sea, an’ it was cold
+in the wind—vara cold; but they’d gone overside like passengers, young
+Bannister an’ Calder an’ a’, leaving the gangway down on the lee-side.
+It would ha’ been a flyin’ in the face o’ manifest Providence to
+overlook the invitation. We were within fifty yards o’ her while
+Kinloch was garmin’ me all over wi’ oil behind the galley; an’ as we
+ran past I went outboard for the salvage o’ three hunder thousand
+pound. Man, it was perishin’ cold, but I’d done my job judgmatically,
+an’ came scrapin’ all along her side slap on to the lower gratin’ o’
+the gangway. No one more astonished than me, I assure ye. Before I’d
+caught my breath I’d skinned both my knees on the gratin’, an’ was
+climbin’ up before she rolled again. I made my line fast to the rail,
+an’ squattered aft to young Bannister’s cabin, whaaur I dried me wi’
+everything in his bunk, an’ put on every conceivable sort o’ rig I
+found till the blood was circulatin’. Three pair drawers, I mind I
+found—to begin upon—an’ I needed them all. It was the coldest cold I
+remember in all my experience.
+
+“Syne I went aft to the engine-room. The _Grotkau_ sat on her own tail,
+as they say. She was vara shortshafted, an’ her gear was all aft. There
+was four or five foot o’ water in the engine-room slummockin’ to and
+fro, black an’ greasy; maybe there was six foot. The stoke-hold doors
+were screwed home, an’ the stoke-hold was tight enough, but for a
+minute the mess in the engine-room deceived me. Only for a minute,
+though, an’ that was because I was not, in a manner o’ speakin’, as
+calm as ordinar’. I looked again to mak’ sure. ’T was just black wi’
+bilge: dead watter that must ha’ come in fortuitously, ye ken.”
+
+“McPhee, I’m only a passenger,” I said, “but you don’t persuade me that
+six foot o’ water can come into an engine-room fortuitously.”
+
+“Who’s tryin’ to persuade one way or the other?” McPhee retorted. “I’m
+statin’ the facts o’ the case—the simple, natural facts. Six or seven
+foot o’ dead watter in the engine-room is a vara depressin’ sight if ye
+think there’s like to be more comin’; but I did not consider that such
+was likely, and so, yell note, I was not depressed.”
+
+“That’s all very well, but I want to know about the water,” I said.
+
+“I’ve told ye. There was six feet or more there, wi’ Calder’s cap
+floatin’ on top.”
+
+“Where did it come from?”
+
+“Weel, in the confusion o’ things after the propeller had dropped off
+an’ the engines were racin’ an’ a’, it’s vara possible that Calder
+might ha’ lost it off his head an’ no troubled himself to pick it up
+again. I remember seem’ that cap on him at Southampton.”
+
+“I don’t want to know about the cap. I’m asking where the water came
+from and what it was doing there, and why you were so certain that it
+wasn’t a leak, McPhee?”
+
+“For good reason—for good an’ sufficient reason.”
+
+“Give it to me, then.”
+
+“Weel, it’s a reason that does not properly concern myself only. To be
+preceese, I’m of opinion that it was due, the watter, in part to an
+error o’ judgment in another man. We can a’ mak’ mistakes.”
+
+“Oh, I beg your pardon?”
+
+“I got me to the rail again, an’, ‘What’s wrang?’ said Bell, hailin’.
+
+“‘She’ll do,’ I said. ‘Send’s o’er a hawser, an’ a man to steer. I’ll
+pull him in by the life-line.’
+
+“I could see heads bobbin’ back an’ forth, an’ a whuff or two o’ strong
+words. Then Bell said: ‘They’ll not trust themselves—one of ’em—in this
+watter—except Kinloch, an’ I’ll no spare him.’
+
+“‘The more salvage to me, then,’ I said. ‘I’ll make shift _solo_.’
+
+“Says one dock-rat, at this: ‘D’ ye think she’s safe?’
+
+“‘I’ll guarantee ye nothing,’ I said, ‘except maybe a hammerin’ for
+keepin’ me this long.’
+
+“Then he sings out: ‘There’s no more than one lifebelt, an’ they canna
+find it, or I’d come.’
+
+“‘Throw him over, the Jezebel,’ I said, for I was oot o’ patience; an’
+they took haud o’ that volunteer before he knew what was in store, and
+hove him over, in the bight of my life-line. So I e’en hauled him upon
+the sag of it, hand over fist—a vara welcome recruit when I’d tilted
+the salt watter oot of him: for, by the way, he could na swim.
+
+“Syne they bent a twa-inch rope to the life-line, an’ a hawser to that,
+an’ I led the rope o’er the drum of a hand-winch forward, an’ we
+sweated the hawser inboard an’ made it fast to the _Grotkau’s_ bitts.
+
+“Bell brought the _Kite_ so close I feared she’d roll in an’ do the
+_Grotkau’s_ plates a mischief. He hove anither life-line to me, an’
+went astern, an’ we had all the weary winch work to do again wi’ a
+second hawser. For all that, Bell was right: we’d along tow before us,
+an’ though Providence had helped us that far, there was no sense in
+leavin’ too much to its keepin’. When the second hawser was fast, I was
+wet wi’ sweat, an’ I cried Bell to tak’ up his slack an’ go home. The
+other man was by way o’ helpin’ the work wi’ askin’ for drinks, but I
+e’en told him he must hand reef an’ steer, beginnin’ with steerin’, for
+I was goin’ to turn in. He steered—oh, ay, he steered, in a manner o’
+speakin’. At the least, he grippit the spokes an’ twiddled ’em an’
+looked wise, but I doubt if the _Hoor_ ever felt it. I turned in there
+an’ then, to young Bannister’s bunk, an’ slept past expression. I
+waukened ragin’ wi’ hunger, a fair lump o’ sea runnin’, the _Kite_
+snorin’ awa’ four knots an hour; an’ the _Grotkau_ slappin’ her nose
+under, an’ yawin’ an’ standin’ over at discretion. She was a most
+disgracefu’ tow. But the shameful thing of all was the food. I raxed me
+a meal fra galley-shelves an’ pantries an’ lazareetes an’ cubby-holes
+that I would not ha’ gied to the mate of a Cardiff collier; an’ ye ken
+we say a Cardiff mate will eat clinkers to save waste. I’m sayin’ it
+was simply vile! The crew had written what _they_ thought of it on the
+new paint o’ the fo’c’sle, but I had not a decent soul wi’ me to
+complain on. There was nothin’ for me to do save watch the hawsers an’
+the _Kite’s_ tail squatterin’ down in white watter when she lifted to a
+sea; so I got steam on the after donkey-pump, an’ pumped oot the
+engine-room. There’s no sense in leavin’ waiter loose in a ship. When
+she was dry, I went doun the shaft-tunnel, an’ found she was leakin’ a
+little through the stuffin’box, but nothin’ to make wark. The propeller
+had e’en jarred off, as I knew it must, an’ Calder had been waitin’ for
+it to go wi’ his hand on the gear. He told me as much when I met him
+ashore. There was nothin’ started or strained. It had just slipped awa’
+to the bed o’ the Atlantic as easy as a man dyin’ wi’ due warning—a
+most providential business for all concerned. Syne I took stock o’ the
+_Grotkau’s_ upper works. Her boats had been smashed on the davits, an’
+here an’ there was the rail missin’, an’ a ventilator or two had
+fetched awa’, an’ the bridge-rails were bent by the seas; but her
+hatches were tight, and she’d taken no sort of harm. Dod, I came to
+hate her like a human bein’, for I was eight weary days aboard,
+starvin’—ay, starvin’—within a cable’s length o’ plenty. All day I laid
+in the bunk reading the _Woman-Hater_, the grandest book Charlie Reade
+ever wrote, an’ pickin’ a toothful here an’ there. It was weary, weary
+work. Eight days, man, I was aboard the _Grotkau_, an’ not one full
+meal did I make. Sma’ blame her crew would not stay by her. The other
+man? Oh I warked him wi’ a vengeance to keep him warm.
+
+“It came on to blow when we fetched soundin’s, an’ that kept me
+standin’ by the hawsers, lashed to the capstan, breathin’ twixt green
+seas. I near died o’ cauld an’ hunger, for the _Grotkau_ towed like a
+barge, an’ Bell howkit her along through or over. It was vara thick
+up-Channel, too. We were standin’ in to make some sort o’ light, an’ we
+near walked over twa three fishin’-boats, an’ they cried us we were
+overclose to Falmouth. Then we were near cut down by a drunken foreign
+fruiter that was blunderin’ between us an’ the shore, and it got
+thicker an’ thicker that night, an’ I could feel by the tow Bell did
+not know whaur he was. Losh, we knew in the morn, for the wind blew the
+fog oot like a candle, an’ the sun came clear; and as surely as
+McRimmon gied me my cheque, the shadow o’ the Eddystone lay across our
+tow-rope! We were that near—ay, we were that near! Bell fetched the
+_Kite_ round with the jerk that came close to tearin’ the bitts out o’
+the _Grotkau;_ an’ I mind I thanked my Maker in young Bannister’s cabin
+when we were inside Plymouth breakwater.
+
+“The first to come aboard was McRimmon, wi’ Dandie. Did I tell you our
+orders were to take anything we found into Plymouth? The auld deil had
+just come down overnight, puttin’ two an’ two together from what Calder
+had told him when the liner landed the _Grotkau’s_ men. He had
+preceesely hit oor time. I’d hailed Bell for something to eat, an’ he
+sent it o’er in the same boat wi’ McRimmon, when the auld man came to
+me. He grinned an’ slapped his legs and worked his eyebrows the while I
+ate.
+
+“‘How do Holdock, Steiner & Chase feed their men?’ said he.
+
+“‘Ye can see,’ I said, knockin’ the top off another beer-bottle. ‘I did
+not sign to be starved, McRimmon.’
+
+“‘Nor to swim, either,’ said he, for Bell had tauld him how I carried
+the line aboard. ‘Well, I’m thinkin’ you’ll be no loser. What freight
+could we ha’ put into the _Lammergeyer_ would equal salvage on four
+hunder thousand pounds—hull an’ cargo? Eh, McPhee? This cuts the liver
+out o’ Holdock, Steiner, Chase & Company, Limited. Eh, McPhee? An’ I’m
+sufferin’ from senile dementia now? Eh, McPhee? An’ I’m not daft, am I,
+till I begin to paint the _Lammergeyer?_ Eh, McPhee? Ye may weel lift
+your leg, Dandie! I ha’ the laugh o’ them all. Ye found watter in the
+engine-room?’
+
+“‘To speak wi’oot prejudice,’ I said, ‘there was some watter.’
+
+“‘They thought she was sinkin’ after the propeller went. She filled wi’
+extraordinary rapeedity. Calder said it grieved him an’ Bannister to
+abandon her.’
+
+“I thought o’ the dinner at Radley’s, an’ what like o’ food I’d eaten
+for eight days.
+
+“‘It would grieve them sore,’ I said.
+
+“‘But the crew would not hear o’ stayin’ and workin’ her back under
+canvas. They’re gaun up an’ down sayin’ they’d ha’ starved first.’
+
+“‘They’d ha’ starved if they’d stayed,’ said I.
+
+“‘I tak’ it, fra Calder’s account, there was a mutiny a’most.’
+
+“‘Ye know more than I, McRimmon,’ I said. ‘Speakin’ wi’oot prejudice,
+for we’re all in the same boat, _who_ opened the bilgecock?’
+
+“‘Oh, that’s it—is it?’ said the auld man, an’ I could see he was
+surprised. ‘A bilge-cock, ye say?’
+
+“‘I believe it was a bilge-cock. They were all shut when I came aboard,
+but some one had flooded the engine-room eight feet over all, and shut
+it off with the worm-an’-wheel gear from the second gratin’
+afterwards.’
+
+“‘Losh!’ said McRimmon. ‘The ineequity o’ man’s beyond belief. But it’s
+awfu’ discreditable to Holdock, Steiner & Chase, if that came oot in
+court.’
+
+“‘It’s just my own curiosity,’ I said.
+
+“‘Aweel, Dandie’s afflicted wi’ the same disease. Dandie, strive
+against curiosity, for it brings a little dog into traps an’ suchlike.
+Whaur was the _Kite_ when yon painted liner took off the _Grotkau’s_
+people?’
+
+“‘Just there or thereabouts,’ I said.
+
+“‘An’ which o’ you twa thought to cover your lights?’ said he, winkin’.
+
+“‘Dandle,’ I said to the dog, ‘we must both strive against curiosity.
+It’s an unremunerative business. What’s our chance o’ salvage, Dandie?’
+
+“He laughed till he choked. ‘Tak’ what I gie you, McPhee, an’ be
+content,’ he said. ‘Lord, how a man wastes time when he gets old. Get
+aboard the Kite, mon, as soon as ye can. I’ve clean forgot there’s a
+Baltic charter yammerin’ for you at London. That’ll be your last
+voyage, I’m thinkin’, excep’ by way o’ pleasure.’
+
+“Steiner’s men were comin’ aboard to take charge an’ tow her round, an’
+I passed young Steiner in a boat as I went to the _Kite_. He looked
+down his nose; but McRimmon pipes up: ‘Here’s the man ye owe the
+_Grotkau_ to—at a price, Steiner—at a price! Let me introduce Mr.
+McPhee to you. Maybe ye’ve met before; but ye’ve vara little luck in
+keepin’ your men—ashore or afloat!’
+
+“Young Steiner looked angry enough to eat him as he chuckled an’
+whustled in his dry old throat.
+
+“‘Ye’ve not got your award yet,’ Steiner says.
+
+“‘Na, na,’ says the auld man, in a screech ye could hear to the Hoe,
+‘but I’ve twa million sterlin’, an’ no bairns, ye Judeeas Apella, if ye
+mean to fight; an’ I’ll match ye p’und for p’und till the last p’und’s
+oot. Ye ken _me_, Steiner! I’m McRimmon o’ McNaughten & McRimmon!’
+
+“‘Dod,’ he said betwix’ his teeth, sittin’ back in the boat, ‘I’ve
+waited fourteen year to break that Jewfirm, an’ God be thankit I’ll do
+it now.’
+
+“The _Kite_ was in the Baltic while the auld man was warkin’ his warks,
+but I know the assessors valued the _Grotkau_, all told, at over three
+hunder and sixty thousand—her manifest was a treat o’ richness—an’
+McRimmon got a third for salvin’ an abandoned ship. Ye see, there’s
+vast deeference between towin’ a ship wi’ men on her an’ pickin’ up a
+derelict—a vast deeference—in pounds sterlin’. Moreover, twa three o’
+the _Grotkau’s_ crew were burnin’ to testify about food, an’ there was
+a note o’ Calder to the Board, in regard to the tail-shaft, that would
+ha’ been vara damagin’ if it had come into court. They knew better than
+to fight.
+
+“Syne the _Kite_ came back, an’ McRimmon paid off me an’ Bell
+personally, an’ the rest of the crew _pro rata_, I believe it’s ca’ed.
+My share—oor share, I should say—was just twenty-five thousand pound
+sterlin’.”
+
+At this point Janet jumped up and kissed him.
+
+“Five-and-twenty thousand pound sterlin’. Noo, I’m fra the North, and
+I’m not the like to fling money awa’ rashly, but I’d gie six months’
+pay—one hunder an’ twenty pounds—to know _who_ flooded the engine-room
+of the _Grotkau_. I’m fairly well acquaint wi’ McRimmon’s
+eediosyncrasies, and _he_’d no hand in it. It was not Calder, for I’ve
+asked him, an’ he wanted to fight me. It would be in the highest degree
+unprofessional o’ Calder—not fightin’, but openin’ bilge-cocks—but for
+a while I thought it was him. Ay, I judged it might be him—under
+temptation.”
+
+“What’s your theory?” I demanded.
+
+“Weel, I’m inclined to think it was one o’ those singular providences
+that remind us we’re in the hands o’ Higher Powers.”
+
+“It couldn’t open and shut itself?”
+
+“I did not mean that; but some half-starvin’ oiler or, maybe, trimmer
+must ha’ opened it awhile to mak’ sure o’ leavin’ the _Grotkau_. It’s a
+demoralisin’ thing to see an engine-room flood up after any accident to
+the gear—demoralisin’ and deceptive both. Aweel, the man got what he
+wanted, for they went aboard the liner cryin’ that the _Grotkau_ was
+sinkin’. But it’s curious to think o’ the consequences. In a’ human
+probability, he’s bein’ damned in heaps at the present moment aboard
+another tramp freighter; an’ here am I, wi’ five-an’-twenty thousand
+pound invested, resolute to go to sea no more—providential’s the
+preceese word—except as a passenger, ye’ll understand, Janet.”
+
+McPhee kept his word. He and Janet went for a voyage as passengers in
+the first-class saloon. They paid seventy pounds for their berths; and
+Janet found a very sick woman in the second-class saloon, so that for
+sixteen days she lived below, and chatted with the stewardesses at the
+foot of the second-saloon stairs while her patient slept. McPhee was a
+passenger for exactly twenty-four hours. Then the engineers’ mess—where
+the oilcloth tables are—joyfully took him to its bosom, and for the
+rest of the voyage that company was richer by the unpaid services of a
+highly certificated engineer.
+
+
+
+
+AN ERROR IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION
+
+
+Before he was thirty, he discovered that there was no one to play with
+him. Though the wealth of three toilsome generations stood to his
+account, though his tastes in the matter of books, bindings, rugs,
+swords, bronzes, lacquer, pictures, plate, statuary, horses,
+conservatories, and agriculture were educated and catholic, the public
+opinion of his country wanted to know why he did not go to office
+daily, as his father had before him.
+
+So he fled, and they howled behind him that he was an unpatriotic
+Anglomaniac, born to consume fruits, one totally lacking in public
+spirit. He wore an eyeglass; he had built a wall round his country
+house, with a high gate that shut, instead of inviting America to sit
+on his flower-beds; he ordered his clothes from England; and the press
+of his abiding city cursed him, from his eye-glass to his trousers, for
+two consecutive days.
+
+When he rose to light again, it was where nothing less than the tents
+of an invading army in Piccadilly would make any difference to anybody.
+If he had money and leisure, England stood ready to give him all that
+money and leisure could buy. That price paid, she would ask no
+questions. He took his cheque-book and accumulated things—warily at
+first, for he remembered that in America things own the man. To his
+delight, he discovered that in England he could put his belongings
+under his feet; for classes, ranks, and denominations of people rose,
+as it were, from the earth, and silently and discreetly took charge of
+his possessions. They had been born and bred for that sole
+purpose—servants of the cheque-book. When that was at an end they would
+depart as mysteriously as they had come.
+
+The impenetrability of this regulated life irritated him, and he strove
+to learn something of the human side of these people. He retired
+baffled, to be trained by his menials. In America, the native
+demoralises the English servant. In England, the servant educates the
+master. Wilton Sargent strove to learn all they taught as ardently as
+his father had striven to wreck, before capture, the railways of his
+native land; and it must have been some touch of the old bandit railway
+blood that bade him buy, for a song, Holt Hangars, whose forty-acre
+lawn, as every one knows, sweeps down in velvet to the quadruple tracks
+of the Great Buchonian Railway. Their trains flew by almost
+continuously, with a bee-like drone in the day and a flutter of strong
+wings at night. The son of Merton Sargent had good right to be
+interested in them. He owned controlling interests in several thousand
+miles of track,—not permanent way,—built on altogether different plans,
+where locomotives eternally whistled for grade-crossings, and
+parlor-cars of fabulous expense and unrestful design skated round
+curves that the Great Buchonian would have condemned as unsafe in a
+construction-line. From the edge of his lawn he could trace the chaired
+metals falling away, rigid as a bowstring, into the valley of the
+Prest, studded with the long perspective of the block signals,
+buttressed with stone, and carried, high above all possible risk, on a
+forty-foot embankment.
+
+Left to himself, he would have builded a private car, and kept it at
+the nearest railway-station, Amberley Royal, five miles away. But those
+into whose hands he had committed himself for his English training had
+little knowledge of railways and less of private cars. The one they
+knew was something that existed in the scheme of things for their
+convenience. The other they held to be “distinctly American”; and, with
+the versatility of his race, Wilton Sargent had set out to be just a
+little more English than the English.
+
+He succeeded to admiration. He learned not to redecorate Holt Hangars,
+though he warmed it; to leave his guests alone; to refrain from
+superfluous introductions; to abandon manners of which he had great
+store, and to hold fast by manner which can after labour be acquired.
+He learned to let other people, hired for the purpose, attend to the
+duties for which they were paid. He learned—this he got from a ditcher
+on the estate—that every man with whom he came in contact had his
+decreed position in the fabric of the realm, which position he would do
+well to consult. Last mystery of all, he learned to golf—well: and when
+an American knows the innermost meaning of “Don’t press, slow back, and
+keep your eye on the ball,” he is, for practical purposes,
+denationalised.
+
+His other education proceeded on the pleasantest lines. Was he
+interested in any conceivable thing in heaven above, or the earth
+beneath, or the waters under the earth? Forthwith appeared at his
+table, guided by those safe hands into which he had fallen, the very
+men who had best said, done, written, explored, excavated, built,
+launched, created, or studied that one thing—herders of books and
+prints in the British Museum; specialists in scarabs, cartouches, and
+dynasties Egyptian; rovers and raiders from the heart of unknown lands;
+toxicologists; orchid-hunters; monographers on flint implements,
+carpets, prehistoric man, or early Renaissance music. They came, and
+they played with him. They asked no questions; they cared not so much
+as a pin who or what he was. They demanded only that he should be able
+to talk and listen courteously. Their work was done elsewhere and out
+of his sight.
+
+There were also women.
+
+“Never,” said Wilton Sargent to himself, “has an American seen England
+as I’m seeing it”; and he thought, blushing beneath the bedclothes, of
+the unregenerate and blatant days when he would steam to office, down
+the Hudson, in his twelve-hundred-ton ocean-going steam-yacht, and
+arrive, by gradations, at Bleecker Street, hanging on to a leather
+strap between an Irish washerwoman and a German anarchist. If any of
+his guests had seen him then they would have said: “How distinctly
+American!” and—Wilton did not care for that tone. He had schooled
+himself to an English walk, and, so long as he did not raise it, an
+English voice. He did not gesticulate with his hands; he sat down on
+most of his enthusiasms, but he could not rid himself of The
+Shibboleth. He would ask for the Worcestershire sauce: even Howard, his
+immaculate butler, could not break him of this.
+
+It was decreed that he should complete his education in a wild and
+wonderful manner, and, further, that I should be in at that death.
+
+Wilton had more than once asked me to Holt Hangars, for the purpose of
+showing how well the new life fitted him, and each time I had declared
+it creaseless. His third invitation was more informal than the others,
+and he hinted of some matter in which he was anxious for my sympathy or
+counsel, or both. There is room for an infinity of mistakes when a man
+begins to take liberties with his nationality; and I went down
+expecting things. A seven-foot dog-cart and a groom in the black Holt
+Hangars livery met me at Amberley Royal. At Holt Hangars I was received
+by a person of elegance and true reserve, and piloted to my luxurious
+chamber. There were no other guests in the house, and this set me
+thinking.
+
+Wilton came into my room about half an hour before dinner, and though
+his face was masked with a drop-curtain of highly embroidered
+indifference, I could see that he was not at ease. In time, for he was
+then almost as difficult to move as one of my own countrymen, I
+extracted the tale—simple in its extravagance, extravagant in its
+simplicity. It seemed that Hackman of the British Museum had been
+staying with him about ten days before, boasting of scarabs. Hackman
+has a way of carrying really priceless antiquities on his tie-ring and
+in his trouser pockets. Apparently, he had intercepted something on its
+way to the Boulak Museum which, he said, was “a genuine Amen-Hotepa
+queen’s scarab of the Fourth Dynasty.” Now Wilton had bought from
+Cassavetti, whose reputation is not above suspicion, a scarab of much
+the same scarabeousness, and had left it in his London chambers.
+Hackman at a venture, but knowing Cassavetti, pronounced it an
+imposition. There was long discussion—savant _versus_ millionaire, one
+saying: “But I know it cannot be”; and the other: “But I can and will
+prove it.” Wilton found it necessary for his soul’s satisfaction to go
+up to town, then and there,—a forty-mile run,—and bring back the scarab
+before dinner. It was at this point that he began to cut corners with
+disastrous results. Amberley Royal station being five miles away, and
+putting in of horses a matter of time, Wilton had told Howard, the
+immaculate butler, to signal the next train to stop; and Howard, who
+was more of a man of resource than his master gave him credit for, had,
+with the red flag of the ninth hole of the links which crossed the
+bottom of the lawn, signalled vehemently to the first down-train; and
+it had stopped. Here Wilton’s account became confused. He attempted, it
+seems, to get into that highly indignant express, but a guard
+restrained him with more or less force—hauled him, in fact, backyards
+from the window of a locked carriage. Wilton must have struck the
+gravel with some vehemence, for the consequences, he admitted, were a
+free fight on the line in which he lost his hat, and was at last
+dragged into the guard’s van and set down breathless.
+
+He had pressed money upon the man, and very foolishly had explained
+everything but his name. This he clung to, for he had a vision of tall
+head-lines in the New York papers, and well knew no son of Merton
+Sargent could expect mercy that side the water. The guard, to Wilton’s
+amazement, refused the money on the grounds that this was a matter for
+the Company to attend to. Wilton insisted on his incognito, and,
+therefore, found two policemen waiting for him at St. Botolph terminus.
+When he expressed a wish to buy a new hat and telegraph to his friends,
+both policemen with one voice warned him that whatever he said would be
+used as evidence against him; and this had impressed Wilton
+tremendously.
+
+“They were so infernally polite,” he said. “If they had clubbed me I
+wouldn’t have cared; but it was, ‘Step this way, sir,’ and, ‘Up those
+stairs, please, sir,’ till they jailed me—jailed me like a common
+drunk, and I had to stay in a filthy little cubby-hole of a cell all
+night.”
+
+“That comes of not giving your name and not wiring your lawyer,” I
+replied. “What did you get?”
+
+“Forty shillings, or a month,” said Wilton, promptly,—“next morning
+bright and early. They were working us off, three a minute. A girl in a
+pink hat—she was brought in at three in the morning—got ten days. I
+suppose I was lucky. I must have knocked his senses out of the guard.
+He told the old duck on the bench that I had told him I was a sergeant
+in the army, and that I was gathering beetles on the track. That comes
+of trying to explain to an Englishman.”
+
+“And you?”
+
+“Oh, I said nothing. I wanted to get out. I paid my fine, and bought a
+new hat, and came up here before noon next morning. There were a lot of
+people in the house, and I told ’em I’d been unavoidably detained, and
+then they began to recollect engagements elsewhere. Hackman must have
+seen the fight on the track and made a story of it. I suppose they
+thought it was distinctly American—confound ’em! It’s the only time in
+my life that I’ve ever flagged a train, and I wouldn’t have done it but
+for that scarab. ’T wouldn’t hurt their old trains to be held up once
+in a while.”
+
+“Well, it’s all over now,” I said, choking a little. “And your name
+didn’t get into the papers. It _is_ rather transatlantic when you come
+to think of it.”
+
+“Over!” Wilton grunted savagely. “It’s only just begun. That trouble
+with the guard was just common, ordinary assault—merely a little
+criminal business. The flagging of the train is civil, infernally
+civil,—and means something quite different. They’re after me for that
+now.”
+
+“Who?”
+
+“The Great Buchonian. There was a man in court watching the case on
+behalf of the Company. I gave him my name in a quiet corner before I
+bought my hat, and—come to dinner now; I’ll show you the results
+afterwards.” The telling of his wrongs had worked Wilton Sargent into a
+very fine temper, and I do not think that my conversation soothed him.
+In the course of the dinner, prompted by a devil of pure mischief, I
+dwelt with loving insistence on certain smells and sounds of New York
+which go straight to the heart of the native in foreign parts; and
+Wilton began to ask many questions about his associates aforetime—men
+of the New York Yacht Club, Storm King, or the Restigouche, owners of
+rivers, ranches, and shipping in their playtime, lords of railways,
+kerosene, wheat, and cattle in their offices. When the green mint came,
+I gave him a peculiarly oily and atrocious cigar, of the brand they
+sell in the tessellated, electric-lighted, with
+expensive-pictures-of-the-nude-adorned bar of the Pandemonium, and
+Wilton chewed the end for several minutes ere he lit it. The butler
+left us alone, and the chimney of the oak-panelled dining-room began to
+smoke.
+
+“That’s another!” said he, poking the fire savagely, and I knew what he
+meant. One cannot put steam-heat in houses where Queen Elizabeth slept.
+The steady beat of a night-mail, whirling down the valley, recalled me
+to business. “What about the Great Buchonian?” I said.
+
+“Come into my study. That’s all—as yet.”
+
+It was a pile of Seidlitz-powders-coloured correspondence, perhaps nine
+inches high, and it looked very businesslike.
+
+“You can go through it,” said Wilton. “Now I could take a chair and a
+red flag and go into Hyde Park and say the most atrocious things about
+your Queen, and preach anarchy and all that, y’ know, till I was
+hoarse, and no one would take any notice. The Police—damn ’em!—would
+protect me if I got into trouble. But for a little thing like flagging
+a dirty little sawed-off train,—running through my own grounds, too,—I
+get the whole British Constitution down on me as if I sold bombs. I
+don’t understand it.”
+
+“No more does the Great Buchonian—apparently.” I was turning over the
+letters. “Here’s the traffic superintendent writing that it’s utterly
+incomprehensible that any man should... Good heavens, Wilton, you
+_have_ done it!” I giggled, as I read on.
+
+“What’s funny now?” said my host.
+
+“It seems that you, or Howard for you, stopped the three-forty Northern
+down.”
+
+“I ought to know that! They all had their knife into me, from the
+engine-driver up.”
+
+“But it’s _the_ three-forty—the Induna—surely you’ve heard of the Great
+Buchonian’s Induna!”
+
+“How the deuce am I to know one train from another? They come along
+about every two minutes.”
+
+“Quite so. But this happens to be the Induna—the one train of the whole
+line. She’s timed for fifty-seven miles an hour. She was put on early
+in the Sixties, and she has never been stopped—”
+
+“_I_ know! Since William the Conqueror came over, or King Charles hid
+in her smoke-stack. You’re as bad as the rest of these Britishers. If
+she’s been run all that while, it’s time she was flagged once or
+twice.”
+
+The American was beginning to ooze out all over Wilton, and his
+small-boned hands were moving restlessly.
+
+“Suppose you flagged the Empire State Express, or the Western Cyclone?”
+
+“Suppose I did. I know Otis Harvey—or used to. I’d send him a wire, and
+he’d understand it was a ground-hog case with me. That’s exactly what I
+told this British fossil company here.”
+
+“Have you been answering their letters without legal advice, then?”
+
+“Of course I have.”
+
+“Oh, my Sainted Country! Go ahead, Wilton.”
+
+“I wrote ’em that I’d be very happy to see their president and explain
+to him in three words all about it; but that wouldn’t do. ’Seems their
+president must be a god. He was too busy, and—well, you can read for
+yourself—they wanted explanations. The stationmaster at Amberley
+Royal—and he grovels before me, as a rule—wanted an explanation, and
+quick, too. The head sachem at St. Botolph’s wanted three or four, and
+the Lord High Mukkamuk that oils the locomotives wanted one every fine
+day. I told ’em—I’ve told ’em about fifty times—I stopped their holy
+and sacred train because I wanted to board her. Did they think I wanted
+to feel her pulse?”
+
+“You didn’t say that?”
+
+“‘Feel her pulse’? Of course not.”
+
+“No. ‘Board her.’”
+
+“What else could I say?”
+
+“My dear Wilton, what is the use of Mrs. Sherborne, and the Clays, and
+all that lot working over you for four years to make an Englishman out
+of you, if the very first time you’re rattled you go back to the
+vernacular?”
+
+“I’m through with Mrs. Sherborne and the rest of the crowd. America’s
+good enough for me. What ought I to have said? ‘Please,’ or ‘thanks
+awf’ly’ or how?”
+
+There was no chance now of mistaking the man’s nationality. Speech,
+gesture, and step, so carefully drilled into him, had gone away with
+the borrowed mask of indifference. It was a lawful son of the Youngest
+People, whose predecessors were the Red Indian. His voice had risen to
+the high, throaty crow of his breed when they labour under excitement.
+His close-set eyes showed by turns unnecessary fear, annoyance beyond
+reason, rapid and purposeless flights of thought, the child’s lust for
+immediate revenge, and the child’s pathetic bewilderment, who knocks
+his head against the bad, wicked table. And on the other side, I knew,
+stood the Company, as unable as Wilton to understand.
+
+“And I could buy their old road three times over,” he muttered, playing
+with a paper-knife, and moving restlessly to and fro.
+
+“You didn’t tell ’em _that_, I hope!”
+
+There was no answer; but as I went through the letters, I felt that
+Wilton must have told them many surprising things. The Great Buchonian
+had first asked for an explanation of the stoppage of their Induna, and
+had found a certain levity in the explanation tendered. It then advised
+“Mr. W. Sargent” to refer his solicitor to their solicitor, or whatever
+the legal phrase is.
+
+“And you didn’t?” I said, looking up.
+
+“No. They were treating me exactly as if I had been a kid playing on
+the cable-tracks. There was not the _least_ necessity for any
+solicitor. Five minutes’ quiet talk would have settled everything.”
+
+I returned to the correspondence. The Great Buchonian regretted that,
+owing to pressure of business, none of their directors could accept Mr.
+W. Sargent’s invitation to run down and discuss the difficulty. The
+Great Buchonian was careful to point out that no animus underlay their
+action, nor was money their object. Their duty was to protect the
+interests of their line, and these interests could not be protected if
+a precedent were established whereby any of the Queen’s subjects could
+stop a train in mid-career. Again (this was another branch of the
+correspondence, not more than five heads of departments being
+concerned), the Company admitted that there was some reasonable doubt
+as to the duties of express-trains in all crises, and the matter was
+open to settlement by process of law till an authoritative ruling was
+obtained—from the House of Lords, if necessary.
+
+“That broke me all up,” said Wilton, who was reading over my shoulder.
+“I knew I’d struck the British Constitution at last. The House of
+Lords—my Lord! And, anyway, I’m not one of the Queen’s subjects.”
+
+“Why, I had a notion that you’d got yourself naturalised.”
+
+Wilton blushed hotly as he explained that very many things must happen
+to the British Constitution ere he took out his papers.
+
+“How does it all strike you?” he said. “Isn’t the Great Buchonian
+crazy?”
+
+“I don’t know. You’ve done something that no one ever thought of doing
+before, and the Company don’t know what to make of it. I see they offer
+to send down their solicitor and another official of the Company to
+talk things over informally. Then here’s another letter suggesting that
+you put up a fourteen-foot wall, crowned with bottle-glass, at the
+bottom of the garden.”
+
+“Talk of British insolence! The man who recommends _that_ (he’s another
+bloated functionary) says that I shall ‘derive great pleasure from
+watching the wall going up day by day’! Did you ever dream of such
+gall? I’ve offered ’em money enough to buy a new set of cars and
+pension the driver for three generations; but that doesn’t seem to be
+what they want. They expect me to go to the House of Lords and get a
+ruling, and build walls between times. Are they _all_ stark, raving
+mad? One ’ud think I made a profession of flagging trains. How in
+Tophet was I to know their old Induna from a waytrain? I took the first
+that came along, and I’ve been jailed and fined for that once already.”
+
+“That was for slugging the guard.”
+
+“He had no right to haul me out when I was half-way through a window.”
+
+“What are you going to do about it?”
+
+“Their lawyer and the other official (can’t they trust their men unless
+they send ’em in pairs?) are coming here to-night. I told ’em I was
+busy, as a rule, till after dinner, but they might send along the
+entire directorate if it eased ’em any.”
+
+Now, after-dinner visiting, for business or pleasure, is the custom of
+the smaller American town, and not that of England, where the end of
+the day is sacred to the owner, not the public. Verily, Wilton Sargent
+had hoisted the striped flag of rebellion!
+
+“Isn’t it time that the humour of the situation began to strike you,
+Wilton?” I asked.
+
+“Where’s the humour of baiting an American citizen just because he
+happens to be a millionaire—poor devil.” He was silent for a little
+time, and then went on: “Of course. _Now_ I see!” He spun round and
+faced me excitedly. “It’s as plain as mud. These ducks are laying their
+pipes to skin me.”
+
+“They say explicitly they don’t want money!”
+
+“That’s all a blind. So’s their addressing me as W. Sargent. They know
+well enough who I am. They know I’m the old man’s son. Why didn’t I
+think of that before?”
+
+“One minute, Wilton. If you climbed to the top of the dome of St.
+Paul’s and offered a reward to any Englishman who could tell you who or
+what Merton Sargent had been, there wouldn’t be twenty men in all
+London to claim it.”
+
+“That’s their insular provincialism, then. I don’t care a cent. The old
+man would have wrecked the Great Buchonian before breakfast for a
+pipe-opener. My God, I’ll do it in dead earnest! I’ll show ’em that
+they can’t bulldoze a foreigner for flagging one of their little tinpot
+trains, and—I’ve spent fifty thousand a year here, at least, for the
+last four years.”
+
+I was glad I was not his lawyer. I re-read the correspondence, notably
+the letter which recommended him—almost tenderly, I fancied—to build a
+fourteen-foot brick wall at the end of his garden, and half-way through
+it a thought struck me which filled me with pure joy.
+
+The footman ushered in two men, frock-coated, grey-trousered,
+smooth-shaven, heavy of speech and gait. It was nearly nine o’clock,
+but they looked as newly come from a bath. I could not understand why
+the elder and taller of the pair glanced at me as though we had an
+understanding; nor why he shook hands with an unEnglish warmth.
+
+“This simplifies the situation,” he said in an undertone, and, as I
+stared, he whispered to his companion: “I fear I shall be of very
+little service at present. Perhaps Mr. Folsom had better talk over the
+affair with Mr. Sargent.”
+
+“That is what I am here for,” said Wilton.
+
+The man of law smiled pleasantly, and said that he saw no reason why
+the difficulty should not be arranged in two minutes’ quiet talk. His
+air, as he sat down opposite Wilton, was soothing to the last degree,
+and his companion drew me up-stage. The mystery was deepening, but I
+followed meekly, and heard Wilton say, with an uneasy laugh:
+
+“I’ve had insomnia over this affair, Mr. Folsom. Let’s settle it one
+way or the other, for heaven’s sake!”
+
+“Ah! Has he suffered much from this lately?” said my man, with a
+preliminary cough.
+
+“I really can’t say,” I replied.
+
+“Then I suppose you have only lately taken charge here?”
+
+“I came this evening. I am not exactly in charge of anything.”
+
+“I see. Merely to observe the course of events in case—” He nodded.
+
+“Exactly.” Observation, after all, is my trade.
+
+He coughed again slightly, and came to business.
+
+“Now,—I am asking solely for information’s sake,—do you find the
+delusions persistent?”
+
+“Which delusions?”
+
+“They are variable, then? That is distinctly curious, because—but do I
+understand that the _type_ of the delusion varies? For example, Mr.
+Sargent believes that he can buy the Great Buchonian.”
+
+“Did he write you that?”
+
+“He made the offer to the Company—on a half-sheet of note-paper. Now,
+has he by chance gone to the other extreme, and believed that he is in
+danger of becoming a pauper? The curious economy in the use of a
+half-sheet of paper shows that some idea of that kind might have
+flashed through his mind, and the two delusions can coexist, but it is
+not common. As you must know, the delusion of vast wealth—the folly of
+grandeurs, I believe our friends the French call it—is, as a rule,
+persistent, to the exclusion of all others.”
+
+Then I heard Wilton’s best English voice at the end of the study:
+
+“My _dear_ sir, I have explained twenty times already, I wanted to get
+that scarab in time for dinner. Suppose you had left an important legal
+document in the same way?”
+
+“That touch of cunning is very significant,” my
+fellow-practitioner—since he insisted on it—muttered.
+
+“I am very happy, of course, to meet you; but if you had only sent your
+president down to dinner here, I could have settled the thing in half a
+minute. Why, I could have bought the Buchonian from him while your
+clerks were sending me this.” Wilton dropped his hand heavily on the
+blue-and-white correspondence, and the lawyer started.
+
+“But, speaking frankly,” the lawyer replied, “it is, if I may say so,
+perfectly inconceivable, even in the case of the most important legal
+documents, that any one should stop the three-forty express—the
+Induna—Our Induna, my dear sir.”
+
+“Absolutely!” my companion echoed; then to me in a lower tone: “You
+notice, again, the persistent delusion of wealth. _I_ was called in
+when he wrote us that. You can see it is utterly impossible for the
+Company to continue to run their trains through the property of a man
+who may at any moment fancy himself divinely commissioned to stop all
+traffic. If he had only referred us to his lawyer—but, naturally,
+_that_ he would not do, under the circumstances. A pity—a great pity.
+He is so young. By the way, it is curious, is it not, to note the
+absolute conviction in the voice of those who are similarly
+afflicted,—heart-rending, I might say, and the inability to follow a
+chain of connected thought.”
+
+“I can’t see what you want,” Wilton was saying to the lawyer.
+
+“It need not be more than fourteen feet high—a really desirable
+structure, and it would be possible to grow pear trees on the sunny
+side.” The lawyer was speaking in an unprofessional voice. “There are
+few things pleasanter than to watch, so to say, one’s own vine and fig
+tree in full bearing. Consider the profit and amusement you would
+derive from it. If _you_ could see your way to doing this, _we_ could
+arrange all the details with your lawyer, and it is possible that the
+Company might bear some of the cost. I have put the matter, I trust, in
+a nutshell. If you, my dear sir, will interest yourself in building
+that wall, and will kindly give us the name of your lawyers, I dare
+assure you that you will hear no more from the Great Buchonian.”
+
+“But why am I to disfigure my lawn with a new brick wall?”
+
+“Grey flint is extremely picturesque.”
+
+“Grey flint, then, if you put it that way. Why the dickens must I go
+building towers of Babylon just because I have held up one of your
+trains—once?”
+
+“The expression he used in his third letter was that he wished to
+‘board her,’” said my companion in my ear. “That was very curious—a
+marine delusion impinging, as it were, upon a land one. What a
+marvellous world he must move in—and will before the curtain falls. So
+young, too—so very young!”
+
+“Well, if you want the plain English of it, I’m damned if I go
+wall-building to your orders. You can fight it all along the line, into
+the House of Lords and out again, and get your rulings by the running
+foot if you like,” said Wilton, hotly. “Great heavens, man, I only did
+it once!”
+
+“We have at present no guarantee that you may not do it again; and,
+with our traffic, we must, in justice to our passengers, demand some
+form of guarantee. It must not serve as a precedent. All this might
+have been saved if you had only referred us to your legal
+representative.” The lawyer looked appealingly around the room. The
+dead-lock was complete.
+
+“Wilton,” I asked, “may I try my hand now?”
+
+“Anything you like,” said Wilton. “It seems I can’t talk English. I
+won’t build any wall, though.” He threw himself back in his chair.
+
+“Gentlemen,” I said deliberately, for I perceived that the doctor’s
+mind would turn slowly, “Mr. Sargent has very large interests in the
+chief railway systems of his own country.”
+
+“His own country?” said the lawyer.
+
+“At that age?” said the doctor.
+
+“Certainly. He inherited them from his father, Mr. Sargent, who was an
+American.”
+
+“And proud of it,” said Wilton, as though he had been a Western Senator
+let loose on the Continent for the first time.
+
+“My dear sir,” said the lawyer, half rising, “why did you not acquaint
+the Company with this fact—this vital fact—early in our correspondence?
+We should have understood. We should have made allowances.”
+
+“Allowances be damned. Am I a Red Indian or a lunatic?”
+
+The two men looked guilty.
+
+“If Mr. Sargent’s friend had told us as much in the beginning,” said
+the doctor, very severely, “much might have been saved.” Alas! I had
+made a life’s enemy of that doctor.
+
+“I hadn’t a chance,” I replied. “Now, of course, you can see that a man
+who owns several thousand miles of line, as Mr. Sargent does, would be
+apt to treat railways a shade more casually than other people.”
+
+“Of course; of course. He is an American; that accounts. Still, it
+_was_ the Induna; but I can quite understand that the customs of our
+cousins across the water differ in these particulars from ours. And do
+you always stop trains in this way in the States, Mr. Sargent?”
+
+“I should if occasion ever arose; but I’ve never had to yet. Are you
+going to make an international complication of the business?”
+
+“You need give yourself no further concern whatever in the matter. We
+see that there is no likelihood of this action of yours establishing a
+precedent, which was the only thing we were afraid of. Now that you
+understand that we cannot reconcile our system to any sudden stoppages,
+we feel quite sure that—”
+
+“I sha’n’t be staying long enough to flag another train,” Wilton said
+pensively.
+
+“You are returning, then, to our fellow-kinsmen across the—ah—big pond,
+you call it?”
+
+“_No_, sir. The ocean—the North Atlantic Ocean. It’s three thousand
+miles broad, and three miles deep in places. I wish it were ten
+thousand.”
+
+“I am not so fond of sea-travel myself; but I think it is every
+Englishman’s duty once in his life to study the great branch of our
+Anglo-Saxon race across the ocean,” said the lawyer.
+
+“If ever you come over, and care to flag any train on my system,
+I’ll—I’ll see you through,” said Wilton.
+
+“Thank you—ah, thank you. You’re very kind. I’m sure I should enjoy
+myself immensely.”
+
+“We have overlooked the fact,” the doctor whispered to me, “that your
+friend proposed to buy the Great Buchonian.”
+
+“He is worth anything from twenty to thirty million dollars—four to
+five million pounds,” I answered, knowing that it would be hopeless to
+explain.
+
+“Really! That is enormous wealth. But the Great Buchonian is not in the
+market.”
+
+“Perhaps he does not want to buy it now.”
+
+“It would be impossible under any circumstances,” said the doctor.
+
+“How characteristic!” murmured the lawyer, reviewing matters in his
+mind. “I always understood from books that your countrymen were in a
+hurry. And so you would have gone forty miles to town and back—before
+dinner—to get a scarab? How intensely American! But you talk exactly
+like an Englishman, Mr. Sargent.”
+
+“That is a fault that can be remedied. There’s only one question I’d
+like to ask you. You said it was inconceivable that any man should stop
+a train on your road?”
+
+“And so it is—absolutely inconceivable.”
+
+“Any sane man, that is?”
+
+“That is what I meant, of course. I mean, with excep—”
+
+“Thank you.”
+
+The two men departed. Wilton checked himself as he was about to fill a
+pipe, took one of my cigars instead, and was silent for fifteen
+minutes.
+
+Then said he: “Have you got a list of the Southampton sailings on you?”
+
+Far away from the greystone wings, the dark cedars, the faultless
+gravel drives, and the mint-sauce lawns of Holt Hangars runs a river
+called the Hudson, whose unkempt banks are covered with the palaces of
+those wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. Here, where the hoot of the
+Haverstraw brick-barge-tug answers the howl of the locomotive on either
+shore, you shall find, with a complete installation of electric light,
+nickel-plated binnacles, and a calliope attachment to her
+steam-whistle, the twelve-hundred-ton ocean-going steam-yacht
+_Columbia_, lying at her private pier, to take to his office, at an
+average speed of seventeen knots an hour,—and the barges can look out
+for themselves,—Wilton Sargent, American.
+
+
+
+
+MY SUNDAY AT HOME
+
+
+If the Red Slayer think he slays,
+    Or if the slain think he is slain,
+They know not well the subtle ways
+    I keep and pass and turn again.
+                    EMERSON.
+
+
+It was the unreproducible slid r, as he said this was his “fy-ist”
+visit to England, that told me he was a New-Yorker from New York; and
+when, in the course of our long, lazy journey westward from Waterloo,
+he enlarged upon the beauties of his city, I, professing ignorance,
+said no word. He had, amazed and delighted at the man’s civility, given
+the London porter a shilling for carrying his bag nearly fifty yards;
+he had thoroughly investigated the first-class lavatory compartment,
+which the London and Southwestern sometimes supply without extra
+charge; and now, half-awed, half-contemptuous, but wholly interested,
+he looked out upon the ordered English landscape wrapped in its Sunday
+peace, while I watched the wonder grow upon his face. Why were the cars
+so short and stilted? Why had every other freight-car a tarpaulin drawn
+over it? What wages would an engineer get now? Where was the swarming
+population of England he had read so much about? What was the rank of
+all those men on tricycles along the roads? When were we due at
+Plymouth I told him all I knew, and very much that I did not. He was
+going to Plymouth to assist in a consultation upon a fellow-countryman
+who had retired to a place called The Hoe—was that up-town or
+down-town—to recover from nervous dyspepsia. Yes, he himself was a
+doctor by profession, and how any one in England could retain any
+nervous disorder passed his comprehension. Never had he dreamed of an
+atmosphere so soothing. Even the deep rumble of London traffic was
+monastical by comparison with some cities he could name; and the
+country—why, it was Paradise. A continuance of it, he confessed, would
+drive him mad; but for a few months it was the most sumptuous rest-cure
+in his knowledge.
+
+“I’ll come over every year after this,” he said, in a burst of delight,
+as we ran between two ten-foot hedges of pink and white may. “It’s
+seeing all the things I’ve ever read about. Of course it doesn’t strike
+you that way. I presume you belong here? What a finished land it is!
+It’s arrived. Must have been born this way. Now, where I used to
+live—Hello! what’s up?”
+
+The train stopped in a blaze of sunshine at Framlynghame Admiral, which
+is made up entirely of the name-board, two platforms, and an overhead
+bridge, without even the usual siding. I had never known the slowest of
+locals stop here before; but on Sunday all things are possible to the
+London and Southwestern. One could hear the drone of conversation along
+the carriages, and, scarcely less loud, the drone of the bumblebees in
+the wallflowers up the bank. My companion thrust his head through the
+window and sniffed luxuriously.
+
+“Where are we now?” said he.
+
+“In Wiltshire,” said I.
+
+“Ah! A man ought to be able to write novels with his left hand in a
+country like this. Well, well! And so this is about Tess’s country,
+ain’t it? I feel just as if I were in a book. Say, the conduc—the guard
+has something on his mind. What’s he getting at?”
+
+The splendid badged and belted guard was striding up the platform at
+the regulation official pace, and in the regulation official voice was
+saying at each door:
+
+“Has any gentleman here a bottle of medicine? A gentleman has taken a
+bottle of poison (laudanum) by mistake.”
+
+Between each five paces he looked at an official telegram in his hand,
+refreshed his memory, and said his say. The dreamy look on my
+companion’s face—he had gone far away with Tess—passed with the speed
+of a snap-shutter. After the manner of his countrymen, he had risen to
+the situation, jerked his bag down from the overhead rail, opened it,
+and I heard the click of bottles. “Find out where the man is,” he said
+briefly. “I’ve got something here that will fix him—if he can swallow
+still.”
+
+Swiftly I fled up the line of carriages in the wake of the guard. There
+was clamour in a rear compartment—the voice of one bellowing to be let
+out, and the feet of one who kicked. With the tail of my eye I saw the
+New York doctor hastening thither, bearing in his hand a blue and
+brimming glass from the lavatory compartment. The guard I found
+scratching his head unofficially, by the engine, and murmuring: “Well,
+I put a bottle of medicine off at Andover—I’m sure I did.”
+
+“Better say it again, any’ow,” said the driver. “Orders is orders. Say
+it again.”
+
+Once more the guard paced back, I, anxious to attract his attention,
+trotting at his heels.
+
+“In a minute—in a minute, sir,” he said, waving an arm capable of
+starting all the traffic on the London and Southwestern Railway at a
+wave. “Has any gentleman here got a bottle of medicine? A gentleman has
+taken a bottle of poison (laudanum) by mistake.”
+
+“Where’s the man?” I gasped.
+
+“Woking. ’Ere’s my orders.” He showed me the telegram, on which were
+the words to be said. “’E must have left ’is bottle in the train, an’
+took another by mistake. ’E’s been wirin’ from Woking awful, an’, now I
+come to think of, it, I’m nearly sure I put a bottle of medicine off at
+Andover.”
+
+“Then the man that took the poison isn’t in the train?”
+
+“Lord, no, sir. No one didn’t take poison _that_ way. ’E took it away
+with ’im, in ’is ’ands. ’E’s wirin’ from Wokin’. My orders was to ask
+everybody in the train, and I ’ave, an’ we’re four minutes late now.
+Are you comin’ on, sir? No? Right be’ind!”
+
+There is nothing, unless, perhaps, the English language, more terrible
+than the workings of an English railway-line. An instant before it
+seemed as though we were going to spend all eternity at Framlynghame
+Admiral, and now I was watching the tail of the train disappear round
+the curve of the cutting.
+
+But I was not alone. On the one bench of the down platform sat the
+largest navvy I have ever seen in my life, softened and made affable
+(for he smiled generously) with liquor. In his huge hands he nursed an
+empty tumbler marked “L.S.W.R.”—marked also, internally, with streaks
+of blue-grey sediment. Before him, a hand on his shoulder, stood the
+doctor, and as I came within ear-shot, this is what I heard him say:
+“Just you hold on to your patience for a minute or two longer, and
+you’ll be as right as ever you were in your life. _I’ll_ stay with you
+till you’re better.”
+
+“Lord! I’m comfortable enough,” said the navvy. “Never felt better in
+my life.”
+
+Turning to me, the doctor lowered his voice. “He might have died while
+that fool conduct-guard was saying his piece. I’ve fixed him, though.
+The stuff’s due in about five minutes, but there’s a heap _to_ him. I
+don’t see how we can make him take exercise.”
+
+For the moment I felt as though seven pounds of crushed ice had been
+neatly applied in the form of a compress to my lower stomach.
+
+“How—how did you manage it?” I gasped.
+
+“I asked him if he’d have a drink. He was knocking spots out of the
+car—strength of his constitution, I suppose. He said he’d go ’most
+anywhere for a drink, so I lured onto the platform, and loaded him up.
+Cold-blooded people, you Britishers are. That train’s gone, and no one
+seemed to care a cent.”
+
+“We’ve missed it,” I said.
+
+He looked at me curiously.
+
+“We’ll get another before sundown, if that’s your only trouble. Say,
+porter, when’s the next train down?”
+
+“Seven forty-five,” said the one porter, and passed out through the
+wicket-gate into the landscape. It was then three-twenty of a hot and
+sleepy afternoon. The station was absolutely deserted. The navvy had
+closed his eyes, and now nodded.
+
+“That’s bad,” said the doctor. “The man, I mean, not the train. We must
+make him walk somehow—walk up and down.”
+
+Swiftly as might be, I explained the delicacy of the situation, and the
+doctor from New York turned a full bronze-green. Then he swore
+comprehensively at the entire fabric of our glorious Constitution,
+cursing the English language, root, branch, and paradigm, through its
+most obscure derivatives. His coat and bag lay on the bench next to the
+sleeper. Thither he edged cautiously, and I saw treachery in his eye.
+
+What devil of delay possessed him to slip on his spring overcoat, I
+cannot tell. They say a slight noise rouses a sleeper more surely than
+a heavy one, and scarcely had the doctor settled himself in his sleeves
+than the giant waked and seized that silk-faced collar in a hot right
+hand. There was rage in his face—rage and the realisation of new
+emotions.
+
+“I’m—I’m not so comfortable as I were,” he said from the deeps of his
+interior. “You’ll wait along o’ me, _you_ will.” He breathed heavily
+through shut lips.
+
+Now, if there was one thing more than another upon which the doctor had
+dwelt in his conversation with me, it was upon the essential
+law-abidingness, not to say gentleness, of his much-misrepresented
+country. And yet (truly, it may have been no more than a button that
+irked him) I saw his hand travel backwards to his right hip, clutch at
+something, and come away empty.
+
+“He won’t kill you,” I said. “He’ll probably sue you in court, if I
+know my own people. Better give him some money from time to time.”
+
+“If he keeps quiet till the stuff gets in its work,” the doctor
+answered, “I’m all right. If he doesn’t... my name is Emory—Julian B.
+Emory—193 ’Steenth Street, corner of Madison and—”
+
+“I feel worse than I’ve ever felt,” said the navvy, with suddenness.
+“What-did-you-give-me-the-drink-for?”
+
+The matter seemed to be so purely personal that I withdrew to a
+strategic position on the overhead bridge, and, abiding in the exact
+centre, looked on from afar.
+
+I could see the white road that ran across the shoulder of Salisbury
+Plain, unshaded for mile after mile, and a dot in the middle distance,
+the back of the one porter returning to Framlynghame Admiral, if such a
+place existed, till seven forty-five. The bell of a church invisible
+clanked softly. There was a rustle in the horse-chestnuts to the left
+of the line, and the sound of sheep cropping close.
+
+The peace of Nirvana lay upon the land, and, brooding in it, my elbow
+on the warm iron girder of the footbridge (it is a forty-shilling fine
+to cross by any other means), I perceived, as never before, how the
+consequences of our acts run eternal through time and through space. If
+we impinge never so slightly upon the life of a fellow-mortal, the
+touch of our personality, like the ripple of a stone cast into a pond,
+widens and widens in unending circles across the aeons, till the
+far-off Gods themselves cannot say where action ceases. Also, it was I
+who had silently set before the doctor the tumbler of the first-class
+lavatory compartment now speeding Plymouthward. Yet I was, in spirit at
+least, a million leagues removed from that unhappy man of another
+nationality, who had chosen to thrust an inexpert finger into the
+workings of an alien life. The machinery was dragging him up and down
+the sunlit platform. The two men seemed to be learning polka-mazurkas
+together, and the burden of their song, borne by one deep voice, was:
+“What did you give me the drink for?”
+
+I saw the flash of silver in the doctor’s hand. The navvy took it and
+pocketed it with his left; but never for an instant did his strong
+right leave the doctor’s coat-collar, and as the crisis approached,
+louder and louder rose his bull-like roar: “What did you give me the
+drink for?”
+
+They drifted under the great twelve-inch pinned timbers of the
+foot-bridge towards the bench, and, I gathered, the time was very near
+at hand. The stuff was getting in its work. Blue, white, and blue
+again, rolled over the navvy’s face in waves, till all settled to one
+rich clay-bank yellow and—that fell which fell.
+
+I thought of the blowing up of Hell Gate; of the geysers in the
+Yellowstone Park; of Jonah and his whale: but the lively original, as I
+watched it foreshortened from above, exceeded all these things. He
+staggered to the bench, the heavy wooden seat cramped with iron cramps
+into the enduring stone, and clung there with his left hand. It
+quivered and shook, as a breakwater-pile quivers to the rush of
+landward-racing seas; nor was there lacking when he caught his breath,
+the “scream of a maddened beach dragged down by the tide.” His right
+hand was upon the doctor’s collar, so that the two shook to one
+paroxysm, pendulums vibrating together, while I, apart, shook with
+them.
+
+It was colossal—immense; but of certain manifestations the English
+language stops short. French only, the caryatid French of Victor Hugo,
+would have described it; so I mourned while I laughed, hastily
+shuffling and discarding inadequate adjectives. The vehemence of the
+shock spent itself, and the sufferer half fell, half knelt, across the
+bench. He was calling now upon God and his wife, huskily, as the
+wounded bull calls upon the unscathed herd to stay. Curiously enough,
+he used no bad language: that had gone from him with the rest. The
+doctor exhibited gold. It was taken and retained. So, too, was the grip
+on the coat-collar.
+
+“If I could stand,” boomed the giant, despairingly, “I’d smash you—you
+an’ your drinks. I’m dyin’—dyin’—dyin’!”
+
+“That’s what you think,” said the doctor. “You’ll find it will do you a
+lot of good”; and, making a virtue of a somewhat imperative necessity,
+he added: “I’ll stay by you. If you’d let go of me a minute I’d give
+you something that would settle you.”
+
+“You’ve settled me now, you damned anarchist. Takin’ the bread out of
+the mouth of an English workin’man! But I’ll keep ’old of you till I’m
+well or dead. I never did you no harm. S’pose _I_ were a little full.
+They pumped me out once at Guy’s with a stummick-pump. I could see
+_that_, but I can’t see this ’ere, an’ it’s killin’ of me by slow
+degrees.”
+
+“You’ll be all right in half-an-hour. What do you suppose I’d want to
+kill you for?” said the doctor, who came of a logical breed.
+
+“’Ow do _I_ know? Tell ’em in court. You’ll get seven years for this,
+you body-snatcher. That’s what you are—a bloomin’ bodysnatcher. There’s
+justice, I tell you, in England; and my Union’ll prosecute, too. We
+don’t stand no tricks with people’s insides ’ere. They give a woman ten
+years for a sight less than this. An’ you’ll ’ave to pay ’undreds an’
+’undreds o’ pounds, besides a pension to the missus. _You_’ll see, you
+physickin’ furriner. Where’s your licence to do such? _You_’ll catch
+it, I tell you!”
+
+Then I observed what I have frequently observed before, that a man who
+is but reasonably afraid of an altercation with an alien has a most
+poignant dread of the operations of foreign law. The doctor’s voice was
+flute-like in its exquisite politeness, as he answered:
+
+“But I’ve given you a very great deal of money—fif—three pounds, I
+think.”
+
+“An’ what’s three pound for poisonin’ the likes o’ _me?_ They told me
+at Guy’s I’d fetch twenty—cold—on the slates. Ouh! It’s comin’ again.”
+
+A second time he was cut down by the foot, as it were, and the
+straining bench rocked to and fro as I averted my eyes.
+
+It was the very point of perfection in the heart of an English May-day.
+The unseen tides of the air had turned, and all nature was setting its
+face with the shadows of the horse-chestnuts towards the peace of the
+coming night. But there were hours yet, I knew—long, long hours of the
+eternal English twilight—to the ending of the day. I was well content
+to be alive—to abandon myself to the drift of Time and Fate; to absorb
+great peace through my skin, and to love my country with the devotion
+that three thousand miles of intervening sea bring to fullest flower.
+And what a garden of Eden it was, this fatted, clipped, and washen
+land! A man could camp in any open field with more sense of home and
+security than the stateliest buildings of foreign cities could afford.
+And the joy was that it was all mine alienably—groomed hedgerow,
+spotless road, decent greystone cottage, serried spinney, tasselled
+copse, apple-bellied hawthorn, and well-grown tree. A light puff of
+wind—it scattered flakes of may over the gleaming rails—gave me a faint
+whiff as it might have been of fresh cocoanut, and I knew that the
+golden gorse was in bloom somewhere out of sight. Linnæus had thanked
+God on his bended knees when he first saw a field of it; and, by the
+way, the navvy was on his knees, too. But he was by no means praying.
+He was purely disgustful.
+
+The doctor was compelled to bend over him, his face towards the back of
+the seat, and from what I had seen I supposed the navvy was now dead.
+If that were the case it would be time for me to go; but I knew that so
+long as a man trusts himself to the current of Circumstance, reaching
+out for and rejecting nothing that comes his way, no harm can overtake
+him. It is the contriver, the schemer, who is caught by the Law, and
+never the philosopher. I knew that when the play was played, Destiny
+herself would move me on from the corpse; and I felt very sorry for the
+doctor.
+
+In the far distance, presumably upon the road that led to Framlynghame
+Admiral, there appeared a vehicle and a horse—the one ancient fly that
+almost every village can produce at need. This thing was advancing,
+unpaid by me, towards the station; would have to pass along the
+deep-cut lane, below the railway-bridge, and come out on the doctor’s
+side. I was in the centre of things, so all sides were alike to me.
+Here, then, was my machine from the machine. When it arrived; something
+would happen, or something else. For the rest, I owned my deeply
+interested soul.
+
+The doctor, by the seat, turned so far as his cramped position allowed,
+his head over his left shoulder, and laid his right hand upon his lips.
+I threw back my hat and elevated my eyebrows in the form of a question.
+The doctor shut his eyes and nodded his head slowly twice or thrice,
+beckoning me to come. I descended cautiously, and it was as the signs
+had told. The navvy was asleep, empty to the lowest notch; yet his hand
+clutched still the doctor’s collar, and at the lightest movement (the
+doctor was really very cramped) tightened mechanically, as the hand of
+a sick woman tightens on that of the watcher. He had dropped, squatting
+almost upon his heels, and, falling lower, had dragged the doctor over
+to the left.
+
+The doctor thrust his right hand, which was free, into his pocket, drew
+forth some keys, and shook his head. The navvy gurgled in his sleep.
+Silently I dived into my pocket, took out one sovereign, and held it up
+between finger and thumb. Again the doctor shook his head. Money was
+not what was lacking to his peace. His bag had fallen from the seat to
+the ground. He looked towards it, and opened his mouth-O-shape. The
+catch was not a difficult one, and when I had mastered it, the doctor’s
+right forefinger was sawing the air. With an immense caution, I
+extracted from the bag such a knife as they use for cutting collops off
+legs. The doctor frowned, and with his first and second fingers
+imitated the action of scissors. Again I searched, and found a most
+diabolical pair of cock-nosed shears, capable of vandyking the
+interiors of elephants. The doctor then slowly lowered his left
+shoulder till the navvy’s right wrist was supported by the bench,
+pausing a moment as the spent volcano rumbled anew. Lower and lower the
+doctor sank, kneeling now by the navvy’s side, till his head was on a
+level with, and just in front of, the great hairy fist, and—there was
+no tension on the coat-collar. Then light dawned on me.
+
+Beginning a little to the right of the spinal column, I cut a huge
+demilune out of his new spring overcoat, bringing it round as far under
+his left side (which was the right side of the navvy) as I dared.
+Passing thence swiftly to the back of the seat, and reaching between
+the splines, I sawed through the silk-faced front on the left-hand side
+of the coat till the two cuts joined.
+
+Cautiously as the box-turtle of his native heath, the doctor drew away
+sideways and to the right, with the air of a frustrated burglar coming
+out from under a bed, and stood up free, one black diagonal shoulder
+projecting through the grey of his ruined overcoat. I returned the
+scissors to the bag, snapped the catch, and held all out to him as the
+wheels of the fly rang hollow under the railway arch.
+
+It came at a footpace past the wicket-gate of the station, and the
+doctor stopped it with a whisper. It was going some five miles across
+country to bring home from church some one,—I could not catch the
+name,—because his own carriage-horses were lame. Its destination
+happened to be the one place in all the world that the doctor was most
+burningly anxious to visit, and he promised the driver untold gold to
+drive to some ancient flame of his—Helen Blazes, she was called.
+
+“Aren’t you coming, too?” he said, bundling his overcoat into his bag.
+
+Now the fly had been so obviously sent to the doctor, and to no one
+else, that I had no concern with it. Our roads, I saw, divided, and
+there was, further, a need upon me to laugh.
+
+“I shall stay here,” I said. “It’s a very pretty country.”
+
+“My God!” he murmured, as softly as he shut the door, and I felt that
+it was a prayer.
+
+Then he went out of my life, and I shaped my course for the
+railway-bridge. It was necessary to pass by the bench once more, but
+the wicket was between us. The departure of the fly had waked the
+navvy. He crawled on to the seat, and with malignant eyes watched the
+driver flog down the road.
+
+“The man inside o’ that,” he called, “’as poisoned me. ’E’s a
+body-snatcher. ’E’s comin’ back again when I’m cold. ’Ere’s my
+evidence!”
+
+He waved his share of the overcoat, and I went my way, because I was
+hungry. Framlynghame Admiral village is a good two miles from the
+station, and I waked the holy calm of the evening every step of that
+way with shouts and yells, casting myself down in the flank of the good
+green hedge when I was too weak to stand. There was an inn,—a blessed
+inn with a thatched roof, and peonies in the garden,—and I ordered
+myself an upper chamber in which the Foresters held their courts for
+the laughter was not all out of me. A bewildered woman brought me ham
+and eggs, and I leaned out of the mullioned window, and laughed between
+mouthfuls. I sat long above the beer and the perfect smoke that
+followed, till the lights changed in the quiet street, and I began to
+think of the seven forty-five down, and all that world of the “Arabian
+Nights” I had quitted.
+
+Descending, I passed a giant in moleskins who filled the low-ceiled
+tap-room. Many empty plates stood before him, and beyond them a fringe
+of the Framlynghame Admiralty, to whom he was unfolding a wondrous tale
+of anarchy, of body-snatching, of bribery, and the Valley of the Shadow
+from the which he was but newly risen. And as he talked he ate, and as
+he ate he drank, for there was much room in him; and anon he paid
+royally, speaking of Justice and the Law, before whom all Englishmen
+are equal, and all foreigners and anarchists vermin and slime.
+
+On my way to the station, he passed me with great strides, his head
+high among the low-flying bats, his feet firm on the packed road-metal,
+his fists clinched, and his breath coming sharply. There was a
+beautiful smell in the air—the smell of white dust, bruised nettles,
+and smoke, that brings tears to the throat of a man who sees his
+country but seldom—a smell like the echoes of the lost talk of lovers;
+the infinitely suggestive odour of an immemorial civilisation. It was a
+perfect walk; and, lingering on every step, I came to the station just
+as the one porter lighted the last of a truckload of lamps, and set
+them back in the lamp-room, while he dealt tickets to four or five of
+the population who, not contented with their own peace, thought fit to
+travel. It was no ticket that the navvy seemed to need. He was sitting
+on a bench, wrathfully grinding a tumbler into fragments with his heel.
+I abode in obscurity at the end of the platform, interested as ever,
+thank Heaven, in my surroundings. There was a jar of wheels on the
+road. The navvy rose as they approached, strode through the wicket, and
+laid a hand upon a horse’s bridle that brought the beast up on his
+hireling hind legs. It was the providential fly coming back, and for a
+moment I wondered whether the doctor had been mad enough to revisit his
+practice.
+
+“Get away; you’re drunk,” said the driver.
+
+“I’m not,” said the navvy. “I’ve been waitin’ ’ere hours and hours.
+Come out, you beggar inside there!”
+
+“Go on, driver,” said a voice I did not know—a crisp, clear, English
+voice.
+
+“All right,” said the navvy. “You wouldn’t ’ear me when I was polite.
+_Now_ will you come?”
+
+There was a chasm in the side of the fly, for he had wrenched the door
+bodily off its hinges, and was feeling within purposefully. A
+well-booted leg rewarded him, and there came out, not with delight,
+hopping on one foot, a round and grey-haired Englishman, from whose
+armpits dropped hymn-books, but from his mouth an altogether different
+service of song.
+
+“Come on, you bloomin’ body-snatcher! You thought I was dead, did you?”
+roared the navvy. And the respectable gentleman came accordingly,
+inarticulate with rage.
+
+“Ere’s a man murderin’ the Squire,” the driver shouted, and fell from
+his box upon the navvy’s neck.
+
+To do them justice, the people of Framlynghame Admiral, so many as were
+on the platform, rallied to the call in the best spirit of feudalism.
+It was the one porter who beat the navvy on the nose with a
+ticket-punch, but it was the three third-class tickets who attached
+themselves to his legs and freed the captive.
+
+“Send for a constable! lock him up!” said that man, adjusting his
+collar; and unitedly they cast him into the lamp-room, and turned the
+key, while the driver mourned over the wrecked fly.
+
+Till then the navvy, whose only desire was justice, had kept his temper
+nobly. Then he went Berserk before our amazed eyes. The door of the
+lamp-room was generously constructed, and would not give an inch, but
+the window he tore from its fastenings and hurled outwards. The one
+porter counted the damage in a loud voice, and the others, arming
+themselves with agricultural implements from the station garden, kept
+up a ceaseless winnowing before the window, themselves backed close to
+the wall, and bade the prisoner think of the gaol. He answered little
+to the point, so far as they could understand; but seeing that his exit
+was impeded, he took a lamp and hurled it through the wrecked sash. It
+fell on the metals and went out. With inconceivable velocity, the
+others, fifteen in all, followed, looking like rockets in the gloom,
+and with the last (he could have had no plan) the Berserk rage left him
+as the doctor’s deadly brewage waked up, under the stimulus of violent
+exercise and a very full meal, to one last cataclysmal exhibition,
+and—we heard the whistle of the seven forty-five down.
+
+They were all acutely interested in as much of the wreck as they could
+see, for the station smelt to Heaven of oil, and the engine skittered
+over broken glass like a terrier in a cucumber-frame. The guard had to
+hear of it, and the Squire had his version of the brutal assault, and
+heads were out all along the carriages as I found me a seat.
+
+“What is the row?” said a young man, as I entered. “Man drunk?”
+
+“Well, the symptoms, so far as my observation has gone, more resemble
+those of Asiatic cholera than anything else,” I answered, slowly and
+judicially, that every word might carry weight in the appointed scheme
+of things. Up till then, you will observe, I had taken no part in that
+war.
+
+He was an Englishman, but he collected his belongings as swiftly as had
+the American, ages before, and leaped upon the platform, crying: “Can I
+be of any service? I’m a doctor.”
+
+From the lamp-room I heard a wearied voice wailing “Another bloomin’
+doctor!”
+
+And the seven forty-five carried me on, a step nearer to Eternity, by
+the road that is worn and seamed and channelled with the passions, and
+weaknesses, and warring interests of man who is immortal and master of
+his fate.
+
+
+
+
+THE BRUSHWOOD BOY
+
+
+Girls and boys, come out to play
+The moon is shining as bright as day!
+Leave your supper and leave your sleep,
+And come with your playfellows out in the street!
+Up the ladder and down the wall—
+
+
+A child of three sat up in his crib and screamed at the top of his
+voice, his fists clinched and his eyes full of terror. At first no one
+heard, for his nursery was in the west wing, and the nurse was talking
+to a gardener among the laurels. Then the housekeeper passed that way,
+and hurried to soothe him. He was her special pet, and she disapproved
+of the nurse.
+
+“What was it, then? What was it, then? There’s nothing to frighten him,
+Georgie dear.”
+
+“It was—it was a policeman! He was on the Down—I saw him! He came in.
+Jane said he would.”
+
+“Policemen don’t come into houses, dearie. Turn over, and take my
+hand.”
+
+“I saw him—on the Down. He came here. Where is your hand, Harper?”
+
+The housekeeper waited till the sobs changed to the regular breathing
+of sleep before she stole out.
+
+“Jane, what nonsense have you been telling Master Georgie about
+policemen?”
+
+“I haven’t told him anything.”
+
+“You have. He’s been dreaming about them.”
+
+“We met Tisdall on Dowhead when we were in the donkey-cart this
+morning. P’r’aps that’s what put it into his head.”
+
+“Oh! Now you aren’t going to frighten the child into fits with your
+silly tales, and the master know nothing about it. If ever I catch you
+again,” etc.
+
+A child of six was telling himself stories as he lay in bed. It was a
+new power, and he kept it a secret. A month before it had occurred to
+him to carry on a nursery tale left unfinished by his mother, and he
+was delighted to find the tale as it came out of his own head just as
+surprising as though he were listening to it “all new from the
+beginning.” There was a prince in that tale, and he killed dragons, but
+only for one night. Ever afterwards Georgie dubbed himself prince,
+pasha, giant-killer, and all the rest (you see, he could not tell any
+one, for fear of being laughed at), and his tales faded gradually into
+dreamland, where adventures were so many that he could not recall the
+half of them. They all began in the same way, or, as Georgie explained
+to the shadows of the night-light, there was “the same starting-off
+place”—a pile of brushwood stacked somewhere near a beach; and round
+this pile Georgie found himself running races with little boys and
+girls. These ended, ships ran high up the dry land and opened into
+cardboard boxes; or gilt-and-green iron railings that surrounded
+beautiful gardens turned all soft and could be walked through and
+overthrown so long as he remembered it was only a dream. He could never
+hold that knowledge more than a few seconds ere things became real, and
+instead of pushing down houses full of grown-up people (a just
+revenge), he sat miserably upon gigantic door-steps trying to sing the
+multiplication-table up to four times six.
+
+The princess of his tales was a person of wonderful beauty (she came
+from the old illustrated edition of Grimm, now out of print), and as
+she always applauded Georgie’s valour among the dragons and buffaloes,
+he gave her the two finest names he had ever heard in his life—Annie
+and Louise, pronounced “Annie_an_louise.” When the dreams swamped the
+stories, she would change into one of the little girls round the
+brushwood-pile, still keeping her title and crown. She saw Georgie
+drown once in a dream-sea by the beach (it was the day after he had
+been taken to bathe in a real sea by his nurse); and he said as he
+sank: “Poor Annie_an_louise! She’ll be sorry for me now!” But
+“Annie_an_louise,” walking slowly on the beach, called, “‘Ha! ha!’ said
+the duck, laughing,” which to a waking mind might not seem to bear on
+the situation. It consoled Georgie at once, and must have been some
+kind of spell, for it raised the bottom of the deep, and he waded out
+with a twelve-inch flower-pot on each foot. As he was strictly
+forbidden to meddle with flower-pots in real life, he felt triumphantly
+wicked.
+
+The movements of the grown-ups, whom Georgie tolerated, but did not
+pretend to understand, removed his world, when he was seven years old,
+to a place called “Oxford-on-a-visit. “Here were huge buildings
+surrounded by vast prairies, with streets of infinite length, and,
+above all, something called the “buttery,” which Georgie was dying to
+see, because he knew it must be greasy, and therefore delightful. He
+perceived how correct were his judgments when his nurse led him through
+a stone arch into the presence of an enormously fat man, who asked him
+if he would like some, bread and cheese. Georgie was used to eat all
+round the clock, so he took what “buttery” gave him, and would have
+taken some brown liquid called “auditale” but that his nurse led him
+away to an afternoon performance of a thing called “Pepper’s Ghost.”
+This was intensely thrilling. People’s heads came off and flew all over
+the stage, and skeletons danced bone by bone, while Mr. Pepper himself,
+beyond question a man of the worst, waved his arms and flapped a long
+gown, and in a deep bass voice (Georgie had never heard a man sing
+before) told of his sorrows unspeakable. Some grown-up or other tried
+to explain that the illusion was made with mirrors, and that there was
+no need to be frightened. Georgie did not know what illusions were, but
+he did know that a mirror was the looking-glass with the ivory handle
+on his mother’s dressing-table. Therefore the “grown-up” was “just
+saying things” after the distressing custom of “grown-ups,” and Georgie
+cast about for amusement between scenes. Next to him sat a little girl
+dressed all in black, her hair combed off her forehead exactly like the
+girl in the book called “Alice in Wonderland,” which had been given him
+on his last birthday. The little girl looked at Georgie, and Georgie
+looked at her. There seemed to be no need of any further introduction.
+
+“I’ve got a cut on my thumb,” said he. It was the first work of his
+first real knife, a savage triangular hack, and he esteemed it a most
+valuable possession.
+
+“I’m tho thorry!” she lisped. “Let me look pleathe.”
+
+“There’s a di-ack-lum plaster on, but it’s all raw under,” Georgie
+answered, complying.
+
+“Dothent it hurt?”—her grey eyes were full of pity and interest.
+
+“Awf’ly. Perhaps it will give me lockjaw.”
+
+“It lookth very horrid. I’m _tho_ thorry!” She put a forefinger to his
+hand, and held her head sidewise for a better view.
+
+Here the nurse turned, and shook him severely. “You mustn’t talk to
+strange little girls, Master Georgie.”
+
+“She isn’t strange. She’s very nice. I like her, an’ I’ve showed her my
+new cut.”
+
+“The idea! You change places with me.”
+
+She moved him over, and shut out the little girl from his view, while
+the grown-up behind renewed the futile explanations.
+
+“I am _not_ afraid, truly,” said the boy, wriggling in despair; “but
+why don’t you go to sleep in the afternoons, same as Provost of Oriel?”
+
+Georgie had been introduced to a grown-up of that name, who slept in
+his presence without apology. Georgie understood that he was the most
+important grown-up in Oxford; hence he strove to gild his rebuke with
+flatteries. This grown-up did not seem to like it, but he collapsed,
+and Georgie lay back in his seat, silent and enraptured. Mr. Pepper was
+singing again, and the deep, ringing voice, the red fire, and the
+misty, waving gown all seemed to be mixed up with the little girl who
+had been so kind about his cut. When the performance was ended she
+nodded to Georgie, and Georgie nodded in return. He spoke no more than
+was necessary till bedtime, but meditated on new colors and sounds and
+lights and music and things as far as he understood them; the
+deep-mouthed agony of Mr. Pepper mingling with the little girl’s lisp.
+That night he made a new tale, from which he shamelessly removed the
+Rapunzel-Rapunzel-let-down-your-hair princess, gold crown, Grimm
+edition, and all, and put a new Annie_an_louise in her place. So it was
+perfectly right and natural that when he came to the brushwood-pile he
+should find her waiting for him, her hair combed off her forehead more
+like Alice in Wonderland than ever, and the races and adventures began.
+
+Ten years at an English public school do not encourage dreaming.
+Georgie won his growth and chest measurement, and a few other things
+which did not appear in the bills, under a system of cricket,
+foot-ball, and paper-chases, from four to five days a week, which
+provided for three lawful cuts of a ground-ash if any boy absented
+himself from these entertainments. He became a rumple-collared,
+dusty-hatted fag of the Lower Third, and a light half-back at Little
+Side foot-ball; was pushed and prodded through the slack backwaters of
+the Lower Fourth, where the raffle of a school generally accumulates;
+won his “second-fifteen” cap at foot-ball, enjoyed the dignity of a
+study with two companions in it, and began to look forward to office as
+a sub-prefect. At last he blossomed into full glory as head of the
+school, ex-officio captain of the games; head of his house, where he
+and his lieutenants preserved discipline and decency among seventy boys
+from twelve to seventeen; general arbiter in the quarrels that spring
+up among the touchy Sixth—and intimate friend and ally of the Head
+himself. When he stepped forth in the black jersey, white knickers, and
+black stockings of the First Fifteen, the new match-ball under his arm,
+and his old and frayed cap at the back of his head, the small fry of
+the lower forms stood apart and worshipped, and the “new caps” of the
+team talked to him ostentatiously, that the world might see. And so, in
+summer, when he came back to the pavilion after a slow but eminently
+safe game, it mattered not whether he had made nothing or, as once
+happened, a hundred and three, the school shouted just the same, and
+women-folk who had come to look at the match looked at Cottar—Cottar,
+_major;_ “that’s Cottar!” Above all, he was responsible for that thing
+called the tone of the school, and few realise with what passionate
+devotion a certain type of boy throws himself into this work. Home was
+a faraway country, full of ponies and fishing and shooting, and
+men-visitors who interfered with one’s plans; but school was the real
+world, where things of vital importance happened, and crises arose that
+must be dealt with promptly and quietly. Not for nothing was it
+written, “Let the Consuls look to it that the Republic takes no harm,”
+and Georgie was glad to be back in authority when the holidays ended.
+Behind him, but not too near, was the wise and temperate Head, now
+suggesting the wisdom of the serpent, now counselling the mildness of
+the dove; leading him on to see, more by half-hints than by any direct
+word, how boys and men are all of a piece, and how he who can handle
+the one will assuredly in time control the other.
+
+For the rest, the school was not encouraged to dwell on its emotions,
+but rather to keep in hard condition, to avoid false quantities, and to
+enter the army direct, without the help of the expensive London
+crammer, under whose roof young blood learns too much. Cottar, _major_,
+went the way of hundreds before him. The Head gave him six months’
+final polish, taught him what kind of answers best please a certain
+kind of examiners, and handed him over to the properly constituted
+authorities, who passed him into Sandhurst. Here he had sense enough to
+see that he was in the Lower Third once more, and behaved with respect
+toward his seniors, till they in turn respected him, and he was
+promoted to the rank of corporal, and sat in authority over mixed
+peoples with all the vices of men and boys combined. His reward was
+another string of athletic cups, a good-conduct sword, and, at last,
+Her Majesty’s commission as a subaltern in a first-class line regiment.
+He did not know that he bore with him from school and college a
+character worth much fine gold, but was pleased to find his mess so
+kindly. He had plenty of money of his own; his training had set the
+public school mask upon his face, and had taught him how many were the
+“things no fellow can do.” By virtue of the same training he kept his
+pores open and his mouth shut.
+
+The regular working of the Empire shifted his world to India, where he
+tasted utter loneliness in subaltern’s quarters,—one room and one
+bullock-trunk,—and, with his mess, learned the new life from the
+beginning. But there were horses in the land-ponies at reasonable
+price; there was polo for such as could afford it; there were the
+disreputable remnants of a pack of hounds; and Cottar worried his way
+along without too much despair. It dawned on him that a regiment in
+India was nearer the chance of active service than he had conceived,
+and that a man might as well study his profession. A major of the new
+school backed this idea with enthusiasm, and he and Cottar accumulated
+a library of military works, and read and argued and disputed far into
+the nights. But the adjutant said the old thing: “Get to know your men,
+young un, and they’ll follow you anywhere. That’s all you want—know
+your men.” Cottar thought he knew them fairly well at cricket and the
+regimental sports, but he never realised the true inwardness of them
+till he was sent off with a detachment of twenty to sit down in a mud
+fort near a rushing river which was spanned by a bridge of boats. When
+the floods came they went forth and hunted strayed pontoons along the
+banks. Otherwise there was nothing to do, and the men got drunk,
+gambled, and quarrelled. They were a sickly crew, for a junior
+subaltern is by custom saddled with the worst men. Cottar endured their
+rioting as long as he could, and then sent down-country for a dozen
+pairs of boxing-gloves.
+
+“I wouldn’t blame you for fightin’,” said he, “if you only knew how to
+use your hands; but you don’t. Take these things, and I’ll show you.”
+The men appreciated his efforts. Now, instead of blaspheming and
+swearing at a comrade, and threatening to shoot him, they could take
+him apart, and soothe themselves to exhaustion. As one explained whom
+Cottar found with a shut eye and a diamond-shaped mouth spitting blood
+through an embrasure: “We tried it with the gloves, sir, for twenty
+minutes, and _that_ done us no good, sir. Then we took off the gloves
+and tried it that way for another twenty minutes, same as you showed
+us, sir, an’ that done us a world o’ good. ’T wasn’t fightin’, sir;
+there was a bet on.”
+
+Cottar dared not laugh, but he invited his men to other sports, such as
+racing across country in shirt and trousers after a trail of torn
+paper, and to single-stick in the evenings, till the native population,
+who had a lust for sport in every form, wished to know whether the
+white men understood wrestling. They sent in an ambassador, who took
+the soldiers by the neck and threw them about the dust; and the entire
+command were all for this new game. They spent money on learning new
+falls and holds, which was better than buying other doubtful
+commodities; and the peasantry grinned five deep round the tournaments.
+
+That detachment, who had gone up in bullock-carts, returned to
+headquarters at an average rate of thirty miles a day, fair
+heel-and-toe; no sick, no prisoners, and no court martials pending.
+They scattered themselves among their friends, singing the praises of
+their lieutenant and looking for causes of offense.
+
+“How did you do it, young un?” the adjutant asked.
+
+“Oh, I sweated the beef off ’em, and then I sweated some muscle on to
+’em. It was rather a lark.”
+
+“If that’s your way of lookin’ at it, we can give you all the larks you
+want. Young Davies isn’t feelin’ quite fit, and he’s next for
+detachment duty. Care to go for him?”
+
+“Sure he wouldn’t mind? I don’t want to shove myself forward, you
+know.”
+
+“You needn’t bother on Davies’s account. We’ll give you the sweepin’s
+of the corps, and you can see what you can make of ’em.”
+
+“All right,” said Cottar. “It’s better fun than loafin’ about
+cantonments.”
+
+“Rummy thing,” said the adjutant, after Cottar had returned to his
+wilderness with twenty other devils worse than the first. “If Cottar
+only knew it, half the women in the station would give their
+eyes—confound ’em!—to have the young un in tow.”
+
+“That accounts for Mrs. Elery sayin’ I was workin’ my nice new boy too
+hard,” said a wing commander.
+
+“Oh, yes; and ‘Why doesn’t he come to the bandstand in the evenings?’
+and ‘Can’t I get him to make up a four at tennis with the Hammon
+girls?’” the adjutant snorted. “Look at young Davies makin’ an ass of
+himself over mutton-dressed-as-lamb old enough to be his mother!”
+
+“No one can accuse young Cottar of runnin’ after women, white _or_
+black,” the major replied thoughtfully. “But, then, that’s the kind
+that generally goes the worst mucker in the end.”
+
+“Not Cottar. I’ve only run across one of his muster before—a fellow
+called Ingles, in South Africa. He was just the same hard trained,
+athletic-sports build of animal. Always kept himself in the pink of
+condition. Didn’t do him much good, though. Shot at Wesselstroom the
+week before Majuba. Wonder how the young un will lick his detachment
+into shape.”
+
+Cottar turned up six weeks later, on foot, with his pupils. He never
+told his experiences, but the men spoke enthusiastically, and fragments
+of it leaked back to the colonel through sergeants, batmen, and the
+like.
+
+There was great jealousy between the first and second detachments, but
+the men united in adoring Cottar, and their way of showing it was by
+sparing him all the trouble that men know how to make for an unloved
+officer. He sought popularity as little as he had sought it at school,
+and therefore it came to him. He favoured no one—not even when the
+company sloven pulled the company cricket-match out of the fire with an
+unexpected forty-three at the last moment. There was very little
+getting round him, for he seemed to know by instinct exactly when and
+where to head off a malingerer; but he did not forget that the
+difference between a dazed and sulky junior of the upper school and a
+bewildered, browbeaten lump of a private fresh from the depot was very
+small indeed. The sergeants, seeing these things, told him secrets
+generally hid from young officers. His words were quoted as barrack
+authority on bets in canteen and at tea; and the veriest shrew of the
+corps, bursting with charges against other women who had used the
+cooking-ranges out of turn, forbore to speak when Cottar, as the
+regulations ordained, asked of a morning if there were “any
+complaints.”
+
+“I’m full o’ complaints,” said Mrs. Corporal Morrison, “an’ I’d kill
+O’Halloran’s fat sow of a wife any day, but ye know how it is. ’E puts
+’is head just inside the door, an’ looks down ’is blessed nose so
+bashful, an’ ’e whispers, ‘Any complaints’ Ye can’t complain after
+that. _I_ want to kiss him. Some day I think I will. Heigh-ho! she’ll
+be a lucky woman that gets Young Innocence. See ’im now, girls. Do ye
+blame me?”
+
+Cottar was cantering across to polo, and he looked a very satisfactory
+figure of a man as he gave easily to the first excited bucks of his
+pony, and slipped over a low mud wall to the practice-ground. There
+were more than Mrs. Corporal Morrison who felt as she did. But Cottar
+was busy for eleven hours of the day. He did not care to have his
+tennis spoiled by petticoats in the court; and after one long afternoon
+at a garden-party, he explained to his major that this sort of thing
+was “futile piffle,” and the major laughed. Theirs was not a married
+mess, except for the colonel’s wife, and Cottar stood in awe of the
+good lady. She said “my regiment,” and the world knows what that means.
+None the less when they wanted her to give away the prizes after a
+shooting-match, and she refused because one of the prize-winners was
+married to a girl who had made a jest of her behind her broad back, the
+mess ordered Cottar to “tackle her,” in his best calling-kit. This he
+did, simply and laboriously, and she gave way altogether.
+
+“She only wanted to know the facts of the case,” he explained. “I just
+told her, and she saw at once.”
+
+“Ye-es,” said the adjutant. “I expect that’s what she did. Comin’ to
+the Fusiliers’ dance to-night, Galahad?”
+
+“No, thanks. I’ve got a fight on with the major.” The virtuous
+apprentice sat up till midnight in the major’s quarters, with a
+stop-watch and a pair of compasses, shifting little painted lead-blocks
+about a four-inch map.
+
+Then he turned in and slept the sleep of innocence, which is full of
+healthy dreams. One peculiarity of his dreams he noticed at the
+beginning of his second hot weather. Two or three times a month they
+duplicated or ran in series. He would find himself sliding into
+dreamland by the same road—a road that ran along a beach near a pile of
+brushwood. To the right lay the sea, sometimes at full tide, sometimes
+withdrawn to the very horizon; but he knew it for the same sea. By that
+road he would travel over a swell of rising ground covered with short,
+withered grass, into valleys of wonder and unreason. Beyond the ridge,
+which was crowned with some sort of street-lamp, anything was possible;
+but up to the lamp it seemed to him that he knew the road as well as he
+knew the parade-ground. He learned to look forward to the place; for,
+once there, he was sure of a good night’s rest, and Indian hot weather
+can be rather trying. First, shadowy under closing eyelids, would come
+the outline of the brushwood-pile; next the white sand of the
+beach-road, almost overhanging the black, changeful sea; then the turn
+inland and uphill to the single light. When he was unrestful for any
+reason, he would tell himself how he was sure to get there—sure to get
+there—if he shut his eyes and surrendered to the drift of things. But
+one night after a foolishly hard hour’s polo (the thermometer was 94°
+in his quarters at ten o’clock), sleep stood away from him altogether,
+though he did his best to find the well-known road, the point where
+true sleep began. At last he saw the brushwood-pile, and hurried along
+to the ridge, for behind him he felt was the wide-awake, sultry world.
+He reached the lamp in safety, tingling with drowsiness, when a
+policeman—a common country policeman—sprang up before him and touched
+him on the shoulder ere he could dive into the dim valley below. He was
+filled with terror,—the hopeless terror of dreams,—for the policeman
+said, in the awful, distinct voice of dream-people, “I am Policeman Day
+coming back from the City of Sleep. You come with me.” Georgie knew it
+was true—that just beyond him in the valley lay the lights of the City
+of Sleep, where he would have been sheltered, and that this
+Policeman-Thing had full power and authority to head him back to
+miserable wakefulness. He found himself looking at the moonlight on the
+wall, dripping with fright; and he never overcame that horror, though
+he met the Policeman several times that hot weather, and his coming was
+the forerunner of a bad night.
+
+But other dreams—perfectly absurd ones—filled him with an
+incommunicable delight. All those that he remembered began by the
+brushwood-pile. For instance, he found a small clockwork steamer (he
+had noticed it many nights before) lying by the sea-road, and stepped
+into it, whereupon it moved with surpassing swiftness over an
+absolutely level sea. This was glorious, for he felt he was exploring
+great matters; and it stopped by a lily carved in stone, which, most
+naturally, floated on the water. Seeing the lily was labelled
+“Hong-Kong,” Georgie said: “Of course. This is precisely what I
+expected Hong-Kong would be like. How magnificent!” Thousands of miles
+farther on it halted at yet another stone lily, labelled “Java”; and
+this, again, delighted him hugely, because he knew that now he was at
+the world’s end. But the little boat ran on and on till it lay in a
+deep fresh-water lock, the sides of which were carven marble, green
+with moss. Lilypads lay on the water, and reeds arched above. Some one
+moved among the reeds—some one whom Georgie knew he had travelled to
+this world’s end to reach. Therefore everything was entirely well with
+him. He was unspeakably happy, and vaulted over the ship’s side to find
+this person. When his feet touched that still water, it changed, with
+the rustle of unrolling maps, to nothing less than a sixth quarter of
+the globe, beyond the most remote imagining of man—a place where
+islands were coloured yellow and blue, their lettering strung across
+their faces. They gave on unknown seas, and Georgie’s urgent desire was
+to return swiftly across this floating atlas to known bearings. He told
+himself repeatedly that it was no good to hurry; but still he hurried
+desperately, and the islands slipped and slid under his feet; the
+straits yawned and widened, till he found himself utterly lost in the
+world’s fourth dimension, with no hope of return. Yet only a little
+distance away he could see the old world with the rivers and
+mountain-chains marked according to the Sandhurst rules of mapmaking.
+Then that person for whom he had come to the Lily Lock (that was its
+name) ran up across unexplored territories, and showed him away. They
+fled hand in hand till they reached a road that spanned ravines, and
+ran along the edge of precipices, and was tunnelled through mountains.
+“This goes to our brushwood-pile,” said his companion; and all his
+trouble was at an end. He took a pony, because he understood that this
+was the Thirty-Mile-Ride and he must ride swiftly, and raced through
+the clattering tunnels and round the curves, always downhill, till he
+heard the sea to his left, and saw it raging under a full moon, against
+sandy cliffs. It was heavy going, but he recognised the nature of the
+country, the dark-purple downs inland, and the bents that whistled in
+the wind. The road was eaten away in places, and the sea lashed at
+him—black, foamless tongues of smooth and glossy rollers; but he was
+sure that there was less danger from the sea than from “Them,” whoever
+“They” were, inland to his right. He knew, too, that he would be safe
+if he could reach the down with the lamp on it. This came as he
+expected: he saw the one light a mile ahead along the beach,
+dismounted, turned to the right, walked quietly over to the
+brushwood-pile, found the little steamer had returned to the beach
+whence he had unmoored it, and—must have fallen asleep, for he could
+remember no more. “I’m gettin’ the hang of the geography of that
+place,” he said to himself, as he shaved next morning. “I must have
+made some sort of circle. Let’s see. The Thirty-Mile-Ride (now how the
+deuce did I know it was called the Thirty-Mile-Ride?) joins the
+sea-road beyond the first down where the lamp is. And that
+atlas-country lies at the back of the Thirty-Mile-Ride, somewhere out
+to the right beyond the hills and tunnels. Rummy things, dreams.
+’Wonder what makes mine fit into each other so?”
+
+He continued on his solid way through the recurring duties of the
+seasons. The regiment was shifted to another station, and he enjoyed
+road-marching for two months, with a good deal of mixed shooting thrown
+in, and when they reached their new cantonments he became a member of
+the local Tent Club, and chased the mighty boar on horseback with a
+short stabbing-spear. There he met the _mahseer_ of the Poonch, beside
+whom the tarpon is as a herring, and he who lands him can say that he
+is a fisherman. This was as new and as fascinating as the big-game
+shooting that fell to his portion, when he had himself photographed for
+the mother’s benefit, sitting on the flank of his first tiger.
+
+Then the adjutant was promoted, and Cottar rejoiced with him, for he
+admired the adjutant greatly, and marvelled who might be big enough to
+fill his place; so that he nearly collapsed when the mantle fell on his
+own shoulders, and the colonel said a few sweet things that made him
+blush. An adjutant’s position does not differ materially from that of
+head of the school, and Cottar stood in the same relation to the
+colonel as he had to his old Head in England. Only, tempers wear out in
+hot weather, and things were said and done that tried him sorely, and
+he made glorious blunders, from which the regimental sergeant-major
+pulled him with a loyal soul and a shut mouth. Slovens and incompetents
+raged against him; the weak-minded strove to lure him from the ways of
+justice; the small-minded—yea, men whom Cottar believed would never do
+“things no fellow can do”—imputed motives mean and circuitous to
+actions that he had not spent a thought upon; and he tasted injustice,
+and it made him very sick. But his consolation came on parade, when he
+looked down the full companies, and reflected how few were in hospital
+or cells, and wondered when the time would come to try the machine of
+his love and labour.
+
+But they needed and expected the whole of a man’s working-day, and
+maybe three or four hours of the night. Curiously enough, he never
+dreamed about the regiment as he was popularly supposed to. The mind,
+set free from the day’s doings, generally ceased working altogether,
+or, if it moved at all, carried him along the old beach-road to the
+downs, the lamp-post, and, once in a while, to terrible Policeman Day.
+The second time that he returned to the world’s lost continent (this
+was a dream that repeated itself again and again, with variations, on
+the same ground) he knew that if he only sat still the person from the
+Lily Lock would help him, and he was not disappointed. Sometimes he was
+trapped in mines of vast depth hollowed out of the heart of the world,
+where men in torment chanted echoing songs; and he heard this person
+coming along through the galleries, and everything was made safe and
+delightful. They met again in low-roofed Indian railway-carriages that
+halted in a garden surrounded by gilt-and-green railings, where a mob
+of stony white people, all unfriendly, sat at breakfast-tables covered
+with roses, and separated Georgie from his companion, while underground
+voices sang deep-voiced songs. Georgie was filled with enormous despair
+till they two met again. They foregathered in the middle of an endless,
+hot tropic night, and crept into a huge house that stood, he knew,
+somewhere north of the railway-station where the people ate among the
+roses. It was surrounded with gardens, all moist and dripping; and in
+one room, reached through leagues of whitewashed passages, a Sick Thing
+lay in bed. Now the least noise, Georgie knew, would unchain some
+waiting horror, and his companion knew it, too; but when their eyes met
+across the bed, Georgie was disgusted to see that she was a child—a
+little girl in strapped shoes, with her black hair combed back from her
+forehead.
+
+“What disgraceful folly!” he thought. “Now she could do nothing
+whatever if Its head came off.”
+
+Then the Thing coughed, and the ceiling shattered down in plaster on
+the mosquito-netting, and “They” rushed in from all quarters. He
+dragged the child through the stifling garden, voices chanting behind
+them, and they rode the Thirty-Mile-Ride under whip and spur along the
+sandy beach by the booming sea, till they came to the downs, the
+lamp-post, and the brushwood-pile, which was safety. Very often dreams
+would break up about them in this fashion, and they would be separated,
+to endure awful adventures alone. But the most amusing times were when
+he and she had a clear understanding that it was all make-believe, and
+walked through mile-wide roaring rivers without even taking off their
+shoes, or set light to populous cities to see how they would burn, and
+were rude as any children to the vague shadows met in their rambles.
+Later in the night they were sure to suffer for this, either at the
+hands of the Railway People eating among the roses, or in the tropic
+uplands at the far end of the Thirty-Mile-Ride. Together, this did no
+much affright them; but often Georgie would hear her shrill cry of
+“Boy! Boy!” half a world away, and hurry to her rescue before “They”
+maltreated her.
+
+He and she explored the dark-purple downs as far inland from the
+brushwood-pile as they dared, but that was always a dangerous matter.
+The interior was filled with “Them,” and “They” went about singing in
+the hollows, and Georgie and she felt safer on or near the seaboard. So
+thoroughly had he come to know the place of his dreams that even waking
+he accepted it as a real country, and made a rough sketch of it. He
+kept his own counsel, of course; but the permanence of the land puzzled
+him. His ordinary dreams were as formless and as fleeting as any
+healthy dreams could be, but once at the brushwood-pile he moved within
+known limits and could see where he was going. There were months at a
+time when nothing notable crossed his sleep. Then the dreams would come
+in a batch of five or six, and next morning the map that he kept in his
+writing case would be written up to date, for Georgie was a most
+methodical person. There was, indeed, a danger—his seniors said so—of
+his developing into a regular “Auntie Fuss” of an adjutant, and when an
+officer once takes to old-maidism there is more hope for the virgin of
+seventy than for him.
+
+But fate sent the change that was needed, in the shape of a little
+winter campaign on the Border, which, after the manner of little
+campaigns, flashed out into a very ugly war; and Cottar’s regiment was
+chosen among the first.
+
+“Now,” said a major, “this’ll shake the cobwebs out of us
+all—especially you, Galahad; and we can see what your
+hen-with-one-chick attitude has done for the regiment.”
+
+Cottar nearly wept with joy as the campaign went forward. They were
+fit—physically fit beyond the other troops; they were good children in
+camp, wet or dry, fed or unfed; and they followed their officers with
+the quick suppleness and trained obedience of a first-class foot-ball
+fifteen. They were cut off from their apology for a base, and
+cheerfully cut their way back to it again; they crowned and cleaned out
+hills full of the enemy with the precision of well-broken dogs of
+chase; and in the hour of retreat, when, hampered with the sick and
+wounded of the column, they were persecuted down eleven miles of
+waterless valley, they, serving as rearguard, covered themselves with a
+great glory in the eyes of fellow-professionals. Any regiment can
+advance, but few know how to retreat with a sting in the tail. Then
+they turned to made roads, most often under fire, and dismantled some
+inconvenient mud redoubts. They were the last corps to be withdrawn
+when the rubbish of the campaign was all swept up; and after a month in
+standing camp, which tries morals severely, they departed to their own
+place in column of fours, singing:
+
+“’E’s goin’ to do without ’em—
+    Don’t want ’em any more;
+’E’s goin’ to do without ’em,
+    As ’e’s often done before.
+’E’s goin’ to be a martyr
+    On a ’ighly novel plan,
+An’ all the boys and girls will say,
+    ’Ow! what a nice young man-man-man!
+    Ow! what a nice young man!’”
+
+
+There came out a _Gazette_ in which Cottar found that he had been
+behaving with “courage and coolness and discretion” in all his
+capacities; that he had assisted the wounded under fire, and blown in a
+gate, also under fire. Net result, his captaincy and a brevet majority,
+coupled with the Distinguished Service Order.
+
+As to his wounded, he explained that they were both heavy men, whom he
+could lift more easily than any one else. “Otherwise, of course, I
+should have sent out one of my men; and, of course, about that gate
+business, we were safe the minute we were well under the walls.” But
+this did not prevent his men from cheering him furiously whenever they
+saw him, or the mess from giving him a dinner on the eve of his
+departure to England. (A year’s leave was among the things he had
+“snaffled out of the campaign,” to use his own words.) The doctor, who
+had taken quite as much as was good for him, quoted poetry about “a
+good blade carving the casques of men,” and so on, and everybody told
+Cottar that he was an excellent person; but when he rose to make his
+maiden speech they shouted so that he was understood to say, “It isn’t
+any use tryin’ to speak with you chaps rottin’ me like this. Let’s have
+some pool.”
+
+It is not unpleasant to spend eight-and-twenty days in an easy-going
+steamer on warm waters, in the company of a woman who lets you see that
+you are head and shoulders superior to the rest of the world, even
+though that woman may be, and most often is, ten counted years your
+senior. P.O. boats are not lighted with the disgustful particularity of
+Atlantic liners. There is more phosphorescence at the bows, and greater
+silence and darkness by the hand-steering gear aft.
+
+Awful things might have happened to Georgie but for the little fact
+that he had never studied the first principles of the game he was
+expected to play. So when Mrs. Zuleika, at Aden, told him how motherly
+an interest she felt in his welfare, medals, brevet, and all, Georgie
+took her at the foot of the letter, and promptly talked of his own
+mother, three hundred miles nearer each day, of his home, and so forth,
+all the way up the Red Sea. It was much easier than he had supposed to
+converse with a woman for an hour at a time. Then Mrs. Zuleika, turning
+from parental affection, spoke of love in the abstract as a thing not
+unworthy of study, and in discreet twilights after dinner demanded
+confidences. Georgie would have been delighted to supply them, but he
+had none, and did not know it was his duty to manufacture them. Mrs.
+Zuleika expressed surprise and unbelief, and asked—those questions
+which deep asks of deep. She learned all that was necessary to
+conviction, and, being very much a woman, resumed (Georgie never knew
+that she had abandoned) the motherly attitude.
+
+“Do you know,” she said, somewhere in the Mediterranean, “I think
+you’re the very dearest boy I have ever met in my life, and I’d like
+you to remember me a little. You will when you are older, but I want
+you to remember me now. You’ll make some girl very happy.”
+
+“Oh! Hope so,” said Georgie, gravely; “but there’s heaps of time for
+marryin’ an’ all that sort of thing, ain’t there?”
+
+“That depends. Here are your bean-bags for the Ladies’ Competition. I
+think I’m growing too old to care for these _tamashas_.”
+
+They were getting up sports, and Georgie was on the committee. He never
+noticed how perfectly the bags were sewn, but another woman did, and
+smiled—once. He liked Mrs. Zuleika greatly. She was a bit old, of
+course, but uncommonly nice. There was no nonsense about her.
+
+A few nights after they passed Gibraltar his dream returned to him. She
+who waited by the brushwood-pile was no longer a little girl, but a
+woman with black hair that grew into a “widow’s peak,” combed back from
+her forehead. He knew her for the child in black, the companion of the
+last six years, and, as it had been in the time of the meetings on the
+Lost Continent, he was filled with delight unspeakable. “They,” for
+some dreamland reason, were friendly or had gone away that night, and
+the two flitted together over all their country, from the
+brushwood-pile up the Thirty-Mile-Ride, till they saw the House of the
+Sick Thing, a pin-point in the distance to the left; stamped through
+the Railway Waiting-room where the roses lay on the spread
+breakfast-tables; and returned, by the ford and the city they had once
+burned for sport, to the great swells of the downs under the lamp-post.
+Wherever they moved a strong singing followed them underground, but
+this night there was no panic. All the land was empty except for
+themselves, and at the last (they were sitting by the lamp-post hand in
+hand) she turned and kissed him. He woke with a start, staring at the
+waving curtain of the cabin door; he could almost have sworn that the
+kiss was real.
+
+Next morning the ship was rolling in a Biscay sea, and people were not
+happy; but as Georgie came to breakfast, shaven, tubbed, and smelling
+of soap, several turned to look at him because of the light in his eyes
+and the splendour of his countenance.
+
+“Well, you look beastly fit,” snapped a neighbour. “Any one left you a
+legacy in the middle of the Bay?”
+
+Georgie reached for the curry, with a seraphic grin. “I suppose it’s
+the gettin’ so near home, and all that. I do feel rather festive this
+mornin. ’Rolls a bit, doesn’t she?”
+
+Mrs. Zuleika stayed in her cabin till the end of the voyage, when she
+left without bidding him farewell, and wept passionately on the
+dock-head for pure joy of meeting her children, who, she had often
+said, were so like their father.
+
+Georgie headed for his own country, wild with delight of his first long
+furlough after the lean seasons. Nothing was changed in that orderly
+life, from the coachman who met him at the station to the white peacock
+that stormed at the carriage from the stone wall above the shaven
+lawns. The house took toll of him with due regard to precedence—first
+the mother; then the father; then the housekeeper, who wept and praised
+God; then the butler, and so on down to the under-keeper, who had been
+dogboy in Georgie’s youth, and called him “Master Georgie,” and was
+reproved by the groom who had taught Georgie to ride.
+
+“Not a thing changed,” he sighed contentedly, when the three of them
+sat down to dinner in the late sunlight, while the rabbits crept out
+upon the lawn below the cedars, and the big trout in the ponds by the
+home paddock rose for their evening meal.
+
+“_Our_ changes are all over, dear,” cooed the mother; “and now I am
+getting used to your size and your tan (you’re very brown, Georgie), I
+see you haven’t changed in the least. You’re exactly like the pater.”
+
+The father beamed on this man after his own heart,—“youngest major in
+the army, and should have had the V.C., sir,”—and the butler listened
+with his professional mask off when Master Georgie spoke of war as it
+is waged to-day, and his father cross-questioned.
+
+They went out on the terrace to smoke among the roses, and the shadow
+of the old house lay long across the wonderful English foliage, which
+is the only living green in the world.
+
+“Perfect! By Jove, it’s perfect!” Georgie was looking at the
+round-bosomed woods beyond the home paddock, where the white pheasant
+boxes were ranged; and the golden air was full of a hundred sacred
+scents and sounds. Georgie felt his father’s arm tighten in his.
+
+“It’s not half bad—but _hodie mihi, cras tibi_, isn’t it? I suppose
+you’ll be turning up some fine day with a girl under your arm, if you
+haven’t one now, eh?”
+
+“You can make your mind easy, sir. I haven’t one.”
+
+“Not in all these years?” said the mother.
+
+“I hadn’t time, mummy. They keep a man pretty busy, these days, in the
+service, and most of our mess are unmarried, too.”
+
+“But you must have met hundreds in society—at balls, and so on?”
+
+“I’m like the Tenth, mummy: I don’t dance.”
+
+“Don’t dance! What have you been doing with yourself, then—backing
+other men’s bills?” said the father.
+
+“Oh, yes; I’ve done a little of that too; but you see, as things are
+now, a man has all his work cut out for him to keep abreast of his
+profession, and my days were always too full to let me lark about half
+the night.”
+
+“Hmm!”—suspiciously.
+
+“It’s never too late to learn. We ought to give some kind of
+housewarming for the people about, now you’ve come back. Unless you
+want to go straight up to town, dear?”
+
+“No. I don’t want anything better than this. Let’s sit still and enjoy
+ourselves. I suppose there will be something for me to ride if I look
+for it?”
+
+“Seeing I’ve been kept down to the old brown pair for the last six
+weeks because all the others were being got ready for Master Georgie, I
+should say there might be,” the father chuckled. “They’re reminding me
+in a hundred ways that I must take the second place now.”
+
+“Brutes!”
+
+“The pater doesn’t mean it, dear; but every one has been trying to make
+your home-coming a success; and you _do_ like it, don’t you?”
+
+“Perfect! Perfect! There’s no place like England—when you ’ve done your
+work.”
+
+“That’s the proper way to look at it, my son.”
+
+And so up and down the flagged walk till their shadows grew long in the
+moonlight, and the mother went indoors and played such songs as a small
+boy once clamoured for, and the squat silver candlesticks were brought
+in, and Georgie climbed to the two rooms in the west wing that had been
+his nursery and his playroom in the beginning. Then who should come to
+tuck him up for the night but the mother? And she sat down on the bed,
+and they talked for a long hour, as mother and son should, if there is
+to be any future for the Empire. With a simple woman’s deep guile she
+asked questions and suggested answers that should have waked some sign
+in the face on the pillow, and there was neither quiver of eyelid nor
+quickening of breath, neither evasion nor delay in reply. So she
+blessed him and kissed him on the mouth, which is not always a mother’s
+property, and said something to her husband later, at which he laughed
+profane and incredulous laughs.
+
+All the establishment waited on Georgie next morning, from the tallest
+six-year-old, “with a mouth like a kid glove, Master Georgie,” to the
+under-keeper strolling carelessly along the horizon, Georgie’s pet rod
+in his hand, and “There’s a four-pounder risin’ below the lasher. You
+don’t ’ave ’em in Injia, Mast-Major Georgie.” It was all beautiful
+beyond telling, even though the mother insisted on taking him out in
+the landau (the leather had the hot Sunday smell of his youth) and
+showing him off to her friends at all the houses for six miles round;
+and the pater bore him up to town and a lunch at the club, where he
+introduced him, quite carelessly, to not less than thirty ancient
+warriors whose sons were not the youngest majors in the army and had
+not the D.S.O. After that it was Georgie’s turn; and remembering his
+friends, he filled up the house with that kind of officer who live in
+cheap lodgings at Southsea or Montpelier Square, Brompton—good men all,
+but not well off. The mother perceived that they needed girls to play
+with; and as there was no scarcity of girls, the house hummed like a
+dovecote in spring. They tore up the place for amateur theatricals;
+they disappeared in the gardens when they ought to have been
+rehearsing; they swept off every available horse and vehicle,
+especially the governess-cart and the fat pony; they fell into the
+trout-ponds; they picnicked and they tennised; and they sat on gates in
+the twilight, two by two, and Georgie found that he was not in the
+least necessary to their entertainment.
+
+“My word!” said he, when he saw the last of their dear backs. “They
+told me they’ve enjoyed ’emselves, but they haven’t done half the
+things they said they would.”
+
+“I know they’ve enjoyed themselves—immensely,” said the mother. “You’re
+a public benefactor, dear.”
+
+“Now we can be quiet again, can’t we?”
+
+“Oh, quite. I’ve a very dear friend of mine that I want you to know.
+She couldn’t come with the house so full, because she’s an invalid, and
+she was away when you first came. She’s a Mrs. Lacy.”
+
+“Lacy! I don’t remember the name about here.”
+
+“No; they came after you went to India—from Oxford. Her husband died
+there, and she lost some money, I believe. They bought The Firs on the
+Bassett Road. She’s a very sweet woman, and we’re very fond of them
+both.”
+
+“She’s a widow, didn’t you say?”
+
+“She has a daughter. Surely I said so, dear?”
+
+“Does she fall into trout-ponds, and gas and giggle, and ‘Oh, Major
+Cottah!’ and all that sort of thing?”
+
+“No, indeed. She’s a very quiet girl, and very musical. She always came
+over here with her music-books—composing, you know; and she generally
+works all day, so you won’t—”
+
+“’Talking about Miriam?” said the pater, coming up. The mother edged
+toward him within elbow-reach. There was no finesse about Georgie’s
+father. “Oh, Miriam’s a dear girl. Plays beautifully. Rides
+beautifully, too. She’s a regular pet of the household. Used to call
+me—” The elbow went home, and ignorant but obedient always, the pater
+shut himself off.
+
+“What used she to call you, sir?”
+
+“All sorts of pet names. I’m very fond of Miriam.”
+
+“Sounds Jewish—Miriam.”
+
+“Jew! You’ll be calling yourself a Jew next. She’s one of the
+Herefordshire Lacys. When her aunt dies—” Again the elbow.
+
+“Oh, you won’t see anything of her, Georgie. She’s busy with her music
+or her mother all day. Besides, you’re going up to town tomorrow,
+aren’t you? I thought you said something about an Institute meeting?”
+The mother spoke.
+
+“Go up to town _now!_ What nonsense!” Once more the pater was shut off.
+
+“I had some idea of it, but I’m not quite sure,” said the son of the
+house. Why did the mother try to get him away because a musical girl
+and her invalid parent were expected? He did not approve of unknown
+females calling his father pet names. He would observe these pushing
+persons who had been only seven years in the county.
+
+All of which the delighted mother read in his countenance, herself
+keeping an air of sweet disinterestedness.
+
+“They’ll be here this evening for dinner. I’m sending the carriage over
+for them, and they won’t stay more than a week.”
+
+“Perhaps I shall go up to town. I don’t quite know yet.” Georgie moved
+away irresolutely. There was a lecture at the United Services Institute
+on the supply of ammunition in the field, and the one man whose
+theories most irritated Major Cottar would deliver it. A heated
+discussion was sure to follow, and perhaps he might find himself moved
+to speak. He took his rod that afternoon and went down to thrash it out
+among the trout.
+
+“Good sport, dear!” said the mother, from the terrace.
+
+“’Fraid it won’t be, mummy. All those men from town, and the girls
+particularly, have put every trout off his feed for weeks. There isn’t
+one of ’em that cares for fishin’—really. Fancy stampin’ and shoutin’
+on the bank, and tellin’ every fish for half a mile exactly what you’re
+goin’ to do, and then chuckin’ a brute of a fly at him! By Jove, it
+would scare _me_ if I was a trout!”
+
+But things were not as bad as he had expected. The black gnat was on
+the water, and the water was strictly preserved. A
+three-quarter-pounder at the second cast set him for the campaign, and
+he worked down-stream, crouching behind the reed and meadowsweet;
+creeping between a hornbeam hedge and a foot-wide strip of bank, where
+he could see the trout, but where they could not distinguish him from
+the background; lying almost on his stomach to switch the blue-upright
+sidewise through the checkered shadows of a gravelly ripple under
+overarching trees. But he had known every inch of the water since he
+was four feet high. The aged and astute between sunk roots, with the
+large and fat that lay in the frothy scum below some strong rush of
+water, sucking as lazily as carp, came to trouble in their turn, at the
+hand that imitated so delicately the flicker and wimple of an
+egg-dropping fly. Consequently, Georgie found himself five miles from
+home when he ought to have been dressing for dinner. The housekeeper
+had taken good care that her boy should not go empty, and before he
+changed to the white moth he sat down to excellent claret with
+sandwiches of potted egg and things that adoring women make and men
+never notice. Then back, to surprise the otter grubbing for fresh-water
+mussels, the rabbits on the edge of the beechwoods foraging in the
+clover, and the policeman-like white owl stooping to the little
+fieldmice, till the moon was strong, and he took his rod apart, and
+went home through well-remembered gaps in the hedges. He fetched a
+compass round the house, for, though he might have broken every law of
+the establishment every hour, the law of his boyhood was unbreakable:
+after fishing you went in by the south garden back-door, cleaned up in
+the outer scullery, and did not present yourself to your elders and
+your betters till you had washed and changed.
+
+“Half-past ten, by Jove! Well, we’ll make the sport an excuse. They
+wouldn’t want to see me the first evening, at any rate. Gone to bed,
+probably.” He skirted by the open French windows of the drawing-room.
+“No, they haven’t. They look very comfy in there.”
+
+He could see his father in his own particular chair, the mother in
+hers, and the back of a girl at the piano by the big potpourri-jar. The
+gardens looked half divine in the moonlight, and he turned down through
+the roses to finish his pipe.
+
+A prelude ended, and there floated out a voice of the kind that in his
+childhood he used to call “creamy” a full, true contralto; and this is
+the song that he heard, every syllable of it:
+
+Over the edge of the purple down,
+    Where the single lamplight gleams,
+Know ye the road to the Merciful Town
+    That is hard by the Sea of Dreams—
+Where the poor may lay their wrongs away,
+    And the sick may forget to weep?
+But we—pity us!Oh, pity us!
+    We wakeful; ah, pity us!—
+We must go back with Policeman Day—
+    Back from the City of Sleep!
+
+Weary they turn from the scroll and crown,
+    Fetter and prayer and plough
+They that go up to the Merciful Town,
+    For her gates are closing now.
+It is their right in the Baths of Night
+    Body and soul to steep
+But we—pity us! ah, pity us!
+    We wakeful; oh, pity us!—
+We must go back with Policeman Day—
+    Back from the City of Sleep!
+
+Over the edge of the purple down,
+    Ere the tender dreams begin,
+Look—we may look—at the Merciful Town,
+    But we may not enter in!
+Outcasts all, from her guarded wall
+    Back to our watch we creep:
+We—pity us! ah, pity us!
+    We wakeful; oh, pity us!—
+We that go back with Policeman Day—
+    Back from the City of Sleep
+
+
+At the last echo he was aware that his mouth was dry and unknown pulses
+were beating in the roof of it. The housekeeper, who would have it that
+he must have fallen in and caught a chill, was waiting to catch him on
+the stairs, and, since he neither saw nor answered her, carried a wild
+tale abroad that brought his mother knocking at the door.
+
+“Anything happened, dear? Harper said she thought you weren’t—”
+
+“No; it’s nothing. I’m all right, mummy. _Please_ don’t bother.”
+
+He did not recognise his own voice, but that was a small matter beside
+what he was considering. Obviously, most obviously, the whole
+coincidence was crazy lunacy. He proved it to the satisfaction of Major
+George Cottar, who was going up to town to-morrow to hear a lecture on
+the supply of ammunition in the field; and having so proved it, the
+soul and brain and heart and body of Georgie cried joyously: “That’s
+the Lily Lock girl—the Lost Continent girl—the Thirty-Mile-Ride
+girl—the Brushwood girl! _I_ know her!”
+
+He waked, stiff and cramped in his chair, to reconsider the situation
+by sunlight, when it did not appear normal. But a man must eat, and he
+went to breakfast, his heart between his teeth, holding himself
+severely in hand.
+
+“Late, as usual,” said the mother. “My boy, Miriam.”
+
+A tall girl in black raised her eyes to his, and Georgie’s life
+training deserted him—just as soon as he realised that she did not
+know. He stared coolly and critically. There was the abundant black
+hair, growing in a widow’s peak, turned back from the forehead, with
+that peculiar ripple over the right ear; there were the grey eyes set a
+little close together; the short upper lip, resolute chin, and the
+known poise of the head. There was also the small well-cut mouth that
+had kissed him.
+
+“Georgie—_dear!_” said the mother, amazedly, for Miriam was flushing
+under the stare.
+
+“I—I beg your pardon!” he gulped. “I don’t know whether the mother has
+told you, but I’m rather an idiot at times, specially before I’ve had
+my breakfast. It’s—it’s a family failing.” He turned to explore among
+the hot-water dishes on the sideboard, rejoicing that she did not
+know—she did not know.
+
+His conversation for the rest of the meal was mildly insane, though the
+mother thought she had never seen her boy look half so handsome. How
+could any girl, least of all one of Miriam’s discernment, forbear to
+fall down and worship? But deeply Miriam was displeased. She had never
+been stared at in that fashion before, and promptly retired into her
+shell when Georgie announced that he had changed his mind about going
+to town, and would stay to play with Miss Lacy if she had nothing
+better to do.
+
+“Oh, but don’t let me throw you out. I’m at work. I’ve things to do all
+the morning.”
+
+“What possessed Georgie to behave so oddly?” the mother sighed to
+herself. “Miriam’s a bundle of feelings—like her mother.”
+
+“You compose—don’t you? Must be a fine thing to be able to do that.
+[‘Pig—oh, pig!’ thought Miriam.] I think I heard you singin’ when I
+came in last night after fishin’. All about a Sea of Dreams, wasn’t it?
+[Miriam shuddered to the core of the soul that afflicted her.] Awfully
+pretty song. How d’ you think of such things?”
+
+“You only composed the music, dear, didn’t you?”
+
+“The words too. I’m sure of it,” said Georgie, with a sparkling eye.
+No; she did not know.
+
+“Yeth; I wrote the words too.” Miriam spoke slowly, for she knew she
+lisped when she was nervous.
+
+“Now how _could_ you tell, Georgie?” said the mother, as delighted as
+though the youngest major in the army were ten years old, showing off
+before company.
+
+“I was sure of it, somehow. Oh, there are heaps of things about me,
+mummy, that you don’t understand. Looks as if it were goin’ to be a hot
+day—for England. Would you care for a ride this afternoon, Miss Lacy?
+We can start out after tea, if you’d like it.”
+
+Miriam could not in decency refuse, but any woman might see she was not
+filled with delight.
+
+“That will be very nice, if you take the Bassett Road. It will save me
+sending Martin down to the village,” said the mother, filling in gaps.
+
+Like all good managers, the mother had her one weakness—a mania for
+little strategies that should economise horses and vehicles. Her
+men-folk complained that she turned them into common carriers, and
+there was a legend in the family that she had once said to the pater on
+the morning of a meet: “If you _should_ kill near Bassett, dear, and if
+it isn’t too late, would you mind just popping over and matching me
+this?”
+
+“I knew that was coming. You’d never miss a chance, mother. If it’s a
+fish or a trunk I won’t.” Georgie laughed.
+
+“It’s only a duck. They can do it up very neatly at Mallett’s,” said
+the mother, simply. “You won’t mind, will you? We’ll have a scratch
+dinner at nine, because it’s so hot.”
+
+The long summer day dragged itself out for centuries; but at last there
+was tea on the lawn, and Miriam appeared.
+
+She was in the saddle before he could offer to help, with the clean
+spring of the child who mounted the pony for the Thirty-Mile-Ride. The
+day held mercilessly, though Georgie got down thrice to look for
+imaginary stones in Rufus’s foot. One cannot say even simple things in
+broad light, and this that Georgie meditated was not simple. So he
+spoke seldom, and Miriam was divided between relief and scorn. It
+annoyed her that the great hulking thing should know she had written
+the words of the song overnight; for though a maiden may sing her most
+secret fancies aloud, she does not care to have them trampled over by
+the male Philistine. They rode into the little red-brick street of
+Bassett, and Georgie made untold fuss over the disposition of that
+duck. It must go in just such a package, and be fastened to the saddle
+in just such a manner, though eight o’clock had struck and they were
+miles from dinner.
+
+“We must be quick!” said Miriam, bored and angry.
+
+“There’s no great hurry; but we can cut over Dowhead Down, and let ’em
+out on the grass. That will save us half an hour.”
+
+The horses capered on the short, sweet-smelling turf, and the delaying
+shadows gathered in the valley as they cantered over the great dun down
+that overhangs Bassett and the Western coaching-road. Insensibly the
+pace quickened without thought of mole-hills; Rufus, gentleman that he
+was, waiting on Miriam’s Dandy till they should have cleared the rise.
+Then down the two-mile slope they raced together, the wind whistling in
+their ears, to the steady throb of eight hoofs and the light
+click-click of the shifting bits.
+
+“Oh, that was glorious!” Miriam cried, reining in. “Dandy and I are old
+friends, but I don’t think we’ve ever gone better together.”
+
+“No; but you’ve gone quicker, once or twice.”
+
+“Really? When?”
+
+Georgie moistened his lips. “Don’t you remember the
+Thirty-Mile-Ride—with me—when ‘They’ were after us—on the beach-road,
+with the sea to the left—going toward the lamp-post on the downs?”
+
+The girl gasped. “What—what do you mean?” she said hysterically.
+
+“The Thirty-Mile-Ride, and—and all the rest of it.”
+
+“You mean—? I didn’t sing anything about the Thirty-Mile-Ride. I know I
+didn’t. I have never told a living soul.’”
+
+“You told about Policeman Day, and the lamp at the top of the downs,
+and the City of Sleep. It all joins on, you know—it’s the same
+country—and it was easy enough to see where you had been.”
+
+“Good God!—It joins on—of course it does; but—I have been—you have
+been—Oh, let’s walk, please, or I shall fall off!”
+
+Georgie ranged alongside, and laid a hand that shook below her
+bridle-hand, pulling Dandy into a walk. Miriam was sobbing as he had
+seen a man sob under the touch of the bullet.
+
+“It’s all right—it’s all right,” he whispered feebly. “Only—only it’s
+true, you know.”
+
+“True! Am I mad?”
+
+“Not unless I’m mad as well. _Do_ try to think a minute quietly. How
+could any one conceivably know anything about the Thirty-Mile-Ride
+having anything to do with you, unless he had been there?”
+
+“But where? But _where?_ Tell me!”
+
+“There—wherever it may be—in our country, I suppose. Do you remember
+the first time you rode it—the Thirty-Mile-Ride, I mean? You must.”
+
+“It was all dreams—all dreams!”
+
+“Yes, but tell, please; because I know.”
+
+“Let me think. I—we were on no account to make any noise—on no account
+to make any noise.” She was staring between Dandy’s ears, with eyes
+that did not see, and a suffocating heart.
+
+“Because ‘It’ was dying in the big house?” Georgie went on, reining in
+again.
+
+“There was a garden with green-and-gilt railings—all hot. Do _you_
+remember?”
+
+“I ought to. I was sitting on the other side of the bed before ‘It’
+coughed and ‘They’ came in.”
+
+“You!”—the deep voice was unnaturally full and strong, and the girl’s
+wide-opened eyes burned in the dusk as she stared him through and
+through. “Then you’re the Boy—my Brushwood Boy, and I’ve known you all
+my life!”
+
+She fell forward on Dandy’s neck. Georgie forced himself out of the
+weakness that was overmastering his limbs, and slid an arm round her
+waist. The head dropped on his shoulder, and he found himself with
+parched lips saying things that up till then he believed existed only
+in printed works of fiction. Mercifully the horses were quiet. She made
+no attempt to draw herself away when she recovered, but lay still,
+whispering, “Of course you’re the Boy, and I didn’t know—I didn’t
+know.”
+
+“I knew last night; and when I saw you at breakfast—”
+
+“Oh, _that_ was why! I wondered at the time. You would, of course.”
+
+“I couldn’t speak before this. Keep your head where it is, dear. It’s
+all right now—all right now, isn’t it?”
+
+“But how was it _I_ didn’t know—after all these years and years? I
+remember—oh, what lots of things I remember!”
+
+“Tell me some. I’ll look after the horses.”
+
+“I remember waiting for you when the steamer came in. Do you?”
+
+“At the Lily Lock, beyond Hong-Kong and Java?”
+
+“Do _you_ call it that, too?”
+
+“You told me it was when I was lost in the continent. That was you that
+showed me the way through the mountains?”
+
+“When the islands slid? It must have been, because you’re the only one
+I remember. All the others were ‘Them.’
+
+“Awful brutes they were, too.”
+
+“I remember showing you the Thirty-Mile-Ride the first time. You ride
+just as you used to—then. You _are_ you!”
+
+“That’s odd. I thought that of you this afternoon. Isn’t it wonderful?”
+
+“What does it all mean? Why should you and I of the millions of people
+in the world have this—this thing between us? What does it mean? I’m
+frightened.”
+
+“This!” said Georgie. The horses quickened their pace. They thought
+they had heard an order. “Perhaps when we die we may find out more, but
+it means this now.”
+
+There was no answer. What could she say? As the world went, they had
+known each other rather less than eight and a half hours, but the
+matter was one that did not concern the world. There was a very long
+silence, while the breath in their nostrils drew cold and sharp as it
+might have been a fume of ether.
+
+“That’s the second,” Georgie whispered. “You remember, don’t you?”
+
+“It’s not!”—furiously. “It’s not!”
+
+“On the downs the other night—months ago. You were just as you are now,
+and we went over the country for miles and miles.”
+
+“It was all empty, too. They had gone away. Nobody frightened us. I
+wonder why, Boy?”
+
+“Oh, if you remember _that_, you must remember the rest. Confess!”
+
+“I remember lots of things, but I _know_ I didn’t. I never have—till
+just now.”
+
+“You _did_, dear.”
+
+“I know I didn’t, because—oh, it’s no use keeping anything back!
+because I truthfully meant to.”
+
+“And truthfully did.”
+
+“No; meant to; but some one else came by.”
+
+“There wasn’t any one else. There never has been.”
+
+“There was—there always is. It was another woman—out there—on the sea.
+I saw her. It was the 26th of May. I’ve got it written down somewhere.”
+
+“Oh, _you_’ve kept a record of your dreams, too? That’s odd about the
+other woman, because I happened to be on the sea just then.”
+
+“I was right. How do I know what you’ve done when you were awake—and I
+thought it was only _you!_”
+
+“You never were more wrong in your life. What a little temper you’ve
+got! Listen to me a minute, dear.” And Georgie, though he knew it not,
+committed black perjury. “It—it isn’t the kind of thing one says to any
+one, because they’d laugh; but on my word and honour, darling, I’ve
+never been kissed by a living soul outside my own people in all my
+life. Don’t laugh, dear. I wouldn’t tell any one but you, but it’s the
+solemn truth.”
+
+“I knew! You are you. Oh, I _knew_ you’d come some day; but I didn’t
+know you were you in the least till you spoke.”
+
+“Then give me another.”
+
+“And you never cared or looked anywhere? Why, all the round world must
+have loved you from the very minute they saw you, Boy.”
+
+“They kept it to themselves if they did. No; I never cared.”
+
+“And we shall be late for dinner—horribly late. Oh, how can I look at
+you in the light before your mother—and mine!”
+
+“We’ll play you’re Miss Lacy till the proper time comes. What’s the
+shortest limit for people to get engaged? S’pose we have got to go
+through all the fuss of an engagement, haven’t we?”
+
+“Oh, I don’t want to talk about that. It’s so commonplace. I’ve thought
+of something that you don’t know. I’m sure of it. What’s my name?”
+
+“Miri—no, it isn’t, by Jove! Wait half a second, and it’ll come back to
+me. You aren’t—you can’t? Why, _those_ old tales—before I went to
+school! I’ve never thought of ’em from that day to this. Are you the
+original, only Annie_an_louise?”
+
+“It was what you always called me ever since the beginning. Oh! We’ve
+turned into the avenue, and we must be an hour late.”
+
+“What does it matter? The chain goes as far back as those days? It
+must, of course—of course it must. I’ve got to ride round with this
+pestilent old bird—confound him!”
+
+“‘Ha! ha!’ said the duck, laughing—do you remember _that?_”
+
+“Yes, I do—flower-pots on my feet, and all. We’ve been together all
+this while; and I’ve got to say good bye to you till dinner. _Sure_
+I’ll see you at dinner-time? _Sure_ you won’t sneak up to your room,
+darling, and leave me all the evening? Good-bye, dear—good-bye.”
+
+“Good-bye, Boy, good-bye. Mind the arch! Don’t let Rufus bolt into his
+stables. Good-bye. Yes, I’ll come down to dinner; but—what shall I do
+when I see you in the light!”
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DAY’S WORK ***
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+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Day’s Work, by Rudyard Kipling</title>
+
+<style type="text/css">
+
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+
+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Day’s Work, by Rudyard Kipling</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Day’s Work</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Rudyard Kipling</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: March, 2001 [eBook #2569]<br />
+[Most recently updated: February 11, 2022]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: An Anonymous Project Gutenberg Volunteer and David Widger</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DAY’S WORK ***</div>
+
+<h1>The Day&rsquo;s Work</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">by Rudyard Kipling</h2>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0001">THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0002">A WALKING DELEGATE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0003">THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0004">THE TOMB OF HIS ANCESTORS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0005">THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0006">WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_PART1">PART I</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_PART2">PART II</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0009">･007</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0010">THE MALTESE CAT</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0011">&ldquo;BREAD UPON THE WATERS&rdquo;</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0012">AN ERROR IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0013">MY SUNDAY AT HOME</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0014">THE BRUSHWOOD BOY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"></a>
+THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS</h2>
+
+<p>
+The least that Findlayson, of the Public Works Department, expected was a C. I.
+E.; he dreamed of a C. S. I.: indeed, his friends told him that he deserved
+more. For three years he had endured heat and cold, disappointment, discomfort,
+danger, and disease, with responsibility almost too heavy for one pair of
+shoulders; and day by day, through that time, the great Kashi Bridge over the
+Ganges had grown under his charge. Now, in less than three months, if all went
+well, his Excellency the Viceroy would open the bridge in state, an archbishop
+would bless it, and the first trainload of soldiers would come over it, and
+there would be speeches.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Findlayson, C. E., sat in his trolley on a construction line that ran along one
+of the main revetments&mdash;the huge stone-faced banks that flared away north
+and south for three miles on either side of the river&mdash;and permitted
+himself to think of the end. With its approaches, his work was one mile and
+three-quarters in length; a lattice-girder bridge, trussed with the Findlayson
+truss, standing on seven-and-twenty brick piers. Each one of those piers was
+twenty-four feet in diameter, capped with red Agra stone and sunk eighty feet
+below the shifting sand of the Ganges&rsquo; bed. Above them was a railway-line
+fifteen feet broad; above that, again, a cart-road of eighteen feet, flanked
+with footpaths. At either end rose towers of red brick, loopholed for musketry
+and pierced for big guns, and the ramp of the road was being pushed forward to
+their haunches. The raw earth-ends were crawling and alive with hundreds upon
+hundreds of tiny asses climbing out of the yawning borrow-pit below with
+sackfuls of stuff; and the hot afternoon air was filled with the noise of
+hooves, the rattle of the drivers&rsquo; sticks, and the swish and roll-down of
+the dirt. The river was very low, and on the dazzling white sand between the
+three centre piers stood squat cribs of railway-sleepers, filled within and
+daubed without with mud, to support the last of the girders as those were
+riveted up. In the little deep water left by the drought, an overhead-crane
+travelled to and fro along its spile-pier, jerking sections of iron into place,
+snorting and backing and grunting as an elephant grunts in the timber-yard.
+Riveters by the hundred swarmed about the lattice side-work and the iron roof
+of the railway-line, hung from invisible staging under the bellies of the
+girders, clustered round the throats of the piers, and rode on the overhang of
+the footpath-stanchions; their fire-pots and the spurts of flame that answered
+each hammer-stroke showing no more than pale yellow in the sun&rsquo;s glare.
+East and west and north and south the construction-trains rattled and shrieked
+up and down the embankments, the piled trucks of brown and white stone banging
+behind them till the side-boards were unpinned, and with a roar and a grumble a
+few thousand tons more material were flung out to hold the river in place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Findlayson, C. E., turned on his trolley and looked over the face of the
+country that he had changed for seven miles around. Looked back on the humming
+village of five thousand workmen; up stream and down, along the vista of spurs
+and sand; across the river to the far piers, lessening in the haze; overhead to
+the guard-towers&mdash;and only he knew how strong those were&mdash;and with a
+sigh of contentment saw that his work was good. There stood his bridge before
+him in the sunlight, lacking only a few weeks&rsquo; work on the girders of the
+three middle piers&mdash;his bridge, raw and ugly as original sin, but
+<i>pukka</i>&mdash;permanent&mdash;to endure when all memory of the builder,
+yea, even of the splendid Findlayson truss, had perished. Practically, the
+thing was done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hitchcock, his assistant, cantered along the line on a little switch-tailed
+Kabuli pony who through long practice could have trotted securely over a
+trestle, and nodded to his chief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All but,&rdquo; said he, with a smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been thinking about it,&rdquo; the senior answered.
+&ldquo;Not half a bad job for two men, is it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One&mdash;and a half. Gad, what a Cooper&rsquo;s Hill cub I was when I
+came on the works!&rdquo; Hitchcock felt very old in the crowded experiences of
+the past three years, that had taught him power and responsibility.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You <i>were</i> rather a colt,&rdquo; said Findlayson. &ldquo;I wonder
+how you&rsquo;ll like going back to office-work when this job&rsquo;s
+over.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall hate it!&rdquo; said the young man, and as he went on his eye
+followed Findlayson&rsquo;s, and he muttered, &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it damned
+good?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think we&rsquo;ll go up the service together,&rdquo; Findlayson said
+to himself. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re too good a youngster to waste on another man.
+Cub thou wast; assistant thou art. Personal assistant, and at Simla, thou shalt
+be, if any credit comes to me out of the business!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Indeed, the burden of the work had fallen altogether on Findlayson and his
+assistant, the young man whom he had chosen because of his rawness to break to
+his own needs. There were labour contractors by the half-hundred&mdash;fitters
+and riveters, European, borrowed from the railway workshops, with, perhaps,
+twenty white and half-caste subordinates to direct, under direction, the bevies
+of workmen&mdash;but none knew better than these two, who trusted each other,
+how the underlings were not to be trusted. They had been tried many times in
+sudden crises&mdash;by slipping of booms, by breaking of tackle, failure of
+cranes, and the wrath of the river&mdash;but no stress had brought to light any
+man among men whom Findlayson and Hitchcock would have honoured by working as
+remorselessly as they worked themselves. Findlayson thought it over from the
+beginning: the months of office-work destroyed at a blow when the Government of
+India, at the last moment, added two feet to the width of the bridge, under the
+impression that bridges were cut out of paper, and so brought to ruin at least
+half an acre of calculations&mdash;and Hitchcock, new to disappointment, buried
+his head in his arms and wept; the heart-breaking delays over the filling of
+the contracts in England; the futile correspondences hinting at great wealth of
+commissions if one, only one, rather doubtful consignment were passed; the war
+that followed the refusal; the careful, polite obstruction at the other end
+that followed the war, till young Hitchcock, putting one month&rsquo;s leave to
+another month, and borrowing ten days from Findlayson, spent his poor little
+savings of a year in a wild dash to London, and there, as his own tongue
+asserted and the later consignments proved, put the fear of God into a man so
+great that he feared only Parliament and said so till Hitchcock wrought with
+him across his own dinner-table, and&mdash;he feared the Kashi Bridge and all
+who spoke in its name. Then there was the cholera that came in the night to the
+village by the bridge works; and after the cholera smote the smallpox. The
+fever they had always with them. Hitchcock had been appointed a magistrate of
+the third class with whipping powers, for the better government of the
+community, and Findlayson watched him wield his powers temperately, learning
+what to overlook and what to look after. It was a long, long reverie, and it
+covered storm, sudden freshets, death in every manner and shape, violent and
+awful rage against red tape half frenzying a mind that knows it should be busy
+on other things; drought, sanitation, finance; birth, wedding, burial, and riot
+in the village of twenty warring castes; argument, expostulation, persuasion,
+and the blank despair that a man goes to bed upon, thankful that his rifle is
+all in pieces in the gun-case. Behind everything rose the black frame of the
+Kashi Bridge&mdash;plate by plate, girder by girder, span by span&mdash;and
+each pier of it recalled Hitchcock, the all-round man, who had stood by his
+chief without failing from the very first to this last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So the bridge was two men&rsquo;s work&mdash;unless one counted Peroo, as Peroo
+certainly counted himself. He was a Lascar, a Kharva from Bulsar, familiar with
+every port between Rockhampton and London, who had risen to the rank of sarang
+on the British India boats, but wearying of routine musters and clean clothes,
+had thrown up the service and gone inland, where men of his calibre were sure
+of employment. For his knowledge of tackle and the handling of heavy weights,
+Peroo was worth almost any price he might have chosen to put upon his services;
+but custom decreed the wage of the overhead men, and Peroo was not within many
+silver pieces of his proper value. Neither running water nor extreme heights
+made him afraid; and, as an ex-serang, he knew how to hold authority. No piece
+of iron was so big or so badly placed that Peroo could not devise a tackle to
+lift it&mdash;a loose-ended, sagging arrangement, rigged with a scandalous
+amount of talking, but perfectly equal to the work in hand. It was Peroo who
+had saved the girder of Number Seven pier from destruction when the new wire
+rope jammed in the eye of the crane, and the huge plate tilted in its slings,
+threatening to slide out sideways. Then the native workmen lost their heads
+with great shoutings, and Hitchcock&rsquo;s right arm was broken by a falling
+T-plate, and he buttoned it up in his coat and swooned, and came to and
+directed for four hours till Peroo, from the top of the crane, reported
+&ldquo;All&rsquo;s well,&rdquo; and the plate swung home. There was no one like
+Peroo, serang, to lash, and guy, and hold to control the donkey-engines, to
+hoist a fallen locomotive craftily out of the borrow-pit into which it had
+tumbled; to strip, and dive, if need be, to see how the concrete blocks round
+the piers stood the scouring of Mother Gunga, or to adventure up-stream on a
+monsoon night and report on the state of the embankment-facings. He would
+interrupt the field-councils of Findlayson and Hitchcock without fear, till his
+wonderful English, or his still more wonderful <i>lingua-franca</i>, half
+Portuguese and half Malay, ran out and he was forced to take string and show
+the knots that he would recommend. He controlled his own gang of
+tacklemen&mdash;mysterious relatives from Kutch Mandvi gathered month by month
+and tried to the uttermost. No consideration of family or kin allowed Peroo to
+keep weak hands or a giddy head on the pay-roll. &ldquo;My honour is the honour
+of this bridge,&rdquo; he would say to the about-to-be-dismissed. &ldquo;What
+do I care for your honour? Go and work on a steamer. That is all you are fit
+for.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The little cluster of huts where he and his gang lived centred round the
+tattered dwelling of a sea-priest&mdash;one who had never set foot on black
+water, but had been chosen as ghostly counsellor by two generations of
+sea-rovers all unaffected by port missions or those creeds which are thrust
+upon sailors by agencies along Thames bank. The priest of the Lascara had
+nothing to do with their caste, or indeed with anything at all. He ate the
+offerings of his church, and slept and smoked, and slept again
+&ldquo;for,&rdquo; said Peroo, who had haled him a thousand miles inland,
+&ldquo;he is a very holy man. He never cares what you eat so long as you do not
+eat beef, and that is good, because on land we worship Shiva, we Kharvas; but
+at sea on the Kumpani&rsquo;s boats we attend strictly to the orders of the
+Burra Malum [the first mate], and on this bridge we observe what Finlinson
+Sahib says.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finlinson Sahib had that day given orders to clear the scaffolding from the
+guard-tower on the right bank, and Peroo with his mates was casting loose and
+lowering down the bamboo poles and planks as swiftly as ever they had whipped
+the cargo out of a coaster.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From his trolley he could hear the whistle of the serang&rsquo;s silver pipe
+and the creak and clatter of the pulleys. Peroo was standing on the topmost
+coping of the tower, clad in the blue dungaree of his abandoned service, and as
+Findlayson motioned to him to be careful, for his was no life to throw away, he
+gripped the last pole, and, shading his eyes ship-fashion, answered with the
+long-drawn wail of the fo&rsquo;c&rsquo;sle lookout: &ldquo;<i>Ham dekhta
+hai</i>&rdquo; (&ldquo;I am looking out&rdquo;). Findlayson laughed and then
+sighed. It was years since he had seen a steamer, and he was sick for home. As
+his trolley passed under the tower, Peroo descended by a rope, ape-fashion, and
+cried: &ldquo;It looks well now, Sahib. Our bridge is all but done. What think
+you Mother Gunga will say when the rail runs over?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She has said little so far. It was never Mother Gunga that delayed
+us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is always time for her; and none the less there has been delay.
+Has the Sahib forgotten last autumn&rsquo;s flood, when the stoneboats were
+sunk without warning&mdash;or only a half-day&rsquo;s warning?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, but nothing save a big flood could hurt us now. The spurs are
+holding well on the west bank.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mother Gunga eats great allowances. There is always room for more stone
+on the revetments. I tell this to the Chota Sahib&rdquo;&mdash;he meant
+Hitchcock&mdash; &ldquo;and he laughs.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No matter, Peroo. Another year thou wilt be able to build a bridge in
+thine own fashion.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Lascar grinned. &ldquo;Then it will not be in this way&mdash;with stonework
+sunk under water, as the <i>Quetta</i> was sunk. I like sus-suspen-sheen
+bridges that fly from bank to bank, with one big step, like a gang-plank. Then
+no water can hurt. When does the Lord Sahib come to open the bridge?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In three months, when the weather is cooler.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ho! ho! He is like the Burra Malum. He sleeps below while the work is
+being done. Then he comes upon the quarter-deck and touches with his finger,
+and says: &lsquo;This is not clean! Dam jibboonwallah!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But the Lord Sahib does not call me a dam jibboonwallah, Peroo.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, Sahib; but he does not come on deck till the work is all finished.
+Even the Burra Malum of the <i>Nerbudda</i> said once at
+Tuticorin&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bah! Go! I am busy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I, also!&rdquo; said Peroo, with an unshaken countenance. &ldquo;May I
+take the light dinghy now and row along the spurs?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To hold them with thy hands? They are, I think, sufficiently
+heavy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nay, Sahib. It is thus. At sea, on the Black Water, we have room to be
+blown up and down without care. Here we have no room at all. Look you, we have
+put the river into a dock, and run her between stone sills.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Findlayson smiled at the &ldquo;we.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We have bitted and bridled her. She is not like the sea, that can beat
+against a soft beach. She is Mother Gunga&mdash;in irons.&rdquo; His voice fell
+a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Peroo, thou hast been up and down the world more even than I. Speak true
+talk, now. How much dost thou in thy heart believe of Mother Gunga?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All that our priest says. London is London, Sahib. Sydney is Sydney, and
+Port Darwin is Port Darwin. Also Mother Gunga is Mother Gunga, and when I come
+back to her banks I know this and worship. In London I did poojah to the big
+temple by the river for the sake of the God within . . . . Yes, I will not take
+the cushions in the dinghy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Findlayson mounted his horse and trotted to the shed of a bungalow that he
+shared with his assistant. The place had become home to him in the last three
+years. He had grilled in the heat, sweated in the rains, and shivered with
+fever under the rude thatch roof; the lime-wash beside the door was covered
+with rough drawings and formulae, and the sentry-path trodden in the matting of
+the verandah showed where he had walked alone. There is no eight-hour limit to
+an engineer&rsquo;s work, and the evening meal with Hitchcock was eaten booted
+and spurred: over their cigars they listened to the hum of the village as the
+gangs came up from the river-bed and the lights began to twinkle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Peroo has gone up the spurs in your dinghy. He&rsquo;s taken a couple of
+nephews with him, and he&rsquo;s lolling in the stern like a commodore,&rdquo;
+said Hitchcock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all right. He&rsquo;s got something on his mind.
+You&rsquo;d think that ten years in the British India boats would have knocked
+most of his religion out of him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So it has,&rdquo; said Hitchcock, chuckling. &ldquo;I overheard him the
+other day in the middle of a most atheistical talk with that fat old
+<i>guru</i> of theirs. Peroo denied the efficacy of prayer; and wanted the
+<i>guru</i> to go to sea and watch a gale out with him, and see if he could
+stop a monsoon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All the same, if you carried off his <i>guru</i> he&rsquo;d leave us
+like a shot. He was yarning away to me about praying to the dome of St.
+Paul&rsquo;s when he was in London.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He told me that the first time he went into the engine-room of a
+steamer, when he was a boy, he prayed to the low-pressure cylinder.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not half a bad thing to pray to, either. He&rsquo;s propitiating his own
+Gods now, and he wants to know what Mother Gunga will think of a bridge being
+run across her. Who&rsquo;s there?&rdquo; A shadow darkened the doorway, and a
+telegram was put into Hitchcock&rsquo;s hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She ought to be pretty well used to it by this time. Only a <i>tar</i>.
+It ought to be Ralli&rsquo;s answer about the new rivets. . . . Great
+Heavens!&rdquo; Hitchcock jumped to his feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; said the senior, and took the form.
+&ldquo;<i>That&rsquo;s</i> what Mother Gunga thinks, is it,&rdquo; he said,
+reading. &ldquo;Keep cool, young&rsquo;un. We&rsquo;ve got all our work cut out
+for us. Let&rsquo;s see. Muir wired half an hour ago: &lsquo;<i>Floods on the
+Ramgunga. Look out</i>.&rsquo; Well, that gives us&mdash;one, two&mdash;nine
+and a half for the flood to reach Melipur Ghaut and seven&rsquo;s sixteen and a
+half to Lataoli&mdash;say fifteen hours before it comes down to us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Curse that hill-fed sewer of a Ramgunga! Findlayson, this is two months
+before anything could have been expected, and the left bank is littered up with
+stuff still. Two full months before the time!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s why it comes. I&rsquo;ve only known Indian rivers for
+five-and-twenty years, and I don&rsquo;t pretend to understand. Here comes
+another <i>tar</i>.&rdquo; Findlayson opened the telegram. &ldquo;Cockran, this
+time, from the Ganges Canal: &lsquo;<i>Heavy rains here. Bad.</i>&rsquo; He
+might have saved the last word. Well, we don&rsquo;t want to know any more.
+We&rsquo;ve got to work the gangs all night and clean up the river-bed.
+You&rsquo;ll take the east bank and work out to meet me in the middle. Get
+every thing that floats below the bridge: we shall have quite enough rivercraft
+coming down adrift anyhow, without letting the stone-boats ram the piers. What
+have you got on the east bank that needs looking after.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pontoon&mdash;one big pontoon with the overhead crane on it.
+T&rsquo;other overhead crane on the mended pontoon, with the cart-road rivets
+from Twenty to Twenty-three piers&mdash;two construction lines, and a
+turning-spur. The pilework must take its chance,&rdquo; said Hitchcock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All right. Roll up everything you can lay hands on. We&rsquo;ll give the
+gang fifteen minutes more to eat their grub.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Close to the verandah stood a big night-gong, never used except for flood, or
+fire in the village. Hitchcock had called for a fresh horse, and was off to his
+side of the bridge when Findlayson took the cloth-bound stick and smote with
+the rubbing stroke that brings out the full thunder of the metal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Long before the last rumble ceased every night-gong in the village had taken up
+the warning. To these were added the hoarse screaming of conches in the little
+temples; the throbbing of drums and tom-toms; and, from the European quarters,
+where the riveters lived, McCartney&rsquo;s bugle, a weapon of offence on
+Sundays and festivals, brayed desperately, calling to &ldquo;Stables.&rdquo;
+Engine after engine toiling home along the spurs at the end of her day&rsquo;s
+work whistled in answer till the whistles were answered from the far bank. Then
+the big gong thundered thrice for a sign that it was flood and not fire; conch,
+drum, and whistle echoed the call, and the village quivered to the sound of
+bare feet running upon soft earth. The order in all cases was to stand by the
+day&rsquo;s work and wait instructions. The gangs poured by in the dusk; men
+stopping to knot a loin-cloth or fasten a sandal; gang-foremen shouting to
+their subordinates as they ran or paused by the tool-issue sheds for bars and
+mattocks; locomotives creeping down their tracks wheel-deep in the crowd; till
+the brown torrent disappeared into the dusk of the river-bed, raced over the
+pilework, swarmed along the lattices, clustered by the cranes, and stood still,
+each man in his place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then the troubled beating of the gong carried the order to take up everything
+and bear it beyond highwater mark, and the flare-lamps broke out by the hundred
+between the webs of dull iron as the riveters began a night&rsquo;s work,
+racing against the flood that was to come. The girders of the three centre
+piers&mdash;those that stood on the cribs&mdash;were all but in position. They
+needed just as many rivets as could be driven into them, for the flood would
+assuredly wash out their supports, and the ironwork would settle down on the
+caps of stone if they were not blocked at the ends. A hundred crowbars strained
+at the sleepers of the temporary line that fed the unfinished piers. It was
+heaved up in lengths, loaded into trucks, and backed up the bank beyond
+flood-level by the groaning locomotives. The tool-sheds on the sands melted
+away before the attack of shouting armies, and with them went the stacked ranks
+of Government stores, iron-bound boxes of rivets, pliers, cutters, duplicate
+parts of the riveting-machines, spare pumps and chains. The big crane would be
+the last to be shifted, for she was hoisting all the heavy stuff up to the main
+structure of the bridge. The concrete blocks on the fleet of stone-boats were
+dropped overside, where there was any depth of water, to guard the piers, and
+the empty boats themselves were poled under the bridge down-stream. It was here
+that Peroo&rsquo;s pipe shrilled loudest, for the first stroke of the big gong
+had brought the dinghy back at racing speed, and Peroo and his people were
+stripped to the waist, working for the honour and credit which are better than
+life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I knew she would speak,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;<i>I</i> knew, but the
+telegraph gives us good warning. O sons of unthinkable begetting&mdash;children
+of unspeakable shame&mdash;are we here for the look of the thing?&rdquo; It was
+two feet of wire-rope frayed at the ends, and it did wonders as Peroo leaped
+from gunnel to gunnel, shouting the language of the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Findlayson was more troubled for the stone-boats than anything else. McCartney,
+with his gangs, was blocking up the ends of the three doubtful spans, but boats
+adrift, if the flood chanced to be a high one, might endanger the girders; and
+there was a very fleet in the shrunken channel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Get them behind the swell of the guard-tower,&rdquo; he shouted down to
+Peroo. &ldquo;It will be dead-water there. Get them below the bridge.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Accha!</i> [Very good.] <i>I</i> know; we are mooring them with
+wire-rope,&rdquo; was the answer. &ldquo;Heh! Listen to the Chota Sahib. He is
+working hard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From across the river came an almost continuous whistling of locomotives,
+backed by the rumble of stone. Hitchcock at the last minute was spending a few
+hundred more trucks of Tarakee stone in reinforcing his spurs and embankments.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The bridge challenges Mother Gunga,&rdquo; said Peroo, with a laugh.
+&ldquo;But when <i>she</i> talks I know whose voice will be the loudest.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For hours the naked men worked, screaming and shouting under the lights. It was
+a hot, moonless night; the end of it was darkened by clouds and a sudden squall
+that made Findlayson very grave.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She moves!&rdquo; said Peroo, just before the dawn. &ldquo;Mother Gunga
+is awake! Hear!&rdquo; He dipped his hand over the side of a boat and the
+current mumbled on it. A little wave hit the side of a pier with a crisp slap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Six hours before her time,&rdquo; said Findlayson, mopping his forehead
+savagely. &ldquo;Now we can&rsquo;t depend on anything. We&rsquo;d better clear
+all hands out of the river-bed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again the big gong beat, and a second time there was the rushing of naked feet
+on earth and ringing iron; the clatter of tools ceased. In the silence, men
+heard the dry yawn of water crawling over thirsty sand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Foreman after foreman shouted to Findlayson, who had posted himself by the
+guard-tower, that his section of the river-bed had been cleaned out, and when
+the last voice dropped Findlayson hurried over the bridge till the iron plating
+of the permanent way gave place to the temporary plank-walk over the three
+centre piers, and there he met Hitchcock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All clear your side?&rdquo; said Findlayson. The whisper rang in the box
+of latticework.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, and the east channel&rsquo;s filling now. We&rsquo;re utterly out
+of our reckoning. When is this thing down on us?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no saying. She&rsquo;s filling as fast as she can.
+Look!&rdquo; Findlayson pointed to the planks below his feet, where the sand,
+burned and defiled by months of work, was beginning to whisper and fizz.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What orders?&rdquo; said Hitchcock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Call the roll&mdash;count stores&mdash;sit on your hunkers&mdash;and
+pray for the bridge. That&rsquo;s all I can think of. Good night. Don&rsquo;t
+risk your life trying to fish out anything that may go down-stream.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;ll be as prudent as you are! &rsquo;Night. Heavens, how
+she&rsquo;s filling! Here&rsquo;s the rain in earnest!&rdquo; Findlayson picked
+his way back to his bank, sweeping the last of McCartney&rsquo;s riveters
+before him. The gangs had spread themselves along the embankments, regardless
+of the cold rain of the dawn, and there they waited for the flood. Only Peroo
+kept his men together behind the swell of the guard-tower, where the
+stone-boats lay tied fore and aft with hawsers, wire-rope, and chains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A shrill wail ran along the line, growing to a yell, half fear and half wonder:
+the face of the river whitened from bank to bank between the stone facings, and
+the faraway spurs went out in spouts of foam. Mother Gunga had come bank-high
+in haste, and a wall of chocolate-coloured water was her messenger. There was a
+shriek above the roar of the water, the complaint of the spans coming down on
+their blocks as the cribs were whirled out from under their bellies. The
+stone-boats groaned and ground each other in the eddy that swung round the
+abutment, and their clumsy masts rose higher and higher against the dim
+sky-line.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Before she was shut between these walls we knew what she would do. Now
+she is thus cramped God only knows what she will do!&rdquo; said Peroo,
+watching the furious turmoil round the guard-tower. &ldquo;Ohé! Fight, then!
+Fight hard, for it is thus that a woman wears herself out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Mother Gunga would not fight as Peroo desired. After the first down-stream
+plunge there came no more walls of water, but the river lifted herself bodily,
+as a snake when she drinks in midsummer, plucking and fingering along the
+revetments, and banking up behind the piers till even Findlayson began to
+recalculate the strength of his work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When day came the village gasped. &ldquo;Only last night,&rdquo; men said,
+turning to each other, &ldquo;it was as a town in the river-bed! Look
+now!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And they looked and wondered afresh at the deep water, the racing water that
+licked the throat of the piers. The farther bank was veiled by rain, into which
+the bridge ran out and vanished; the spurs up-stream were marked by no more
+than eddies and spoutings, and down-stream the pent river, once freed of her
+guide-lines, had spread like a sea to the horizon. Then hurried by, rolling in
+the water, dead men and oxen together, with here and there a patch of thatched
+roof that melted when it touched a pier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Big flood,&rdquo; said Peroo, and Findlayson nodded. It was as big a
+flood as he had any wish to watch. His bridge would stand what was upon her
+now, but not very much more, and if by any of a thousand chances there happened
+to be a weakness in the embankments, Mother Gunga would carry his honour to the
+sea with the other raffle. Worst of all, there was nothing to do except to sit
+still; and Findlayson sat still under his macintosh till his helmet became pulp
+on his head, and his boots were over-ankle in mire. He took no count of time,
+for the river was marking the hours, inch by inch and foot by foot, along the
+embankment, and he listened, numb and hungry, to the straining of the
+stone-boats, the hollow thunder under the piers, and the hundred noises that
+make the full note of a flood. Once a dripping servant brought him food, but he
+could not eat; and once he thought that he heard a faint toot from a locomotive
+across the river, and then he smiled. The bridge&rsquo;s failure would hurt his
+assistant not a little, but Hitchcock was a young man with his big work yet to
+do. For himself the crash meant everything&mdash;everything that made a hard
+life worth the living. They would say, the men of his own profession. . . he
+remembered the half pitying things that he himself had said when
+Lockhart&rsquo;s new waterworks burst and broke down in brickheaps and sludge,
+and Lockhart&rsquo;s spirit broke in him and he died. He remembered what he
+himself had said when the Sumao Bridge went out in the big cyclone by the sea;
+and most he remembered poor Hartopp&rsquo;s face three weeks later, when the
+shame had marked it. His bridge was twice the size of Hartopp&rsquo;s, and it
+carried the Findlayson truss as well as the new pier-shoe&mdash;the Findlayson
+bolted shoe. There were no excuses in his service. Government might listen,
+perhaps, but his own kind would judge him by his bridge, as that stood or fell.
+He went over it in his head, plate by plate, span by span, brick by brick, pier
+by pier, remembering, comparing, estimating, and recalculating, lest there
+should be any mistake; and through the long hours and through the flights of
+formulae that danced and wheeled before him a cold fear would come to pinch his
+heart. His side of the sum was beyond question; but what man knew Mother
+Gunga&rsquo;s arithmetic? Even as he was making all sure by the
+multiplication-table, the river might be scooping a pot-hole to the very bottom
+of any one of those eighty-foot piers that carried his reputation. Again a
+servant came to him with food, but his mouth was dry, and he could only drink
+and return to the decimals in his brain. And the river was still rising. Peroo,
+in a mat shelter-coat, crouched at his feet, watching now his face and now the
+face of the river, but saying nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last the Lascar rose and floundered through the mud towards the village, but
+he was careful to leave an ally to watch the boats.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently he returned, most irreverently driving before him the priest of his
+creed&mdash;a fat old man, with a grey beard that whipped the wind with the wet
+cloth that blew over his shoulder. Never was seen so lamentable a <i>guru</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What good are offerings and little kerosene lamps and dry grain,&rdquo;
+shouted Peroo, &ldquo;if squatting in the mud is all that thou canst do? Thou
+hast dealt long with the Gods when they were contented and well-wishing. Now
+they are angry. Speak to them!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is a man against the wrath of Gods?&rdquo; whined the priest,
+cowering as the wind took him. &ldquo;Let me go to the temple, and I will pray
+there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Son of a pig, pray <i>here!</i> Is there no return for salt fish and
+curry powder and dried onions? Call aloud! Tell Mother Gunga we have had
+enough. Bid her be still for the night. I cannot pray, but I have been serving
+in the Kumpani&rsquo;s boats, and when men did not obey my orders
+I&mdash;&rdquo; A flourish of the wire-rope colt rounded the sentence, and the
+priest, breaking free from his disciple, fled to the village.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fat pig!&rdquo; said Peroo. &ldquo;After all that we have done for him!
+When the flood is down I will see to it that we get a new <i>guru</i>.
+Finlinson Sahib, it darkens for night now, and since yesterday nothing has been
+eaten. Be wise, Sahib. No man can endure watching and great thinking on an
+empty belly. Lie down, Sahib. The river will do what the river will do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The bridge is mine; I cannot leave it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wilt thou hold it up with thy hands, then?&rdquo; said Peroo, laughing.
+&ldquo;I was troubled for my boats and sheers <i>before</i> the flood came. Now
+we are in the hands of the Gods. The Sahib will not eat and lie down? Take
+these, then. They are meat and good toddy together, and they kill all
+weariness, besides the fever that follows the rain. I have eaten nothing else
+to-day at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took a small tin tobacco-box from his sodden waistbelt and thrust it into
+Findlayson&rsquo;s hand, saying, &ldquo;Nay, do not be afraid. It is no more
+than opium&mdash;clean Malwa opium!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Findlayson shook two or three of the dark-brown pellets into his hand, and
+hardly knowing what he did, swallowed them. The stuff was at least a good guard
+against fever&mdash;the fever that was creeping upon him out of the wet
+mud&mdash;and he had seen what Peroo could do in the stewing mists of autumn on
+the strength of a dose from the tin box.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Peroo nodded with bright eyes. &ldquo;In a little&mdash;in a little the Sahib
+will find that he thinks well again. I too will&mdash;&rdquo; He dived into his
+treasure-box, resettled the rain-coat over his head, and squatted down to watch
+the boats. It was too dark now to see beyond the first pier, and the night
+seemed to have given the river new strength. Findlayson stood with his chin on
+his chest, thinking. There was one point about one of the piers&mdash;the
+seventh&mdash;that he had not fully settled in his mind. The figures would not
+shape themselves to the eye except one by one and at enormous intervals of
+time. There was a sound rich and mellow in his ears like the deepest note of a
+double-bass&mdash;an entrancing sound upon which he pondered for several hours,
+as it seemed. Then Peroo was at his elbow, shouting that a wire hawser had
+snapped and the stone-boats were loose. Findlayson saw the fleet open and swing
+out fanwise to a long-drawn shriek of wire straining across gunnels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A tree hit them. They will all go,&rdquo; cried Peroo. &ldquo;The main
+hawser has parted. What does the Sahib do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An immensely complex plan had suddenly flashed into Findlayson&rsquo;s mind. He
+saw the ropes running from boat to boat in straight lines and angles&mdash;each
+rope a line of white fire. But there was one rope which was the master rope. He
+could see that rope. If he could pull it once, it was absolutely and
+mathematically certain that the disordered fleet would reassemble itself in the
+backwater behind the guard-tower. But why, he wondered, was Peroo clinging so
+desperately to his waist as he hastened down the bank? It was necessary to put
+the Lascar aside, gently and slowly, because it was necessary to save the
+boats, and, further, to demonstrate the extreme ease of the problem that looked
+so difficult. And then&mdash;but it was of no conceivable importance&mdash;a
+wirerope raced through his hand, burning it, the high bank disappeared, and
+with it all the slowly dispersing factors of the problem. He was sitting in the
+rainy darkness&mdash;sitting in a boat that spun like a top, and Peroo was
+standing over him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I had forgotten,&rdquo; said the Lascar, slowly, &ldquo;that to those
+fasting and unused, the opium is worse than any wine. Those who die in Gunga go
+to the Gods. Still, I have no desire to present myself before such great ones.
+Can the Sahib swim?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What need? He can fly&mdash;fly as swiftly as the wind,&rdquo; was the
+thick answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is mad!&rdquo; muttered Peroo, under his breath. &ldquo;And he threw
+me aside like a bundle of dung-cakes. Well, he will not know his death. The
+boat cannot live an hour here even if she strike nothing. It is not good to
+look at death with a clear eye.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He refreshed himself again from the tin box, squatted down in the bows of the
+reeling, pegged, and stitched craft, staring through the mist at the nothing
+that was there. A warm drowsiness crept over Findlayson, the Chief Engineer,
+whose duty was with his bridge. The heavy raindrops struck him with a thousand
+tingling little thrills, and the weight of all time since time was made hung
+heavy on his eyelids. He thought and perceived that he was perfectly secure,
+for the water was so solid that a man could surely step out upon it, and,
+standing still with his legs apart to keep his balance&mdash;this was the most
+important point&mdash;would be borne with great and easy speed to the shore.
+But yet a better plan came to him. It needed only an exertion of will for the
+soul to hurl the body ashore as wind drives paper, to waft it kite-fashion to
+the bank. Thereafter&mdash;the boat spun dizzily&mdash;suppose the high wind
+got under the freed body? Would it tower up like a kite and pitch headlong on
+the far-away sands, or would it duck about, beyond control, through all
+eternity? Findlayson gripped the gunnel to anchor himself, for it seemed that
+he was on the edge of taking the flight before he had settled all his plans.
+Opium has more effect on the white man than the black. Peroo was only
+comfortably indifferent to accidents. &ldquo;She cannot live,&rdquo; he
+grunted. &ldquo;Her seams open already. If she were even a dinghy with oars we
+could have ridden it out; but a box with holes is no good. Finlinson Sahib, she
+fills.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Accha!</i> I am going away. Come thou also.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In his mind, Findlayson had already escaped from the boat, and was circling
+high in air to find a rest for the sole of his foot. His body&mdash;he was
+really sorry for its gross helplessness&mdash;lay in the stern, the water
+rushing about its knees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How very ridiculous!&rdquo; he said to himself, from his
+eyrie&mdash;&ldquo;that is Findlayson&mdash;chief of the Kashi Bridge. The poor
+beast is going to be drowned, too. Drowned when it&rsquo;s close to shore.
+I&rsquo;m&mdash;I&rsquo;m onshore already. Why doesn&rsquo;t it come
+along.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To his intense disgust, he found his soul back in his body again, and that body
+spluttering and choking in deep water. The pain of the reunion was atrocious,
+but it was necessary, also, to fight for the body. He was conscious of grasping
+wildly at wet sand, and striding prodigiously, as one strides in a dream, to
+keep foothold in the swirling water, till at last he hauled himself clear of
+the hold of the river, and dropped, panting, on wet earth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not this night,&rdquo; said Peroo, in his ear. &ldquo;The Gods have
+protected us.&rdquo; The Lascar moved his feet cautiously, and they rustled
+among dried stumps. &ldquo;This is some island of last year&rsquo;s
+indigo-crop,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;We shall find no men here; but have
+great care, Sahib; all the snakes of a hundred miles have been flooded out.
+Here comes the lightning, on the heels of the wind. Now we shall be able to
+look; but walk carefully.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Findlayson was far and far beyond any fear of snakes, or indeed any merely
+human emotion. He saw, after he had rubbed the water from his eyes, with an
+immense clearness, and trod, so it seemed to himself, with world-encompassing
+strides. Somewhere in the night of time he had built a bridge&mdash;a bridge
+that spanned illimitable levels of shining seas; but the Deluge had swept it
+away, leaving this one island under heaven for Findlayson and his companion,
+sole survivors of the breed of Man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An incessant lightning, forked and blue, showed all that there was to be seen
+on the little patch in the flood&mdash;a clump of thorn, a clump of swaying
+creaking bamboos, and a grey gnarled peepul overshadowing a Hindoo shrine, from
+whose dome floated a tattered red flag. The holy man whose summer resting-place
+it was had long since abandoned it, and the weather had broken the red-daubed
+image of his god. The two men stumbled, heavy limbed and heavy-eyed, over the
+ashes of a brick-set cooking-place, and dropped down under the shelter of the
+branches, while the rain and river roared together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The stumps of the indigo crackled, and there was a smell of cattle, as a huge
+and dripping Brahminee bull shouldered his way under the tree. The flashes
+revealed the trident mark of Shiva on his flank, the insolence of head and
+hump, the luminous stag-like eyes, the brow crowned with a wreath of sodden
+marigold blooms, and the silky dewlap that almost swept the ground. There was a
+noise behind him of other beasts coming up from the floodline through the
+thicket, a sound of heavy feet and deep breathing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here be more beside ourselves,&rdquo; said Findlayson, his head against
+the tree-pole, looking through half-shut eyes, wholly at ease.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Truly,&rdquo; said Peroo, thickly, &ldquo;and no small ones.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are they, then? I do not see clearly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Gods. Who else? Look!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, true! The Gods surely&mdash;the Gods.&rdquo; Findlayson smiled as
+his head fell forward on his chest. Peroo was eminently right. After the Flood,
+who should be alive in the land except the Gods that made it&mdash;the Gods to
+whom his village prayed nightly&mdash;the Gods who were in all men&rsquo;s
+mouths and about all men&rsquo;s ways. He could not raise his head or stir a
+finger for the trance that held him, and Peroo was smiling vacantly at the
+lightning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Bull paused by the shrine, his head lowered to the damp earth. A green
+Parrot in the branches preened his wet wings and screamed against the thunder
+as the circle under the tree filled with the shifting shadows of beasts. There
+was a black Buck at the Bull&rsquo;s heels&mdash;such a Buck as Findlayson in
+his far-away life upon earth might have seen in dreams&mdash;a Buck with a
+royal head, ebon back, silver belly, and gleaming straight horns. Beside him,
+her head bowed to the ground, the green eyes burning under the heavy brows,
+with restless tail switching the dead grass, paced a Tigress, full-bellied and
+deep-jowled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Bull crouched beside the shrine, and there leaped from the darkness a
+monstrous grey Ape, who seated himself man-wise in the place of the fallen
+image, and the rain spilled like jewels from the hair of his neck and
+shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Other shadows came and went behind the circle, among them a drunken Man
+flourishing staff and drinking-bottle. Then a hoarse bellow broke out from near
+the ground. &ldquo;The flood lessens even now,&rdquo; it cried. &ldquo;Hour by
+hour the water falls, and their bridge still stands!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My bridge,&rdquo; said Findlayson to himself. &ldquo;That must be very
+old work now. What have the Gods to do with my bridge?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His eyes rolled in the darkness following the roar. A Mugger&mdash;the
+blunt-nosed, ford-haunting Mugger of the Ganges&mdash;draggled herself before
+the beasts, lashing furiously to right and left with her tail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They have made it too strong for me. In all this night I have only torn
+away a handful of planks. The walls stand. The towers stand. They have chained
+my flood, and the river is not free any more. Heavenly Ones, take this yoke
+away! Give me clear water between bank and bank! It is I, Mother Gunga, that
+speak. The Justice of the Gods! Deal me the Justice of the Gods!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What said I?&rdquo; whispered Peroo. &ldquo;This is in truth a Punchayet
+of the Gods. Now we know that all the world is dead, save you and I,
+Sahib.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Parrot screamed and fluttered again, and the Tigress, her ears flat to her
+head, snarled wickedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Somewhere in the shadow, a great trunk and gleaming tusks swayed to and fro,
+and a low gurgle broke the silence that followed on the snarl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We be here,&rdquo; said a deep voice, &ldquo;the Great Ones. One only
+and very many. Shiv, my father, is here, with Indra. Kali has spoken already.
+Hanuman listens also.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Kashi is without her Kotwal tonight,&rdquo; shouted the Man with the
+drinking-bottle, flinging his staff to the ground, while the island rang to the
+baying of hounds. &ldquo;Give her the Justice of the Gods.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ye were still when they polluted my waters,&rdquo; the great Crocodile
+bellowed. &ldquo;Ye made no sign when my river was trapped between the walls. I
+had no help save my own strength, and that failed&mdash;the strength of Mother
+Gunga failed&mdash;before their guard-towers. What could I do? I have done
+everything. Finish now, Heavenly Ones!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I brought the death; I rode the spotted sickness from hut to hut of
+their workmen, and yet they would not cease.&rdquo; A nose-slitten, hide-worn
+Ass, lame, scissor-legged, and galled, limped forward. &ldquo;I cast the death
+at them out of my nostrils, but they would not cease.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Peroo would have moved, but the opium lay heavy upon him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bah!&rdquo; he said, spitting. &ldquo;Here is Sitala herself;
+Mata&mdash;the smallpox. Has the Sahib a handkerchief to put over his
+face?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Little help! They fed me the corpses for a month, and I flung them out
+on my sand-bars, but their work went forward. Demons they are, and sons of
+demons! And ye left Mother Gunga alone for their fire-carriage to make a mock
+of. The Justice of the Gods on the bridge-builders!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Bull turned the cud in his mouth and answered slowly: &ldquo;If the Justice
+of the Gods caught all who made a mock of holy things there would be many dark
+altars in the land, mother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But this goes beyond a mock,&rdquo; said the Tigress, darting forward a
+griping paw. &ldquo;Thou knowest, Shiv, and ye, too, Heavenly Ones; ye know
+that they have defiled Gunga. Surely they must come to the Destroyer. Let Indra
+judge.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Buck made no movement as he answered: &ldquo;How long has this evil
+been?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Three years, as men count years,&rdquo; said the Mugger, close pressed
+to the earth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Does Mother Gunga die, then, in a year, that she is so anxious to see
+vengeance now? The deep sea was where she runs but yesterday, and tomorrow the
+sea shall cover her again as the Gods count that which men call time. Can any
+say that this their bridge endures till tomorrow?&rdquo; said the Buck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was along hush, and in the clearing of the storm the full moon stood up
+above the dripping trees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Judge ye, then,&rdquo; said the River, sullenly. &ldquo;I have spoken my
+shame. The flood falls still. I can do no more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For my own part&rdquo;&mdash;it was the voice of the great Ape seated
+within the shrine&mdash;&ldquo;it pleases me well to watch these men,
+remembering that I also builded no small bridge in the world&rsquo;s
+youth.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They say, too,&rdquo; snarled the Tiger, &ldquo;that these men came of
+the wreck of thy armies, Hanuman, and therefore thou hast aided&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They toil as my armies toiled in Lanka, and they believe that their toil
+endures. Indra is too high, but Shiv, thou knowest how the land is threaded
+with their fire-carriages.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yea, I know,&rdquo; said the Bull. &ldquo;Their Gods instructed them in
+the matter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A laugh ran round the circle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Their Gods! What should their Gods know? They were born yesterday, and
+those that made them are scarcely yet cold,&rdquo; said the Mugger,
+&ldquo;tomorrow their Gods will die.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ho!&rdquo; said Peroo. &ldquo;Mother Gunga talks good talk. I told that
+to the padre-sahib who preached on the <i>Mombassa</i>, and he asked the Burra
+Malum to put me in irons for a great rudeness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Surely they make these things to please their Gods,&rdquo; said the Bull
+again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not altogether,&rdquo; the Elephant rolled forth. &ldquo;It is for the
+profit of my mahajuns &mdash;my fat money-lenders that worship me at each new
+year, when they draw my image at the head of the account-books. I, looking over
+their shoulders by lamplight, see that the names in the books are those of men
+in far places&mdash;for all the towns are drawn together by the fire-carriage,
+and the money comes and goes swiftly, and the account-books grow as fat as
+myself. And I, who am Ganesh of Good Luck, I bless my peoples.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They have changed the face of the land-which is my land. They have
+killed and made new towns on my banks,&rdquo; said the Mugger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is but the shifting of a little dirt. Let the dirt dig in the dirt if
+it pleases the dirt,&rdquo; answered the Elephant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But afterwards?&rdquo; said the Tiger. &ldquo;Afterwards they will see
+that Mother Gunga can avenge no insult, and they fall away from her first, and
+later from us all, one by one. In the end, Ganesh, we are left with naked
+altars.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The drunken Man staggered to his feet, and hiccupped vehemently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Kali lies. My sister lies. Also this my stick is the Kotwal of Kashi,
+and he keeps tally of my pilgrims. When the time comes to worship
+Bhairon&mdash;and it is always time&mdash;the fire-carriages move one by one,
+and each bears a thousand pilgrims. They do not come afoot any more, but
+rolling upon wheels, and my honour is increased.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Gunga, I have seen thy bed at Pryag black with the pilgrims,&rdquo; said
+the Ape, leaning forward, &ldquo;and but for the fire-carriage they would have
+come slowly and in fewer numbers. Remember.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They come to me always,&rdquo; Bhairon went on thickly. &ldquo;By day
+and night they pray to me, all the Common People in the fields and the roads.
+Who is like Bhairon today? What talk is this of changing faiths? Is my staff
+Kotwal of Kashi for nothing? He keeps the tally, and he says that never were so
+many altars as today, and the fire carriage serves them well. Bhairon am
+I&mdash;Bhairon of the Common People, and the chiefest of the Heavenly Ones
+today. Also my staff says&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Peace, thou!&rdquo; lowed the Bull. &ldquo;The worship of the schools is
+mine, and they talk very wisely, asking whether I be one or many, as is the
+delight of my people, and ye know what I am. Kali, my wife, thou knowest
+also.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yea, I know,&rdquo; said the Tigress, with lowered head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Greater am I than Gunga also. For ye know who moved the minds of men
+that they should count Gunga holy among the rivers. Who die in that
+water&mdash;ye know how men say&mdash;come to us without punishment, and Gunga
+knows that the fire-carriage has borne to her scores upon scores of such
+anxious ones; and Kali knows that she has held her chiefest festivals among the
+pilgrimages that are fed by the fire-carriage. Who smote at Pooree, under the
+Image there, her thousands in a day and a night, and bound the sickness to the
+wheels of the fire-carriages, so that it ran from one end of the land to the
+other? Who but Kali? Before the fire-carriage came it was a heavy toil. The
+fire-carriages have served thee well, Mother of Death. But I speak for mine own
+altars, who am not Bhairon of the Common Folk, but Shiv. Men go to and fro,
+making words and telling talk of strange Gods, and I listen. Faith follows
+faith among my people in the schools, and I have no anger; for when all words
+are said, and the new talk is ended, to Shiv men return at the last.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;True. It is true,&rdquo; murmured Hanuman. &ldquo;To Shiv and to the
+others, mother, they return. I creep from temple to temple in the North, where
+they worship one God and His Prophet; and presently my image is alone within
+their shrines.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Small thanks,&rdquo; said the Buck, turning his head slowly. &ldquo;I am
+that One and His Prophet also.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Even so, father,&rdquo; said Hanuman. &ldquo;And to the South I go who
+am the oldest of the Gods as men know the Gods, and presently I touch the
+shrines of the new faith and the Woman whom we know is hewn twelve-armed, and
+still they call her Mary.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Small thanks, brother,&rdquo; said the Tigress. &ldquo;I am that
+Woman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Even so, sister; and I go West among the fire-carriages, and stand
+before the bridge-builders in many shapes, and because of me they change their
+faiths and are very wise. Ho! ho! I am the builder of bridges,
+indeed&mdash;bridges between this and that, and each bridge leads surely to Us
+in the end. Be content, Gunga.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Neither these men nor those that follow them mock thee at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Am I alone, then, Heavenly Ones? Shall I smooth out my flood lest
+unhappily I bear away their walls? Will Indra dry my springs in the hills and
+make me crawl humbly between their wharfs? Shall I bury me in the sand ere I
+offend?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And all for the sake of a little iron bar with the fire-carriage atop.
+Truly, Mother Gunga is always young!&rdquo; said Ganesh the Elephant. &ldquo;A
+child had not spoken more foolishly. Let the dirt dig in the dirt ere it return
+to the dirt. I know only that my people grow rich and praise me. Shiv has said
+that the men of the schools do not forget; Bhairon is content for his crowd of
+the Common People; and Hanuman laughs.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Surely I laugh,&rdquo; said the Ape. &ldquo;My altars are few beside
+those of Ganesh or Bhairon, but the fire-carriages bring me new worshippers
+from beyond the Black Water&mdash;the men who believe that their God is toil. I
+run before them beckoning, and they follow Hanuman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Give them the toil that they desire, then,&rdquo; said the River.
+&ldquo;Make a bar across my flood and throw the water back upon the bridge.
+Once thou wast strong in Lanka, Hanuman. Stoop and lift my bed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who gives life can take life.&rdquo; The Ape scratched in the mud with a
+long forefinger. &ldquo;And yet, who would profit by the killing? Very many
+would die.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There came up from the water a snatch of a love-song such as the boys sing when
+they watch their cattle in the noon heats of late spring. The Parrot screamed
+joyously, sidling along his branch with lowered head as the song grew louder,
+and in a patch of clear moonlight stood revealed the young herd, the darling of
+the Gopis, the idol of dreaming maids and of mothers ere their children are
+born&mdash;Krishna the Well-beloved. He stooped to knot up his long wet hair,
+and the parrot fluttered to his shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fleeting and singing, and singing and fleeting,&rdquo; hiccupped
+Bhairon. &ldquo;Those make thee late for the council, brother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And then?&rdquo; said Krishna, with a laugh, throwing back his head.
+&ldquo;Ye can do little without me or Karma here.&rdquo; He fondled the
+Parrot&rsquo;s plumage and laughed again. &ldquo;What is this sitting and
+talking together? I heard Mother Gunga roaring in the dark, and so came quickly
+from a hut where I lay warm. And what have ye done to Karma, that he is so wet
+and silent? And what does Mother Gunga here? Are the heavens full that ye must
+come paddling in the mud beast-wise? Karma, what do they do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Gunga has prayed for a vengeance on the bridgebuilders, and Kali is with
+her. Now she bids Hanuman whelm the bridge, that her honour may be made
+great,&rdquo; cried the Parrot. &ldquo;I waited here, knowing that thou wouldst
+come, O my master!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And the Heavenly Ones said nothing? Did Gunga and the Mother of Sorrows
+out-talk them? Did none speak for my people?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; said Ganesh, moving uneasily from foot to foot; &ldquo;I
+said it was but dirt at play, and why should we stamp it flat?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was content to let them toil&mdash;well content,&rdquo; said Hanuman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What had I to do with Gunga&rsquo;s anger?&rdquo; said the Bull.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am Bhairon of the Common Folk, and this my staff is Kotwal of all
+Kashi. I spoke for the Common People.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thou?&rdquo; The young God&rsquo;s eyes sparkled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Am I not the first of the Gods in their mouths today?&rdquo; returned
+Bhairon, unabashed. &ldquo;For the sake of the Common People I said very many
+wise things which I have now forgotten, but this my staff&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Krishna turned impatiently, saw the Mugger at his feet, and kneeling, slipped
+an arm round the cold neck. &ldquo;Mother,&rdquo; he said gently, &ldquo;get
+thee to thy flood again. This matter is not for thee. What harm shall thy
+honour take of this live dirt? Thou hast given them their fields new year after
+year, and by thy flood they are made strong. They come all to thee at the last.
+What need to slay them now? Have pity, mother, for a little and it is only for
+a little.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If it be only for a little&mdash;&rdquo; the slow beast began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are they Gods, then?&rdquo; Krishna, returned with a laugh, his eyes
+looking into the dull eyes of the River. &ldquo;Be certain that it is only for
+a little. The Heavenly Ones have heard thee, and presently justice will be
+done. Go now, mother, to the flood again. Men and cattle are thick on the
+waters&mdash;the banks fall&mdash;the villages melt because of thee.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But the bridge&mdash;the bridge stands.&rdquo; The Mugger turned
+grunting into the undergrowth as Krishna rose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is ended,&rdquo; said the Tigress, viciously. &ldquo;There is no more
+justice from the Heavenly Ones. Ye have made shame and sport of Gunga, who
+asked no more than a few score lives.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of <i>my</i> people&mdash;who lie under the leaf-roofs of the village
+yonder&mdash;of the young girls, and the young men who sing to them in the dark
+of the child that will be born next morn&mdash;of that which was begotten
+tonight,&rdquo; said Krishna. &ldquo;And when all is done, what profit?
+Tomorrow sees them at work. Ay, if ye swept the bridge out from end to end they
+would begin anew. Hear me! Bhairon is drunk always. Hanuman mocks his people
+with new riddles.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nay, but they are very old ones,&rdquo; the Ape said, laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Shiv hears the talk of the schools and the dreams of the holy men;
+Ganesh thinks only of his fat traders; but I&mdash;I live with these my people,
+asking for no gifts, and so receiving them hourly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And very tender art thou of thy people,&rdquo; said the Tigress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are my own. The old women dream of me turning in their sleep; the
+maids look and listen for me when they go to fill their lotahs by the river. I
+walk by the young men waiting without the gates at dusk, and I call over my
+shoulder to the whitebeards. Ye know, Heavenly Ones, that I alone of us all
+walk upon the earth continually, and have no pleasure in our heavens so long as
+a green blade springs here, or there are two voices at twilight in the standing
+crops. Wise are ye, but ye live far off, forgetting whence ye came. So do I not
+forget. And the fire-carriage feeds your shrines, ye say? And the
+fire-carriages bring a thousand pilgrims where but ten came in the old years?
+True. That is true, today.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But tomorrow they are dead, brother,&rdquo; said Ganesh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Peace!&rdquo; said the Bull, as Hanuman leaned forward again. &ldquo;And
+tomorrow, beloved&mdash;what of tomorrow?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This only. A new word creeping from mouth to mouth among the Common
+Folk&mdash;a word that neither man nor God can lay hold of&mdash;an evil
+word&mdash;a little lazy word among the Common Folk, saying (and none know who
+set that word afoot) that they weary of ye, Heavenly Ones.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Gods laughed together softly. &ldquo;And then, beloved?&rdquo; they said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And to cover that weariness they, my people, will bring to thee, Shiv,
+and to thee, Ganesh, at first greater offerings and a louder noise of worship.
+But the word has gone abroad, and, after, they will pay fewer dues to our fat
+Brahmins. Next they will forget your altars, but so slowly that no man can say
+how his forgetfulness began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I knew&mdash;I knew! I spoke this also, but they would not hear,&rdquo;
+said the Tigress. &ldquo;We should have slain&mdash;we should have
+slain!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is too late now. Ye should have slain at the beginning when the men
+from across the water had taught our folk nothing. Now my people see their
+work, and go away thinking. They do not think of the Heavenly Ones altogether.
+They think of the fire-carriage and the other things that the bridge-builders
+have done, and when your priests thrust forward hands asking alms, they give a
+little unwillingly. That is the beginning, among one or two, or five or
+ten&mdash;for I, moving among my people, know what is in their hearts.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And the end, Jester of the Gods? What shall the end be?&rdquo; said
+Ganesh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The end shall be as it was in the beginning, O slothful son of Shiv! The
+flame shall die upon the altars and the prayer upon the tongue till ye become
+little Gods again&mdash;Gods of the jungle&mdash;names that the hunters of rats
+and noosers of dogs whisper in the thicket and among the caves&mdash;rag-Gods,
+pot Godlings of the tree, and the village-mark, as ye were at the beginning.
+That is the end, Ganesh, for thee, and for Bhairon&mdash;Bhairon of the Common
+People.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is very far away,&rdquo; grunted Bhairon. &ldquo;Also, it is a
+lie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Many women have kissed Krishna. They told him this to cheer their own
+hearts when the grey hairs came, and he has told us the tale,&rdquo; said the
+Bull, below his breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Their Gods came, and we changed them. I took the Woman and made her
+twelve-armed. So shall we twist all their Gods,&rdquo; said Hanuman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Their Gods! This is no question of their Gods&mdash;one or
+three&mdash;man or woman. The matter is with the people. <i>They</i> move, and
+not the Gods of the bridgebuilders,&rdquo; said Krishna.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So be it. I have made a man worship the fire-carriage as it stood still
+breathing smoke, and he knew not that he worshipped me,&rdquo; said Hanuman the
+Ape. &ldquo;They will only change a little the names of their Gods. I shall
+lead the builders of the bridges as of old; Shiv shall be worshipped in the
+schools by such as doubt and despise their fellows; Ganesh shall have his
+mahajuns, and Bhairon the donkey-drivers, the pilgrims, and the sellers of
+toys. Beloved, they will do no more than change the names, and that we have
+seen a thousand times.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Surely they will do no more than change the names,&rdquo; echoed Ganesh;
+but there was an uneasy movement among the Gods.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They will change more than the names. Me alone they cannot kill, so long
+as a maiden and a man meet together or the spring follows the winter rains.
+Heavenly Ones, not for nothing have I walked upon the earth. My people know not
+now what they know; but I, who live with them, I read their hearts. Great
+Kings, the beginning of the end is born already. The fire-carriages shout the
+names of new Gods that are <i>not</i> the old under new names. Drink now and
+eat greatly! Bathe your faces in the smoke of the altars before they grow cold!
+Take dues and listen to the cymbals and the drums, Heavenly Ones, while yet
+there are flowers and songs. As men count time the end is far off; but as we
+who know reckon it is today. I have spoken.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young God ceased, and his brethren looked at each other long in silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This I have not heard before,&rdquo; Peroo whispered in his
+companion&rsquo;s ear. &ldquo;And yet sometimes, when I oiled the brasses in
+the engine-room of the <i>Goorkha</i>, I have wondered if our priests were so
+wise&mdash;so wise. The day is coming, Sahib. They will be gone by the
+morning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A yellow light broadened in the sky, and the tone of the river changed as the
+darkness withdrew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly the Elephant trumpeted aloud as though man had goaded him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let Indra judge. Father of all, speak thou! What of the things we have
+heard? Has Krishna lied indeed? Or&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ye know,&rdquo; said the Buck, rising to his feet. &ldquo;Ye know the
+Riddle of the Gods. When Brahm ceases to dream, the Heavens and the Hells and
+Earth disappear. Be content. Brahm dreams still. The dreams come and go, and
+the nature of the dreams changes, but still Brahm dreams. Krishna has walked
+too long upon earth, and yet I love him the more for the tale he has told. The
+Gods change, beloved&mdash;all save One!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ay, all save one that makes love in the hearts of men,&rdquo; said
+Krishna, knotting his girdle. &ldquo;It is but a little time to wait, and ye
+shall know if I lie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Truly it is but a little time, as thou sayest, and we shall know. Get
+thee to thy huts again, beloved, and make sport for the young things, for still
+Brahm dreams. Go, my children! Brahm dreams&mdash;and till he wakes the Gods
+die not.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+&ldquo;Whither went they?&rdquo; said the Lascar, awe-struck, shivering a
+little with the cold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;God knows!&rdquo; said Findlayson. The river and the island lay in full
+daylight now, and there was never mark of hoof or pug on the wet earth under
+the peepul. Only a parrot screamed in the branches, bringing down showers of
+water-drops as he fluttered his wings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Up! We are cramped with cold! Has the opium died out? Canst thou move,
+Sahib?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Findlayson staggered to his feet and shook himself. His head swam and ached,
+but the work of the opium was over, and, as he sluiced his forehead in a pool,
+the Chief Engineer of the Kashi Bridge was wondering how he had managed to fall
+upon the island, what chances the day offered of return, and, above all, how
+his work stood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Peroo, I have forgotten much. I was under the guard-tower watching the
+river; and then. . . . Did the flood sweep us away?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. The boats broke loose, Sahib, and&rdquo; (if the Sahib had forgotten
+about the opium, decidedly Peroo would not remind him) &ldquo;in striving to
+retie them, so it seemed to me&mdash;but it was dark&mdash;a rope caught the
+Sahib and threw him upon a boat. Considering that we two, with Hitchcock Sahib,
+built, as it were, that bridge, I came also upon the boat, which came riding on
+horseback, as it were, on the nose of this island, and so, splitting, cast us
+ashore. I made a great cry when the boat left the wharf, and without doubt
+Hitchcock Sahib will come for us. As for the bridge, so many have died in the
+building that it cannot fall.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A fierce sun, that drew out all the smell of the sodden land, had followed the
+storm, and in that clear light there was no room for a man to think of the
+dreams of the dark. Findlayson stared up-stream, across the blaze of moving
+water, till his eyes ached. There was no sign of any bank to the Ganges, much
+less of a bridgeline.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We came down far,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It was wonderful that we were
+not drowned a hundred times.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That was the least of the wonder, for no man dies before his time. I
+have seen Sydney, I have seen London, and twenty great ports,
+but&rdquo;&mdash;Peroo looked at the damp, discoloured shrine under the
+peepul&mdash;&ldquo;never man has seen that we saw here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Has the Sahib forgotten; or do we black men only see the Gods?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There was a fever upon me.&rdquo; Findlayson was still looking uneasily
+across the water. &ldquo;It seemed that the island was full of beasts and men
+talking, but I do not remember. A boat could live in this water now, I
+think.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oho! Then it is true.&lsquo;When Brahm ceases to dream, the Gods
+die.&rsquo; Now I know, indeed, what he meant. Once, too, the <i>guru</i> said
+as much to me; but then I did not understand. Now I am wise.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What?&rdquo; said Findlayson, over his shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Peroo went on as if he were talking to himself.
+&ldquo;Six&mdash;seven&mdash;ten monsoons since, I was watch on the
+fo&rsquo;c&rsquo;sle of the <i>Rewah</i>&mdash;the Kumpani&rsquo;s big
+boat&mdash;and there was a big <i>tufan</i>, green and black water beating, and
+I held fast to the life-lines, choking under the waters. Then I thought of the
+Gods&mdash;of Those whom we saw tonight&rdquo;&mdash;he stared curiously at
+Findlayson&rsquo;s back, but the white man was looking across the flood.
+&ldquo;Yes, I say of Those whom we saw this night past, and I called upon Them
+to protect me. And while I prayed, still keeping my lookout, a big wave came
+and threw me forward upon the ring of the great black bowianchor, and the
+<i>Rewah</i> rose high and high, leaning towards the lefthand side, and the
+water drew away from beneath her nose, and I lay upon my belly, holding the
+ring, and looking down into those great deeps. Then I thought, even in the face
+of death: If I lose hold I die, and for me neither the <i>Rewah</i> nor my
+place by the galley where the rice is cooked, nor Bombay, nor Calcutta, nor
+even London, will be any more for me. &lsquo;How shall I be sure,&rsquo; I
+said, that the Gods to whom I pray will abide at all?&rsquo; This I thought,
+and the <i>Rewah</i> dropped her nose as a hammer falls, and all the sea came
+in and slid me backwards along the fo&rsquo;c&rsquo;sle and over the break of
+the fo&rsquo;c&rsquo;sle, and I very badly bruised my shin against the
+donkey-engine: but I did not die, and I have seen the Gods. They are good for
+live men, but for the dead. . . They have spoken Themselves. Therefore, when I
+come to the village I will beat the <i>guru</i> for talking riddles which are
+no riddles. When Brahm ceases to dream the Gods go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look up-stream. The light blinds. Is there smoke yonder?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Peroo shaded his eyes with his hands. &ldquo;He is a wise man and quick.
+Hitchcock Sahib would not trust a rowboat. He has borrowed the Rao
+Sahib&rsquo;s steam launch, and comes to look for us. I have always said that
+there should have been a steam-launch on the bridge works for us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The territory of the Rao of Baraon lay within ten miles of the bridge; and
+Findlayson and Hitchcock had spent a fair portion of their scanty leisure in
+playing billiards and shooting black-buck with the young man. He had been
+bear-led by an English tutor of sporting tastes for some five or six years, and
+was now royally wasting the revenues accumulated during his minority by the
+Indian Government. His steam-launch, with its silver-plated rails, striped silk
+awning, and mahogany decks, was a new toy which Findlayson had found horribly
+in the way when the Rao came to look at the bridge works.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s great luck,&rdquo; murmured Findlayson, but he was none the
+less afraid, wondering what news might be of the bridge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The gaudy blue and white funnel came down-stream swiftly. They could see
+Hitchcock in the bows, with a pair of opera-glasses, and his face was unusually
+white. Then Peroo hailed, and the launch made for the tail of the island. The
+Rao Sahib, in tweed shooting-suit and a seven-hued turban, waved his royal
+hand, and Hitchcock shouted. But he need have asked no questions, for
+Findlayson&rsquo;s first demand was for his bridge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All serene! Gad, I never expected to see you again, Findlayson.
+You&rsquo;re seven koss down-stream. Yes; there&rsquo;s not a stone shifted
+anywhere; but how are you? I borrowed the Rao Sahib&rsquo;s launch, and he was
+good enough to come along. Jump in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, Finlinson, you are very well, eh? That was most unprecedented
+calamity last night, eh? My royal palace, too, it leaks like the devil, and the
+crops will also be short all about my country. Now you shall back her out,
+Hitchcock. I&mdash;I do not understand steam engines. You are wet? You are
+cold, Finlinson? I have some things to eat here, and you will take a good
+drink.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m immensely grateful, Rao Sahib. I believe you&rsquo;ve saved my
+life. How did Hitchcock&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oho! His hair was upon end. He rode to me in the middle of the night and
+woke me up in the arms of Morpheus. I was most truly concerned, Finlinson, so I
+came too. My head-priest he is very angry just now. We will go quick, Mister
+Hitchcock. I am due to attend at twelve forty-five in the state temple, where
+we sanctify some new idol. If not so I would have asked you to spend the day
+with me. They are dam-bore, these religious ceremonies, Finlinson, eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Peroo, well known to the crew, had possessed himself of the inlaid wheel, and
+was taking the launch craftily up-stream. But while he steered he was, in his
+mind, handling two feet of partially untwisted wire-rope; and the back upon
+which he beat was the back of his <i>guru</i>.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"></a>
+A WALKING DELEGATE</h2>
+
+<p>
+According to the custom of Vermont, Sunday afternoon is salting-time on the
+farm, and, unless something very important happens, we attend to the salting
+ourselves. Dave and Pete, the red oxen, are treated first; they stay in the
+home meadow ready for work on Monday. Then come the cows, with Pan, the calf,
+who should have been turned into veal long ago, but survived on account of his
+manners; and lastly the horses, scattered through the seventy acres of the Back
+Pasture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You must go down by the brook that feeds the clicking, bubbling water-ram; up
+through the sugar-bush, where the young maple undergrowth closes round you like
+a shallow sea; next follow the faint line of an old county-road running past
+two green hollows fringed with wild rose that mark the cellars of two ruined
+houses; then by Lost Orchard, where nobody ever comes except in cider-time;
+then across another brook, and so into the Back Pasture. Half of it is pine and
+hemlock and spruce, with sumach and little juniper bushes, and the other half
+is grey rock and boulder and moss, with green streaks of brake and swamp; but
+the horses like it well enough&mdash;our own, and the others that are turned
+down there to feed at fifty cents a week. Most people walk to the Back Pasture,
+and find it very rough work; but one can get there in a buggy, if the horse
+knows what is expected of him. The safest conveyance is our coupé. This began
+life as a buckboard, and we bought it for five dollars from a sorrowful man who
+had no other sort of possessions; and the seat came off one night when we were
+turning a corner in a hurry. After that alteration it made a beautiful
+salting-machine, if you held tight, because there was nothing to catch your
+feet when you fell out, and the slats rattled tunes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One Sunday afternoon we went out with the salt as usual. It was a broiling hot
+day, and we could not find the horses anywhere till we let Tedda Gabler, the
+bobtailed mare who throws up the dirt with her big hooves exactly as a tedder
+throws hay, have her head. Clever as she is, she tipped the coupé over in a
+hidden brook before she came out on a ledge of rock where all the horses had
+gathered, and were switching flies. The Deacon was the first to call to her. He
+is a very dark iron-grey four-year-old, son of Grandee. He has been handled
+since he was two, was driven in a light cart before he was three, and now ranks
+as an absolutely steady lady&rsquo;s horse&mdash;proof against steam-rollers,
+grade-crossings, and street processions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Salt!&rdquo; said the Deacon, joyfully. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re dreffle
+late, Tedda.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Any&mdash;any place to cramp the coupé?&rdquo; Tedda panted. &ldquo;It
+weighs turr&rsquo;ble this weather. I&rsquo;d &rsquo;a&rsquo; come sooner, but
+they didn&rsquo;t know what they wanted&mdash;ner haow. Fell out twice, both of
+&rsquo;em. I don&rsquo;t understand sech foolishness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You look consider&rsquo;ble het up. Guess you&rsquo;d better cramp her
+under them pines, an&rsquo; cool off a piece.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tedda scrambled on the ledge, and cramped the coupé in the shade of a tiny
+little wood of pines, while my companion and I lay down among the brown, silky
+needles, and gasped. All the home horses were gathered round us, enjoying their
+Sunday leisure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were Rod and Rick, the seniors on the farm. They were the regular
+road-pair, bay with black points, full brothers, aged, sons of a Hambletonian
+sire and a Morgan dam. There were Nip and Tuck, seal-browns, rising six,
+brother and sister, Black Hawks by birth, perfectly matched, just finishing
+their education, and as handsome a pair as man could wish to find in a
+forty-mile drive. There was Muldoon, our ex-car-horse, bought at a venture, and
+any colour you choose that is not white; and Tweezy, who comes from Kentucky,
+with an affliction of his left hip, which makes him a little uncertain how his
+hind legs are moving. He and Muldoon had been hauling gravel all the week for
+our new road. The Deacon you know already. Last of all, and eating something,
+was our faithful Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, the black buggy-horse, who had seen
+us through every state of weather and road, the horse who was always standing
+in harness before some door or other&mdash;a philosopher with the appetite of a
+shark and the manners of an archbishop. Tedda Gabler was a new
+&ldquo;trade,&rdquo; with a reputation for vice which was really the result of
+bad driving. She had one working gait, which she could hold till further
+notice; a Roman nose; a large, prominent eye; a shaving-brush of a tail; and an
+irritable temper. She took her salt through her bridle; but the others trotted
+up nuzzling and wickering for theirs, till we emptied it on the clean rocks.
+They were all standing at ease, on three legs for the most part, talking the
+ordinary gossip of the Back Pasture&mdash;about the scarcity of water, and gaps
+in the fence, and how the early windfalls tasted that season&mdash;when little
+Rick blew the last few grains of his allowance into a crevice, and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hurry, boys! Might ha&rsquo; knowed that &lsquo;Livery-plug&rsquo; would
+be around.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We heard a clatter of hooves, and there climbed up from the ravine below a
+fifty-center transient&mdash;a wall-eyed, yellow frame-house of a horse, sent
+up to board from a livery-stable in town, where they called him &ldquo;The
+Lamb,&rdquo; and never let him out except at night and to strangers. My
+companion, who knew and had broken most of the horses, looked at the ragged
+hammer-head as it rose, and said quietly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ni-ice beast. Man-eater, if he gets the chance&mdash;see his eye.
+Kicker, too&mdash;see his hocks. Western horse.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The animal lumbered up, snuffling and grunting. His feet showed that he had not
+worked for weeks and weeks, and our creatures drew together significantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As usual,&rdquo; he said, with an underhung
+sneer&mdash;&ldquo;bowin&rsquo; your heads before the Oppressor that comes to
+spend his leisure gloatin&rsquo; over you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mine&rsquo;s done,&rdquo; said the Deacon; he licked up the remnant of
+his salt, dropped his nose in his master&rsquo;s hand, and sang a little grace
+all to himself. The Deacon has the most enchanting manners of any one I know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An&rsquo; fawnin&rsquo; on them for what is your inalienable right.
+It&rsquo;s humiliatin&rsquo;,&rdquo; said the yellow horse, sniffing to see if
+he could find a few spare grains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go daown hill, then, Boney,&rdquo; the Deacon replied. &ldquo;Guess
+you&rsquo;ll find somethin&rsquo; to eat still, if yer hain&rsquo;t hogged it
+all. You&rsquo;ve ett more&rsquo;n any three of us to-day&mdash;an&rsquo; day
+&rsquo;fore that&mdash;an&rsquo; the last two months&mdash;sence you&rsquo;ve
+been here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not addressin&rsquo; myself to the young an&rsquo; immature. I am
+speakin&rsquo; to those whose opinion <i>an</i>&rsquo; experience commands
+respect.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw Rod raise his head as though he were about to make a remark; then he
+dropped it again, and stood three-cornered, like a plough-horse. Rod can cover
+his mile in a shade under three minutes on an ordinary road to an ordinary
+buggy. He is tremendously powerful behind, but, like most Hambletonians, he
+grows a trifle sullen as he gets older. No one can love Rod very much; but no
+one can help respecting him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish to wake <i>those</i>,&rdquo; the yellow horse went on, &ldquo;to
+an abidin&rsquo; sense o&rsquo; their wrongs an&rsquo; their injuries an&rsquo;
+their outrages.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Haow&rsquo;s that?&rdquo; said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, dreamily. He
+thought Boney was talking of some kind of feed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An&rsquo; when I say outrages and injuries&rdquo;&mdash;Boney waved his
+tail furiously&mdash;&ldquo;I mean &rsquo;em, too. Great Oats! That&rsquo;s
+just what I <i>do</i> mean, plain an&rsquo; straight.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The gentleman talks quite earnest,&rdquo; said Tuck, the mare, to Nip,
+her brother. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no doubt thinkin&rsquo; broadens the horizons
+o&rsquo; the mind. His language is quite lofty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hesh, sis,&rdquo; Nip answered. &ldquo;He hain&rsquo;t widened
+nothin&rsquo; &rsquo;cep&rsquo; the circle he&rsquo;s ett in pasture. They feed
+words fer beddin&rsquo; where he comes from.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s elegant talkin&rsquo;, though,&rdquo; Tuck returned, with an
+unconvinced toss of her pretty, lean little head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The yellow horse heard her, and struck an attitude which he meant to be
+extremely impressive. It made him look as though he had been badly stuffed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now I ask you, I ask you without prejudice an&rsquo; without
+favour,&mdash;what has Man the Oppressor ever done for you?&mdash;Are you not
+inalienably entitled to the free air o&rsquo; heaven, blowin&rsquo; acrost this
+boundless prairie?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hev ye ever wintered here?&rdquo; said the Deacon, merrily, while the
+others snickered. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s kinder cool.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not yet,&rdquo; said Boney. &ldquo;I come from the boundless confines
+o&rsquo; Kansas, where the noblest of our kind have their abidin&rsquo; place
+among the sunflowers on the threshold o&rsquo; the settin&rsquo; sun in his
+glory.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An&rsquo; they sent you ahead as a sample?&rdquo; said Rick, with an
+amused quiver of his long, beautifully groomed tail, as thick and as fine and
+as wavy as a quadroon&rsquo;s back hair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Kansas, sir, needs no adver<i>tise</i>ment. Her native sons rely on
+themselves an&rsquo; their native sires. Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Tweezy lifted up his wise and polite old head. His affliction makes him
+bashful as a rule, but he is ever the most courteous of horses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Excuse me, suh,&rdquo; he said slowly, &ldquo;but, unless I have been
+misinfohmed, most of your prominent siahs, suh, are impo&rsquo;ted from
+Kentucky; an&rsquo; <i>I</i>&rsquo;m from Paduky.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was the least little touch of pride in the last words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Any horse dat knows beans,&rdquo; said Muldoon, suddenly (he had been
+standing with his hairy chin on Tweezy&rsquo;s broad quarters), &ldquo;gits
+outer Kansas &rsquo;fore dey crip his shoes. I blew in dere from Ioway in de
+days o&rsquo; me youth an&rsquo; innocence, an&rsquo; I wuz grateful when dey
+boxed me fer N&rsquo; York. You can&rsquo;t tell <i>me</i> anything about
+Kansas I don&rsquo;t wanter fergit. De Belt Line stables ain&rsquo;t no Hoffman
+House, but dey&rsquo;re Vanderbilts &rsquo;longside o&rsquo; Kansas.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What the horses o&rsquo; Kansas think to-day, the horses of America will
+think to-morrow; an&rsquo; I tell <i>you</i> that when the horses of America
+rise in their might, the day o&rsquo; the Oppressor is ended.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a pause, till Rick said, with a little grunt:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ef you put it that way, every one of us has riz in his might,
+&rsquo;cep&rsquo; Marcus, mebbe. Marky, &rsquo;j ever rise in yer might?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nope,&rdquo; said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, thoughtfully quidding over
+a mouthful of grass. &ldquo;I seen a heap o&rsquo; fools try, though.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You admit that you riz?&rdquo; said the Kansas horse, excitedly.
+&ldquo;Then why&mdash;why in Kansas did you ever go under again?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Horse can&rsquo;t walk on his hind legs <i>all</i> the time,&rdquo; said
+the Deacon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not when he&rsquo;s jerked over on his back &rsquo;fore he knows what
+fetched him. We&rsquo;ve all done it, Boney,&rdquo; said Rick. &ldquo;Nip
+an&rsquo; Tuck they tried it, spite o&rsquo; what the Deacon told &rsquo;em;
+an&rsquo; the Deacon he tried it, spite o&rsquo; what me an&rsquo; Rod told
+him; an&rsquo; me an&rsquo; Rod tried it, spite o&rsquo; what Grandee told us;
+an&rsquo; I guess Grandee he tried it, spite o&rsquo; what his dam told him.
+It&rsquo;s the same old circus from generation to generation. &rsquo;Colt
+can&rsquo;t see why he&rsquo;s called on to back. Same old rearin&rsquo; on
+end&mdash;straight up. Same old feelin&rsquo; that you&rsquo;ve bested
+&rsquo;em this time. Same old little yank at your mouth when you&rsquo;re up
+good an&rsquo; tall. Same old Pegasus-act, wonderin&rsquo; where you&rsquo;ll
+&rsquo;light. Same old wop when you hit the dirt with your head where your tail
+should be, and your in&rsquo;ards shook up like a bran-mash. Same old voice in
+your ear: &lsquo;Waal, ye little fool, an&rsquo; what did you reckon to make by
+that?&rsquo; We&rsquo;re through with risin&rsquo; in our might on this farm.
+We go to pole er single, accordin&rsquo; ez we&rsquo;re hitched.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An&rsquo; Man the Oppressor sets an&rsquo; gloats over you, same as
+he&rsquo;s settin&rsquo; now. Hain&rsquo;t that been your experience,
+madam?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This last remark was addressed to Tedda; and any one could see with half an eye
+that poor, old anxious, fidgety Tedda, stamping at the flies, must have left a
+wild and tumultuous youth behind her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Pends on the man,&rdquo; she answered, shifting from one foot to
+the other, and addressing herself to the home horses. &ldquo;They abused me
+dreffle when I was young. I guess I was sperrity an&rsquo; nervous some, but
+they didn&rsquo;t allow for that. &rsquo;Twas in Monroe County, Noo York,
+an&rsquo; sence then till I come here, I&rsquo;ve run away with more men than
+&rsquo;u&rsquo;d fill a boardin&rsquo;-house. Why, the man that sold me here he
+says to the boss, s&rsquo; he: &lsquo;Mind, now, I&rsquo;ve warned you.
+&rsquo;Twon&rsquo;t be none of my fault if she sheds you daown the road.
+Don&rsquo;t you drive her in a top-buggy, ner &rsquo;thout winkers,&rsquo;
+s&rsquo; he, &lsquo;ner &rsquo;thout this bit ef you look to come home behind
+her.&rsquo; &rsquo;N&rsquo; the fust thing the boss did was to git the
+top-buggy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t say as I like top-buggies,&rdquo; said Rick; &ldquo;they
+don&rsquo;t balance good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Suit me to a ha&rsquo;ar,&rdquo; said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.
+&ldquo;Top-buggy means the baby&rsquo;s in behind, an&rsquo; I kin stop while
+she gathers the pretty flowers&mdash;yes, an&rsquo; pick a maouthful, too. The
+women-folk all say I hev to be humoured, an&rsquo; I don&rsquo;t kerry things
+to the sweatin&rsquo;-point.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Course I&rsquo;ve no pre<i>jud</i>ice against a top-buggy
+s&rsquo; long&rsquo;s I can see it,&rdquo; Tedda went on quickly.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s ha&rsquo;f-seein&rsquo; the pesky thing bobbin&rsquo;
+an&rsquo; balancin&rsquo; behind the winkers gits on <i>my</i> nerves. Then the
+boss looked at the bit they&rsquo;d sold with me, an&rsquo; s&rsquo; he:
+&lsquo;Jiminy Christmas! This &rsquo;u&rsquo;d make a clothes-horse stan&rsquo;
+&rsquo;n end!&rsquo; Then he gave me a plain bar bit, an&rsquo; fitted
+it&rsquo;s if there was some feelin&rsquo; to my maouth.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hain&rsquo;t ye got any, Miss Tedda?&rdquo; said Tuck, who has a mouth
+like velvet, and knows it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Might &rsquo;a&rsquo; had, Miss Tuck, but I&rsquo;ve forgot. Then he
+give me an open bridle,&mdash;my style&rsquo;s an open
+bridle&mdash;an&rsquo;&mdash;I dunno as I ought to tell this by
+rights&mdash;he&mdash;give&mdash;me&mdash;a kiss.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My!&rdquo; said Tuck, &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t tell fer the shoes o&rsquo;
+me what makes some men so fresh.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pshaw, sis,&rdquo; said Nip, &ldquo;what&rsquo;s the sense in
+actin&rsquo; so? <i>You</i> git a kiss reg&rsquo;lar&rsquo;s hitchin&rsquo;-up
+time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, you needn&rsquo;t tell, smarty,&rdquo; said Tuck, with a squeal
+and a kick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d heard o&rsquo; kisses, o&rsquo; course,&rdquo; Tedda went on,
+&ldquo;but they hadn&rsquo;t come my way specially. I don&rsquo;t mind
+tellin&rsquo; I was that took aback at that man&rsquo;s doin&rsquo;s he might
+ha&rsquo; lit fire-crackers on my saddle. Then we went out jest&rsquo;s if a
+kiss was nothin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; I wasn&rsquo;t three strides into my gait
+&rsquo;fore I felt the boss knoo his business, an&rsquo; was trustin&rsquo; me.
+So I studied to please him, an&rsquo; he never took the whip from the
+dash&mdash;a whip drives me plumb distracted&mdash;an&rsquo; the upshot was
+that&mdash;waal, I&rsquo;ve come up the Back Pasture to-day, an&rsquo; the
+coupé&rsquo;s tipped clear over twice, an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve waited till
+&rsquo;twuz fixed each time. You kin judge for yourselves. I don&rsquo;t set up
+to be no better than my neighbours,&mdash;specially with my tail snipped off
+the way &rsquo;tis,&mdash;but I want you all to know Tedda&rsquo;s quit
+fightin&rsquo; in harness or out of it, &rsquo;cep&rsquo; when there&rsquo;s a
+born fool in the pasture, stuffin&rsquo; his stummick with board that
+ain&rsquo;t rightly hisn, &rsquo;cause he hain&rsquo;t earned it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Meanin&rsquo; me, madam?&rdquo; said the yellow horse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ef the shoe fits, clinch it,&rdquo; said Tedda, snorting.
+&ldquo;<i>I</i> named no names, though, to be sure, some folks are mean enough
+an&rsquo; greedy enough to do &rsquo;thout &rsquo;em.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a deal to be forgiven to ignorance,&rdquo; said the yellow
+horse, with an ugly look in his blue eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Seemin&rsquo;ly, yes; or some folks &rsquo;u&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; been
+kicked raound the pasture &rsquo;bout onct a minute sence they came&mdash;board
+er no board.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But what you do <i>not</i> understand, if you will excuse me, madam, is
+that the whole principle o&rsquo; servitood, which includes keep an&rsquo;
+feed, starts from a radically false basis; an&rsquo; I am proud to say that me
+an&rsquo; the majority o&rsquo; the horses o&rsquo; Kansas think the entire
+concern should be relegated to the limbo of exploded superstitions. I say
+we&rsquo;re too progressive for that. I say we&rsquo;re too enlightened for
+that. &rsquo;Twas good enough&rsquo;s long&rsquo;s we didn&rsquo;t think, but
+naow&mdash;but naow&mdash;a new loominary has arisen on the horizon!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Meanin&rsquo; you?&rdquo; said the Deacon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The horses o&rsquo; Kansas are behind me with their multitoodinous
+thunderin&rsquo; hooves, an&rsquo; we say, simply but grandly, that we take our
+stand with all four feet on the inalienable rights of the horse, pure and
+simple,&mdash;the high-toned child o&rsquo; nature, fed by the same
+wavin&rsquo; grass, cooled by the same ripplin&rsquo; brook&mdash;yes,
+an&rsquo; warmed by the same gen&rsquo;rous sun as falls impartially on the
+outside an&rsquo; the <i>in</i>side of the pampered machine o&rsquo; the
+trottin&rsquo;-track, or the bloated coupé-horses o&rsquo; these yere Eastern
+cities. Are we not the same flesh an&rsquo; blood?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not by a bushel an&rsquo; a half,&rdquo; said the Deacon, under his
+breath. &ldquo;Grandee never was in Kansas.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My! Ain&rsquo;t that elegant, though, abaout the wavin&rsquo; grass
+an&rsquo; the ripplin&rsquo; brooks?&rdquo; Tuck whispered in Nip&rsquo;s ear.
+&ldquo;The gentleman&rsquo;s real convincin&rsquo;, <i>I</i> think.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I say we <i>are</i> the same flesh an&rsquo; blood! Are we to be
+separated, horse from horse, by the artificial barriers of a
+trottin&rsquo;-record, or are we to look down upon each other on the strength
+o&rsquo; the gifts o&rsquo; nature&mdash;an extry inch below the knee, or
+slightly more powerful quarters? What&rsquo;s the use o&rsquo; them advantages
+to you? Man the Oppressor comes along, an&rsquo; sees you&rsquo;re likely
+an&rsquo; good-lookin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; grinds you to the face o&rsquo; the
+earth. What for? For his own pleasure: for his own convenience! Young an&rsquo;
+old, black an&rsquo; bay, white an&rsquo; grey, there&rsquo;s no distinctions
+made between us. We&rsquo;re ground up together under the remorseless teeth
+o&rsquo; the engines of oppression!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Guess his breechin&rsquo; must ha&rsquo; broke goin&rsquo;
+daown-hill,&rdquo; said the Deacon. &ldquo;Slippery road, maybe, an&rsquo; the
+buggy come onter him, an&rsquo; he didn&rsquo;t know &rsquo;nough to hold back.
+That don&rsquo;t feel like teeth, though. Maybe he busted a shaft, an&rsquo; it
+pricked him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An&rsquo; I come to you from Kansas, wavin&rsquo; the tail o&rsquo;
+friendship to all an&rsquo; sundry, an&rsquo; in the name of the uncounted
+millions o&rsquo; pure-minded, high-toned horses now strugglin&rsquo; towards
+the light o&rsquo; freedom, I say to you, Rub noses with us in our sacred
+an&rsquo; holy cause. The power is yourn. Without you, I say, Man the Oppressor
+cannot move himself from place to place. Without you he cannot reap, he cannot
+sow, he cannot plough.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mighty odd place, Kansas!&rdquo; said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.
+&ldquo;Seemin&rsquo;ly they reap in the spring an&rsquo; plough in the fall.
+&rsquo;Guess it&rsquo;s right fer them, but &rsquo;twould make me kinder
+giddy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The produc&rsquo;s of your untirin&rsquo; industry would rot on the
+ground if you did not weakly consent to help him. <i>Let</i> &rsquo;em rot, I
+say! Let him call you to the stables in vain an&rsquo; nevermore! Let him shake
+his ensnarin&rsquo; oats under your nose in vain! Let the Brahmas roost in the
+buggy, an&rsquo; the rats run riot round the reaper! Let him walk on his two
+hind feet till they blame well drop off! Win no more soul-destroin&rsquo; races
+for his pleasure! Then, an&rsquo; not till then, will Man the Oppressor know
+where he&rsquo;s at. Quit workin&rsquo;, fellow-sufferers an&rsquo; slaves!
+Kick! Rear! Plunge! Lie down on the shafts, an&rsquo; woller! Smash an&rsquo;
+destroy! The conflict will be but short, an&rsquo; the victory is certain.
+After that we can press our inalienable rights to eight quarts o&rsquo; oats a
+day, two good blankets, an&rsquo; a fly-net an&rsquo; the best o&rsquo;
+stablin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The yellow horse shut his yellow teeth with a triumphant snap; and Tuck said,
+with a sigh: &ldquo;Seems&rsquo;s if somethin&rsquo; ought to be done.
+Don&rsquo;t seem right, somehow,&mdash;oppressin&rsquo; us an all,&mdash;to my
+way o&rsquo; thinkin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Said Muldoon, in a far-away and sleepy voice:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who in Vermont&rsquo;s goin&rsquo; to haul de inalienable oats? Dey
+weigh like Sam Hill, an&rsquo; sixty bushel at dat allowance ain&rsquo;t
+goin&rsquo; to last t&rsquo;ree weeks here. An&rsquo; dere&rsquo;s de winter
+hay for five mont&rsquo;s!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We can settle those minor details when the great cause is won,&rdquo;
+said the yellow horse. &ldquo;Let us return simply but grandly to our
+inalienable rights&mdash;the right o&rsquo; freedom on these yere verdant
+hills, an&rsquo; no invijjus distinctions o&rsquo; track an&rsquo;
+pedigree:&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What in stables &rsquo;jer call an invijjus distinction?&rdquo; said the
+Deacon, stiffly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fer one thing, bein&rsquo; a bloated, pampered trotter jest because you
+happen to be raised that way, an&rsquo; couldn&rsquo;t no more help
+trottin&rsquo; than eatin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do ye know anythin&rsquo; about trotters?&rdquo; said the Deacon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen &rsquo;em trot. That was enough for me. <i>I</i>
+don&rsquo;t want to know any more. Trottin&rsquo;s immoral.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Waal, I&rsquo;ll tell you this much. They don&rsquo;t bloat, an&rsquo;
+they don&rsquo;t pamp&mdash;much. I don&rsquo;t hold out to be no trotter
+myself, though I am free to say I had hopes that way&mdash;onct. But I
+<i>do</i> say, fer I&rsquo;ve seen &rsquo;em trained, that a trotter
+don&rsquo;t trot with his feet: he trots with his head; an&rsquo; he does more
+work&mdash;ef you know what <i>that</i> is&mdash;in a week than you er your
+sire ever done in all your lives. He&rsquo;s everlastingly at it, a trotter is;
+an&rsquo; when he isn&rsquo;t, he&rsquo;s studyin&rsquo; haow. You seen
+&rsquo;em trot? Much you hev! You was hitched to a rail, back o&rsquo; the
+stand, in a buckboard with a soap-box nailed on the slats, an&rsquo; a frowzy
+buff&rsquo;lo atop, while your man peddled rum fer lemonade to little boys as
+thought they was actin&rsquo; manly, till you was both run off the track
+an&rsquo; jailed&mdash;you intoed, shufflin&rsquo;, sway-backed,
+wind-suckin&rsquo; skate, you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t get het up, Deacon,&rdquo; said Tweezy, quietly. &ldquo;Now,
+suh, would you consider a fox-trot, an&rsquo; single-foot, an&rsquo; rack,
+an&rsquo; pace, <i>an</i>&rsquo; amble, distinctions not worth
+distinguishin&rsquo;? I assuah you, gentlemen, there was a time befo&rsquo; I
+was afflicted in my hip, if you&rsquo;ll pardon me, Miss Tuck, when I was quite
+celebrated in Paduky for <i>all</i> those gaits; an&rsquo; in my opinion the
+Deacon&rsquo;s co&rsquo;rect when he says that a ho&rsquo;se of any position in
+society gets his gaits by his haid, an&rsquo; not by&mdash;his, ah, limbs, Miss
+Tuck. I reckon I&rsquo;m very little good now, but I&rsquo;m rememberin&rsquo;
+the things I used to do befo&rsquo; I took to transpo&rsquo;tin&rsquo; real
+estate with the help an&rsquo; assistance of this gentleman here.&rdquo; He
+looked at Muldoon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Invijjus arterficial hind legs!&rdquo; said the ex-car-horse, with a
+grunt of contempt. &ldquo;On de Belt Line we don&rsquo;t reckon no horse wuth
+his keep &rsquo;less he kin switch de car off de track, run her round on de
+cobbles, an&rsquo; dump her in ag&rsquo;in ahead o&rsquo; de truck what&rsquo;s
+blockin&rsquo; him. Dere is a way o&rsquo; swingin&rsquo; yer quarters when de
+driver says,&lsquo;Yank her out, boys!&rsquo; dat takes a year to learn. Onct
+yer git onter it, youse kin yank a cable-car outer a manhole. I don&rsquo;t
+advertise myself for no circus-horse, but I knew dat trick better than most,
+an&rsquo; dey was good to me in de stables, fer I saved time on de
+Belt&mdash;an&rsquo; time&rsquo;s what dey hunt in N&rsquo; York.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But the simple child o&rsquo; nature&mdash;&rdquo; the yellow horse
+began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, go an&rsquo; unscrew yer splints! You&rsquo;re talkin&rsquo; through
+yer bandages,&rdquo; said Muldoon, with a horse-laugh. &ldquo;Dere ain&rsquo;t
+no loose-box for de simple child o&rsquo; nature on de Belt Line, wid de
+<i>Paris</i> comin&rsquo; in an&rsquo; de <i>Teutonic</i> goin&rsquo; out,
+an&rsquo; de trucks an&rsquo; de coupé&rsquo;s sayin&rsquo; things, an&rsquo;
+de heavy freight movin&rsquo; down fer de Boston boat &rsquo;bout t&rsquo;ree
+o&rsquo;clock of an August afternoon, in de middle of a hot wave when de fat
+Kanucks an&rsquo; Western horses drops dead on de block. De simple child
+o&rsquo; nature had better chase himself inter de water. Every man at de end of
+his lines is mad or loaded or silly, an&rsquo; de cop&rsquo;s madder an&rsquo;
+loadeder an&rsquo; sillier than de rest. Dey all take it outer de horses.
+Dere&rsquo;s no wavin&rsquo; brooks ner ripplin&rsquo; grass on de Belt Line.
+Run her out on de cobbles wid de sparks flyin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; stop when de
+cop slugs you on de bone o&rsquo; yer nose. Dat&rsquo;s N&rsquo;York; see?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was always told s&rsquo;ciety in Noo York was dreffle refined
+an&rsquo; high-toned,&rdquo; said Tuck. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re lookin&rsquo; to go
+there one o&rsquo; these days, Nip an&rsquo; me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, <i>you</i> won&rsquo;t see no Belt business where you&rsquo;ll go,
+miss. De man dat wants you&rsquo;ll want you bad, an&rsquo; he&rsquo;ll summer
+you on Long Island er at Newport, wid a winky-pinky silver harness an&rsquo; an
+English coachman. You&rsquo;ll make a star-hitch, you an&rsquo; yer brother,
+miss. But I guess you won&rsquo;t have no nice smooth bar bit. Dey checks
+&rsquo;em, an&rsquo; dey bangs deir tails, an&rsquo; dey bits &rsquo;em, de
+city folk, an&rsquo; dey says it&rsquo;s English, ye know, an&rsquo; dey
+darsen&rsquo;t cut a horse loose &rsquo;ca&rsquo;se o&rsquo; de cops. N&rsquo;
+York&rsquo;s no place fer a horse, &rsquo;less he&rsquo;s on de Belt, an&rsquo;
+can go round wid de boys. Wisht <i>I</i> was in de Fire Department!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But did you never stop to consider the degradin&rsquo; servitood of it
+all?&rdquo; said the yellow horse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t stop on de Belt, cully. You&rsquo;re stopped. An&rsquo;
+we was all in de servitood business, man an&rsquo; horse, an&rsquo; Jimmy dat
+sold de papers. Guess de passengers weren&rsquo;t out to grass neither, by de
+way dey acted. I done my turn, an&rsquo; I&rsquo;m none o&rsquo; Barnum&rsquo;s
+crowd; but any horse dat&rsquo;s worked on de Belt four years don&rsquo;t train
+wid no simple child o&rsquo; nature&mdash;not by de whole length o&rsquo;
+N&rsquo; York.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But can it be possible that with your experience, and at your time of
+life, you do not believe that all horses are free and equal?&rdquo; said the
+yellow horse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not till they&rsquo;re dead,&rdquo; Muldoon answered quietly.
+&ldquo;An&rsquo; den it depends on de gross total o&rsquo; buttons an&rsquo;
+mucilage dey gits outer youse at Barren Island.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They tell me you&rsquo;re a prominent philosopher.&rdquo; The yellow
+horse turned to Marcus. &ldquo;Can <i>you</i> deny a basic and pivotal
+statement such as this?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t deny anythin&rsquo;,&rdquo; said Marcus Aurelius
+Antoninus, cautiously; &ldquo;but ef you <i>ast</i> me, I should say
+&rsquo;twuz more different sorts o&rsquo; clipped oats of a lie than
+anythin&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve had my teeth into sence I wuz foaled.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you a horse?&rdquo; said the yellow horse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Them that knows me best &rsquo;low I am.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ain&rsquo;t <i>I</i> a horse?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yep; one kind of.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then ain&rsquo;t you an&rsquo; me equal?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How fer kin you go in a day to a loaded buggy, drawin&rsquo; five
+hundred pounds?&rdquo; Marcus asked carelessly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That has nothing to do with the case,&rdquo; the yellow horse answered
+excitedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing I know hez more to do with the case,&rdquo; Marcus
+replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Kin ye yank a full car outer de tracks ten times in de
+mornin&rsquo;?&rdquo; said Muldoon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Kin ye go to Keene&mdash;forty-two mile in an afternoon&mdash;with a
+mate,&rdquo; said Rick; &ldquo;an&rsquo; turn out bright an&rsquo; early next
+mornin&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Was there evah any time in your careah, suh&mdash;I am not
+referrin&rsquo; to the present circumstances, but our mutual glorious
+past&mdash;when you could carry a pretty girl to market hahnsome, an&rsquo; let
+her knit all the way on account o&rsquo; the smoothness o&rsquo; the
+motion?&rdquo; said Tweezy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Kin you keep your feet through the West River Bridge, with the
+narrer-gage comin&rsquo; in on one side, an&rsquo; the Montreal flyer the
+other, an&rsquo; the old bridge teeterin&rsquo; between?&rdquo; said the
+Deacon. &ldquo;Kin you put your nose down on the cow-catcher of a locomotive
+when you&rsquo;re waitin&rsquo; at the depot an&rsquo; let &rsquo;em play
+&lsquo;Curfew shall not ring to-night&rsquo; with the big brass bell?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Kin you hold back when the brichin&rsquo; breaks? Kin you stop fer
+orders when your nigh hind leg&rsquo;s over your trace an&rsquo; ye feel good
+of a frosty mornin&rsquo;?&rdquo; said Nip, who had only learned that trick
+last winter, and thought it was the crown of horsely knowledge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the use o&rsquo; talkin&rsquo;?&rdquo; said Tedda Gabler,
+scornfully. &ldquo;What kin ye do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I rely on my simple rights&mdash;the inalienable rights o&rsquo; my
+unfettered horsehood. An&rsquo; I am proud to say I have never, since my first
+shoes, lowered myself to obeyin&rsquo; the will o&rsquo; man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Must ha&rsquo; had a heap o&rsquo; whips broke over yer yaller
+back,&rdquo; said Tedda. &ldquo;Hev ye found it paid any?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sorrer has been my portion since the day I was foaled. Blows an&rsquo;
+boots an&rsquo; whips an&rsquo; insults&mdash;injury, outrage, an&rsquo;
+oppression. I would not endoor the degradin&rsquo; badges o&rsquo; servitood
+that connect us with the buggy an&rsquo; the farm-wagon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s amazin&rsquo; difficult to draw a buggy &rsquo;thout traces
+er collar er breast-strap er somefin&rsquo;,&rdquo; said Marcus. &ldquo;A
+Power-machine for sawin&rsquo; wood is most the only thing there&rsquo;s no
+straps to. I&rsquo;ve helped saw &rsquo;s much as three cord in an afternoon in
+a Power-machine. Slep&rsquo;, too, most o&rsquo; the time, I did; but
+&rsquo;tain&rsquo;t half as inte<i>res</i>tin&rsquo; ez goin&rsquo; daown-taown
+in the Concord.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Concord don&rsquo;t hender <i>you</i> goin&rsquo; to sleep any,&rdquo;
+said Nip. &ldquo;My throat-lash! D&rsquo;you remember when you lay down in the
+sharves last week, waitin&rsquo; at the piazza?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pshaw! That didn&rsquo;t hurt the sharves. They wuz good an&rsquo; wide,
+an&rsquo; I lay down keerful. The folks kep&rsquo; me hitched up nigh an hour
+&rsquo;fore they started; an&rsquo; larfed&mdash;why, they all but lay down
+themselves with larfin&rsquo;. Say, Boney, if you&rsquo;ve got to be hitched
+<i>to</i> anything that goes on wheels, you&rsquo;ve got to be hitched
+<i>with</i> somefin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go an&rsquo; jine a circus,&rdquo; said Muldoon, &ldquo;an&rsquo; walk
+on your hind legs. All de horses dat knows too much to work [he pronounced it
+&lsquo;woik,&rsquo; New York fashion] jine de circus.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not sayin&rsquo; anythin&rsquo; again&rsquo; work,&rdquo; said the
+yellow horse; &ldquo;work is the finest thing in the world.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Seems too fine fer some of us,&rdquo; Tedda snorted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I only ask that each horse should work for himself, an&rsquo; enjoy the
+profit of his labours. Let him work intelligently, an&rsquo; not as a
+machine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There ain&rsquo;t no horse that works like a machine,&rdquo; Marcus
+began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no way o&rsquo; workin&rsquo; that doesn&rsquo;t mean
+goin&rsquo; to pole er single&mdash;they never put me in the
+Power-machine&mdash;er under saddle,&rdquo; said Rick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, shucks! We&rsquo;re talkin&rsquo; same ez we graze,&rdquo; said Nip,
+&ldquo;raound an&rsquo; raound in circles. Rod, we hain&rsquo;t heard from you
+yet, an&rsquo; you&rsquo;ve more know-how than any span here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rod, the off-horse of the pair, had been standing with one hip lifted, like a
+tired cow; and you could only tell by the quick flutter of the haw across his
+eye, from time to time, that he was paying any attention to the argument. He
+thrust his jaw out sidewise, as his habit is when he pulls, and changed his
+leg. His voice was hard and heavy, and his ears were close to his big, plain
+Hambletonian head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How old are you?&rdquo; he said to the yellow horse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nigh thirteen, I guess.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mean age; ugly age; I&rsquo;m gettin&rsquo; that way myself. How long
+hev ye been pawin&rsquo; this firefanged stable-litter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you mean my principles, I&rsquo;ve held &rsquo;em sence I was
+three.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mean age; ugly age; teeth give heaps o&rsquo; trouble then. Set a colt
+to actin&rsquo; crazy fer a while. <i>You</i>&rsquo;ve kep&rsquo; it up,
+seemin&rsquo;ly. D&rsquo;ye talk much to your neighbours fer a steady
+thing?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I uphold the principles o&rsquo; the Cause wherever I am
+pastured.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Done a heap o&rsquo; good, I guess?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am proud to say I have taught a few of my companions the principles
+o&rsquo; freedom an&rsquo; liberty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Meanin&rsquo; they ran away er kicked when they got the chanst?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was talkin&rsquo; in the abstrac&rsquo;, an&rsquo; not in the
+concrete. My teachin&rsquo;s educated them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What a horse, specially a young horse, hears in the abstrac&rsquo;,
+he&rsquo;s liable to do in the Concord. You was handled late, I presoom.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Four, risin&rsquo; five.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s where the trouble began. Driv&rsquo; by a woman, like ez
+not&mdash;eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not fer long,&rdquo; said the yellow horse, with a snap of his teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Spilled her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I heerd she never drove again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Any childern?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Buckboards full of &rsquo;em.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Men too?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have shed conside&rsquo;ble men in my time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By kickin&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Any way that come along. Fallin&rsquo; back over the dash is as handy as
+most.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They must be turr&rsquo;ble afraid o&rsquo; you daown taown?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;ve sent me here to get rid o&rsquo; me. I guess they spend
+their time talkin&rsquo; over my campaigns.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>I</i> wanter know!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, <i>sir</i>. Now, all you gentlemen have asked me what I can do.
+I&rsquo;ll just show you. See them two fellers lyin&rsquo; down by the
+buggy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yep; one of &rsquo;em owns me. T&rsquo;other broke me,&rdquo; said Rod.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Get &rsquo;em out here in the open, an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ll show you
+something. Lemme hide back o&rsquo; you peoples, so&rsquo;s they won&rsquo;t
+see what I&rsquo;m at.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Meanin&rsquo; ter kill &rsquo;em?&rdquo; Rod drawled. There was a
+shudder of horror through the others; but the yellow horse never noticed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll catch &rsquo;em by the back o&rsquo; the neck, an&rsquo;
+pile-drive &rsquo;em a piece. They can suit &rsquo;emselves about livin&rsquo;
+when I&rsquo;m through with &rsquo;em.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Shouldn&rsquo;t wonder ef they did,&rdquo; said Rod.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The yellow horse had hidden himself very cleverly behind the others as they
+stood in a group, and was swaying his head close to the ground with a curious
+scythe-like motion, looking side-wise out of his wicked eyes. You can never
+mistake a man-eater getting ready to knock a man down. We had had one to
+pasture the year before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;See that?&rdquo; said my companion, turning over on the pine-needles.
+&ldquo;Nice for a woman walking &rsquo;cross lots, wouldn&rsquo;t it be?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bring &rsquo;em out!&rdquo; said the yellow horse, hunching his sharp
+back. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no chance among them tall trees. Bring out
+the&mdash;oh! Ouch!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a right-and-left kick from Muldoon. I had no idea that the old car-horse
+could lift so quickly. Both blows caught the yellow horse full and fair in the
+ribs, and knocked the breath out of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that for?&rdquo; he said angrily, when he recovered
+himself; but I noticed he did not draw any nearer to Muldoon than was
+necessary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Muldoon never answered, but discoursed to himself in the whining grunt that he
+uses when he is going down-hill in front of a heavy load. We call it singing;
+but I think it&rsquo;s something much worse, really. The yellow horse blustered
+and squealed a little, and at last said that, if it was a horse-fly that had
+stung Muldoon, he would accept an apology.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll get it,&rdquo; said Muldoon, &ldquo;in de sweet
+by-and-bye&mdash;all de apology you&rsquo;ve any use for. Excuse me
+interruptin&rsquo; you, Mr. Rod, but I&rsquo;m like Tweezy&mdash;I&rsquo;ve a
+Southern drawback in me hind legs.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Naow, I want you all here to take notice, an&rsquo; you&rsquo;ll learn
+something,&rdquo; Rod went on. &ldquo;This yaller-backed skate comes to our
+pastur&rsquo;-&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not havin&rsquo; paid his board,&rdquo; put in Tedda.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not havin&rsquo; earned his board, an&rsquo; talks smooth to us abaout
+ripplin&rsquo; brooks an&rsquo; wavin&rsquo; grass, an&rsquo; his high-toned,
+pure-souled horsehood, which don&rsquo;t hender him sheddin&rsquo; women
+an&rsquo; childern, an&rsquo; fallin&rsquo; over the dash onter men. You heard
+his talk, an&rsquo; you thought it mighty fine, some o&rsquo; you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tuck looked guilty here, but she did not say anything.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bit by bit he goes on ez you have heard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was talkin&rsquo; in the abstrac&rsquo;,&rdquo; said the yellow horse,
+in an altered voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Abstrac&rsquo; be switched! Ez I&rsquo;ve said, it&rsquo;s this yer
+blamed abstrac&rsquo; business that makes the young uns cut up in the Concord;
+an&rsquo; abstrac&rsquo; or no abstrac&rsquo;, he crep&rsquo; on an&rsquo; on
+till he come to killin&rsquo; plain an&rsquo; straight&mdash;killin&rsquo; them
+as never done him no harm, jest beca&rsquo;se they owned horses.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An&rsquo; knowed how to manage &rsquo;em,&rdquo; said Tedda. &ldquo;That
+makes it worse.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Waal, he didn&rsquo;t kill &rsquo;em, anyway,&rdquo; said Marcus.
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; been half killed ef he had tried.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Makes no differ,&rdquo; Rod answered. &ldquo;He meant to; an&rsquo; ef
+he hadn&rsquo;t&mdash;s&rsquo;pose we want the Back Pasture turned into a
+biffin&rsquo;-ground on our only day er rest? &rsquo;S&rsquo;pose <i>we</i>
+want <i>our</i> men walkin&rsquo; round with bits er lead pipe an&rsquo; a
+twitch, an&rsquo; their hands full o&rsquo; stones to throw at us, same&rsquo;s
+if we wuz hogs er hooky keows? More&rsquo;n that, leavin&rsquo; out Tedda
+here&mdash;an&rsquo; I guess it&rsquo;s more her maouth than her manners stands
+in her light&mdash;there ain&rsquo;t a horse on this farm that ain&rsquo;t a
+woman&rsquo;s horse, an&rsquo; proud of it. An&rsquo; this yer bogspavined
+Kansas sunflower goes up an&rsquo; daown the length o&rsquo; the country,
+traded off an&rsquo; traded on, boastin&rsquo; as he&rsquo;s shed
+women&mdash;an&rsquo; childern. I don&rsquo;t say as a woman in a buggy
+ain&rsquo;t a fool. I don&rsquo;t say as she ain&rsquo;t the lastin&rsquo;est
+kind er fool, ner I don&rsquo;t say a child ain&rsquo;t
+worse&mdash;spattin&rsquo; the lines an&rsquo; standin&rsquo; up an&rsquo;
+hollerin&rsquo;&mdash;but I <i>do</i> say, &rsquo;tain&rsquo;t none of our
+business to shed &rsquo;em daown the road.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; said the Deacon. &ldquo;The baby tried to git
+some o&rsquo; my tail for a sooveneer last fall when I was up to the haouse,
+an&rsquo; I didn&rsquo;t kick. Boney&rsquo;s talk ain&rsquo;t goin&rsquo; to
+hurt us any. We ain&rsquo;t colts.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thet&rsquo;s what you <i>think</i>. Bimeby you git into a tight corner,
+&rsquo;Lection day er Valley Fair, like&rsquo;s not, daown-taown, when
+you&rsquo;re all het an&rsquo; lathery, an&rsquo; pestered with flies,
+an&rsquo; thirsty, an&rsquo; sick o&rsquo; bein&rsquo; worked in an aout
+&rsquo;tween buggies. <i>Then</i> somethin&rsquo; whispers inside o&rsquo; your
+winkers, bringin&rsquo; up all that talk abaout servitood an&rsquo; inalienable
+truck an&rsquo; sech like, an&rsquo; jest then a Militia gun goes off; er your
+wheels hit, an&rsquo;&mdash;waal, you&rsquo;re only another horse ez
+can&rsquo;t be trusted. I&rsquo;ve been there time an&rsquo; again.
+Boys&mdash;fer I&rsquo;ve seen you all bought er broke&mdash;on my solemn
+repitation fer a three-minute clip, I ain&rsquo;t givin&rsquo; you no bran-mash
+o&rsquo; my own fixin&rsquo;. I&rsquo;m tellin&rsquo; you my experiences,
+an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve had ez heavy a load an&rsquo; ez high a check&rsquo;s any
+horse here. I wuz born with a splint on my near fore ez big&rsquo;s a walnut,
+an&rsquo; the cussed, three-cornered Hambletonian temper that sours up
+an&rsquo; curdles daown ez you git older. I&rsquo;ve favoured my splint; even
+little Rick he don&rsquo;t know what it&rsquo;s cost me to keep my end up
+sometimes; an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve fit my temper in stall an&rsquo; harness,
+hitched up an&rsquo; at pasture, till the sweat trickled off my hooves,
+an&rsquo; they thought I wuz off condition, an&rsquo; drenched me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When my affliction came,&rdquo; said Tweezy, gently, &ldquo;I was very
+near to losin&rsquo; my manners. Allow me to extend to you my sympathy,
+suh.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rick said nothing, but he looked at Rod curiously. Rick is a sunny-tempered
+child who never bears malice, and I don&rsquo;t think he quite understood. He
+gets his temper from his mother, as a horse should.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been there too, Rod,&rdquo; said Tedda. &ldquo;Open
+confession&rsquo;s good for the soul, an&rsquo; all Monroe County knows
+I&rsquo;ve had my experriences.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But if you will excuse me, suh, that pusson&rdquo;&mdash;Tweezy looked
+unspeakable things at the yellow horse&mdash;&ldquo;that pusson who has
+insulted our intelligences comes from Kansas. An&rsquo; what a ho&rsquo;se of
+his position, an&rsquo; Kansas at that, says cannot, by any stretch of the
+halter, concern gentlemen of <i>our</i> position. There&rsquo;s no shadow of
+equal&rsquo;ty, suh, not even for one kick. He&rsquo;s beneath our
+contempt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let him talk,&rdquo; said Marcus. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s always
+inte<i>res</i>tin&rsquo; to know what another horse thinks. It don&rsquo;t tech
+us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An&rsquo; he talks so, too,&rdquo; said Tuck. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never
+heard anythin&rsquo; so smart for a long time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again Rod stuck out his jaws sidewise, and went on slowly, as though he were
+slugging on a plain bit at the end of a thirty-mile drive:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want all you here ter understand thet ther ain&rsquo;t no Kansas, ner
+no Kentucky, ner yet no Vermont, in <i>our</i> business. There&rsquo;s jest two
+kind o&rsquo; horse in the United States&mdash;them ez can an&rsquo; will do
+their work after bein&rsquo; properly broke an&rsquo; handled, an&rsquo; them
+as won&rsquo;t. I&rsquo;m sick an&rsquo; tired o&rsquo; this everlastin&rsquo;
+tail-switchin&rsquo; an&rsquo; wickerin&rsquo; abaout one State er another. A
+horse kin be proud o&rsquo; his State, an&rsquo; swap lies abaout it in stall
+or when he&rsquo;s hitched to a block, ef he keers to put in fly-time that way;
+but he hain&rsquo;t no right to let that pride o&rsquo; hisn interfere with his
+work, ner to make it an excuse fer claimin&rsquo; he&rsquo;s different.
+That&rsquo;s colts&rsquo; talk, an&rsquo; don&rsquo;t you fergit it, Tweezy.
+An&rsquo;, Marcus, you remember that bein&rsquo; a philosopher, an&rsquo;
+anxious to save trouble,&mdash;fer you <i>are</i>,&mdash;don&rsquo;t excuse you
+from jumpin&rsquo; with all your feet on a slack-jawed, crazy clay-bank like
+Boney here. It&rsquo;s leavin&rsquo; &rsquo;em alone that gives &rsquo;em their
+chance to ruin colts an&rsquo; kill folks. An&rsquo;, Tuck, waal, you&rsquo;re
+a mare anyways&mdash;but when a horse comes along an&rsquo; covers up all his
+talk o&rsquo; killin&rsquo; with ripplin&rsquo; brooks, an wavin grass,
+an&rsquo; eight quarts of oats a day free, <i>after</i> killin&rsquo; his man,
+don&rsquo;t you be run away with by his yap. You&rsquo;re too young an&rsquo;
+too nervous.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll&mdash;I&rsquo;ll have nervous prostration sure ef
+there&rsquo;s a fight here,&rdquo; said Tuck, who saw what was in Rod&rsquo;s
+eye; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m&mdash;I&rsquo;m that sympathetic I&rsquo;d run away clear
+to next caounty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yep; I know that kind o&rsquo; sympathy. Jest lasts long enough to start
+a fuss, an&rsquo; then lights aout to make new trouble. I hain&rsquo;t been ten
+years in harness fer nuthin&rsquo;. Naow, we&rsquo;re goin&rsquo; to keep
+school with Boney fer a spell.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Say, look a-here, you ain&rsquo;t goin&rsquo; to hurt me, are you?
+Remember, I belong to a man in town,&rdquo; cried the yellow horse, uneasily.
+Muldoon kept behind him so that he could not run away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know it. There must be some pore delooded fool in this State hez a
+right to the loose end o&rsquo; your hitchin&rsquo;-strap. I&rsquo;m blame
+sorry fer him, but he shall hev his rights when we&rsquo;re through with
+you,&rdquo; said Rod.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If it&rsquo;s all the same, gentlemen, I&rsquo;d ruther change pasture.
+Guess I&rsquo;ll do it now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t always have your &rsquo;druthers. Guess you
+won&rsquo;t,&rdquo; said Rod.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But look a-here. All of you ain&rsquo;t so blame unfriendly to a
+stranger. S&rsquo;pose we count noses.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What in Vermont fer?&rdquo; said Rod, putting up his eyebrows. The idea
+of settling a question by counting noses is the very last thing that ever
+enters the head of a well-broken horse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To see how many&rsquo;s on my side. Here&rsquo;s Miss Tuck, anyway;
+an&rsquo; Colonel Tweezy yonder&rsquo;s neutral; an&rsquo; Judge Marcus,
+an&rsquo; I guess the Reverend [the yellow horse meant the Deacon] might see
+that I had my rights. He&rsquo;s the likeliest-lookin&rsquo; Trotter I&rsquo;ve
+ever set eyes on. Pshaw. Boys. You ain&rsquo;t goin&rsquo; to pound <i>me</i>,
+be you? Why, we&rsquo;ve gone round in pasture, all colts together, this month
+o&rsquo; Sundays, hain&rsquo;t we, as friendly as could be. There ain&rsquo;t a
+horse alive I don&rsquo;t care who he is&mdash;has a higher opinion o&rsquo;
+you, Mr. Rod, than I have. Let&rsquo;s do it fair an&rsquo; true an&rsquo;
+above the exe. Let&rsquo;s count noses same&rsquo;s they do in Kansas.&rdquo;
+Here he dropped his voice a little and turned to Marcus: &ldquo;Say, Judge,
+there&rsquo;s some green food I know, back o&rsquo; the brook, no one
+hain&rsquo;t touched yet. After this little <i>fraças</i> is fixed up, you
+an&rsquo; me&rsquo;ll make up a party an&rsquo; &rsquo;tend to it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marcus did not answer for a long time, then he said: &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a pup
+up to the haouse &rsquo;bout eight weeks old. He&rsquo;ll yap till he gits a
+lickin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; when he sees it comin&rsquo; he lies on his back,
+an&rsquo; yowls. But he don&rsquo;t go through no cir<i>kit</i>uous
+nose-countin&rsquo; first. I&rsquo;ve seen a noo light sence Rod spoke.
+You&rsquo;ll better stand up to what&rsquo;s served. I&rsquo;m goin&rsquo; to
+philosophise all over your carcass.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>I</i>&rsquo;m goin&rsquo; to do yer up in brown paper,&rdquo; said
+Muldoon. &ldquo;I can fit you on apologies.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hold on. Ef we all biffed you now, these same men you&rsquo;ve been so
+dead anxious to kill &rsquo;u&rsquo;d call us off. Guess we&rsquo;ll wait till
+they go back to the haouse, an&rsquo; you&rsquo;ll have time to think cool
+an&rsquo; quiet,&rdquo; said Rod.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you no respec&rsquo; whatever fer the dignity o&rsquo; our common
+horsehood?&rdquo; the yellow horse squealed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nary respec&rsquo; onless the horse kin do something. America&rsquo;s
+paved with the kind er horse you are&mdash;jist plain yaller-dog
+horse&mdash;waitin&rsquo; ter be whipped inter shape. We call &rsquo;em
+yearlings an&rsquo; colts when they&rsquo;re young. When they&rsquo;re aged we
+pound &rsquo;em&mdash;in this pastur&rsquo;. Horse, sonny, is what you start
+from. We know all about horse here, an&rsquo; he ain&rsquo;t any high-toned,
+pure souled child o&rsquo; nature. Horse, plain horse, same ez you, is
+chock-full o&rsquo; tricks, an&rsquo; meannesses, an&rsquo; cussednesses,
+an&rsquo; shirkin&rsquo;s, an&rsquo; monkey-shines, which he&rsquo;s took over
+from his sire an&rsquo; his dam, an&rsquo; thickened up with his own special
+fancy in the way o&rsquo; goin&rsquo; crooked. Thet&rsquo;s <i>horse,</i>
+an&rsquo; thet&rsquo;s about his dignity an&rsquo; the size of his soul
+&rsquo;fore he&rsquo;s been broke an&rsquo; rawhided a piece. Now we
+ain&rsquo;t goin&rsquo; to give ornery unswitched <i>horse</i>, that
+hain&rsquo;t done nawthin&rsquo; wuth a quart of oats sence he wuz foaled, pet
+names that would be good enough fer Nancy Hanks, or Alix, or Directum, who
+<i>hev</i>. Don&rsquo;t you try to back off acrost them rocks. Wait where you
+are! Ef I let my Hambletonian temper git the better o&rsquo; me I&rsquo;d
+frazzle you out finer than rye-straw inside o&rsquo; three minutes, you
+woman-scarin&rsquo;, kid-killin&rsquo;, dash-breakin&rsquo;, unbroke, unshod,
+ungaited, pastur&rsquo;-hoggin&rsquo;, saw-backed, shark-mouthed,
+hair-trunk-thrown-in-in-trade son of a bronco an&rsquo; a
+sewin&rsquo;-machine!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think we&rsquo;d better get home,&rdquo; I said to my companion, when
+Rod had finished; and we climbed into the coupé, Tedda whinnying, as we bumped
+over the ledges: &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m dreffle sorry I can&rsquo;t stay fer
+the sociable; but I hope an&rsquo; trust my friends&rsquo;ll take a ticket fer
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bet your natchul!&rdquo; said Muldoon, cheerfully, and the horses
+scattered before us, trotting into the ravine.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Next morning we sent back to the livery-stable what was left of the yellow
+horse. It seemed tired, but anxious to go.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"></a>
+THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF</h2>
+
+<p>
+It was her first voyage, and though she was but a cargo-steamer of twenty-five
+hundred tons, she was the very best of her kind, the outcome of forty years of
+experiments and improvements in framework and machinery; and her designers and
+owner thought as much of her as though she had been the <i>Lucania</i>. Any one
+can make a floating hotel that will pay expenses, if he puts enough money into
+the saloon, and charges for private baths, suites of rooms, and such like; but
+in these days of competition and low freights every square inch of a cargo-boat
+must be built for cheapness, great hold-capacity, and a certain steady speed.
+This boat was, perhaps, two hundred and forty feet long and thirty-two feet
+wide, with arrangements that enabled her to carry cattle on her main and sheep
+on her upper deck if she wanted to; but her great glory was the amount of cargo
+that she could store away in her holds. Her owners&mdash;they were a very well
+known Scotch firm&mdash;came round with her from the north, where she had been
+launched and christened and fitted, to Liverpool, where she was to take cargo
+for New York; and the owner&rsquo;s daughter, Miss Frazier, went to and fro on
+the clean decks, admiring the new paint and the brass work, and the patent
+winches, and particularly the strong, straight bow, over which she had cracked
+a bottle of champagne when she named the steamer the <i>Dimbula</i>. It was a
+beautiful September afternoon, and the boat in all her newness&mdash;she was
+painted lead-colour with a red funnel&mdash;looked very fine indeed. Her
+house-flag was flying, and her whistle from time to time acknowledged the
+salutes of friendly boats, who saw that she was new to the High and Narrow Seas
+and wished to make her welcome.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And now,&rdquo; said Miss Frazier, delightedly, to the captain,
+&ldquo;she&rsquo;s a real ship, isn&rsquo;t she? It seems only the other day
+father gave the order for her, and now&mdash;and now&mdash;isn&rsquo;t she a
+beauty!&rdquo; The girl was proud of the firm, and talked as though she were
+the controlling partner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, she&rsquo;s no so bad,&rdquo; the skipper replied cautiously.
+&ldquo;But I&rsquo;m sayin&rsquo; that it takes more than christenin&rsquo; to
+mak&rsquo; a ship. In the nature o&rsquo; things, Miss Frazier, if ye follow
+me, she&rsquo;s just irons and rivets and plates put into the form of a ship.
+She has to find herself yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought father said she was exceptionally well found.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So she is,&rdquo; said the skipper, with a laugh. &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s
+this way wi&rsquo; ships, Miss Frazier. She&rsquo;s all here, but the parrts of
+her have not learned to work together yet. They&rsquo;ve had no chance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The engines are working beautifully. I can hear them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, indeed. But there&rsquo;s more than engines to a ship. Every inch
+of her, ye&rsquo;ll understand, has to be livened up and made to work wi&rsquo;
+its neighbour&mdash;sweetenin&rsquo; her, we call it, technically.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And how will you do it?&rdquo; the girl asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We can no more than drive and steer her and so forth; but if we have
+rough weather this trip&mdash;it&rsquo;s likely&mdash;she&rsquo;ll learn the
+rest by heart! For a ship, ye&rsquo;ll obsairve, Miss Frazier, is in no sense a
+reegid body closed at both ends. She&rsquo;s a highly complex structure
+o&rsquo; various an&rsquo; conflictin&rsquo; strains, wi&rsquo; tissues that
+must give an&rsquo; tak&rsquo; accordin&rsquo; to her personal modulus of
+elasteecity.&rdquo; Mr. Buchanan, the chief engineer, was coming towards them.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sayin&rsquo; to Miss Frazier, here, that our little
+<i>Dimbula</i> has to be sweetened yet, and nothin&rsquo; but a gale will do
+it. How&rsquo;s all wi&rsquo; your engines, Buck?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well enough&mdash;true by plumb an&rsquo; rule, o&rsquo; course; but
+there&rsquo;s no spontaneeity yet.&rdquo; He turned to the girl. &ldquo;Take my
+word, Miss Frazier, and maybe ye&rsquo;ll comprehend later; even after a pretty
+girl&rsquo;s christened a ship it does not follow that there&rsquo;s such a
+thing as a ship under the men that work her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was sayin&rsquo; the very same, Mr. Buchanan,&rdquo; the skipper
+interrupted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s more metaphysical than I can follow,&rdquo; said Miss
+Frazier, laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why so? Ye&rsquo;re good Scotch, an&rsquo;&mdash;I knew your
+mother&rsquo;s father, he was fra&rsquo; Dumfries&mdash;ye&rsquo;ve a vested
+right in metapheesics, Miss Frazier, just as ye have in the
+<i>Dimbula</i>,&rdquo; the engineer said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh, well, we must go down to the deep watters, an&rsquo; earn Miss
+Frazier her deevidends. Will you not come to my cabin for tea?&rdquo; said the
+skipper. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll be in dock the night, and when you&rsquo;re
+goin&rsquo; back to Glasgie ye can think of us loadin&rsquo; her down an&rsquo;
+drivin&rsquo; her forth&mdash;all for your sake.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the next few days they stowed some four thousand tons dead-weight into the
+<i>Dimbula</i>, and took her out from Liverpool. As soon as she met the lift of
+the open water, she naturally began to talk. If you lay your ear to the side of
+the cabin, the next time you are in a steamer, you will hear hundreds of little
+voices in every direction, thrilling and buzzing, and whispering and popping,
+and gurgling and sobbing and squeaking exactly like a telephone in a
+thunder-storm. Wooden ships shriek and growl and grunt, but iron vessels throb
+and quiver through all their hundreds of ribs and thousands of rivets. The
+<i>Dimbula</i> was very strongly built, and every piece of her had a letter or
+a number, or both, to describe it; and every piece had been hammered, or
+forged, or rolled, or punched by man, and had lived in the roar and rattle of
+the shipyard for months. Therefore, every piece had its own separate voice, in
+exact proportion to the amount of trouble spent upon it. Cast-iron, as a rule,
+says very little; but mild steel plates and wrought-iron, and ribs and beams
+that have been much bent and welded and riveted, talk continuously. Their
+conversation, of course, is not half as wise as our human talk, because they
+are all, though they do not know it, bound down one to the other in a black
+darkness, where they cannot tell what is happening near them, nor what will
+overtake them next.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as she had cleared the Irish coast, a sullen, grey-headed old wave of
+the Atlantic climbed leisurely over her straight bows, and sat down on the
+steam-capstan used for hauling up the anchor. Now the capstan and the engine
+that drove it had been newly painted red and green; besides which, nobody likes
+being ducked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you do that again,&rdquo; the capstan sputtered through the
+teeth of his cogs. &ldquo;Hi! Where&rsquo;s the fellow gone?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wave had slouched overside with a plop and a chuckle; but &ldquo;Plenty
+more where he came from,&rdquo; said a brother-wave, and went through and over
+the capstan, who was bolted firmly to an iron plate on the iron deck-beams
+below.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you keep still up there?&rdquo; said the deckbeams.
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with you? One minute you weigh twice as much as
+you ought to, and the next you don&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t my fault,&rdquo; said the capstan. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a
+green brute outside that comes and hits me on the head.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell that to the shipwrights. You&rsquo;ve been in position for months
+and you&rsquo;ve never wriggled like this before. If you aren&rsquo;t careful
+you&rsquo;ll strain <i>us</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Talking of strain,&rdquo; said a low, rasping, unpleasant voice,
+&ldquo;are any of you fellows&mdash;you deck-beams, we mean&mdash;aware that
+those exceedingly ugly knees of yours happen to be riveted into our
+structure&mdash;<i>ours?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who might you be?&rdquo; the deck-beams inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, nobody in particular,&rdquo; was the answer. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re only
+the port and starboard upper-deck stringers; and if you persist in heaving and
+hiking like this, we shall be reluctantly compelled to take steps.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now the stringers of the ship are long iron girders, so to speak, that run
+lengthways from stern to bow. They keep the iron frames (what are called ribs
+in a wooden ship) in place, and also help to hold the ends of the deck-beams,
+which go from side to side of the ship. Stringers always consider themselves
+most important, because they are so long.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will take steps&mdash;will you?&rdquo; This was a long echoing
+rumble. It came from the frames&mdash;scores and scores of them, each one about
+eighteen inches distant from the next, and each riveted to the stringers in
+four places. &ldquo;We think you will have a certain amount of trouble in
+<i>that</i>&rdquo;; and thousands and thousands of the little rivets that held
+everything together whispered: &ldquo;You Will! You will! Stop quivering and be
+quiet. Hold on, brethren! Hold on! Hot Punches! What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rivets have no teeth, so they cannot chatter with fright; but they did their
+best as a fluttering jar swept along the ship from stern to bow, and she shook
+like a rat in a terrier&rsquo;s mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An unusually severe pitch, for the sea was rising, had lifted the big throbbing
+screw nearly to the surface, and it was spinning round in a kind of
+soda-water&mdash;half sea and half air&mdash;going much faster than was proper,
+because there was no deep water for it to work in. As it sank again, the
+engines&mdash;and they were triple expansion, three cylinders in a
+row&mdash;snorted through all their three pistons. &ldquo;Was that a joke, you
+fellow outside? It&rsquo;s an uncommonly poor one. How are we to do our work if
+you fly off the handle that way?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t fly off the handle,&rdquo; said the screw, twirling
+huskily at the end of the screw-shaft. &ldquo;If I had, you&rsquo;d have been
+scrap-iron by this time. The sea dropped away from under me, and I had nothing
+to catch on to. That&rsquo;s all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all, d&rsquo;you call it?&rdquo; said the thrust-block,
+whose business it is to take the push of the screw; for if a screw had nothing
+to hold it back it would crawl right into the engine-room. (It is the holding
+back of the screwing action that gives the drive to a ship.) &ldquo;I know I do
+my work deep down and out of sight, but I warn you I expect justice. All I ask
+for is bare justice. Why can&rsquo;t you push steadily and evenly, instead of
+whizzing like a whirligig, and making me hot under all my collars?&rdquo; The
+thrust-block had six collars, each faced with brass, and he did not wish to get
+them heated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the bearings that supported the fifty feet of screw-shaft as it ran to the
+stern whispered: &ldquo;Justice&mdash;give us justice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can only give you what I can get,&rdquo; the screw answered.
+&ldquo;Look out! It&rsquo;s coming again!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rose with a roar as the <i>Dimbula</i> plunged, and
+&ldquo;whack&mdash;flack&mdash;whack&mdash;whack&rdquo; went the engines,
+furiously, for they had little to check them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m the noblest outcome of human ingenuity&mdash;Mr. Buchanan says
+so,&rdquo; squealed the high-pressure cylinder. &ldquo;This is simply
+ridiculous!&rdquo; The piston went up savagely, and choked, for half the steam
+behind it was mixed with dirty water. &ldquo;Help! Oiler! Fitter! Stoker! Help!
+I&rsquo;m choking,&rdquo; it gasped. &ldquo;Never in the history of maritime
+invention has such a calamity over-taken one so young and strong. And if I go,
+who&rsquo;s to drive the ship?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hush! oh, hush!&rdquo; whispered the Steam, who, of course, had been to
+sea many times before. He used to spend his leisure ashore in a cloud, or a
+gutter, or a flower-pot, or a thunder-storm, or anywhere else where water was
+needed. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s only a little priming, a little carrying-over, as
+they call it. It&rsquo;ll happen all night, on and off. I don&rsquo;t say
+it&rsquo;s nice, but it&rsquo;s the best we can do under the
+circumstances.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What difference can circumstances make? I&rsquo;m here to do my
+work&mdash;on clean, dry steam. Blow circumstances!&rdquo; the cylinder roared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The circumstances will attend to the blowing. I&rsquo;ve worked on the
+North Atlantic run a good many times&mdash;it&rsquo;s going to be rough before
+morning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t distressingly calm now,&rdquo; said the extra strong
+frames&mdash;they were called web-frames&mdash;in the engine-room.
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s an upward thrust that we don&rsquo;t understand, and
+there&rsquo;s a twist that is very bad for our brackets and diamond-plates, and
+there&rsquo;s a sort of west-northwesterly pull, that follows the twist, which
+seriously annoys us. We mention this because we happened to cost a good deal of
+money, and we feel sure that the owner would not approve of our being treated
+in this frivolous way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid the matter is out of owner&rsquo;s hands for the
+present,&rdquo; said the Steam, slipping into the condenser.
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re left to your own devices till the weather betters.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t mind the weather,&rdquo; said a flat bass voice below;
+&ldquo;it&rsquo;s this confounded cargo that&rsquo;s breaking my heart.
+I&rsquo;m the garboard-strake, and I&rsquo;m twice as thick as most of the
+others, and I ought to know something.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The garboard-strake is the lowest plate in the bottom of a ship, and the
+<i>Dimbula&rsquo;s</i> garboard-strake was nearly three-quarters of an inch
+mild steel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The sea pushes me up in a way I should never have expected,&rdquo; the
+strake grunted, &ldquo;and the cargo pushes me down, and, between the two, I
+don&rsquo;t know what I&rsquo;m supposed to do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When in doubt, hold on,&rdquo; rumbled the Steam, making head in the
+boilers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes; but there&rsquo;s only dark, and cold, and hurry, down here; and
+how do I know whether the other plates are doing their duty? Those
+bulwark-plates up above, I&rsquo;ve heard, ain&rsquo;t more than
+five-sixteenths of an inch thick&mdash;scandalous, I call it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I agree with you,&rdquo; said a huge web-frame, by the main cargo-hatch.
+He was deeper and thicker than all the others, and curved half-way across the
+ship in the shape of half an arch, to support the deck where deck-beams would
+have been in the way of cargo coming up and down. &ldquo;I work entirely
+unsupported, and I observe that I am the sole strength of this vessel, so far
+as my vision extends. The responsibility, I assure you, is enormous. I believe
+the money-value of the cargo is over one hundred and fifty thousand pounds.
+Think of that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And every pound of it is dependent on my personal exertions.&rdquo; Here
+spoke a sea-valve that communicated directly with the water outside, and was
+seated not very far from the garboard-strake. &ldquo;I rejoice to think that I
+am a Prince-Hyde Valve, with best Para rubber facings. Five patents cover
+me&mdash;I mention this without pride&mdash;five separate and several patents,
+each one finer than the other. At present I am screwed fast. Should I open, you
+would immediately be swamped. This is incontrovertible!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patent things always use the longest words they can. It is a trick that they
+pick up from their inventors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s news,&rdquo; said a big centrifugal bilge-pump. &ldquo;I
+had an idea that you were employed to clean decks and things with. At least,
+I&rsquo;ve used you for that more than once. I forget the precise number, in
+thousands, of gallons which I am guaranteed to throw per hour; but I assure
+you, my complaining friends, that there is not the least danger. I alone am
+capable of clearing any water that may find its way here. By my Biggest
+Deliveries, we pitched then!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sea was getting up in workmanlike style. It was a dead westerly gale, blown
+from under a ragged opening of green sky, narrowed on all sides by fat, grey
+clouds; and the wind bit like pincers as it fretted the spray into lacework on
+the flanks of the waves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I tell you what it is,&rdquo; the foremast telephoned down its
+wire-stays. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m up here, and I can take a dispassionate view of
+things. There&rsquo;s an organised conspiracy against us. I&rsquo;m sure of it,
+because every single one of these waves is heading directly for our bows. The
+whole sea is concerned in it&mdash;and so&rsquo;s the wind. It&rsquo;s
+awful!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s awful?&rdquo; said a wave, drowning the capstan for the
+hundredth time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This organised conspiracy on your part,&rdquo; the capstan gurgled,
+taking his cue from the mast. &ldquo;Organised bubbles and spindrift! There has
+been a depression in the Gulf of Mexico. Excuse me!&rdquo; He leaped overside;
+but his friends took up the tale one after another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Which has advanced&mdash;&rdquo; That wave hove green water over the
+funnel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As far as Cape Hatteras&mdash;&rdquo; He drenched the bridge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And is now going out to sea&mdash;to sea&mdash;to sea!&rdquo; The third
+went out in three surges, making a clean sweep of a boat, which turned bottom
+up and sank in the darkening troughs alongside, while the broken falls whipped
+the davits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all there is to it,&rdquo; seethed the white water roaring
+through the scuppers. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no animus in our proceedings.
+We&rsquo;re only meteorological corollaries.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it going to get any worse?&rdquo; said the bow-anchor chained down to
+the deck, where he could only breathe once in five minutes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not knowing, can&rsquo;t say. Wind may blow a bit by midnight. Thanks
+awfully. Good-bye.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wave that spoke so politely had travelled some distance aft, and found
+itself all mixed up on the deck amidships, which was a well-deck sunk between
+high bulwarks. One of the bulwark-plates, which was hung on hinges to open
+outward, had swung out, and passed the bulk of the water back to the sea again
+with a clean smack.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Evidently that&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m made for,&rdquo; said the plate,
+closing again with a sputter of pride. &ldquo;Oh, no, you don&rsquo;t, my
+friend!&rdquo; The top of a wave was trying to get in from the outside, but as
+the plate did not open in that direction, the defeated water spurted back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not bad for five-sixteenths of an inch,&rdquo; said the bulwark-plate.
+&ldquo;My work, I see, is laid down for the night&rdquo;; and it began opening
+and shutting, as it was designed to do, with the motion of the ship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We are not what you might call idle,&rdquo; groaned all the frames
+together, as the <i>Dimbula</i> climbed a big wave, lay on her side at the top,
+and shot into the next hollow, twisting in the descent. A huge swell pushed up
+exactly under her middle, and her bow and stern hung free with nothing to
+support them. Then one joking wave caught her up at the bow, and another at the
+stern, while the rest of the water slunk away from under her just to see how
+she would like it; so she was held up at her two ends only, and the weight of
+the cargo and the machinery fell on the groaning iron keels and
+bilge-stringers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ease off! Ease off, there!&rdquo; roared the garboard-strake. &ldquo;I
+want one-eighth of an inch fair play. D&rsquo; you hear me, you rivets!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ease off! Ease off!&rdquo; cried the bilge-stringers. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t
+hold us so tight to the frames!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ease off!&rdquo; grunted the deck-beams, as the <i>Dimbula</i> rolled
+fearfully. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve cramped our knees into the stringers, and we
+can&rsquo;t move. Ease off, you flat-headed little nuisances.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then two converging seas hit the bows, one on each side, and fell away in
+torrents of streaming thunder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ease off!&rdquo; shouted the forward collision-bulkhead. &ldquo;I want
+to crumple up, but I&rsquo;m stiffened in every direction. Ease off, you dirty
+little forge-filings. Let me breathe!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the hundreds of plates that are riveted to the frames, and make the outside
+skin of every steamer, echoed the call, for each plate wanted to shift and
+creep a little, and each plate, according to its position, complained against
+the rivets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We can&rsquo;t help it! <i>We</i> can&rsquo;t help it!&rdquo; they
+murmured in reply. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re put here to hold you, and we&rsquo;re
+going to do it; you never pull us twice in the same direction. If you&rsquo;d
+say what you were going to do next, we&rsquo;d try to meet your views.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As far as I could feel,&rdquo; said the upper-deck planking, and that
+was four inches thick, &ldquo;every single iron near me was pushing or pulling
+in opposite directions. Now, what&rsquo;s the sense of that? My friends, let us
+all pull together.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pull any way you please,&rdquo; roared the funnel, &ldquo;so long as you
+don&rsquo;t try your experiments on <i>me</i>. I need fourteen wire-ropes, all
+pulling in different directions, to hold me steady. Isn&rsquo;t that so?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We believe you, my boy!&rdquo; whistled the funnel-stays through their
+clinched teeth, as they twanged in the wind from the top of the funnel to the
+deck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nonsense! We must all pull together,&rdquo; the decks repeated.
+&ldquo;Pull lengthways.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good,&rdquo; said the stringers; &ldquo;then stop pushing sideways
+when you get wet. Be content to run gracefully fore and aft, and curve in at
+the ends as we do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;no curves at the end. A very slight workmanlike curve from side
+to side, with a good grip at each knee, and little pieces welded on,&rdquo;
+said the deck-beams.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fiddle!&rdquo; cried the iron pillars of the deep, dark hold. &ldquo;Who
+ever heard of curves? Stand up straight; be a perfectly round column, and carry
+tons of good solid weight&mdash;like that! There!&rdquo; A big sea smashed on
+the deck above, and the pillars stiffened themselves to the load.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Straight up and down is not bad,&rdquo; said the frames, who ran that
+way in the sides of the ship, &ldquo;but you must also expand yourselves
+sideways. Expansion is the law of life, children. Open out! open out!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come back!&rdquo; said the deck-beams, savagely, as the upward heave of
+the sea made the frames try to open. &ldquo;Come back to your bearings, you
+slack-jawed irons!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rigidity! Rigidity! Rigidity!&rdquo; thumped the engines.
+&ldquo;Absolute, unvarying rigidity&mdash;rigidity!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see!&rdquo; whined the rivets, in chorus. &ldquo;No two of you will
+ever pull alike, and&mdash;and you blame it all on us. We only know how to go
+through a plate and bite down on both sides so that it can&rsquo;t, and
+mustn&rsquo;t, and sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t move.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got one fraction of an inch play, at any rate,&rdquo; said
+the garboard-strake, triumphantly. So he had, and all the bottom of the ship
+felt the easier for it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then we&rsquo;re no good,&rdquo; sobbed the bottom rivets. &ldquo;We
+were ordered&mdash;we were ordered&mdash;never to give; and we&rsquo;ve given,
+and the sea will come in, and we&rsquo;ll all go to the bottom together! First
+we&rsquo;re blamed for everything unpleasant, and now we haven&rsquo;t the
+consolation of having done our work.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t say I told you,&rdquo; whispered the Steam, consolingly;
+&ldquo;but, between you and me and the last cloud I came from, it was bound to
+happen sooner or later. You <i>had</i> to give a fraction, and you&rsquo;ve
+given without knowing it. Now, hold on, as before.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the use?&rdquo; a few hundred rivets chattered.
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve given&mdash;we&rsquo;ve given; and the sooner we confess
+that we can&rsquo;t keep the ship together, and go off our little heads, the
+easier it will be. No rivet forged can stand this strain.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No one rivet was ever meant to. Share it among you,&rdquo; the Steam
+answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The others can have my share. I&rsquo;m going to pull out,&rdquo; said a
+rivet in one of the forward plates.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you go, others will follow,&rdquo; hissed the Steam.
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing so contagious in a boat as rivets going. Why, I
+knew a little chap like you&mdash;he was an eighth of an inch fatter,
+though&mdash;on a steamer&mdash;to be sure, she was only twelve hundred tons,
+now I come to think of it&mdash;in exactly the same place as you are. He pulled
+out in a bit of a bobble of a sea, not half as bad as this, and he started all
+his friends on the same butt-strap, and the plates opened like a furnace door,
+and I had to climb into the nearest fog-bank, while the boat went down.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now that&rsquo;s peculiarly disgraceful,&rdquo; said the rivet.
+&ldquo;Fatter than me, was he, and in a steamer not half our tonnage? Reedy
+little peg! I blush for the family, sir.&rdquo; He settled himself more firmly
+than ever in his place, and the Steam chuckled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see,&rdquo; he went on, quite gravely, &ldquo;a rivet, and
+especially a rivet in your position, is really the one indispensable part of
+the ship.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Steam did not say that he had whispered the very same thing to every single
+piece of iron aboard. There is no sense in telling too much.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And all that while the little <i>Dimbula</i> pitched and chopped, and swung and
+slewed, and lay down as though she were going to die, and got up as though she
+had been stung, and threw her nose round and round in circles half a dozen
+times as she dipped, for the gale was at its worst. It was inky black, in spite
+of the tearing white froth on the waves, and, to top everything, the rain began
+to fall in sheets, so that you could not see your hand before your face. This
+did not make much difference to the ironwork below, but it troubled the
+foremast a good deal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now it&rsquo;s all finished,&rdquo; he said dismally. &ldquo;The
+conspiracy is too strong for us. There is nothing left but to&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Hurraar! Brrrraaah! Brrrrrrp!</i>&rdquo; roared the Steam through the
+fog-horn, till the decks quivered. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be frightened, below.
+It&rsquo;s only me, just throwing out a few words, in case any one happens to
+be rolling round to-night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say there&rsquo;s any one except us on the sea
+in such weather?&rdquo; said the funnel, in a husky snuffle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Scores of &rsquo;em,&rdquo; said the Steam, clearing its throat.
+&ldquo;<i>Rrrrrraaa! Brraaaaa! Prrrrp!</i> It&rsquo;s a trifle windy up here;
+and, Great Boilers! how it rains!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;re drowning,&rdquo; said the scuppers. They had been doing
+nothing else all night, but this steady thrash of rain above them seemed to be
+the end of the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all right. We&rsquo;ll be easier in an hour or two. First
+the wind and then the rain. Soon you may make sail again! <i>Grrraaaaaah!
+Drrrraaaa! Drrrp!</i> I have a notion that the sea is going down already. If it
+does you&rsquo;ll learn something about rolling. We&rsquo;ve only pitched till
+now. By the way, aren&rsquo;t you chaps in the hold a little easier than you
+were?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was just as much groaning and straining as ever, but it was not so loud
+or squeaky in tone; and when the ship quivered she did not jar stiffly, like a
+poker hit on the floor, but gave with a supple little waggle, like a perfectly
+balanced golf-club.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We have made a most amazing discovery,&rdquo; said the stringers, one
+after another. &ldquo;A discovery that entirely changes the situation. We have
+found, for the first time in the history of ship-building, that the inward pull
+of the deck-beams and the outward thrust of the frames locks us, as it were,
+more closely in our places, and enables us to endure a strain which is entirely
+without parallel in the records of marine architecture.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Steam turned a laugh quickly into a roar up the fog-horn. &ldquo;What
+massive intellects you great stringers have,&rdquo; he said softly, when he had
+finished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We also,&rdquo; began the deck-beams, &ldquo;are discoverers and
+geniuses. We are of opinion that the support of the hold-pillars materially
+helps us. We find that we lock up on them when we are subjected to a heavy and
+singular weight of sea above.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here the <i>Dimbula</i> shot down a hollow, lying almost on her side; righting
+at the bottom with a wrench and a spasm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In these cases&mdash;are you aware of this, Steam?&mdash;the plating at
+the bows, and particularly at the stern&mdash;we would also mention the floors
+beneath us&mdash;help us to resist any tendency to spring.&rdquo; The frames
+spoke, in the solemn awed voice which people use when they have just come
+across something entirely new for the very first time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m only a poor puffy little flutterer,&rdquo; said the Steam,
+&ldquo;but I have to stand a good deal of pressure in my business. It&rsquo;s
+all tremendously interesting. Tell us some more. You fellows are so
+strong.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Watch us and you&rsquo;ll see,&rdquo; said the bow-plates, proudly.
+&ldquo;Ready, behind there! Here&rsquo;s the father and mother of waves coming!
+Sit tight, rivets all!&rdquo; A great sluicing comber thundered by, but through
+the scuffle and confusion the Steam could hear the low, quick cries of the
+ironwork as the various strains took them&mdash;cries like these: &ldquo;Easy,
+now&mdash;easy! <i>Now</i> push for all your strength! Hold out! Give a
+fraction! Hold up! Pull in! Shove crossways! Mind the strain at the ends! Grip,
+now! Bite tight! Let the water get away from under&mdash;and there she
+goes!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wave raced off into the darkness, shouting, &ldquo;Not bad, that, if
+it&rsquo;s your first run!&rdquo; and the drenched and ducked ship throbbed to
+the beat of the engines inside her. All three cylinders were white with the
+salt spray that had come down through the engine-room hatch; there was white
+fur on the canvas-bound steam-pipes, and even the bright-work deep below was
+speckled and soiled; but the cylinders had learned to make the most of steam
+that was half water, and were pounding along cheerfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How&rsquo;s the noblest outcome of human ingenuity hitting it?&rdquo;
+said the Steam, as he whirled through the engine-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing for nothing in this world of woe,&rdquo; the cylinders answered,
+as though they had been working for centuries, &ldquo;and precious little for
+seventy-five pounds head. We&rsquo;ve made two knots this last hour and a
+quarter! Rather humiliating for eight hundred horse-power, isn&rsquo;t
+it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s better than drifting astern, at any rate. You seem
+rather less&mdash;how shall I put it&mdash;stiff in the back than you
+were.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you&rsquo;d been hammered as we&rsquo;ve been this night, you
+wouldn&rsquo;t be stiff&mdash;iff&mdash;iff; either.
+Theoreti&mdash;retti&mdash;retti&mdash;cally, of course, rigidity is the thing.
+Purrr&mdash;purr&mdash;practically, there has to be a little give and take.
+<i>We</i> found that out by working on our sides for five minutes at a
+stretch&mdash;chch&mdash;chh. How&rsquo;s the weather?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sea&rsquo;s going down fast,&rdquo; said the Steam.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good business,&rdquo; said the high-pressure cylinder. &ldquo;Whack her
+up, boys. They&rsquo;ve given us five pounds more steam&rdquo;; and he began
+humming the first bars of &ldquo;Said the young Obadiah to the old
+Obadiah,&rdquo; which, as you may have noticed, is a pet tune among engines not
+built for high speed. Racing-liners with twin-screws sing &ldquo;The Turkish
+Patrol&rdquo; and the overture to the &ldquo;Bronze Horse,&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;Madame Angot,&rdquo; till something goes wrong, and then they render
+Gounod&rsquo;s &ldquo;Funeral March of a Marionette,&rdquo; with variations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll learn a song of your own some fine day,&rdquo; said the
+Steam, as he flew up the fog-horn for one last bellow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next day the sky cleared and the sea dropped a little, and the <i>Dimbula</i>
+began to roll from side to side till every inch of iron in her was sick and
+giddy. But luckily they did not all feel ill at the same time: otherwise she
+would have opened out like a wet paper box.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Steam whistled warnings as he went about his business: it is in this short,
+quick roll and tumble that follows a heavy sea that most of the accidents
+happen, for then everything thinks that the worst is over and goes off guard.
+So he orated and chattered till the beams and frames and floors and stringers
+and things had learned how to lock down and lock up on one another, and endure
+this new kind of strain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They found ample time to practise, for they were sixteen days at sea, and it
+was foul weather till within a hundred miles of New York. The <i>Dimbula</i>
+picked up her pilot, and came in covered with salt and red rust. Her funnel was
+dirty-grey from top to bottom; two boats had been carried away; three copper
+ventilators looked like hats after a fight with the police; the bridge had a
+dimple in the middle of it; the house that covered the steam steering-gear was
+split as with hatchets; there was a bill for small repairs in the engine-room
+almost as long as the screw-shaft; the forward cargo-hatch fell into
+bucket-staves when they raised the iron cross-bars; and the steam-capstan had
+been badly wrenched on its bed. Altogether, as the skipper said, it was
+&ldquo;a pretty general average.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But she&rsquo;s soupled,&rdquo; he said to Mr. Buchanan. &ldquo;For all
+her dead-weight she rode like a yacht. Ye mind that last blow off the
+Banks&mdash;I am proud of her, Buck.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s vera good,&rdquo; said the chief engineer, looking along the
+dishevelled decks. &ldquo;Now, a man judgin&rsquo; superfeecially would say we
+were a wreck, but we know otherwise&mdash;by experience.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Naturally everything in the <i>Dimbula</i> fairly stiffened with pride, and the
+foremast and the forward collision-bulkhead, who are pushing creatures, begged
+the Steam to warn the Port of New York of their arrival. &ldquo;Tell those big
+boats all about us,&rdquo; they said. &ldquo;They seem to take us quite as a
+matter of course.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a glorious, clear, dead calm morning, and in single file, with less than
+half a mile between each, their bands playing and their tugboats shouting and
+waving handkerchiefs, were the <i>Majestic</i>, the <i>Paris</i>, the
+<i>Touraine</i>, the <i>Servia</i>, the <i>Kaiser Wilhelm II.</i>, and the
+<i>Werkendam</i>, all statelily going out to sea. As the <i>Dimbula</i> shifted
+her helm to give the great boats clear way, the Steam (who knows far too much
+to mind making an exhibition of himself now and then) shouted:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Princes, Dukes, and Barons of the High Seas! Know ye
+by these presents, we are the <i>Dimbula</i>, fifteen days nine hours from
+Liverpool, having crossed the Atlantic with four thousand ton of cargo for the
+first time in our career! We have not foundered. We are here. &rsquo;<i>Eer!
+&rsquo;Eer!</i> We are not disabled. But we have had a time wholly unparalleled
+in the annals of ship-building! Our decks were swept! We pitched; we rolled! We
+thought we were going to die! <i>Hi! Hi!</i> But we didn&rsquo;t. We wish to
+give notice that we have come to New York all the way across the Atlantic,
+through the worst weather in the world; and we are the <i>Dimbula!</i> We
+are&mdash;arr&mdash;ha&mdash;ha&mdash;ha-r-r-r!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The beautiful line of boats swept by as steadily as the procession of the
+Seasons. The <i>Dimbula</i> heard the <i>Majestic</i> say, &ldquo;Hmph!&rdquo;
+and the <i>Paris</i> grunted, &ldquo;How!&rdquo; and the <i>Touraine</i> said,
+&ldquo;Oui!&rdquo; with a little coquettish flicker of steam; and the
+<i>Servia</i> said, &ldquo;Haw!&rdquo; and the <i>Kaiser</i> and the
+<i>Werkendam</i> said, &ldquo;Hoch!&rdquo; Dutch fashion&mdash;and that was
+absolutely all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did my best,&rdquo; said the Steam, gravely, &ldquo;but I don&rsquo;t
+think they were much impressed with us, somehow. Do you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s simply disgusting,&rdquo; said the bow-plates. &ldquo;They
+might have seen what we&rsquo;ve been through. There isn&rsquo;t a ship on the
+sea that has suffered as we have&mdash;is there, now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I wouldn&rsquo;t go so far as that,&rdquo; said the Steam,
+&ldquo;because I&rsquo;ve worked on some of those boats, and sent them through
+weather quite as bad as the fortnight that we&rsquo;ve had, in six days; and
+some of them are a little over ten thousand tons, I believe. Now I&rsquo;ve
+seen the <i>Majestic</i>, for instance, ducked from her bows to her funnel; and
+I&rsquo;ve helped the <i>Arizona</i>, I think she was, to back off an iceberg
+she met with one dark night; and I had to run out of the <i>Paris&rsquo;s</i>
+engine-room, one day, because there was thirty foot of water in it. Of course,
+I don&rsquo;t deny&mdash;&rdquo; The Steam shut off suddenly, as a tugboat,
+loaded with a political club and a brass band, that had been to see a New York
+Senator off to Europe, crossed their bows, going to Hoboken. There was a long
+silence that reached, without a break, from the cut-water to the
+propeller-blades of the <i>Dimbula</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then a new, big voice said slowly and thickly, as though the owner had just
+waked up: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s my conviction that I have made a fool of
+myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Steam knew what had happened at once; for when a ship finds herself all the
+talking of the separate pieces ceases and melts into one voice, which is the
+soul of the ship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo; he said, with a laugh. &ldquo;I am the
+<i>Dimbula</i>, of course. I&rsquo;ve never been anything else except
+that&mdash;and a fool!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tugboat, which was doing its very best to be run down, got away just in
+time; its band playing clashily and brassily a popular but impolite air:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+In the days of old Rameses&mdash;are you on?<br/>
+In the days of old Rameses&mdash;are you on?<br/>
+In the days of old Rameses,<br/>
+That story had paresis,<br/>
+Are you on&mdash;are you on&mdash;are you on?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m glad you&rsquo;ve found yourself,&rdquo; said the Steam.
+&ldquo;To tell the truth, I was a little tired of talking to all those ribs and
+stringers. Here&rsquo;s Quarantine. After that we&rsquo;ll go to our wharf and
+clean up a little, and&mdash;next month we&rsquo;ll do it all over
+again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"></a>
+THE TOMB OF HIS ANCESTORS</h2>
+
+<p>
+Some people will tell you that if there were but a single loaf of bread in all
+India it would be divided equally between the Plowdens, the Trevors, the
+Beadons, and the Rivett-Carnacs. That is only one way of saying that certain
+families serve India generation after generation, as dolphins follow in line
+across the open sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Let us take a small and obscure case. There has been at least one
+representative of the Devonshire Chinns in or near Central India since the days
+of Lieutenant-Fireworker Humphrey Chinn, of the Bombay European Regiment, who
+assisted at the capture of Seringapatam in 1799. Alfred Ellis Chinn,
+Humphrey&rsquo;s younger brother, commanded a regiment of Bombay grenadiers
+from 1804 to 1813, when he saw some mixed fighting; and in 1834 John Chinn of
+the same family&mdash;we will call him John Chinn the First&mdash;came to light
+as a level-headed administrator in time of trouble at a place called Mundesur.
+He died young, but left his mark on the new country, and the Honourable the
+Board of Directors of the Honourable the East India Company embodied his
+virtues in a stately resolution, and paid for the expenses of his tomb among
+the Satpura hills.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was succeeded by his son, Lionel Chinn, who left the little old Devonshire
+home just in time to be severely wounded in the Mutiny. He spent his working
+life within a hundred and fifty miles of John Chinn&rsquo;s grave, and rose to
+the command of a regiment of small, wild hill-men, most of whom had known his
+father. His son John was born in the small thatched-roofed, mud-walled
+cantonment, which is even to-day eighty miles from the nearest railway, in the
+heart of a scrubby, tigerish country. Colonel Lionel Chinn served thirty years
+and retired. In the Canal his steamer passed the outward-bound troop-ship,
+carrying his son eastward to the family duty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Chinns are luckier than most folk, because they know exactly what they must
+do. A clever Chinn passes for the Bombay Civil Service, and gets away to
+Central India, where everybody is glad to see him. A dull Chinn enters the
+Police Department or the Woods and Forest, and sooner or later he, too, appears
+in Central India, and that is what gave rise to the saying, &ldquo;Central
+India is inhabited by Bhils, Mairs, and Chinns, all very much alike.&rdquo; The
+breed is small-boned, dark, and silent, and the stupidest of them are good
+shots. John Chinn the Second was rather clever, but as the eldest son he
+entered the army, according to Chinn tradition. His duty was to abide in his
+father&rsquo;s regiment for the term of his natural life, though the corps was
+one which most men would have paid heavily to avoid. They were irregulars,
+small, dark, and blackish, clothed in rifle-green with black-leather trimmings;
+and friends called them the &ldquo;Wuddars,&rdquo; which means a race of
+low-caste people who dig up rats to eat. But the Wuddars did not resent it.
+They were the only Wuddars, and their points of pride were these:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Firstly, they had fewer English officers than any native regiment. Secondly,
+their subalterns were not mounted on parade, as is the general rule, but walked
+at the head of their men. A man who can hold his own with the Wuddars at their
+quickstep must be sound in wind and limb. Thirdly, they were the most <i>pukka
+shikarries</i> (out-and-out hunters) in all India. Fourthly-up to
+one-hundredthly&mdash;they were the Wuddars&mdash;Chinn&rsquo;s Irregular Bhil
+Levies of the old days, but now, henceforward and for ever, the Wuddars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No Englishman entered their mess except for love or through family usage. The
+officers talked to their soldiers in a tongue not two hundred white folk in
+India understood; and the men were their children, all drawn from the Bhils,
+who are, perhaps, the strangest of the many strange races in India. They were,
+and at heart are, wild men, furtive, shy, full of untold superstitions. The
+races whom we call natives of the country found the Bhil in possession of the
+land when they first broke into that part of the world thousands of years ago.
+The books call them Pre-Aryan, Aboriginal, Dravidian, and so forth; and, in
+other words, that is what the Bhils call themselves. When a Rajput chief whose
+bards can sing his pedigree backwards for twelve hundred years is set on the
+throne, his investiture is not complete till he has been marked on the forehead
+with blood from the veins of a Bhil. The Rajputs say the ceremony has no
+meaning, but the Bhil knows that it is the last, last shadow of his old rights
+as the long-ago owner of the soil.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Centuries of oppression and massacre made the Bhil a cruel and half-crazy thief
+and cattle-stealer, and when the English came he seemed to be almost as open to
+civilisation as the tigers of his own jungles. But John Chinn the First, father
+of Lionel, grandfather of our John, went into his country, lived with him,
+learned his language, shot the deer that stole his poor crops, and won his
+confidence, so that some Bhils learned to plough and sow, while others were
+coaxed into the Company&rsquo;s service to police their friends.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When they understood that standing in line did not mean instant execution, they
+accepted soldiering as a cumbrous but amusing kind of sport, and were zealous
+to keep the wild Bhils under control. That was the thin edge of the wedge. John
+Chinn the First gave them written promises that, if they were good from a
+certain date, the Government would overlook previous offences; and since John
+Chinn was never known to break his word&mdash;he promised once to hang a Bhil
+locally esteemed invulnerable, and hanged him in front of his tribe for seven
+proved murders&mdash;the Bhils settled down as steadily as they knew how. It
+was slow, unseen work, of the sort that is being done all over India to-day;
+and though John Chinn&rsquo;s only reward came, as I have said, in the shape of
+a grave at Government expense, the little people of the hills never forgot him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colonel Lionel Chinn knew and loved them, too, and they were very fairly
+civilised, for Bhils, before his service ended. Many of them could hardly be
+distinguished from low-caste Hindoo farmers; but in the south, where John Chinn
+the First was buried, the wildest still clung to the Satpura ranges, cherishing
+a legend that some day Jan Chinn, as they called him, would return to his own.
+In the mean time they mistrusted the white man and his ways. The least
+excitement would stampede them, plundering, at random, and now and then
+killing; but if they were handled discreetly they grieved like children, and
+promised never to do it again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Bhils of the regiment&mdash;the uniformed men&mdash;were virtuous in many
+ways, but they needed humouring. They felt bored and homesick unless taken
+after tiger as beaters; and their cold-blooded daring&mdash;all Wuddars shoot
+tigers on foot: it is their caste-mark&mdash;made even the officers wonder.
+They would follow up a wounded tiger as unconcernedly as though it were a
+sparrow with a broken wing; and this through a country full of caves and rifts
+and pits, where a wild beast could hold a dozen men at his mercy. Now and then
+some little man was brought to barracks with his head smashed in or his ribs
+torn away; but his companions never learned caution; they contented themselves
+with settling the tiger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young John Chinn was decanted at the verandah of the Wuddars&rsquo; lonely
+mess-house from the back seat of a two-wheeled cart, his gun-cases cascading
+all round him. The slender little, hookey-nosed boy looked forlorn as a strayed
+goat when he slapped the white dust off his knees, and the cart jolted down the
+glaring road. But in his heart he was contented. After all, this was the place
+where he had been born, and things were not much changed since he had been sent
+to England, a child, fifteen years ago.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were a few new buildings, but the air and the smell and the sunshine were
+the same; and the little green men who crossed the parade-ground looked very
+familiar. Three weeks ago John Chinn would have said he did not remember a word
+of the Bhil tongue, but at the mess door he found his lips moving in sentences
+that he did not understand&mdash;bits of old nursery rhymes, and tail-ends of
+such orders as his father used to give the men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Colonel watched him come up the steps, and laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look!&rdquo; he said to the Major. &ldquo;No need to ask the young
+un&rsquo;s breed. He&rsquo;s a <i>pukka</i> Chinn. Might be his father in the
+Fifties over again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hope he&rsquo;ll shoot as straight,&rdquo; said the Major.
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s brought enough ironmongery with him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t be a Chinn if he didn&rsquo;t. Watch him blowin&rsquo;
+his nose. Regular Chinn beak. Flourishes his handkerchief like his father.
+It&rsquo;s the second edition&mdash;line for line.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fairy tale, by Jove!&rdquo; said the Major, peering through the slats of
+the jalousies. &ldquo;If he&rsquo;s the lawful heir, he&rsquo;ll.... Now old
+Chinn could no more pass that chick without fiddling with it than....&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;His son!&rdquo; said the Colonel, jumping up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I be blowed!&rdquo; said the Major. The boy&rsquo;s eye had been
+caught by a split-reed screen that hung on a slew between the veranda pillars,
+and, mechanically, he had tweaked the edge to set it level. Old Chinn had sworn
+three times a day at that screen for many years; he could never get it to his
+satisfaction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His son entered the anteroom in the middle of a fivefold silence. They made him
+welcome for his father&rsquo;s sake and, as they took stock of him, for his
+own. He was ridiculously like the portrait of the Colonel on the wall, and when
+he had washed a little of the dust from his throat he went to his quarters with
+the old man&rsquo;s short, noiseless jungle-step.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So much for heredity,&rdquo; said the Major. &ldquo;That comes of four
+generations among the Bhils.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And the men know it,&rdquo; said a Wing officer. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve
+been waiting for this youth with their tongues hanging out. I am persuaded
+that, unless he absolutely beats &rsquo;em over the head, they&rsquo;ll lie
+down by companies and worship him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothin&rsquo; like havin&rsquo; a father before you,&rdquo; said the
+Major. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a parvenu with my chaps. I&rsquo;ve only been twenty
+years in the regiment, and my revered parent he was a simple squire.
+There&rsquo;s no getting at the bottom of a Bhil&rsquo;s mind. Now, <i>why</i>
+is the superior bearer that young Chinn brought with him fleeing across country
+with his bundle?&rdquo; He stepped into the verandah, and shouted after the
+man&mdash;a typical new-joined subaltern&rsquo;s servant who speaks English and
+cheats in proportion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; he called.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Plenty bad man here. I going, sar,&rdquo; was the reply. &ldquo;Have
+taken Sahib&rsquo;s keys, and say will shoot.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Doocid lucid&mdash;doocid convincin&rsquo;. How those up-country thieves
+can leg it! He has been badly frightened by some one.&rdquo; The Major strolled
+to his quarters to dress for mess.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young Chinn, walking like a man in a dream, had fetched a compass round the
+entire cantonment before going to his own tiny cottage. The captain&rsquo;s
+quarters, in which he had been born, delayed him for a little; then he looked
+at the well on the parade-ground, where he had sat of evenings with his nurse,
+and at the ten-by-fourteen church, where the officers went to service if a
+chaplain of any official creed happened to come along. It seemed very small as
+compared with the gigantic buildings he used to stare up at, but it was the
+same place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From time to time he passed a knot of silent soldiers, who saluted. They might
+have been the very men who had carried him on their backs when he was in his
+first knickerbockers. A faint light burned in his room, and, as he entered,
+hands clasped his feet, and a voice murmured from the floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who is it?&rdquo; said young Chinn, not knowing he spoke in the Bhil
+tongue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I bore you in my arms, Sahib, when I was a strong man and you were a
+small one&mdash;crying, crying, crying! I am your servant, as I was your
+father&rsquo;s before you. We are all your servants.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young Chinn could not trust himself to reply, and the voice went on:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have taken your keys from that fat foreigner, and sent him away; and
+the studs are in the shirt for mess. Who should know, if I do not know? And so
+the baby has become a man, and forgets his nurse; but my nephew shall make a
+good servant, or I will beat him twice a day.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then there rose up, with a rattle, as straight as a Bhil arrow, a little
+white-haired wizened ape of a man, with medals and orders on his tunic,
+stammering, saluting, and trembling. Behind him a young and wiry Bhil, in
+uniform, was taking the trees out of Chinn&rsquo;s mess-boots.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chinn&rsquo;s eyes were full of tears. The old man held out his keys.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Foreigners are bad people. He will never come back again. We are all
+servants of your father&rsquo;s son. Has the Sahib forgotten who took him to
+see the trapped tiger in the village across the river, when his mother was so
+frightened and he was so brave?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The scene came back to Chinn in great magic-lantern flashes.
+&ldquo;Bukta!&rdquo; he cried; and all in a breath: &ldquo;You promised nothing
+should hurt me. <i>Is</i> it Bukta?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man was at his feet a second time. &ldquo;He has not forgotten. He
+remembers his own people as his father remembered. Now can I die. But first I
+will live and show the Sahib how to kill tigers. That <i>that</i> yonder is my
+nephew. If he is not a good servant, beat him and send him to me, and I will
+surely kill him, for now the Sahib is with his own people. Ai, Jan
+<i>baba</i>&mdash;Jan <i>baba!</i> My Jan <i>baba!</i> I will stay here and see
+that this does his work well. Take off his boots, fool. Sit down upon the bed,
+Sahib, and let me look. It <i>is</i> Jan <i>baba</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pushed forward the hilt of his sword as a sign of service, which is an
+honour paid only to viceroys, governors, generals, or to little children whom
+one loves dearly. Chinn touched the hilt mechanically with three fingers,
+muttering he knew not what. It happened to be the old answer of his childhood,
+when Bukta in jest called him the little General Sahib.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Major&rsquo;s quarters were opposite Chinn&rsquo;s, and when he heard his
+servant gasp with surprise he looked across the room. Then the Major sat on the
+bed and whistled; for the spectacle of the senior native commissioned officer
+of the regiment, an &ldquo;unmixed&rdquo; Bhil, a Companion of the Order of
+British India, with thirty-five years&rsquo; spotless service in the army, and
+a rank among his own people superior to that of many Bengal princelings,
+valeting the last-joined subaltern, was a little too much for his nerves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The throaty bugles blew the Mess-call that has a long legend behind it. First a
+few piercing notes like the shrieks of beaters in a far-away cover, and next,
+large, full, and smooth, the refrain of the wild song: &ldquo;And oh, and oh,
+the green pulse of Mundore&mdash;Mundore!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All little children were in bed when the Sahib heard that call
+last,&rdquo; said Bukta, passing Chinn a clean handkerchief. The call brought
+back memories of his cot under the mosquito-netting, his mother&rsquo;s kiss,
+and the sound of footsteps growing fainter as he dropped asleep among his men.
+So he hooked the dark collar of his new mess-jacket, and went to dinner like a
+prince who has newly inherited his father&rsquo;s crown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old Bukta swaggered forth curling his whiskers. He knew his own value, and no
+money and no rank within the gift of the Government would have induced him to
+put studs in young officers&rsquo; shirts, or to hand them clean ties. Yet,
+when he took off his uniform that night, and squatted among his fellows for a
+quiet smoke, he told them what he had done, and they said that he was entirely
+right. Thereat Bukta propounded a theory which to a white mind would have
+seemed raving insanity; but the whispering, level-headed little men of war
+considered it from every point of view, and thought that there might be a great
+deal in it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At mess under the oil-lamps the talk turned as usual to the unfailing subject
+of <i>shikar</i>&mdash;big game-shooting of every kind and under all sorts of
+conditions. Young Chinn opened his eyes when he understood that each one of his
+companions had shot several tigers in the Wuddar style&mdash;on foot, that
+is&mdash;making no more of the business than if the brute had been a dog.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In nine cases out of ten,&rdquo; said the Major, &ldquo;a tiger is
+almost as dangerous as a porcupine. But the tenth time you come home feet
+first.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That set all talking, and long before midnight Chinn&rsquo;s brain was in a
+whirl with stories of tigers&mdash;man-eaters and cattle-killers each pursuing
+his own business as methodically as clerks in an office; new tigers that had
+lately come into such-and-such a district; and old, friendly beasts of great
+cunning, known by nicknames in the mess&mdash;such as &ldquo;Puggy,&rdquo; who
+was lazy, with huge paws, and &ldquo;Mrs. Malaprop,&rdquo; who turned up when
+you never expected her, and made female noises. Then they spoke of Bhil
+superstitions, a wide and picturesque field, till young Chinn hinted that they
+must be pulling his leg.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Deed, we aren&rsquo;t,&rdquo; said a man on his left. &ldquo;We
+know all about you. You&rsquo;re a Chinn and all that, and you&rsquo;ve a sort
+of vested right here; but if you don&rsquo;t believe what we&rsquo;re telling
+you, what will you do when old Bukta begins his stories? He knows about
+ghost-tigers, and tigers that go to a hell of their own; and tigers that walk
+on their hind feet; and your grandpapa&rsquo;s riding-tiger, as well. Odd he
+hasn&rsquo;t spoken of that yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know you&rsquo;ve an ancestor buried down Satpura way, don&rsquo;t
+you?&rdquo; said the Major, as Chinn smiled irresolutely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course I do,&rdquo; said Chinn, who had the chronicle of the Book of
+Chinn by heart. It lies in a worn old ledger on the Chinese lacquer table
+behind the piano in the Devonshire home, and the children are allowed to look
+at it on Sundays.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I wasn&rsquo;t sure. Your revered ancestor, my boy, according to
+the Bhils, has a tiger of his own&mdash;a saddle-tiger that he rides round the
+country whenever he feels inclined. <i>I</i> don&rsquo;t call it decent in an
+ex-Collector&rsquo;s ghost; but that is what the Southern Bhils believe. Even
+our men, who might be called moderately cool, don&rsquo;t care to beat that
+country if they hear that Jan Chinn is running about on his tiger. It is
+supposed to be a clouded animal&mdash;not stripy, but blotchy, like a
+tortoise-shell tom-cat. No end of a brute, it is, and a sure sign of war or
+pestilence or&mdash;or something. There&rsquo;s a nice family legend for
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the origin of it, d&rsquo; you suppose?&rdquo; said Chinn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ask the Satpura Bhils. Old Jan Chinn was a mighty hunter before the
+Lord. Perhaps it was the tiger&rsquo;s revenge, or perhaps he&rsquo;s
+huntin&rsquo; &rsquo;em still. You must go to his tomb one of these days and
+inquire. Bukta will probably attend to that. He was asking me before you came
+whether by any ill-luck you had already bagged your tiger. If not, he is going
+to enter you under his own wing. Of course, for you of all men it&rsquo;s
+imperative. You&rsquo;ll have a first-class time with Bukta.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Major was not wrong. Bukta kept an anxious eye on young Chinn at drill, and
+it was noticeable that the first time the new officer lifted up his voice in an
+order the whole line quivered. Even the Colonel was taken aback, for it might
+have been Lionel Chinn returned from Devonshire with a new lease of life. Bukta
+had continued to develop his peculiar theory among his intimates, and it was
+accepted as a matter of faith in the lines, since every word and gesture on
+young Chinn&rsquo;s part so confirmed it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old man arranged early that his darling should wipe out the reproach of not
+having shot a tiger; but he was not content to take the first or any beast that
+happened to arrive. In his own villages he dispensed the high, low, and middle
+justice, and when his people&mdash;naked and fluttered&mdash;came to him with
+word of a beast marked down, he bade them send spies to the kills and the
+watering-places, that he might be sure the quarry was such an one as suited the
+dignity of such a man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Three or four times the reckless trackers returned, most truthfully saying that
+the beast was mangy, undersized&mdash;a tigress worn with nursing, or a
+broken-toothed old male&mdash;and Bukta would curb young Chinn&rsquo;s
+impatience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, a noble animal was marked down&mdash;a ten-foot cattle-killer with a
+huge roll of loose skin along the belly, glossy-hided, full-frilled about the
+neck, whiskered, frisky, and young. He had slain a man in pure sport, they
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let him be fed,&rdquo; quoth Bukta, and the villagers dutifully drove
+out a cow to amuse him, that he might lie up near by.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Princes and potentates have taken ship to India and spent great moneys for the
+mere glimpse of beasts one-half as fine as this of Bukta&rsquo;s.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is not good,&rdquo; said he to the Colonel, when he asked for
+shooting-leave, &ldquo;that my Colonel&rsquo;s son who may be&mdash;that my
+Colonel&rsquo;s son should lose his maidenhead on any small jungle beast. That
+may come after. I have waited long for this which is a tiger. He has come in
+from the Mair country. In seven days we will return with the skin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mess gnashed their teeth enviously. Bukta, had he chosen, might have
+invited them all. But he went out alone with Chinn, two days in a shooting-cart
+and a day on foot, till they came to a rocky, glary valley with a pool of good
+water in it. It was a parching day, and the boy very naturally stripped and
+went in for a bathe, leaving Bukta by the clothes. A white skin shows far
+against brown jungle, and what Bukta beheld on Chinn&rsquo;s back and right
+shoulder dragged him forward step by step with staring eyeballs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d forgotten it isn&rsquo;t decent to strip before a man of his
+position,&rdquo; said Chinn, flouncing in the water. &ldquo;How the little
+devil stares! What is it, Bukta?&rdquo; &ldquo;The Mark!&rdquo; was the
+whispered answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is nothing. You know how it is with my people!&rdquo; Chinn was
+annoyed. The dull-red birth-mark on his shoulder, something like a
+conventionalised Tartar cloud, had slipped his memory or he would not have
+bathed. It occurred, so they said at home, in alternate generations, appearing,
+curiously enough, eight or nine years after birth, and, save that it was part
+of the Chinn inheritance, would not be considered pretty. He hurried ashore,
+dressed again, and went on till they met two or three Bhils, who promptly fell
+on their faces. &ldquo;My people,&rdquo; grunted Bukta, not condescending to
+notice them. &ldquo;And so your people, Sahib. When I was a young man we were
+fewer, but not so weak. Now we are many, but poor stock. As may be remembered.
+How will you shoot him, Sahib? From a tree; from a shelter which my people
+shall build; by day or by night?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;On foot and in the daytime,&rdquo; said young Chinn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That was your custom, as I have heard,&rdquo; said Bukta to himself.
+&ldquo;I will get news of him. Then you and I will go to him. I will carry one
+gun. You have yours. There is no need of more. What tiger shall stand against
+<i>thee?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was marked down by a little water-hole at the head of a ravine, full-gorged
+and half asleep in the May sunlight. He was walked up like a partridge, and he
+turned to do battle for his life. Bukta made no motion to raise his rifle, but
+kept his eyes on Chinn, who met the shattering roar of the charge with a single
+shot&mdash;it seemed to him hours as he sighted&mdash;which tore through the
+throat, smashing the backbone below the neck and between the shoulders. The
+brute couched, choked, and fell, and before Chinn knew well what had happened
+Bukta bade him stay still while he paced the distance between his feet and the
+ringing jaws.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fifteen,&rdquo; said Bukta. &ldquo;Short paces. No need for a second
+shot, Sahib. He bleeds cleanly where he lies, and we need not spoil the skin. I
+said there would be no need of these, but they came&mdash;in case.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly the sides of the ravine were crowned with the heads of Bukta&rsquo;s
+people&mdash;a force that could have blown the ribs out of the beast had
+Chinn&rsquo;s shot failed; but their guns were hidden, and they appeared as
+interested beaters, some five or six waiting the word to skin. Bukta watched
+the life fade from the wild eyes, lifted one hand, and turned on his heel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No need to show that <i>we</i> care,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Now, after
+this, we can kill what we choose. Put out your hand, Sahib.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chinn obeyed. It was entirely steady, and Bukta nodded. &ldquo;That also was
+your custom. My men skin quickly. They will carry the skin to cantonments. Will
+the Sahib come to my poor village for the night and, perhaps, forget that I am
+his officer?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But those men&mdash;the beaters. They have worked hard, and
+perhaps&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, if they skin clumsily, we will skin them. They are my people. In the
+lines I am one thing. Here I am another.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was very true. When Bukta doffed uniform and reverted to the fragmentary
+dress of his own people, he left his civilisation of drill in the next world.
+That night, after a little talk with his subjects, he devoted to an orgie; and
+a Bhil orgie is a thing not to be safely written about. Chinn, flushed with
+triumph, was in the thick of it, but the meaning of the mysteries was hidden.
+Wild folk came and pressed about his knees with offerings. He gave his flask to
+the elders of the village. They grew eloquent, and wreathed him about with
+flowers. Gifts and loans, not all seemly, were thrust upon him, and infernal
+music rolled and maddened round red fires, while singers sang songs of the
+ancient times, and danced peculiar dances. The aboriginal liquors are very
+potent, and Chinn was compelled to taste them often, but, unless the stuff had
+been drugged, how came he to fall asleep suddenly, and to waken late the next
+day&mdash;half a march from the village?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Sahib was very tired. A little before dawn he went to sleep,&rdquo;
+Bukta explained. &ldquo;My people carried him here, and now it is time we
+should go back to cantonments.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The voice, smooth and deferential, the step, steady and silent, made it hard to
+believe that only a few hours before Bukta was yelling and capering with naked
+fellow-devils of the scrub.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My people were very pleased to see the Sahib. They will never forget.
+When next the Sahib goes out recruiting, he will go to my people, and they will
+give him as many men as we need.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chinn kept his own counsel, except as to the shooting of the tiger, and Bukta
+embroidered that tale with a shameless tongue. The skin was certainly one of
+the finest ever hung up in the mess, and the first of many. When Bukta could
+not accompany his boy on shooting-trips, he took care to put him in good hands,
+and Chinn learned more of the mind and desire of the wild Bhil in his marches
+and campings, by talks at twilight or at wayside pools, than an uninstructed
+man could have come at in a lifetime.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently his men in the regiment grew bold to speak of their
+relatives&mdash;mostly in trouble&mdash;and to lay cases of tribal custom
+before him. They would say, squatting in his verandah at twilight, after the
+easy, confidential style of the Wuddars, that such-and-such a bachelor had run
+away with such-and-such a wife at a far-off village. Now, how many cows would
+Chinn Sahib consider a just fine? Or, again, if written order came from the
+Government that a Bhil was to repair to a walled city of the plains to give
+evidence in a law-court, would it be wise to disregard that order? On the other
+hand, if it were obeyed, would the rash voyager return alive?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But what have I to do with these things?&rdquo; Chinn demanded of Bukta,
+impatiently. &ldquo;I am a soldier. I do not know the law.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hoo! Law is for fools and white men. Give them a large and loud order,
+and they will abide by it. Thou art their law.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But wherefore?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every trace of expression left Bukta&rsquo;s countenance. The idea might have
+smitten him for the first time. &ldquo;How can I say?&rdquo; he replied.
+&ldquo;Perhaps it is on account of the name. A Bhil does not love strange
+things. Give them orders, Sahib&mdash;two, three, four words at a time such as
+they can carry away in their heads. That is enough.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chinn gave orders then, valiantly, not realising that a word spoken in haste
+before mess became the dread unappealable law of villages beyond the smoky
+hills was, in truth, no less than the Law of Jan Chinn the First, who, so the
+whispered legend ran, had come back to earth, to oversee the third generation,
+in the body and bones of his grandson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There could be no sort of doubt in this matter. All the Bhils knew that Jan
+Chinn reincarnated had honoured Bukta&rsquo;s village with his presence after
+slaying his first&mdash;in this life&mdash;tiger; that he had eaten and drunk
+with the people, as he was used; and&mdash;Bukta must have drugged
+Chinn&rsquo;s liquor very deeply&mdash;upon his back and right shoulder all men
+had seen the same angry red Flying Cloud that the high Gods had set on the
+flesh of Jan Chinn the First when first he came to the Bhil. As concerned the
+foolish white world which has no eyes, he was a slim and young officer in the
+Wuddars; but his own people knew he was Jan Chinn, who had made the Bhil a man;
+and, believing, they hastened to carry his words, careful never to alter them
+on the way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Because the savage and the child who plays lonely games have one horror of
+being laughed at or questioned, the little folk kept their convictions to
+themselves; and the Colonel, who thought he knew his regiment, never guessed
+that each one of the six hundred quick-footed, beady-eyed rank-and-file, to
+attention beside their rifles, believed serenely and unshakenly that the
+subaltern on the left flank of the line was a demi-god twice
+born&mdash;tutelary deity of their land and people. The Earth-gods themselves
+had stamped the incarnation, and who would dare to doubt the handiwork of the
+Earth-gods?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chinn, being practical above all things, saw that his family name served him
+well in the lines and in camp. His men gave no trouble&mdash;one does not
+commit regimental offences with a god in the chair of justice&mdash;and he was
+sure of the best beaters in the district when he needed them. They believed
+that the protection of Jan Chinn the First cloaked them, and were bold in that
+belief beyond the utmost daring of excited Bhils.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His quarters began to look like an amateur natural-history museum, in spite of
+duplicate heads and horns and skulls that he sent home to Devonshire. The
+people, very humanly, learned the weak side of their god. It is true he was
+unbribable, but bird-skins, butterflies, beetles, and, above all, news of big
+game pleased him. In other respects, too, he lived up to the Chinn tradition.
+He was fever-proof. A night&rsquo;s sitting out over a tethered goat in a damp
+valley, that would have filled the Major with a month&rsquo;s malaria, had no
+effect on him. He was, as they said, &ldquo;salted before he was born.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now in the autumn of his second year&rsquo;s service an uneasy rumour crept out
+of the earth and ran about among the Bhils. Chinn heard nothing of it till a
+brother-officer said across the mess-table: &ldquo;Your revered
+ancestor&rsquo;s on the rampage in the Satpura country. You&rsquo;d better look
+him up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to be disrespectful, but I&rsquo;m a little sick of
+my revered ancestor. Bukta talks of nothing else. What&rsquo;s the old boy
+supposed to be doing now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Riding cross-country by moonlight on his processional tiger.
+That&rsquo;s the story. He&rsquo;s been seen by about two thousand Bhils,
+skipping along the tops of the Satpuras, and scaring people to death. They
+believe it devoutly, and all the Satpura chaps are worshipping away at his
+shrine&mdash;tomb, I mean&mdash;like good &rsquo;uns. You really ought to go
+down there. Must be a queer thing to see your grandfather treated as a
+god.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What makes you think there&rsquo;s any truth in the tale?&rdquo; said
+Chinn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because all our men deny it. They say they&rsquo;ve never heard of
+Chinn&rsquo;s tiger. Now that&rsquo;s a manifest lie, because every Bhil
+<i>has</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s only one thing you&rsquo;ve overlooked,&rdquo; said the
+Colonel, thoughtfully. &ldquo;When a local god reappears on earth, it&rsquo;s
+always an excuse for trouble of some kind; and those Satpura Bhils are about as
+wild as your grandfather left them, young &rsquo;un. It means something.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Meanin&rsquo; they may go on the war-path?&rdquo; said Chinn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t say&mdash;as yet. Shouldn&rsquo;t be surprised a little
+bit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t been told a syllable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Proves it all the more. They are keeping something back.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bukta tells me everything, too, as a rule. Now, why didn&rsquo;t he tell
+me that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chinn put the question directly to the old man that night, and the answer
+surprised him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why should I tell what is well known? Yes, the Clouded Tiger is out in
+the Satpura country.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do the wild Bhils think that it means?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They do not know. They wait. Sahib, what <i>is</i> coming? Say only one
+little word, and we will be content.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We? What have tales from the south, where the jungly Bhils live, to do
+with drilled men?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When Jan Chinn wakes is no time for any Bhil to be quiet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But he has not waked, Bukta.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sahib&rdquo;&mdash;the old man&rsquo;s eyes were full of tender
+reproof&mdash;&ldquo;if he does not wish to be seen, why does he go abroad in
+the moonlight? We know he is awake, but we do not know what he desires. Is it a
+sign for all the Bhils, or one that concerns the Satpura folk alone? Say one
+little word, Sahib, that I may carry it to the lines, and send on to our
+villages. Why does Jan Chinn ride out? Who has done wrong? Is it pestilence? Is
+it murrain? Will our children die? Is it a sword? Remember, Sahib, we are thy
+people and thy servants, and in this life I bore thee in my arms&mdash;not
+knowing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bukta has evidently looked on the cup this evening,&rdquo; Chinn
+thought; &ldquo;but if I can do anything to soothe the old chap I must.
+It&rsquo;s like the Mutiny rumours on a small scale.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He dropped into a deep wicker chair, over which was thrown his first
+tiger-skin, and his weight on the cushion flapped the clawed paws over his
+shoulders. He laid hold of them mechanically as he spoke, drawing the painted
+hide, cloak-fashion, about him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now will I tell the truth, Bukta,&rdquo; he said, leaning forward, the
+dried muzzle on his shoulder, to invent a specious lie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see that it is the truth,&rdquo; was the answer, in a shaking voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jan Chinn goes abroad among the Satpuras, riding on the Clouded Tiger,
+ye say? Be it so. Therefore the sign of the wonder is for the Satpura Bhils
+only, and does not touch the Bhils who plough in the north and east, the Bhils
+of the Khandesh, or any others, except the Satpura Bhils, who, as we know, are
+wild and foolish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is, then, a sign for <i>them</i>. Good or bad?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Beyond doubt, good. For why should Jan Chinn make evil to those whom he
+has made men? The nights over yonder are hot; it is ill to lie in one bed
+over-long without turning, and Jan Chinn would look again upon his people. So
+he rises, whistles his Clouded Tiger, and goes abroad a little to breathe the
+cool air. If the Satpura Bhils kept to their villages, and did not wander after
+dark, they would not see him. Indeed, Bukta, it is no more than that he would
+see the light again in his own country. Send this news south, and say that it
+is my word.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bukta bowed to the floor. &ldquo;Good Heavens!&rdquo; thought Chinn, &ldquo;and
+this blinking pagan is a first-class officer, and as straight as a die! I may
+as well round it off neatly.&rdquo; He went on:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If the Satpura Bhils ask the meaning of the sign, tell them that Jan
+Chinn would see how they kept their old promises of good living. Perhaps they
+have plundered; perhaps they mean to disobey the orders of the Government;
+perhaps there is a dead man in the jungle; and so Jan Chinn has come to
+see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is he, then, angry?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bah! Am <i>I</i> ever angry with my Bhils? I say angry words, and
+threaten many things. <i>Thou</i> knowest, Bukta. I have seen thee smile behind
+the hand. I know, and thou knowest. The Bhils are my children. I have said it
+many times.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ay. We be thy children,&rdquo; said Bukta.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And no otherwise is it with Jan Chinn, my father&rsquo;s father. He
+would see the land he loved and the people once again. It is a good ghost,
+Bukta. I say it. Go and tell them. And I do hope devoutly,&rdquo; he added,
+&ldquo;that it will calm &rsquo;em down.&rdquo; Flinging back the tiger-skin,
+he rose with a long, unguarded yawn that showed his well-kept teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bukta fled, to be received in the lines by a knot of panting inquirers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is true,&rdquo; said Bukta. &ldquo;He wrapped himself in the skin,
+and spoke from it. He would see his own country again. The sign is not for us;
+and, indeed, he is a young man. How should he lie idle of nights? He says his
+bed is too hot and the air is bad. He goes to and fro for the love of
+night-running. He has said it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The grey-whiskered assembly shuddered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He says the Bhils are his children. Ye know he does not lie. He has said
+it to me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But what of the Satpura Bhils? What means the sign for them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing. It is only night-running, as I have said. He rides to see if
+they obey the Government, as he taught them to do in his first life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what if they do not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He did not say.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The light went out in Chinn&rsquo;s quarters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look,&rdquo; said Bukta. &ldquo;Now he goes away. None the less it is a
+good ghost, as he has said. How shall we fear Jan Chinn, who made the Bhil a
+man? His protection is on us; and ye know Jan Chinn never broke a protection
+spoken or written on paper. When he is older and has found him a wife he will
+lie in his bed till morning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A commanding officer is generally aware of the regimental state of mind a
+little before the men; and this is why the Colonel said, a few days later, that
+some one had been putting the Fear of God into the Wuddars. As he was the only
+person officially entitled to do this, it distressed him to see such unanimous
+virtue. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s too good to last,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I only wish
+I could find out what the little chaps mean.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The explanation, as it seemed to him, came at the change of the moon, when he
+received orders to hold himself in readiness to &ldquo;allay any possible
+excitement&rdquo; among the Satpura Bhils, who were, to put it mildly, uneasy
+because a paternal Government had sent up against them a Mahratta
+State-educated vaccinator, with lancets, lymph, and an officially registered
+calf. In the language of State, they had &ldquo;manifested a strong objection
+to all prophylactic measures,&rdquo; had &ldquo;forcibly detained the
+vaccinator,&rdquo; and &ldquo;were on the point of neglecting or evading their
+tribal obligations.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That means they are in a blue funk&mdash;same as they were at
+census-time,&rdquo; said the Colonel; &ldquo;and if we stampede them into the
+hills we&rsquo;ll never catch &rsquo;em, in the first place, and, in the
+second, they&rsquo;ll whoop off plundering till further orders. Wonder who the
+God-forsaken idiot is who is trying to vaccinate a Bhil. I knew trouble was
+coming. One good thing is that they&rsquo;ll only use local corps, and we can
+knock up something we&rsquo;ll call a campaign, and let them down easy. Fancy
+us potting our best beaters because they don&rsquo;t want to be vaccinated!
+They&rsquo;re only crazy with fear.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think, sir,&rdquo; said Chinn, the next day, &ldquo;that
+perhaps you could give me a fortnight&rsquo;s shooting-leave?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Desertion in the face of the enemy, by Jove!&rdquo; The Colonel laughed.
+&ldquo;I might, but I&rsquo;d have to antedate it a little, because we&rsquo;re
+warned for service, as you might say. However, we&rsquo;ll assume that you
+applied for leave three days ago, and are now well on your way south.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to take Bukta with me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course, yes. I think that will be the best plan. You&rsquo;ve some
+kind of hereditary influence with the little chaps, and they may listen to you
+when a glimpse of our uniforms would drive them wild. You&rsquo;ve never been
+in that part of the world before, have you? Take care they don&rsquo;t send you
+to your family vault in your youth and innocence. I believe you&rsquo;ll be all
+right if you can get &rsquo;em to listen to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think so, sir; but if&mdash;if they should accidentally put
+an&mdash;make asses of &rsquo;emselves&mdash;they might, you know&mdash;I hope
+you&rsquo;ll represent that they were only frightened. There isn&rsquo;t an
+ounce of real vice in &rsquo;em, and I should never forgive myself if any one
+of&mdash;of my name got them into trouble.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Colonel nodded, but said nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chinn and Bukta departed at once. Bukta did not say that, ever since the
+official vaccinator had been dragged into the hills by indignant Bhils, runner
+after runner had skulked up to the lines, entreating, with forehead in the
+dust, that Jan Chinn should come and explain this unknown horror that hung over
+his people.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The portent of the Clouded Tiger was now too clear. Let Jan Chinn comfort his
+own, for vain was the help of mortal man. Bukta toned down these beseechings to
+a simple request for Chinn&rsquo;s presence. Nothing would have pleased the old
+man better than a rough-and-tumble campaign against the Satpuras, whom he, as
+an &ldquo;unmixed&rdquo; Bhil, despised; but he had a duty to all his nation as
+Jan Chinn&rsquo;s interpreter; and he devoutly believed that forty plagues
+would fall on his village if he tampered with that obligation. Besides, Jan
+Chinn knew all things, and he rode the Clouded Tiger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They covered thirty miles a day on foot and pony, raising the blue wall-like
+line of the Satpuras as swiftly as might be. Bukta was very silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They began the steep climb a little after noon, but it was near sunset ere they
+reached the stone platform clinging to the side of a rifted, jungle-covered
+hill, where Jan Chinn the First was laid, as he had desired, that he might
+overlook his people. All India is full of neglected graves that date from the
+beginning of the eighteenth century&mdash;tombs of forgotten colonels of corps
+long since disbanded; mates of East India men who went on shooting expeditions
+and never came back; factors, agents, writers, and ensigns of the Honourable
+the East India Company by hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands. English
+folk forget quickly, but natives have long memories, and if a man has done good
+in his life it is remembered after his death. The weathered marble four-square
+tomb of Jan Chinn was hung about with wild flowers and nuts, packets of wax and
+honey, bottles of native spirits, and infamous cigars, with buffalo horns and
+plumes of dried grass. At one end was a rude clay image of a white man, in the
+old-fashioned top-hat, riding on a bloated tiger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bukta salamed reverently as they approached. Chinn bared his head and began to
+pick out the blurred inscription. So far as he could read it ran
+thus&mdash;word for word, and letter for letter:
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+To the Memory of J<small>OHN</small> C<small>HINN</small>, Esq.<br/>
+Late Collector of............<br/>
+....ithout Bloodshed or ... error of Authority<br/>
+Employ . only .. eans of Conciliat ... and Confiden.<br/>
+accomplished the ...tire Subjection...<br/>
+a Lawless and Predatory Peop...<br/>
+....taching them to ... ish Government<br/>
+by a Conque.. over .... Minds<br/>
+The most perma... and rational Mode of Domini..<br/>
+...Governor General and Counc ... engal<br/>
+have ordered thi ..... erected<br/>
+....arted this Life Aug. 19, 184. Ag...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the other side of the grave were ancient verses, also very worn. As much as
+Chinn could decipher said:
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+.... the savage band<br/>
+Forsook their Haunts and b..... is Command<br/>
+....mended .. rals check a ...st for spoil.<br/>
+And . s . ing Hamlets prove his gene.... toil.<br/>
+Humanit ... survey ......ights restor..<br/>
+A Nation ..ield .. subdued without a Sword.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For some little time he leaned on the tomb thinking of this dead man of his own
+blood, and of the house in Devonshire; then, nodding to the plains: &ldquo;Yes;
+it&rsquo;s a big work&mdash;all of it&mdash;even my little share. He must have
+been worth knowing.... Bukta, where are my people?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not here, Sahib. No man comes here except in full sun. They wait above.
+Let us climb and see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Chinn, remembering the first law of Oriental diplomacy, in an even voice
+answered: &ldquo;I have come this far only because the Satpura folk are
+foolish, and dared not visit our lines. Now bid them wait on me <i>here</i>. I
+am not a servant, but the master of Bhils.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I go&mdash;I go,&rdquo; clucked the old man. Night was falling, and at
+any moment Jan Chinn might whistle up his dreaded steed from the darkening
+scrub.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now for the first time in a long life Bukta disobeyed a lawful command and
+deserted his leader; for he did not come back, but pressed to the flat
+table-top of the hill, and called softly. Men stirred all about
+him&mdash;little trembling men with bows and arrows who had watched the two
+since noon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where is he?&rdquo; whispered one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;At his own place. He bids you come,&rdquo; said Bukta.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather let him loose the Clouded Tiger upon us. We do not go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nor I, though I bore him in my arms when he was a child in this his
+life. Wait here till the day.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But surely he will be angry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He will be very angry, for he has nothing to eat. But he has said to me
+many times that the Bhils are his children. By sunlight I believe this,
+but&mdash;by moonlight I am not so sure. What folly have ye Satpura pigs
+compassed that ye should need him at all?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One came to us in the name of the Government with little ghost-knives
+and a magic calf, meaning to turn us into cattle by the cutting off of our
+arms. We were greatly afraid, but we did not kill the man. He is here,
+bound&mdash;a black man; and we think he comes from the west. He said it was an
+order to cut us all with knives&mdash;especially the women and the children. We
+did not hear that it was an order, so we were afraid, and kept to our hills.
+Some of our men have taken ponies and bullocks from the plains, and others pots
+and cloths and ear-rings.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are any slain?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By our men? Not yet. But the young men are blown to and fro by many
+rumours like flames upon a hill. I sent runners asking for Jan Chinn lest worse
+should come to us. It was this fear that he foretold by the sign of the Clouded
+Tiger.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He says it is otherwise,&rdquo; said Bukta; and he repeated, with
+amplifications, all that young Chinn had told him at the conference of the
+wicker chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Think you,&rdquo; said the questioner, at last, &ldquo;that the
+Government will lay hands on us?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not I,&rdquo; Bukta rejoined. &ldquo;Jan Chinn will give an order, and
+ye will obey. The rest is between the Government and Jan Chinn. I myself know
+something of the ghost-knives and the scratching. It is a charm against the
+Smallpox. But how it is done I cannot tell. Nor need that concern you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If he stands by us and before the anger of the Government we will most
+strictly obey Jan Chinn, except&mdash;except we do not go down to that place
+to-night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They could hear young Chinn below them shouting for Bukta; but they cowered and
+sat still, expecting the Clouded Tiger. The tomb had been holy ground for
+nearly half a century. If Jan Chinn chose to sleep there, who had better right?
+But they would not come within eyeshot of the place till broad day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At first Chinn was exceedingly angry, till it occurred to him that Bukta most
+probably had a reason (which, indeed, he had), and his own dignity might suffer
+if he yelled without answer. He propped himself against the foot of the grave,
+and, alternately dozing and smoking, came through the warm night proud that he
+was a lawful, legitimate, fever-proof Chinn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He prepared his plan of action much as his grandfather would have done; and
+when Bukta appeared in the morning with a most liberal supply of food, said
+nothing of the overnight desertion. Bukta would have been relieved by an
+outburst of human anger; but Chinn finished his victual leisurely, and a
+cheroot, ere he made any sign.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are very much afraid,&rdquo; said Bukta, who was not too bold
+himself. &ldquo;It remains only to give orders. They said they will obey if
+thou wilt only stand between them and the Government.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That I know,&rdquo; said Chinn, strolling slowly to the table-land. A
+few of the elder men stood in an irregular semicircle in an open glade; but the
+ruck of people&mdash;women and children were hidden in the thicket. They had no
+desire to face the first anger of Jan Chinn the First.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Seating himself on a fragment of split rock, he smoked his cheroot to the butt,
+hearing men breathe hard all about him. Then he cried, so suddenly that they
+jumped:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bring the man that was bound!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A scuffle and a cry were followed by the appearance of a Hindoo vaccinator,
+quaking with fear, bound hand and foot, as the Bhils of old were accustomed to
+bind their human sacrifices. He was pushed cautiously before the presence; but
+young Chinn did not look at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I said&mdash;the man that <i>was</i> bound. Is it a jest to bring me one
+tied like a buffalo? Since when could the Bhil bind folk at his pleasure?
+Cut!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Half a dozen hasty knives cut away the thongs, and the man crawled to Chinn,
+who pocketed his case of lancets and tubes of lymph. Then, sweeping the
+semicircle with one comprehensive forefinger, and in the voice of compliment,
+he said, clearly and distinctly: &ldquo;Pigs!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ai!&rdquo; whispered Bukta. &ldquo;Now he speaks. Woe to foolish
+people!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have come on foot from my house&rdquo; (the assembly shuddered)
+&ldquo;to make clear a matter which any other Satpura Bhil would have seen with
+both eyes from a distance. Ye know the Smallpox who pits and scars your
+children so that they look like wasp-combs. It is an order of the Government
+that whoso is scratched on the arm with these little knives which I hold up is
+charmed against her. All Sahibs are thus charmed, and very many Hindoos. This
+is the mark of the charm. Look!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rolled back his sleeve to the armpit and showed the white scars of the
+vaccination-mark on his white skin. &ldquo;Come, all, and look.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few daring spirits came up, and nodded their heads wisely. There was
+certainly a mark, and they knew well what other dread marks were hidden by the
+shirt. Merciful was Jan Chinn, that then and there proclaimed his godhead!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now all these things the man whom ye bound told you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did&mdash;a hundred times; but they answered with blows,&rdquo;
+groaned the operator, chafing his wrists and ankles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, being pigs, ye did not believe; and so came I here to save you,
+first from Smallpox, next from a great folly of fear, and lastly, it may be,
+from the rope and the jail. It is no gain to me; it is no pleasure to me: but
+for the sake of that one who is yonder, who made the Bhil a man&rdquo;&mdash;he
+pointed down the hill&mdash;&ldquo;I, who am of his blood, the son of his son,
+come to turn your people. And I speak the truth, as did Jan Chinn.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The crowd murmured reverently, and men stole out of the thicket by twos and
+threes to join it. There was no anger in their god&rsquo;s face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;These are my orders. (Heaven send they&rsquo;ll take &rsquo;em, but I
+seem to have impressed &rsquo;em so far!) I myself will stay among you while
+this man scratches your arms with the knives, after the order of the
+Government. In three, or it may be five or seven, days, your arms will swell
+and itch and burn. That is the power of Smallpox fighting in your base blood
+against the orders of the Government. I will therefore stay among you till I
+see that Smallpox is conquered, and I will not go away till the men and the
+women and the little children show me upon their arms such marks as I have even
+now showed you. I bring with me two very good guns, and a man whose name is
+known among beasts and men. We will hunt together, I and he and your young men,
+and the others shall eat and lie still. This is my order.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a long pause while victory hung in the balance. A white-haired old
+sinner, standing on one uneasy leg, piped up:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There are ponies and some few bullocks and other things for which we
+need a <i>kowl</i> [protection]. They were not taken in the way of
+trade.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The battle was won, and John Chinn drew a breath of relief. The young Bhils had
+been raiding, but if taken swiftly all could be put straight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will write a <i>kowl</i> so soon as the ponies, the bullocks, and the
+other things are counted before me and sent back whence they came. But first we
+will put the Government mark on such as have not been visited by
+Smallpox.&rdquo; In an undertone, to the vaccinator: &ldquo;If you show you are
+afraid you&rsquo;ll never see Poona again, my friend.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is not sufficient ample supply of vaccination for all this
+population,&rdquo; said the man. &ldquo;They destroyed the offeecial
+calf.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They won&rsquo;t know the difference. Scrape &rsquo;em and give me a
+couple of lancets; I&rsquo;ll attend to the elders.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The aged diplomat who had demanded protection was the first victim. He fell to
+Chinn&rsquo;s hand and dared not cry out. As soon as he was freed he dragged up
+a companion, and held him fast, and the crisis became, as it were, a
+child&rsquo;s sport; for the vaccinated chased the unvaccinated to treatment,
+vowing that all the tribe must suffer equally. The women shrieked, and the
+children ran howling; but Chinn laughed, and waved the pink-tipped lancet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is an honour,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Tell them, Bukta, how great an
+honour it is that I myself mark them. Nay, I cannot mark every one&mdash;the
+Hindoo must also do his work&mdash;but I will touch all marks that he makes, so
+there will be an equal virtue in them. Thus do the Rajputs stick pigs. Ho,
+brother with one eye! Catch that girl and bring her to me. She need not run
+away yet, for she is not married, and I do not seek her in marriage. She will
+not come? Then she shall be shamed by her little brother, a fat boy, a bold
+boy. He puts out his arm like a soldier. Look! <i>He</i> does not flinch at the
+blood. Some day he shall be in my regiment. And now, mother of many, we will
+lightly touch thee, for Smallpox has been before us here. It is a true thing,
+indeed, that this charm breaks the power of Mata. There will be no more pitted
+faces among the Satpuras, and so ye can ask many cows for each maid to be
+wed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so on and so on&mdash;quick-poured showman&rsquo;s patter, sauced in the
+Bhil hunting-proverbs and tales of their own brand of coarse humour till the
+lancets were blunted and both operators worn out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, nature being the same the world over, the unvaccinated grew jealous of
+their marked comrades, and came near to blows about it. Then Chinn declared
+himself a court of justice, no longer a medical board, and made formal inquiry
+into the late robberies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We are the thieves of Mahadeo,&rdquo; said the Bhils, simply. &ldquo;It
+is our fate, and we were frightened. When we are frightened we always
+steal.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Simply and directly as children, they gave in the tale of the plunder, all but
+two bullocks and some spirits that had gone amissing (these Chinn promised to
+make good out of his own pocket), and ten ringleaders were despatched to the
+lowlands with a wonderful document, written on the leaf of a note-book, and
+addressed to an Assistant District Superintendent of Police. There was warm
+calamity in that note, as Jan Chinn warned them, but anything was better than
+loss of liberty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Armed with this protection, the repentant raiders went down-hill. They had no
+desire whatever to meet Mr. Dundas Fawne of the Police, aged twenty-two, and of
+a cheerful countenance, nor did they wish to revisit the scene of their
+robberies. Steering a middle course, they ran into the camp of the one
+Government chaplain allowed to the various irregular corps through a district
+of some fifteen thousand square miles, and stood before him in a cloud of dust.
+He was by way of being a priest, they knew, and, what was more to the point, a
+good sportsman who paid his beaters generously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he read Chinn&rsquo;s note he laughed, which they deemed a lucky omen,
+till he called up policemen, who tethered the ponies and the bullocks by the
+piled house-gear, and laid stern hands upon three of that smiling band of the
+thieves of Mahadeo. The chaplain himself addressed them magisterially with a
+riding-whip. That was painful, but Jan Chinn had prophesied it. They submitted,
+but would not give up the written protection, fearing the jail. On their way
+back they met Mr. D. Fawne, who had heard about the robberies, and was not
+pleased.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; said the eldest of the gang, when the second interview
+was at an end, &ldquo;certainly Jan Chinn&rsquo;s protection has saved us our
+liberty, but it is as though there were many beatings in one small piece of
+paper. Put it away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One climbed into a tree, and stuck the letter into a cleft forty feet from the
+ground, where it could do no harm. Warmed, sore, but happy, the ten returned to
+Jan Chinn next day, where he sat among uneasy Bhils, all looking at their right
+arms, and all bound under terror of their god&rsquo;s disfavour not to scratch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was a good <i>kowl</i>,&rdquo; said the leader. &ldquo;First the
+chaplain, who laughed, took away our plunder, and beat three of us, as was
+promised. Next, we meet Fawne Sahib, who frowned, and asked for the plunder. We
+spoke the truth, and so he beat us all, one after another, and called us chosen
+names. He then gave us these two bundles&rdquo;&mdash;they set down a bottle of
+whisky and a box of cheroots&mdash;&ldquo;and we came away. The <i>kowl</i> is
+left in a tree, because its virtue is that so soon as we show it to a Sahib we
+are beaten.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But for that <i>kowl</i>,&rdquo; said Jan Chinn, sternly, &ldquo;ye
+would all have been marching to jail with a policeman on either side. Ye come
+now to serve as beaters for me. These people are unhappy, and we will go
+hunting till they are well. To-night we will make a feast.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is written in the chronicles of the Satpura Bhils, together with many other
+matters not fit for print, that through five days, after the day that he had
+put his mark upon them, Jan Chinn the First hunted for his people; and on the
+five nights of those days the tribe was gloriously and entirely drunk. Jan
+Chinn bought country spirits of an awful strength, and slew wild pig and deer
+beyond counting, so that if any fell sick they might have two good reasons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Between head- and stomach-aches they found no time to think of their arms, but
+followed Jan Chinn obediently through the jungles, and with each day&rsquo;s
+returning confidence men, women, and children stole away to their villages as
+the little army passed by. They carried news that it was good and right to be
+scratched with ghost-knives; that Jan Chinn was indeed reincarnated as a god of
+free food and drink, and that of all nations the Satpura Bhils stood first in
+his favour, if they would only refrain from scratching. Henceforward that
+kindly demi-god would be connected in their minds with great gorgings and the
+vaccine and lancets of a paternal Government.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And to-morrow I go back to my home,&rdquo; said Jan Chinn to his
+faithful few, whom neither spirits, overeating, nor swollen glands could
+conquer. It is hard for children and savages to behave reverently at all times
+to the idols of their make-belief; and they had frolicked excessively with Jan
+Chinn. But the reference to his home cast a gloom on the people.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And the Sahib will not come again?&rdquo; said he who had been
+vaccinated first.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is to be seen,&rdquo; answered Chinn, warily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nay, but come as a white man&mdash;come as a young man whom we know and
+love; for, as thou alone knowest, we are a weak people. If we again saw
+thy&mdash;thy horse&mdash;&rdquo; They were picking up their courage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have no horse. I came on foot with Bukta, yonder. What is this?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thou knowest&mdash;the thing that thou hast chosen for a
+night-horse.&rdquo; The little men squirmed in fear and awe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Night-horses? Bukta, what is this last tale of children?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bukta had been a silent leader in Chinn&rsquo;s presence since the night of his
+desertion, and was grateful for a chance-flung question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They know, Sahib,&rdquo; he whispered. &ldquo;It is the Clouded Tiger.
+That that comes from the place where thou didst once sleep. It is thy
+horse&mdash;as it has been these three generations.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My horse! That was a dream of the Bhils.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is no dream. Do dreams leave the tracks of broad pugs on earth? Why
+make two faces before thy people? They know of the night-ridings, and
+they&mdash;and they&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are afraid, and would have them cease.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bukta nodded. &ldquo;If thou hast no further need of him. He is thy
+horse.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The thing leaves a trail, then?&rdquo; said Chinn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We have seen it. It is like a village road under the tomb.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can ye find and follow it for me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By daylight&mdash;if one comes with us, and, above all, stands near
+by.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will stand close, and we will see to it that Jan Chinn does not ride
+any more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Bhils shouted the last words again and again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From Chinn&rsquo;s point of view the stalk was nothing more than an ordinary
+one&mdash;down-hill, through split and crannied rocks, unsafe, perhaps, if a
+man did not keep his wits by him, but no worse than twenty others he had
+undertaken. Yet his men&mdash;they refused absolutely to beat, and would only
+trail&mdash;dripped sweat at every move. They showed the marks of enormous pugs
+that ran, always down-hill, to a few hundred feet below Jan Chinn&rsquo;s tomb,
+and disappeared in a narrow-mouthed cave. It was an insolently open road, a
+domestic highway, beaten without thought of concealment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The beggar might be paying rent and taxes,&rdquo; Chinn muttered ere he
+asked whether his friend&rsquo;s taste ran to cattle or man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Cattle,&rdquo; was the answer. &ldquo;Two heifers a week. We drive them
+for him at the foot of the hill. It is his custom. If we did not, he might seek
+us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Blackmail and piracy,&rdquo; said Chinn. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t say I
+fancy going into the cave after him. What&rsquo;s to be done?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Bhils fell back as Chinn lodged himself behind a rock with his rifle ready.
+Tigers, he knew, were shy beasts, but one who had been long cattle-fed in this
+sumptuous style might prove overbold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He speaks!&rdquo; some one whispered from the rear. &ldquo;He knows,
+too.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, of <i>all</i> the infernal cheek!&rdquo; said Chinn. There was an
+angry growl from the cave&mdash;a direct challenge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come out, then,&rdquo; Chinn shouted. &ldquo;Come out of that.
+Let&rsquo;s have a look at you.&rdquo; The brute knew well enough that there
+was some connection between brown nude Bhils and his weekly allowance; but the
+white helmet in the sunlight annoyed him, and he did not approve of the voice
+that broke his rest. Lazily as a gorged snake, he dragged himself out of the
+cave, and stood yawning and blinking at the entrance. The sunlight fell upon
+his flat right side, and Chinn wondered. Never had he seen a tiger marked after
+this fashion. Except for his head, which was staringly barred, he was
+dappled&mdash;not striped, but dappled like a child&rsquo;s rocking-horse in
+rich shades of smoky black on red gold. That portion of his belly and throat
+which should have been white was orange, and his tail and paws were black.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked leisurely for some ten seconds, and then deliberately lowered his
+head, his chin dropped and drawn in, staring intently at the man. The effect of
+this was to throw forward the round arch of his skull, with two broad bands
+across it, while below the bands glared the unwinking eyes; so that, head on,
+as he stood, he showed something like a diabolically scowling pantomime-mask.
+It was a piece of natural mesmerism that he had practised many times on his
+quarry, and though Chinn was by no means a terrified heifer, he stood for a
+while, held by the extraordinary oddity of the attack. The head&mdash;the body
+seemed to have been packed away behind it&mdash;the ferocious, skull-like head,
+crept nearer to the switching of an angry tail-tip in the grass. Left and right
+the Bhils had scattered to let John Chinn subdue his own horse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My word!&rdquo; he thought. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s trying to frighten
+me!&rdquo; and fired between the saucer-like eyes, leaping aside upon the shot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A big coughing mass, reeking of carrion, bounded past him up the hill, and he
+followed discreetly. The tiger made no attempt to turn into the jungle; he was
+hunting for sight and breath&mdash;nose up, mouth open, the tremendous
+fore-legs scattering the gravel in spurts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Scuppered!&rdquo; said John Chinn, watching the flight. &ldquo;Now if he
+was a partridge he&rsquo;d tower. Lungs must be full of blood.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The brute had jerked himself over a boulder and fallen out of sight the other
+side. John Chinn looked over with a ready barrel. But the red trail led
+straight as an arrow even to his grandfather&rsquo;s tomb, and there, among the
+smashed spirit-bottles and the fragments of the mud image, the life left, with
+a flurry and a grunt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If my worthy ancestor could see that,&rdquo; said John Chinn,
+&ldquo;he&rsquo;d have been proud of me. Eyes, lower jaw, and lungs. A very
+nice shot.&rdquo; He whistled for Bukta as he drew the tape over the stiffening
+bulk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ten&mdash;six&mdash;eight&mdash;by Jove! It&rsquo;s nearly
+eleven&mdash;call it eleven. Fore-arm, twenty-four&mdash;five&mdash;seven and a
+half. A short tail, too: three feet one. But <i>what</i> a skin! Oh, Bukta!
+Bukta! The men with the knives swiftly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is he beyond question dead?&rdquo; said an awe-stricken voice behind a
+rock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That was not the way I killed my first tiger,&rdquo; said Chinn.
+&ldquo;I did not think that Bukta would run. I had no second gun.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&mdash;it is the Clouded Tiger,&rdquo; said Bukta, un-heeding the
+taunt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is dead.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whether all the Bhils, vaccinated and unvaccinated, of the Satpuras had lain by
+to see the kill, Chinn could not say; but the whole hill&rsquo;s flank rustled
+with little men, shouting, singing, and stamping. And yet, till he had made the
+first cut in the splendid skin, not a man would take a knife; and, when the
+shadows fell, they ran from the red-stained tomb, and no persuasion would bring
+them back till dawn. So Chinn spent a second night in the open, guarding the
+carcass from jackals, and thinking about his ancestor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He returned to the lowlands to the triumphal chant of an escorting army three
+hundred strong, the Mahratta vaccinator close at his elbow, and the rudely
+dried skin a trophy before him. When that army suddenly and noiselessly
+disappeared, as quail in high corn, he argued he was near civilisation, and a
+turn in the road brought him upon the camp of a wing of his own corps. He left
+the skin on a cart-tail for the world to see, and sought the Colonel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;re perfectly right,&rdquo; he explained earnestly.
+&ldquo;There isn&rsquo;t an ounce of vice in &rsquo;em. They were only
+frightened. I&rsquo;ve vaccinated the whole boiling, and they like it awfully.
+What are&mdash;what are we doing here, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m trying to find out,&rdquo; said the Colonel.
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know yet whether we&rsquo;re a piece of a brigade or a
+police force. However, I think we&rsquo;ll call ourselves a police force. How
+did you manage to get a Bhil vaccinated?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; said Chinn, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been thinking it over,
+and, as far as I can make out, I&rsquo;ve got a sort of hereditary influence
+over &rsquo;em.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So I know, or I wouldn&rsquo;t have sent you; but <i>what</i>,
+exactly?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s rather rummy. It seems, from what I can make out, that
+I&rsquo;m my own grandfather reincarnated, and I&rsquo;ve been disturbing the
+peace of the country by riding a pad-tiger of nights. If I hadn&rsquo;t done
+that, I don&rsquo;t think they&rsquo;d have objected to the vaccination; but
+the two together were more than they could stand. And so, sir, I&rsquo;ve
+vaccinated &rsquo;em, and shot my tiger-horse as a sort o&rsquo; proof of good
+faith. You never saw such a skin in your life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Colonel tugged his moustache thought-fully. &ldquo;Now, how the
+deuce,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;am I to include that in my report?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Indeed, the official version of the Bhils&rsquo; anti-vaccination stampede said
+nothing about Lieutenant John Chinn, his godship. But Bukta knew, and the corps
+knew, and every Bhil in the Satpura hills knew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now Bukta is zealous that John Chinn shall swiftly be wedded and impart his
+powers to a son; for if the Chinn succession fails, and the little Bhils are
+left to their own imaginings, there will be fresh trouble in the Satpuras.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"></a>
+THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA</h2>
+
+<p class="poem">
+All supplies very bad and dear, and there are no facilities for even the
+smallest repairs.&mdash;S<small>AILING</small> D<small>IRECTIONS</small>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her nationality was British, but you will not find her house-flag in the list
+of our mercantile marine. She was a nine-hundred-ton, iron, schooner-rigged,
+screw cargo-boat, differing externally in no way from any other tramp of the
+sea. But it is with steamers as it is with men. There are those who will for a
+consideration sail extremely close to the wind; and, in the present state of a
+fallen world, such people and such steamers have their use. From the hour that
+the <i>Aglaia</i> first entered the Clyde&mdash;new, shiny, and innocent, with
+a quart of cheap champagne trickling down her cut-water&mdash;Fate and her
+owner, who was also her captain, decreed that she should deal with embarrassed
+crowned heads, fleeing Presidents, financiers of over-extended ability, women
+to whom change of air was imperative, and the lesser law-breaking Powers. Her
+career led her sometimes into the Admiralty Courts, where the sworn statements
+of her skipper filled his brethren with envy. The mariner cannot tell or act a
+lie in the face of the sea, or mislead a tempest; but, as lawyers have
+discovered, he makes up for chances withheld when he returns to shore, an
+affidavit in either hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The <i>Aglaia</i> figured with distinction in the great <i>Mackinaw</i>
+salvage-case. It was her first slip from virtue, and she learned how to change
+her name, but not her heart, and to run across the sea. As the <i>Guiding
+Light</i> she was very badly wanted in a South American port for the little
+matter of entering harbour at full speed, colliding with a coal-hulk and the
+State&rsquo;s only man-of-war, just as that man-of-war was going to coal. She
+put to sea without explanations, though three forts fired at her for half an
+hour. As the <i>Julia M&rsquo;Gregor</i> she had been concerned in picking up
+from a raft certain gentlemen who should have stayed in Noumea, but who
+preferred making themselves vastly unpleasant to authority in quite another
+quarter of the world; and as the <i>Shah-in-Shah</i> she had been overtaken on
+the high seas, indecently full of munitions of war, by the cruiser of an
+agitated Power at issue with its neighbour. That time she was very nearly sunk,
+and her riddled hull gave eminent lawyers of two countries great profit. After
+a season she reappeared as the <i>Martin Hunt</i> painted a dull slate-colour,
+with pure saffron funnel, and boats of robin&rsquo;s-egg blue, engaging in the
+Odessa trade till she was invited (and the invitation could not well be
+disregarded) to keep away from Black Sea ports altogether.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had ridden through many waves of depression. Freights might drop out of
+sight, Seamen&rsquo;s Unions throw spanners and nuts at certificated masters,
+or stevedores combine till cargo perished on the dock-head; but the boat of
+many names came and went, busy, alert, and inconspicuous always. Her skipper
+made no complaint of hard times, and port officers observed that her crew
+signed and signed again with the regularity of Atlantic liner boatswains. Her
+name she changed as occasion called; her well-paid crew never; and a large
+percentage of the profits of her voyages was spent with an open hand on her
+engine-room. She never troubled the underwriters, and very seldom stopped to
+talk with a signal-station, for her business was urgent and private.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But an end came to her tradings, and she perished in this manner. Deep peace
+brooded over Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Australasia, and Polynesia. The
+Powers dealt together more or less honestly; banks paid their depositors to the
+hour; diamonds of price came safely to the hands of their owners; Republics
+rested content with their Dictators; diplomats found no one whose presence in
+the least incommoded them; monarchs lived openly with their lawfully wedded
+wives. It was as though the whole earth had put on its best Sunday bib and
+tucker; and business was very bad for the <i>Martin Hunt</i>. The great,
+virtuous calm engulfed her, slate sides, yellow funnel, and all, but cast up in
+another hemisphere the steam whaler <i>Haliotis</i>, black and rusty, with a
+manure-coloured funnel, a litter of dingy white boats, and an enormous stove,
+or furnace, for boiling blubber on her forward well-deck. There could be no
+doubt that her trip was successful, for she lay at several ports not too well
+known, and the smoke of her trying-out insulted the beaches.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Anon she departed, at the speed of the average London four-wheeler, and entered
+a semi-inland sea, warm, still, and blue, which is, perhaps, the most strictly
+preserved water in the world. There she stayed for a certain time, and the
+great stars of those mild skies beheld her playing puss-in-the-corner among
+islands where whales are never found. All that while she smelt abominably, and
+the smell, though fishy, was not whalesome. One evening calamity descended upon
+her from the island of Pygang-Watai, and she fled, while her crew jeered at a
+fat black-and-brown gunboat puffing far behind. They knew to the last
+revolution the capacity of every boat, on those seas, that they were anxious to
+avoid. A British ship with a good conscience does not, as a rule, flee from the
+man-of-war of a foreign Power, and it is also considered a breach of etiquette
+to stop and search British ships at sea. These things the skipper of the
+<i>Haliotis</i> did not pause to prove, but held on at an inspiriting eleven
+knots an hour till nightfall. One thing only he overlooked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Power that kept an expensive steam-patrol moving up and down those waters
+(they had dodged the two regular ships of the station with an ease that bred
+contempt) had newly brought up a third and a fourteen-knot boat with a clean
+bottom to help the work; and that was why the <i>Haliotis</i>, driving hard
+from the east to the west, found herself at daylight in such a position that
+she could not help seeing an arrangement of four flags, a mile and a half
+behind, which read: &ldquo;Heave to, or take the consequences!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had her choice, and she took it. The end came when, presuming on her
+lighter draught, she tried to draw away northward over a friendly shoal. The
+shell that arrived by way of the Chief Engineer&rsquo;s cabin was some five
+inches in diameter, with a practice, not a bursting, charge. It had been
+intended to cross her bows, and that was why it knocked the framed portrait of
+the Chief Engineer&rsquo;s wife&mdash;and she was a very pretty girl&mdash;on
+to the floor, splintered his wash-hand stand, crossed the alleyway into the
+engine-room, and striking on a grating, dropped directly in front of the
+forward engine, where it burst, neatly fracturing both the bolts that held the
+connecting-rod to the forward crank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What follows is worth consideration. The forward engine had no more work to do.
+Its released piston-rod, therefore, drove up fiercely, with nothing to check
+it, and started most of the nuts of the cylinder-cover. It came down again, the
+full weight of the steam behind it, and the foot of the disconnected
+connecting-rod, useless as the leg of a man with a sprained ankle, flung out to
+the right and struck the starboard, or right-hand, cast-iron supporting-column
+of the forward engine, cracking it clean through about six inches above the
+base, and wedging the upper portion outwards three inches towards the
+ship&rsquo;s side. There the connecting-rod jammed. Meantime, the after-engine,
+being as yet unembarrassed, went on with its work, and in so doing brought
+round at its next revolution the crank of the forward engine, which smote the
+already jammed connecting-rod, bending it and therewith the piston-rod
+cross-head&mdash;the big cross-piece that slides up and down so smoothly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cross-head jammed sideways in the guides, and, in addition to putting
+further pressure on the already broken starboard supporting-column, cracked the
+port, or left-hand, supporting-column in two or three places. There being
+nothing more that could be made to move, the engines brought up, all standing,
+with a hiccup that seemed to lift the <i>Haliotis</i> a foot out of the water;
+and the engine-room staff, opening every steam outlet that they could find in
+the confusion, arrived on deck somewhat scalded, but calm. There was a sound
+below of things happening&mdash;a rushing, clicking, purring, grunting,
+rattling noise that did not last for more than a minute. It was the machinery
+adjusting itself, on the spur of the moment, to a hundred altered conditions.
+Mr. Wardrop, one foot on the upper grating, inclined his ear sideways, and
+groaned. You cannot stop engines working at twelve knots an hour in three
+seconds without disorganising them. The <i>Haliotis</i> slid forward in a cloud
+of steam, shrieking like a wounded horse. There was nothing more to do. The
+five-inch shell with a reduced charge had settled the situation. And when you
+are full, all three holds, of strictly preserved pearls; when you have cleaned
+out the Tanna Bank, the Sea-Horse Bank, and four other banks from one end to
+the other of the Amanala Sea&mdash;when you have ripped out the very heart of a
+rich Government monopoly so that five years will not repair your
+wrong-doings&mdash;you must smile and take what is in store. But the skipper
+reflected, as a launch put out from the man-of-war, that he had been bombarded
+on the high seas, with the British flag&mdash;several of
+them&mdash;picturesquely disposed above him, and tried to find comfort from the
+thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where,&rdquo; said the stolid naval lieutenant hoisting himself aboard,
+&ldquo;where are those dam&rsquo; pearls?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were there beyond evasion. No affidavit could do away with the fearful
+smell of decayed oysters, the diving-dresses, and the shell-littered hatches.
+They were there to the value of seventy thousand pounds, more or less; and
+every pound poached.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man-of-war was annoyed; for she had used up many tons of coal, she had
+strained her tubes, and, worse than all, her officers and crew had been
+hurried. Every one on the <i>Haliotis</i> was arrested and rearrested several
+times, as each officer came aboard; then they were told by what they esteemed
+to be the equivalent of a midshipman that they were to consider themselves
+prisoners, and finally were put under arrest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not the least good,&rdquo; said the skipper, suavely.
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;d much better send us a tow&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Be still&mdash;you are arrest!&rdquo; was the reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where the devil do you expect we are going to escape to? We&rsquo;re
+helpless. You&rsquo;ve got to tow us into somewhere, and explain why you fired
+on us. Mr. Wardrop, we&rsquo;re helpless, aren&rsquo;t we?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ruined from end to end,&rdquo; said the man of machinery. &ldquo;If she
+rolls, the forward cylinder will come down and go through her bottom. Both
+columns are clean cut through. There&rsquo;s nothing to hold anything
+up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The council of war clanked off to see if Mr. Wardrop&rsquo;s words were true.
+He warned them that it was as much as a man&rsquo;s life was worth to enter the
+engine-room, and they contented themselves with a distant inspection through
+the thinning steam. The <i>Haliotis</i> lifted to the long, easy swell, and the
+starboard supporting-column ground a trifle, as a man grits his teeth under the
+knife. The forward cylinder was depending on that unknown force men call the
+pertinacity of materials, which now and then balances that other heartbreaking
+power, the perversity of inanimate things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see!&rdquo; said Mr. Wardrop, hurrying them away. &ldquo;The engines
+aren&rsquo;t worth their price as old iron.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We tow,&rdquo; was the answer. &ldquo;Afterwards we shall
+confiscate.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man-of-war was short-handed, and did not see the necessity for putting a
+prize-crew aboard the <i>Haliotis</i>. So she sent one sublieutenant, whom the
+skipper kept very drunk, for he did not wish to make the tow too easy, and,
+moreover, he had an inconspicuous little rope hanging from the stem of his
+ship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then they began to tow at an average speed of four knots an hour. The
+<i>Haliotis</i> was very hard to move, and the gunnery-lieutenant, who had
+fired the five-inch shell, had leisure to think upon consequences. Mr. Wardrop
+was the busy man. He borrowed all the crew to shore up the cylinders with spars
+and blocks from the bottom and sides of the ship. It was a day&rsquo;s risky
+work; but anything was better than drowning at the end of a tow-rope; and if
+the forward cylinder had fallen, it would have made its way to the sea-bed, and
+taken the <i>Haliotis</i> after.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where are we going to, and how long will they tow us?&rdquo; he asked of
+the skipper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;God knows! and this prize-lieutenant&rsquo;s drunk. What do you think
+you can do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s just the bare chance,&rdquo; Mr. Wardrop whispered, though
+no one was within hearing&mdash;&ldquo;there&rsquo;s just the bare chance
+o&rsquo; repairin&rsquo; her, if a man knew how. They&rsquo;ve twisted the very
+guts out of her, bringing her up with that jerk; but I&rsquo;m saying that,
+with time and patience, there&rsquo;s just the chance o&rsquo; making steam
+yet. <i>We</i> could do it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The skipper&rsquo;s eye brightened. &ldquo;Do you mean,&rdquo; he began,
+&ldquo;that she is any good?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, no,&rdquo; said Mr. Wardrop. &ldquo;She&rsquo;ll need three thousand
+pounds in repairs, at the lowest, if she&rsquo;s to take the sea again,
+an&rsquo; that apart from any injury to her structure. She&rsquo;s like a man
+fallen down five pair o&rsquo; stairs. We can&rsquo;t tell for months what has
+happened; but we know she&rsquo;ll never be good again without a new inside. Ye
+should see the condenser-tubes an&rsquo; the steam connections to the donkey,
+for two things only. I&rsquo;m not afraid of them repairin&rsquo; her.
+I&rsquo;m afraid of them stealin&rsquo; things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;ve fired on us. They&rsquo;ll have to explain that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Our reputation&rsquo;s not good enough to ask for explanations.
+Let&rsquo;s take what we have and be thankful. Ye would not have consuls
+remembern&rsquo; the <i>Guidin&rsquo; Light</i>, an&rsquo; the
+<i>Shah-in-Shah</i>, an&rsquo; the <i>Aglaia</i>, at this most alarmin&rsquo;
+crisis. We&rsquo;ve been no better than pirates these ten years. Under
+Providence we&rsquo;re no worse than thieves now. We&rsquo;ve much to be
+thankful for&mdash;if we e&rsquo;er get back to her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Make it your own way, then,&rdquo; said the skipper. &ldquo;If
+there&rsquo;s the least chance&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll leave none,&rdquo; said Mr. Wardrop&mdash;&ldquo;none that
+they&rsquo;ll dare to take. Keep her heavy on the tow, for we need time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The skipper never interfered with the affairs of the engine-room, and Mr.
+Wardrop&mdash;an artist in his profession&mdash;turned to and composed a work
+terrible and forbidding. His background was the dark-grained sides of the
+engine-room; his material the metals of power and strength, helped out with
+spars, baulks, and ropes. The man-of-war towed sullenly and viciously. The
+<i>Haliotis</i> behind her hummed like a hive before swarming. With extra and
+totally unneeded spars her crew blocked up the space round the forward engine
+till it resembled a statue in its scaffolding, and the butts of the shores
+interfered with every view that a dispassionate eye might wish to take. And
+that the dispassionate mind might be swiftly shaken out of its calm, the
+well-sunk bolts of the shores were wrapped round untidily with loose ends of
+ropes, giving a studied effect of most dangerous insecurity. Next, Mr. Wardrop
+took up a collection from the after-engine, which, as you will remember, had
+not been affected in the general wreck. The cylinder escape-valve he abolished
+with a flogging-hammer. It is difficult in far-off ports to come by such
+valves, unless, like Mr. Wardrop, you keep duplicates in store. At the same
+time men took off the nuts of two of the great holding-down bolts that serve to
+keep the engines in place on their solid bed. An engine violently arrested in
+mid-career may easily jerk off the nut of a holding-down bolt, and this
+accident looked very natural.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Passing along the tunnel, he removed several shaft coupling-bolts and nuts,
+scattering other and ancient pieces of iron underfoot. Cylinder-bolts he cut
+off to the number of six from the after-engine cylinder, so that it might match
+its neighbour, and stuffed the bilge- and feed-pumps with cotton-waste. Then he
+made up a neat bundle of the various odds and ends that he had gathered from
+the engines&mdash;little things like nuts and valve-spindles, all carefully
+tallowed&mdash;and retired with them under the floor of the engine-room, where
+he sighed, being fat, as he passed from manhole to manhole of the double
+bottom, and in a fairly dry submarine compartment hid them. Any engineer,
+particularly in an unfriendly port, has a right to keep his spare stores where
+he chooses; and the foot of one of the cylinder shores blocked all entrance
+into the regular store-room, even if that had not been already closed with
+steel wedges. In conclusion, he disconnected the after-engine, laid piston and
+connecting-rod, carefully tallowed, where it would be most inconvenient to the
+casual visitor, took out three of the eight collars of the thrust-block, hid
+them where only he could find them again, filled the boilers by hand, wedged
+the sliding doors of the coal-bunkers, and rested from his labours. The
+engine-room was a cemetery, and it did not need the contents of the ash-lift
+through the skylight to make it any worse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He invited the skipper to look at the completed work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Saw ye ever such a forsaken wreck as that?&rdquo; said he, proudly.
+&ldquo;It almost frights <i>me</i> to go under those shores. Now, what d&rsquo;
+you think they&rsquo;ll do to us?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wait till we see,&rdquo; said the skipper. &ldquo;It&rsquo;ll be bad
+enough when it comes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was not wrong. The pleasant days of towing ended all too soon, though the
+<i>Haliotis</i> trailed behind her a heavily weighted jib stayed out into the
+shape of a pocket; and Mr. Wardrop was no longer an artist of imagination, but
+one of seven-and-twenty prisoners in a prison full of insects. The man-of-war
+had towed them to the nearest port, not to the headquarters of the colony, and
+when Mr. Wardrop saw the dismal little harbour, with its ragged line of Chinese
+junks, its one crazy tug, and the boat-building shed that, under the charge of
+a philosophical Malay, represented a dockyard, he sighed and shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did well,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;This is the habitation o&rsquo;
+wreckers an&rsquo; thieves. We&rsquo;re at the uttermost ends of the earth.
+Think you they&rsquo;ll ever know in England?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t look like it,&rdquo; said the skipper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were marched ashore with what they stood up in, under a generous escort,
+and were judged according to the customs of the country, which, though
+excellent, are a little out of date. There were the pearls; there were the
+poachers; and there sat a small but hot Governor. He consulted for a while, and
+then things began to move with speed, for he did not wish to keep a hungry crew
+at large on the beach, and the man-of-war had gone up the coast. With a wave of
+his hand&mdash;a stroke of the pen was not necessary&mdash;he consigned them to
+the <i>blackgang-tana</i>, the back-country, and the hand of the Law removed
+them from his sight and the knowledge of men. They were marched into the palms,
+and the back-country swallowed them up&mdash;all the crew of the
+<i>Haliotis</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Deep peace continued to brood over Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Australasia,
+and Polynesia.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+It was the firing that did it. They should have kept their counsel; but when a
+few thousand foreigners are bursting with joy over the fact that a ship under
+the British flag has been fired at on the high seas, news travels quickly; and
+when it came out that the pearl-stealing crew had not been allowed access to
+their consul (there was no consul within a few hundred miles of that lonely
+port) even the friendliest of Powers has a right to ask questions. The great
+heart of the British public was beating furiously on account of the performance
+of a notorious race-horse, and had not a throb to waste on distant accidents;
+but somewhere deep in the hull of the ship of State there is machinery which
+more or less accurately takes charge of foreign affairs. That machinery began
+to revolve, and who so shocked and surprised as the Power that had captured the
+<i>Haliotis?</i> It explained that colonial governors and far-away men-of-war
+were difficult to control, and promised that it would most certainly make an
+example both of the Governor and the vessel. As for the crew reported to be
+pressed into military service in tropical climes, it would produce them as soon
+as possible, and it would apologise, if necessary. Now, no apologies were
+needed. When one nation apologises to another, millions of amateurs who have no
+earthly concern with the difficulty hurl themselves into the strife and
+embarrass the trained specialist. It was requested that the crew be found, if
+they were still alive&mdash;they had been eight months beyond
+knowledge&mdash;and it was promised that all would be forgotten.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The little Governor of the little port was pleased with himself.
+Seven-and-twenty white men made a very compact force to throw away on a war
+that had neither beginning nor end&mdash;a jungle and stockade fight that
+flickered and smouldered through the wet hot years in the hills a hundred miles
+away, and was the heritage of every wearied official. He had, he thought,
+deserved well of his country; and if only some one would buy the unhappy
+<i>Haliotis</i>, moored in the harbour below his verandah, his cup would be
+full. He looked at the neatly silvered lamps that he had taken from her cabins,
+and thought of much that might be turned to account. But his countrymen in that
+moist climate had no spirit. They would peep into the silent engine-room, and
+shake their heads. Even the men-of-war would not tow her further up the coast,
+where the Governor believed that she could be repaired. She was a bad bargain;
+but her cabin carpets were undeniably beautiful, and his wife approved of her
+mirrors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Three hours later cables were bursting round him like shells, for, though he
+knew it not, he was being offered as a sacrifice by the nether to the upper
+millstone, and his superiors had no regard for his feelings. He had, said the
+cables, grossly exceeded his power, and failed to report on events. He would,
+therefore&mdash;at this he cast himself back in his hammock&mdash;produce the
+crew of the <i>Haliotis</i>. He would send for them, and, if that failed, he
+would put his dignity on a pony and fetch them himself. He had no conceivable
+right to make pearl-poachers serve in any war. He would be held responsible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next morning the cables wished to know whether he had found the crew of the
+<i>Haliotis</i>. They were to be found, freed and fed&mdash;he was to feed
+them&mdash;till such time as they could be sent to the nearest English port in
+a man-of-war. If you abuse a man long enough in great words flashed over the
+sea-beds, things happen. The Governor sent inland swiftly for his prisoners,
+who were also soldiers; and never was a militia regiment more anxious to reduce
+its strength. No power short of death could make these mad men wear the uniform
+of their service. They would not fight, except with their fellows, and it was
+for that reason the regiment had not gone to war, but stayed in a stockade,
+reasoning with the new troops. The autumn campaign had been a fiasco, but here
+were the Englishmen. All the regiment marched back to guard them, and the hairy
+enemy, armed with blow-pipes, rejoiced in the forest. Five of the crew had
+died, but there lined up on the Governor&rsquo;s verandah two-and-twenty men
+marked about the legs with the scars of leech-bites. A few of them wore fringes
+that had once been trousers; the others used loin-cloths of gay patterns; and
+they existed beautifully but simply in the Governor&rsquo;s verandah, and when
+he came out they sang at him. When you have lost seventy thousand pounds&rsquo;
+worth of pearls, your pay, your ship, and all your clothes, and have lived in
+bondage for five months beyond the faintest pretences of civilisation, you know
+what true independence means, for you become the happiest of created
+things&mdash;natural man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Governor told the crew that they were evil, and they asked for food. When
+he saw how they ate, and when he remembered that none of the pearl patrol-boats
+were expected for two months, he sighed. But the crew of the <i>Haliotis</i>
+lay down in the verandah, and said that they were pensioners of the
+Governor&rsquo;s bounty. A grey-bearded man, fat and bald-headed, his one
+garment a green-and-yellow loin-cloth, saw the <i>Haliotis</i> in the harbour,
+and bellowed for joy. The men crowded to the verandah-rail, kicking aside the
+long cane chairs. They pointed, gesticulated, and argued freely, without shame.
+The militia regiment sat down in the Governor&rsquo;s garden. The Governor
+retired to his hammock&mdash;it was as easy to be killed lying as
+standing&mdash;and his women squeaked from the shuttered rooms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She sold?&rdquo; said the grey-bearded man, pointing to the
+<i>Haliotis</i>. He was Mr. Wardrop.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No good,&rdquo; said the Governor, shaking his head. &ldquo;No one come
+buy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s taken my lamps, though,&rdquo; said the skipper. He wore one
+leg of a pair of trousers, and his eye wandered along the verandah. The
+Governor quailed. There were cuddy camp-stools and the skipper&rsquo;s
+writing-table in plain sight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;ve cleaned her out, o&rsquo; course,&rdquo; said Mr. Wardrop.
+&ldquo;They would. We&rsquo;ll go aboard and take an inventory. See!&rdquo; He
+waved his hands over the harbour. &ldquo;We&mdash;live&mdash;there&mdash;now.
+Sorry?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Governor smiled a smile of relief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s glad of that,&rdquo; said one of the crew, reflectively.
+&ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t wonder.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They flocked down to the harbour-front, the militia regiment clattering behind,
+and embarked themselves in what they found&mdash;it happened to be the
+Governor&rsquo;s boat. Then they disappeared over the bulwarks of the
+<i>Haliotis</i>, and the Governor prayed that they might find occupation
+inside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Wardrop&rsquo;s first bound took him to the engine-room; and when the
+others were patting the well-remembered decks, they heard him giving God thanks
+that things were as he had left them. The wrecked engines stood over his head
+untouched; no inexpert hand had meddled with his shores; the steel wedges of
+the store-room were rusted home; and, best of all, the hundred and sixty tons
+of good Australian coal in the bunkers had not diminished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand it,&rdquo; said Mr. Wardrop. &ldquo;Any Malay
+knows the use o&rsquo; copper. They ought to have cut away the pipes. And with
+Chinese junks coming here, too. It&rsquo;s a special interposition o&rsquo;
+Providence.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You think so,&rdquo; said the skipper, from above. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s
+only been one thief here, and he&rsquo;s cleaned her out of all <i>my</i>
+things, anyhow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here the skipper spoke less than the truth, for under the planking of his
+cabin, only to be reached by a chisel, lay a little money which never drew any
+interest&mdash;his sheet-anchor to windward. It was all in clean sovereigns
+that pass current the world over, and might have amounted to more than a
+hundred pounds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s left me alone. Let&rsquo;s thank God,&rdquo; repeated Mr.
+Wardrop.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s taken everything else; look!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The <i>Haliotis</i>, except as to her engine-room, had been systematically and
+scientifically gutted from one end to the other, and there was strong evidence
+that an unclean guard had camped in the skipper&rsquo;s cabin to regulate that
+plunder. She lacked glass, plate, crockery, cutlery, mattresses, cuddy carpets
+and chairs, all boats, and her copper ventilators. These things had been
+removed, with her sails and as much of the wire rigging as would not imperil
+the safety of the masts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He must have sold those,&rdquo; said the skipper. &ldquo;The other
+things are in his house, I suppose.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every fitting that could be pried or screwed out was gone. Port, starboard, and
+masthead lights; teak gratings; sliding sashes of the deckhouse; the
+captain&rsquo;s chest of drawers, with charts and chart-table; photographs,
+brackets, and looking-glasses; cabin doors; rubber cuddy mats; hatch-irons;
+half the funnel-stays; cork fenders; carpenter&rsquo;s grindstone and
+tool-chest; holystones, swabs, squeegees; all cabin and pantry lamps;
+galley-fittings <i>en bloc;</i> flags and flag-locker; clocks, chronometers;
+the forward compass and the ship&rsquo;s bell and belfry, were among the
+missing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were great scarred marks on the deck-planking over which the
+cargo-derricks had been hauled. One must have fallen by the way, for the
+bulwark-rails were smashed and bent and the side-plates bruised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the Governor,&rdquo; said the skipper &ldquo;He&rsquo;s been
+selling her on the instalment plan.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s go up with spanners and shovels, and kill &rsquo;em
+all,&rdquo; shouted the crew. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s drown him, and keep the
+woman!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then we&rsquo;ll be shot by that black-and-tan regiment&mdash;<i>our</i>
+regiment. What&rsquo;s the trouble ashore? They&rsquo;ve camped our regiment on
+the beach.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;re cut off; that&rsquo;s all. Go and see what they want,&rdquo;
+said Mr. Wardrop. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve the trousers.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In his simple way the Governor was a strategist. He did not desire that the
+crew of the <i>Haliotis</i> should come ashore again, either singly or in
+detachments, and he proposed to turn their steamer into a convict-hulk. They
+would wait&mdash;he explained this from the quay to the skipper in the
+barge&mdash;and they would continue to wait till the man-of-war came along,
+exactly where they were. If one of them set foot ashore, the entire regiment
+would open fire, and he would not scruple to use the two cannon of the town.
+Meantime food would be sent daily in a boat under an armed escort. The skipper,
+bare to the waist, and rowing, could only grind his teeth; and the Governor
+improved the occasion, and revenged himself for the bitter words in the cables,
+by saying what he thought of the morals and manners of the crew. The barge
+returned to the <i>Haliotis</i> in silence, and the skipper climbed aboard,
+white on the cheek-bones and blue about the nostrils.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I knew it,&rdquo; said Mr. Wardrop; &ldquo;and they won&rsquo;t give us
+good food, either. We shall have bananas morning, noon, and night, an&rsquo; a
+man can&rsquo;t work on fruit. <i>We</i> know that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then the skipper cursed Mr. Wardrop for importing frivolous side-issues into
+the conversation; and the crew cursed one another, and the <i>Haliotis</i>, the
+voyage, and all that they knew or could bring to mind. They sat down in silence
+on the empty decks, and their eyes burned in their heads. The green harbour
+water chuckled at them overside. They looked at the palm-fringed hills inland,
+at the white houses above the harbour road, at the single tier of native craft
+by the quay, at the stolid soldiery sitting round the two cannon, and, last of
+all, at the blue bar of the horizon. Mr. Wardrop was buried in thought, and
+scratched imaginary lines with his untrimmed finger-nails on the planking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I make no promise,&rdquo; he said, at last, &ldquo;for I can&rsquo;t say
+what may or may not have happened to them. But here&rsquo;s the ship, and
+here&rsquo;s us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a little scornful laughter at this, and Mr. Wardrop knitted his
+brows. He recalled that in the days when he wore trousers he had been Chief
+Engineer of the <i>Haliotis</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Harland, Mackesy, Noble, Hay, Naughton, Fink, O&rsquo;Hara,
+Trumbull.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here, sir!&rdquo; The instinct of obedience waked to answer the
+roll-call of the engine-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Below!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They rose and went.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Captain, I&rsquo;ll trouble you for the rest of the men as I want them.
+We&rsquo;ll get my stores out, and clear away the shores we don&rsquo;t need,
+and then we&rsquo;ll patch her up. <i>My</i> men will remember that
+they&rsquo;re in the <i>Haliotis</i>,&mdash;under me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went into the engine-room, and the others stared. They were used to the
+accidents of the sea, but this was beyond their experience. None who had seen
+the engine-room believed that anything short of new engines from end to end
+could stir the <i>Haliotis</i> from her moorings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The engine-room stores were unearthed, and Mr. Wardrop&rsquo;s face, red with
+the filth of the bilges and the exertion of travelling on his stomach, lit with
+joy. The spare gear of the <i>Haliotis</i> had been unusually complete, and
+two-and-twenty men, armed with screw-jacks, differential blocks, tackle, vices,
+and a forge or so, can look Kismet between the eyes without winking. The crew
+were ordered to replace the holding-down and shaft-bearing bolts, and return
+the collars of the thrust-block. When they had finished, Mr. Wardrop delivered
+a lecture on repairing compound engines without the aid of the shops, and the
+men sat about on the cold machinery. The cross-head jammed in the guides leered
+at them drunkenly, but offered no help. They ran their fingers hopelessly into
+the cracks of the starboard supporting-column, and picked at the ends of the
+ropes round the shores, while Mr. Wardrop&rsquo;s voice rose and fell echoing,
+till the quick tropic night closed down over the engine-room skylight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next morning the work of reconstruction began. It has been explained that the
+foot of the connecting-rod was forced against the foot of the starboard
+supporting-column, which it had cracked through and driven outward towards the
+ship&rsquo;s skin. To all appearance the job was more than hopeless, for rod
+and column seemed to have been welded into one. But herein Providence smiled on
+them for one moment to hearten them through the weary weeks ahead. The second
+engineer&mdash;more reckless than resourceful&mdash;struck at random with a
+cold chisel into the cast-iron of the column, and a greasy, grey flake of metal
+flew from under the imprisoned foot of the connecting-rod, while the rod itself
+fell away slowly, and brought up with a thunderous clang somewhere in the dark
+of the crank-pit. The guides-plates above were still jammed fast in the guides,
+but the first blow had been struck. They spent the rest of the day grooming the
+donkey-engine, which stood immediately forward of the engine-room hatch. Its
+tarpaulin, of course, had been stolen, and eight warm months had not improved
+the working parts. Further, the last dying hiccup of the <i>Haliotis</i>
+seemed&mdash;or it might have been the Malay from the boat-house&mdash;to have
+lifted the thing bodily on its bolts, and set it down inaccurately as regarded
+its steam connections.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If we only had one single cargo-derrick!&rdquo; Mr. Wardrop sighed.
+&ldquo;We can take the cylinder-cover off by hand, if we sweat; but to get the
+rod out o&rsquo; the piston&rsquo;s not possible unless we use steam. Well,
+there&rsquo;ll be steam the morn, if there&rsquo;s nothing else. She&rsquo;ll
+fizzle!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next morning men from the shore saw the <i>Haliotis</i> through a cloud, for it
+was as though the deck smoked. Her crew were chasing steam through the shaken
+and leaky pipes to its work in the forward donkey-engine; and where oakum
+failed to plug a crack, they stripped off their loin-cloths for lapping, and
+swore, half-boiled and mother-naked. The donkey-engine worked&mdash;at a
+price&mdash;the price of constant attention and furious stoking&mdash;worked
+long enough to allow a wire-rope (it was made up of a funnel and a
+foremast-stay) to be led into the engine-room and made fast on the
+cylinder-cover of the forward engine. That rose easily enough, and was hauled
+through the skylight and on to the deck, many hands assisting the doubtful
+steam. Then came the tug of war, for it was necessary to get to the piston and
+the jammed piston-rod. They removed two of the piston junk-ring studs, screwed
+in two strong iron eye-bolts by way of handles, doubled the wire-rope, and set
+half a dozen men to smite with an extemporised battering-ram at the end of the
+piston-rod, where it peered through the piston, while the donkey-engine hauled
+upwards on the piston itself. After four hours of this furious work, the
+piston-rod suddenly slipped, and the piston rose with a jerk, knocking one or
+two men over into the engine-room. But when Mr. Wardrop declared that the
+piston had not split, they cheered, and thought nothing of their wounds; and
+the donkey-engine was hastily stopped; its boiler was nothing to tamper with.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And day by day their supplies reached them by boat. The skipper humbled himself
+once more before the Governor, and as a concession had leave to get
+drinking-water from the Malay boat-builder on the quay. It was not good
+drinking-water, but the Malay was anxious to supply anything in his power, if
+he were paid for it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now when the jaws of the forward engine stood, as it were, stripped and empty,
+they began to wedge up the shores of the cylinder itself. That work alone
+filled the better part of three days&mdash;warm and sticky days, when the hands
+slipped and sweat ran into the eyes. When the last wedge was hammered home
+there was no longer an ounce of weight on the supporting-columns; and Mr.
+Wardrop rummaged the ship for boiler-plate three-quarters of an inch thick,
+where he could find it. There was not much available, but what there was was
+more than beaten gold to him. In one desperate forenoon the entire crew, naked
+and lean, haled back, more or less into place, the starboard supporting-column,
+which, as you remember, was cracked clean through. Mr. Wardrop found them
+asleep where they had finished the work, and gave them a day&rsquo;s rest,
+smiling upon them as a father while he drew chalk-marks about the cracks. They
+woke to new and more trying labour; for over each one of those cracks a plate
+of three-quarter-inch boiler-iron was to be worked hot, the rivet-holes being
+drilled by hand. All that time they were fed on fruits, chiefly bananas, with
+some sago.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Those were the days when men swooned over the ratchet-drill and the hand-forge,
+and where they fell they had leave to lie unless their bodies were in the way
+of their fellows&rsquo; feet. And so, patch upon patch, and a patch over all,
+the starboard supporting-column was clouted; but when they thought all was
+secure, Mr. Wardrop decreed that the noble patchwork would never support
+working engines; at the best, it could only hold the guide-bars approximately
+true. The dead weight of the cylinders must be borne by vertical struts; and,
+therefore, a gang would repair to the bows, and take out, with files, the big
+bow-anchor davits, each of which was some three inches in diameter. They threw
+hot coals at Wardrop, and threatened to kill him, those who did not weep (they
+were ready to weep on the least provocation); but he hit them with iron bars
+heated at the end, and they limped forward, and the davits came with them when
+they returned. They slept sixteen hours on the strength of it, and in three
+days two struts were in place, bolted from the foot of the starboard
+supporting-column to the under side of the cylinder. There remained now the
+port, or condenser-column, which, though not so badly cracked as its fellow,
+had also been strengthened in four places with boiler-plate patches, but needed
+struts. They took away the main stanchions of the bridge for that work, and,
+crazy with toil, did not see till all was in place that the rounded bars of
+iron must be flattened from top to bottom to allow the air-pump levers to clear
+them. It was Wardrop&rsquo;s oversight, and he wept bitterly before the men as
+he gave the order to unbolt the struts and flatten them with hammer and the
+flame. Now the broken engine was underpinned firmly, and they took away the
+wooden shores from under the cylinders, and gave them to the robbed bridge,
+thanking God for even half a day&rsquo;s work on gentle, kindly wood instead of
+the iron that had entered into their souls. Eight months in the back-country
+among the leeches, at a temperature of 85° moist, is very bad for the nerves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had kept the hardest work to the last, as boys save Latin prose, and, worn
+though they were, Mr. Wardrop did not dare to give them rest. The piston-rod
+and connecting-rod were to be straightened, and this was a job for a regular
+dockyard with every appliance. They fell to it, cheered by a little chalk
+showing of work done and time consumed which Mr. Wardrop wrote up on the
+engine-room bulkhead. Fifteen days had gone&mdash;fifteen days of killing
+labour&mdash;and there was hope before them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is curious that no man knows how the rods were straightened. The crew of the
+<i>Haliotis</i> remember that week very dimly, as a fever patient remembers the
+delirium of a long night. There were fires everywhere, they say; the whole ship
+was one consuming furnace, and the hammers were never still. Now, there could
+not have been more than one fire at the most, for Mr. Wardrop distinctly
+recalls that no straightening was done except under his own eye. They remember,
+too, that for many years voices gave orders which they obeyed with their
+bodies, but their minds were abroad on all the seas. It seems to them that they
+stood through days and nights slowly sliding a bar backwards and forwards
+through a white glow that was part of the ship. They remember an intolerable
+noise in their burning heads from the walls of the stoke-hole, and they
+remember being savagely beaten by men whose eyes seemed asleep. When their
+shift was over they would draw straight lines in the air, anxiously and
+repeatedly, and would question one another in their sleep, crying, &ldquo;Is
+she straight?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last&mdash;they do not remember whether this was by day or by
+night&mdash;Mr. Wardrop began to dance clumsily, and wept the while; and they
+too danced and wept, and went to sleep twitching all over; and when they woke,
+men said that the rods were straightened, and no one did any work for two days,
+but lay on the decks and ate fruit. Mr. Wardrop would go below from time to
+time, and pat the two rods where they lay, and they heard him singing hymns.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then his trouble of mind went from him, and at the end of the third day&rsquo;s
+idleness he made a drawing in chalk upon the deck, with letters of the alphabet
+at the angles. He pointed out that, though the piston-rod was more or less
+straight, the piston-rod cross-head&mdash;the thing that had been jammed
+sideways in the guides&mdash;had been badly strained, and had cracked the lower
+end of the piston-rod. He was going to forge and shrink a wrought-iron collar
+on the neck of the piston-rod where it joined the cross-head, and from the
+collar he would bolt a Y-shaped piece of iron whose lower arms should be bolted
+into the cross-head. If anything more were needed, they could use up the last
+of the boiler-plate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So the forges were lit again, and men burned their bodies, but hardly felt the
+pain. The finished connection was not beautiful, but it seemed strong
+enough&mdash;at least, as strong as the rest of the machinery; and with that
+job their labours came to an end. All that remained was to connect up the
+engines, and to get food and water. The skipper and four men dealt with the
+Malay boat-builder by night chiefly; it was no time to haggle over the price of
+sago and dried fish. The others stayed aboard and replaced piston, piston-rod,
+cylinder-cover, cross-head, and bolts, with the aid of the faithful
+donkey-engine. The cylinder-cover was hardly steam-proof, and the eye of
+science might have seen in the connecting-rod a flexure something like that of
+a Christmas-tree candle which has melted and been straightened by hand over a
+stove, but, as Mr. Wardrop said, &ldquo;She didn&rsquo;t hit anything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as the last bolt was in place, men tumbled over one another in their
+anxiety to get to the hand starting-gear, the wheel and worm, by which some
+engines can be moved when there is no steam aboard. They nearly wrenched off
+the wheel, but it was evident to the blindest eye that the engines stirred.
+They did not revolve in their orbits with any enthusiasm, as good machines
+should; indeed, they groaned not a little; but they moved over and came to rest
+in a way which proved that they still recognised man&rsquo;s hand. Then Mr.
+Wardrop sent his slaves into the darker bowels of the engine-room and the
+stoke-hole, and followed them with a flare-lamp. The boilers were sound, but
+would take no harm from a little scaling and cleaning. Mr. Wardrop would not
+have any one over-zealous, for he feared what the next stroke of the tool might
+show. &ldquo;The less we know about her now,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;the better
+for us all, I&rsquo;m thinkin&rsquo;. Ye&rsquo;ll understand me when I say that
+this is in no sense regular engineerin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As his raiment, when he spoke, was his grey beard and uncut hair, they believed
+him. They did not ask too much of what they met, but polished and tallowed and
+scraped it to a false brilliancy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A lick of paint would make me easier in my mind,&rdquo; said Mr.
+Wardrop, plaintively. &ldquo;I know half the condenser-tubes are started; and
+the propeller-shaftin&rsquo; &rsquo;s God knows how far out of the true, and
+we&rsquo;ll need a new air-pump, an&rsquo; the main-steam leaks like a sieve,
+and there&rsquo;s worse each way I look; but&mdash;paint&rsquo;s like clothes
+to a man, an&rsquo; ours is near all gone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The skipper unearthed some stale ropy paint of the loathsome green that they
+used for the galleys of sailing-ships, and Mr. Wardrop spread it abroad
+lavishly to give the engines self-respect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His own was returning day by day, for he wore his loin-cloth continuously; but
+the crew, having worked under orders, did not feel as he did. The completed
+work satisfied Mr. Wardrop. He would at the last have made shift to run to
+Singapore, and gone home without vengeance taken to show his engines to his
+brethren in the craft; but the others and the captain forbade him. They had not
+yet recovered their self-respect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would be safer to make what ye might call a trial trip, but beggars
+mustn&rsquo;t be choosers; an if the engines will go over to the hand-gear, the
+probability&mdash;I&rsquo;m only saying it&rsquo;s a probability&mdash;the
+chance is that they&rsquo;ll hold up when we put steam on her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How long will you take to get steam?&rdquo; said the skipper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;God knows! Four hours&mdash;a day&mdash;half a week. If I can raise
+sixty pound I&rsquo;ll not complain.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Be sure of her first; we can&rsquo;t afford to go out half a mile, and
+break down.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My soul and body, man, we&rsquo;re one continuous breakdown, fore
+an&rsquo; aft! We might fetch Singapore, though.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll break down at Pygang-Watai, where we can do good,&rdquo; was
+the answer, in a voice that did not allow argument. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s
+<i>my</i> boat, and&mdash;I&rsquo;ve had eight months to think in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No man saw the <i>Haliotis</i> depart, though many heard her. She left at two
+in the morning, having cut her moorings, and it was none of her crew&rsquo;s
+pleasure that the engines should strike up a thundering half-seas-over chanty
+that echoed among the hills. Mr. Wardrop wiped away a tear as he listened to
+the new song.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s gibberin&rsquo;&mdash;she&rsquo;s just
+gibberin&rsquo;,&rdquo; he whimpered. &ldquo;Yon&rsquo;s the voice of a
+maniac.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And if engines have any soul, as their masters believe, he was quite right.
+There were outcries and clamours, sobs and bursts of chattering laughter,
+silences where the trained ear yearned for the clear note, and torturing
+reduplications where there should have been one deep voice. Down the
+screw-shaft ran murmurs and warnings, while a heart-diseased flutter without
+told that the propeller needed re-keying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How does she make it?&rdquo; said the skipper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She moves, but&mdash;but she&rsquo;s breakin&rsquo; my heart. The sooner
+we&rsquo;re at Pygang-Watai, the better. She&rsquo;s mad, and we&rsquo;re
+waking the town.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is she at all near safe?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do <i>I</i> care how safe she is? She&rsquo;s mad. Hear that, now!
+To be sure, nothing&rsquo;s hittin&rsquo; anything, and the bearin&rsquo;s are
+fairly cool, but&mdash;can ye not hear?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If she goes,&rdquo; said the skipper, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care a curse.
+And she&rsquo;s <i>my</i> boat, too.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went, trailing a fathom of weed behind her. From a slow two knots an hour
+she crawled up to a triumphant four. Anything beyond that made the struts
+quiver dangerously, and filled the engine-room with steam. Morning showed her
+out of sight of land, and there was a visible ripple under her bows; but she
+complained bitterly in her bowels, and, as though the noise had called it,
+there shot along across the purple sea a swift, dark proa, hawk-like and
+curious, which presently ranged alongside and wished to know if the
+<i>Haliotis</i> were helpless. Ships, even the steamers of the white men, had
+been known to break down in those waters, and the honest Malay and Javanese
+traders would sometimes aid them in their own peculiar way. But this ship was
+not full of lady passengers and well-dressed officers. Men, white, naked and
+savage, swarmed down her sides&mdash;some with red-hot iron bars, and others
+with large hammers&mdash;threw themselves upon those innocent inquiring
+strangers, and, before any man could say what had happened, were in full
+possession of the proa, while the lawful owners bobbed in the water overside.
+Half an hour later the proa&rsquo;s cargo of sago and trepang, as well as a
+doubtful-minded compass, was in the <i>Haliotis</i>. The two huge triangular
+mat sails, with their seventy-foot yards and booms, had followed the cargo, and
+were being fitted to the stripped masts of the steamer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They rose, they swelled, they filled, and the empty steamer visibly laid over
+as the wind took them. They gave her nearly three knots an hour, and what
+better could men ask? But if she had been forlorn before, this new purchase
+made her horrible to see. Imagine a respectable charwoman in the tights of a
+ballet-dancer rolling drunk along the streets, and you will come to some faint
+notion of the appearance of that nine-hundred-ton, well-decked, once
+schooner-rigged cargo-boat as she staggered under her new help, shouting and
+raving across the deep. With steam and sail that marvellous voyage continued;
+and the bright-eyed crew looked over the rail, desolate, unkempt, unshorn,
+shamelessly clothed beyond the decencies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the end of the third week she sighted the island of Pygang-Watai, whose
+harbour is the turning-point of a pearl sea-patrol. Here the gun-boats stay for
+a week ere they retrace their line. There is no village at Pygang-Watai; only a
+stream of water, some palms, and a harbour safe to rest in till the first
+violence of the southeast monsoon has blown itself out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They opened up the low coral beach, with its mound of whitewashed coal ready
+for supply, the deserted huts for the sailors, and the flagless flagstaff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next day there was no <i>Haliotis</i>&mdash;only a little proa rocking in the
+warm rain at the mouth of the harbour, whose crew watched with hungry eyes the
+smoke of a gunboat on the horizon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Months afterwards there were a few lines in an English newspaper to the effect
+that some gunboat of some foreign Power had broken her back at the mouth of
+some far-away harbour by running at full speed into a sunken wreck.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"></a>
+WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR</h2>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2H_PART1" id="link2H_PART1"></a>
+PART I</h2>
+
+<p class="poem">
+I have done one braver thing<br/>
+    Than all the worthies did;<br/>
+And yet a braver thence doth spring,<br/>
+    Which is to keep that hid.<br/>
+<br/>
+                    T<small>HE</small> U<small>NDERTAKING</small>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it officially declared yet?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;ve gone as far as to admit &lsquo;extreme local
+scarcity,&rsquo; and they&rsquo;ve started relief-works in one or two
+districts, the paper says.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That means it will be declared as soon as they can make sure of the men
+and the rolling-stock. Shouldn&rsquo;t wonder if it were as bad as the
+&rsquo;78 Famine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t be,&rdquo; said Scott, turning a little in the long cane
+chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve had fifteen-anna crops in the north, and Bombay and Bengal
+report more than they know what to do with. They&rsquo;ll be able to check it
+before it gets out of hand. It will only be local.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martyn picked the &ldquo;<i>Pioneer</i>&rdquo; from the table, read through the
+telegrams once more, and put up his feet on the chair-rests. It was a hot,
+dark, breathless evening, heavy with the smell of the newly watered Mall. The
+flowers in the Club gardens were dead and black on their stalks, the little
+lotus-pond was a circle of caked mud, and the tamarisk-trees were white with
+the dust of weeks. Most of the men were at the band-stand in the public
+gardens&mdash;from the Club verandah you could hear the native Police band
+hammering stale waltzes&mdash;or on the polo-ground, or in the high-walled
+fives-court, hotter than a Dutch oven. Half a dozen grooms, squatted at the
+heads of their ponies, waited their masters&rsquo; return. From time to time a
+man would ride at a foot-pace into the Club compound, and listlessly loaf over
+to the whitewashed barracks beside the main building. These were supposed to be
+chambers. Men lived in them, meeting the same white faces night after night at
+dinner, and drawing out their office-work till the latest possible hour, that
+they might escape that doleful company.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are you going to do?&rdquo; said Martyn, with a yawn.
+&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s have a swim before dinner.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Water&rsquo;s hot. I was at the bath to-day.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Play you game o&rsquo; billiards&mdash;fifty up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a hundred and five in the hall now. Sit still and don&rsquo;t
+be so abominably energetic.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A grunting camel swung up to the porch, his badged and belted rider fumbling a
+leather pouch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Kubber-kargaz-ki-yektraaa</i>,&rdquo; the man whined, handing down
+the newspaper extra&mdash;a slip printed on one side only, and damp from the
+press. It was pinned up on the green-baize board, between notices of ponies for
+sale and fox-terriers missing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martyn rose lazily, read it, and whistled. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s declared!&rdquo;
+he cried. &ldquo;One, two, three&mdash;eight districts go under the operations
+of the Famine Code <i>ek dum</i>. They&rsquo;ve put Jimmy Hawkins in
+charge.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good business!&rdquo; said Scott, with the first sign of interest he had
+shown. &ldquo;When in doubt hire a Punjabi. I worked under Jimmy when I first
+came out and he belonged to the Punjab. He has more <i>bundobust</i> than most
+men.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jimmy&rsquo;s a Jubilee Knight now,&rdquo; said Martyn.
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a good chap, even though he is a thrice-born civilian and
+went to the Benighted Presidency. What unholy names these Madras districts
+rejoice in&mdash;all <i>ungas</i> or <i>rungas</i> or <i>pillays</i> or
+<i>polliums</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A dog-cart drove up in the dusk, and a man entered, mopping his head. He was
+editor of the one daily paper at the capital of a Province of twenty-five
+million natives and a few hundred white men: as his staff was limited to
+himself and one assistant, his office-hours ran variously from ten to twenty a
+day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hi, Raines; you&rsquo;re supposed to know everything,&rdquo; said
+Martyn, stopping him. &ldquo;How&rsquo;s this Madras &lsquo;scarcity&rsquo;
+going to turn out?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No one knows as yet. There&rsquo;s a message as long as your arm coming
+in on the telephone. I&rsquo;ve left my cub to fill it out. Madras has owned
+she can&rsquo;t manage it alone, and Jimmy seems to have a free hand in getting
+all the men he needs. Arbuthnot&rsquo;s warned to hold himself in
+readiness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Badger&rsquo; Arbuthnot?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Peshawur chap. Yes: and the <i>Pi</i> wires that Ellis and Clay have
+been moved from the Northwest already, and they&rsquo;ve taken half a dozen
+Bombay men, too. It&rsquo;s <i>pukka</i> famine, by the looks of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;re nearer the scene of action than we are; but if it comes to
+indenting on the Punjab this early, there&rsquo;s more in this than meets the
+eye,&rdquo; said Martyn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here to-day and gone to-morrow. Didn&rsquo;t come to stay for
+ever,&rdquo; said Scott, dropping one of Marryat&rsquo;s novels, and rising to
+his feet. &ldquo;Martyn, your sister&rsquo;s waiting for you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A rough grey horse was backing and shifting at the edge of the verandah, where
+the light of a kerosene lamp fell on a brown-calico habit and a white face
+under a grey-felt hat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Right, O!&rdquo; said Martyn. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m ready. Better come and
+dine with us, if you&rsquo;ve nothing to do, Scott. William, is there any
+dinner in the house?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go home and see,&rdquo; was the rider&rsquo;s answer.
+&ldquo;You can drive him over&mdash;at eight, remember.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Scott moved leisurely to his room, and changed into the evening-dress of the
+season and the country: spotless white linen from head to foot, with a broad
+silk <i>cummerbund</i>. Dinner at the Martyns&rsquo; was a decided improvement
+on the goat-mutton, twiney-tough fowl, and tinned entrées of the Club. But it
+was a great pity that Martyn could not afford to send his sister to the hills
+for the hot weather. As an Acting District Superintendent of Police, Martyn
+drew the magnificent pay of six hundred depreciated silver rupees a month, and
+his little four-roomed bungalow said just as much. There were the usual
+blue-and-white-striped jail-made rugs on the uneven floor; the usual
+glass-studded Amritsar <i>phulkaris</i> draped on nails driven into the flaking
+whitewash of the walls; the usual half-dozen chairs that did not match, picked
+up at sales of dead men&rsquo;s effects; and the usual streaks of black grease
+where the leather punka-thong ran through the wall. It was as though everything
+had been unpacked the night before to be repacked next morning. Not a door in
+the house was true on its hinges. The little windows, fifteen feet up, were
+darkened with wasp-nests, and lizards hunted flies between the beams of the
+wood-ceiled roof. But all this was part of Scott&rsquo;s life. Thus did people
+live who had such an income; and in a land where each man&rsquo;s pay, age, and
+position are printed in a book, that all may read, it is hardly worth while to
+play at pretence in word or deed. Scott counted eight years&rsquo; service in
+the Irrigation Department, and drew eight hundred rupees a month, on the
+understanding that if he served the State faithfully for another twenty-two
+years he could retire on a pension of some four hundred rupees a month. His
+working-life, which had been spent chiefly under canvas or in temporary
+shelters where a man could sleep, eat, and write letters, was bound up with the
+opening and guarding of irrigation canals, the handling of two or three
+thousand workmen of all castes and creeds, and the payment of vast sums of
+coined silver.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had finished that spring, not without credit, the last section of the great
+Mosuhl Canal, and&mdash;much against his will, for he hated
+office-work&mdash;had been sent in to serve during the hot weather on the
+accounts and supply side of the Department, with sole charge of the sweltering
+sub-office at the capital of the Province. Martyn knew this; William, his
+sister, knew it; and everybody knew it. Scott knew, too, as well as the rest of
+the world, that Miss Martyn had come out to India four years ago to keep house
+for her brother, who, as every one knew, had borrowed the money to pay for her
+passage, and that she ought, as all the world said, to have married at once. In
+stead of this, she had refused some half a dozen subalterns, a Civilian twenty
+years her senior, one Major, and a man in the Indian Medical Department. This,
+too, was common property. She had &ldquo;stayed down three hot weathers,&rdquo;
+as the saying is, because her brother was in debt and could not afford the
+expense of her keep at even a cheap hill-station. Therefore her face was white
+as bone, and in the centre of her forehead was a big silvery scar about the
+size of a shilling&mdash;the mark of a Delhi sore, which is the same as a
+&ldquo;Bagdad date.&rdquo; This comes from drinking bad water, and slowly eats
+into the flesh till it is ripe enough to be burned out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+None the less William had enjoyed herself hugely in her four years. Twice she
+had been nearly drowned while fording a river; once she had been run away with
+on a camel; had witnessed a midnight attack of thieves on her brother&rsquo;s
+camp; had seen justice administered, with long sticks, in the open under trees;
+could speak Urdu and even rough Punjabi with a fluency that was envied by her
+seniors; had entirely fallen out of the habit of writing to her aunts in
+England, or cutting the pages of the English magazines; had been through a very
+bad cholera year, seeing sights unfit to be told; and had wound up her
+experiences by six weeks of typhoid fever, during which her head had been
+shaved and hoped to keep her twenty-third birthday that September. It is
+conceivable that the aunts would not have approved of a girl who never set foot
+on the ground if a horse were within hail; who rode to dances with a shawl
+thrown over her skirt; who wore her hair cropped and curling all over her head;
+who answered indifferently to the name of William or Bill; whose speech was
+heavy with the flowers of the vernacular; who could act in amateur theatricals,
+play on the banjo, rule eight servants and two horses, their accounts and their
+diseases, and look men slowly and deliberately between the eyes&mdash;even
+after they had proposed to her and been rejected.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I like men who do things,&rdquo; she had confided to a man in the
+Educational Department, who was teaching the sons of cloth-merchants and dyers
+the beauty of Wordsworth&rsquo;s &ldquo;Excursion&rdquo; in annotated
+cram-books; and when he grew poetical, William explained that she
+&ldquo;didn&rsquo;t understand poetry very much; it made her head ache,&rdquo;
+and another broken heart took refuge at the Club. But it was all
+William&rsquo;s fault. She delighted in hearing men talk of their own work, and
+that is the most fatal way of bringing a man to your feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Scott had known her for some three years, meeting her, as a rule, under
+canvass, when his camp and her brother&rsquo;s joined for a day on the edge of
+the Indian Desert. He had danced with her several times at the big Christmas
+gatherings, when as many as five hundred white people came in to the station;
+and had always a great respect for her housekeeping and her dinners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked more like a boy than ever when, the meal ended, she sat, rolling
+cigarettes, her low forehead puckered beneath the dark curls as she twiddled
+the papers and stuck out her rounded chin when the tobacco stayed in place, or,
+with a gesture as true as a school-boy&rsquo;s throwing a stone, tossed the
+finished article across the room to Martyn, who caught it with one hand, and
+continued his talk with Scott. It was all &ldquo;shop,&rdquo;&mdash;canals and
+the policing of canals; the sins of villagers who stole more water than they
+had paid for, and the grosser sin of native constables who connived at the
+thefts; of the transplanting bodily of villages to newly irrigated ground, and
+of the coming fight with the desert in the south when the Provincial funds
+should warrant the opening of the long-surveyed Luni Protective Canal System.
+And Scott spoke openly of his great desire to be put on one particular section
+of the work where he knew the land and the people; and Martyn sighed for a
+billet in the Himalayan foot-hills, and said his mind of his superiors, and
+William rolled cigarettes and said nothing, but smiled gravely on her brother
+because he was happy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At ten Scott&rsquo;s horse came to the door, and the evening was ended. The
+lights of the two low bungalows in which the daily paper was printed showed
+bright across the road. It was too early to try to find sleep, and Scott
+drifted over to the editor. Raines, stripped to the waist like a sailor at a
+gun, lay half asleep in a long chair, waiting for night telegrams. He had a
+theory that if a man did not stay by his work all day and most of the night he
+laid himself open to fever: so he ate and slept among his files.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can you do it?&rdquo; he said drowsily. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t mean to
+bring you over.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;About what? I&rsquo;ve been dining at the Martyns&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Madras famine, of course. Martyn&rsquo;s warned, too. They&rsquo;re
+taking men where they can find &rsquo;em. I sent a note to you at the Club just
+now, asking if you could do us a letter once a week from the
+south&mdash;between two and three columns, say. Nothing sensational, of course,
+but just plain facts about who is doing what, and so forth. Our regular
+rates&mdash;ten rupees a column.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sorry, but it&rsquo;s out of my line,&rdquo; Scott answered, staring
+absently at the map of India on the wall. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s rough on
+Martyn&mdash;very. Wonder what he&rsquo;ll do with his sister? Wonder what the
+deuce they&rsquo;ll do with me? I&rsquo;ve no famine experience. This is the
+first I&rsquo;ve heard of it. <i>Am</i> I ordered?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, yes. Here&rsquo;s the wire. They&rsquo;ll put you on to
+relief-works,&rdquo; Raines said, &ldquo;with a horde of Madrassis dying like
+flies; one native apothecary and half a pint of cholera-mixture among the ten
+thousand of you. It comes of your being idle for the moment. Every man who
+isn&rsquo;t doing two men&rsquo;s work seems to have been called upon. Hawkins
+evidently believes in Punjabis. It&rsquo;s going to be quite as bad as anything
+they have had in the last ten years.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all in the day&rsquo;s work, worse luck. I suppose I shall
+get my orders officially some time to-morrow. I&rsquo;m awfully glad I happened
+to drop in. Better go and pack my kit now. Who relieves me here&mdash;do you
+know?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Raines turned over a sheaf of telegrams. &ldquo;McEuan,&rdquo; said he,
+&ldquo;from Murree.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Scott chuckled. &ldquo;He thought he was going to be cool all summer.
+He&rsquo;ll be very sick about this. Well, no good talking.
+&rsquo;Night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Two hours later, Scott, with a clear conscience, laid himself down to rest on a
+string cot in a bare room. Two worn bullock trunks, a leather water-bottle, a
+tin ice-box, and his pet saddle sewed up in sacking were piled at the door, and
+the Club secretary&rsquo;s receipt for last month&rsquo;s bill was under his
+pillow. His orders came next morning, and with them an unofficial telegram from
+Sir James Hawkins; who was not in the habit of forgetting good men when he had
+once met them, bidding him report himself with all speed at some
+unpronounceable place fifteen hundred miles to the south, for the famine was
+sore in the land, and white men were needed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A pink and fattish youth arrived in the red-hot noonday, whimpering a little at
+fate and famines, which never allowed any one three months&rsquo; peace. He was
+Scott&rsquo;s successor&mdash;another cog in the machinery, moved forward
+behind his fellow whose services, as the official announcement ran, &ldquo;were
+placed at the disposal of the Madras Government for famine duty until further
+orders.&rdquo; Scott handed over the funds in his charge, showed him the
+coolest corner in the office, warned him against excess of zeal, and, as
+twilight fell, departed from the Club in a hired carriage, with his faithful
+body-servant, Faiz Ullah, and a mound of disordered baggage atop, to catch the
+southern mail at the loopholed and bastioned railway-station. The heat from the
+thick brick walls struck him across the face as if it had been a hot towel; and
+he reflected that there were at least five nights and four days of this travel
+before him. Faiz Ullah, used to the chances of service, plunged into the crowd
+on the stone platform, while Scott, a black cheroot between his teeth, waited
+till his compartment should be set away. A dozen native policemen, with their
+rifles and bundles, shouldered into the press of Punjabi farmers, Sikh
+craftsmen, and greasy-locked Afreedee pedlars, escorting with all pomp
+Martyn&rsquo;s uniform-case, water-bottles, ice-box, and bedding-roll. They saw
+Faiz Ullah&rsquo;s lifted hand, and steered for it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My Sahib and your Sahib,&rdquo; said Faiz Ullah to Martyn&rsquo;s man,
+&ldquo;will travel together. Thou and I, O brother, will thus secure the
+servants&rsquo; places close by; and because of our masters&rsquo; authority
+none will dare to disturb us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Faiz Ullah reported all things ready, Scott settled down at full length,
+coatless and bootless, on the broad leather-covered bunk. The heat under the
+iron-arched roof of the station might have been anything over a hundred
+degrees. At the last moment Martyn entered, dripping.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t swear,&rdquo; said Scott, lazily; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s too late
+to change your carriage; and we&rsquo;ll divide the ice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are you doing here?&rdquo; said the police-man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m lent to the Madras Government, same as you. By Jove,
+it&rsquo;s a bender of a night! Are you taking any of your men down?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A dozen. I suppose I shall have to superintend relief distributions.
+Didn&rsquo;t know you were under orders too.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t till after I left you last night. Raines had the news
+first. My orders came this morning. McEuan relieved me at four, and I got off
+at once. Shouldn&rsquo;t wonder if it wouldn&rsquo;t be a good thing&mdash;this
+famine&mdash;if we come through it alive.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jimmy ought to put you and me to work together,&rdquo; said Martyn; and
+then, after a pause: &ldquo;My sister&rsquo;s here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good business,&rdquo; said Scott, heartily. &ldquo;Going to get off at
+Umballa, I suppose, and go up to Simla. Who&rsquo;ll she stay with
+there?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No-o; that&rsquo;s just the trouble of it. She&rsquo;s going down with
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Scott sat bolt upright under the oil-lamps as the train jolted past Tarn-Taran.
+&ldquo;What! You don&rsquo;t mean you couldn&rsquo;t afford&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Tain&rsquo;t that. I&rsquo;d have scraped up the money
+somehow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You might have come to me, to begin with,&rdquo; said Scott, stiffly;
+&ldquo;we aren&rsquo;t altogether strangers.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, you needn&rsquo;t be stuffy about it. I might, but&mdash;you
+don&rsquo;t know my sister. I&rsquo;ve been explaining and exhorting and all
+the rest of it all day&mdash;lost my temper since seven this morning, and
+haven&rsquo;t got it back yet&mdash;but she wouldn&rsquo;t hear of any
+compromise. A woman&rsquo;s entitled to travel with her husband if she wants
+to; and William says she&rsquo;s on the same footing. You see, we&rsquo;ve been
+together all our lives, more or less, since my people died. It isn&rsquo;t as
+if she were an ordinary sister.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All the sisters I&rsquo;ve ever heard of would have stayed where they
+were well off.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s as clever as a man, confound her,&rdquo; Martyn went on.
+&ldquo;She broke up the bungalow over my head while I was talking at her.
+Settled the whole <i>subchiz</i> [outfit] in three hours&mdash;servants,
+horses, and all. I didn&rsquo;t get my orders till nine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jimmy Hawkins won&rsquo;t be pleased,&rdquo; said Scott. &ldquo;A
+famine&rsquo;s no place for a woman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Jim&mdash;I mean Lady Jim&rsquo;s in camp with him. At any rate,
+she says she will look after my sister. William wired down to her on her own
+responsibility, asking if she could come, and knocked the ground from under me
+by showing me her answer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Scott laughed aloud. &ldquo;If she can do that she can take care of herself,
+and Mrs. Jim won&rsquo;t let her run into any mischief. There aren&rsquo;t many
+women, sisters or wives, who would walk into a famine with their eyes open. It
+isn&rsquo;t as if she didn&rsquo;t know what these things mean. She was through
+the Jalo cholera last year.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The train stopped at Amritsar, and Scott went back to the ladies&rsquo;
+compartment, immediately behind their carriage. William, with a cloth
+riding-cap on her curls, nodded affably.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come in and have some tea,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Best thing in the
+world for heat-apoplexy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do I look as if I were going to have heat-apoplexy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never can tell,&rdquo; said William, wisely. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s always
+best to be ready.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had arranged her compartment with the knowledge of an old campaigner. A
+felt-covered water-bottle hung in the draught of one of the shuttered windows;
+a tea-set of Russian china, packed in a wadded basket, stood on the seat; and a
+travelling spirit-lamp was clamped against the woodwork above it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+William served them generously, in large cups, hot tea, which saves the veins
+of the neck from swelling inopportunely on a hot night. It was characteristic
+of the girl that, her plan of action once settled, she asked for no comments on
+it. Life among men who had a great deal of work to do, and very little time to
+do it in, had taught her the wisdom of effacing, as well as of fending for,
+herself. She did not by word or deed suggest that she would be useful,
+comforting, or beautiful in their travels, but continued about her business
+serenely: put the cups back without clatter when tea was ended, and made
+cigarettes for her guests.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This time last night,&rdquo; said Scott, &ldquo;we didn&rsquo;t
+expect&mdash;er&mdash;this kind of thing, did we?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve learned to expect anything,&rdquo; said William. &ldquo;You
+know, in our service, we live at the end of the telegraph; but, of course, this
+ought to be a good thing for us all, departmentally&mdash;if we live.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It knocks us out of the running in our own Province,&rdquo; Scott
+replied, with equal gravity. &ldquo;I hoped to be put on the Luni Protective
+Works this cold weather, but there&rsquo;s no saying how long the famine may
+keep us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hardly beyond October, I should think,&rdquo; said Martyn. &ldquo;It
+will be ended, one way or the other, then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And we&rsquo;ve nearly a week of this,&rdquo; said William.
+&ldquo;Sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t we be dusty when it&rsquo;s over?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a night and a day they knew their surroundings, and for a night and a day,
+skirting the edge of the great Indian Desert on a narrow-gauge railway, they
+remembered how in the days of their apprenticeship they had come by that road
+from Bombay. Then the languages in which the names of the stations were written
+changed, and they launched south into a foreign land, where the very smells
+were new. Many long and heavily laden grain-trains were in front of them, and
+they could feel the hand of Jimmy Hawkins from far off. They waited in
+extemporised sidings while processions of empty trucks returned to the north,
+and were coupled on to slow, crawling trains, and dropped at midnight, Heaven
+knew where; but it was furiously hot, and they walked to and fro among sacks,
+and dogs howled. Then they came to an India more strange to them than to the
+untravelled Englishman&mdash;the flat, red India of palm-tree, palmyra-palm,
+and rice&mdash;the India of the picture-books, of &ldquo;<i>Little Henry and
+His Bearer</i>&rdquo;&mdash;all dead and dry in the baking heat. They had left
+the incessant passenger-traffic of the north and west far and far behind them.
+Here the people crawled to the side of the train, holding their little ones in
+their arms; and a loaded truck would be left behind, the men and women
+clustering round it like ants by spilled honey. Once in the twilight they saw
+on a dusty plain a regiment of little brown men, each bearing a body over his
+shoulder; and when the train stopped to leave yet another truck, they perceived
+that the burdens were not corpses, but only foodless folk picked up beside dead
+oxen by a corps of Irregular troops. Now they met more white men, here one and
+there two, whose tents stood close to the line, and who came armed with written
+authorities and angry words to cut off a truck. They were too busy to do more
+than nod at Scott and Martyn, and stare curiously at William, who could do
+nothing except make tea, and watch how her men staved off the rush of wailing,
+walking skeletons, putting them down three at a time in heaps, with their own
+hands uncoupling the marked trucks, or taking receipts from the hollow-eyed,
+weary white men, who spoke another argot than theirs. They ran out of ice, out
+of soda-water, and out of tea; for they were six days and seven nights on the
+road, and it seemed to them like seven times seven years.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, in a dry, hot dawn, in a land of death, lit by long red fires of
+railway-sleepers, where they were burning the dead, they came to their
+destination, and were met by Jim Hawkins, the Head of the Famine, unshaven,
+unwashed, but cheery, and entirely in command of affairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Martyn, he decreed then and there, was to live on trains till further orders;
+was to go back with empty trucks, filling them with starving people as he found
+them, and dropping them at a famine-camp on the edge of the Eight Districts. He
+would pick up supplies and return, and his constables would guard the loaded
+grain-cars, also picking up people, and would drop them at a camp a hundred
+miles south. Scott&mdash;Hawkins was very glad to see Scott again&mdash;would
+that same hour take charge of a convoy of bullock-carts, and would go south,
+feeding as he went, to yet another famine-camp, where he would leave his
+starving&mdash;there would be no lack of starving on the route&mdash;and wait
+for orders by telegraph. Generally, Scott was in all small things to act as he
+thought best.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+William bit her under lip. There was no one in the wide world like her one
+brother, but Martyn&rsquo;s orders gave him no discretion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She came out on the platform, masked with dust from head to foot, a horse-shoe
+wrinkle on her forehead, put here by much thinking during the past week, but as
+self-possessed as ever. Mrs. Jim&mdash;who should have been Lady Jim but that
+no one remembered the title&mdash;took possession of her with a little gasp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m so glad you&rsquo;re here,&rdquo; she almost sobbed.
+&ldquo;You oughtn&rsquo;t to, of course, but there&mdash;there isn&rsquo;t
+another woman in the place, and we must help each other, you know; and
+we&rsquo;ve all the wretched people and the little babies they are
+selling.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen some,&rdquo; said William.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it ghastly? I&rsquo;ve bought twenty; they&rsquo;re in our
+camp; but won&rsquo;t you have something to eat first? We&rsquo;ve more than
+ten people can do here; and I&rsquo;ve got a horse for you. Oh, I&rsquo;m so
+glad you&rsquo;ve come, dear. You&rsquo;re a Punjabi, too, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Steady, Lizzie,&rdquo; said Hawkins, over his shoulder.
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll look after you, Miss Martyn. Sorry I can&rsquo;t ask you to
+breakfast, Martyn. You&rsquo;ll have to eat as you go. Leave two of your men to
+help Scott. These poor devils can&rsquo;t stand up to load carts.
+Saunders&rdquo; (this to the engine-driver, who was half asleep in the cab),
+&ldquo;back down and get those empties away. You&rsquo;ve &lsquo;line
+clear&rsquo; to Anundrapillay; they&rsquo;ll give you orders north of that.
+Scott, load up your carts from that B. P. P. truck, and be off as soon as you
+can. The Eurasian in the pink shirt is your interpreter and guide. You&rsquo;ll
+find an apothecary of sorts tied to the yoke of the second wagon. He&rsquo;s
+been trying to bolt; you&rsquo;ll have to look after him. Lizzie, drive Miss
+Martyn to camp, and tell them to send the red horse down here for me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Scott, with Faiz Ullah and two policemen, was already busied with the carts,
+backing them up to the truck and unbolting the sideboards quietly, while the
+others pitched in the bags of millet and wheat. Hawkins watched him for as long
+as it took to fill one cart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a good man,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If all goes well I shall
+work him hard.&rdquo; This was Jim Hawkins&rsquo;s notion of the highest
+compliment one human being could pay another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An hour later Scott was under way; the apothecary threatening him with the
+penalties of the law for that he, a member of the Subordinate Medical
+Department, had been coerced and bound against his will and all laws governing
+the liberty of the subject; the pink-shirted Eurasian begging leave to see his
+mother, who happened to be dying some three miles away: &ldquo;Only verree,
+verree short leave of absence, and will presently return, sar&mdash;&ldquo;;
+the two constables, armed with staves, bringing up the rear; and Faiz Ullah, a
+Mohammedan&rsquo;s contempt for all Hindoos and foreigners in every line of his
+face, explaining to the drivers that though Scott Sahib was a man to be feared
+on all fours, he, Faiz Ullah, was Authority Itself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The procession creaked past Hawkins&rsquo;s camp&mdash;three stained tents
+under a clump of dead trees, behind them the famine-shed, where a crowd of
+hopeless ones tossed their arms around the cooking-kettles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wish to Heaven William had kept out of it,&rdquo; said Scott to himself,
+after a glance. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll have cholera, sure as a gun, when the Rains
+break.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But William seemed to have taken kindly to the operations of the Famine Code,
+which, when famine is declared, supersede the workings of the ordinary law.
+Scott saw her, the centre of a mob of weeping women, in a calico riding-habit,
+and a blue-grey felt hat with a gold puggaree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want fifty rupees, please. I forgot to ask Jack before he went away.
+Can you lend it me? It&rsquo;s for condensed-milk for the babies,&rdquo; said
+she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Scott took the money from his belt, and handed it over without a word.
+&ldquo;For goodness sake, take care of yourself,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I shall be all right. We ought to get the milk in two days. By the
+way, the orders are, I was to tell you, that you&rsquo;re to take one of Sir
+Jim&rsquo;s horses. There&rsquo;s a grey Cabuli here that I thought would be
+just your style, so I&rsquo;ve said you&rsquo;d take him. Was that
+right?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s awfully good of you. We can&rsquo;t either of us talk much
+about style, I am afraid.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Scott was in a weather-stained drill shooting-kit, very white at the seams and
+a little frayed at the wrists. William regarded him thoughtfully, from his pith
+helmet to his greased ankle-boots. &ldquo;You look very nice, I think. Are you
+sure you&rsquo;ve everything you&rsquo;ll need&mdash;quinine, chlorodyne, and
+so on?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Think so,&rdquo; said Scott, patting three or four of his
+shooting-pockets as he mounted and rode alongside his convoy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; he cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good-bye, and good luck,&rdquo; said William. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m awfully
+obliged for the money.&rdquo; She turned on a spurred heel and disappeared into
+the tent, while the carts pushed on past the famine-sheds, past the roaring
+lines of the thick, fat fires, down to the baked Gehenna of the South.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2H_PART2" id="link2H_PART2"></a>
+PART II</h2>
+
+<p class="poem">
+So let us melt and make no noise,<br/>
+    No tear-floods nor sigh-tempests move;<br/>
+&rsquo;Twere profanation of our joys<br/>
+    To tell the Laity our love.<br/>
+<br/>
+                    A V<small>ALEDICTION</small>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was punishing work, even though he travelled by night and camped by day; but
+within the limits of his vision there was no man whom Scott could call master.
+He was as free as Jimmy Hawkins&mdash;freer, in fact, for the Government held
+the Head of the Famine tied neatly to a telegraph-wire, and if Jimmy had ever
+regarded telegrams seriously, the death-rate of that famine would have been
+much higher than it was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the end of a few days&rsquo; crawling Scott learned something of the size of
+the India which he served, and it astonished him. His carts, as you know, were
+loaded with wheat, millet, and barley, good food-grains needing only a little
+grinding. But the people to whom he brought the life-giving stuffs were
+rice-eaters. They could hull rice in their mortars, but they knew nothing of
+the heavy stone querns of the North, and less of the material that the white
+man convoyed so laboriously. They clamoured for rice&mdash;unhusked paddy, such
+as they were accustomed to&mdash;and, when they found that there was none,
+broke away weeping from the sides of the cart. What was the use of these
+strange hard grains that choked their throats? They would die. And then and
+there very many of them kept their word. Others took their allowance, and
+bartered enough millet to feed a man through a week for a few handfuls of
+rotten rice saved by some less unfortunate. A few put their share into the
+rice-mortars, pounded it, and made a paste with foul water; but they were very
+few. Scott understood dimly that many people in the India of the South ate
+rice, as a rule, but he had spent his service in a grain Province, had seldom
+seen rice in the blade or ear, and least of all would have believed that in
+time of deadly need men could die at arm&rsquo;s length of plenty, sooner than
+touch food they did not know. In vain the interpreters interpreted; in vain his
+two policemen showed in vigorous pantomime what should be done. The starving
+crept away to their bark and weeds, grubs, leaves, and clay, and left the open
+sacks untouched. But sometimes the women laid their phantoms of children at
+Scott&rsquo;s feet, looking back as they staggered away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Faiz Ullah opined it was the will of God that these foreigners should die, and
+it remained only to give orders to burn the dead. None the less there was no
+reason why the Sahib should lack his comforts, and Faiz Ullah, a campaigner of
+experience, had picked up a few lean goats and had added them to the
+procession. That they might give milk for the morning meal, he was feeding them
+on the good grain that these imbeciles rejected. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Faiz
+Ullah; &ldquo;if the Sahib thought fit, a little milk might be given to some of
+the babies&rdquo;; but, as the Sahib well knew, babies were cheap, and, for his
+own part, Faiz Ullah held that there was no Government order as to babies.
+Scott spoke forcefully to Faiz Ullah and the two policemen, and bade them
+capture goats where they could find them. This they most joyfully did, for it
+was a recreation, and many ownerless goats were driven in. Once fed, the poor
+brutes were willing enough to follow the carts, and a few days&rsquo; good
+food&mdash;food such as human beings died for lack of&mdash;set them in milk
+again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I am no goatherd,&rdquo; said Faiz Ullah. &ldquo;It is against my
+<i>izzat</i> [my honour].&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When we cross the Bias River again we will talk of <i>izzat</i>,&rdquo;
+Scott replied. &ldquo;Till that day thou and the policemen shall be sweepers to
+the camp, if I give the order.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thus, then, it is done,&rdquo; grunted Faiz Ullah, &ldquo;if the Sahib
+will have it so&rdquo;; and he showed how a goat should be milked, while Scott
+stood over him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now we will feed them,&rdquo; said Scott; &ldquo;twice a day we will
+feed them&rdquo;; and he bowed his back to the milking, and took a horrible
+cramp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When you have to keep connection unbroken between a restless mother of kids and
+a baby who is at the point of death, you suffer in all your system. But the
+babies were fed. Each morning and evening Scott would solemnly lift them out
+one by one from their nest of gunny-bags under the cart-tilts. There were
+always many who could do no more than breathe, and the milk was dropped into
+their toothless mouths drop by drop, with due pauses when they choked. Each
+morning, too, the goats were fed; and since they would straggle without a
+leader, and since the natives were hirelings, Scott was forced to give up
+riding, and pace slowly at the head of his flocks, accommodating his step to
+their weaknesses. All this was sufficiently absurd, and he felt the absurdity
+keenly; but at least he was saving life, and when the women saw that their
+children did not die, they made shift to eat a little of the strange foods, and
+crawled after the carts, blessing the master of the goats.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Give the women something to live for,&rdquo; said Scott to himself, as
+he sneezed in the dust of a hundred little feet, &ldquo;and they&rsquo;ll hang
+on somehow. This beats William&rsquo;s condensed-milk trick all to pieces. I
+shall never live it down, though.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He reached his destination very slowly, found that a rice-ship had come in from
+Burmah, and that stores of paddy were available; found also an overworked
+Englishman in charge of the shed, and, loading the carts, set back to cover the
+ground he had already passed. He left some of the children and half his goats
+at the famine-shed. For this he was not thanked by the Englishman, who had
+already more stray babies than he knew what to do with. Scott&rsquo;s back was
+suppled to stooping now, and he went on with his wayside ministrations in
+addition to distributing the paddy. More babies and more goats were added unto
+him; but now some of the babies wore rags, and beads round their wrists or
+necks. &ldquo;<i>That</i>&rdquo; said the interpreter, as though Scott did not
+know, &ldquo;signifies that their mothers hope in eventual contingency to
+resume them offeecially.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The sooner, the better,&rdquo; said Scott; but at the same time he
+marked, with the pride of ownership, how this or that little Ramasawmy was
+putting on flesh like a bantam. As the paddy-carts were emptied he headed for
+Hawkins&rsquo;s camp by the railway, timing his arrival to fit in with the
+dinner-hour, for it was long since he had eaten at a cloth. He had no desire to
+make any dramatic entry, but an accident of the sunset ordered it that when he
+had taken off his helmet to get the evening breeze, the low light should fall
+across his forehead, and he could not see what was before him; while one
+waiting at the tent door beheld with new eyes a young man, beautiful as Paris,
+a god in a halo of golden dust, walking slowly at the head of his flocks, while
+at his knee ran small naked Cupids. But she laughed&mdash;William, in a
+slate-coloured blouse, laughed consumedly till Scott, putting the best face he
+could upon the matter, halted his armies and bade her admire the kindergarten.
+It was an unseemly sight, but the proprieties had been left ages ago, with the
+tea-party at Amritsar Station, fifteen hundred miles to the north.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are coming on nicely,&rdquo; said William. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve only
+five-and-twenty here now. The women are beginning to take them away
+again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you in charge of the babies, then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;Mrs. Jim and I. We didn&rsquo;t think of goats, though.
+We&rsquo;ve been trying condensed-milk and water.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Any losses?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;More than I care to think of;&rdquo; said William, with a shudder.
+&ldquo;And you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Scott said nothing. There had been many little burials along his
+route&mdash;one cannot burn a dead baby&mdash;many mothers who had wept when
+they did not find again the children they had trusted to the care of the
+Government.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Hawkins came out carrying a razor, at which Scott looked hungrily, for he
+had a beard that he did not love. And when they sat down to dinner in the tent
+he told his tale in few words, as it might have been an official report. Mrs.
+Jim snuffled from time to time, and Jim bowed his head judicially; but
+William&rsquo;s grey eyes were on the clean-shaven face, and it was to her that
+Scott seemed to appeal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good for the Pauper Province!&rdquo; said William, her chin on her hand,
+as she leaned forward among the wine-glasses. Her cheeks had fallen in, and the
+scar on her forehead was more prominent than ever, but the well-turned neck
+rose roundly as a column from the ruffle of the blouse which was the accepted
+evening-dress in camp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was awfully absurd at times,&rdquo; said Scott. &ldquo;You see, I
+didn&rsquo;t know much about milking or babies. They&rsquo;ll chaff my head
+off, if the tale goes up North.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let &rsquo;em,&rdquo; said William, haughtily. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve all
+done coolie-work since we came. I know Jack has.&rdquo; This was to
+Hawkins&rsquo;s address, and the big man smiled blandly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your brother&rsquo;s a highly efficient officer, William,&rdquo; said
+he, &ldquo;and I&rsquo;ve done him the honour of treating him as he deserves.
+Remember, I write the confidential reports.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you must say that William&rsquo;s worth her weight in gold,&rdquo;
+said Mrs. Jim. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what we should have done without her.
+She has been everything to us.&rdquo; She dropped her hand upon
+William&rsquo;s, which was rough with much handling of reins, and William
+patted it softly. Jim beamed on the company. Things were going well with his
+world. Three of his more grossly incompetent men had died, and their places had
+been filled by their betters. Every day brought the Rains nearer. They had put
+out the famine in five of the Eight Districts, and, after all, the death-rate
+had not been too heavy&mdash;things considered. He looked Scott over carefully,
+as an ogre looks over a man, and rejoiced in his thews and iron-hard condition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s just the least bit in the world tucked up,&rdquo; said Jim to
+himself, &ldquo;but he can do two men&rsquo;s work yet.&rdquo; Then he was
+aware that Mrs. Jim was telegraphing to him, and according to the domestic code
+the message ran: &ldquo;A clear case. Look at them!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked and listened. All that William was saying was: &ldquo;What can you
+expect of a country where they call a <i>bhistee</i> [a water-carrier] a
+<i>tunni-cutch?</i>&rdquo; and all that Scott answered was: &ldquo;I shall be
+glad to get back to the Club. Save me a dance at the Christmas Ball,
+won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a far cry from here to the Lawrence Hall,&rdquo; said Jim.
+&ldquo;Better turn in early, Scott. It&rsquo;s paddy-carts to-morrow;
+you&rsquo;ll begin loading at five.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t you going to give Mr. Scott a single day&rsquo;s
+rest?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wish I could, Lizzie, &rsquo;Fraid I can&rsquo;t. As long as he can
+stand up we must use him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ve had one Europe evening, at least. By Jove, I&rsquo;d
+nearly forgotten! What do I do about those babies of mine?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Leave them here,&rdquo; said William&mdash;&ldquo;we are in charge of
+that&mdash;and as many goats as you can spare. I must learn how to milk
+now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you care to get up early enough to-morrow I&rsquo;ll show you. I have
+to milk, you see. Half of &rsquo;em have beads and things round their necks.
+You must be careful not to take &rsquo;em off; in case the mothers turn
+up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You forget I&rsquo;ve had some experience here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope to goodness you won&rsquo;t overdo.&rdquo; Scott&rsquo;s voice
+was unguarded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll take care of her,&rdquo; said Mrs. Jim, telegraphing
+hundred-word messages as she carried William off; while Jim gave Scott his
+orders for the coming campaign. It was very late&mdash;nearly nine
+o&rsquo;clock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jim, you&rsquo;re a brute,&rdquo; said his wife, that night; and the
+Head of the Famine chuckled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not a bit of it, dear. I remember doing the first Jandiala Settlement
+for the sake of a girl in a crinoline, and she was slender, Lizzie. I&rsquo;ve
+never done as good a piece of work since. <i>He</i>&rsquo;ll work like a
+demon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you might have given him one day.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And let things come to a head now? No, dear; it&rsquo;s their happiest
+time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe either of the darlings know what&rsquo;s the
+matter with them. Isn&rsquo;t it beautiful? Isn&rsquo;t it lovely?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Getting up at three to learn to milk, bless her heart! Oh, ye Gods, why
+must we grow old and fat?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s a darling. She has done more work under me&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Under <i>you!</i> The day after she came she was in charge and you were
+her subordinate. You&rsquo;ve stayed there ever since; she manages you almost
+as well as you manage me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t, and that&rsquo;s why I love her. She&rsquo;s as
+direct as a man&mdash;as her brother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Her brother&rsquo;s weaker than she is. He&rsquo;s always to me for
+orders; but he&rsquo;s honest, and a glutton for work. I confess I&rsquo;m
+rather fond of William, and if I had a daughter&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The talk ended. Far away in the Derajat was a child&rsquo;s grave more than
+twenty years old, and neither Jim nor his wife spoke of it any more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All the same, you&rsquo;re responsible,&rdquo; Jim added, a
+moment&rsquo;s silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bless &rsquo;em!&rdquo; said Mrs. Jim, sleepily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before the stars paled, Scott, who slept in an empty cart, waked and went about
+his work in silence; it seemed at that hour unkind to rouse Faiz Ullah and the
+interpreter. His head being close to the ground, he did not hear William till
+she stood over him in the dingy old riding-habit, her eyes still heavy with
+sleep, a cup of tea and a piece of toast in her hands. There was a baby on the
+ground, squirming on a piece of blanket, and a six-year-old child peered over
+Scott&rsquo;s shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hai, you little rip,&rdquo; said Scott, &ldquo;how the deuce do you
+expect to get your rations if you aren&rsquo;t quiet?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A cool white hand steadied the brat, who forthwith choked as the milk gurgled
+into his mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mornin&rsquo;,&rdquo; said the milker. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve no notion how
+these little fellows can wriggle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, yes, I have.&rdquo; She whispered, because the world was asleep.
+&ldquo;Only I feed them with a spoon or a rag. Yours are fatter than mine. And
+you&rsquo;ve been doing this day after day?&rdquo; The voice was almost lost.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes; it was absurd. Now you try,&rdquo; he said, giving place to the
+girl. &ldquo;Look out! A goat&rsquo;s not a cow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The goat protested against the amateur, and there was a scuffle, in which Scott
+snatched up the baby. Then it was all to do over again, and William laughed
+softly and merrily. She managed, however, to feed two babies, and a third.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t the little beggars take it well?&rdquo; said Scott. &ldquo;I
+trained &rsquo;em.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were very busy and interested, when lo! it was broad daylight, and before
+they knew, the camp was awake, and they kneeled among the goats, surprised by
+the day, both flushed to the temples. Yet all the round world rolling up out of
+the darkness might have heard and seen all that had passed between them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said William, unsteadily, snatching up the tea and toast,
+&ldquo;I had this made for you. It&rsquo;s stone-cold now. I thought you
+mightn&rsquo;t have anything ready so early. Better not drink it.
+It&rsquo;s&mdash;it&rsquo;s stone-cold.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s awfully kind of you. It&rsquo;s just right. It&rsquo;s
+awfully good of you, really. I&rsquo;ll leave my kids and goats with you and
+Mrs. Jim, and, of course, any one in camp can show you about the
+milking.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said William; and she grew pinker and pinker and
+statelier and more stately, as she strode back to her tent, fanning herself
+with the saucer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were shrill lamentations through the camp when the elder children saw
+their nurse move off without them. Faiz Ullah unbent so far as to jest with the
+policemen, and Scott turned purple with shame because Hawkins, already in the
+saddle, roared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A child escaped from the care of Mrs. Jim, and, running like a rabbit, clung to
+Scott&rsquo;s boot, William pursuing with long, easy strides.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will not go&mdash;I will not go!&rdquo; shrieked the child, twining
+his feet round Scott&rsquo;s ankle. &ldquo;They will kill me here. I do not
+know these people.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I say,&rdquo; said Scott, in broken Tamil, &ldquo;I say, she will do you
+no harm. Go with her and be well fed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come!&rdquo; said William, panting, with a wrathful glance at Scott, who
+stood helpless and, as it were, hamstrung.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go back,&rdquo; said Scott quickly to William. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll send
+the little chap over in a minute.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tone of authority had its effect, but in a way Scott did not exactly
+intend. The boy loosened his grasp, and said with gravity: &ldquo;I did not
+know the woman was thine. I will go.&rdquo; Then he cried to his companions, a
+mob of three-, four-, and five-year-olds waiting on the success of his venture
+ere they stampeded: &ldquo;Go back and eat. It is our man&rsquo;s woman. She
+will obey his orders.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim collapsed where he sat; Faiz Ullah and the two policemen grinned; and
+Scott&rsquo;s orders to the cartmen flew like hail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is the custom of the Sahibs when truth is told in their
+presence,&rdquo; said Faiz Ullah. &ldquo;The time comes that I must seek new
+service. Young wives, especially such as speak our language and have knowledge
+of the ways of the Police, make great trouble for honest butlers in the matter
+of weekly accounts.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What William thought of it all she did not say, but when her brother, ten days
+later, came to camp for orders, and heard of Scott&rsquo;s performances, he
+said, laughing: &ldquo;Well, that settles it. He&rsquo;ll be <i>Bakri</i> Scott
+to the end of his days.&rdquo; (<i>Bakri</i> in the Northern vernacular, means
+a goat.) &ldquo;What a lark! I&rsquo;d have given a month&rsquo;s pay to have
+seen him nursing famine babies. I fed some with <i>conjee</i> [rice-water], but
+that was all right.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s perfectly disgusting,&rdquo; said his sister, with blazing
+eyes. &ldquo;A man does something like&mdash;like that&mdash;and all you other
+men think of is to give him an absurd nickname, and then you laugh and think
+it&rsquo;s funny.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Mrs. Jim, sympathetically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, <i>you</i> can&rsquo;t talk, William. You christened little Miss
+Demby the Button-quail, last cold weather; you know you did. India&rsquo;s the
+land of nicknames.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s different,&rdquo; William replied. &ldquo;She was only a
+girl, and she hadn&rsquo;t done anything except walk like a quail, and she
+<i>does</i>. But it isn&rsquo;t fair to make fun of a man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Scott won&rsquo;t care,&rdquo; said Martyn. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t get a
+rise out of old Scotty. I&rsquo;ve been trying for eight years, and
+you&rsquo;ve only known him for three. How does he look?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He looks very well,&rdquo; said William, and went away with a flushed
+cheek. &ldquo;<i>Bakri</i> Scott, indeed!&rdquo; Then she laughed to herself,
+for she knew her country. &ldquo;But it will be <i>Bakri</i> all the
+same&rdquo;; and she repeated it under her breath several times slowly,
+whispering it into favour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he returned to his duties on the railway, Martyn spread the name far and
+wide among his associates, so that Scott met it as he led his paddy-carts to
+war. The natives believed it to be some English title of honour, and the
+cart-drivers used it in all simplicity till Faiz Ullah, who did not approve of
+foreign japes, broke their heads. There was very little time for milking now,
+except at the big camps, where Jim had extended Scott&rsquo;s idea and was
+feeding large flocks on the useless northern grains. Sufficient paddy had come
+now into the Eight Districts to hold the people safe, if it were only
+distributed quickly, and for that purpose no one was better than the big Canal
+officer, who never lost his temper, never gave an unnecessary order, and never
+questioned an order given. Scott pressed on, saving his cattle, washing their
+galled necks daily, so that no time should be lost on the road; reported
+himself with his rice at the minor famine-sheds, unloaded, and went back light
+by forced night-march to the next distributing centre, to find Hawkins&rsquo;s
+unvarying telegram: &ldquo;Do it again.&rdquo; And he did it again and again,
+and yet again, while Jim Hawkins, fifty miles away, marked off on a big map the
+tracks of his wheels gridironing the stricken lands. Others did
+well&mdash;Hawkins reported at the end they all did well&mdash;but Scott was
+the most excellent, for he kept good coined rupees by him, settled for his own
+cart-repairs on the spot, and ran to meet all sorts of unconsidered extras,
+trusting to be recouped later on. Theoretically, the Government should have
+paid for every shoe and linchpin, for every hand employed in the loading; but
+Government vouchers cash themselves slowly, and intelligent and efficient
+clerks write at great length, contesting unauthorised expenditures of eight
+annas. The man who wants to make his work a success must draw on his own
+bank-account of money or other things as he goes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I told you he&rsquo;d work,&rdquo; said Jimmy to his wife, at the end of
+six weeks. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s been in sole charge of a couple of thousand men up
+north, on the Mosuhl Canal, for a year; but he gives less trouble than young
+Martyn with his ten constables; and I&rsquo;m morally certain&mdash;only
+Government doesn&rsquo;t recognise moral obligations&mdash;he&rsquo;s spent
+about half his pay to grease his wheels. Look at this, Lizzie, for one
+week&rsquo;s work! Forty miles in two days with twelve carts; two days&rsquo;
+halt building a famine-shed for young Rogers. (Rogers ought to have built it
+himself, the idiot!) Then forty miles back again, loading six carts on the way,
+and distributing all Sunday. Then in the evening he pitches in a twenty-page
+Demi-Official to me, saying the people where he is might be
+&lsquo;advantageously employed on relief-work,&rsquo; and suggesting that he
+put &rsquo;em to work on some broken-down old reservoir he&rsquo;s discovered,
+so as to have a good water-supply when the Rains break. He thinks he can cauk
+the dam in a fortnight. Look at his marginal sketches&mdash;aren&rsquo;t they
+clear and good? I knew he was <i>pukka</i>, but I didn&rsquo;t know he was as
+<i>pukka</i> as this!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must show these to William,&rdquo; said Mrs. Jim. &ldquo;The
+child&rsquo;s wearing herself out among the babies.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not more than you are, dear. Well, another two months ought to see us
+out of the wood. I&rsquo;m sorry it&rsquo;s not in my power to recommend you
+for a V. C.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+William sat late in her tent that night, reading through page after page of the
+square handwriting, patting the sketches of proposed repairs to the reservoir,
+and wrinkling her eyebrows over the columns of figures of estimated
+water-supply. &ldquo;And he finds time to do all this,&rdquo; she cried to
+herself, &ldquo;and&mdash;well, I also was present. I&rsquo;ve saved one or two
+babies.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She dreamed for the twentieth time of the god in the golden dust, and woke
+refreshed to feed loathsome black children, scores of them, wastrels picked up
+by the wayside, their bones almost breaking their skin, terrible and covered
+with sores.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Scott was not allowed to leave his cart-work, but his letter was duly forwarded
+to the Government, and he had the consolation, not rare in India, of knowing
+that another man was reaping where he had sown. That also was discipline
+profitable to the soul.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s much too good to waste on canals,&rdquo; said Jimmy.
+&ldquo;Any one can oversee coolies. You needn&rsquo;t be angry, William; he
+can&mdash;but I need my pearl among bullock-drivers, and I&rsquo;ve transferred
+him to the Khanda district, where he&rsquo;ll have it all to do over again. He
+should be marching now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s <i>not</i> a coolie,&rdquo; said William, furiously.
+&ldquo;He ought to be doing his regulation work.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s the best man in his service, and that&rsquo;s saying a good
+deal; but if you <i>must</i> use razors to cut grindstones, why, I prefer the
+best cutlery.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it almost time we saw him again?&rdquo; said Mrs. Jim.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure the poor boy hasn&rsquo;t had a respectable meal for a
+month. He probably sits on a cart and eats sardines with his fingers.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All in good time, dear. Duty before decency&mdash;wasn&rsquo;t it Mr.
+Chucks said that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; it was Midshipman Easy,&rdquo; William laughed. &ldquo;I sometimes
+wonder how it will feel to dance or listen to a band again, or sit under a
+roof. I can&rsquo;t believe I ever wore a ball-frock in my life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One minute,&rdquo; said Mrs. Jim, who was thinking. &ldquo;If he goes to
+Khanda, he passes within five miles of us. Of course he&rsquo;ll ride
+in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, no, he won&rsquo;t,&rdquo; said William.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How do you know, dear?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It will take him off his work. He won&rsquo;t have time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;ll make it,&rdquo; said Mrs. Jim, with a twinkle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It depends on his own judgment. There&rsquo;s absolutely no reason why
+he shouldn&rsquo;t, if he thinks fit,&rdquo; said Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He won&rsquo;t see fit,&rdquo; William replied, without sorrow or
+emotion. &ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t be him if he did.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One certainly gets to know people rather well in times like
+these,&rdquo; said Jim, drily; but William&rsquo;s face was serene as ever, and
+even as she prophesied, Scott did not appear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Rains fell at last, late, but heavily; and the dry, gashed earth was red
+mud, and servants killed snakes in the camp, where every one was weather-bound
+for a fortnight&mdash;all except Hawkins, who took horse and plashed about in
+the wet, rejoicing. Now the Government decreed that seed-grain should be
+distributed to the people, as well as advances of money for the purchase of new
+oxen; and the white men were doubly worked for this new duty, while William
+skipped from brick to brick laid down on the trampled mud, and dosed her
+charges with warming medicines that made them rub their little round stomachs;
+and the milch goats throve on the rank grass. There was never a word from Scott
+in the Khanda district, away to the southeast, except the regular telegraphic
+report to Hawkins. The rude country roads had disappeared; his drivers were
+half mutinous; one of Martyn&rsquo;s loaned policemen had died of cholera; and
+Scott was taking thirty grains of quinine a day to fight the fever that comes
+with the rain: but those were things Scott did not consider necessary to
+report. He was, as usual, working from a base of supplies on a railway line, to
+cover a circle of fifteen miles radius, and since full loads were impossible,
+he took quarter-loads, and toiled four times as hard by consequence; for he did
+not choose to risk an epidemic which might have grown uncontrollable by
+assembling villagers in thousands at the relief-sheds. It was cheaper to take
+Government bullocks, work them to death, and leave them to the crows in the
+wayside sloughs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was the time when eight years of clean living and hard condition told,
+though a man&rsquo;s head were ringing like a bell from the cinchona, and the
+earth swayed under his feet when he stood and under his bed when he slept. If
+Hawkins had seen fit to make him a bullock-driver, that, he thought, was
+entirely Hawkins&rsquo;s own affair. There were men in the North who would know
+what he had done; men of thirty years&rsquo; service in his own department who
+would say that it was &ldquo;not half bad&rdquo;; and above, immeasurably
+above, all men of all grades, there was William in the thick of the fight, who
+would approve because she understood. He had so trained his mind that it would
+hold fast to the mechanical routine of the day, though his own voice sounded
+strange in his own ears, and his hands, when he wrote, grew large as pillows or
+small as peas at the end of his wrists. That steadfastness bore his body to the
+telegraph-office at the railway-station, and dictated a telegram to Hawkins
+saying that the Khanda district was, in his judgment, now safe, and he
+&ldquo;waited further orders.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Madrassee telegraph-clerk did not approve of a large, gaunt man falling
+over him in a dead faint, not so much because of the weight as because of the
+names and blows that Faiz Ullah dealt him when he found the body rolled under a
+bench. Then Faiz Ullah took blankets, quilts, and coverlets where he found
+them, and lay down under them at his master&rsquo;s side, and bound his arms
+with a tent-rope, and filled him with a horrible stew of herbs, and set the
+policeman to fight him when he wished to escape from the intolerable heat of
+his coverings, and shut the door of the telegraph-office to keep out the
+curious for two nights and one day; and when a light engine came down the line,
+and Hawkins kicked in the door, Scott hailed him weakly but in a natural voice,
+and Faiz Ullah stood back and took all the credit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For two nights, Heaven-born, he was <i>pagal</i>&rdquo; said Faiz Ullah.
+&ldquo;Look at my nose, and consider the eye of the policeman. He beat us with
+his bound hands; but we sat upon him, Heaven-born, and though his words were
+<i>tez</i>, we sweated him. Heaven-born, never has been such a sweat! He is
+weaker now than a child; but the fever has gone out of him, by the grace of
+God. There remains only my nose and the eye of the constabeel. Sahib, shall I
+ask for my dismissal because my Sahib has beaten me?&rdquo; And Faiz Ullah laid
+his long thin hand carefully on Scott&rsquo;s chest to be sure that the fever
+was all gone, ere he went out to open tinned soups and discourage such as
+laughed at his swelled nose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The district&rsquo;s all right,&rdquo; Scott whispered. &ldquo;It
+doesn&rsquo;t make any difference. You got my wire? I shall be fit in a week.
+&rsquo;Can&rsquo;t understand how it happened. I shall be fit in a few
+days.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re coming into camp with us,&rdquo; said Hawkins.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But look here&mdash;but&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all over except the shouting. We sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t need you
+Punjabis any more. On my honour, we sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t. Martyn goes back in a
+few weeks; Arbuthnot&rsquo;s returned already; Ellis and Clay are putting the
+last touches to a new feeder-line the Government&rsquo;s built as relief-work.
+Morten&rsquo;s dead&mdash;he was a Bengal man, though; you wouldn&rsquo;t know
+him. &rsquo;Pon my word, you and Will&mdash;Miss Martyn&mdash;seem to have come
+through it as well as anybody.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, how is she, by-the-way?&rdquo; The voice went up and down as he
+spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Going strong when I left her. The Roman Catholic Missions are adopting
+the unclaimed babies to turn them into little priests; the Basil Mission is
+taking some, and the mothers are taking the rest. You should hear the little
+beggars howl when they&rsquo;re sent away from William. She&rsquo;s pulled down
+a bit, but so are we all. Now, when do you suppose you&rsquo;ll be able to
+move?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t come into camp in this state. I won&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he
+replied pettishly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, you <i>are</i> rather a sight, but from what I gathered there it
+seemed to me they&rsquo;d be glad to see you under any conditions. I&rsquo;ll
+look over your work here, if you like, for a couple of days, and you can pull
+yourself together while Faiz Ullah feeds you up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Scott could walk dizzily by the time Hawkins&rsquo;s inspection was ended, and
+he flushed all over when Jim said of his work that it was &ldquo;not half
+bad,&rdquo; and volunteered, further, that he had considered Scott his
+right-hand man through the famine, and would feel it his duty to say as much
+officially.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So they came back by rail to the old camp; but there were no crowds near it;
+the long fires in the trenches were dead and black, and the famine-sheds were
+almost empty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see!&rdquo; said Jim. &ldquo;There isn&rsquo;t much more to do.
+Better ride up and see the wife. They&rsquo;ve pitched a tent for you.
+Dinner&rsquo;s at seven. I&rsquo;ve some work here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Riding at a foot-pace, Faiz Ullah by his stirrup, Scott came to William in the
+brown-calico riding-habit, sitting at the dining-tent door, her hands in her
+lap, white as ashes, thin and worn, with no lustre in her hair. There did not
+seem to be any Mrs. Jim on the horizon, and all that William could say was:
+&ldquo;My word, how pulled down you look!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had a touch of fever. You don&rsquo;t look very well
+yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m fit enough. We&rsquo;ve stamped it out. I suppose you
+know?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Scott nodded. &ldquo;We shall all be returned in a few weeks. Hawkins told
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Before Christmas, Mrs. Jim says. Sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t you be glad to go
+back? I can smell the wood-smoke already&rdquo;; William sniffed. &ldquo;We
+shall be in time for all the Christmas doings. I don&rsquo;t suppose even the
+Punjab Government would be base enough to transfer Jack till the new
+year?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It seems hundreds of years ago&mdash;the Punjab and all
+that&mdash;doesn&rsquo;t it? Are you glad you came?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now it&rsquo;s all over, yes. It has been ghastly here, though. You know
+we had to sit still and do nothing, and Sir Jim was away so much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do nothing! How did you get on with the milking?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I managed it somehow&mdash;after you taught me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then the talk stopped with an almost audible jar. Still no Mrs. Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That reminds me, I owe you fifty rupees for the condensed-milk. I
+thought perhaps you&rsquo;d be coming here when you were transferred to the
+Khanda district, and I could pay you then; but you didn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I passed within five miles of the camp, but it was in the middle of a
+march, you see, and the carts were breaking down every few minutes, and I
+couldn&rsquo;t get &rsquo;em over the ground till ten o&rsquo;clock that night.
+I wanted to come awfully. You knew I did, didn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&mdash;believe&mdash;I&mdash;did,&rdquo; said William, facing him with
+level eyes. She was no longer white.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you understand?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why you didn&rsquo;t ride in? Of course I did.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because you couldn&rsquo;t, of course. I knew that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you care?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you had come in&mdash;but I knew you wouldn&rsquo;t&mdash;but if you
+<i>had</i>, I should have cared a great deal. You know I should.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank God I didn&rsquo;t! Oh, but I wanted to! I couldn&rsquo;t trust
+myself to ride in front of the carts, because I kept edging &rsquo;em over
+here, don&rsquo;t you know?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I knew you wouldn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; said William, contentedly.
+&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s your fifty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Scott bent forward and kissed the hand that held the greasy notes. Its fellow
+patted him awkwardly but very tenderly on the head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And <i>you</i> knew, too, didn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; said William, in a
+new voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, on my honour, I didn&rsquo;t. I hadn&rsquo;t the&mdash;the cheek to
+expect anything of the kind, except... I say, were you out riding anywhere the
+day I passed by to Khanda?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+William nodded, and smiled after the manner of an angel surprised in a good
+deed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then it was just a speck I saw of your habit in the&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Palm-grove on the Southern cart-road. I saw your helmet when you came up
+from the mullah by the temple&mdash;just enough to be sure that you were all
+right. D&rsquo; you care?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This time Scott did not kiss her hand, for they were in the dusk of the
+dining-tent, and, because William&rsquo;s knees were trembling under her, she
+had to sit down in the nearest chair, where she wept long and happily, her head
+on her arms; and when Scott imagined that it would be well to comfort her, she
+needing nothing of the kind, she ran to her own tent; and Scott went out into
+the world, and smiled upon it largely and idiotically. But when Faiz Ullah
+brought him a drink, he found it necessary to support one hand with the other,
+or the good whisky and soda would have been spilled abroad. There are fevers
+and fevers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it was worse&mdash;much worse&mdash;the strained, eye-shirking talk at
+dinner till the servants had withdrawn, and worst of all when Mrs. Jim, who had
+been on the edge of weeping from the soup down, kissed Scott and William, and
+they drank one whole bottle of champagne, hot, because there was no ice, and
+Scott and William sat outside the tent in the starlight till Mrs. Jim drove
+them in for fear of more fever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Apropos of these things and some others William said: &ldquo;Being engaged is
+abominable, because, you see, one has no official position. We must be thankful
+we&rsquo;ve lots of things to do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Things to do!&rdquo; said Jim, when that was reported to him.
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;re neither of them any good any more. I can&rsquo;t get five
+hours&rsquo; work a day out of Scott. He&rsquo;s in the clouds half the
+time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, but they&rsquo;re so beautiful to watch, Jimmy. It will break my
+heart when they go. Can&rsquo;t you do anything for him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve given the Government the impression&mdash;at least, I hope I
+have&mdash;that he personally conducted the entire famine. But all he wants is
+to get on to the Luni Canal Works, and William&rsquo;s just as bad. Have you
+ever heard &rsquo;em talking of barrage and aprons and wastewater? It&rsquo;s
+their style of spooning, I suppose.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Jim smiled tenderly. &ldquo;Ah, that&rsquo;s in the intervals&mdash;bless
+&rsquo;em.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so Love ran about the camp unrebuked in broad daylight, while men picked up
+the pieces and put them neatly away of the Famine in the Eight Districts.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Morning brought the penetrating chill of the Northern December, the layers of
+wood-smoke, the dusty grey-blue of the tamarisks, the domes of ruined tombs,
+and all the smell of the white Northern plains, as the mail-train ran on to the
+mile-long Sutlej Bridge. William, wrapped in a <i>poshteen</i>&mdash;a
+silk-embroidered sheepskin jacket trimmed with rough astrakhan&mdash;looked out
+with moist eyes and nostrils that dilated joyously. The South of pagodas and
+palm-trees, the overpopulated Hindu South, was done with. Here was the land she
+knew and loved, and before her lay the good life she understood, among folk of
+her own caste and mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were picking them up at almost every station now&mdash;men and women
+coming in for the Christmas Week, with racquets, with bundles of polo-sticks,
+with dear and bruised cricket-bats, with fox-terriers and saddles. The greater
+part of them wore jackets like William&rsquo;s, for the Northern cold is as
+little to be trifled with as the Northern heat. And William was among them and
+of them, her hands deep in her pockets, her collar turned up over her ears,
+stamping her feet on the platforms as she walked up and down to get warm,
+visiting from carriage to carriage and everywhere being congratulated. Scott
+was with the bachelors at the far end of the train, where they chaffed him
+mercilessly about feeding babies and milking goats; but from time to time he
+would stroll up to William&rsquo;s window, and murmur: &ldquo;Good enough,
+isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; and William would answer with sighs of pure delight:
+&ldquo;Good enough, indeed.&rdquo; The large open names of the home towns were
+good to listen to. Umballa, Ludianah, Phillour, Jullundur, they rang like the
+coming marriage-bells in her ears, and William felt deeply and truly sorry for
+all strangers and outsiders&mdash;visitors, tourists, and those fresh-caught
+for the service of the country.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a glorious return, and when the bachelors gave the Christmas Ball,
+William was, unofficially, you might say, the chief and honoured guest among
+the Stewards, who could make things very pleasant for their friends. She and
+Scott danced nearly all the dances together, and sat out the rest in the big
+dark gallery overlooking the superb teak floor, where the uniforms blazed, and
+the spurs clinked, and the new frocks and four hundred dancers went round and
+round till the draped flags on the pillars flapped and bellied to the whirl of
+it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About midnight half a dozen men who did not care for dancing came over from the
+Club to play &ldquo;Waits,&rdquo; and that was a surprise the Stewards had
+arranged&mdash;before any one knew what had happened, the band stopped, and
+hidden voices broke into &ldquo;Good King Wenceslaus,&rdquo; and William in the
+gallery hummed and beat time with her foot:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;Mark my footsteps well, my page,<br/>
+    Tread thou in them boldly.<br/>
+Thou shalt feel the winter&rsquo;s rage<br/>
+    Freeze thy blood less coldly!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I hope they are going to give us another! Isn&rsquo;t it pretty,
+coming out of the dark in that way? Look&mdash;look down. There&rsquo;s Mrs.
+Gregory wiping her eyes!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s like Home, rather,&rdquo; said Scott. &ldquo;I
+remember&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hsh! Listen!&mdash;dear.&rdquo; And it began again:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;When shepherds watched their flocks by night&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A-h-h!&rdquo; said William, drawing closer to Scott.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+All seated on the ground,<br/>
+The Angel of the Lord came down,<br/>
+And glory shone around.<br/>
+&lsquo;Fear not,&rsquo; said he (for mighty dread<br/>
+Had seized their troubled mind);<br/>
+&lsquo;Glad tidings of great joy I bring<br/>
+To you and all mankind.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This time it was William that wiped her eyes.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"></a>
+･007</h2>
+
+<p>
+A locomotive is, next to a marine engine, the most sensitive thing man ever
+made; and No. ･007, besides being sensitive, was new. The red paint was hardly
+dry on his spotless bumper-bar, his headlight shone like a fireman&rsquo;s
+helmet, and his cab might have been a hard-wood-finish parlour. They had run
+him into the round-house after his trial&mdash;he had said good-bye to his best
+friend in the shops, the overhead travelling-crane&mdash;the big world was just
+outside; and the other locos were taking stock of him. He looked at the
+semicircle of bold, unwinking headlights, heard the low purr and mutter of the
+steam mounting in the gauges&mdash;scornful hisses of contempt as a slack valve
+lifted a little&mdash;and would have given a month&rsquo;s oil for leave to
+crawl through his own driving-wheels into the brick ash-pit beneath him. ･007
+was an eight-wheeled &ldquo;American&rdquo; loco, slightly different from
+others of his type, and as he stood he was worth ten thousand dollars on the
+Company&rsquo;s books. But if you had bought him at his own valuation, after
+half an hour&rsquo;s waiting in the darkish, echoing round-house, you would
+have saved exactly nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars and
+ninety-eight cents.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A heavy Mogul freight, with a short cow-catcher and a fire-box that came down
+within three inches of the rail, began the impolite game, speaking to a
+Pittsburgh Consolidation, who was visiting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where did this thing blow in from?&rdquo; he asked, with a dreamy puff
+of light steam.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;it&rsquo;s all I can do to keep track of our makes,&rdquo; was the
+answer, &ldquo;without lookin&rsquo; after <i>your</i> back-numbers. Guess
+it&rsquo;s something Peter Cooper left over when he died.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+･007 quivered; his steam was getting up, but he held his tongue. Even a
+hand-car knows what sort of locomotive it was that Peter Cooper experimented
+upon in the far-away Thirties. It carried its coal and water in two
+apple-barrels, and was not much bigger than a bicycle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then up and spoke a small, newish switching-engine, with a little step in front
+of his bumper-timber, and his wheels so close together that he looked like a
+broncho getting ready to buck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Something&rsquo;s wrong with the road when a Pennsylvania gravel-pusher
+tells us anything about our stock, <i>I</i> think. That kid&rsquo;s all right.
+Eustis designed him, and Eustis designed me. Ain&rsquo;t that good
+enough?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+･007 could have carried the switching-loco round the yard in his tender, but he
+felt grateful for even this little word of consolation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We don&rsquo;t use hand-cars on the Pennsylvania,&rdquo; said the
+Consolidation. &ldquo;That&mdash;er&mdash;peanut-stand is old enough and ugly
+enough to speak for himself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He hasn&rsquo;t bin spoken to yet. He&rsquo;s bin spoke <i>at</i>.
+Hain&rsquo;t ye any manners on the Pennsylvania?&rdquo; said the
+switching-loco.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You ought to be in the yard, Poney,&rdquo; said the Mogul, severely.
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;re all long-haulers here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what you think,&rdquo; the little fellow replied.
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll know more &rsquo;fore the night&rsquo;s out. I&rsquo;ve bin
+down to Track 17, and the freight there&mdash;oh, Christmas!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve trouble enough in my own division,&rdquo; said a lean, light
+suburban loco with very shiny brake-shoes. &ldquo;My commuters wouldn&rsquo;t
+rest till they got a parlourcar. They&rsquo;ve hitched it back of all, and it
+hauls worsen a snow-plough. I&rsquo;ll snap her off someday sure, and then
+they&rsquo;ll blame every one except their foolselves. They&rsquo;ll be
+askin&rsquo; me to haul a vestibuled next!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They made you in New Jersey, didn&rsquo;t they?&rdquo; said Poney.
+&ldquo;Thought so. Commuters and truck-wagons ain&rsquo;t any sweet
+haulin&rsquo;, but I tell <i>you</i> they&rsquo;re a heap better &rsquo;n
+cuttin&rsquo; out refrigerator-cars or oil-tanks. Why, I&rsquo;ve
+hauled&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Haul! You?&rdquo; said the Mogul, contemptuously. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all
+you can do to bunt a cold-storage car up the yard. Now, I&mdash;&rdquo; he
+paused a little to let the words sink in&mdash;&ldquo;I handle the Flying
+Freight&mdash;e-leven cars worth just anything you please to mention. On the
+stroke of eleven I pull out; and I&rsquo;m timed for thirty-five an hour.
+Costly-perishable-fragile, immediate&mdash;that&rsquo;s me! Suburban
+traffic&rsquo;s only but one degree better than switching. Express
+freight&rsquo;s what pays.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I ain&rsquo;t given to blowing, as a rule,&rdquo; began the
+Pittsburgh Consolidation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No? You was sent in here because you grunted on the grade,&rdquo; Poney
+interrupted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where I grunt, you&rsquo;d lie down, Poney: but, as I was saying, I
+don&rsquo;t blow much. Notwithstandin&rsquo;, <i>if</i> you want to see freight
+that is freight moved lively, you should see me warbling through the
+Alleghanies with thirty-seven ore-cars behind me, and my brakemen
+fightin&rsquo; tramps so&rsquo;s they can&rsquo;t attend to my tooter. I have
+to do all the holdin&rsquo; back then, and, though I say it, I&rsquo;ve never
+had a load get away from me yet. <i>No</i>, sir. Haulin&rsquo;s&rsquo;s one
+thing, but judgment and discretion&rsquo;s another. You want judgment in my
+business.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah! But&mdash;but are you not paralysed by a sense of your overwhelming
+responsibilities?&rdquo; said a curious, husky voice from a corner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who&rsquo;s that?&rdquo; ･007 whispered to the Jersey commuter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Compound&mdash;experiment&mdash;N.G. She&rsquo;s bin switchin&rsquo; in
+the B. &amp; A. yards for six months, when she wasn&rsquo;t in the shops.
+She&rsquo;s economical (<i>I</i> call it mean) in her coal, but she takes it
+out in repairs. Ahem! I presume you found Boston somewhat isolated, madam,
+after your New York season?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am never so well occupied as when I am alone.&rdquo; The Compound
+seemed to be talking from half-way up her smoke-stack.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sure,&rdquo; said the irreverent Poney, under his breath. &ldquo;They
+don&rsquo;t hanker after her any in the yard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, with my constitution and temperament&mdash;my work lies in
+Boston&mdash;I find your <i>outrecuidance</i>&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Outer which?&rdquo; said the Mogul freight. &ldquo;Simple cylinders are
+good enough for me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps I should have said <i>faroucherie</i>,&rdquo; hissed the
+Compound.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t hold with any make of papier-mache wheel,&rdquo; the Mogul
+insisted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Compound sighed pityingly, and said no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Git &rsquo;em all shapes in this world, don&rsquo;t ye?&rdquo; said
+Poney, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s Mass&rsquo;chusetts all over. They half start,
+an&rsquo; then they stick on a dead-centre, an&rsquo; blame it all on other
+folk&rsquo;s ways o&rsquo; treatin&rsquo; them. Talkin&rsquo; o&rsquo; Boston,
+Comanche told me, last night, he had a hot-box just beyond the Newtons, Friday.
+That was why, <i>he</i> says, the Accommodation was held up. Made out no end of
+a tale, Comanche did.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I&rsquo;d heard that in the shops, with my boiler out for repairs,
+I&rsquo;d know &rsquo;t was one o&rsquo; Comanche&rsquo;s lies,&rdquo; the New
+Jersey commuter snapped. &ldquo;Hot-box! Him! What happened was they&rsquo;d
+put an extra car on, and he just lay down on the grade and squealed. They had
+to send 127 to help him through. Made it out a hotbox, did he? Time before that
+he said he was ditched! Looked me square in the headlight and told me that as
+cool as&mdash;as a water-tank in a cold wave. Hot-box! You ask 127 about
+Comanche&rsquo;s hot-box. Why, Comanche he was side-tracked, and 127 (<i>he</i>
+was just about as mad as they make &rsquo;em on account o&rsquo; being called
+out at ten o&rsquo;clock at night) took hold and snapped her into Boston in
+seventeen minutes. Hot-box! Hot fraud! that&rsquo;s what Comanche is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then ･007 put both drivers and his pilot into it, as the saying is, for he
+asked what sort of thing a hot-box might be?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Paint my bell sky-blue!&rdquo; said Poney, the switcher. &ldquo;Make me
+a surface-railroad loco with a hard-wood skirtin&rsquo;-board round my wheels.
+Break me up and cast me into five-cent sidewalk-fakirs&rsquo; mechanical toys!
+Here&rsquo;s an eight-wheel coupled &rsquo;American&rsquo; don&rsquo;t know
+what a hot-box is! Never heard of an emergency-stop either, did ye? Don&rsquo;t
+know what ye carry jack-screws for? You&rsquo;re too innocent to be left alone
+with your own tender. Oh, you&mdash;you flatcar!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a roar of escaping steam before any one could answer, and ･007 nearly
+blistered his paint off with pure mortification.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A hot-box,&rdquo; began the Compound, picking and choosing her words as
+though they were coal, &ldquo;a hotbox is the penalty exacted from inexperience
+by haste. Ahem!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hot-box!&rdquo; said the Jersey Suburban. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the price
+you pay for going on the tear. It&rsquo;s years since I&rsquo;ve had one.
+It&rsquo;s a disease that don&rsquo;t attack shorthaulers, as a rule.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We never have hot-boxes on the Pennsylvania,&rdquo; said the
+Consolidation. &ldquo;They get &rsquo;em in New York&mdash;same as nervous
+prostration.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, go home on a ferry-boat,&rdquo; said the Mogul. &ldquo;You think
+because you use worse grades than our road &rsquo;u&rsquo;d allow, you&rsquo;re
+a kind of Alleghany angel. Now, I&rsquo;ll tell you what you... Here&rsquo;s my
+folk. Well, I can&rsquo;t stop. See you later, perhaps.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rolled forward majestically to the turn-table, and swung like a man-of-war
+in a tideway, till he picked up his track. &ldquo;But as for you, you pea-green
+swiveling&rsquo; coffee-pot [this to ･007], you go out and learn something
+before you associate with those who&rsquo;ve made more mileage in a week than
+you&rsquo;ll roll up in a year. Costly-perishable-fragile
+immediate&mdash;that&rsquo;s me! S&rsquo; long.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Split my tubes if that&rsquo;s actin&rsquo; polite to a new member
+o&rsquo; the Brotherhood,&rdquo; said Poney. &ldquo;There wasn&rsquo;t any call
+to trample on ye like that. But manners was left out when Moguls was made. Keep
+up your fire, kid, an&rsquo; burn your own smoke. &rsquo;Guess we&rsquo;ll all
+be wanted in a minute.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Men were talking rather excitedly in the roundhouse. One man, in a dingy
+jersey, said that he hadn&rsquo;t any locomotives to waste on the yard. Another
+man, with a piece of crumpled paper in his hand, said that the yard-master said
+that he was to say that if the other man said anything, he (the other man) was
+to shut his head. Then the other man waved his arms, and wanted to know if he
+was expected to keep locomotives in his hip-pocket. Then a man in a black
+Prince Albert, without a collar, came up dripping, for it was a hot August
+night, and said that what <i>he</i> said went; and between the three of them
+the locomotives began to go, too&mdash;first the Compound; then the
+Consolidation; then ･007.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, deep down in his fire-box, ･007 had cherished a hope that as soon as his
+trial was done, he would be led forth with songs and shoutings, and attached to
+a green-and-chocolate vestibuled flyer, under charge of a bold and noble
+engineer, who would pat him on his back, and weep over him, and call him his
+Arab steed. (The boys in the shops where he was built used to read wonderful
+stories of railroad life, and ･007 expected things to happen as he had heard.)
+But there did not seem to be many vestibuled fliers in the roaring, rumbling,
+electric-lighted yards, and his engineer only said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, what sort of a fool-sort of an injector has Eustis loaded on to
+this rig this time?&rdquo; And he put the lever over with an angry snap,
+crying: &ldquo;Am I supposed to switch with this thing, hey?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The collarless man mopped his head, and replied that, in the present state of
+the yard and freight and a few other things, the engineer would switch and keep
+on switching till the cows came home. ･007 pushed out gingerly, his heart in
+his headlight, so nervous that the clang of his own bell almost made him jump
+the track. Lanterns waved, or danced up and down, before and behind him; and on
+every side, six tracks deep, sliding backward and forward, with clashings of
+couplers and squeals of hand-brakes, were cars&mdash;more cars than ･007 had
+dreamed of. There were oil-cars, and hay-cars, and stock-cars full of lowing
+beasts, and ore-cars, and potato-cars with stovepipe-ends sticking out in the
+middle; cold-storage and refrigerator cars dripping ice water on the tracks;
+ventilated fruit&mdash;and milk-cars; flatcars with truck-wagons full of
+market-stuff; flat-cars loaded with reapers and binders, all red and green and
+gilt under the sizzling electric lights; flat-cars piled high with
+strong-scented hides, pleasant hemlock-plank, or bundles of shingles; flat-cars
+creaking to the weight of thirty-ton castings, angle-irons, and rivet-boxes for
+some new bridge; and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of box-cars loaded,
+locked, and chalked. Men&mdash;hot and angry&mdash;crawled among and between
+and under the thousand wheels; men took flying jumps through his cab, when he
+halted for a moment; men sat on his pilot as he went forward, and on his tender
+as he returned; and regiments of men ran along the tops of the box-cars beside
+him, screwing down brakes, waving their arms, and crying curious things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was pushed forward a foot at a time; whirled backward, his rear drivers
+clinking and clanking, a quarter of a mile; jerked into a switch (yard-switches
+are <i>very</i> stubby and unaccommodating), bunted into a Red D, or
+Merchant&rsquo;s Transport car, and, with no hint or knowledge of the weight
+behind him, started up anew. When his load was fairly on the move, three or
+four cars would be cut off, and ･007 would bound forward, only to be held
+hiccupping on the brake. Then he would wait a few minutes, watching the whirled
+lanterns, deafened with the clang of the bells, giddy with the vision of the
+sliding cars, his brake-pump panting forty to the minute, his front coupler
+lying sideways on his cow-catcher, like a tired dog&rsquo;s tongue in his
+mouth, and the whole of him covered with half-burnt coal-dust.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Tisn&rsquo;t so easy switching with a straight-backed
+tender,&rdquo; said his little friend of the round-house, bustling by at a
+trot. &ldquo;But you&rsquo;re comin&rsquo; on pretty fair. Ever seen a
+flyin&rsquo; switch? No? Then watch me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poney was in charge of a dozen heavy flat-cars. Suddenly he shot away from them
+with a sharp &ldquo;<i>Whutt!</i>&rdquo; A switch opened in the shadows ahead;
+he turned up it like a rabbit as it snapped behind him, and the long line of
+twelve-foot-high lumber jolted on into the arms of a full-sized road-loco, who
+acknowledged receipt with a dry howl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My man&rsquo;s reckoned the smartest in the yard at that trick,&rdquo;
+he said, returning. &ldquo;Gives me cold shivers when another fool tries it,
+though. That&rsquo;s where my short wheel-base comes in. Like as not
+you&rsquo;d have your tender scraped off if <i>you</i> tried it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+･007 had no ambitions that way, and said so.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No? Of course this ain&rsquo;t your regular business, but say,
+don&rsquo;t you think it&rsquo;s interestin&rsquo;? Have you seen the
+yard-master? Well, he&rsquo;s the greatest man on earth, an&rsquo; don&rsquo;t
+you forget it. When are we through? Why, kid, it&rsquo;s always like this, day
+<i>an</i>&rsquo; night&mdash;Sundays an&rsquo; week-days. See that thirty-car
+freight slidin&rsquo; in four, no, five tracks off? She&rsquo;s all mixed
+freight, sent here to be sorted out into straight trains. That&rsquo;s why
+we&rsquo;re cuttin&rsquo; out the cars one by one.&rdquo; He gave a vigorous
+push to a west-bound car as he spoke, and started back with a little snort of
+surprise, for the car was an old friend&mdash;an M. T. K. box-car.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jack my drivers, but it&rsquo;s Homeless Kate! Why, Kate, ain&rsquo;t
+there <i>no</i> gettin&rsquo; you back to your friends? There&rsquo;s forty
+chasers out for you from your road, if there&rsquo;s one. Who&rsquo;s
+holdin&rsquo; you now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wish I knew,&rdquo; whimpered Homeless Kate. &ldquo;I belong in Topeka,
+but I&rsquo;ve bin to Cedar Rapids; I&rsquo;ve bin to Winnipeg; I&rsquo;ve bin
+to Newport News; I&rsquo;ve bin all down the old Atlanta and West Point;
+an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve bin to Buffalo. Maybe I&rsquo;ll fetch up at Haverstraw.
+I&rsquo;ve only bin out ten months, but I&rsquo;m homesick&mdash;I&rsquo;m just
+achin&rsquo; homesick.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Try Chicago, Katie,&rdquo; said the switching-loco; and the battered old
+car lumbered down the track, jolting: &ldquo;I want to be in Kansas when the
+sunflowers bloom.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yard&rsquo;s full o&rsquo; Homeless Kates an&rsquo; Wanderin&rsquo;
+Willies,&rdquo; he explained to ･007. &ldquo;I knew an old Fitchburg flat-car
+out seventeen months; an&rsquo; one of ours was gone fifteen &rsquo;fore ever
+we got track of her. Dunno quite how our men fix it. Swap around, I guess.
+Anyway, I&rsquo;ve done <i>my</i> duty. She&rsquo;s on her way to Kansas, via
+Chicago; but I&rsquo;ll lay my next boilerful she&rsquo;ll be held there to
+wait consignee&rsquo;s convenience, and sent back to us with wheat in the
+fall.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just then the Pittsburgh Consolidation passed, at the head of a dozen cars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m goin&rsquo; home,&rdquo; he said proudly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t get all them twelve on to the flat. Break &rsquo;em in half,
+Dutchy!&rdquo; cried Poney. But it was ･007 who was backed down to the last six
+cars, and he nearly blew up with surprise when he found himself pushing them on
+to a huge ferry-boat. He had never seen deep water before, and shivered as the
+flat drew away and left his bogies within six inches of the black, shiny tide.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After this he was hurried to the freight-house, where he saw the yard-master, a
+smallish, white-faced man in shirt, trousers, and slippers, looking down upon a
+sea of trucks, a mob of bawling truckmen, and squadrons of backing, turning,
+sweating, spark-striking horses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s shippers&rsquo; carts loadin&rsquo; on to the
+receivin&rsquo; trucks,&rdquo; said the small engine, reverently. &ldquo;But
+<i>he</i> don&rsquo;t care. He lets &rsquo;em cuss. He&rsquo;s the
+Czar-King-Boss! He says &rsquo;Please,&rsquo; and then they kneel down
+an&rsquo; pray. There&rsquo;s three or four strings o&rsquo; today&rsquo;s
+freight to be pulled before he can attend to <i>them</i>. When he waves his
+hand that way, things happen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A string of loaded cars slid out down the track, and a string of empties took
+their place. Bales, crates, boxes, jars, carboys, frails, cases, and packages
+flew into them from the freight-house as though the cars had been magnets and
+they iron filings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ki-yah!&rdquo; shrieked little Poney. &ldquo;Ain&rsquo;t it
+great?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A purple-faced truckman shouldered his way to the yard-master, and shook his
+fist under his nose. The yard-master never looked up from his bundle of freight
+receipts. He crooked his forefinger slightly, and a tall young man in a red
+shirt, lounging carelessly beside him, hit the truckman under the left ear, so
+that he dropped, quivering and clucking, on a hay-bale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eleven, seven, ninety-seven, L. Y. S.; fourteen ought ought three;
+nineteen thirteen; one one four; seventeen ought twenty-one M. B.; <i>and</i>
+the ten westbound. All straight except the two last. Cut &rsquo;em off at the
+junction. An&rsquo; <i>that&rsquo;s</i> all right. Pull that string.&rdquo; The
+yard-master, with mild blue eyes, looked out over the howling truckmen at the
+waters in the moonlight beyond, and hummed:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;All things bright and beautiful,<br/>
+    All creatures great and small,<br/>
+<i>All</i> things wise and wonderful,<br/>
+    The Lawd Gawd He made all!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+･007 moved out the cars and delivered them to the regular road-engine. He had
+never felt quite so limp in his life before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Curious, ain&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; said Poney, puffing, on the next track.
+&ldquo;You an&rsquo; me, if we got that man under our bumpers, we&rsquo;d work
+him into red waste an&rsquo; not know what we&rsquo;d done; but-up
+there&mdash;with the steam hummin&rsquo; in his boiler that awful quiet
+way...&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>I</i> know,&rdquo; said ･007. &ldquo;Makes me feel as if I&rsquo;d
+dropped my Fire an&rsquo; was getting cold. He <i>is</i> the greatest man on
+earth.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were at the far north end of the yard now, under a switchtower, looking
+down on the four-track way of the main traffic. The Boston Compound was to haul
+･007&rsquo;s string to some far-away northern junction over an indifferent
+road-bed, and she mourned aloud for the ninety-six pound rails of the B. &amp;
+A.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re young; you&rsquo;re young,&rdquo; she coughed. &ldquo;You
+don&rsquo;t realise your responsibilities.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, he does,&rdquo; said Poney, sharply; &ldquo;but he don&rsquo;t lie
+down under &rsquo;em.&rdquo; Then, with aside-spurt of steam, exactly like a
+tough spitting: &ldquo;There ain&rsquo;t more than fifteen thousand
+dollars&rsquo; worth o&rsquo; freight behind her anyway, and she goes on as if
+&rsquo;t were a hundred thousand&mdash;same as the Mogul&rsquo;s. Excuse me,
+madam, but you&rsquo;ve the track.... She&rsquo;s stuck on a dead-centre
+again&mdash;bein&rsquo; specially designed not to.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Compound crawled across the tracks on a long slant, groaning horribly at
+each switch, and moving like a cow in a snow-drift. There was a little pause
+along the yard after her tail-lights had disappeared; switches locked crisply,
+and every one seemed to be waiting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now I&rsquo;ll show you something worth,&rdquo; said Poney. &ldquo;When
+the Purple Emperor ain&rsquo;t on time, it&rsquo;s about time to amend the
+Constitution. The first stroke of twelve is&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Boom!&rdquo; went the clock in the big yard-tower, and far away ･007
+heard a full, vibrating &ldquo;<i>Yah! Yah! Yah!</i>&rdquo; A headlight
+twinkled on the horizon like a star, grew an overpowering blaze, and whooped up
+the humming track to the roaring music of a happy giant&rsquo;s song:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;With a michnai&mdash;ghignai&mdash;shtingal! Yah! Yah! Yah!<br/>
+Ein&mdash;zwei&mdash;drei&mdash;Mutter! Yah! Yah! Yah!<br/>
+She climb upon der shteeple,<br/>
+Und she frighten all der people.<br/>
+Singin&rsquo; michnai&mdash;ghignai&mdash;shtingal! Yah! Yah!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+The last defiant &ldquo;yah! yah!&rdquo; was delivered a mile and a half beyond
+the passenger-depot; but ･007 had caught one glimpse of the superb
+six-wheel-coupled racing-locomotive, who hauled the pride and glory of the
+road&mdash;the gilt-edged Purple Emperor, the millionaires&rsquo; south-bound
+express, laying the miles over his shoulder as a man peels a shaving from a
+soft board. The rest was a blur of maroon enamel, a bar of white light from the
+electrics in the cars, and a flicker of nickel-plated hand-rail on the rear
+platform.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ooh!&rdquo; said ･007.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Seventy-five miles an hour these five miles. Baths, I&rsquo;ve heard;
+barber&rsquo;s shop; ticker; and a library and the rest to match. Yes, sir;
+seventy-five an hour! But he&rsquo;ll talk to you in the round-house just as
+democratic as I would. And I&mdash;cuss my wheel-base!&mdash;I&rsquo;d kick
+clean off the track at half his gait. He&rsquo;s the Master of our Lodge.
+Cleans up at our house. I&rsquo;ll introdooce you some day. He&rsquo;s worth
+knowin&rsquo;! There ain&rsquo;t many can sing that song, either.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+･007 was too full of emotions to answer. He did not hear a raging of
+telephone-bells in the switch-tower, nor the man, as he leaned out and called
+to ･007&rsquo;s engineer: &ldquo;Got any steam?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Nough to run her a hundred mile out o&rsquo; this, if I
+could,&rdquo; said the engineer, who belonged to the open road and hated
+switching.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then get. The Flying Freight&rsquo;s ditched forty mile out, with fifty
+rod o&rsquo; track ploughed up. No; no one&rsquo;s hurt, but both tracks are
+blocked. Lucky the wreckin&rsquo;-car an&rsquo; derrick are this end of the
+yard. Crew &rsquo;ll be along in a minute. Hurry! You&rsquo;ve the
+track.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I could jest kick my little sawed-off self,&rdquo; said Poney, as
+･007 was backed, with a bang, on to a grim and grimy car like a caboose, but
+full of tools&mdash;a flatcar and a derrick behind it. &ldquo;Some folks are
+one thing, and some are another; but <i>you</i>&rsquo;re in luck, kid. They
+push a wrecking-car. Now, don&rsquo;t get rattled. Your wheel-base will keep
+you on the track, and there ain&rsquo;t any curves worth mentionin&rsquo;. Oh,
+say! Comanche told me there&rsquo;s one section o&rsquo; sawedged track
+that&rsquo;s liable to jounce ye a little. Fifteen an&rsquo; a half out,
+<i>after</i> the grade at Jackson&rsquo;s crossin&rsquo;. You&rsquo;ll know it
+by a farmhouse an&rsquo; a windmill an&rsquo; five maples in the dooryard.
+Windmill&rsquo;s west o&rsquo; the maples. An&rsquo; there&rsquo;s an
+eighty-foot iron bridge in the middle o&rsquo; that section with no
+guard-rails. See you later. Luck!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before he knew well what had happened, ･007 was flying up the track into the
+dumb, dark world. Then fears of the night beset him. He remembered all he had
+ever heard of landslides, rain-piled boulders, blown trees, and strayed cattle,
+all that the Boston Compound had ever said of responsibility, and a great deal
+more that came out of his own head. With a very quavering voice he whistled for
+his first grade-crossing (an event in the life of a locomotive), and his nerves
+were in no way restored by the sight of a frantic horse and a white-faced man
+in a buggy less than a yard from his right shoulder. Then he was sure he would
+jump the track; felt his flanges mounting the rail at every curve; knew that
+his first grade would make him lie down even as Comanche had done at the
+Newtons. He whirled down the grade to Jackson&rsquo;s crossing, saw the
+windmill west of the maples, felt the badly laid rails spring under him, and
+sweated big drops all over his boiler. At each jarring bump he believed an axle
+had smashed, and he took the eighty-foot bridge without the guard-rail like a
+hunted cat on the top of a fence. Then a wet leaf stuck against the glass of
+his headlight and threw a flying shadow on the track, so that he thought it was
+some little dancing animal that would feel soft if he ran over it; and anything
+soft underfoot frightens a locomotive as it does an elephant. But the men
+behind seemed quite calm. The wrecking-crew were climbing carelessly from the
+caboose to the tender&mdash;even jesting with the engineer, for he heard a
+shuffling of feet among the coal, and the snatch of a song, something like
+this:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+Oh, the Empire State must learn to wait,<br/>
+And the Cannon-ball go hang!<br/>
+When the West-bound&rsquo;s ditched, and the tool-car&rsquo;s hitched,<br/>
+And it&rsquo;s &rsquo;way for the Breakdown Gang (Tare-ra!)<br/>
+&rsquo;Way for the Breakdown Gang!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Say! Eustis knew what he was doin&rsquo; when he designed this rig.
+She&rsquo;s a hummer. New, too.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Snff! Phew! She is new. That ain&rsquo;t paint,
+that&rsquo;s&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A burning pain shot through ･007&rsquo;s right rear driver&mdash;a crippling,
+stinging pain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This,&rdquo; said ･007, as he flew, &ldquo;is a hot-box. Now I know what
+it means. I shall go to pieces, I guess. My first road-run, too!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Het a bit, ain&rsquo;t she?&rdquo; the fireman ventured to suggest to
+the engineer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;ll hold for all we want of her. We&rsquo;re &rsquo;most there.
+Guess you chaps back had better climb into your car,&rdquo; said the engineer,
+his hand on the brake lever. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen men snapped
+off&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the crew fled back with laughter. They had no wish to be jerked on to the
+track. The engineer half turned his wrist, and ･007 found his drivers pinned
+firm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now it&rsquo;s come!&rdquo; said ･007, as he yelled aloud, and slid like
+a sleigh. For the moment he fancied that he would jerk bodily from off his
+underpinning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That must be the emergency-stop that Poney guyed me about,&rdquo; he
+gasped, as soon as he could think. &ldquo;Hot-box-emergency-stop. They both
+hurt; but now I can talk back in the round-house.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was halted, all hissing hot, a few feet in the rear of what doctors would
+call a compound-comminuted car. His engineer was kneeling down among his
+drivers, but he did not call ･007 his &ldquo;Arab steed,&rdquo; nor cry over
+him, as the engineers did in the newspapers. He just bad worded ･007, and
+pulled yards of charred cotton-waste from about the axles, and hoped he might
+some day catch the idiot who had packed it. Nobody else attended to him, for
+Evans, the Mogul&rsquo;s engineer, a little cut about the head, but very angry,
+was exhibiting, by lantern-light, the mangled corpse of a slim blue pig.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;T were n&rsquo;t even a decent-sized hog,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;&rsquo;T were a shote.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dangerousest beasts they are,&rdquo; said one of the crew. &ldquo;Get
+under the pilot an&rsquo; sort o&rsquo; twiddle ye off the track, don&rsquo;t
+they?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t they?&rdquo; roared Evans, who was a red-headed Welshman.
+&ldquo;You talk as if I was ditched by a hog every fool-day o&rsquo; the week.
+<i>I</i> ain&rsquo;t friends with all the cussed half-fed shotes in the State
+o&rsquo; New York. No, indeed! Yes, this is him&mdash;an&rsquo; look what
+he&rsquo;s done!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not a bad night&rsquo;s work for one stray piglet. The Flying Freight
+seemed to have flown in every direction, for the Mogul had mounted the rails
+and run diagonally a few hundred feet from right to left, taking with him such
+cars as cared to follow. Some did not. They broke their couplers and lay down,
+while rear cars frolicked over them. In that game, they had ploughed up and
+removed and twisted a good deal of the left-hand track. The Mogul himself had
+waddled into a corn-field, and there he knelt&mdash;fantastic wreaths of green
+twisted round his crankpins; his pilot covered with solid clods of field, on
+which corn nodded drunkenly; his fire put out with dirt (Evans had done that as
+soon as he recovered his senses); and his broken headlight half full of
+half-burnt moths. His tender had thrown coal all over him, and he looked like a
+disreputable buffalo who had tried to wallow in a general store. For there lay
+scattered over the landscape, from the burst cars, type-writers,
+sewing-machines, bicycles in crates, a consignment of silver-plated imported
+harness, French dresses and gloves, a dozen finely moulded hard-wood mantels, a
+fifteen-foot naphtha-launch, with a solid brass bedstead crumpled around her
+bows, a case of telescopes and microscopes, two coffins, a case of very best
+candies, some gilt-edged dairy produce, butter and eggs in an omelette, a
+broken box of expensive toys, and a few hundred other luxuries. A camp of
+tramps hurried up from nowhere, and generously volunteered to help the crew. So
+the brakemen, armed with coupler-pins, walked up and down on one side, and the
+freight-conductor and the fireman patrolled the other with their hands in their
+hip-pockets. A long-bearded man came out of a house beyond the corn-field, and
+told Evans that if the accident had happened a little later in the year, all
+his corn would have been burned, and accused Evans of carelessness. Then he ran
+away, for Evans was at his heels shrieking: &ldquo;&rsquo;T was his hog done
+it&mdash;his hog done it! Let me kill him! Let me kill him!&rdquo; Then the
+wrecking-crew laughed; and the farmer put his head out of a window and said
+that Evans was no gentleman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But ･007 was very sober. He had never seen a wreck before, and it frightened
+him. The crew still laughed, but they worked at the same time; and ･007 forgot
+horror in amazement at the way they handled the Mogul freight. They dug round
+him with spades; they put ties in front of his wheels, and jack-screws under
+him; they embraced him with the derrick-chain and tickled him with crowbars;
+while ･007 was hitched on to wrecked cars and backed away till the knot broke
+or the cars rolled clear of the track. By dawn thirty or forty men were at
+work, replacing and ramming down the ties, gauging the rails and spiking them.
+By daylight all cars who could move had gone on in charge of another loco; the
+track was freed for traffic; and 007 had hauled the old Mogul over a small
+pavement of ties, inch by inch, till his flanges bit the rail once more, and he
+settled down with a clank. But his spirit was broken, and his nerve was gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;T weren&rsquo;t even a hog,&rdquo; he repeated dolefully;
+&ldquo;&rsquo;t were a shote; and you&mdash;<i>you</i> of all of
+&rsquo;em&mdash;had to help me on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But how in the whole long road did it happen?&rdquo; asked 007, sizzling
+with curiosity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Happen! It didn&rsquo;t happen! It just come! I sailed right on top of
+him around that last curve&mdash;thought he was a skunk. Yes; he was all as
+little as that. He hadn&rsquo;t more &rsquo;n squealed once &rsquo;fore I felt
+my bogies lift (he&rsquo;d rolled right under the pilot), and I couldn&rsquo;t
+catch the track again to save me. Swivelled clean off, I was. Then I felt him
+sling himself along, all greasy, under my left leadin&rsquo; driver, and, oh,
+Boilers! that mounted the rail. I heard my flanges zippin&rsquo; along the
+ties, an&rsquo; the next I knew I was playin&rsquo; &rsquo;Sally, Sally
+Waters&rsquo; in the corn, my tender shuckin&rsquo; coal through my cab,
+an&rsquo; old man Evans lyin&rsquo; still an&rsquo; bleedin&rsquo; in front
+o&rsquo; me. Shook? There ain&rsquo;t a stay or a bolt or a rivet in me that
+ain&rsquo;t sprung to glory somewhere.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Umm!&rdquo; said 007. &ldquo;What d&rsquo; you reckon you weigh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Without these lumps o&rsquo; dirt I&rsquo;m all of a hundred thousand
+pound.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And the shote?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eighty. Call him a hundred pound at the outside. He&rsquo;s worth about
+four &rsquo;n a half dollars. Ain&rsquo;t it awful? Ain&rsquo;t it enough to
+give you nervous prostration? Ain&rsquo;t it paralysin&rsquo;? Why, I come just
+around that curve&mdash;&rdquo; and the Mogul told the tale again, for he was
+very badly shaken.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s all in the day&rsquo;s run, I guess,&rdquo; said 007,
+soothingly; &ldquo;an&rsquo;&mdash;an&rsquo; a corn-field&rsquo;s pretty soft
+fallin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If it had bin a sixty-foot bridge, an&rsquo; I could ha&rsquo; slid off
+into deep water an&rsquo; blown up an&rsquo; killed both men, same as others
+have done, I wouldn&rsquo;t ha&rsquo; cared; but to be ditched by a
+shote&mdash;an&rsquo; you to help me out&mdash;in a corn-field&mdash;an&rsquo;
+an old hayseed in his nightgown cussin&rsquo; me like as if I was a sick
+truck-horse!... Oh, it&rsquo;s awful! Don&rsquo;t call me Mogul! I&rsquo;m a
+sewin&rsquo;-machine, they&rsquo;ll guy my sand-box off in the yard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And 007, his hot-box cooled and his experience vastly enlarged, hauled the
+Mogul freight slowly to the roundhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hello, old man! Bin out all night, hain&rsquo;t ye?&rdquo; said the
+irrepressible Poney, who had just come off duty. &ldquo;Well, I must say you
+look it. Costly-perishable-fragile-immediate&mdash;that&rsquo;s you! Go to the
+shops, take them vine-leaves out o&rsquo; your hair, an&rsquo; git &rsquo;em to
+play the hose on you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Leave him alone, Poney,&rdquo; said 007 severely, as he was swung on the
+turn-table, &ldquo;or I&rsquo;ll&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Didn&rsquo;t know the old granger was any special friend o&rsquo;
+yours, kid. He wasn&rsquo;t over-civil to you last time I saw him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know it; but I&rsquo;ve seen a wreck since then, and it has about
+scared the paint off me. I&rsquo;m not going to guy anyone as long as I
+steam&mdash;not when they&rsquo;re new to the business an&rsquo; anxious to
+learn. And I&rsquo;m not goin&rsquo; to guy the old Mogul either, though I did
+find him wreathed around with roastin&rsquo;-ears. &rsquo;T was a little bit of
+a shote&mdash;not a hog&mdash;just a shote, Poney&mdash;no bigger&rsquo;n a
+lump of anthracite&mdash;I saw it&mdash;that made all the mess. Anybody can be
+ditched, I guess.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Found that out already, have you? Well, that&rsquo;s a good
+beginnin&rsquo;.&rdquo; It was the Purple Emperor, with his high, tight,
+plate-glass cab and green velvet cushion, waiting to be cleaned for his next
+day&rsquo;s fly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let me make you two gen&rsquo;lemen acquainted,&rdquo; said Poney.
+&ldquo;This is our Purple Emperor, kid, whom you were admirin&rsquo; and, I may
+say, envyin&rsquo; last night. This is a new brother, worshipful sir, with most
+of his mileage ahead of him, but, so far as a serving-brother can, I&rsquo;ll
+answer for him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Happy to meet you,&rdquo; said the Purple Emperor, with a glance
+round the crowded round-house. &ldquo;I guess there are enough of us here to
+form a full meetin&rsquo;. Ahem! By virtue of the authority vested in me as
+Head of the Road, I hereby declare and pronounce No. ･007 a full and accepted
+Brother of the Amalgamated Brotherhood of Locomotives, and as such entitled to
+all shop, switch, track, tank, and round-house privileges throughout my
+jurisdiction, in the Degree of Superior Flier, it bein&rsquo; well known and
+credibly reported to me that our Brother has covered forty-one miles in
+thirty-nine minutes and a half on an errand of mercy to the afflicted. At a
+convenient time, I myself will communicate to you the Song and Signal of this
+Degree whereby you may be recognised in the darkest night. Take your stall,
+newly entered Brother among Locomotives!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Now, in the darkest night, even as the Purple Emperor said, if you will stand
+on the bridge across the freightyard, looking down upon the four-track way, at
+2:30 A. M., neither before nor after, when the White Moth, that takes the
+overflow from the Purple Emperor, tears south with her seven vestibuled
+cream-white cars, you will hear, as the yard-clock makes the half-hour, a
+far-away sound like the bass of a violoncello, and then, a hundred feet to each
+word,
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;With a michnai&mdash;ghignai&mdash;shtingal! Yah! Yah! Yah!<br/>
+Ein&mdash;zwei&mdash;drei&mdash;Mutter! Yah! Yah! Yah!<br/>
+She climb upon der shteeple,<br/>
+Und she frighten all der people,<br/>
+Singin&rsquo; michnai&mdash;ghignai&mdash;shtingal! Yah! Yah!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+That is 007 covering his one hundred and fifty-six miles in two hundred and
+twenty-one minutes.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"></a>
+THE MALTESE CAT</h2>
+
+<p>
+They had good reason to be proud, and better reason to be afraid, all twelve of
+them; for though they had fought their way, game by game, up the teams entered
+for the polo tournament, they were meeting the Archangels that afternoon in the
+final match; and the Archangels men were playing with half a dozen ponies
+apiece. As the game was divided into six quarters of eight minutes each, that
+meant a fresh pony after every halt. The Skidars&rsquo; team, even supposing
+there were no accidents, could only supply one pony for every other change; and
+two to one is heavy odds. Again, as Shiraz, the grey Syrian, pointed out, they
+were meeting the pink and pick of the polo-ponies of Upper India, ponies that
+had cost from a thousand rupees each, while they themselves were a cheap lot
+gathered, often from country-carts, by their masters, who belonged to a poor
+but honest native infantry regiment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Money means pace and weight,&rdquo; said Shiraz, rubbing his black-silk
+nose dolefully along his neat-fitting boot, &ldquo;and by the maxims of the
+game as I know it&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, but we aren&rsquo;t playing the maxims,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat.
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;re playing the game; and we&rsquo;ve the great advantage of
+knowing the game. Just think a stride, Shiraz! We&rsquo;ve pulled up from
+bottom to second place in two weeks against all those fellows on the ground
+here. That&rsquo;s because we play with our heads as well as our feet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It makes me feel undersized and unhappy all the same,&rdquo; said
+Kittiwynk, a mouse-coloured mare with a red brow-band and the cleanest pair of
+legs that ever an aged pony owned. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve twice our style, these
+others.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kittiwynk looked at the gathering and sighed. The hard, dusty polo-ground was
+lined with thousands of soldiers, black and white, not counting hundreds and
+hundreds of carriages and drags and dogcarts, and ladies with
+brilliant-coloured parasols, and officers in uniform and out of it, and crowds
+of natives behind them; and orderlies on camels, who had halted to watch the
+game, instead of carrying letters up and down the station; and native
+horse-dealers running about on thin-eared Biluchi mares, looking for a chance
+to sell a few first-class polo-ponies. Then there were the ponies of thirty
+teams that had entered for the Upper India Free-for-All Cup&mdash;nearly every
+pony of worth and dignity, from Mhow to Peshawar, from Allahabad to Multan;
+prize ponies, Arabs, Syrian, Barb, country-bred, Deccanee, Waziri, and Kabul
+ponies of every colour and shape and temper that you could imagine. Some of
+them were in mat-roofed stables, close to the polo-ground, but most were under
+saddle, while their masters, who had been defeated in the earlier games,
+trotted in and out and told the world exactly how the game should be played.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a glorious sight, and the come and go of the little, quick hooves, and
+the incessant salutations of ponies that had met before on other polo-grounds
+or race-courses were enough to drive a four-footed thing wild.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the Skidars&rsquo; team were careful not to know their neighbours, though
+half the ponies on the ground were anxious to scrape acquaintance with the
+little fellows that had come from the North, and, so far, had swept the board.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s see,&rdquo; said a soft gold-coloured Arab, who had been
+playing very badly the day before, to The Maltese Cat; &ldquo;didn&rsquo;t we
+meet in Abdul Rahman&rsquo;s stable in Bombay, four seasons ago? I won the
+Paikpattan Cup next season, you may remember?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not me,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat, politely. &ldquo;I was at Malta
+then, pulling a vegetable-cart. I don&rsquo;t race. I play the game.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said the Arab, cocking his tail and swaggering off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Keep yourselves to yourselves,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat to his
+companions. &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t want to rub noses with all those goose-rumped
+half-breeds of Upper India. When we&rsquo;ve won this Cup they&rsquo;ll give
+their shoes to know us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>We</i> sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t win the cup,&rdquo; said Shiraz.
+&ldquo;How do you feel?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stale as last night&rsquo;s feed when a muskrat has run over it,&rdquo;
+said Polaris, a rather heavy-shouldered grey; and the rest of the team agreed
+with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The sooner you forget that the better,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat,
+cheerfully. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve finished tiffin in the big tent. We shall be
+wanted now. If your saddles are not comfy, kick. If your bits aren&rsquo;t
+easy, rear, and let the <i>saises</i> know whether your boots are tight.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Each pony had his <i>sais</i>, his groom, who lived and ate and slept with the
+animal, and had betted a good deal more than he could afford on the result of
+the game. There was no chance of anything going wrong, but to make sure, each
+<i>sais</i> was shampooing the legs of his pony to the last minute. Behind the
+<i>saises</i> sat as many of the Skidars&rsquo; regiment as had leave to attend
+the match&mdash;about half the native officers, and a hundred or two dark,
+black-bearded men with the regimental pipers nervously fingering the big,
+beribboned bagpipes. The Skidars were what they call a Pioneer regiment, and
+the bagpipes made the national music of half their men. The native officers
+held bundles of polo-sticks, long cane-handled mallets, and as the grand stand
+filled after lunch they arranged themselves by ones and twos at different
+points round the ground, so that if a stick were broken the player would not
+have far to ride for a new one. An impatient British Cavalry Band struck up
+&ldquo;If you want to know the time, ask a p&rsquo;leeceman!&rdquo; and the two
+umpires in light dust-coats danced out on two little excited ponies. The four
+players of the Archangels&rsquo; team followed, and the sight of their
+beautiful mounts made Shiraz groan again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wait till we know,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat. &ldquo;Two of &rsquo;em
+are playing in blinkers, and that means they can&rsquo;t see to get out of the
+way of their own side, or they <i>may</i> shy at the umpires&rsquo; ponies.
+They&rsquo;ve <i>all</i> got white web-reins that are sure to stretch or
+slip!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And,&rdquo; said Kittiwynk, dancing to take the stiffness out of her,
+&ldquo;they carry their whips in their hands instead of on their wrists.
+Hah!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;True enough. No man can manage his stick and his reins and his whip that
+way,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve fallen over every square
+yard of the Malta ground, and <i>I</i> ought to know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He quivered his little, flea-bitten withers just to show how satisfied he felt;
+but his heart was not so light. Ever since he had drifted into India on a
+troop-ship, taken, with an old rifle, as part payment for a racing debt, The
+Maltese Cat had played and preached polo to the Skidars&rsquo; team on the
+Skidars&rsquo; stony polo-ground. Now a polo-pony is like a poet. If he is born
+with a love for the game, he can be made. The Maltese Cat knew that bamboos
+grew solely in order that poloballs might be turned from their roots, that
+grain was given to ponies to keep them in hard condition, and that ponies were
+shod to prevent them slipping on a turn. But, besides all these things, he knew
+every trick and device of the finest game in the world, and for two seasons had
+been teaching the others all he knew or guessed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Remember,&rdquo; he said for the hundredth time, as the riders came up,
+&ldquo;we <i>must</i> play together, and you <i>must</i> play with your heads.
+Whatever happens, follow the ball. Who goes out first?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kittiwynk, Shiraz, Polaris, and a short high little bay fellow with tremendous
+hocks and no withers worth speaking of (he was called Corks) were being girthed
+up, and the soldiers in the background stared with all their eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want you men to keep quiet,&rdquo; said Lutyens, the captain of the
+team, &ldquo;and especially <i>not</i> to blow your pipes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not if we win, Captain Sahib?&rdquo; asked the piper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If we win you can do what you please,&rdquo; said Lutyens, with a smile,
+as he slipped the loop of his stick over his wrist, and wheeled to canter to
+his place. The Archangels&rsquo; ponies were a little bit above themselves on
+account of the many-coloured crowd so close to the ground. Their riders were
+excellent players, but they were a team of crack players instead of a crack
+team; and that made all the difference in the world. They honestly meant to
+play together, but it is very hard for four men, each the best of the team he
+is picked from, to remember that in polo no brilliancy in hitting or riding
+makes up for playing alone. Their captain shouted his orders to them by name,
+and it is a curious thing that if you call his name aloud in public after an
+Englishman you make him hot and fretty. Lutyens said nothing to his men,
+because it had all been said before. He pulled up Shiraz, for he was playing
+&ldquo;back,&rdquo; to guard the goal. Powell on Polaris was half-back, and
+Macnamara and Hughes on Corks and Kittiwynk were forwards. The tough, bamboo
+ball was set in the middle of the ground, one hundred and fifty yards from the
+ends, and Hughes crossed sticks, heads up, with the Captain of the Archangels,
+who saw fit to play forward; that is a place from which you cannot easily
+control your team. The little click as the cane-shafts met was heard all over
+the ground, and then Hughes made some sort of quick wrist-stroke that just
+dribbled the ball a few yards. Kittiwynk knew that stroke of old, and followed
+as a cat follows a mouse. While the Captain of the Archangels was wrenching his
+pony round, Hughes struck with all his strength, and next instant Kittiwynk was
+away, Corks following close behind her, their little feet pattering like
+raindrops on glass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pull out to the left,&rdquo; said Kittiwynk between her teeth;
+&ldquo;it&rsquo;s coming your way, Corks!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The back and half-back of the Archangels were tearing down on her just as she
+was within reach of the ball. Hughes leaned forward with a loose rein, and cut
+it away to the left almost under Kittiwynk&rsquo;s foot, and it hopped and
+skipped off to Corks, who saw that, if he was not quick it would run beyond the
+boundaries. That long bouncing drive gave the Archangels time to wheel and send
+three men across the ground to head off Corks. Kittiwynk stayed where she was;
+for she knew the game. Corks was on the ball half a fraction of a second before
+the others came up, and Macnamara, with a backhanded stroke, sent it back
+across the ground to Hughes, who saw the way clear to the Archangels&rsquo;
+goal, and smacked the ball in before any one quite knew what had happened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s luck,&rdquo; said Corks, as they changed ends. &ldquo;A
+goal in three minutes for three hits, and no riding to speak of.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; said Polaris. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve made &rsquo;em
+angry too soon. Shouldn&rsquo;t wonder if they tried to rush us off our feet
+next time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Keep the ball hanging, then,&rdquo; said Shiraz. &ldquo;That wears out
+every pony that is not used to it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next time there was no easy galloping across the ground. All the Archangels
+closed up as one man, but there they stayed, for Corks, Kittiwynk, and Polaris
+were somewhere on the top of the ball, marking time among the rattling sticks,
+while Shiraz circled about outside, waiting for a chance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>We</i> can do this all day,&rdquo; said Polaris, ramming his quarters
+into the side of another pony. &ldquo;Where do you think you&rsquo;re shoving
+to?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll&mdash;I&rsquo;ll be driven in an <i>ekka</i> if I
+know,&rdquo; was the gasping reply, &ldquo;and I&rsquo;d give a week&rsquo;s
+feed to get my blinkers off. I can&rsquo;t see anything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The dust is rather bad. Whew! That was one for my off-hock.
+Where&rsquo;s the ball, Corks?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Under my tail. At least, the man&rsquo;s looking for it there! This is
+beautiful. They can&rsquo;t use their sticks, and it&rsquo;s driving &rsquo;em
+wild. Give old Blinkers a push and then he&rsquo;ll go over.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here, don&rsquo;t touch me! I can&rsquo;t see.
+I&rsquo;ll&mdash;I&rsquo;ll back out, I think,&rdquo; said the pony in
+blinkers, who knew that if you can&rsquo;t see all round your head, you cannot
+prop yourself against the shock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Corks was watching the ball where it lay in the dust, close to his near
+fore-leg, with Macnamara&rsquo;s shortened stick tap-tapping it from time to
+time. Kittiwynk was edging her way out of the scrimmage, whisking her stump of
+a tail with nervous excitement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ho! They&rsquo;ve got it,&rdquo; she snorted. &ldquo;Let me out!&rdquo;
+and she galloped like a rifle-bullet just behind a tall lanky pony of the
+Archangels, whose rider was swinging up his stick for a stroke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not to-day, thank you,&rdquo; said Hughes, as the blow slid off his
+raised stick, and Kittiwynk laid her shoulder to the tall pony&rsquo;s
+quarters, and shoved him aside just as Lutyens on Shiraz sent the ball where it
+had come from, and the tall pony went skating and slipping away to the left.
+Kittiwynk, seeing that Polaris had joined Corks in the chase for the ball up
+the ground, dropped into Polaris&rsquo; place, and then &ldquo;time&rdquo; was
+called.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Skidars&rsquo; ponies wasted no time in kicking or fuming. They knew that
+each minute&rsquo;s rest meant so much gain, and trotted off to the rails and
+their <i>saises</i>, who began to scrape and blanket and rub them at once.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Whew!&rdquo; said Corks, stiffening up to get all the tickle of the big
+vulcanite scraper. &ldquo;If we were playing pony for pony, we would bend those
+Archangels double in half an hour. But they&rsquo;ll bring up fresh ones and
+fresh ones and fresh ones after that&mdash;you see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who cares?&rdquo; said Polaris. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve drawn first blood. Is
+my hock swelling?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Looks puffy,&rdquo; said Corks. &ldquo;You must have had rather a wipe.
+Don&rsquo;t let it stiffen. You &rsquo;ll be wanted again in half an
+hour.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the game like?&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ground&rsquo;s like your shoe, except where they put too much water on
+it,&rdquo; said Kittiwynk. &ldquo;Then it&rsquo;s slippery. Don&rsquo;t play in
+the centre. There&rsquo;s a bog there. I don&rsquo;t know how their next four
+are going to behave, but we kept the ball hanging, and made &rsquo;em lather
+for nothing. Who goes out? Two Arabs and a couple of country-breds!
+That&rsquo;s bad. What a comfort it is to wash your mouth out!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kitty was talking with a neck of a lather-covered soda-water bottle between her
+teeth, and trying to look over her withers at the same time. This gave her a
+very coquettish air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s bad?&rdquo; said Grey Dawn, giving to the girth and
+admiring his well-set shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You Arabs can&rsquo;t gallop fast enough to keep yourselves
+warm&mdash;that&rsquo;s what Kitty means,&rdquo; said Polaris, limping to show
+that his hock needed attention. &ldquo;Are you playing back, Grey Dawn?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Looks like it,&rdquo; said Grey Dawn, as Lutyens swung himself up.
+Powell mounted The Rabbit, a plain bay country-bred much like Corks, but with
+mulish ears. Macnamara took Faiz-Ullah, a handy, short-backed little red Arab
+with a long tail, and Hughes mounted Benami, an old and sullen brown beast, who
+stood over in front more than a polo-pony should.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Benami looks like business,&rdquo; said Shiraz. &ldquo;How&rsquo;s your
+temper, Ben?&rdquo; The old campaigner hobbled off without answering, and The
+Maltese Cat looked at the new Archangel ponies prancing about on the ground.
+They were four beautiful blacks, and they saddled big enough and strong enough
+to eat the Skidars&rsquo; team and gallop away with the meal inside them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Blinkers again,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat. &ldquo;Good enough!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;re chargers&mdash;cavalry chargers!&rdquo; said Kittiwynk,
+indignantly. &ldquo;<i>They&rsquo;ll</i> never see thirteen-three again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;ve all been fairly measured, and they&rsquo;ve all got their
+certificates,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat, &ldquo;or they wouldn&rsquo;t be
+here. We must take things as they come along, and keep your eyes on the
+ball.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The game began, but this time the Skidars were penned to their own end of the
+ground, and the watching ponies did not approve of that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Faiz-Ullah is shirking&mdash;as usual,&rdquo; said Polaris, with a
+scornful grunt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Faiz-Ullah is eating whip,&rdquo; said Corks. They could hear the
+leather-thonged polo-quirt lacing the little fellow&rsquo;s well-rounded
+barrel. Then The Rabbit&rsquo;s shrill neigh came across the ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t do all the work,&rdquo; he cried, desperately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Play the game&mdash;don&rsquo;t talk,&rdquo; The Maltese Cat whickered;
+and all the ponies wriggled with excitement, and the soldiers and the grooms
+gripped the railings and shouted. A black pony with blinkers had singled out
+old Benami, and was interfering with him in every possible way. They could see
+Benami shaking his head up and down, and flapping his under lip.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;ll be a fall in a minute,&rdquo; said Polaris. &ldquo;Benami
+is getting stuffy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The game flickered up and down between goal-post and goal-post, and the black
+ponies were getting more confident as they felt they had the legs of the
+others. The ball was hit out of a little scrimmage, and Benami and The Rabbit
+followed it, Faiz-Ullah only too glad to be quiet for an instant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The blinkered black pony came up like a hawk, with two of his own side behind
+him, and Benami&rsquo;s eye glittered as he raced. The question was which pony
+should make way for the other, for each rider was perfectly willing to risk a
+fall in a good cause. The black, who had been driven nearly crazy by his
+blinkers, trusted to his weight and his temper; but Benami knew how to apply
+his weight and how to keep his temper. They met, and there was a cloud of dust.
+The black was lying on his side, all the breath knocked out of his body. The
+Rabbit was a hundred yards up the ground with the ball, and Benami was sitting
+down. He had slid nearly ten yards on his tail, but he had had his revenge, and
+sat cracking his nostrils till the black pony rose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what you get for interfering. Do you want any more?&rdquo;
+said Benami, and he plunged into the game. Nothing was done that quarter,
+because Faiz-Ullah would not gallop, though Macnamara beat him whenever he
+could spare a second. The fall of the black pony had impressed his companions
+tremendously, and so the Archangels could not profit by Faiz-Ullah&rsquo;s bad
+behaviour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But as The Maltese Cat said when &ldquo;time&rdquo; was called, and the four
+came back blowing and dripping, Faiz-Ullah ought to have been kicked all round
+Umballa. If he did not behave better next time The Maltese Cat promised to pull
+out his Arab tail by the roots and&mdash;eat it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no time to talk, for the third four were ordered out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The third quarter of a game is generally the hottest, for each side thinks that
+the others must be pumped; and most of the winning play in a game is made about
+that time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lutyens took over The Maltese Cat with a pat and a hug, for Lutyens valued him
+more than anything else in the world; Powell had Shikast, a little grey rat
+with no pedigree and no manners outside polo; Macnamara mounted Bamboo, the
+largest of the team; and Hughes Who&rsquo;s Who, <i>alias</i> The Animal. He
+was supposed to have Australian blood in his veins, but he looked like a
+clothes-horse, and you could whack his legs with an iron crow-bar without
+hurting him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They went out to meet the very flower of the Archangels&rsquo; team; and when
+Who&rsquo;s Who saw their elegantly booted legs and their beautiful satin
+skins, he grinned a grin through his light, well-worn bridle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My word!&rdquo; said Who&rsquo;s Who. &ldquo;We must give &rsquo;em a
+little football. These gentlemen need a rubbing down.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No biting,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat, warningly; for once or twice in
+his career Who&rsquo;s Who had been known to forget himself in that way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who said anything about biting? I&rsquo;m not playing tiddly-winks.
+I&rsquo;m playing the game.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Archangels came down like a wolf on the fold, for they were tired of
+football, and they wanted polo. They got it more and more. Just after the game
+began, Lutyens hit a ball that was coming towards him rapidly, and it rolled in
+the air, as a ball sometimes will, with the whirl of a frightened partridge.
+Shikast heard, but could not see it for the minute, though he looked everywhere
+and up into the air as The Maltese Cat had taught him. When he saw it ahead and
+overhead he went forward with Powell as fast as he could put foot to ground. It
+was then that Powell, a quiet and level-headed man, as a rule, became inspired,
+and played a stroke that sometimes comes off successfully after long practice.
+He took his stick in both hands, and, standing up in his stirrups, swiped at
+the ball in the air, Munipore fashion. There was one second of paralysed
+astonishment, and then all four sides of the ground went up in a yell of
+applause and delight as the ball flew true (you could see the amazed Archangels
+ducking in their saddles to dodge the line of flight, and looking at it with
+open mouths), and the regimental pipes of the Skidars squealed from the
+railings as long as the pipers had breath. Shikast heard the stroke; but he
+heard the head of the stick fly off at the same time. Nine hundred and
+ninety-nine ponies out of a thousand would have gone tearing on after the ball
+with a useless player pulling at their heads; but Powell knew him, and he knew
+Powell; and the instant he felt Powell&rsquo;s right leg shift a trifle on the
+saddle-flap, he headed to the boundary, where a native officer was frantically
+waving a new stick. Before the shouts had ended, Powell was armed again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once before in his life The Maltese Cat had heard that very same stroke played
+off his own back, and had profited by the confusion it wrought. This time he
+acted on experience, and leaving Bamboo to guard the goal in case of accidents,
+came through the others like a flash, head and tail low&mdash;Lutyens standing
+up to ease him&mdash;swept on and on before the other side knew what was the
+matter, and nearly pitched on his head between the Archangels&rsquo; goal-post
+as Lutyens kicked the ball in after a straight scurry of a hundred and fifty
+yards. If there was one thing more than another upon which The Maltese Cat
+prided himself, it was on this quick, streaking kind of run half across the
+ground. He did not believe in taking balls round the field unless you were
+clearly overmatched. After this they gave the Archangels five-minuted football;
+and an expensive fast pony hates football because it rumples his temper.
+Who&rsquo;s Who showed himself even better than Polaris in this game. He did
+not permit any wriggling away, but bored joyfully into the scrimmage as if he
+had his nose in a feed-box and was looking for something nice. Little Shikast
+jumped on the ball the minute it got clear, and every time an Archangel pony
+followed it, he found Shikast standing over it, asking what was the matter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If we can live through this quarter,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat,
+&ldquo;I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t care. Don&rsquo;t take it out of yourselves. Let
+them do the lathering.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So the ponies, as their riders explained afterwards, &ldquo;shut-up.&rdquo; The
+Archangels kept them tied fast in front of their goal, but it cost the
+Archangels&rsquo; ponies all that was left of their tempers; and ponies began
+to kick, and men began to repeat compliments, and they chopped at the legs of
+Who&rsquo;s Who, and he set his teeth and stayed where he was, and the dust
+stood up like a tree over the scrimmage until that hot quarter ended.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They found the ponies very excited and confident when they went to their
+saises; and The Maltese Cat had to warn them that the worst of the game was
+coming.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now <i>we</i> are all going in for the second time,&rdquo; said he,
+&ldquo;and <i>they</i> are trotting out fresh ponies. You think you can gallop,
+but you&rsquo;ll find you can&rsquo;t; and then you&rsquo;ll be sorry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But two goals to nothing is a halter-long lead,&rdquo; said Kittiwynk,
+prancing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How long does it take to get a goal?&rdquo; The Maltese Cat answered.
+&ldquo;For pity&rsquo;s sake, don&rsquo;t run away with a notion that the game
+is half-won just because we happen to be in luck now! They&rsquo;ll ride you
+into the grand stand, if they can; you must <i>not</i> give &rsquo;em a chance.
+Follow the ball.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Football, as usual?&rdquo; said Polaris. &ldquo;My hock&rsquo;s half as
+big as a nose-bag.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t let them have a look at the ball, if you can help it. Now
+leave me alone. I must get all the rest I can before the last quarter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He hung down his head and let all his muscles go slack, Shikast, Bamboo, and
+Who&rsquo;s Who copying his example.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Better not watch the game,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We aren&rsquo;t
+playing, and we shall only take it out of ourselves if we grow anxious. Look at
+the ground and pretend it&rsquo;s fly-time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They did their best, but it was hard advice to follow. The hooves were drumming
+and the sticks were rattling all up and down the ground, and yells of applause
+from the English troops told that the Archangels were pressing the Skidars
+hard. The native soldiers behind the ponies groaned and grunted, and said
+things in undertones, and presently they heard a long-drawn shout and a clatter
+of hurrahs!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One to the Archangels,&rdquo; said Shikast, without raising his head.
+&ldquo;Time&rsquo;s nearly up. Oh, my sire and dam!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Faiz-Ullah,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat, &ldquo;if you don&rsquo;t play
+to the last nail in your shoes this time, I&rsquo;ll kick you on the ground
+before all the other ponies.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll do my best when my time comes,&rdquo; said the little Arab,
+sturdily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The <i>saises</i> looked at each other gravely as they rubbed their
+ponies&rsquo; legs. This was the time when long purses began to tell, and
+everybody knew it. Kittiwynk and the others came back, the sweat dripping over
+their hooves and their tails telling sad stories.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;re better than we are,&rdquo; said Shiraz. &ldquo;I knew how
+it would be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Shut your big head,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat; &ldquo;we&rsquo;ve one
+goal to the good yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes; but it&rsquo;s two Arabs and two country-breds to play now,&rdquo;
+said Corks. &ldquo;Faiz-Ullah, remember!&rdquo; He spoke in a biting voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As Lutyens mounted Grey Dawn he looked at his men, and they did not look
+pretty. They were covered with dust and sweat in streaks. Their yellow boots
+were almost black, their wrists were red and lumpy, and their eyes seemed two
+inches deep in their heads; but the expression in the eyes was satisfactory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you take anything at tiffin?&rdquo; said Lutyens; and the team shook
+their heads. They were too dry to talk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All right. The Archangels did. They are worse pumped than we are.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;ve got the better ponies,&rdquo; said Powell. &ldquo;I
+sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t be sorry when this business is over.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That fifth quarter was a painful one in every way. Faiz-Ullah played like a
+little red demon, and The Rabbit seemed to be everywhere at once, and Benami
+rode straight at anything and everything that came in his way; while the
+umpires on their ponies wheeled like gulls outside the shifting game. But the
+Archangels had the better mounts,&mdash;they had kept their racers till late in
+the game,&mdash;and never allowed the Skidars to play football. They hit the
+ball up and down the width of the ground till Benami and the rest were
+outpaced. Then they went forward, and time and again Lutyens and Grey Dawn were
+just, and only just, able to send the ball away with a long, spitting
+backhander. Grey Dawn forgot that he was an Arab; and turned from grey to blue
+as he galloped. Indeed, he forgot too well, for he did not keep his eyes on the
+ground as an Arab should, but stuck out his nose and scuttled for the dear
+honour of the game. They had watered the ground once or twice between the
+quarters, and a careless waterman had emptied the last of his skinful all in
+one place near the Skidars&rsquo; goal. It was close to the end of the play,
+and for the tenth time Grey Dawn was bolting after the ball, when his near
+hind-foot slipped on the greasy mud, and he rolled over and over, pitching
+Lutyens just clear of the goal-post; and the triumphant Archangels made their
+goal. Then &ldquo;time&rdquo; was called&mdash;two goals all; but Lutyens had
+to be helped up, and Grey Dawn rose with his near hind-leg strained somewhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the damage?&rdquo; said Powell, his arm around Lutyens.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Collar-bone, of course,&rdquo; said Lutyens, between his teeth. It was
+the third time he had broken it in two years, and it hurt him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Powell and the others whistled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Game&rsquo;s up,&rdquo; said Hughes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hold on. We&rsquo;ve five good minutes yet, and it isn&rsquo;t my right
+hand. We &rsquo;ll stick it out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I say,&rdquo; said the Captain of the Archangels, trotting up,
+&ldquo;are you hurt, Lutyens? We&rsquo;ll wait if you care to put in a
+substitute. I wish&mdash;I mean&mdash;the fact is, you fellows deserve this
+game if any team does. Wish we could give you a man, or some of our
+ponies&mdash;or something.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You &rsquo;re awfully good, but we&rsquo;ll play it to a finish, I
+think.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Captain of the Archangels stared for a little. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s not half
+bad,&rdquo; he said, and went back to his own side, while Lutyens borrowed a
+scarf from one of his native officers and made a sling of it. Then an Archangel
+galloped up with a big bath-sponge, and advised Lutyens to put it under his
+armpit to ease his shoulder, and between them they tied up his left arm
+scientifically; and one of the native officers leaped forward with four long
+glasses that fizzed and bubbled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The team looked at Lutyens piteously, and he nodded. It was the last quarter,
+and nothing would matter after that. They drank out the dark golden drink, and
+wiped their moustaches, and things looked more hopeful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Maltese Cat had put his nose into the front of Lutyens&rsquo; shirt and was
+trying to say how sorry he was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He knows,&rdquo; said Lutyens, proudly. &ldquo;The beggar knows.
+I&rsquo;ve played him without a bridle before now&mdash;for fun.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s no fun now,&rdquo; said Powell. &ldquo;But we haven&rsquo;t a
+decent substitute.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Lutyens. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the last quarter, and
+we&rsquo;ve got to make our goal and win. I&rsquo;ll trust The Cat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you fall this time, you&rsquo;ll suffer a little,&rdquo; said
+Macnamara.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll trust The Cat,&rdquo; said Lutyens.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You hear that?&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat, proudly, to the others.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s worth while playing polo for ten years to have that said of
+you. Now then, my sons, come along. We&rsquo;ll kick up a little bit, just to
+show the Archangels <i>this</i> team haven&rsquo;t suffered.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, sure enough, as they went on to the ground, The Maltese Cat, after
+satisfying himself that Lutyens was home in the saddle, kicked out three or
+four times, and Lutyens laughed. The reins were caught up anyhow in the tips of
+his strapped left hand, and he never pretended to rely on them. He knew The Cat
+would answer to the least pressure of the leg, and by way of showing
+off&mdash;for his shoulder hurt him very much&mdash;he bent the little fellow
+in a close figure-of-eight in and out between the goal-posts. There was a roar
+from the native officers and men, who dearly loved a piece of <i>dugabashi</i>
+(horse-trick work), as they called it, and the pipes very quietly and
+scornfully droned out the first bars of a common bazaar tune called
+&ldquo;Freshly Fresh and Newly New,&rdquo; just as a warning to the other
+regiments that the Skidars were fit. All the natives laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And now,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat, as they took their place,
+&ldquo;remember that this is the last quarter, and follow the ball!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t need to be told,&rdquo; said Who&rsquo;s Who.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let me go on. All those people on all four sides will begin to crowd
+in&mdash;just as they did at Malta. You&rsquo;ll hear people calling out, and
+moving forward and being pushed back; and that is going to make the Archangel
+ponies very unhappy. But if a ball is struck to the boundary, you go after it,
+and let the people get out of your way. I went over the pole of a four-in-hand
+once, and picked a game out of the dust by it. Back me up when I run, and
+follow the ball.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a sort of an all-round sound of sympathy and wonder as the last
+quarter opened, and then there began exactly what The Maltese Cat had foreseen.
+People crowded in close to the boundaries, and the Archangels&rsquo; ponies
+kept looking sideways at the narrowing space. If you know how a man feels to be
+cramped at tennis&mdash;not because he wants to run out of the court, but
+because he likes to know that he can at a pinch&mdash;you will guess how ponies
+must feel when they are playing in a box of human beings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll bend some of those men if I can get away,&rdquo; said
+Who&rsquo;s Who, as he rocketed behind the ball; and Bamboo nodded without
+speaking. They were playing the last ounce in them, and The Maltese Cat had
+left the goal undefended to join them. Lutyens gave him every order that he
+could to bring him back, but this was the first time in his career that the
+little wise grey had ever played polo on his own responsibility, and he was
+going to make the most of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are you doing here?&rdquo; said Hughes, as The Cat crossed in front
+of him and rode off an Archangel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Cat&rsquo;s in charge&mdash;mind the goal!&rdquo; shouted Lutyens,
+and bowing forward hit the ball full, and followed on, forcing the Archangels
+towards their own goal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No football,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat. &ldquo;Keep the ball by the
+boundaries and cramp &rsquo;em. Play open order, and drive &rsquo;em to the
+boundaries.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Across and across the ground in big diagonals flew the ball, and whenever it
+came to a flying rush and a stroke close to the boundaries the Archangel ponies
+moved stiffly. They did not care to go headlong at a wall of men and carriages,
+though if the ground had been open they could have turned on a sixpence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wriggle her up the sides,&rdquo; said The Cat. &ldquo;Keep her close to
+the crowd. They hate the carriages. Shikast, keep her up this side.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Shikast and Powell lay left and right behind the uneasy scuffle of an open
+scrimmage, and every time the ball was hit away Shikast galloped on it at such
+an angle that Powell was forced to hit it towards the boundary; and when the
+crowd had been driven away from that side, Lutyens would send the ball over to
+the other, and Shikast would slide desperately after it till his friends came
+down to help. It was billiards, and no football, this time&mdash;billiards in a
+corner pocket; and the cues were not well chalked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If they get us out in the middle of the ground they&rsquo;ll walk away
+from us. Dribble her along the sides,&rdquo; cried The Maltese Cat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So they dribbled all along the boundary, where a pony could not come on their
+right-hand side; and the Archangels were furious, and the umpires had to
+neglect the game to shout at the people to get back, and several blundering
+mounted policemen tried to restore order, all close to the scrimmage, and the
+nerves of the Archangels&rsquo; ponies stretched and broke like cob-webs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Five or six times an Archangel hit the ball up into the middle of the ground,
+and each time the watchful Shikast gave Powell his chance to send it back, and
+after each return, when the dust had settled, men could see that the Skidars
+had gained a few yards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every now and again there were shouts of &ldquo;Side! Off side!&rdquo; from the
+spectators; but the teams were too busy to care, and the umpires had all they
+could do to keep their maddened ponies clear of the scuffle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last Lutyens missed a short easy stroke, and the Skidars had to fly back
+helter-skelter to protect their own goal, Shikast leading. Powell stopped the
+ball with a backhander when it was not fifty yards from the goalposts, and
+Shikast spun round with a wrench that nearly hoisted Powell out of his saddle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now&rsquo;s our last chance,&rdquo; said The Cat, wheeling like a
+cockchafer on a pin. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got to ride it out. Come along.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lutyens felt the little chap take a deep breath, and, as it were, crouch under
+his rider. The ball was hopping towards the right-hand boundary, an Archangel
+riding for it with both spurs and a whip; but neither spur nor whip would make
+his pony stretch himself as he neared the crowd. The Maltese Cat glided under
+his very nose, picking up his hind legs sharp, for there was not a foot to
+spare between his quarters and the other pony&rsquo;s bit. It was as neat an
+exhibition as fancy figure-skating. Lutyens hit with all the strength he had
+left, but the stick slipped a little in his hand, and the ball flew off to the
+left instead of keeping close to the boundary. Who&rsquo;s Who was far across
+the ground, thinking hard as he galloped. He repeated stride for stride The
+Cat&rsquo;s manoeuvres with another Archangel pony, nipping the ball away from
+under his bridle, and clearing his opponent by half a fraction of an inch, for
+Who&rsquo;s Who was clumsy behind. Then he drove away towards the right as The
+Maltese Cat came up from the left; and Bamboo held a middle course exactly
+between them. The three were making a sort of Government-broad-arrow-shaped
+attack; and there was only the Archangels&rsquo; back to guard the goal; but
+immediately behind them were three Archangels racing all they knew, and mixed
+up with them was Powell sending Shikast along on what he felt was their last
+hope. It takes a very good man to stand up to the rush of seven crazy ponies in
+the last quarters of a Cup game, when men are riding with their necks for sale,
+and the ponies are delirious. The Archangels&rsquo; back missed his stroke and
+pulled aside just in time to let the rush go by. Bamboo and Who&rsquo;s Who
+shortened stride to give The Cat room, and Lutyens got the goal with a clean,
+smooth, smacking stroke that was heard all over the field. But there was no
+stopping the ponies. They poured through the goalposts in one mixed mob,
+winners and losers together, for the pace had been terrific. The Maltese Cat
+knew by experience what would happen, and, to save Lutyens, turned to the right
+with one last effort, that strained a back-sinew beyond hope of repair. As he
+did so he heard the right-hand goalpost crack as a pony cannoned into
+it&mdash;crack, splinter and fall like a mast. It had been sawed three parts
+through in case of accidents, but it upset the pony nevertheless, and he
+blundered into another, who blundered into the left-hand post, and then there
+was confusion and dust and wood. Bamboo was lying on the ground, seeing stars;
+an Archangel pony rolled beside him, breathless and angry; Shikast had sat down
+dog-fashion to avoid falling over the others, and was sliding along on his
+little bobtail in a cloud of dust; and Powell was sitting on the ground,
+hammering with his stick and trying to cheer. All the others were shouting at
+the top of what was left of their voices, and the men who had been spilt were
+shouting too. As soon as the people saw no one was hurt, ten thousand native
+and English shouted and clapped and yelled, and before any one could stop them
+the pipers of the Skidars broke on to the ground, with all the native officers
+and men behind them, and marched up and down, playing a wild Northern tune
+called &ldquo;Zakhme Began,&rdquo; and through the insolent blaring of the
+pipes and the high-pitched native yells you could hear the Archangels&rsquo;
+band hammering, &ldquo;For they are all jolly good fellows,&rdquo; and then
+reproachfully to the losing team, &ldquo;Ooh, Kafoozalum! Kafoozalum!
+Kafoozalum!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Besides all these things and many more, there was a Commander-in-chief, and an
+Inspector-General of Cavalry, and the principal veterinary officer of all India
+standing on the top of a regimental coach, yelling like school-boys; and
+brigadiers and colonels and commissioners, and hundreds of pretty ladies joined
+the chorus. But The Maltese Cat stood with his head down, wondering how many
+legs were left to him; and Lutyens watched the men and ponies pick themselves
+out of the wreck of the two goal-posts, and he patted The Maltese Cat very
+tenderly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I say,&rdquo; said the Captain of the Archangels, spitting a pebble out
+of his mouth, &ldquo;will you take three thousand for that pony&mdash;as he
+stands?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No thank you. I&rsquo;ve an idea he&rsquo;s saved my life,&rdquo; said
+Lutyens, getting off and lying down at full length. Both teams were on the
+ground too, waving their boots in the air, and coughing and drawing deep
+breaths, as the <i>saises</i> ran up to take away the ponies, and an officious
+water-carrier sprinkled the players with dirty water till they sat up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My aunt!&rdquo; said Powell, rubbing his back, and looking at the stumps
+of the goal-posts, &ldquo;That was a game!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They played it over again, every stroke of it, that night at the big dinner,
+when the Free-for-All Cup was filled and passed down the table, and emptied and
+filled again, and everybody made most eloquent speeches. About two in the
+morning, when there might have been some singing, a wise little, plain little,
+grey little head looked in through the open door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hurrah! Bring him in,&rdquo; said the Archangels; and his <i>sais</i>,
+who was very happy indeed, patted The Maltese Cat on the flank, and he limped
+in to the blaze of light and the glittering uniforms, looking for Lutyens. He
+was used to messes, and men&rsquo;s bedrooms, and places where ponies are not
+usually encouraged, and in his youth had jumped on and off a mess-table for a
+bet. So he behaved himself very politely, and ate bread dipped in salt, and was
+petted all round the table, moving gingerly; and they drank his health, because
+he had done more to win the Cup than any man or horse on the ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was glory and honour enough for the rest of his days, and The Maltese Cat
+did not complain much when the veterinary surgeon said that he would be no good
+for polo any more. When Lutyens married, his wife did not allow him to play, so
+he was forced to be an umpire; and his pony on these occasions was a
+flea-bitten grey with a neat polo-tail, lame all round, but desperately quick
+on his feet, and, as everybody knew, Past Pluperfect Prestissimo Player of the
+Game.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"></a>
+&ldquo;BREAD UPON THE WATERS&rdquo;</h2>
+
+<p>
+If you remember my improper friend Brugglesmith, you will also bear in mind his
+friend McPhee, Chief Engineer of the <i>Breslau</i>, whose dingey Brugglesmith
+tried to steal. His apologies for the performances of Brugglesmith may one day
+be told in their proper place: the tale before us concerns McPhee. He was never
+a racing engineer, and took special pride in saying as much before the
+Liverpool men; but he had a thirty-two years&rsquo; knowledge of machinery and
+the humours of ships. One side of his face had been wrecked through the
+bursting of a pressure-gauge in the days when men knew less than they do now,
+and his nose rose grandly out of the wreck, like a club in a public riot. There
+were cuts and lumps on his head, and he would guide your forefinger through his
+short iron-grey hair and tell you how he had come by his trade-marks. He owned
+all sorts of certificates of extra-competency, and at the bottom of his cabin
+chest of drawers, where he kept the photograph of his wife, were two or three
+Royal Humane Society medals for saving lives at sea. Professionally&mdash;it
+was different when crazy steerage-passengers jumped
+overboard&mdash;professionally, McPhee does not approve of saving life at sea,
+and he has often told me that a new Hell awaits stokers and trimmers who sign
+for a strong man&rsquo;s pay and fall sick the second day out. He believes in
+throwing boots at fourth and fifth engineers when they wake him up at night
+with word that a bearing is redhot, all because a lamp&rsquo;s glare is
+reflected red from the twirling metal. He believes that there are only two
+poets in the world; one being Robert Burns, of course, and the other Gerald
+Massey. When he has time for novels he reads Wilkie Collins and Charles
+Reade&mdash;chiefly the latter&mdash;and knows whole pages of <i>Very Hard
+Cash</i> by heart. In the saloon his table is next to the captain&rsquo;s, and
+he drinks only water while his engines work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was good to me when we first met, because I did not ask questions, and
+believed in Charles Reade as a most shamefully neglected author. Later he
+approved of my writings to the extent of one pamphlet of twenty-four pages that
+I wrote for Holdock, Steiner &amp; Chase, owners of the line, when they bought
+some ventilating patent and fitted it to the cabins of the <i>Breslau</i>,
+<i>Spandau</i>, and <i>Koltzau</i>. The purser of the <i>Breslau</i>
+recommended me to Holdock&rsquo;s secretary for the job; and Holdock, who is a
+Wesleyan Methodist, invited me to his house, and gave me dinner with the
+governess when the others had finished, and placed the plans and specifications
+in my hand, and I wrote the pamphlet that same afternoon. It was called
+&ldquo;Comfort in the Cabin,&rdquo; and brought me seven pound ten, cash
+down&mdash;an important sum of money in those days; and the governess, who was
+teaching Master John Holdock his scales, told me that Mrs. Holdock had told her
+to keep an eye on me, in case I went away with coats from the hat-rack. McPhee
+liked that pamphlet enormously, for it was composed in the Bouverie-Byzantine
+style, with baroque and rococo embellishments; and afterwards he introduced me
+to Mrs. McPhee, who succeeded Dinah in my heart; for Dinah was half a world
+away, and it is wholesome and antiseptic to love such a woman as Janet McPhee.
+They lived in a little twelve-pound house, close to the shipping. When McPhee
+was away Mrs. McPhee read the Lloyds column in the papers, and called on the
+wives of senior engineers of equal social standing. Once or twice, too, Mrs.
+Holdock visited Mrs. McPhee in a brougham with celluloid fittings, and I have
+reason to believe that, after she had played owner&rsquo;s wife long enough,
+they talked scandal. The Holdocks lived in an old-fashioned house with a big
+brick garden not a mile from the McPhees, for they stayed by their money as
+their money stayed by them; and in summer you met their brougham solemnly
+junketing by Theydon Bois or Loughton. But I was Mrs. McPhee&rsquo;s friend,
+for she allowed me to convoy her westward, sometimes, to theatres where she
+sobbed or laughed or shivered with a simple heart; and she introduced me to a
+new world of doctors&rsquo; wives, captains&rsquo; wives, and engineers&rsquo;
+wives, whose whole talk and thought centred in and about ships and lines of
+ships you have never heard of. There were sailing-ships, with stewards and
+mahogany and maple saloons, trading to Australia, taking cargoes of
+consumptives and hopeless drunkards for whom a sea-voyage was recommended;
+there were frowzy little West African boats, full of rats and cockroaches,
+where men died anywhere but in their bunks; there were Brazilian boats whose
+cabins could be hired for merchandise, that went out loaded nearly awash; there
+were Zanzibar and Mauritius steamers and wonderful reconstructed boats that
+plied to the other tide of Borneo. These were loved and known, for they earned
+our bread and a little butter, and we despised the big Atlantic boats, and made
+fun of the P. &amp; O. and Orient liners, and swore by our respective
+owners&mdash;Wesleyan, Baptist, or Presbyterian, as the case might be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had only just come back to England when Mrs. McPhee invited me to dinner at
+three o&rsquo;clock in the afternoon, and the notepaper was almost bridal in
+its scented creaminess. When I reached the house I saw that there were new
+curtains in the window that must have cost forty-five shillings a pair; and as
+Mrs. McPhee drew me into the little marble-papered hall, she looked at me
+keenly, and cried:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have ye not heard? What d&rsquo; ye think o&rsquo; the hat-rack?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, that hat-rack was oak&mdash;thirty shillings, at least. McPhee came
+down-stairs with a sober foot&mdash;he steps as lightly as a cat, for all his
+weight, when he is at sea&mdash;and shook hands in a new and awful
+manner&mdash;a parody of old Holdock&rsquo;s style when he says good-bye to his
+skippers. I perceived at once that a legacy had come to him, but I held my
+peace, though Mrs. McPhee begged me every thirty seconds to eat a great deal
+and say nothing. It was rather a mad sort of meal, because McPhee and his wife
+took hold of hands like little children (they always do after voyages), and
+nodded and winked and choked and gurgled, and hardly ate a mouthful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A female servant came in and waited; though Mrs. McPhee had told me time and
+again that she would thank no one to do her housework while she had her health.
+But this was a servant with a cap, and I saw Mrs. McPhee swell and swell under
+her <i>garance</i>-coloured gown. There is no small free-board to Janet McPhee,
+nor is <i>garance</i> any subdued tint; and with all this unexplained pride and
+glory in the air I felt like watching fireworks without knowing the festival.
+When the maid had removed the cloth she brought a pineapple that would have
+cost half a guinea at that season (only McPhee has his own way of getting such
+things), and a Canton china bowl of dried lichis, and a glass plate of
+preserved ginger, and a small jar of sacred and Imperial chow-chow that
+perfumed the room. McPhee gets it from a Dutchman in Java, and I think he
+doctors it with liqueurs. But the crown of the feast was some Madeira of the
+kind you can only come by if you know the wine and the man. A little
+maize-wrapped fig of clotted Madeira cigars went with the wine, and the rest
+was a pale blue smoky silence; Janet, in her splendour, smiling on us two, and
+patting McPhee&rsquo;s hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll drink,&rdquo; said McPhee, slowly, rubbing his chin,
+&ldquo;to the eternal damnation o&rsquo; Holdock, Steiner &amp; Chase.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course I answered &ldquo;Amen,&rdquo; though I had made seven pound ten
+shillings out of the firm. McPhee&rsquo;s enemies were mine, and I was drinking
+his Madeira.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ye&rsquo;ve heard nothing?&rdquo; said Janet. &ldquo;Not a word, not a
+whisper?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not a word, nor a whisper. On my word, I have not.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell him, Mac,&rdquo; said she; and that is another proof of
+Janet&rsquo;s goodness and wifely love. A smaller woman would have babbled
+first, but Janet is five feet nine in her stockings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;re rich,&rdquo; said McPhee. I shook hands all round.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;re damned rich,&rdquo; he added. I shook hands all round a
+second time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go to sea no more&mdash;unless&mdash;there&rsquo;s no
+sayin&rsquo;&mdash;a private yacht, maybe&mdash;wi&rsquo; a small an&rsquo;
+handy auxiliary.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not enough for <i>that</i>,&rdquo; said Janet.
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;re fair rich&mdash;well-to-do, but no more. A new gown for
+church, and one for the theatre. We&rsquo;ll have it made west.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How much is it?&rdquo; I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Twenty-five thousand pounds.&rdquo; I drew a long breath.
+&ldquo;An&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve been earnin&rsquo; twenty-five an&rsquo; twenty
+pound a month!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The last words came away with a roar, as though the wide world was conspiring
+to beat him down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All this time I&rsquo;m waiting,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I know nothing
+since last September. Was it left you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They laughed aloud together. &ldquo;It was left,&rdquo; said McPhee, choking.
+&ldquo;Ou, ay, it was left. That&rsquo;s vara good. Of course it was left.
+Janet, d&rsquo; ye note that? It was left. Now if you&rsquo;d put <i>that</i>
+in your pamphlet it would have been vara jocose. It <i>was</i> left.&rdquo; He
+slapped his thigh and roared till the wine quivered in the decanter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Scotch are a great people, but they are apt to hang over a joke too long,
+particularly when no one can see the point but themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When I rewrite my pamphlet I&rsquo;ll put it in, McPhee. Only I must
+know something more first.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+McPhee thought for the length of half a cigar, while Janet caught my eye and
+led it round the room to one new thing after another&mdash;the new vine-pattern
+carpet, the new chiming rustic clock between the models of the Colombo
+outrigger-boats, the new inlaid sideboard with a purple cut-glass flower-stand,
+the fender of gilt and brass, and last, the new black-and-gold piano.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In October o&rsquo; last year the Board sacked me,&rdquo; began McPhee.
+&ldquo;In October o&rsquo; last year the <i>Breslau</i> came in for winter
+overhaul. She&rsquo;d been runnin&rsquo; eight months&mdash;two hunder
+an&rsquo; forty days&mdash;an&rsquo; I was three days makin&rsquo; up my
+indents, when she went to dry-dock. All told, mark you, it was this side
+o&rsquo; three hunder pound&mdash;to be preceese, two hunder an&rsquo;
+eighty-six pound four shillings. There&rsquo;s not another man could ha&rsquo;
+nursed the <i>Breslau</i> for eight months to that tune. Never
+again&mdash;never again! They may send their boats to the bottom, for aught I
+care.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no need,&rdquo; said Janet, softly. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re
+done wi&rsquo; Holdock, Steiner &amp; Chase.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s irritatin&rsquo;, Janet, it&rsquo;s just irritatin&rsquo;. I
+ha&rsquo; been justified from first to last, as the world knows, but&mdash;but
+I canna forgie &rsquo;em. Ay, wisdom is justified o&rsquo; her children;
+an&rsquo; any other man than me wad ha&rsquo; made the indent eight hunder. Hay
+was our skipper&mdash;ye&rsquo;ll have met him. They shifted him to the
+<i>Torgau</i>, an&rsquo; bade me wait for the <i>Breslau</i> under young
+Bannister. Ye&rsquo;ll obsairve there&rsquo;d been a new election on the Board.
+I heard the shares were sellin&rsquo; hither an&rsquo; yon, an&rsquo; the major
+part of the Board was new to me. The old Board would ne&rsquo;er ha&rsquo; done
+it. They trusted me. But the new Board were all for reorganisation. Young
+Steiner&mdash;Steiner&rsquo;s son&mdash;the Jew, was at the bottom of it,
+an&rsquo; they did not think it worth their while to send me word. The first I
+knew&mdash;an&rsquo; I was Chief Engineer&mdash;was the notice of the
+line&rsquo;s winter sailin&rsquo;s, and the <i>Breslau</i> timed for sixteen
+days between port an&rsquo; port! Sixteen days, man! She&rsquo;s a good boat,
+but eighteen is her summer time, mark you. Sixteen was sheer flytin&rsquo;,
+kitin&rsquo; nonsense, an&rsquo; so I told young Bannister.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got to make it,&rsquo; he said. &rsquo;Ye should not
+ha&rsquo; sent in a three hunder pound indent.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do they look for their boats to be run on air?&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;The
+Board&rsquo;s daft.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;E&rsquo;en tell &rsquo;em so,&rsquo; he says. &lsquo;I&rsquo;m a
+married man, an&rsquo; my fourth&rsquo;s on the ways now, she
+says.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A boy&mdash;wi&rsquo; red hair,&rdquo; Janet put in. Her own hair is the
+splendid red-gold that goes with a creamy complexion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My word, I was an angry man that day! Forbye I was fond o&rsquo; the old
+<i>Breslau</i>, I looked for a little consideration from the Board after twenty
+years&rsquo; service. There was Board-meetin&rsquo; on Wednesday, an&rsquo; I
+slept overnight in the engine-room, takin&rsquo; figures to support my case.
+Well, I put it fair and square before them all. &lsquo;Gentlemen,&rsquo; I
+said, &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve run the <i>Breslau</i> eight seasons, an&rsquo; I
+believe there&rsquo;s no fault to find wi&rsquo; my wark. But if ye haud to
+this&rsquo;&mdash;I waggled the advertisement at &rsquo;em&mdash;&lsquo;this
+that <i>I</i>&rsquo;ve never heard of it till I read it at breakfast, I do
+assure you on my professional reputation, she can never do it. That is to say,
+she can for a while, but at a risk no thinkin&rsquo; man would run.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;What the deil d&rsquo; ye suppose we pass your indents
+for?&rsquo; says old Holdock. &lsquo;Man, we&rsquo;re spendin&rsquo; money like
+watter.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;I&rsquo;ll leave it in the Board&rsquo;s hands,&rsquo; I said,
+&lsquo;if two hunder an&rsquo; eighty-seven pound is anything beyond right and
+reason for eight months.&rsquo; I might ha&rsquo; saved my breath, for the
+Board was new since the last election, an&rsquo; there they sat, the damned
+deevidend-huntin&rsquo; ship-chandlers, deaf as the adders o&rsquo; Scripture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;We must keep faith wi&rsquo; the public,&rsquo; said young
+Steiner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Keep faith wi&rsquo; the <i>Breslau</i>, then,&rsquo; I said.
+&lsquo;She&rsquo;s served you well, an&rsquo; your father before you.
+She&rsquo;ll need her bottom restiffenin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; new bed-plates,
+an&rsquo; turnin&rsquo; out the forward boilers, an&rsquo; re-turnin&rsquo; all
+three cylinders, an&rsquo; refacin&rsquo; all guides, to begin with. It&rsquo;s
+a three months&rsquo; job.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Because one employé is afraid?&rsquo; says young Steiner.
+&lsquo;Maybe a piano in the Chief Engineer&rsquo;s cabin would be more to the
+point.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I crushed my cap in my hands, an&rsquo; thanked God we&rsquo;d no bairns
+an&rsquo; a bit put by.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Understand, gentlemen,&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;If the
+<i>Breslau</i> is made a sixteen-day boat, ye&rsquo;ll find another
+engineer.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Bannister makes no objection,&rsquo; said Holdock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;I&rsquo;m speakin&rsquo; for myself,&rsquo; I said.
+&lsquo;Bannister has bairns.&rsquo; An&rsquo; then I &lsquo;Ye can run her into
+Hell an&rsquo; out again if ye pay pilotage,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;but ye run
+without me.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;That&rsquo;s insolence,&rsquo; said young Steiner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;At your pleasure,&rsquo; I said, turnin&rsquo; to go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Ye can consider yourself dismissed. We must preserve discipline
+among our employés,&rsquo; said old Holdock, an&rsquo; he looked round to see
+that the Board was with him. They knew nothin&rsquo;&mdash;God forgie
+&rsquo;em&mdash;an&rsquo; they nodded me out o&rsquo; the line after twenty
+years&mdash;after twenty years.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I went out an&rsquo; sat down by the hall porter to get my wits again.
+I&rsquo;m thinkin&rsquo; I swore at the Board. Then auld
+McRimmon&mdash;o&rsquo; McNaughten &amp; McRimmon&mdash;came, oot o&rsquo; his
+office, that&rsquo;s on the same floor, an&rsquo; looked at me, proppin&rsquo;
+up one eyelid wi&rsquo; his forefinger. Ye know they call him the Blind Deevil,
+forbye he onythin&rsquo; but blind, an&rsquo; no deevil in his dealin&rsquo;s
+wi&rsquo; me&mdash;McRimmon o&rsquo; the Black Bird Line.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;What&rsquo;s here, Mister McPhee?&rsquo; said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was past prayin&rsquo; for by then. &lsquo;A Chief Engineer sacked
+after twenty years&rsquo; service because he&rsquo;ll not risk the
+<i>Breslau</i> on the new timin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; be damned to ye,
+McRimmon,&rsquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The auld man sucked in his lips an&rsquo; whistled. &lsquo;Ah,&rsquo;
+said he, &lsquo;the new timin&rsquo;. I see!&rsquo; He doddered into the
+Board-room I&rsquo;d just left, an&rsquo; the Dandie-dog that is just his blind
+man&rsquo;s leader stayed wi&rsquo; me. <i>That</i> was providential. In a
+minute he was back again. &lsquo;Ye&rsquo;ve cast your bread on the watter,
+McPhee, an&rsquo; be damned to you,&rsquo; he says. &lsquo;Whaur&rsquo;s my
+dog? My word, is he on your knee? There&rsquo;s more discernment in a dog than
+a Jew. What garred ye curse your Board, McPhee? It&rsquo;s expensive.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;They&rsquo;ll pay more for the <i>Breslau</i>,&rsquo; I said.
+&lsquo;Get off my knee, ye smotherin&rsquo; beast.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Bearin&rsquo;s hot, eh?&rsquo; said McRimmon. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s
+thirty year since a man daur curse me to my face. Time was I&rsquo;d ha&rsquo;
+cast ye doon the stairway for that.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Forgie&rsquo;s all!&rsquo; I said. He was wearin&rsquo; to
+eighty, as I knew. &lsquo;I was wrong, McRimmon; but when a man&rsquo;s shown
+the door for doin&rsquo; his plain duty he&rsquo;s not always ceevil.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;So I hear,&rsquo; says McRimmon. &lsquo;Ha&rsquo; ye ony
+objection to a tramp freighter? It&rsquo;s only fifteen a month, but they say
+the Blind Deevil feeds a man better than others. She&rsquo;s my <i>Kite</i>.
+Come ben. Ye can thank Dandie, here. I&rsquo;m no used to thanks. An&rsquo;
+noo,&rsquo; says he, &lsquo;what possessed ye to throw up your berth wi&rsquo;
+Holdock?&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;The new timin&rsquo;,&rsquo; said I. &lsquo;The <i>Breslau</i>
+will not stand it.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Hoot, oot,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;Ye might ha&rsquo; crammed her
+a little&mdash;enough to show ye were drivin&rsquo; her&mdash;an&rsquo; brought
+her in twa days behind. What&rsquo;s easier than to say ye slowed for
+bearin&rsquo;s, eh? All my men do it, and&mdash;I believe &rsquo;em.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;McRimmon,&rsquo; says I, &lsquo;what&rsquo;s her virginity to a
+lassie?&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He puckered his dry face an&rsquo; twisted in his chair. &lsquo;The
+warld an&rsquo; a&rsquo;,&rsquo; says he. &lsquo;My God, the vara warld
+an&rsquo; a&rsquo;. (But what ha&rsquo; you or me to do wi&rsquo; virginity,
+this late along?)&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;This,&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;There&rsquo;s just one thing that
+each one of us in his trade or profession will <i>not</i> do for ony
+consideration whatever. If I run to time I run to time, barrin&rsquo; always
+the risks o&rsquo; the high seas. Less than that, under God, I have not done.
+More than that, by God, I will not do! There&rsquo;s no trick o&rsquo; the
+trade I&rsquo;m not acquaint wi&rsquo;&mdash;&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;So I&rsquo;ve heard,&rsquo; says McRimmon, dry as a biscuit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;But yon matter o&rsquo; fair runnin&rsquo; s just my Shekinah,
+ye&rsquo;ll understand. I daurna tamper wi&rsquo; <i>that</i>. Nursing weak
+engines is fair craftsmanship; but what the Board ask is cheatin&rsquo;,
+wi&rsquo; the risk o&rsquo; manslaughter addeetional.&rsquo; Ye&rsquo;ll note I
+know my business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There was some more talk, an&rsquo; next week I went aboard the
+<i>Kite</i>, twenty-five hunder ton, simple compound, a Black Bird tramp. The
+deeper she rode, the better she&rsquo;d steam. I&rsquo;ve snapped as much as
+eleven out of her, but eight point three was her fair normal. Good food forward
+an&rsquo; better aft, all indents passed wi&rsquo;out marginal remarks, the
+best coal, new donkeys, and good crews. There was nothin&rsquo; the old man
+would not do, except paint. That was his deeficulty. Ye could no more draw
+paint than his last teeth from him. He&rsquo;d come down to dock, an&rsquo; his
+boats a scandal all along the watter, an&rsquo; he&rsquo;d whine an&rsquo; cry
+an&rsquo; say they looked all he could desire. Every owner has his <i>non plus
+ultra</i>, I&rsquo;ve obsairved. Paint was McRimmon&rsquo;s. But you could get
+round his engines without riskin&rsquo; your life, an&rsquo;, for all his
+blindness, I&rsquo;ve seen him reject five flawed intermediates, one after the
+other, on a nod from me; an&rsquo; his cattle-fittin&rsquo;s were guaranteed
+for North Atlantic winter weather. Ye ken what <i>that</i> means? McRimmon
+an&rsquo; the Black Bird Line, God bless him!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I forgot to say she would lie down an&rsquo; fill her forward deck
+green, an&rsquo; snore away into a twenty-knot gale forty-five to the minute,
+three an&rsquo; a half knots an hour, the engines runnin&rsquo; sweet an&rsquo;
+true as a bairn breathin&rsquo; in its sleep. Bell was skipper; an&rsquo;
+forbye there&rsquo;s no love lost between crews an&rsquo; owners, we were fond
+o&rsquo; the auld Blind Deevil an&rsquo; his dog, an&rsquo; I&rsquo;m
+thinkin&rsquo; he liked us. He was worth the windy side o&rsquo; twa million
+sterlin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; no friend to his own blood-kin. Money&rsquo;s an
+awfu&rsquo; thing&mdash;overmuch&mdash;for a lonely man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d taken her out twice, there an&rsquo; back again, when word
+came o&rsquo; the <i>Breslau&rsquo;s</i> breakdown, just as I prophesied.
+Calder was her engineer&mdash;he&rsquo;s not fit to run a tug down the
+Solent&mdash;and he fairly lifted the engines off the bed-plates, an&rsquo;
+they fell down in heaps, by what I heard. So she filled from the after
+stuffin&rsquo;-box to the after bulkhead, an&rsquo; lay star-gazing, with
+seventy-nine squealin&rsquo; passengers in the saloon, till the
+<i>Camaralzaman</i> o&rsquo; Ramsey &amp; Gold&rsquo;s Cartagena line gave her
+a tow to the tune o&rsquo; five thousand seven hunder an&rsquo; forty pound,
+wi&rsquo; costs in the Admiralty Court. She was helpless, ye&rsquo;ll
+understand, an&rsquo; in no case to meet ony weather. Five thousand seven
+hunder an&rsquo; forty pounds, <i>with</i> costs, an&rsquo; exclusive o&rsquo;
+new engines! They&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; done better to ha&rsquo; kept me on the old
+timin&rsquo;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, even so, the new Board were all for retrenchment. Young Steiner,
+the Jew, was at the bottom of it. They sacked men right an&rsquo; left, that
+would not eat the dirt the Board gave &rsquo;em. They cut down repairs; they
+fed crews wi&rsquo; leavin&rsquo;s an&rsquo; scrapin&rsquo;s; and,
+reversin&rsquo;, McRimmon&rsquo;s practice, they hid their defeeciencies
+wi&rsquo; paint an&rsquo; cheap gildin&rsquo;. <i>Quem Deus vult perrdere
+prrius dementat</i>, ye remember.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In January we went to dry-dock, an&rsquo; in the next dock lay the
+<i>Grotkau</i>, their big freighter that was the <i>Dolabella</i> o&rsquo;
+Piegan, Piegan &amp; Walsh&rsquo;s line in &rsquo;84&mdash;a Clyde-built iron
+boat, a flat-bottomed, pigeon-breasted, under-engined, bull-nosed bitch of a
+five thousand ton freighter, that would neither steer, nor steam, nor stop when
+ye asked her. Whiles she&rsquo;d attend to her helm, whiles she&rsquo;d take
+charge, whiles she&rsquo;d wait to scratch herself, an&rsquo; whiles
+she&rsquo;d buttock into a dockhead. But Holdock and Steiner had bought her
+cheap, and painted her all over like the Hoor o&rsquo; Babylon, an&rsquo; we
+called her the <i>Hoor</i> for short.&rdquo; (By the way, McPhee kept to that
+name throughout the rest of his tale; so you must read accordingly.) &ldquo;I
+went to see young Bannister&mdash;he had to take what the Board gave him,
+an&rsquo; he an&rsquo; Calder were shifted together from the <i>Breslau</i> to
+this abortion&mdash;an&rsquo; talkin&rsquo; to him I went into the dock under
+her. Her plates were pitted till the men that were paint, paint, paintin&rsquo;
+her laughed at it. But the warst was at the last. She&rsquo;d a great clumsy
+iron twelve-foot Thresher propeller&mdash;Aitcheson designed the
+<i>Kite&rsquo;s</i>&rsquo;&mdash;and just on the tail o&rsquo; the shaft,
+behind the boss, was a red weepin&rsquo; crack ye could ha&rsquo; put a
+penknife to. Man, it was an awful crack!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;When d&rsquo; ye ship a new tail-shaft?&rsquo; I said to
+Bannister.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He knew what I meant. &lsquo;Oh, yon&rsquo;s a superfeecial flaw,&rsquo;
+says he, not lookin&rsquo; at me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Superfeecial Gehenna!&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;Ye&rsquo;ll not take
+her oot wi&rsquo; a solution o&rsquo; continuity that like.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;They&rsquo;ll putty it up this evening,&rsquo; he said.
+&lsquo;I&rsquo;m a married man, an&rsquo;&mdash;ye used to know the
+Board.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I e&rsquo;en said what was gie&rsquo;d me in that hour. Ye know how a
+drydock echoes. I saw young Steiner standin&rsquo; listenin&rsquo; above me,
+an&rsquo;, man, he used language provocative of a breach o&rsquo; the peace. I
+was a spy and a disgraced employé, an&rsquo; a corrupter o&rsquo; young
+Bannister&rsquo;s morals, an&rsquo; he&rsquo;d prosecute me for libel. He went
+away when I ran up the steps&mdash;I&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; thrown him into the dock
+if I&rsquo;d caught him&mdash;an&rsquo; there I met McRimmon, wi&rsquo; Dandie
+pullin&rsquo; on the chain, guidin&rsquo; the auld man among the railway lines.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;McPhee,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;ye&rsquo;re no paid to fight
+Holdock, Steiner, Chase &amp; Company, Limited, when ye meet. What&rsquo;s
+wrong between you?&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;No more than a tail-shaft rotten as a kail-stump. For ony sakes
+go an&rsquo; look, McRimmon. It&rsquo;s a comedietta.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;I&rsquo;m feared o&rsquo; yon conversational Hebrew,&rsquo; said
+he. &lsquo;Whaur&rsquo;s the flaw, an&rsquo; what like?&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;A seven-inch crack just behind the boss. There&rsquo;s no power
+on earth will fend it just jarrin&rsquo; off.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;When?&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;That&rsquo;s beyon&rsquo; my knowledge,&rsquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;So it is; so it is,&rsquo; said McRimmon. &lsquo;We&rsquo;ve all
+oor leemitations. Ye&rsquo;re certain it was a crack?&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Man, it&rsquo;s a crevasse,&rsquo; I said, for there were no
+words to describe the magnitude of it. &lsquo;An&rsquo; young Bannister&rsquo;s
+sayin&rsquo; it&rsquo;s no more than a superfeecial flaw!&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Weell, I tak&rsquo; it oor business is to mind oor business. If
+ye&rsquo;ve ony friends aboard her, McPhee, why not bid them to a bit dinner at
+Radley&rsquo;s?&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;I was thinkin&rsquo; o&rsquo; tea in the cuddy,&rsquo; I said.
+&lsquo;Engineers o&rsquo; tramp freighters cannot afford hotel prices.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Na! na!&rsquo; says the auld man, whimperin&rsquo;. &lsquo;Not
+the cuddy. They&rsquo;ll laugh at my <i>Kite</i>, for she&rsquo;s no plastered
+with paint like the <i>Hoor</i>. Bid them to Radley&rsquo;s, McPhee, an&rsquo;
+send me the bill. Thank Dandie, here, man. I&rsquo;m no used to thanks.&rsquo;
+Then he turned him round. (I was just thinkin&rsquo; the vara same thing.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&lsquo;Mister McPhee,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;this is <i>not</i> senile
+dementia.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Preserve &rsquo;s!&rsquo; I said, clean jumped oot o&rsquo;
+mysel&rsquo;. &lsquo;I was but thinkin&rsquo; you&rsquo;re fey,
+McRimmon.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dod, the auld deevil laughed till he nigh sat down on Dandie.
+&lsquo;Send me the bill,&rsquo; says he. &lsquo;I&rsquo;m long past champagne,
+but tell me how it tastes the morn.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bell and I bid young Bannister and Calder to dinner at Radley&rsquo;s.
+They&rsquo;ll have no laughin&rsquo; an&rsquo; singin&rsquo; there, but we took
+a private room&mdash;like yacht-owners fra&rsquo; Cowes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+McPhee grinned all over, and lay back to think.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And then?&rdquo; said I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We were no drunk in ony preceese sense o&rsquo; the word, but
+Radley&rsquo;s showed me the dead men. There were six magnums o&rsquo; dry
+champagne an&rsquo; maybe a bottle o&rsquo; whisky.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean to tell me that you four got away with a magnum and a half a
+piece, besides whisky?&rdquo; I demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+McPhee looked down upon me from between his shoulders with toleration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Man, we were not settin&rsquo; down to drink,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;They no more than made us wutty. To be sure, young Bannister laid his
+head on the table an&rsquo; greeted like a bairn, an&rsquo; Calder was all for
+callin&rsquo; on Steiner at two in the morn an&rsquo; painting him
+galley-green; but they&rsquo;d been drinkin&rsquo; the afternoon. Lord, how
+they twa cursed the Board, an&rsquo; the <i>Grotkau</i>, an&rsquo; the
+tail-shaft, an&rsquo; the engines, an&rsquo; a&rsquo;! They didna talk o&rsquo;
+superfeecial flaws that night. I mind young Bannister an&rsquo; Calder
+shakin&rsquo; hands on a bond to be revenged on the Board at ony reasonable
+cost this side o&rsquo; losing their certificates. Now mark ye how false
+economy ruins business. The Board fed them like swine (I have good reason to
+know it), an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve obsairved wi&rsquo; my ain people that if ye
+touch his stomach ye wauken the deil in a Scot. Men will tak&rsquo; a dredger
+across the Atlantic if they&rsquo;re well fed, an&rsquo; fetch her somewhere on
+the broadside o&rsquo; the Americas; but bad food&rsquo;s bad service the warld
+over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The bill went to McRimmon, an&rsquo; he said no more to me till the
+week-end, when I was at him for more paint, for we&rsquo;d heard the
+<i>Kite</i> was chartered Liverpool-side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&lsquo;Bide whaur ye&rsquo;re put,&rsquo; said the Blind Deevil. &lsquo;Man, do
+ye wash in champagne? The <i>Kite&rsquo;s</i> no leavin&rsquo; here till I gie
+the order, an&rsquo;&mdash;how am I to waste paint on her, wi&rsquo; the
+<i>Lammergeyer</i> docked for who knows how long an&rsquo; a&rsquo;?&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She was our big freighter&mdash;McIntyre was engineer&mdash;an&rsquo; I
+knew she&rsquo;d come from overhaul not three months. That morn I met
+McRimmon&rsquo;s head-clerk&mdash;ye&rsquo;ll not know him&mdash;fair
+bitin&rsquo; his nails off wi&rsquo; mortification.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;The auld man&rsquo;s gone gyte,&rsquo; says he. &lsquo;He&rsquo;s
+withdrawn the <i>Lammergeyer</i>.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Maybe he has reasons,&rsquo; says I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Reasons! He&rsquo;s daft!&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;He&rsquo;ll no be daft till he begins to paint,&rsquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;That&rsquo;s just what he&rsquo;s done&mdash;and South American
+freights higher than we&rsquo;ll live to see them again. He&rsquo;s laid her up
+to paint her&mdash;to paint her&mdash;to paint her!&rsquo; says the little
+clerk, dancin&rsquo; like a hen on a hot plate. &lsquo;Five thousand ton
+o&rsquo; potential freight rottin&rsquo; in drydock, man; an&rsquo; he
+dolin&rsquo; the paint out in quarter-pound tins, for it cuts him to the heart,
+mad though he is. An&rsquo; the <i>Grotkau</i>&mdash;the <i>Grotkau</i> of all
+conceivable bottoms&mdash;soaking up every pound that should be ours at
+Liverpool!&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was staggered wi&rsquo; this folly&mdash;considerin&rsquo; the dinner
+at Radley&rsquo;s in connection wi&rsquo; the same.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Ye may well stare, McPhee,&rsquo; says the head-clerk.
+&lsquo;There&rsquo;s engines, an&rsquo; rollin&rsquo; stock, an&rsquo; iron
+bridges&mdash;d&rsquo;ye know what freights are noo? an&rsquo; pianos,
+an&rsquo; millinery, an&rsquo; fancy Brazil cargo o&rsquo; every species
+pourin&rsquo; into the <i>Grotkau</i>&mdash;the <i>Grotkau</i> o&rsquo; the
+Jerusalem firm&mdash;and the <i>Lammergeyer</i>&rsquo;s bein&rsquo;
+painted!&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Losh, I thought he&rsquo;d drop dead wi&rsquo; the fits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I could say no more than &lsquo;Obey orders, if ye break owners,&rsquo;
+but on the <i>Kite</i> we believed McRimmon was mad; an&rsquo; McIntyre of the
+<i>Lammergeyer</i> was for lockin&rsquo; him up by some patent legal process
+he&rsquo;d found in a book o&rsquo; maritime law. An&rsquo; a&rsquo; that week
+South American freights rose an&rsquo; rose. It was sinfu&rsquo;!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Syne Bell got orders to tak&rsquo; the <i>Kite</i> round to Liverpool in
+water-ballast, and McRimmon came to bid&rsquo;s good-bye, yammerin&rsquo;
+an&rsquo; whinin&rsquo; o&rsquo;er the acres o&rsquo; paint he&rsquo;d lavished
+on the <i>Lammergeyer</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;I look to you to retrieve it,&rsquo; says he. &lsquo;I look to
+you to reimburse me! &rsquo;Fore God, why are ye not cast off? Are ye
+dawdlin&rsquo; in dock for a purpose?&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;What odds, McRimmon?&rsquo; says Bell. &lsquo;We&rsquo;ll be a
+day behind the fair at Liverpool. The <i>Grotkau</i>&rsquo;s got all the
+freight that might ha&rsquo; been ours an&rsquo; the
+<i>Lammergeyer</i>&rsquo;s.&rsquo; McRimmon laughed an&rsquo;
+chuckled&mdash;the pairfect eemage o&rsquo; senile dementia. Ye ken his
+eyebrows wark up an&rsquo; down like a gorilla&rsquo;s.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Ye&rsquo;re under sealed orders,&rsquo; said he, tee-heein&rsquo;
+an&rsquo; scratchin&rsquo; himself. &lsquo;Yon&rsquo;s they&rsquo;&mdash;to be
+opened <i>seriatim</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Says Bell, shufflin&rsquo; the envelopes when the auld man had gone
+ashore: &lsquo;We&rsquo;re to creep round a&rsquo; the south coast,
+standin&rsquo; in for orders&mdash;this weather, too. There&rsquo;s no question
+o&rsquo; his lunacy now.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, we buttocked the auld <i>Kite</i> along&mdash;vara bad weather we
+made&mdash;standin&rsquo; in all alongside for telegraphic orders, which are
+the curse o&rsquo; skippers. Syne we made over to Holyhead, an&rsquo; Bell
+opened the last envelope for the last instructions. I was wi&rsquo; him in the
+cuddy, an&rsquo; he threw it over to me, cryin&rsquo;: &lsquo;Did ye ever know
+the like, Mac?&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll no say what McRimmon had written, but he was far from mad.
+There was a sou&rsquo;wester brewin&rsquo; when we made the mouth o&rsquo; the
+Mersey, a bitter cold morn wi&rsquo; a grey-green sea and a grey-green
+sky&mdash;Liverpool weather, as they say; an&rsquo; there we lay
+choppin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; the crew swore. Ye canna keep secrets aboard ship.
+They thought McRimmon was mad, too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Syne we saw the <i>Grotkau</i> rollin&rsquo; oot on the top o&rsquo;
+flood, deep an&rsquo; double deep, wi&rsquo; her new-painted funnel an&rsquo;
+her new-painted boats an&rsquo; a&rsquo;. She looked her name, an&rsquo;,
+moreover, she coughed like it. Calder tauld me at Radley&rsquo;s what ailed his
+engines, but my own ear would ha&rsquo; told me twa mile awa&rsquo;, by the
+beat o&rsquo; them. Round we came, plungin&rsquo; an&rsquo; squatterin&rsquo;
+in her wake, an&rsquo; the wind cut wi&rsquo; good promise o&rsquo; more to
+come. By six it blew hard but clear, an&rsquo; before the middle watch it was a
+sou&rsquo;wester in airnest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;She&rsquo;ll edge into Ireland, this gait,&rsquo; says Bell. I
+was with him on the bridge, watchin&rsquo; the <i>Grotkau&rsquo;s</i> port
+light. Ye canna see green so far as red, or we&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; kept to
+leeward. We&rsquo;d no passengers to consider, an&rsquo; (all eyes being on the
+<i>Grotkau</i>) we fair walked into a liner rampin&rsquo; home to Liverpool.
+Or, to be preceese, Bell no more than twisted the <i>Kite</i> oot from under
+her bows, and there was a little damnin&rsquo; betwix&rsquo; the twa bridges.
+&ldquo;Noo a passenger&rdquo;&mdash;McPhee regarded me
+benignantly&mdash;&ldquo;wad ha&rsquo; told the papers that as soon as he got
+to the Customs. We stuck to the <i>Grotkau&rsquo;s</i> tail that night
+an&rsquo; the next twa days&mdash;she slowed down to five knot by my
+reckonin&rsquo; and we lapped along the weary way to the Fastnet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you don&rsquo;t go by the Fastnet to get to any South American port,
+do you?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>We</i> do not. We prefer to go as direct as may be. But we were
+followin&rsquo; the <i>Grotkau</i>, an&rsquo; she&rsquo;d no walk into that
+gale for ony consideration. Knowin&rsquo; what I did to her discredit, I
+couldna blame young Bannister. It was warkin&rsquo; up to a North Atlantic
+winter gale, snow an&rsquo; sleet an&rsquo; a perishin&rsquo; wind. Eh, it was
+like the Deil walkin&rsquo; abroad o&rsquo; the surface o&rsquo; the deep,
+whuppin&rsquo; off the top o&rsquo; the waves before he made up his mind.
+They&rsquo;d bore up against it so far, but the minute she was clear o&rsquo;
+the Skelligs she fair tucked up her skirts an&rsquo; ran for it by Dunmore
+Head. Wow, she rolled!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;She&rsquo;ll be makin&rsquo; Smerwick,&rsquo; says Bell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;She&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; tried for Ventry by noo if she meant
+that,&rsquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;They&rsquo;ll roll the funnel oot o&rsquo; her, this gait,&rsquo;
+says Bell. &lsquo;Why canna Bannister keep her head to sea?&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the tail-shaft. Ony rollin&rsquo;s better than pitchin&rsquo;
+wi&rsquo; superfeecial cracks in the tail-shaft. Calder knows that much,&rsquo;
+I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;It&rsquo;s ill wark retreevin&rsquo; steamers this
+weather,&rsquo; said Bell. His beard and whiskers were frozen to his oilskin,
+an&rsquo; the spray was white on the weather side of him. Pairfect North
+Atlantic winter weather!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One by one the sea raxed away our three boats, an&rsquo; the davits were
+crumpled like ram&rsquo;s horns.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Yon&rsquo;s bad,&rsquo; said Bell, at the last. &lsquo;Ye canna
+pass a hawser wi&rsquo;oot a boat.&rsquo; Bell was a vara judeecious
+man&mdash;for an Aberdonian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not one that fashes himself for eventualities outside the
+engine-room, so I e&rsquo;en slipped down betwixt waves to see how the
+<i>Kite</i> fared. Man, she&rsquo;s the best geared boat of her class that ever
+left Clyde! Kinloch, my second, knew her as well as I did. I found him
+dryin&rsquo; his socks on the main-steam, an&rsquo; combin&rsquo; his whiskers
+wi&rsquo; the comb Janet gied me last year, for the warld an&rsquo; a&rsquo; as
+though we were in port. I tried the feed, speered into the stoke-hole, thumbed
+all bearin&rsquo;s, spat on the thrust for luck, gied &rsquo;em my
+blessin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; took Kinloch&rsquo;s socks before I went up to the
+bridge again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then Bell handed me the wheel, an&rsquo; went below to warm himself.
+When he came up my gloves were frozen to the spokes an&rsquo; the ice clicked
+over my eyelids. Pairfect North Atlantic winter weather, as I was sayin&rsquo;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The gale blew out by night, but we lay in smotherin&rsquo; cross-seas
+that made the auld <i>Kite</i> chatter from stem to stern. I slowed to
+thirty-four, I mind&mdash;no, thirty-seven. There was a long swell the morn,
+an&rsquo; the <i>Grotkau</i> was headin&rsquo; into it west awa&rsquo;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;She&rsquo;ll win to Rio yet, tail-shaft or no tail-shaft,&rsquo;
+says Bell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Last night shook her,&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;She&rsquo;ll jar it
+off yet, mark my word.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We were then, maybe, a hunder and fifty mile westsou&rsquo;west o&rsquo;
+Slyne Head, by dead reckonin&rsquo;. Next day we made a hunder an&rsquo;
+thirty&mdash;ye&rsquo;ll note we were not racin-boats&mdash;an&rsquo; the day
+after a hunder an&rsquo; sixty-one, an&rsquo; that made us, we&rsquo;ll say,
+Eighteen an&rsquo; a bittock west, an&rsquo; maybe Fifty-one an&rsquo; a
+bittock north, crossin&rsquo; all the North Atlantic liner lanes on the long
+slant, always in sight o&rsquo; the <i>Grotkau</i>, creepin&rsquo; up by night
+and fallin&rsquo; awa&rsquo; by day. After the gale it was cold weather
+wi&rsquo; dark nights.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was in the engine-room on Friday night, just before the middle watch,
+when Bell whustled down the tube: &lsquo;She&rsquo;s done it&rsquo;; an&rsquo;
+up I came.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The <i>Grotkau</i> was just a fair distance south, an&rsquo; one by one
+she ran up the three red lights in a vertical line&mdash;the sign of a steamer
+not under control.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Yon&rsquo;s a tow for us,&rsquo; said Bell, lickin&rsquo; his
+chops. &lsquo;She&rsquo;ll be worth more than the <i>Breslau</i>. We&rsquo;ll
+go down to her, McPhee!&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Bide a while,&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;The seas fair throng
+wi&rsquo; ships here.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Reason why,&rsquo; said Bell. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s a fortune gaun
+beggin&rsquo;. What d&rsquo; ye think, man?&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Gie her till daylight. She knows we&rsquo;re here. If Bannister
+needs help he&rsquo;ll loose a rocket.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Wha told ye Bannister&rsquo;s need? We&rsquo;ll ha&rsquo; some
+rag-an&rsquo;-bone tramp snappin&rsquo; her up under oor nose,&rsquo; said he;
+an&rsquo; he put the wheel over. We were goin&rsquo; slow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Bannister wad like better to go home on a liner an&rsquo; eat in
+the saloon. Mind ye what they said o&rsquo; Holdock &amp; Steiner&rsquo;s food
+that night at Radley&rsquo;s? Keep her awa&rsquo;, man&mdash;keep her
+awa&rsquo;. A tow&rsquo;s a tow, but a derelict&rsquo;s big salvage.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;E-eh!&rsquo; said Bell. &lsquo;Yon&rsquo;s an inshot o&rsquo;
+yours, Mac. I love ye like a brother. We&rsquo;ll bide whaur we are till
+daylight&rsquo;; an&rsquo; he kept her awa&rsquo;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Syne up went a rocket forward, an&rsquo; twa on the bridge, an&rsquo; a
+blue light aft. Syne a tar-barrel forward again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;She&rsquo;s sinkin&rsquo;,&rsquo; said Bell. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s
+all gaun, an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ll get no more than a pair o&rsquo; night-glasses
+for pickin&rsquo; up young Bannister&mdash;the fool!&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Fair an&rsquo; soft again,&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;She&rsquo;s
+signallin&rsquo; to the south of us. Bannister knows as well as I that one
+rocket would bring the <i>Kite</i>. He&rsquo;ll no be wastin&rsquo; fireworks
+for nothin&rsquo;. Hear her ca&rsquo;!&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The <i>Grotkau</i> whustled an&rsquo; whustled for five minutes,
+an&rsquo; then there were more fireworks&mdash;a regular exhibeetion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;That&rsquo;s no for men in the regular trade,&rsquo; says Bell.
+&lsquo;Ye&rsquo;re right, Mac. That&rsquo;s for a cuddy full o&rsquo;
+passengers.&rsquo; He blinked through the night-glasses when it lay a bit thick
+to southward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;What d&rsquo; ye make of it?&rsquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Liner,&rsquo; he says. &lsquo;Yon&rsquo;s her rocket. Ou, ay;
+they&rsquo;ve waukened the gold-strapped skipper, an&rsquo;&mdash;noo
+they&rsquo;ve waukened the passengers. They&rsquo;re turnin&rsquo; on the
+electrics, cabin by cabin. Yon&rsquo;s anither rocket! They&rsquo;re
+comin&rsquo; up to help the perishin&rsquo; in deep watters.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Gie me the glass,&rsquo; I said. But Bell danced on the bridge,
+clean dementit. &lsquo;Mails-mails-mails!&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;Under contract
+wi&rsquo; the Government for the due conveyance o&rsquo; the mails; an&rsquo;
+as such, Mac, ye&rsquo;ll note, she may rescue life at sea, but she canna
+tow!&mdash;she canna tow! Yon&rsquo;s her night-signal. She&rsquo;ll be up in
+half an hour!&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Gowk!&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;an&rsquo; we blazin&rsquo; here
+wi&rsquo; all oor lights. Oh, Bell, ye&rsquo;re a fool!&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He tumbled off the bridge forward, an&rsquo; I tumbled aft, an&rsquo;
+before ye could wink our lights were oot, the engine-room hatch was covered,
+an&rsquo; we lay pitch-dark, watchin&rsquo; the lights o&rsquo; the liner come
+up that the <i>Grotkau</i>&rsquo;d been signallin&rsquo; to. Twenty knot an
+hour she came, every cabin lighted, an&rsquo; her boats swung awa&rsquo;. It
+was grandly done, an&rsquo; in the inside of an hour. She stopped like Mrs.
+Holdock&rsquo;s machine; down went the gangway, down went the boats, an&rsquo;
+in ten minutes we heard the passengers cheerin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; awa&rsquo; she
+fled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;They&rsquo;ll tell o&rsquo; this all the days they live,&rsquo;
+said Bell. &lsquo;A rescue at sea by night, as pretty as a play. Young
+Bannister an&rsquo; Calder will be drinkin&rsquo; in the saloon, an&rsquo; six
+months hence the Board o&rsquo; Trade &rsquo;ll gie the skipper a pair o&rsquo;
+binoculars. It&rsquo;s vara philanthropic all round.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll lay by till day&mdash;ye may think we waited for it
+wi&rsquo; sore eyes an&rsquo; there sat the <i>Grotkau</i>, her nose a bit
+cocked, just leerin&rsquo; at us. She looked paifectly ridiculous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;She&rsquo;ll be fillin&rsquo; aft,&rsquo; says Bell; &lsquo;for
+why is she down by the stern? The tail-shaft&rsquo;s punched a hole in her,
+an&rsquo;&mdash;we &rsquo;ve no boats. There&rsquo;s three hunder thousand
+pound sterlin&rsquo;, at a conservative estimate, droonin&rsquo; before our
+eyes. What&rsquo;s to do?&rsquo; An&rsquo; his bearin&rsquo;s got hot again in
+a minute: he was an incontinent man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Run her as near as ye daur,&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;Gie me a jacket
+an&rsquo; a lifeline, an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ll swum for it.&rsquo; There was a bit
+lump of a sea, an&rsquo; it was cold in the wind&mdash;vara cold; but
+they&rsquo;d gone overside like passengers, young Bannister an&rsquo; Calder
+an&rsquo; a&rsquo;, leaving the gangway down on the lee-side. It would
+ha&rsquo; been a flyin&rsquo; in the face o&rsquo; manifest Providence to
+overlook the invitation. We were within fifty yards o&rsquo; her while Kinloch
+was garmin&rsquo; me all over wi&rsquo; oil behind the galley; an&rsquo; as we
+ran past I went outboard for the salvage o&rsquo; three hunder thousand pound.
+Man, it was perishin&rsquo; cold, but I&rsquo;d done my job judgmatically,
+an&rsquo; came scrapin&rsquo; all along her side slap on to the lower
+gratin&rsquo; o&rsquo; the gangway. No one more astonished than me, I assure
+ye. Before I&rsquo;d caught my breath I&rsquo;d skinned both my knees on the
+gratin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; was climbin&rsquo; up before she rolled again. I made
+my line fast to the rail, an&rsquo; squattered aft to young Bannister&rsquo;s
+cabin, whaaur I dried me wi&rsquo; everything in his bunk, an&rsquo; put on
+every conceivable sort o&rsquo; rig I found till the blood was
+circulatin&rsquo;. Three pair drawers, I mind I found&mdash;to begin
+upon&mdash;an&rsquo; I needed them all. It was the coldest cold I remember in
+all my experience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Syne I went aft to the engine-room. The <i>Grotkau</i> sat on her own
+tail, as they say. She was vara shortshafted, an&rsquo; her gear was all aft.
+There was four or five foot o&rsquo; water in the engine-room slummockin&rsquo;
+to and fro, black an&rsquo; greasy; maybe there was six foot. The stoke-hold
+doors were screwed home, an&rsquo; the stoke-hold was tight enough, but for a
+minute the mess in the engine-room deceived me. Only for a minute, though,
+an&rsquo; that was because I was not, in a manner o&rsquo; speakin&rsquo;, as
+calm as ordinar&rsquo;. I looked again to mak&rsquo; sure. &rsquo;T was just
+black wi&rsquo; bilge: dead watter that must ha&rsquo; come in fortuitously, ye
+ken.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;McPhee, I&rsquo;m only a passenger,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;but you
+don&rsquo;t persuade me that six foot o&rsquo; water can come into an
+engine-room fortuitously.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who&rsquo;s tryin&rsquo; to persuade one way or the other?&rdquo; McPhee
+retorted. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m statin&rsquo; the facts o&rsquo; the case&mdash;the
+simple, natural facts. Six or seven foot o&rsquo; dead watter in the
+engine-room is a vara depressin&rsquo; sight if ye think there&rsquo;s like to
+be more comin&rsquo;; but I did not consider that such was likely, and so, yell
+note, I was not depressed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all very well, but I want to know about the water,&rdquo; I
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve told ye. There was six feet or more there, wi&rsquo;
+Calder&rsquo;s cap floatin&rsquo; on top.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where did it come from?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Weel, in the confusion o&rsquo; things after the propeller had dropped
+off an&rsquo; the engines were racin&rsquo; an&rsquo; a&rsquo;, it&rsquo;s vara
+possible that Calder might ha&rsquo; lost it off his head an&rsquo; no troubled
+himself to pick it up again. I remember seem&rsquo; that cap on him at
+Southampton.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to know about the cap. I&rsquo;m asking where the
+water came from and what it was doing there, and why you were so certain that
+it wasn&rsquo;t a leak, McPhee?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For good reason&mdash;for good an&rsquo; sufficient reason.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Give it to me, then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Weel, it&rsquo;s a reason that does not properly concern myself only. To
+be preceese, I&rsquo;m of opinion that it was due, the watter, in part to an
+error o&rsquo; judgment in another man. We can a&rsquo; mak&rsquo;
+mistakes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I beg your pardon?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I got me to the rail again, an&rsquo;, &lsquo;What&rsquo;s wrang?&rsquo;
+said Bell, hailin&rsquo;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;She&rsquo;ll do,&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;Send&rsquo;s o&rsquo;er a
+hawser, an&rsquo; a man to steer. I&rsquo;ll pull him in by the
+life-line.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I could see heads bobbin&rsquo; back an&rsquo; forth, an&rsquo; a whuff
+or two o&rsquo; strong words. Then Bell said: &lsquo;They&rsquo;ll not trust
+themselves&mdash;one of &rsquo;em&mdash;in this watter&mdash;except Kinloch,
+an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ll no spare him.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;The more salvage to me, then,&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll
+make shift <i>solo</i>.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Says one dock-rat, at this: &lsquo;D&rsquo; ye think she&rsquo;s
+safe?&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;I&rsquo;ll guarantee ye nothing,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;except
+maybe a hammerin&rsquo; for keepin&rsquo; me this long.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then he sings out: &lsquo;There&rsquo;s no more than one lifebelt,
+an&rsquo; they canna find it, or I&rsquo;d come.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Throw him over, the Jezebel,&rsquo; I said, for I was oot
+o&rsquo; patience; an&rsquo; they took haud o&rsquo; that volunteer before he
+knew what was in store, and hove him over, in the bight of my life-line. So I
+e&rsquo;en hauled him upon the sag of it, hand over fist&mdash;a vara welcome
+recruit when I&rsquo;d tilted the salt watter oot of him: for, by the way, he
+could na swim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Syne they bent a twa-inch rope to the life-line, an&rsquo; a hawser to
+that, an&rsquo; I led the rope o&rsquo;er the drum of a hand-winch forward,
+an&rsquo; we sweated the hawser inboard an&rsquo; made it fast to the
+<i>Grotkau&rsquo;s</i> bitts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bell brought the <i>Kite</i> so close I feared she&rsquo;d roll in
+an&rsquo; do the <i>Grotkau&rsquo;s</i> plates a mischief. He hove anither
+life-line to me, an&rsquo; went astern, an&rsquo; we had all the weary winch
+work to do again wi&rsquo; a second hawser. For all that, Bell was right:
+we&rsquo;d along tow before us, an&rsquo; though Providence had helped us that
+far, there was no sense in leavin&rsquo; too much to its keepin&rsquo;. When
+the second hawser was fast, I was wet wi&rsquo; sweat, an&rsquo; I cried Bell
+to tak&rsquo; up his slack an&rsquo; go home. The other man was by way o&rsquo;
+helpin&rsquo; the work wi&rsquo; askin&rsquo; for drinks, but I e&rsquo;en told
+him he must hand reef an&rsquo; steer, beginnin&rsquo; with steerin&rsquo;, for
+I was goin&rsquo; to turn in. He steered&mdash;oh, ay, he steered, in a manner
+o&rsquo; speakin&rsquo;. At the least, he grippit the spokes an&rsquo; twiddled
+&rsquo;em an&rsquo; looked wise, but I doubt if the <i>Hoor</i> ever felt it. I
+turned in there an&rsquo; then, to young Bannister&rsquo;s bunk, an&rsquo;
+slept past expression. I waukened ragin&rsquo; wi&rsquo; hunger, a fair lump
+o&rsquo; sea runnin&rsquo;, the <i>Kite</i> snorin&rsquo; awa&rsquo; four knots
+an hour; an&rsquo; the <i>Grotkau</i> slappin&rsquo; her nose under, an&rsquo;
+yawin&rsquo; an&rsquo; standin&rsquo; over at discretion. She was a most
+disgracefu&rsquo; tow. But the shameful thing of all was the food. I raxed me a
+meal fra galley-shelves an&rsquo; pantries an&rsquo; lazareetes an&rsquo;
+cubby-holes that I would not ha&rsquo; gied to the mate of a Cardiff collier;
+an&rsquo; ye ken we say a Cardiff mate will eat clinkers to save waste.
+I&rsquo;m sayin&rsquo; it was simply vile! The crew had written what
+<i>they</i> thought of it on the new paint o&rsquo; the fo&rsquo;c&rsquo;sle,
+but I had not a decent soul wi&rsquo; me to complain on. There was
+nothin&rsquo; for me to do save watch the hawsers an&rsquo; the
+<i>Kite&rsquo;s</i> tail squatterin&rsquo; down in white watter when she lifted
+to a sea; so I got steam on the after donkey-pump, an&rsquo; pumped oot the
+engine-room. There&rsquo;s no sense in leavin&rsquo; waiter loose in a ship.
+When she was dry, I went doun the shaft-tunnel, an&rsquo; found she was
+leakin&rsquo; a little through the stuffin&rsquo;box, but nothin&rsquo; to make
+wark. The propeller had e&rsquo;en jarred off, as I knew it must, an&rsquo;
+Calder had been waitin&rsquo; for it to go wi&rsquo; his hand on the gear. He
+told me as much when I met him ashore. There was nothin&rsquo; started or
+strained. It had just slipped awa&rsquo; to the bed o&rsquo; the Atlantic as
+easy as a man dyin&rsquo; wi&rsquo; due warning&mdash;a most providential
+business for all concerned. Syne I took stock o&rsquo; the
+<i>Grotkau&rsquo;s</i> upper works. Her boats had been smashed on the davits,
+an&rsquo; here an&rsquo; there was the rail missin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; a
+ventilator or two had fetched awa&rsquo;, an&rsquo; the bridge-rails were bent
+by the seas; but her hatches were tight, and she&rsquo;d taken no sort of harm.
+Dod, I came to hate her like a human bein&rsquo;, for I was eight weary days
+aboard, starvin&rsquo;&mdash;ay, starvin&rsquo;&mdash;within a cable&rsquo;s
+length o&rsquo; plenty. All day I laid in the bunk reading the
+<i>Woman-Hater</i>, the grandest book Charlie Reade ever wrote, an&rsquo;
+pickin&rsquo; a toothful here an&rsquo; there. It was weary, weary work. Eight
+days, man, I was aboard the <i>Grotkau</i>, an&rsquo; not one full meal did I
+make. Sma&rsquo; blame her crew would not stay by her. The other man? Oh I
+warked him wi&rsquo; a vengeance to keep him warm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It came on to blow when we fetched soundin&rsquo;s, an&rsquo; that kept
+me standin&rsquo; by the hawsers, lashed to the capstan, breathin&rsquo; twixt
+green seas. I near died o&rsquo; cauld an&rsquo; hunger, for the <i>Grotkau</i>
+towed like a barge, an&rsquo; Bell howkit her along through or over. It was
+vara thick up-Channel, too. We were standin&rsquo; in to make some sort
+o&rsquo; light, an&rsquo; we near walked over twa three fishin&rsquo;-boats,
+an&rsquo; they cried us we were overclose to Falmouth. Then we were near cut
+down by a drunken foreign fruiter that was blunderin&rsquo; between us
+an&rsquo; the shore, and it got thicker an&rsquo; thicker that night, an&rsquo;
+I could feel by the tow Bell did not know whaur he was. Losh, we knew in the
+morn, for the wind blew the fog oot like a candle, an&rsquo; the sun came
+clear; and as surely as McRimmon gied me my cheque, the shadow o&rsquo; the
+Eddystone lay across our tow-rope! We were that near&mdash;ay, we were that
+near! Bell fetched the <i>Kite</i> round with the jerk that came close to
+tearin&rsquo; the bitts out o&rsquo; the <i>Grotkau;</i> an&rsquo; I mind I
+thanked my Maker in young Bannister&rsquo;s cabin when we were inside Plymouth
+breakwater.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The first to come aboard was McRimmon, wi&rsquo; Dandie. Did I tell you
+our orders were to take anything we found into Plymouth? The auld deil had just
+come down overnight, puttin&rsquo; two an&rsquo; two together from what Calder
+had told him when the liner landed the <i>Grotkau&rsquo;s</i> men. He had
+preceesely hit oor time. I&rsquo;d hailed Bell for something to eat, an&rsquo;
+he sent it o&rsquo;er in the same boat wi&rsquo; McRimmon, when the auld man
+came to me. He grinned an&rsquo; slapped his legs and worked his eyebrows the
+while I ate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;How do Holdock, Steiner &amp; Chase feed their men?&rsquo; said
+he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Ye can see,&rsquo; I said, knockin&rsquo; the top off another
+beer-bottle. &lsquo;I did not sign to be starved, McRimmon.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Nor to swim, either,&rsquo; said he, for Bell had tauld him how I
+carried the line aboard. &lsquo;Well, I&rsquo;m thinkin&rsquo; you&rsquo;ll be
+no loser. What freight could we ha&rsquo; put into the <i>Lammergeyer</i> would
+equal salvage on four hunder thousand pounds&mdash;hull an&rsquo; cargo? Eh,
+McPhee? This cuts the liver out o&rsquo; Holdock, Steiner, Chase &amp; Company,
+Limited. Eh, McPhee? An&rsquo; I&rsquo;m sufferin&rsquo; from senile dementia
+now? Eh, McPhee? An&rsquo; I&rsquo;m not daft, am I, till I begin to paint the
+<i>Lammergeyer?</i> Eh, McPhee? Ye may weel lift your leg, Dandie! I ha&rsquo;
+the laugh o&rsquo; them all. Ye found watter in the engine-room?&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;To speak wi&rsquo;oot prejudice,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;there was
+some watter.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;They thought she was sinkin&rsquo; after the propeller went. She
+filled wi&rsquo; extraordinary rapeedity. Calder said it grieved him an&rsquo;
+Bannister to abandon her.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought o&rsquo; the dinner at Radley&rsquo;s, an&rsquo; what like
+o&rsquo; food I&rsquo;d eaten for eight days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;It would grieve them sore,&rsquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;But the crew would not hear o&rsquo; stayin&rsquo; and
+workin&rsquo; her back under canvas. They&rsquo;re gaun up an&rsquo; down
+sayin&rsquo; they&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; starved first.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;They&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; starved if they&rsquo;d stayed,&rsquo;
+said I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;I tak&rsquo; it, fra Calder&rsquo;s account, there was a mutiny
+a&rsquo;most.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Ye know more than I, McRimmon,&rsquo; I said.
+&lsquo;Speakin&rsquo; wi&rsquo;oot prejudice, for we&rsquo;re all in the same
+boat, <i>who</i> opened the bilgecock?&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Oh, that&rsquo;s it&mdash;is it?&rsquo; said the auld man,
+an&rsquo; I could see he was surprised. &lsquo;A bilge-cock, ye say?&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;I believe it was a bilge-cock. They were all shut when I came
+aboard, but some one had flooded the engine-room eight feet over all, and shut
+it off with the worm-an&rsquo;-wheel gear from the second gratin&rsquo;
+afterwards.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Losh!&rsquo; said McRimmon. &lsquo;The ineequity o&rsquo;
+man&rsquo;s beyond belief. But it&rsquo;s awfu&rsquo; discreditable to Holdock,
+Steiner &amp; Chase, if that came oot in court.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;It&rsquo;s just my own curiosity,&rsquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Aweel, Dandie&rsquo;s afflicted wi&rsquo; the same disease.
+Dandie, strive against curiosity, for it brings a little dog into traps
+an&rsquo; suchlike. Whaur was the <i>Kite</i> when yon painted liner took off
+the <i>Grotkau&rsquo;s</i> people?&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Just there or thereabouts,&rsquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;An&rsquo; which o&rsquo; you twa thought to cover your
+lights?&rsquo; said he, winkin&rsquo;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Dandle,&rsquo; I said to the dog, &lsquo;we must both strive
+against curiosity. It&rsquo;s an unremunerative business. What&rsquo;s our
+chance o&rsquo; salvage, Dandie?&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He laughed till he choked. &lsquo;Tak&rsquo; what I gie you, McPhee,
+an&rsquo; be content,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;Lord, how a man wastes time when
+he gets old. Get aboard the Kite, mon, as soon as ye can. I&rsquo;ve clean
+forgot there&rsquo;s a Baltic charter yammerin&rsquo; for you at London.
+That&rsquo;ll be your last voyage, I&rsquo;m thinkin&rsquo;, excep&rsquo; by
+way o&rsquo; pleasure.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Steiner&rsquo;s men were comin&rsquo; aboard to take charge an&rsquo;
+tow her round, an&rsquo; I passed young Steiner in a boat as I went to the
+<i>Kite</i>. He looked down his nose; but McRimmon pipes up:
+&lsquo;Here&rsquo;s the man ye owe the <i>Grotkau</i> to&mdash;at a price,
+Steiner&mdash;at a price! Let me introduce Mr. McPhee to you. Maybe ye&rsquo;ve
+met before; but ye&rsquo;ve vara little luck in keepin&rsquo; your
+men&mdash;ashore or afloat!&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Young Steiner looked angry enough to eat him as he chuckled an&rsquo;
+whustled in his dry old throat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Ye&rsquo;ve not got your award yet,&rsquo; Steiner says.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Na, na,&rsquo; says the auld man, in a screech ye could hear to
+the Hoe, &lsquo;but I&rsquo;ve twa million sterlin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; no bairns,
+ye Judeeas Apella, if ye mean to fight; an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ll match ye
+p&rsquo;und for p&rsquo;und till the last p&rsquo;und&rsquo;s oot. Ye ken
+<i>me</i>, Steiner! I&rsquo;m McRimmon o&rsquo; McNaughten &amp;
+McRimmon!&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Dod,&rsquo; he said betwix&rsquo; his teeth, sittin&rsquo; back
+in the boat, &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve waited fourteen year to break that Jewfirm,
+an&rsquo; God be thankit I&rsquo;ll do it now.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The <i>Kite</i> was in the Baltic while the auld man was warkin&rsquo;
+his warks, but I know the assessors valued the <i>Grotkau</i>, all told, at
+over three hunder and sixty thousand&mdash;her manifest was a treat o&rsquo;
+richness&mdash;an&rsquo; McRimmon got a third for salvin&rsquo; an abandoned
+ship. Ye see, there&rsquo;s vast deeference between towin&rsquo; a ship
+wi&rsquo; men on her an&rsquo; pickin&rsquo; up a derelict&mdash;a vast
+deeference&mdash;in pounds sterlin&rsquo;. Moreover, twa three o&rsquo; the
+<i>Grotkau&rsquo;s</i> crew were burnin&rsquo; to testify about food, an&rsquo;
+there was a note o&rsquo; Calder to the Board, in regard to the tail-shaft,
+that would ha&rsquo; been vara damagin&rsquo; if it had come into court. They
+knew better than to fight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Syne the <i>Kite</i> came back, an&rsquo; McRimmon paid off me an&rsquo;
+Bell personally, an&rsquo; the rest of the crew <i>pro rata</i>, I believe
+it&rsquo;s ca&rsquo;ed. My share&mdash;oor share, I should say&mdash;was just
+twenty-five thousand pound sterlin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this point Janet jumped up and kissed him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Five-and-twenty thousand pound sterlin&rsquo;. Noo, I&rsquo;m fra the
+North, and I&rsquo;m not the like to fling money awa&rsquo; rashly, but
+I&rsquo;d gie six months&rsquo; pay&mdash;one hunder an&rsquo; twenty
+pounds&mdash;to know <i>who</i> flooded the engine-room of the <i>Grotkau</i>.
+I&rsquo;m fairly well acquaint wi&rsquo; McRimmon&rsquo;s eediosyncrasies, and
+<i>he</i>&rsquo;d no hand in it. It was not Calder, for I&rsquo;ve asked him,
+an&rsquo; he wanted to fight me. It would be in the highest degree
+unprofessional o&rsquo; Calder&mdash;not fightin&rsquo;, but openin&rsquo;
+bilge-cocks&mdash;but for a while I thought it was him. Ay, I judged it might
+be him&mdash;under temptation.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s your theory?&rdquo; I demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Weel, I&rsquo;m inclined to think it was one o&rsquo; those singular
+providences that remind us we&rsquo;re in the hands o&rsquo; Higher
+Powers.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It couldn&rsquo;t open and shut itself?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did not mean that; but some half-starvin&rsquo; oiler or, maybe,
+trimmer must ha&rsquo; opened it awhile to mak&rsquo; sure o&rsquo;
+leavin&rsquo; the <i>Grotkau</i>. It&rsquo;s a demoralisin&rsquo; thing to see
+an engine-room flood up after any accident to the gear&mdash;demoralisin&rsquo;
+and deceptive both. Aweel, the man got what he wanted, for they went aboard the
+liner cryin&rsquo; that the <i>Grotkau</i> was sinkin&rsquo;. But it&rsquo;s
+curious to think o&rsquo; the consequences. In a&rsquo; human probability,
+he&rsquo;s bein&rsquo; damned in heaps at the present moment aboard another
+tramp freighter; an&rsquo; here am I, wi&rsquo; five-an&rsquo;-twenty thousand
+pound invested, resolute to go to sea no more&mdash;providential&rsquo;s the
+preceese word&mdash;except as a passenger, ye&rsquo;ll understand,
+Janet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+McPhee kept his word. He and Janet went for a voyage as passengers in the
+first-class saloon. They paid seventy pounds for their berths; and Janet found
+a very sick woman in the second-class saloon, so that for sixteen days she
+lived below, and chatted with the stewardesses at the foot of the second-saloon
+stairs while her patient slept. McPhee was a passenger for exactly twenty-four
+hours. Then the engineers&rsquo; mess&mdash;where the oilcloth tables
+are&mdash;joyfully took him to its bosom, and for the rest of the voyage that
+company was richer by the unpaid services of a highly certificated engineer.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"></a>
+AN ERROR IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION</h2>
+
+<p>
+Before he was thirty, he discovered that there was no one to play with him.
+Though the wealth of three toilsome generations stood to his account, though
+his tastes in the matter of books, bindings, rugs, swords, bronzes, lacquer,
+pictures, plate, statuary, horses, conservatories, and agriculture were
+educated and catholic, the public opinion of his country wanted to know why he
+did not go to office daily, as his father had before him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So he fled, and they howled behind him that he was an unpatriotic Anglomaniac,
+born to consume fruits, one totally lacking in public spirit. He wore an
+eyeglass; he had built a wall round his country house, with a high gate that
+shut, instead of inviting America to sit on his flower-beds; he ordered his
+clothes from England; and the press of his abiding city cursed him, from his
+eye-glass to his trousers, for two consecutive days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he rose to light again, it was where nothing less than the tents of an
+invading army in Piccadilly would make any difference to anybody. If he had
+money and leisure, England stood ready to give him all that money and leisure
+could buy. That price paid, she would ask no questions. He took his cheque-book
+and accumulated things&mdash;warily at first, for he remembered that in America
+things own the man. To his delight, he discovered that in England he could put
+his belongings under his feet; for classes, ranks, and denominations of people
+rose, as it were, from the earth, and silently and discreetly took charge of
+his possessions. They had been born and bred for that sole
+purpose&mdash;servants of the cheque-book. When that was at an end they would
+depart as mysteriously as they had come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The impenetrability of this regulated life irritated him, and he strove to
+learn something of the human side of these people. He retired baffled, to be
+trained by his menials. In America, the native demoralises the English servant.
+In England, the servant educates the master. Wilton Sargent strove to learn all
+they taught as ardently as his father had striven to wreck, before capture, the
+railways of his native land; and it must have been some touch of the old bandit
+railway blood that bade him buy, for a song, Holt Hangars, whose forty-acre
+lawn, as every one knows, sweeps down in velvet to the quadruple tracks of the
+Great Buchonian Railway. Their trains flew by almost continuously, with a
+bee-like drone in the day and a flutter of strong wings at night. The son of
+Merton Sargent had good right to be interested in them. He owned controlling
+interests in several thousand miles of track,&mdash;not permanent
+way,&mdash;built on altogether different plans, where locomotives eternally
+whistled for grade-crossings, and parlor-cars of fabulous expense and unrestful
+design skated round curves that the Great Buchonian would have condemned as
+unsafe in a construction-line. From the edge of his lawn he could trace the
+chaired metals falling away, rigid as a bowstring, into the valley of the
+Prest, studded with the long perspective of the block signals, buttressed with
+stone, and carried, high above all possible risk, on a forty-foot embankment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Left to himself, he would have builded a private car, and kept it at the
+nearest railway-station, Amberley Royal, five miles away. But those into whose
+hands he had committed himself for his English training had little knowledge of
+railways and less of private cars. The one they knew was something that existed
+in the scheme of things for their convenience. The other they held to be
+&ldquo;distinctly American&rdquo;; and, with the versatility of his race,
+Wilton Sargent had set out to be just a little more English than the English.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He succeeded to admiration. He learned not to redecorate Holt Hangars, though
+he warmed it; to leave his guests alone; to refrain from superfluous
+introductions; to abandon manners of which he had great store, and to hold fast
+by manner which can after labour be acquired. He learned to let other people,
+hired for the purpose, attend to the duties for which they were paid. He
+learned&mdash;this he got from a ditcher on the estate&mdash;that every man
+with whom he came in contact had his decreed position in the fabric of the
+realm, which position he would do well to consult. Last mystery of all, he
+learned to golf&mdash;well: and when an American knows the innermost meaning of
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t press, slow back, and keep your eye on the ball,&rdquo; he
+is, for practical purposes, denationalised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His other education proceeded on the pleasantest lines. Was he interested in
+any conceivable thing in heaven above, or the earth beneath, or the waters
+under the earth? Forthwith appeared at his table, guided by those safe hands
+into which he had fallen, the very men who had best said, done, written,
+explored, excavated, built, launched, created, or studied that one
+thing&mdash;herders of books and prints in the British Museum; specialists in
+scarabs, cartouches, and dynasties Egyptian; rovers and raiders from the heart
+of unknown lands; toxicologists; orchid-hunters; monographers on flint
+implements, carpets, prehistoric man, or early Renaissance music. They came,
+and they played with him. They asked no questions; they cared not so much as a
+pin who or what he was. They demanded only that he should be able to talk and
+listen courteously. Their work was done elsewhere and out of his sight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were also women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never,&rdquo; said Wilton Sargent to himself, &ldquo;has an American
+seen England as I&rsquo;m seeing it&rdquo;; and he thought, blushing beneath
+the bedclothes, of the unregenerate and blatant days when he would steam to
+office, down the Hudson, in his twelve-hundred-ton ocean-going steam-yacht, and
+arrive, by gradations, at Bleecker Street, hanging on to a leather strap
+between an Irish washerwoman and a German anarchist. If any of his guests had
+seen him then they would have said: &ldquo;How distinctly American!&rdquo;
+and&mdash;Wilton did not care for that tone. He had schooled himself to an
+English walk, and, so long as he did not raise it, an English voice. He did not
+gesticulate with his hands; he sat down on most of his enthusiasms, but he
+could not rid himself of The Shibboleth. He would ask for the Worcestershire
+sauce: even Howard, his immaculate butler, could not break him of this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was decreed that he should complete his education in a wild and wonderful
+manner, and, further, that I should be in at that death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wilton had more than once asked me to Holt Hangars, for the purpose of showing
+how well the new life fitted him, and each time I had declared it creaseless.
+His third invitation was more informal than the others, and he hinted of some
+matter in which he was anxious for my sympathy or counsel, or both. There is
+room for an infinity of mistakes when a man begins to take liberties with his
+nationality; and I went down expecting things. A seven-foot dog-cart and a
+groom in the black Holt Hangars livery met me at Amberley Royal. At Holt
+Hangars I was received by a person of elegance and true reserve, and piloted to
+my luxurious chamber. There were no other guests in the house, and this set me
+thinking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wilton came into my room about half an hour before dinner, and though his face
+was masked with a drop-curtain of highly embroidered indifference, I could see
+that he was not at ease. In time, for he was then almost as difficult to move
+as one of my own countrymen, I extracted the tale&mdash;simple in its
+extravagance, extravagant in its simplicity. It seemed that Hackman of the
+British Museum had been staying with him about ten days before, boasting of
+scarabs. Hackman has a way of carrying really priceless antiquities on his
+tie-ring and in his trouser pockets. Apparently, he had intercepted something
+on its way to the Boulak Museum which, he said, was &ldquo;a genuine
+Amen-Hotepa queen&rsquo;s scarab of the Fourth Dynasty.&rdquo; Now Wilton had
+bought from Cassavetti, whose reputation is not above suspicion, a scarab of
+much the same scarabeousness, and had left it in his London chambers. Hackman
+at a venture, but knowing Cassavetti, pronounced it an imposition. There was
+long discussion&mdash;savant <i>versus</i> millionaire, one saying: &ldquo;But
+I know it cannot be&rdquo;; and the other: &ldquo;But I can and will prove
+it.&rdquo; Wilton found it necessary for his soul&rsquo;s satisfaction to go up
+to town, then and there,&mdash;a forty-mile run,&mdash;and bring back the
+scarab before dinner. It was at this point that he began to cut corners with
+disastrous results. Amberley Royal station being five miles away, and putting
+in of horses a matter of time, Wilton had told Howard, the immaculate butler,
+to signal the next train to stop; and Howard, who was more of a man of resource
+than his master gave him credit for, had, with the red flag of the ninth hole
+of the links which crossed the bottom of the lawn, signalled vehemently to the
+first down-train; and it had stopped. Here Wilton&rsquo;s account became
+confused. He attempted, it seems, to get into that highly indignant express,
+but a guard restrained him with more or less force&mdash;hauled him, in fact,
+backyards from the window of a locked carriage. Wilton must have struck the
+gravel with some vehemence, for the consequences, he admitted, were a free
+fight on the line in which he lost his hat, and was at last dragged into the
+guard&rsquo;s van and set down breathless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had pressed money upon the man, and very foolishly had explained everything
+but his name. This he clung to, for he had a vision of tall head-lines in the
+New York papers, and well knew no son of Merton Sargent could expect mercy that
+side the water. The guard, to Wilton&rsquo;s amazement, refused the money on
+the grounds that this was a matter for the Company to attend to. Wilton
+insisted on his incognito, and, therefore, found two policemen waiting for him
+at St. Botolph terminus. When he expressed a wish to buy a new hat and
+telegraph to his friends, both policemen with one voice warned him that
+whatever he said would be used as evidence against him; and this had impressed
+Wilton tremendously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They were so infernally polite,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If they had
+clubbed me I wouldn&rsquo;t have cared; but it was, &lsquo;Step this way,
+sir,&rsquo; and, &lsquo;Up those stairs, please, sir,&rsquo; till they jailed
+me&mdash;jailed me like a common drunk, and I had to stay in a filthy little
+cubby-hole of a cell all night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That comes of not giving your name and not wiring your lawyer,&rdquo; I
+replied. &ldquo;What did you get?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Forty shillings, or a month,&rdquo; said Wilton,
+promptly,&mdash;&ldquo;next morning bright and early. They were working us off,
+three a minute. A girl in a pink hat&mdash;she was brought in at three in the
+morning&mdash;got ten days. I suppose I was lucky. I must have knocked his
+senses out of the guard. He told the old duck on the bench that I had told him
+I was a sergeant in the army, and that I was gathering beetles on the track.
+That comes of trying to explain to an Englishman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I said nothing. I wanted to get out. I paid my fine, and bought a
+new hat, and came up here before noon next morning. There were a lot of people
+in the house, and I told &rsquo;em I&rsquo;d been unavoidably detained, and
+then they began to recollect engagements elsewhere. Hackman must have seen the
+fight on the track and made a story of it. I suppose they thought it was
+distinctly American&mdash;confound &rsquo;em! It&rsquo;s the only time in my
+life that I&rsquo;ve ever flagged a train, and I wouldn&rsquo;t have done it
+but for that scarab. &rsquo;T wouldn&rsquo;t hurt their old trains to be held
+up once in a while.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s all over now,&rdquo; I said, choking a little.
+&ldquo;And your name didn&rsquo;t get into the papers. It <i>is</i> rather
+transatlantic when you come to think of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Over!&rdquo; Wilton grunted savagely. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s only just begun.
+That trouble with the guard was just common, ordinary assault&mdash;merely a
+little criminal business. The flagging of the train is civil, infernally
+civil,&mdash;and means something quite different. They&rsquo;re after me for
+that now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Great Buchonian. There was a man in court watching the case on
+behalf of the Company. I gave him my name in a quiet corner before I bought my
+hat, and&mdash;come to dinner now; I&rsquo;ll show you the results
+afterwards.&rdquo; The telling of his wrongs had worked Wilton Sargent into a
+very fine temper, and I do not think that my conversation soothed him. In the
+course of the dinner, prompted by a devil of pure mischief, I dwelt with loving
+insistence on certain smells and sounds of New York which go straight to the
+heart of the native in foreign parts; and Wilton began to ask many questions
+about his associates aforetime&mdash;men of the New York Yacht Club, Storm
+King, or the Restigouche, owners of rivers, ranches, and shipping in their
+playtime, lords of railways, kerosene, wheat, and cattle in their offices. When
+the green mint came, I gave him a peculiarly oily and atrocious cigar, of the
+brand they sell in the tessellated, electric-lighted, with
+expensive-pictures-of-the-nude-adorned bar of the Pandemonium, and Wilton
+chewed the end for several minutes ere he lit it. The butler left us alone, and
+the chimney of the oak-panelled dining-room began to smoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s another!&rdquo; said he, poking the fire savagely, and I
+knew what he meant. One cannot put steam-heat in houses where Queen Elizabeth
+slept. The steady beat of a night-mail, whirling down the valley, recalled me
+to business. &ldquo;What about the Great Buchonian?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come into my study. That&rsquo;s all&mdash;as yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a pile of Seidlitz-powders-coloured correspondence, perhaps nine inches
+high, and it looked very businesslike.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can go through it,&rdquo; said Wilton. &ldquo;Now I could take a
+chair and a red flag and go into Hyde Park and say the most atrocious things
+about your Queen, and preach anarchy and all that, y&rsquo; know, till I was
+hoarse, and no one would take any notice. The Police&mdash;damn
+&rsquo;em!&mdash;would protect me if I got into trouble. But for a little thing
+like flagging a dirty little sawed-off train,&mdash;running through my own
+grounds, too,&mdash;I get the whole British Constitution down on me as if I
+sold bombs. I don&rsquo;t understand it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No more does the Great Buchonian&mdash;apparently.&rdquo; I was turning
+over the letters. &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s the traffic superintendent writing that
+it&rsquo;s utterly incomprehensible that any man should... Good heavens,
+Wilton, you <i>have</i> done it!&rdquo; I giggled, as I read on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s funny now?&rdquo; said my host.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It seems that you, or Howard for you, stopped the three-forty Northern
+down.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I ought to know that! They all had their knife into me, from the
+engine-driver up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s <i>the</i> three-forty&mdash;the Induna&mdash;surely
+you&rsquo;ve heard of the Great Buchonian&rsquo;s Induna!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How the deuce am I to know one train from another? They come along about
+every two minutes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Quite so. But this happens to be the Induna&mdash;the one train of the
+whole line. She&rsquo;s timed for fifty-seven miles an hour. She was put on
+early in the Sixties, and she has never been stopped&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>I</i> know! Since William the Conqueror came over, or King Charles
+hid in her smoke-stack. You&rsquo;re as bad as the rest of these Britishers. If
+she&rsquo;s been run all that while, it&rsquo;s time she was flagged once or
+twice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The American was beginning to ooze out all over Wilton, and his small-boned
+hands were moving restlessly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Suppose you flagged the Empire State Express, or the Western
+Cyclone?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Suppose I did. I know Otis Harvey&mdash;or used to. I&rsquo;d send him a
+wire, and he&rsquo;d understand it was a ground-hog case with me. That&rsquo;s
+exactly what I told this British fossil company here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you been answering their letters without legal advice, then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course I have.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, my Sainted Country! Go ahead, Wilton.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wrote &rsquo;em that I&rsquo;d be very happy to see their president
+and explain to him in three words all about it; but that wouldn&rsquo;t do.
+&rsquo;Seems their president must be a god. He was too busy, and&mdash;well,
+you can read for yourself&mdash;they wanted explanations. The stationmaster at
+Amberley Royal&mdash;and he grovels before me, as a rule&mdash;wanted an
+explanation, and quick, too. The head sachem at St. Botolph&rsquo;s wanted
+three or four, and the Lord High Mukkamuk that oils the locomotives wanted one
+every fine day. I told &rsquo;em&mdash;I&rsquo;ve told &rsquo;em about fifty
+times&mdash;I stopped their holy and sacred train because I wanted to board
+her. Did they think I wanted to feel her pulse?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t say that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Feel her pulse&rsquo;? Of course not.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. &lsquo;Board her.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What else could I say?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear Wilton, what is the use of Mrs. Sherborne, and the Clays, and
+all that lot working over you for four years to make an Englishman out of you,
+if the very first time you&rsquo;re rattled you go back to the
+vernacular?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m through with Mrs. Sherborne and the rest of the crowd.
+America&rsquo;s good enough for me. What ought I to have said?
+&lsquo;Please,&rsquo; or &lsquo;thanks awf&rsquo;ly&rsquo; or how?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no chance now of mistaking the man&rsquo;s nationality. Speech,
+gesture, and step, so carefully drilled into him, had gone away with the
+borrowed mask of indifference. It was a lawful son of the Youngest People,
+whose predecessors were the Red Indian. His voice had risen to the high,
+throaty crow of his breed when they labour under excitement. His close-set eyes
+showed by turns unnecessary fear, annoyance beyond reason, rapid and
+purposeless flights of thought, the child&rsquo;s lust for immediate revenge,
+and the child&rsquo;s pathetic bewilderment, who knocks his head against the
+bad, wicked table. And on the other side, I knew, stood the Company, as unable
+as Wilton to understand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I could buy their old road three times over,&rdquo; he muttered,
+playing with a paper-knife, and moving restlessly to and fro.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t tell &rsquo;em <i>that</i>, I hope!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no answer; but as I went through the letters, I felt that Wilton must
+have told them many surprising things. The Great Buchonian had first asked for
+an explanation of the stoppage of their Induna, and had found a certain levity
+in the explanation tendered. It then advised &ldquo;Mr. W. Sargent&rdquo; to
+refer his solicitor to their solicitor, or whatever the legal phrase is.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you didn&rsquo;t?&rdquo; I said, looking up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. They were treating me exactly as if I had been a kid playing on the
+cable-tracks. There was not the <i>least</i> necessity for any solicitor. Five
+minutes&rsquo; quiet talk would have settled everything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I returned to the correspondence. The Great Buchonian regretted that, owing to
+pressure of business, none of their directors could accept Mr. W.
+Sargent&rsquo;s invitation to run down and discuss the difficulty. The Great
+Buchonian was careful to point out that no animus underlay their action, nor
+was money their object. Their duty was to protect the interests of their line,
+and these interests could not be protected if a precedent were established
+whereby any of the Queen&rsquo;s subjects could stop a train in mid-career.
+Again (this was another branch of the correspondence, not more than five heads
+of departments being concerned), the Company admitted that there was some
+reasonable doubt as to the duties of express-trains in all crises, and the
+matter was open to settlement by process of law till an authoritative ruling
+was obtained&mdash;from the House of Lords, if necessary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That broke me all up,&rdquo; said Wilton, who was reading over my
+shoulder. &ldquo;I knew I&rsquo;d struck the British Constitution at last. The
+House of Lords&mdash;my Lord! And, anyway, I&rsquo;m not one of the
+Queen&rsquo;s subjects.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, I had a notion that you&rsquo;d got yourself naturalised.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wilton blushed hotly as he explained that very many things must happen to the
+British Constitution ere he took out his papers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How does it all strike you?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t the Great
+Buchonian crazy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. You&rsquo;ve done something that no one ever thought
+of doing before, and the Company don&rsquo;t know what to make of it. I see
+they offer to send down their solicitor and another official of the Company to
+talk things over informally. Then here&rsquo;s another letter suggesting that
+you put up a fourteen-foot wall, crowned with bottle-glass, at the bottom of
+the garden.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Talk of British insolence! The man who recommends <i>that</i>
+(he&rsquo;s another bloated functionary) says that I shall &lsquo;derive great
+pleasure from watching the wall going up day by day&rsquo;! Did you ever dream
+of such gall? I&rsquo;ve offered &rsquo;em money enough to buy a new set of
+cars and pension the driver for three generations; but that doesn&rsquo;t seem
+to be what they want. They expect me to go to the House of Lords and get a
+ruling, and build walls between times. Are they <i>all</i> stark, raving mad?
+One &rsquo;ud think I made a profession of flagging trains. How in Tophet was I
+to know their old Induna from a waytrain? I took the first that came along, and
+I&rsquo;ve been jailed and fined for that once already.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That was for slugging the guard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He had no right to haul me out when I was half-way through a
+window.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are you going to do about it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Their lawyer and the other official (can&rsquo;t they trust their men
+unless they send &rsquo;em in pairs?) are coming here to-night. I told
+&rsquo;em I was busy, as a rule, till after dinner, but they might send along
+the entire directorate if it eased &rsquo;em any.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, after-dinner visiting, for business or pleasure, is the custom of the
+smaller American town, and not that of England, where the end of the day is
+sacred to the owner, not the public. Verily, Wilton Sargent had hoisted the
+striped flag of rebellion!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it time that the humour of the situation began to strike
+you, Wilton?&rdquo; I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where&rsquo;s the humour of baiting an American citizen just because he
+happens to be a millionaire&mdash;poor devil.&rdquo; He was silent for a little
+time, and then went on: &ldquo;Of course. <i>Now</i> I see!&rdquo; He spun
+round and faced me excitedly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s as plain as mud. These ducks
+are laying their pipes to skin me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They say explicitly they don&rsquo;t want money!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all a blind. So&rsquo;s their addressing me as W. Sargent.
+They know well enough who I am. They know I&rsquo;m the old man&rsquo;s son.
+Why didn&rsquo;t I think of that before?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One minute, Wilton. If you climbed to the top of the dome of St.
+Paul&rsquo;s and offered a reward to any Englishman who could tell you who or
+what Merton Sargent had been, there wouldn&rsquo;t be twenty men in all London
+to claim it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s their insular provincialism, then. I don&rsquo;t care a
+cent. The old man would have wrecked the Great Buchonian before breakfast for a
+pipe-opener. My God, I&rsquo;ll do it in dead earnest! I&rsquo;ll show
+&rsquo;em that they can&rsquo;t bulldoze a foreigner for flagging one of their
+little tinpot trains, and&mdash;I&rsquo;ve spent fifty thousand a year here, at
+least, for the last four years.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was glad I was not his lawyer. I re-read the correspondence, notably the
+letter which recommended him&mdash;almost tenderly, I fancied&mdash;to build a
+fourteen-foot brick wall at the end of his garden, and half-way through it a
+thought struck me which filled me with pure joy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The footman ushered in two men, frock-coated, grey-trousered, smooth-shaven,
+heavy of speech and gait. It was nearly nine o&rsquo;clock, but they looked as
+newly come from a bath. I could not understand why the elder and taller of the
+pair glanced at me as though we had an understanding; nor why he shook hands
+with an unEnglish warmth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This simplifies the situation,&rdquo; he said in an undertone, and, as I
+stared, he whispered to his companion: &ldquo;I fear I shall be of very little
+service at present. Perhaps Mr. Folsom had better talk over the affair with Mr.
+Sargent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is what I am here for,&rdquo; said Wilton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man of law smiled pleasantly, and said that he saw no reason why the
+difficulty should not be arranged in two minutes&rsquo; quiet talk. His air, as
+he sat down opposite Wilton, was soothing to the last degree, and his companion
+drew me up-stage. The mystery was deepening, but I followed meekly, and heard
+Wilton say, with an uneasy laugh:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had insomnia over this affair, Mr. Folsom. Let&rsquo;s settle
+it one way or the other, for heaven&rsquo;s sake!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah! Has he suffered much from this lately?&rdquo; said my man, with a
+preliminary cough.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I really can&rsquo;t say,&rdquo; I replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then I suppose you have only lately taken charge here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I came this evening. I am not exactly in charge of anything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see. Merely to observe the course of events in case&mdash;&rdquo; He
+nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exactly.&rdquo; Observation, after all, is my trade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He coughed again slightly, and came to business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now,&mdash;I am asking solely for information&rsquo;s sake,&mdash;do you
+find the delusions persistent?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Which delusions?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are variable, then? That is distinctly curious, because&mdash;but
+do I understand that the <i>type</i> of the delusion varies? For example, Mr.
+Sargent believes that he can buy the Great Buchonian.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did he write you that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He made the offer to the Company&mdash;on a half-sheet of note-paper.
+Now, has he by chance gone to the other extreme, and believed that he is in
+danger of becoming a pauper? The curious economy in the use of a half-sheet of
+paper shows that some idea of that kind might have flashed through his mind,
+and the two delusions can coexist, but it is not common. As you must know, the
+delusion of vast wealth&mdash;the folly of grandeurs, I believe our friends the
+French call it&mdash;is, as a rule, persistent, to the exclusion of all
+others.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then I heard Wilton&rsquo;s best English voice at the end of the study:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My <i>dear</i> sir, I have explained twenty times already, I wanted to
+get that scarab in time for dinner. Suppose you had left an important legal
+document in the same way?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That touch of cunning is very significant,&rdquo; my
+fellow-practitioner&mdash;since he insisted on it&mdash;muttered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am very happy, of course, to meet you; but if you had only sent your
+president down to dinner here, I could have settled the thing in half a minute.
+Why, I could have bought the Buchonian from him while your clerks were sending
+me this.&rdquo; Wilton dropped his hand heavily on the blue-and-white
+correspondence, and the lawyer started.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, speaking frankly,&rdquo; the lawyer replied, &ldquo;it is, if I may
+say so, perfectly inconceivable, even in the case of the most important legal
+documents, that any one should stop the three-forty express&mdash;the
+Induna&mdash;Our Induna, my dear sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Absolutely!&rdquo; my companion echoed; then to me in a lower tone:
+&ldquo;You notice, again, the persistent delusion of wealth. <i>I</i> was
+called in when he wrote us that. You can see it is utterly impossible for the
+Company to continue to run their trains through the property of a man who may
+at any moment fancy himself divinely commissioned to stop all traffic. If he
+had only referred us to his lawyer&mdash;but, naturally, <i>that</i> he would
+not do, under the circumstances. A pity&mdash;a great pity. He is so young. By
+the way, it is curious, is it not, to note the absolute conviction in the voice
+of those who are similarly afflicted,&mdash;heart-rending, I might say, and the
+inability to follow a chain of connected thought.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t see what you want,&rdquo; Wilton was saying to the lawyer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It need not be more than fourteen feet high&mdash;a really desirable
+structure, and it would be possible to grow pear trees on the sunny
+side.&rdquo; The lawyer was speaking in an unprofessional voice. &ldquo;There
+are few things pleasanter than to watch, so to say, one&rsquo;s own vine and
+fig tree in full bearing. Consider the profit and amusement you would derive
+from it. If <i>you</i> could see your way to doing this, <i>we</i> could
+arrange all the details with your lawyer, and it is possible that the Company
+might bear some of the cost. I have put the matter, I trust, in a nutshell. If
+you, my dear sir, will interest yourself in building that wall, and will kindly
+give us the name of your lawyers, I dare assure you that you will hear no more
+from the Great Buchonian.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But why am I to disfigure my lawn with a new brick wall?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Grey flint is extremely picturesque.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Grey flint, then, if you put it that way. Why the dickens must I go
+building towers of Babylon just because I have held up one of your
+trains&mdash;once?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The expression he used in his third letter was that he wished to
+&lsquo;board her,&rsquo;&rdquo; said my companion in my ear. &ldquo;That was
+very curious&mdash;a marine delusion impinging, as it were, upon a land one.
+What a marvellous world he must move in&mdash;and will before the curtain
+falls. So young, too&mdash;so very young!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, if you want the plain English of it, I&rsquo;m damned if I go
+wall-building to your orders. You can fight it all along the line, into the
+House of Lords and out again, and get your rulings by the running foot if you
+like,&rdquo; said Wilton, hotly. &ldquo;Great heavens, man, I only did it
+once!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We have at present no guarantee that you may not do it again; and, with
+our traffic, we must, in justice to our passengers, demand some form of
+guarantee. It must not serve as a precedent. All this might have been saved if
+you had only referred us to your legal representative.&rdquo; The lawyer looked
+appealingly around the room. The dead-lock was complete.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wilton,&rdquo; I asked, &ldquo;may I try my hand now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Anything you like,&rdquo; said Wilton. &ldquo;It seems I can&rsquo;t
+talk English. I won&rsquo;t build any wall, though.&rdquo; He threw himself
+back in his chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Gentlemen,&rdquo; I said deliberately, for I perceived that the
+doctor&rsquo;s mind would turn slowly, &ldquo;Mr. Sargent has very large
+interests in the chief railway systems of his own country.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;His own country?&rdquo; said the lawyer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;At that age?&rdquo; said the doctor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly. He inherited them from his father, Mr. Sargent, who was an
+American.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And proud of it,&rdquo; said Wilton, as though he had been a Western
+Senator let loose on the Continent for the first time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear sir,&rdquo; said the lawyer, half rising, &ldquo;why did you not
+acquaint the Company with this fact&mdash;this vital fact&mdash;early in our
+correspondence? We should have understood. We should have made
+allowances.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Allowances be damned. Am I a Red Indian or a lunatic?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two men looked guilty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If Mr. Sargent&rsquo;s friend had told us as much in the
+beginning,&rdquo; said the doctor, very severely, &ldquo;much might have been
+saved.&rdquo; Alas! I had made a life&rsquo;s enemy of that doctor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hadn&rsquo;t a chance,&rdquo; I replied. &ldquo;Now, of course, you
+can see that a man who owns several thousand miles of line, as Mr. Sargent
+does, would be apt to treat railways a shade more casually than other
+people.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course; of course. He is an American; that accounts. Still, it
+<i>was</i> the Induna; but I can quite understand that the customs of our
+cousins across the water differ in these particulars from ours. And do you
+always stop trains in this way in the States, Mr. Sargent?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should if occasion ever arose; but I&rsquo;ve never had to yet. Are
+you going to make an international complication of the business?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You need give yourself no further concern whatever in the matter. We see
+that there is no likelihood of this action of yours establishing a precedent,
+which was the only thing we were afraid of. Now that you understand that we
+cannot reconcile our system to any sudden stoppages, we feel quite sure
+that&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t be staying long enough to flag another
+train,&rdquo; Wilton said pensively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are returning, then, to our fellow-kinsmen across
+the&mdash;ah&mdash;big pond, you call it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>No</i>, sir. The ocean&mdash;the North Atlantic Ocean. It&rsquo;s
+three thousand miles broad, and three miles deep in places. I wish it were ten
+thousand.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not so fond of sea-travel myself; but I think it is every
+Englishman&rsquo;s duty once in his life to study the great branch of our
+Anglo-Saxon race across the ocean,&rdquo; said the lawyer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If ever you come over, and care to flag any train on my system,
+I&rsquo;ll&mdash;I&rsquo;ll see you through,&rdquo; said Wilton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you&mdash;ah, thank you. You&rsquo;re very kind. I&rsquo;m sure I
+should enjoy myself immensely.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We have overlooked the fact,&rdquo; the doctor whispered to me,
+&ldquo;that your friend proposed to buy the Great Buchonian.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is worth anything from twenty to thirty million dollars&mdash;four to
+five million pounds,&rdquo; I answered, knowing that it would be hopeless to
+explain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Really! That is enormous wealth. But the Great Buchonian is not in the
+market.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps he does not want to buy it now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would be impossible under any circumstances,&rdquo; said the doctor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How characteristic!&rdquo; murmured the lawyer, reviewing matters in his
+mind. &ldquo;I always understood from books that your countrymen were in a
+hurry. And so you would have gone forty miles to town and back&mdash;before
+dinner&mdash;to get a scarab? How intensely American! But you talk exactly like
+an Englishman, Mr. Sargent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is a fault that can be remedied. There&rsquo;s only one question
+I&rsquo;d like to ask you. You said it was inconceivable that any man should
+stop a train on your road?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And so it is&mdash;absolutely inconceivable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Any sane man, that is?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is what I meant, of course. I mean, with excep&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two men departed. Wilton checked himself as he was about to fill a pipe,
+took one of my cigars instead, and was silent for fifteen minutes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then said he: &ldquo;Have you got a list of the Southampton sailings on
+you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Far away from the greystone wings, the dark cedars, the faultless gravel
+drives, and the mint-sauce lawns of Holt Hangars runs a river called the
+Hudson, whose unkempt banks are covered with the palaces of those wealthy
+beyond the dreams of avarice. Here, where the hoot of the Haverstraw
+brick-barge-tug answers the howl of the locomotive on either shore, you shall
+find, with a complete installation of electric light, nickel-plated binnacles,
+and a calliope attachment to her steam-whistle, the twelve-hundred-ton
+ocean-going steam-yacht <i>Columbia</i>, lying at her private pier, to take to
+his office, at an average speed of seventeen knots an hour,&mdash;and the
+barges can look out for themselves,&mdash;Wilton Sargent, American.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"></a>
+MY SUNDAY AT HOME</h2>
+
+<p class="poem">
+If the Red Slayer think he slays,<br/>
+    Or if the slain think he is slain,<br/>
+They know not well the subtle ways<br/>
+    I keep and pass and turn again.<br/>
+                    E<small>MERSON</small>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the unreproducible slid r, as he said this was his &ldquo;fy-ist&rdquo;
+visit to England, that told me he was a New-Yorker from New York; and when, in
+the course of our long, lazy journey westward from Waterloo, he enlarged upon
+the beauties of his city, I, professing ignorance, said no word. He had, amazed
+and delighted at the man&rsquo;s civility, given the London porter a shilling
+for carrying his bag nearly fifty yards; he had thoroughly investigated the
+first-class lavatory compartment, which the London and Southwestern sometimes
+supply without extra charge; and now, half-awed, half-contemptuous, but wholly
+interested, he looked out upon the ordered English landscape wrapped in its
+Sunday peace, while I watched the wonder grow upon his face. Why were the cars
+so short and stilted? Why had every other freight-car a tarpaulin drawn over
+it? What wages would an engineer get now? Where was the swarming population of
+England he had read so much about? What was the rank of all those men on
+tricycles along the roads? When were we due at Plymouth I told him all I knew,
+and very much that I did not. He was going to Plymouth to assist in a
+consultation upon a fellow-countryman who had retired to a place called The
+Hoe&mdash;was that up-town or down-town&mdash;to recover from nervous
+dyspepsia. Yes, he himself was a doctor by profession, and how any one in
+England could retain any nervous disorder passed his comprehension. Never had
+he dreamed of an atmosphere so soothing. Even the deep rumble of London traffic
+was monastical by comparison with some cities he could name; and the
+country&mdash;why, it was Paradise. A continuance of it, he confessed, would
+drive him mad; but for a few months it was the most sumptuous rest-cure in his
+knowledge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll come over every year after this,&rdquo; he said, in a burst
+of delight, as we ran between two ten-foot hedges of pink and white may.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s seeing all the things I&rsquo;ve ever read about. Of course
+it doesn&rsquo;t strike you that way. I presume you belong here? What a
+finished land it is! It&rsquo;s arrived. Must have been born this way. Now,
+where I used to live&mdash;Hello! what&rsquo;s up?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The train stopped in a blaze of sunshine at Framlynghame Admiral, which is made
+up entirely of the name-board, two platforms, and an overhead bridge, without
+even the usual siding. I had never known the slowest of locals stop here
+before; but on Sunday all things are possible to the London and Southwestern.
+One could hear the drone of conversation along the carriages, and, scarcely
+less loud, the drone of the bumblebees in the wallflowers up the bank. My
+companion thrust his head through the window and sniffed luxuriously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where are we now?&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In Wiltshire,&rdquo; said I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah! A man ought to be able to write novels with his left hand in a
+country like this. Well, well! And so this is about Tess&rsquo;s country,
+ain&rsquo;t it? I feel just as if I were in a book. Say, the conduc&mdash;the
+guard has something on his mind. What&rsquo;s he getting at?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The splendid badged and belted guard was striding up the platform at the
+regulation official pace, and in the regulation official voice was saying at
+each door:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Has any gentleman here a bottle of medicine? A gentleman has taken a
+bottle of poison (laudanum) by mistake.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Between each five paces he looked at an official telegram in his hand,
+refreshed his memory, and said his say. The dreamy look on my companion&rsquo;s
+face&mdash;he had gone far away with Tess&mdash;passed with the speed of a
+snap-shutter. After the manner of his countrymen, he had risen to the
+situation, jerked his bag down from the overhead rail, opened it, and I heard
+the click of bottles. &ldquo;Find out where the man is,&rdquo; he said briefly.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got something here that will fix him&mdash;if he can swallow
+still.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Swiftly I fled up the line of carriages in the wake of the guard. There was
+clamour in a rear compartment&mdash;the voice of one bellowing to be let out,
+and the feet of one who kicked. With the tail of my eye I saw the New York
+doctor hastening thither, bearing in his hand a blue and brimming glass from
+the lavatory compartment. The guard I found scratching his head unofficially,
+by the engine, and murmuring: &ldquo;Well, I put a bottle of medicine off at
+Andover&mdash;I&rsquo;m sure I did.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Better say it again, any&rsquo;ow,&rdquo; said the driver. &ldquo;Orders
+is orders. Say it again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once more the guard paced back, I, anxious to attract his attention, trotting
+at his heels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In a minute&mdash;in a minute, sir,&rdquo; he said, waving an arm
+capable of starting all the traffic on the London and Southwestern Railway at a
+wave. &ldquo;Has any gentleman here got a bottle of medicine? A gentleman has
+taken a bottle of poison (laudanum) by mistake.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where&rsquo;s the man?&rdquo; I gasped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Woking. &rsquo;Ere&rsquo;s my orders.&rdquo; He showed me the telegram,
+on which were the words to be said. &ldquo;&rsquo;E must have left &rsquo;is
+bottle in the train, an&rsquo; took another by mistake. &rsquo;E&rsquo;s been
+wirin&rsquo; from Woking awful, an&rsquo;, now I come to think of, it,
+I&rsquo;m nearly sure I put a bottle of medicine off at Andover.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then the man that took the poison isn&rsquo;t in the train?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lord, no, sir. No one didn&rsquo;t take poison <i>that</i> way. &rsquo;E
+took it away with &rsquo;im, in &rsquo;is &rsquo;ands. &rsquo;E&rsquo;s
+wirin&rsquo; from Wokin&rsquo;. My orders was to ask everybody in the train,
+and I &rsquo;ave, an&rsquo; we&rsquo;re four minutes late now. Are you
+comin&rsquo; on, sir? No? Right be&rsquo;ind!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is nothing, unless, perhaps, the English language, more terrible than the
+workings of an English railway-line. An instant before it seemed as though we
+were going to spend all eternity at Framlynghame Admiral, and now I was
+watching the tail of the train disappear round the curve of the cutting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I was not alone. On the one bench of the down platform sat the largest
+navvy I have ever seen in my life, softened and made affable (for he smiled
+generously) with liquor. In his huge hands he nursed an empty tumbler marked
+&ldquo;L.S.W.R.&rdquo;&mdash;marked also, internally, with streaks of blue-grey
+sediment. Before him, a hand on his shoulder, stood the doctor, and as I came
+within ear-shot, this is what I heard him say: &ldquo;Just you hold on to your
+patience for a minute or two longer, and you&rsquo;ll be as right as ever you
+were in your life. <i>I&rsquo;ll</i> stay with you till you&rsquo;re
+better.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lord! I&rsquo;m comfortable enough,&rdquo; said the navvy. &ldquo;Never
+felt better in my life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Turning to me, the doctor lowered his voice. &ldquo;He might have died while
+that fool conduct-guard was saying his piece. I&rsquo;ve fixed him, though. The
+stuff&rsquo;s due in about five minutes, but there&rsquo;s a heap <i>to</i>
+him. I don&rsquo;t see how we can make him take exercise.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the moment I felt as though seven pounds of crushed ice had been neatly
+applied in the form of a compress to my lower stomach.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How&mdash;how did you manage it?&rdquo; I gasped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I asked him if he&rsquo;d have a drink. He was knocking spots out of the
+car&mdash;strength of his constitution, I suppose. He said he&rsquo;d go
+&rsquo;most anywhere for a drink, so I lured onto the platform, and loaded him
+up. Cold-blooded people, you Britishers are. That train&rsquo;s gone, and no
+one seemed to care a cent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve missed it,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at me curiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll get another before sundown, if that&rsquo;s your only
+trouble. Say, porter, when&rsquo;s the next train down?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Seven forty-five,&rdquo; said the one porter, and passed out through the
+wicket-gate into the landscape. It was then three-twenty of a hot and sleepy
+afternoon. The station was absolutely deserted. The navvy had closed his eyes,
+and now nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s bad,&rdquo; said the doctor. &ldquo;The man, I mean, not
+the train. We must make him walk somehow&mdash;walk up and down.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Swiftly as might be, I explained the delicacy of the situation, and the doctor
+from New York turned a full bronze-green. Then he swore comprehensively at the
+entire fabric of our glorious Constitution, cursing the English language, root,
+branch, and paradigm, through its most obscure derivatives. His coat and bag
+lay on the bench next to the sleeper. Thither he edged cautiously, and I saw
+treachery in his eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What devil of delay possessed him to slip on his spring overcoat, I cannot
+tell. They say a slight noise rouses a sleeper more surely than a heavy one,
+and scarcely had the doctor settled himself in his sleeves than the giant waked
+and seized that silk-faced collar in a hot right hand. There was rage in his
+face&mdash;rage and the realisation of new emotions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m&mdash;I&rsquo;m not so comfortable as I were,&rdquo; he said
+from the deeps of his interior. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll wait along o&rsquo; me,
+<i>you</i> will.&rdquo; He breathed heavily through shut lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, if there was one thing more than another upon which the doctor had dwelt
+in his conversation with me, it was upon the essential law-abidingness, not to
+say gentleness, of his much-misrepresented country. And yet (truly, it may have
+been no more than a button that irked him) I saw his hand travel backwards to
+his right hip, clutch at something, and come away empty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He won&rsquo;t kill you,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll probably sue
+you in court, if I know my own people. Better give him some money from time to
+time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If he keeps quiet till the stuff gets in its work,&rdquo; the doctor
+answered, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m all right. If he doesn&rsquo;t... my name is
+Emory&mdash;Julian B. Emory&mdash;193 &rsquo;Steenth Street, corner of Madison
+and&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I feel worse than I&rsquo;ve ever felt,&rdquo; said the navvy, with
+suddenness. &ldquo;What-did-you-give-me-the-drink-for?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The matter seemed to be so purely personal that I withdrew to a strategic
+position on the overhead bridge, and, abiding in the exact centre, looked on
+from afar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I could see the white road that ran across the shoulder of Salisbury Plain,
+unshaded for mile after mile, and a dot in the middle distance, the back of the
+one porter returning to Framlynghame Admiral, if such a place existed, till
+seven forty-five. The bell of a church invisible clanked softly. There was a
+rustle in the horse-chestnuts to the left of the line, and the sound of sheep
+cropping close.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The peace of Nirvana lay upon the land, and, brooding in it, my elbow on the
+warm iron girder of the footbridge (it is a forty-shilling fine to cross by any
+other means), I perceived, as never before, how the consequences of our acts
+run eternal through time and through space. If we impinge never so slightly
+upon the life of a fellow-mortal, the touch of our personality, like the ripple
+of a stone cast into a pond, widens and widens in unending circles across the
+aeons, till the far-off Gods themselves cannot say where action ceases. Also,
+it was I who had silently set before the doctor the tumbler of the first-class
+lavatory compartment now speeding Plymouthward. Yet I was, in spirit at least,
+a million leagues removed from that unhappy man of another nationality, who had
+chosen to thrust an inexpert finger into the workings of an alien life. The
+machinery was dragging him up and down the sunlit platform. The two men seemed
+to be learning polka-mazurkas together, and the burden of their song, borne by
+one deep voice, was: &ldquo;What did you give me the drink for?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw the flash of silver in the doctor&rsquo;s hand. The navvy took it and
+pocketed it with his left; but never for an instant did his strong right leave
+the doctor&rsquo;s coat-collar, and as the crisis approached, louder and louder
+rose his bull-like roar: &ldquo;What did you give me the drink for?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They drifted under the great twelve-inch pinned timbers of the foot-bridge
+towards the bench, and, I gathered, the time was very near at hand. The stuff
+was getting in its work. Blue, white, and blue again, rolled over the
+navvy&rsquo;s face in waves, till all settled to one rich clay-bank yellow
+and&mdash;that fell which fell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I thought of the blowing up of Hell Gate; of the geysers in the Yellowstone
+Park; of Jonah and his whale: but the lively original, as I watched it
+foreshortened from above, exceeded all these things. He staggered to the bench,
+the heavy wooden seat cramped with iron cramps into the enduring stone, and
+clung there with his left hand. It quivered and shook, as a breakwater-pile
+quivers to the rush of landward-racing seas; nor was there lacking when he
+caught his breath, the &ldquo;scream of a maddened beach dragged down by the
+tide.&rdquo; His right hand was upon the doctor&rsquo;s collar, so that the two
+shook to one paroxysm, pendulums vibrating together, while I, apart, shook with
+them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was colossal&mdash;immense; but of certain manifestations the English
+language stops short. French only, the caryatid French of Victor Hugo, would
+have described it; so I mourned while I laughed, hastily shuffling and
+discarding inadequate adjectives. The vehemence of the shock spent itself, and
+the sufferer half fell, half knelt, across the bench. He was calling now upon
+God and his wife, huskily, as the wounded bull calls upon the unscathed herd to
+stay. Curiously enough, he used no bad language: that had gone from him with
+the rest. The doctor exhibited gold. It was taken and retained. So, too, was
+the grip on the coat-collar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I could stand,&rdquo; boomed the giant, despairingly,
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d smash you&mdash;you an&rsquo; your drinks. I&rsquo;m
+dyin&rsquo;&mdash;dyin&rsquo;&mdash;dyin&rsquo;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what you think,&rdquo; said the doctor. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll
+find it will do you a lot of good&rdquo;; and, making a virtue of a somewhat
+imperative necessity, he added: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll stay by you. If you&rsquo;d
+let go of me a minute I&rsquo;d give you something that would settle
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve settled me now, you damned anarchist. Takin&rsquo; the
+bread out of the mouth of an English workin&rsquo;man! But I&rsquo;ll keep
+&rsquo;old of you till I&rsquo;m well or dead. I never did you no harm.
+S&rsquo;pose <i>I</i> were a little full. They pumped me out once at
+Guy&rsquo;s with a stummick-pump. I could see <i>that</i>, but I can&rsquo;t
+see this &rsquo;ere, an&rsquo; it&rsquo;s killin&rsquo; of me by slow
+degrees.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be all right in half-an-hour. What do you suppose I&rsquo;d
+want to kill you for?&rdquo; said the doctor, who came of a logical breed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Ow do <i>I</i> know? Tell &rsquo;em in court. You&rsquo;ll get
+seven years for this, you body-snatcher. That&rsquo;s what you are&mdash;a
+bloomin&rsquo; bodysnatcher. There&rsquo;s justice, I tell you, in England; and
+my Union&rsquo;ll prosecute, too. We don&rsquo;t stand no tricks with
+people&rsquo;s insides &rsquo;ere. They give a woman ten years for a sight less
+than this. An&rsquo; you&rsquo;ll &rsquo;ave to pay &rsquo;undreds an&rsquo;
+&rsquo;undreds o&rsquo; pounds, besides a pension to the missus.
+<i>You</i>&rsquo;ll see, you physickin&rsquo; furriner. Where&rsquo;s your
+licence to do such? <i>You</i>&rsquo;ll catch it, I tell you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then I observed what I have frequently observed before, that a man who is but
+reasonably afraid of an altercation with an alien has a most poignant dread of
+the operations of foreign law. The doctor&rsquo;s voice was flute-like in its
+exquisite politeness, as he answered:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I&rsquo;ve given you a very great deal of
+money&mdash;fif&mdash;three pounds, I think.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An&rsquo; what&rsquo;s three pound for poisonin&rsquo; the likes
+o&rsquo; <i>me?</i> They told me at Guy&rsquo;s I&rsquo;d fetch
+twenty&mdash;cold&mdash;on the slates. Ouh! It&rsquo;s comin&rsquo;
+again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A second time he was cut down by the foot, as it were, and the straining bench
+rocked to and fro as I averted my eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the very point of perfection in the heart of an English May-day. The
+unseen tides of the air had turned, and all nature was setting its face with
+the shadows of the horse-chestnuts towards the peace of the coming night. But
+there were hours yet, I knew&mdash;long, long hours of the eternal English
+twilight&mdash;to the ending of the day. I was well content to be
+alive&mdash;to abandon myself to the drift of Time and Fate; to absorb great
+peace through my skin, and to love my country with the devotion that three
+thousand miles of intervening sea bring to fullest flower. And what a garden of
+Eden it was, this fatted, clipped, and washen land! A man could camp in any
+open field with more sense of home and security than the stateliest buildings
+of foreign cities could afford. And the joy was that it was all mine
+alienably&mdash;groomed hedgerow, spotless road, decent greystone cottage,
+serried spinney, tasselled copse, apple-bellied hawthorn, and well-grown tree.
+A light puff of wind&mdash;it scattered flakes of may over the gleaming
+rails&mdash;gave me a faint whiff as it might have been of fresh cocoanut, and
+I knew that the golden gorse was in bloom somewhere out of sight. Linnæus had
+thanked God on his bended knees when he first saw a field of it; and, by the
+way, the navvy was on his knees, too. But he was by no means praying. He was
+purely disgustful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor was compelled to bend over him, his face towards the back of the
+seat, and from what I had seen I supposed the navvy was now dead. If that were
+the case it would be time for me to go; but I knew that so long as a man trusts
+himself to the current of Circumstance, reaching out for and rejecting nothing
+that comes his way, no harm can overtake him. It is the contriver, the schemer,
+who is caught by the Law, and never the philosopher. I knew that when the play
+was played, Destiny herself would move me on from the corpse; and I felt very
+sorry for the doctor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the far distance, presumably upon the road that led to Framlynghame Admiral,
+there appeared a vehicle and a horse&mdash;the one ancient fly that almost
+every village can produce at need. This thing was advancing, unpaid by me,
+towards the station; would have to pass along the deep-cut lane, below the
+railway-bridge, and come out on the doctor&rsquo;s side. I was in the centre of
+things, so all sides were alike to me. Here, then, was my machine from the
+machine. When it arrived; something would happen, or something else. For the
+rest, I owned my deeply interested soul.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor, by the seat, turned so far as his cramped position allowed, his
+head over his left shoulder, and laid his right hand upon his lips. I threw
+back my hat and elevated my eyebrows in the form of a question. The doctor shut
+his eyes and nodded his head slowly twice or thrice, beckoning me to come. I
+descended cautiously, and it was as the signs had told. The navvy was asleep,
+empty to the lowest notch; yet his hand clutched still the doctor&rsquo;s
+collar, and at the lightest movement (the doctor was really very cramped)
+tightened mechanically, as the hand of a sick woman tightens on that of the
+watcher. He had dropped, squatting almost upon his heels, and, falling lower,
+had dragged the doctor over to the left.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor thrust his right hand, which was free, into his pocket, drew forth
+some keys, and shook his head. The navvy gurgled in his sleep. Silently I dived
+into my pocket, took out one sovereign, and held it up between finger and
+thumb. Again the doctor shook his head. Money was not what was lacking to his
+peace. His bag had fallen from the seat to the ground. He looked towards it,
+and opened his mouth-O-shape. The catch was not a difficult one, and when I had
+mastered it, the doctor&rsquo;s right forefinger was sawing the air. With an
+immense caution, I extracted from the bag such a knife as they use for cutting
+collops off legs. The doctor frowned, and with his first and second fingers
+imitated the action of scissors. Again I searched, and found a most diabolical
+pair of cock-nosed shears, capable of vandyking the interiors of elephants. The
+doctor then slowly lowered his left shoulder till the navvy&rsquo;s right wrist
+was supported by the bench, pausing a moment as the spent volcano rumbled anew.
+Lower and lower the doctor sank, kneeling now by the navvy&rsquo;s side, till
+his head was on a level with, and just in front of, the great hairy fist,
+and&mdash;there was no tension on the coat-collar. Then light dawned on me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beginning a little to the right of the spinal column, I cut a huge demilune out
+of his new spring overcoat, bringing it round as far under his left side (which
+was the right side of the navvy) as I dared. Passing thence swiftly to the back
+of the seat, and reaching between the splines, I sawed through the silk-faced
+front on the left-hand side of the coat till the two cuts joined.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Cautiously as the box-turtle of his native heath, the doctor drew away sideways
+and to the right, with the air of a frustrated burglar coming out from under a
+bed, and stood up free, one black diagonal shoulder projecting through the grey
+of his ruined overcoat. I returned the scissors to the bag, snapped the catch,
+and held all out to him as the wheels of the fly rang hollow under the railway
+arch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It came at a footpace past the wicket-gate of the station, and the doctor
+stopped it with a whisper. It was going some five miles across country to bring
+home from church some one,&mdash;I could not catch the name,&mdash;because his
+own carriage-horses were lame. Its destination happened to be the one place in
+all the world that the doctor was most burningly anxious to visit, and he
+promised the driver untold gold to drive to some ancient flame of
+his&mdash;Helen Blazes, she was called.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t you coming, too?&rdquo; he said, bundling his overcoat into
+his bag.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now the fly had been so obviously sent to the doctor, and to no one else, that
+I had no concern with it. Our roads, I saw, divided, and there was, further, a
+need upon me to laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall stay here,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a very pretty
+country.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My God!&rdquo; he murmured, as softly as he shut the door, and I felt
+that it was a prayer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he went out of my life, and I shaped my course for the railway-bridge. It
+was necessary to pass by the bench once more, but the wicket was between us.
+The departure of the fly had waked the navvy. He crawled on to the seat, and
+with malignant eyes watched the driver flog down the road.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The man inside o&rsquo; that,&rdquo; he called, &ldquo;&rsquo;as
+poisoned me. &rsquo;E&rsquo;s a body-snatcher. &rsquo;E&rsquo;s comin&rsquo;
+back again when I&rsquo;m cold. &rsquo;Ere&rsquo;s my evidence!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He waved his share of the overcoat, and I went my way, because I was hungry.
+Framlynghame Admiral village is a good two miles from the station, and I waked
+the holy calm of the evening every step of that way with shouts and yells,
+casting myself down in the flank of the good green hedge when I was too weak to
+stand. There was an inn,&mdash;a blessed inn with a thatched roof, and peonies
+in the garden,&mdash;and I ordered myself an upper chamber in which the
+Foresters held their courts for the laughter was not all out of me. A
+bewildered woman brought me ham and eggs, and I leaned out of the mullioned
+window, and laughed between mouthfuls. I sat long above the beer and the
+perfect smoke that followed, till the lights changed in the quiet street, and I
+began to think of the seven forty-five down, and all that world of the
+&ldquo;Arabian Nights&rdquo; I had quitted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Descending, I passed a giant in moleskins who filled the low-ceiled tap-room.
+Many empty plates stood before him, and beyond them a fringe of the
+Framlynghame Admiralty, to whom he was unfolding a wondrous tale of anarchy, of
+body-snatching, of bribery, and the Valley of the Shadow from the which he was
+but newly risen. And as he talked he ate, and as he ate he drank, for there was
+much room in him; and anon he paid royally, speaking of Justice and the Law,
+before whom all Englishmen are equal, and all foreigners and anarchists vermin
+and slime.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On my way to the station, he passed me with great strides, his head high among
+the low-flying bats, his feet firm on the packed road-metal, his fists
+clinched, and his breath coming sharply. There was a beautiful smell in the
+air&mdash;the smell of white dust, bruised nettles, and smoke, that brings
+tears to the throat of a man who sees his country but seldom&mdash;a smell like
+the echoes of the lost talk of lovers; the infinitely suggestive odour of an
+immemorial civilisation. It was a perfect walk; and, lingering on every step, I
+came to the station just as the one porter lighted the last of a truckload of
+lamps, and set them back in the lamp-room, while he dealt tickets to four or
+five of the population who, not contented with their own peace, thought fit to
+travel. It was no ticket that the navvy seemed to need. He was sitting on a
+bench, wrathfully grinding a tumbler into fragments with his heel. I abode in
+obscurity at the end of the platform, interested as ever, thank Heaven, in my
+surroundings. There was a jar of wheels on the road. The navvy rose as they
+approached, strode through the wicket, and laid a hand upon a horse&rsquo;s
+bridle that brought the beast up on his hireling hind legs. It was the
+providential fly coming back, and for a moment I wondered whether the doctor
+had been mad enough to revisit his practice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Get away; you&rsquo;re drunk,&rdquo; said the driver.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not,&rdquo; said the navvy. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been
+waitin&rsquo; &rsquo;ere hours and hours. Come out, you beggar inside
+there!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go on, driver,&rdquo; said a voice I did not know&mdash;a crisp, clear,
+English voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said the navvy. &ldquo;You wouldn&rsquo;t &rsquo;ear
+me when I was polite. <i>Now</i> will you come?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a chasm in the side of the fly, for he had wrenched the door bodily
+off its hinges, and was feeling within purposefully. A well-booted leg rewarded
+him, and there came out, not with delight, hopping on one foot, a round and
+grey-haired Englishman, from whose armpits dropped hymn-books, but from his
+mouth an altogether different service of song.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come on, you bloomin&rsquo; body-snatcher! You thought I was dead, did
+you?&rdquo; roared the navvy. And the respectable gentleman came accordingly,
+inarticulate with rage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ere&rsquo;s a man murderin&rsquo; the Squire,&rdquo; the driver shouted,
+and fell from his box upon the navvy&rsquo;s neck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To do them justice, the people of Framlynghame Admiral, so many as were on the
+platform, rallied to the call in the best spirit of feudalism. It was the one
+porter who beat the navvy on the nose with a ticket-punch, but it was the three
+third-class tickets who attached themselves to his legs and freed the captive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Send for a constable! lock him up!&rdquo; said that man, adjusting his
+collar; and unitedly they cast him into the lamp-room, and turned the key,
+while the driver mourned over the wrecked fly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Till then the navvy, whose only desire was justice, had kept his temper nobly.
+Then he went Berserk before our amazed eyes. The door of the lamp-room was
+generously constructed, and would not give an inch, but the window he tore from
+its fastenings and hurled outwards. The one porter counted the damage in a loud
+voice, and the others, arming themselves with agricultural implements from the
+station garden, kept up a ceaseless winnowing before the window, themselves
+backed close to the wall, and bade the prisoner think of the gaol. He answered
+little to the point, so far as they could understand; but seeing that his exit
+was impeded, he took a lamp and hurled it through the wrecked sash. It fell on
+the metals and went out. With inconceivable velocity, the others, fifteen in
+all, followed, looking like rockets in the gloom, and with the last (he could
+have had no plan) the Berserk rage left him as the doctor&rsquo;s deadly
+brewage waked up, under the stimulus of violent exercise and a very full meal,
+to one last cataclysmal exhibition, and&mdash;we heard the whistle of the seven
+forty-five down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were all acutely interested in as much of the wreck as they could see, for
+the station smelt to Heaven of oil, and the engine skittered over broken glass
+like a terrier in a cucumber-frame. The guard had to hear of it, and the Squire
+had his version of the brutal assault, and heads were out all along the
+carriages as I found me a seat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is the row?&rdquo; said a young man, as I entered. &ldquo;Man
+drunk?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, the symptoms, so far as my observation has gone, more resemble
+those of Asiatic cholera than anything else,&rdquo; I answered, slowly and
+judicially, that every word might carry weight in the appointed scheme of
+things. Up till then, you will observe, I had taken no part in that war.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was an Englishman, but he collected his belongings as swiftly as had the
+American, ages before, and leaped upon the platform, crying: &ldquo;Can I be of
+any service? I&rsquo;m a doctor.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the lamp-room I heard a wearied voice wailing &ldquo;Another
+bloomin&rsquo; doctor!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the seven forty-five carried me on, a step nearer to Eternity, by the road
+that is worn and seamed and channelled with the passions, and weaknesses, and
+warring interests of man who is immortal and master of his fate.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"></a>
+THE BRUSHWOOD BOY</h2>
+
+<p class="poem">
+Girls and boys, come out to play<br/>
+The moon is shining as bright as day!<br/>
+Leave your supper and leave your sleep,<br/>
+And come with your playfellows out in the street!<br/>
+Up the ladder and down the wall&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A child of three sat up in his crib and screamed at the top of his voice, his
+fists clinched and his eyes full of terror. At first no one heard, for his
+nursery was in the west wing, and the nurse was talking to a gardener among the
+laurels. Then the housekeeper passed that way, and hurried to soothe him. He
+was her special pet, and she disapproved of the nurse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What was it, then? What was it, then? There&rsquo;s nothing to frighten
+him, Georgie dear.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was&mdash;it was a policeman! He was on the Down&mdash;I saw him! He
+came in. Jane said he would.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Policemen don&rsquo;t come into houses, dearie. Turn over, and take my
+hand.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I saw him&mdash;on the Down. He came here. Where is your hand,
+Harper?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The housekeeper waited till the sobs changed to the regular breathing of sleep
+before she stole out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jane, what nonsense have you been telling Master Georgie about
+policemen?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t told him anything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have. He&rsquo;s been dreaming about them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We met Tisdall on Dowhead when we were in the donkey-cart this morning.
+P&rsquo;r&rsquo;aps that&rsquo;s what put it into his head.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! Now you aren&rsquo;t going to frighten the child into fits with your
+silly tales, and the master know nothing about it. If ever I catch you
+again,&rdquo; etc.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+A child of six was telling himself stories as he lay in bed. It was a new
+power, and he kept it a secret. A month before it had occurred to him to carry
+on a nursery tale left unfinished by his mother, and he was delighted to find
+the tale as it came out of his own head just as surprising as though he were
+listening to it &ldquo;all new from the beginning.&rdquo; There was a prince in
+that tale, and he killed dragons, but only for one night. Ever afterwards
+Georgie dubbed himself prince, pasha, giant-killer, and all the rest (you see,
+he could not tell any one, for fear of being laughed at), and his tales faded
+gradually into dreamland, where adventures were so many that he could not
+recall the half of them. They all began in the same way, or, as Georgie
+explained to the shadows of the night-light, there was &ldquo;the same
+starting-off place&rdquo;&mdash;a pile of brushwood stacked somewhere near a
+beach; and round this pile Georgie found himself running races with little boys
+and girls. These ended, ships ran high up the dry land and opened into
+cardboard boxes; or gilt-and-green iron railings that surrounded beautiful
+gardens turned all soft and could be walked through and overthrown so long as
+he remembered it was only a dream. He could never hold that knowledge more than
+a few seconds ere things became real, and instead of pushing down houses full
+of grown-up people (a just revenge), he sat miserably upon gigantic door-steps
+trying to sing the multiplication-table up to four times six.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The princess of his tales was a person of wonderful beauty (she came from the
+old illustrated edition of Grimm, now out of print), and as she always
+applauded Georgie&rsquo;s valour among the dragons and buffaloes, he gave her
+the two finest names he had ever heard in his life&mdash;Annie and Louise,
+pronounced &ldquo;Annie<i>an</i>louise.&rdquo; When the dreams swamped the
+stories, she would change into one of the little girls round the
+brushwood-pile, still keeping her title and crown. She saw Georgie drown once
+in a dream-sea by the beach (it was the day after he had been taken to bathe in
+a real sea by his nurse); and he said as he sank: &ldquo;Poor
+Annie<i>an</i>louise! She&rsquo;ll be sorry for me now!&rdquo; But
+&ldquo;Annie<i>an</i>louise,&rdquo; walking slowly on the beach, called,
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Ha! ha!&rsquo; said the duck, laughing,&rdquo; which to a waking
+mind might not seem to bear on the situation. It consoled Georgie at once, and
+must have been some kind of spell, for it raised the bottom of the deep, and he
+waded out with a twelve-inch flower-pot on each foot. As he was strictly
+forbidden to meddle with flower-pots in real life, he felt triumphantly wicked.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+The movements of the grown-ups, whom Georgie tolerated, but did not pretend to
+understand, removed his world, when he was seven years old, to a place called
+&ldquo;Oxford-on-a-visit. &ldquo;Here were huge buildings surrounded by vast
+prairies, with streets of infinite length, and, above all, something called the
+&ldquo;buttery,&rdquo; which Georgie was dying to see, because he knew it must
+be greasy, and therefore delightful. He perceived how correct were his
+judgments when his nurse led him through a stone arch into the presence of an
+enormously fat man, who asked him if he would like some, bread and cheese.
+Georgie was used to eat all round the clock, so he took what
+&ldquo;buttery&rdquo; gave him, and would have taken some brown liquid called
+&ldquo;auditale&rdquo; but that his nurse led him away to an afternoon
+performance of a thing called &ldquo;Pepper&rsquo;s Ghost.&rdquo; This was
+intensely thrilling. People&rsquo;s heads came off and flew all over the stage,
+and skeletons danced bone by bone, while Mr. Pepper himself, beyond question a
+man of the worst, waved his arms and flapped a long gown, and in a deep bass
+voice (Georgie had never heard a man sing before) told of his sorrows
+unspeakable. Some grown-up or other tried to explain that the illusion was made
+with mirrors, and that there was no need to be frightened. Georgie did not know
+what illusions were, but he did know that a mirror was the looking-glass with
+the ivory handle on his mother&rsquo;s dressing-table. Therefore the
+&ldquo;grown-up&rdquo; was &ldquo;just saying things&rdquo; after the
+distressing custom of &ldquo;grown-ups,&rdquo; and Georgie cast about for
+amusement between scenes. Next to him sat a little girl dressed all in black,
+her hair combed off her forehead exactly like the girl in the book called
+&ldquo;Alice in Wonderland,&rdquo; which had been given him on his last
+birthday. The little girl looked at Georgie, and Georgie looked at her. There
+seemed to be no need of any further introduction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got a cut on my thumb,&rdquo; said he. It was the first work
+of his first real knife, a savage triangular hack, and he esteemed it a most
+valuable possession.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m tho thorry!&rdquo; she lisped. &ldquo;Let me look
+pleathe.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a di-ack-lum plaster on, but it&rsquo;s all raw
+under,&rdquo; Georgie answered, complying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dothent it hurt?&rdquo;&mdash;her grey eyes were full of pity and
+interest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Awf&rsquo;ly. Perhaps it will give me lockjaw.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It lookth very horrid. I&rsquo;m <i>tho</i> thorry!&rdquo; She put a
+forefinger to his hand, and held her head sidewise for a better view.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here the nurse turned, and shook him severely. &ldquo;You mustn&rsquo;t talk to
+strange little girls, Master Georgie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She isn&rsquo;t strange. She&rsquo;s very nice. I like her, an&rsquo;
+I&rsquo;ve showed her my new cut.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The idea! You change places with me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She moved him over, and shut out the little girl from his view, while the
+grown-up behind renewed the futile explanations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am <i>not</i> afraid, truly,&rdquo; said the boy, wriggling in
+despair; &ldquo;but why don&rsquo;t you go to sleep in the afternoons, same as
+Provost of Oriel?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Georgie had been introduced to a grown-up of that name, who slept in his
+presence without apology. Georgie understood that he was the most important
+grown-up in Oxford; hence he strove to gild his rebuke with flatteries. This
+grown-up did not seem to like it, but he collapsed, and Georgie lay back in his
+seat, silent and enraptured. Mr. Pepper was singing again, and the deep,
+ringing voice, the red fire, and the misty, waving gown all seemed to be mixed
+up with the little girl who had been so kind about his cut. When the
+performance was ended she nodded to Georgie, and Georgie nodded in return. He
+spoke no more than was necessary till bedtime, but meditated on new colors and
+sounds and lights and music and things as far as he understood them; the
+deep-mouthed agony of Mr. Pepper mingling with the little girl&rsquo;s lisp.
+That night he made a new tale, from which he shamelessly removed the
+Rapunzel-Rapunzel-let-down-your-hair princess, gold crown, Grimm edition, and
+all, and put a new Annie<i>an</i>louise in her place. So it was perfectly right
+and natural that when he came to the brushwood-pile he should find her waiting
+for him, her hair combed off her forehead more like Alice in Wonderland than
+ever, and the races and adventures began.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Ten years at an English public school do not encourage dreaming. Georgie won
+his growth and chest measurement, and a few other things which did not appear
+in the bills, under a system of cricket, foot-ball, and paper-chases, from four
+to five days a week, which provided for three lawful cuts of a ground-ash if
+any boy absented himself from these entertainments. He became a
+rumple-collared, dusty-hatted fag of the Lower Third, and a light half-back at
+Little Side foot-ball; was pushed and prodded through the slack backwaters of
+the Lower Fourth, where the raffle of a school generally accumulates; won his
+&ldquo;second-fifteen&rdquo; cap at foot-ball, enjoyed the dignity of a study
+with two companions in it, and began to look forward to office as a
+sub-prefect. At last he blossomed into full glory as head of the school,
+ex-officio captain of the games; head of his house, where he and his
+lieutenants preserved discipline and decency among seventy boys from twelve to
+seventeen; general arbiter in the quarrels that spring up among the touchy
+Sixth&mdash;and intimate friend and ally of the Head himself. When he stepped
+forth in the black jersey, white knickers, and black stockings of the First
+Fifteen, the new match-ball under his arm, and his old and frayed cap at the
+back of his head, the small fry of the lower forms stood apart and worshipped,
+and the &ldquo;new caps&rdquo; of the team talked to him ostentatiously, that
+the world might see. And so, in summer, when he came back to the pavilion after
+a slow but eminently safe game, it mattered not whether he had made nothing or,
+as once happened, a hundred and three, the school shouted just the same, and
+women-folk who had come to look at the match looked at Cottar&mdash;Cottar,
+<i>major;</i> &ldquo;that&rsquo;s Cottar!&rdquo; Above all, he was responsible
+for that thing called the tone of the school, and few realise with what
+passionate devotion a certain type of boy throws himself into this work. Home
+was a faraway country, full of ponies and fishing and shooting, and
+men-visitors who interfered with one&rsquo;s plans; but school was the real
+world, where things of vital importance happened, and crises arose that must be
+dealt with promptly and quietly. Not for nothing was it written, &ldquo;Let the
+Consuls look to it that the Republic takes no harm,&rdquo; and Georgie was glad
+to be back in authority when the holidays ended. Behind him, but not too near,
+was the wise and temperate Head, now suggesting the wisdom of the serpent, now
+counselling the mildness of the dove; leading him on to see, more by half-hints
+than by any direct word, how boys and men are all of a piece, and how he who
+can handle the one will assuredly in time control the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the rest, the school was not encouraged to dwell on its emotions, but
+rather to keep in hard condition, to avoid false quantities, and to enter the
+army direct, without the help of the expensive London crammer, under whose roof
+young blood learns too much. Cottar, <i>major</i>, went the way of hundreds
+before him. The Head gave him six months&rsquo; final polish, taught him what
+kind of answers best please a certain kind of examiners, and handed him over to
+the properly constituted authorities, who passed him into Sandhurst. Here he
+had sense enough to see that he was in the Lower Third once more, and behaved
+with respect toward his seniors, till they in turn respected him, and he was
+promoted to the rank of corporal, and sat in authority over mixed peoples with
+all the vices of men and boys combined. His reward was another string of
+athletic cups, a good-conduct sword, and, at last, Her Majesty&rsquo;s
+commission as a subaltern in a first-class line regiment. He did not know that
+he bore with him from school and college a character worth much fine gold, but
+was pleased to find his mess so kindly. He had plenty of money of his own; his
+training had set the public school mask upon his face, and had taught him how
+many were the &ldquo;things no fellow can do.&rdquo; By virtue of the same
+training he kept his pores open and his mouth shut.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The regular working of the Empire shifted his world to India, where he tasted
+utter loneliness in subaltern&rsquo;s quarters,&mdash;one room and one
+bullock-trunk,&mdash;and, with his mess, learned the new life from the
+beginning. But there were horses in the land-ponies at reasonable price; there
+was polo for such as could afford it; there were the disreputable remnants of a
+pack of hounds; and Cottar worried his way along without too much despair. It
+dawned on him that a regiment in India was nearer the chance of active service
+than he had conceived, and that a man might as well study his profession. A
+major of the new school backed this idea with enthusiasm, and he and Cottar
+accumulated a library of military works, and read and argued and disputed far
+into the nights. But the adjutant said the old thing: &ldquo;Get to know your
+men, young un, and they&rsquo;ll follow you anywhere. That&rsquo;s all you
+want&mdash;know your men.&rdquo; Cottar thought he knew them fairly well at
+cricket and the regimental sports, but he never realised the true inwardness of
+them till he was sent off with a detachment of twenty to sit down in a mud fort
+near a rushing river which was spanned by a bridge of boats. When the floods
+came they went forth and hunted strayed pontoons along the banks. Otherwise
+there was nothing to do, and the men got drunk, gambled, and quarrelled. They
+were a sickly crew, for a junior subaltern is by custom saddled with the worst
+men. Cottar endured their rioting as long as he could, and then sent
+down-country for a dozen pairs of boxing-gloves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t blame you for fightin&rsquo;,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;if
+you only knew how to use your hands; but you don&rsquo;t. Take these things,
+and I&rsquo;ll show you.&rdquo; The men appreciated his efforts. Now, instead
+of blaspheming and swearing at a comrade, and threatening to shoot him, they
+could take him apart, and soothe themselves to exhaustion. As one explained
+whom Cottar found with a shut eye and a diamond-shaped mouth spitting blood
+through an embrasure: &ldquo;We tried it with the gloves, sir, for twenty
+minutes, and <i>that</i> done us no good, sir. Then we took off the gloves and
+tried it that way for another twenty minutes, same as you showed us, sir,
+an&rsquo; that done us a world o&rsquo; good. &rsquo;T wasn&rsquo;t
+fightin&rsquo;, sir; there was a bet on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Cottar dared not laugh, but he invited his men to other sports, such as racing
+across country in shirt and trousers after a trail of torn paper, and to
+single-stick in the evenings, till the native population, who had a lust for
+sport in every form, wished to know whether the white men understood wrestling.
+They sent in an ambassador, who took the soldiers by the neck and threw them
+about the dust; and the entire command were all for this new game. They spent
+money on learning new falls and holds, which was better than buying other
+doubtful commodities; and the peasantry grinned five deep round the
+tournaments.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That detachment, who had gone up in bullock-carts, returned to headquarters at
+an average rate of thirty miles a day, fair heel-and-toe; no sick, no
+prisoners, and no court martials pending. They scattered themselves among their
+friends, singing the praises of their lieutenant and looking for causes of
+offense.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How did you do it, young un?&rdquo; the adjutant asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I sweated the beef off &rsquo;em, and then I sweated some muscle on
+to &rsquo;em. It was rather a lark.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If that&rsquo;s your way of lookin&rsquo; at it, we can give you all the
+larks you want. Young Davies isn&rsquo;t feelin&rsquo; quite fit, and
+he&rsquo;s next for detachment duty. Care to go for him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sure he wouldn&rsquo;t mind? I don&rsquo;t want to shove myself forward,
+you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t bother on Davies&rsquo;s account. We&rsquo;ll give you
+the sweepin&rsquo;s of the corps, and you can see what you can make of
+&rsquo;em.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Cottar. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s better fun than
+loafin&rsquo; about cantonments.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rummy thing,&rdquo; said the adjutant, after Cottar had returned to his
+wilderness with twenty other devils worse than the first. &ldquo;If Cottar only
+knew it, half the women in the station would give their eyes&mdash;confound
+&rsquo;em!&mdash;to have the young un in tow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That accounts for Mrs. Elery sayin&rsquo; I was workin&rsquo; my nice
+new boy too hard,&rdquo; said a wing commander.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, yes; and &lsquo;Why doesn&rsquo;t he come to the bandstand in the
+evenings?&rsquo; and &lsquo;Can&rsquo;t I get him to make up a four at tennis
+with the Hammon girls?&rsquo;&rdquo; the adjutant snorted. &ldquo;Look at young
+Davies makin&rsquo; an ass of himself over mutton-dressed-as-lamb old enough to
+be his mother!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No one can accuse young Cottar of runnin&rsquo; after women, white
+<i>or</i> black,&rdquo; the major replied thoughtfully. &ldquo;But, then,
+that&rsquo;s the kind that generally goes the worst mucker in the end.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not Cottar. I&rsquo;ve only run across one of his muster before&mdash;a
+fellow called Ingles, in South Africa. He was just the same hard trained,
+athletic-sports build of animal. Always kept himself in the pink of condition.
+Didn&rsquo;t do him much good, though. Shot at Wesselstroom the week before
+Majuba. Wonder how the young un will lick his detachment into shape.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Cottar turned up six weeks later, on foot, with his pupils. He never told his
+experiences, but the men spoke enthusiastically, and fragments of it leaked
+back to the colonel through sergeants, batmen, and the like.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was great jealousy between the first and second detachments, but the men
+united in adoring Cottar, and their way of showing it was by sparing him all
+the trouble that men know how to make for an unloved officer. He sought
+popularity as little as he had sought it at school, and therefore it came to
+him. He favoured no one&mdash;not even when the company sloven pulled the
+company cricket-match out of the fire with an unexpected forty-three at the
+last moment. There was very little getting round him, for he seemed to know by
+instinct exactly when and where to head off a malingerer; but he did not forget
+that the difference between a dazed and sulky junior of the upper school and a
+bewildered, browbeaten lump of a private fresh from the depot was very small
+indeed. The sergeants, seeing these things, told him secrets generally hid from
+young officers. His words were quoted as barrack authority on bets in canteen
+and at tea; and the veriest shrew of the corps, bursting with charges against
+other women who had used the cooking-ranges out of turn, forbore to speak when
+Cottar, as the regulations ordained, asked of a morning if there were
+&ldquo;any complaints.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m full o&rsquo; complaints,&rdquo; said Mrs. Corporal Morrison,
+&ldquo;an&rsquo; I&rsquo;d kill O&rsquo;Halloran&rsquo;s fat sow of a wife any
+day, but ye know how it is. &rsquo;E puts &rsquo;is head just inside the door,
+an&rsquo; looks down &rsquo;is blessed nose so bashful, an&rsquo; &rsquo;e
+whispers, &lsquo;Any complaints&rsquo; Ye can&rsquo;t complain after that.
+<i>I</i> want to kiss him. Some day I think I will. Heigh-ho! she&rsquo;ll be a
+lucky woman that gets Young Innocence. See &rsquo;im now, girls. Do ye blame
+me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Cottar was cantering across to polo, and he looked a very satisfactory figure
+of a man as he gave easily to the first excited bucks of his pony, and slipped
+over a low mud wall to the practice-ground. There were more than Mrs. Corporal
+Morrison who felt as she did. But Cottar was busy for eleven hours of the day.
+He did not care to have his tennis spoiled by petticoats in the court; and
+after one long afternoon at a garden-party, he explained to his major that this
+sort of thing was &ldquo;futile piffle,&rdquo; and the major laughed. Theirs
+was not a married mess, except for the colonel&rsquo;s wife, and Cottar stood
+in awe of the good lady. She said &ldquo;my regiment,&rdquo; and the world
+knows what that means. None the less when they wanted her to give away the
+prizes after a shooting-match, and she refused because one of the prize-winners
+was married to a girl who had made a jest of her behind her broad back, the
+mess ordered Cottar to &ldquo;tackle her,&rdquo; in his best calling-kit. This
+he did, simply and laboriously, and she gave way altogether.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She only wanted to know the facts of the case,&rdquo; he explained.
+&ldquo;I just told her, and she saw at once.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ye-es,&rdquo; said the adjutant. &ldquo;I expect that&rsquo;s what she
+did. Comin&rsquo; to the Fusiliers&rsquo; dance to-night, Galahad?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, thanks. I&rsquo;ve got a fight on with the major.&rdquo; The
+virtuous apprentice sat up till midnight in the major&rsquo;s quarters, with a
+stop-watch and a pair of compasses, shifting little painted lead-blocks about a
+four-inch map.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he turned in and slept the sleep of innocence, which is full of healthy
+dreams. One peculiarity of his dreams he noticed at the beginning of his second
+hot weather. Two or three times a month they duplicated or ran in series. He
+would find himself sliding into dreamland by the same road&mdash;a road that
+ran along a beach near a pile of brushwood. To the right lay the sea, sometimes
+at full tide, sometimes withdrawn to the very horizon; but he knew it for the
+same sea. By that road he would travel over a swell of rising ground covered
+with short, withered grass, into valleys of wonder and unreason. Beyond the
+ridge, which was crowned with some sort of street-lamp, anything was possible;
+but up to the lamp it seemed to him that he knew the road as well as he knew
+the parade-ground. He learned to look forward to the place; for, once there, he
+was sure of a good night&rsquo;s rest, and Indian hot weather can be rather
+trying. First, shadowy under closing eyelids, would come the outline of the
+brushwood-pile; next the white sand of the beach-road, almost overhanging the
+black, changeful sea; then the turn inland and uphill to the single light. When
+he was unrestful for any reason, he would tell himself how he was sure to get
+there&mdash;sure to get there&mdash;if he shut his eyes and surrendered to the
+drift of things. But one night after a foolishly hard hour&rsquo;s polo (the
+thermometer was 94° in his quarters at ten o&rsquo;clock), sleep stood away
+from him altogether, though he did his best to find the well-known road, the
+point where true sleep began. At last he saw the brushwood-pile, and hurried
+along to the ridge, for behind him he felt was the wide-awake, sultry world. He
+reached the lamp in safety, tingling with drowsiness, when a policeman&mdash;a
+common country policeman&mdash;sprang up before him and touched him on the
+shoulder ere he could dive into the dim valley below. He was filled with
+terror,&mdash;the hopeless terror of dreams,&mdash;for the policeman said, in
+the awful, distinct voice of dream-people, &ldquo;I am Policeman Day coming
+back from the City of Sleep. You come with me.&rdquo; Georgie knew it was
+true&mdash;that just beyond him in the valley lay the lights of the City of
+Sleep, where he would have been sheltered, and that this Policeman-Thing had
+full power and authority to head him back to miserable wakefulness. He found
+himself looking at the moonlight on the wall, dripping with fright; and he
+never overcame that horror, though he met the Policeman several times that hot
+weather, and his coming was the forerunner of a bad night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But other dreams&mdash;perfectly absurd ones&mdash;filled him with an
+incommunicable delight. All those that he remembered began by the
+brushwood-pile. For instance, he found a small clockwork steamer (he had
+noticed it many nights before) lying by the sea-road, and stepped into it,
+whereupon it moved with surpassing swiftness over an absolutely level sea. This
+was glorious, for he felt he was exploring great matters; and it stopped by a
+lily carved in stone, which, most naturally, floated on the water. Seeing the
+lily was labelled &ldquo;Hong-Kong,&rdquo; Georgie said: &ldquo;Of course. This
+is precisely what I expected Hong-Kong would be like. How magnificent!&rdquo;
+Thousands of miles farther on it halted at yet another stone lily, labelled
+&ldquo;Java&rdquo;; and this, again, delighted him hugely, because he knew that
+now he was at the world&rsquo;s end. But the little boat ran on and on till it
+lay in a deep fresh-water lock, the sides of which were carven marble, green
+with moss. Lilypads lay on the water, and reeds arched above. Some one moved
+among the reeds&mdash;some one whom Georgie knew he had travelled to this
+world&rsquo;s end to reach. Therefore everything was entirely well with him. He
+was unspeakably happy, and vaulted over the ship&rsquo;s side to find this
+person. When his feet touched that still water, it changed, with the rustle of
+unrolling maps, to nothing less than a sixth quarter of the globe, beyond the
+most remote imagining of man&mdash;a place where islands were coloured yellow
+and blue, their lettering strung across their faces. They gave on unknown seas,
+and Georgie&rsquo;s urgent desire was to return swiftly across this floating
+atlas to known bearings. He told himself repeatedly that it was no good to
+hurry; but still he hurried desperately, and the islands slipped and slid under
+his feet; the straits yawned and widened, till he found himself utterly lost in
+the world&rsquo;s fourth dimension, with no hope of return. Yet only a little
+distance away he could see the old world with the rivers and mountain-chains
+marked according to the Sandhurst rules of mapmaking. Then that person for whom
+he had come to the Lily Lock (that was its name) ran up across unexplored
+territories, and showed him away. They fled hand in hand till they reached a
+road that spanned ravines, and ran along the edge of precipices, and was
+tunnelled through mountains. &ldquo;This goes to our brushwood-pile,&rdquo;
+said his companion; and all his trouble was at an end. He took a pony, because
+he understood that this was the Thirty-Mile-Ride and he must ride swiftly, and
+raced through the clattering tunnels and round the curves, always downhill,
+till he heard the sea to his left, and saw it raging under a full moon, against
+sandy cliffs. It was heavy going, but he recognised the nature of the country,
+the dark-purple downs inland, and the bents that whistled in the wind. The road
+was eaten away in places, and the sea lashed at him&mdash;black, foamless
+tongues of smooth and glossy rollers; but he was sure that there was less
+danger from the sea than from &ldquo;Them,&rdquo; whoever &ldquo;They&rdquo;
+were, inland to his right. He knew, too, that he would be safe if he could
+reach the down with the lamp on it. This came as he expected: he saw the one
+light a mile ahead along the beach, dismounted, turned to the right, walked
+quietly over to the brushwood-pile, found the little steamer had returned to
+the beach whence he had unmoored it, and&mdash;must have fallen asleep, for he
+could remember no more. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m gettin&rsquo; the hang of the
+geography of that place,&rdquo; he said to himself, as he shaved next morning.
+&ldquo;I must have made some sort of circle. Let&rsquo;s see. The
+Thirty-Mile-Ride (now how the deuce did I know it was called the
+Thirty-Mile-Ride?) joins the sea-road beyond the first down where the lamp is.
+And that atlas-country lies at the back of the Thirty-Mile-Ride, somewhere out
+to the right beyond the hills and tunnels. Rummy things, dreams. &rsquo;Wonder
+what makes mine fit into each other so?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He continued on his solid way through the recurring duties of the seasons. The
+regiment was shifted to another station, and he enjoyed road-marching for two
+months, with a good deal of mixed shooting thrown in, and when they reached
+their new cantonments he became a member of the local Tent Club, and chased the
+mighty boar on horseback with a short stabbing-spear. There he met the
+<i>mahseer</i> of the Poonch, beside whom the tarpon is as a herring, and he
+who lands him can say that he is a fisherman. This was as new and as
+fascinating as the big-game shooting that fell to his portion, when he had
+himself photographed for the mother&rsquo;s benefit, sitting on the flank of
+his first tiger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then the adjutant was promoted, and Cottar rejoiced with him, for he admired
+the adjutant greatly, and marvelled who might be big enough to fill his place;
+so that he nearly collapsed when the mantle fell on his own shoulders, and the
+colonel said a few sweet things that made him blush. An adjutant&rsquo;s
+position does not differ materially from that of head of the school, and Cottar
+stood in the same relation to the colonel as he had to his old Head in England.
+Only, tempers wear out in hot weather, and things were said and done that tried
+him sorely, and he made glorious blunders, from which the regimental
+sergeant-major pulled him with a loyal soul and a shut mouth. Slovens and
+incompetents raged against him; the weak-minded strove to lure him from the
+ways of justice; the small-minded&mdash;yea, men whom Cottar believed would
+never do &ldquo;things no fellow can do&rdquo;&mdash;imputed motives mean and
+circuitous to actions that he had not spent a thought upon; and he tasted
+injustice, and it made him very sick. But his consolation came on parade, when
+he looked down the full companies, and reflected how few were in hospital or
+cells, and wondered when the time would come to try the machine of his love and
+labour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But they needed and expected the whole of a man&rsquo;s working-day, and maybe
+three or four hours of the night. Curiously enough, he never dreamed about the
+regiment as he was popularly supposed to. The mind, set free from the
+day&rsquo;s doings, generally ceased working altogether, or, if it moved at
+all, carried him along the old beach-road to the downs, the lamp-post, and,
+once in a while, to terrible Policeman Day. The second time that he returned to
+the world&rsquo;s lost continent (this was a dream that repeated itself again
+and again, with variations, on the same ground) he knew that if he only sat
+still the person from the Lily Lock would help him, and he was not
+disappointed. Sometimes he was trapped in mines of vast depth hollowed out of
+the heart of the world, where men in torment chanted echoing songs; and he
+heard this person coming along through the galleries, and everything was made
+safe and delightful. They met again in low-roofed Indian railway-carriages that
+halted in a garden surrounded by gilt-and-green railings, where a mob of stony
+white people, all unfriendly, sat at breakfast-tables covered with roses, and
+separated Georgie from his companion, while underground voices sang deep-voiced
+songs. Georgie was filled with enormous despair till they two met again. They
+foregathered in the middle of an endless, hot tropic night, and crept into a
+huge house that stood, he knew, somewhere north of the railway-station where
+the people ate among the roses. It was surrounded with gardens, all moist and
+dripping; and in one room, reached through leagues of whitewashed passages, a
+Sick Thing lay in bed. Now the least noise, Georgie knew, would unchain some
+waiting horror, and his companion knew it, too; but when their eyes met across
+the bed, Georgie was disgusted to see that she was a child&mdash;a little girl
+in strapped shoes, with her black hair combed back from her forehead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What disgraceful folly!&rdquo; he thought. &ldquo;Now she could do
+nothing whatever if Its head came off.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then the Thing coughed, and the ceiling shattered down in plaster on the
+mosquito-netting, and &ldquo;They&rdquo; rushed in from all quarters. He
+dragged the child through the stifling garden, voices chanting behind them, and
+they rode the Thirty-Mile-Ride under whip and spur along the sandy beach by the
+booming sea, till they came to the downs, the lamp-post, and the
+brushwood-pile, which was safety. Very often dreams would break up about them
+in this fashion, and they would be separated, to endure awful adventures alone.
+But the most amusing times were when he and she had a clear understanding that
+it was all make-believe, and walked through mile-wide roaring rivers without
+even taking off their shoes, or set light to populous cities to see how they
+would burn, and were rude as any children to the vague shadows met in their
+rambles. Later in the night they were sure to suffer for this, either at the
+hands of the Railway People eating among the roses, or in the tropic uplands at
+the far end of the Thirty-Mile-Ride. Together, this did no much affright them;
+but often Georgie would hear her shrill cry of &ldquo;Boy! Boy!&rdquo; half a
+world away, and hurry to her rescue before &ldquo;They&rdquo; maltreated her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He and she explored the dark-purple downs as far inland from the brushwood-pile
+as they dared, but that was always a dangerous matter. The interior was filled
+with &ldquo;Them,&rdquo; and &ldquo;They&rdquo; went about singing in the
+hollows, and Georgie and she felt safer on or near the seaboard. So thoroughly
+had he come to know the place of his dreams that even waking he accepted it as
+a real country, and made a rough sketch of it. He kept his own counsel, of
+course; but the permanence of the land puzzled him. His ordinary dreams were as
+formless and as fleeting as any healthy dreams could be, but once at the
+brushwood-pile he moved within known limits and could see where he was going.
+There were months at a time when nothing notable crossed his sleep. Then the
+dreams would come in a batch of five or six, and next morning the map that he
+kept in his writing case would be written up to date, for Georgie was a most
+methodical person. There was, indeed, a danger&mdash;his seniors said
+so&mdash;of his developing into a regular &ldquo;Auntie Fuss&rdquo; of an
+adjutant, and when an officer once takes to old-maidism there is more hope for
+the virgin of seventy than for him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But fate sent the change that was needed, in the shape of a little winter
+campaign on the Border, which, after the manner of little campaigns, flashed
+out into a very ugly war; and Cottar&rsquo;s regiment was chosen among the
+first.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said a major, &ldquo;this&rsquo;ll shake the cobwebs out of
+us all&mdash;especially you, Galahad; and we can see what your
+hen-with-one-chick attitude has done for the regiment.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Cottar nearly wept with joy as the campaign went forward. They were
+fit&mdash;physically fit beyond the other troops; they were good children in
+camp, wet or dry, fed or unfed; and they followed their officers with the quick
+suppleness and trained obedience of a first-class foot-ball fifteen. They were
+cut off from their apology for a base, and cheerfully cut their way back to it
+again; they crowned and cleaned out hills full of the enemy with the precision
+of well-broken dogs of chase; and in the hour of retreat, when, hampered with
+the sick and wounded of the column, they were persecuted down eleven miles of
+waterless valley, they, serving as rearguard, covered themselves with a great
+glory in the eyes of fellow-professionals. Any regiment can advance, but few
+know how to retreat with a sting in the tail. Then they turned to made roads,
+most often under fire, and dismantled some inconvenient mud redoubts. They were
+the last corps to be withdrawn when the rubbish of the campaign was all swept
+up; and after a month in standing camp, which tries morals severely, they
+departed to their own place in column of fours, singing:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;&rsquo;E&rsquo;s goin&rsquo; to do without &rsquo;em&mdash;<br/>
+    Don&rsquo;t want &rsquo;em any more;<br/>
+&rsquo;E&rsquo;s goin&rsquo; to do without &rsquo;em,<br/>
+    As &rsquo;e&rsquo;s often done before.<br/>
+&rsquo;E&rsquo;s goin&rsquo; to be a martyr<br/>
+    On a &rsquo;ighly novel plan,<br/>
+An&rsquo; all the boys and girls will say,<br/>
+    &rsquo;Ow! what a nice young man-man-man!<br/>
+    Ow! what a nice young man!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+There came out a <i>Gazette</i> in which Cottar found that he had been behaving
+with &ldquo;courage and coolness and discretion&rdquo; in all his capacities;
+that he had assisted the wounded under fire, and blown in a gate, also under
+fire. Net result, his captaincy and a brevet majority, coupled with the
+Distinguished Service Order.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As to his wounded, he explained that they were both heavy men, whom he could
+lift more easily than any one else. &ldquo;Otherwise, of course, I should have
+sent out one of my men; and, of course, about that gate business, we were safe
+the minute we were well under the walls.&rdquo; But this did not prevent his
+men from cheering him furiously whenever they saw him, or the mess from giving
+him a dinner on the eve of his departure to England. (A year&rsquo;s leave was
+among the things he had &ldquo;snaffled out of the campaign,&rdquo; to use his
+own words.) The doctor, who had taken quite as much as was good for him, quoted
+poetry about &ldquo;a good blade carving the casques of men,&rdquo; and so on,
+and everybody told Cottar that he was an excellent person; but when he rose to
+make his maiden speech they shouted so that he was understood to say, &ldquo;It
+isn&rsquo;t any use tryin&rsquo; to speak with you chaps rottin&rsquo; me like
+this. Let&rsquo;s have some pool.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+It is not unpleasant to spend eight-and-twenty days in an easy-going steamer on
+warm waters, in the company of a woman who lets you see that you are head and
+shoulders superior to the rest of the world, even though that woman may be, and
+most often is, ten counted years your senior. P.O. boats are not lighted with
+the disgustful particularity of Atlantic liners. There is more phosphorescence
+at the bows, and greater silence and darkness by the hand-steering gear aft.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Awful things might have happened to Georgie but for the little fact that he had
+never studied the first principles of the game he was expected to play. So when
+Mrs. Zuleika, at Aden, told him how motherly an interest she felt in his
+welfare, medals, brevet, and all, Georgie took her at the foot of the letter,
+and promptly talked of his own mother, three hundred miles nearer each day, of
+his home, and so forth, all the way up the Red Sea. It was much easier than he
+had supposed to converse with a woman for an hour at a time. Then Mrs. Zuleika,
+turning from parental affection, spoke of love in the abstract as a thing not
+unworthy of study, and in discreet twilights after dinner demanded confidences.
+Georgie would have been delighted to supply them, but he had none, and did not
+know it was his duty to manufacture them. Mrs. Zuleika expressed surprise and
+unbelief, and asked&mdash;those questions which deep asks of deep. She learned
+all that was necessary to conviction, and, being very much a woman, resumed
+(Georgie never knew that she had abandoned) the motherly attitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you know,&rdquo; she said, somewhere in the Mediterranean, &ldquo;I
+think you&rsquo;re the very dearest boy I have ever met in my life, and
+I&rsquo;d like you to remember me a little. You will when you are older, but I
+want you to remember me now. You&rsquo;ll make some girl very happy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! Hope so,&rdquo; said Georgie, gravely; &ldquo;but there&rsquo;s
+heaps of time for marryin&rsquo; an&rsquo; all that sort of thing, ain&rsquo;t
+there?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That depends. Here are your bean-bags for the Ladies&rsquo; Competition.
+I think I&rsquo;m growing too old to care for these <i>tamashas</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were getting up sports, and Georgie was on the committee. He never noticed
+how perfectly the bags were sewn, but another woman did, and smiled&mdash;once.
+He liked Mrs. Zuleika greatly. She was a bit old, of course, but uncommonly
+nice. There was no nonsense about her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few nights after they passed Gibraltar his dream returned to him. She who
+waited by the brushwood-pile was no longer a little girl, but a woman with
+black hair that grew into a &ldquo;widow&rsquo;s peak,&rdquo; combed back from
+her forehead. He knew her for the child in black, the companion of the last six
+years, and, as it had been in the time of the meetings on the Lost Continent,
+he was filled with delight unspeakable. &ldquo;They,&rdquo; for some dreamland
+reason, were friendly or had gone away that night, and the two flitted together
+over all their country, from the brushwood-pile up the Thirty-Mile-Ride, till
+they saw the House of the Sick Thing, a pin-point in the distance to the left;
+stamped through the Railway Waiting-room where the roses lay on the spread
+breakfast-tables; and returned, by the ford and the city they had once burned
+for sport, to the great swells of the downs under the lamp-post. Wherever they
+moved a strong singing followed them underground, but this night there was no
+panic. All the land was empty except for themselves, and at the last (they were
+sitting by the lamp-post hand in hand) she turned and kissed him. He woke with
+a start, staring at the waving curtain of the cabin door; he could almost have
+sworn that the kiss was real.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next morning the ship was rolling in a Biscay sea, and people were not happy;
+but as Georgie came to breakfast, shaven, tubbed, and smelling of soap, several
+turned to look at him because of the light in his eyes and the splendour of his
+countenance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, you look beastly fit,&rdquo; snapped a neighbour. &ldquo;Any one
+left you a legacy in the middle of the Bay?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Georgie reached for the curry, with a seraphic grin. &ldquo;I suppose
+it&rsquo;s the gettin&rsquo; so near home, and all that. I do feel rather
+festive this mornin. &rsquo;Rolls a bit, doesn&rsquo;t she?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Zuleika stayed in her cabin till the end of the voyage, when she left
+without bidding him farewell, and wept passionately on the dock-head for pure
+joy of meeting her children, who, she had often said, were so like their
+father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Georgie headed for his own country, wild with delight of his first long
+furlough after the lean seasons. Nothing was changed in that orderly life, from
+the coachman who met him at the station to the white peacock that stormed at
+the carriage from the stone wall above the shaven lawns. The house took toll of
+him with due regard to precedence&mdash;first the mother; then the father; then
+the housekeeper, who wept and praised God; then the butler, and so on down to
+the under-keeper, who had been dogboy in Georgie&rsquo;s youth, and called him
+&ldquo;Master Georgie,&rdquo; and was reproved by the groom who had taught
+Georgie to ride.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not a thing changed,&rdquo; he sighed contentedly, when the three of
+them sat down to dinner in the late sunlight, while the rabbits crept out upon
+the lawn below the cedars, and the big trout in the ponds by the home paddock
+rose for their evening meal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Our</i> changes are all over, dear,&rdquo; cooed the mother;
+&ldquo;and now I am getting used to your size and your tan (you&rsquo;re very
+brown, Georgie), I see you haven&rsquo;t changed in the least. You&rsquo;re
+exactly like the pater.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The father beamed on this man after his own heart,&mdash;&ldquo;youngest major
+in the army, and should have had the V.C., sir,&rdquo;&mdash;and the butler
+listened with his professional mask off when Master Georgie spoke of war as it
+is waged to-day, and his father cross-questioned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They went out on the terrace to smoke among the roses, and the shadow of the
+old house lay long across the wonderful English foliage, which is the only
+living green in the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perfect! By Jove, it&rsquo;s perfect!&rdquo; Georgie was looking at the
+round-bosomed woods beyond the home paddock, where the white pheasant boxes
+were ranged; and the golden air was full of a hundred sacred scents and sounds.
+Georgie felt his father&rsquo;s arm tighten in his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not half bad&mdash;but <i>hodie mihi, cras tibi</i>,
+isn&rsquo;t it? I suppose you&rsquo;ll be turning up some fine day with a girl
+under your arm, if you haven&rsquo;t one now, eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can make your mind easy, sir. I haven&rsquo;t one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not in all these years?&rdquo; said the mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hadn&rsquo;t time, mummy. They keep a man pretty busy, these days, in
+the service, and most of our mess are unmarried, too.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you must have met hundreds in society&mdash;at balls, and so
+on?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m like the Tenth, mummy: I don&rsquo;t dance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t dance! What have you been doing with yourself,
+then&mdash;backing other men&rsquo;s bills?&rdquo; said the father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, yes; I&rsquo;ve done a little of that too; but you see, as things
+are now, a man has all his work cut out for him to keep abreast of his
+profession, and my days were always too full to let me lark about half the
+night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hmm!&rdquo;&mdash;suspiciously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s never too late to learn. We ought to give some kind of
+housewarming for the people about, now you&rsquo;ve come back. Unless you want
+to go straight up to town, dear?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. I don&rsquo;t want anything better than this. Let&rsquo;s sit still
+and enjoy ourselves. I suppose there will be something for me to ride if I look
+for it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Seeing I&rsquo;ve been kept down to the old brown pair for the last six
+weeks because all the others were being got ready for Master Georgie, I should
+say there might be,&rdquo; the father chuckled. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re reminding
+me in a hundred ways that I must take the second place now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Brutes!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The pater doesn&rsquo;t mean it, dear; but every one has been trying to
+make your home-coming a success; and you <i>do</i> like it, don&rsquo;t
+you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perfect! Perfect! There&rsquo;s no place like England&mdash;when you
+&rsquo;ve done your work.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the proper way to look at it, my son.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so up and down the flagged walk till their shadows grew long in the
+moonlight, and the mother went indoors and played such songs as a small boy
+once clamoured for, and the squat silver candlesticks were brought in, and
+Georgie climbed to the two rooms in the west wing that had been his nursery and
+his playroom in the beginning. Then who should come to tuck him up for the
+night but the mother? And she sat down on the bed, and they talked for a long
+hour, as mother and son should, if there is to be any future for the Empire.
+With a simple woman&rsquo;s deep guile she asked questions and suggested
+answers that should have waked some sign in the face on the pillow, and there
+was neither quiver of eyelid nor quickening of breath, neither evasion nor
+delay in reply. So she blessed him and kissed him on the mouth, which is not
+always a mother&rsquo;s property, and said something to her husband later, at
+which he laughed profane and incredulous laughs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the establishment waited on Georgie next morning, from the tallest
+six-year-old, &ldquo;with a mouth like a kid glove, Master Georgie,&rdquo; to
+the under-keeper strolling carelessly along the horizon, Georgie&rsquo;s pet
+rod in his hand, and &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a four-pounder risin&rsquo; below the
+lasher. You don&rsquo;t &rsquo;ave &rsquo;em in Injia, Mast-Major
+Georgie.&rdquo; It was all beautiful beyond telling, even though the mother
+insisted on taking him out in the landau (the leather had the hot Sunday smell
+of his youth) and showing him off to her friends at all the houses for six
+miles round; and the pater bore him up to town and a lunch at the club, where
+he introduced him, quite carelessly, to not less than thirty ancient warriors
+whose sons were not the youngest majors in the army and had not the D.S.O.
+After that it was Georgie&rsquo;s turn; and remembering his friends, he filled
+up the house with that kind of officer who live in cheap lodgings at Southsea
+or Montpelier Square, Brompton&mdash;good men all, but not well off. The mother
+perceived that they needed girls to play with; and as there was no scarcity of
+girls, the house hummed like a dovecote in spring. They tore up the place for
+amateur theatricals; they disappeared in the gardens when they ought to have
+been rehearsing; they swept off every available horse and vehicle, especially
+the governess-cart and the fat pony; they fell into the trout-ponds; they
+picnicked and they tennised; and they sat on gates in the twilight, two by two,
+and Georgie found that he was not in the least necessary to their
+entertainment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My word!&rdquo; said he, when he saw the last of their dear backs.
+&ldquo;They told me they&rsquo;ve enjoyed &rsquo;emselves, but they
+haven&rsquo;t done half the things they said they would.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know they&rsquo;ve enjoyed themselves&mdash;immensely,&rdquo; said the
+mother. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a public benefactor, dear.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now we can be quiet again, can&rsquo;t we?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, quite. I&rsquo;ve a very dear friend of mine that I want you to
+know. She couldn&rsquo;t come with the house so full, because she&rsquo;s an
+invalid, and she was away when you first came. She&rsquo;s a Mrs. Lacy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lacy! I don&rsquo;t remember the name about here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; they came after you went to India&mdash;from Oxford. Her husband
+died there, and she lost some money, I believe. They bought The Firs on the
+Bassett Road. She&rsquo;s a very sweet woman, and we&rsquo;re very fond of them
+both.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s a widow, didn&rsquo;t you say?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She has a daughter. Surely I said so, dear?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Does she fall into trout-ponds, and gas and giggle, and &lsquo;Oh, Major
+Cottah!&rsquo; and all that sort of thing?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, indeed. She&rsquo;s a very quiet girl, and very musical. She always
+came over here with her music-books&mdash;composing, you know; and she
+generally works all day, so you won&rsquo;t&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Talking about Miriam?&rdquo; said the pater, coming up. The
+mother edged toward him within elbow-reach. There was no finesse about
+Georgie&rsquo;s father. &ldquo;Oh, Miriam&rsquo;s a dear girl. Plays
+beautifully. Rides beautifully, too. She&rsquo;s a regular pet of the
+household. Used to call me&mdash;&rdquo; The elbow went home, and ignorant but
+obedient always, the pater shut himself off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What used she to call you, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All sorts of pet names. I&rsquo;m very fond of Miriam.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sounds Jewish&mdash;Miriam.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jew! You&rsquo;ll be calling yourself a Jew next. She&rsquo;s one of the
+Herefordshire Lacys. When her aunt dies&mdash;&rdquo; Again the elbow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, you won&rsquo;t see anything of her, Georgie. She&rsquo;s busy with
+her music or her mother all day. Besides, you&rsquo;re going up to town
+tomorrow, aren&rsquo;t you? I thought you said something about an Institute
+meeting?&rdquo; The mother spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go up to town <i>now!</i> What nonsense!&rdquo; Once more the pater was
+shut off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I had some idea of it, but I&rsquo;m not quite sure,&rdquo; said the son
+of the house. Why did the mother try to get him away because a musical girl and
+her invalid parent were expected? He did not approve of unknown females calling
+his father pet names. He would observe these pushing persons who had been only
+seven years in the county.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All of which the delighted mother read in his countenance, herself keeping an
+air of sweet disinterestedness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;ll be here this evening for dinner. I&rsquo;m sending the
+carriage over for them, and they won&rsquo;t stay more than a week.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps I shall go up to town. I don&rsquo;t quite know yet.&rdquo;
+Georgie moved away irresolutely. There was a lecture at the United Services
+Institute on the supply of ammunition in the field, and the one man whose
+theories most irritated Major Cottar would deliver it. A heated discussion was
+sure to follow, and perhaps he might find himself moved to speak. He took his
+rod that afternoon and went down to thrash it out among the trout.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good sport, dear!&rdquo; said the mother, from the terrace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Fraid it won&rsquo;t be, mummy. All those men from town, and the
+girls particularly, have put every trout off his feed for weeks. There
+isn&rsquo;t one of &rsquo;em that cares for fishin&rsquo;&mdash;really. Fancy
+stampin&rsquo; and shoutin&rsquo; on the bank, and tellin&rsquo; every fish for
+half a mile exactly what you&rsquo;re goin&rsquo; to do, and then
+chuckin&rsquo; a brute of a fly at him! By Jove, it would scare <i>me</i> if I
+was a trout!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But things were not as bad as he had expected. The black gnat was on the water,
+and the water was strictly preserved. A three-quarter-pounder at the second
+cast set him for the campaign, and he worked down-stream, crouching behind the
+reed and meadowsweet; creeping between a hornbeam hedge and a foot-wide strip
+of bank, where he could see the trout, but where they could not distinguish him
+from the background; lying almost on his stomach to switch the blue-upright
+sidewise through the checkered shadows of a gravelly ripple under overarching
+trees. But he had known every inch of the water since he was four feet high.
+The aged and astute between sunk roots, with the large and fat that lay in the
+frothy scum below some strong rush of water, sucking as lazily as carp, came to
+trouble in their turn, at the hand that imitated so delicately the flicker and
+wimple of an egg-dropping fly. Consequently, Georgie found himself five miles
+from home when he ought to have been dressing for dinner. The housekeeper had
+taken good care that her boy should not go empty, and before he changed to the
+white moth he sat down to excellent claret with sandwiches of potted egg and
+things that adoring women make and men never notice. Then back, to surprise the
+otter grubbing for fresh-water mussels, the rabbits on the edge of the
+beechwoods foraging in the clover, and the policeman-like white owl stooping to
+the little fieldmice, till the moon was strong, and he took his rod apart, and
+went home through well-remembered gaps in the hedges. He fetched a compass
+round the house, for, though he might have broken every law of the
+establishment every hour, the law of his boyhood was unbreakable: after fishing
+you went in by the south garden back-door, cleaned up in the outer scullery,
+and did not present yourself to your elders and your betters till you had
+washed and changed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Half-past ten, by Jove! Well, we&rsquo;ll make the sport an excuse. They
+wouldn&rsquo;t want to see me the first evening, at any rate. Gone to bed,
+probably.&rdquo; He skirted by the open French windows of the drawing-room.
+&ldquo;No, they haven&rsquo;t. They look very comfy in there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could see his father in his own particular chair, the mother in hers, and
+the back of a girl at the piano by the big potpourri-jar. The gardens looked
+half divine in the moonlight, and he turned down through the roses to finish
+his pipe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A prelude ended, and there floated out a voice of the kind that in his
+childhood he used to call &ldquo;creamy&rdquo; a full, true contralto; and this
+is the song that he heard, every syllable of it:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+Over the edge of the purple down,<br/>
+    Where the single lamplight gleams,<br/>
+Know ye the road to the Merciful Town<br/>
+    That is hard by the Sea of Dreams&mdash;<br/>
+Where the poor may lay their wrongs away,<br/>
+    And the sick may forget to weep?<br/>
+But we&mdash;pity us!Oh, pity us!<br/>
+    We wakeful; ah, pity us!&mdash;<br/>
+We must go back with Policeman Day&mdash;<br/>
+    Back from the City of Sleep!<br/>
+<br/>
+Weary they turn from the scroll and crown,<br/>
+    Fetter and prayer and plough<br/>
+They that go up to the Merciful Town,<br/>
+    For her gates are closing now.<br/>
+It is their right in the Baths of Night<br/>
+    Body and soul to steep<br/>
+But we&mdash;pity us! ah, pity us!<br/>
+    We wakeful; oh, pity us!&mdash;<br/>
+We must go back with Policeman Day&mdash;<br/>
+    Back from the City of Sleep!<br/>
+<br/>
+Over the edge of the purple down,<br/>
+    Ere the tender dreams begin,<br/>
+Look&mdash;we may look&mdash;at the Merciful Town,<br/>
+    But we may not enter in!<br/>
+Outcasts all, from her guarded wall<br/>
+    Back to our watch we creep:<br/>
+We&mdash;pity us! ah, pity us!<br/>
+    We wakeful; oh, pity us!&mdash;<br/>
+We that go back with Policeman Day&mdash;<br/>
+    Back from the City of Sleep
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the last echo he was aware that his mouth was dry and unknown pulses were
+beating in the roof of it. The housekeeper, who would have it that he must have
+fallen in and caught a chill, was waiting to catch him on the stairs, and,
+since he neither saw nor answered her, carried a wild tale abroad that brought
+his mother knocking at the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Anything happened, dear? Harper said she thought you
+weren&rsquo;t&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; it&rsquo;s nothing. I&rsquo;m all right, mummy. <i>Please</i>
+don&rsquo;t bother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not recognise his own voice, but that was a small matter beside what he
+was considering. Obviously, most obviously, the whole coincidence was crazy
+lunacy. He proved it to the satisfaction of Major George Cottar, who was going
+up to town to-morrow to hear a lecture on the supply of ammunition in the
+field; and having so proved it, the soul and brain and heart and body of
+Georgie cried joyously: &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the Lily Lock girl&mdash;the Lost
+Continent girl&mdash;the Thirty-Mile-Ride girl&mdash;the Brushwood girl!
+<i>I</i> know her!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He waked, stiff and cramped in his chair, to reconsider the situation by
+sunlight, when it did not appear normal. But a man must eat, and he went to
+breakfast, his heart between his teeth, holding himself severely in hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Late, as usual,&rdquo; said the mother. &ldquo;My boy, Miriam.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A tall girl in black raised her eyes to his, and Georgie&rsquo;s life training
+deserted him&mdash;just as soon as he realised that she did not know. He stared
+coolly and critically. There was the abundant black hair, growing in a
+widow&rsquo;s peak, turned back from the forehead, with that peculiar ripple
+over the right ear; there were the grey eyes set a little close together; the
+short upper lip, resolute chin, and the known poise of the head. There was also
+the small well-cut mouth that had kissed him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Georgie&mdash;<i>dear!</i>&rdquo; said the mother, amazedly, for Miriam
+was flushing under the stare.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&mdash;I beg your pardon!&rdquo; he gulped. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know
+whether the mother has told you, but I&rsquo;m rather an idiot at times,
+specially before I&rsquo;ve had my breakfast. It&rsquo;s&mdash;it&rsquo;s a
+family failing.&rdquo; He turned to explore among the hot-water dishes on the
+sideboard, rejoicing that she did not know&mdash;she did not know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His conversation for the rest of the meal was mildly insane, though the mother
+thought she had never seen her boy look half so handsome. How could any girl,
+least of all one of Miriam&rsquo;s discernment, forbear to fall down and
+worship? But deeply Miriam was displeased. She had never been stared at in that
+fashion before, and promptly retired into her shell when Georgie announced that
+he had changed his mind about going to town, and would stay to play with Miss
+Lacy if she had nothing better to do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, but don&rsquo;t let me throw you out. I&rsquo;m at work. I&rsquo;ve
+things to do all the morning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What possessed Georgie to behave so oddly?&rdquo; the mother sighed to
+herself. &ldquo;Miriam&rsquo;s a bundle of feelings&mdash;like her
+mother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You compose&mdash;don&rsquo;t you? Must be a fine thing to be able to do
+that. [&lsquo;Pig&mdash;oh, pig!&rsquo; thought Miriam.] I think I heard you
+singin&rsquo; when I came in last night after fishin&rsquo;. All about a Sea of
+Dreams, wasn&rsquo;t it? [Miriam shuddered to the core of the soul that
+afflicted her.] Awfully pretty song. How d&rsquo; you think of such
+things?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You only composed the music, dear, didn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The words too. I&rsquo;m sure of it,&rdquo; said Georgie, with a
+sparkling eye. No; she did not know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yeth; I wrote the words too.&rdquo; Miriam spoke slowly, for she knew
+she lisped when she was nervous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now how <i>could</i> you tell, Georgie?&rdquo; said the mother, as
+delighted as though the youngest major in the army were ten years old, showing
+off before company.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was sure of it, somehow. Oh, there are heaps of things about me,
+mummy, that you don&rsquo;t understand. Looks as if it were goin&rsquo; to be a
+hot day&mdash;for England. Would you care for a ride this afternoon, Miss Lacy?
+We can start out after tea, if you&rsquo;d like it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miriam could not in decency refuse, but any woman might see she was not filled
+with delight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That will be very nice, if you take the Bassett Road. It will save me
+sending Martin down to the village,&rdquo; said the mother, filling in gaps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Like all good managers, the mother had her one weakness&mdash;a mania for
+little strategies that should economise horses and vehicles. Her men-folk
+complained that she turned them into common carriers, and there was a legend in
+the family that she had once said to the pater on the morning of a meet:
+&ldquo;If you <i>should</i> kill near Bassett, dear, and if it isn&rsquo;t too
+late, would you mind just popping over and matching me this?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I knew that was coming. You&rsquo;d never miss a chance, mother. If
+it&rsquo;s a fish or a trunk I won&rsquo;t.&rdquo; Georgie laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s only a duck. They can do it up very neatly at
+Mallett&rsquo;s,&rdquo; said the mother, simply. &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t mind,
+will you? We&rsquo;ll have a scratch dinner at nine, because it&rsquo;s so
+hot.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The long summer day dragged itself out for centuries; but at last there was tea
+on the lawn, and Miriam appeared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was in the saddle before he could offer to help, with the clean spring of
+the child who mounted the pony for the Thirty-Mile-Ride. The day held
+mercilessly, though Georgie got down thrice to look for imaginary stones in
+Rufus&rsquo;s foot. One cannot say even simple things in broad light, and this
+that Georgie meditated was not simple. So he spoke seldom, and Miriam was
+divided between relief and scorn. It annoyed her that the great hulking thing
+should know she had written the words of the song overnight; for though a
+maiden may sing her most secret fancies aloud, she does not care to have them
+trampled over by the male Philistine. They rode into the little red-brick
+street of Bassett, and Georgie made untold fuss over the disposition of that
+duck. It must go in just such a package, and be fastened to the saddle in just
+such a manner, though eight o&rsquo;clock had struck and they were miles from
+dinner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must be quick!&rdquo; said Miriam, bored and angry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no great hurry; but we can cut over Dowhead Down, and let
+&rsquo;em out on the grass. That will save us half an hour.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The horses capered on the short, sweet-smelling turf, and the delaying shadows
+gathered in the valley as they cantered over the great dun down that overhangs
+Bassett and the Western coaching-road. Insensibly the pace quickened without
+thought of mole-hills; Rufus, gentleman that he was, waiting on Miriam&rsquo;s
+Dandy till they should have cleared the rise. Then down the two-mile slope they
+raced together, the wind whistling in their ears, to the steady throb of eight
+hoofs and the light click-click of the shifting bits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, that was glorious!&rdquo; Miriam cried, reining in. &ldquo;Dandy and
+I are old friends, but I don&rsquo;t think we&rsquo;ve ever gone better
+together.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; but you&rsquo;ve gone quicker, once or twice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Really? When?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Georgie moistened his lips. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you remember the
+Thirty-Mile-Ride&mdash;with me&mdash;when &lsquo;They&rsquo; were after
+us&mdash;on the beach-road, with the sea to the left&mdash;going toward the
+lamp-post on the downs?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl gasped. &ldquo;What&mdash;what do you mean?&rdquo; she said
+hysterically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Thirty-Mile-Ride, and&mdash;and all the rest of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean&mdash;? I didn&rsquo;t sing anything about the
+Thirty-Mile-Ride. I know I didn&rsquo;t. I have never told a living
+soul.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You told about Policeman Day, and the lamp at the top of the downs, and
+the City of Sleep. It all joins on, you know&mdash;it&rsquo;s the same
+country&mdash;and it was easy enough to see where you had been.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good God!&mdash;It joins on&mdash;of course it does; but&mdash;I have
+been&mdash;you have been&mdash;Oh, let&rsquo;s walk, please, or I shall fall
+off!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Georgie ranged alongside, and laid a hand that shook below her bridle-hand,
+pulling Dandy into a walk. Miriam was sobbing as he had seen a man sob under
+the touch of the bullet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all right&mdash;it&rsquo;s all right,&rdquo; he whispered
+feebly. &ldquo;Only&mdash;only it&rsquo;s true, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;True! Am I mad?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not unless I&rsquo;m mad as well. <i>Do</i> try to think a minute
+quietly. How could any one conceivably know anything about the Thirty-Mile-Ride
+having anything to do with you, unless he had been there?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But where? But <i>where?</i> Tell me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&mdash;wherever it may be&mdash;in our country, I suppose. Do you
+remember the first time you rode it&mdash;the Thirty-Mile-Ride, I mean? You
+must.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was all dreams&mdash;all dreams!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, but tell, please; because I know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let me think. I&mdash;we were on no account to make any noise&mdash;on
+no account to make any noise.&rdquo; She was staring between Dandy&rsquo;s
+ears, with eyes that did not see, and a suffocating heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because &lsquo;It&rsquo; was dying in the big house?&rdquo; Georgie went
+on, reining in again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There was a garden with green-and-gilt railings&mdash;all hot. Do
+<i>you</i> remember?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I ought to. I was sitting on the other side of the bed before
+&lsquo;It&rsquo; coughed and &lsquo;They&rsquo; came in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You!&rdquo;&mdash;the deep voice was unnaturally full and strong, and
+the girl&rsquo;s wide-opened eyes burned in the dusk as she stared him through
+and through. &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;re the Boy&mdash;my Brushwood Boy, and
+I&rsquo;ve known you all my life!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She fell forward on Dandy&rsquo;s neck. Georgie forced himself out of the
+weakness that was overmastering his limbs, and slid an arm round her waist. The
+head dropped on his shoulder, and he found himself with parched lips saying
+things that up till then he believed existed only in printed works of fiction.
+Mercifully the horses were quiet. She made no attempt to draw herself away when
+she recovered, but lay still, whispering, &ldquo;Of course you&rsquo;re the
+Boy, and I didn&rsquo;t know&mdash;I didn&rsquo;t know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I knew last night; and when I saw you at breakfast&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, <i>that</i> was why! I wondered at the time. You would, of
+course.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t speak before this. Keep your head where it is, dear.
+It&rsquo;s all right now&mdash;all right now, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But how was it <i>I</i> didn&rsquo;t know&mdash;after all these years
+and years? I remember&mdash;oh, what lots of things I remember!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell me some. I&rsquo;ll look after the horses.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I remember waiting for you when the steamer came in. Do you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;At the Lily Lock, beyond Hong-Kong and Java?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do <i>you</i> call it that, too?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You told me it was when I was lost in the continent. That was you that
+showed me the way through the mountains?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When the islands slid? It must have been, because you&rsquo;re the only
+one I remember. All the others were &lsquo;Them.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Awful brutes they were, too.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I remember showing you the Thirty-Mile-Ride the first time. You ride
+just as you used to&mdash;then. You <i>are</i> you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s odd. I thought that of you this afternoon. Isn&rsquo;t it
+wonderful?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What does it all mean? Why should you and I of the millions of people in
+the world have this&mdash;this thing between us? What does it mean? I&rsquo;m
+frightened.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This!&rdquo; said Georgie. The horses quickened their pace. They thought
+they had heard an order. &ldquo;Perhaps when we die we may find out more, but
+it means this now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no answer. What could she say? As the world went, they had known each
+other rather less than eight and a half hours, but the matter was one that did
+not concern the world. There was a very long silence, while the breath in their
+nostrils drew cold and sharp as it might have been a fume of ether.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the second,&rdquo; Georgie whispered. &ldquo;You remember,
+don&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not!&rdquo;&mdash;furiously. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;On the downs the other night&mdash;months ago. You were just as you are
+now, and we went over the country for miles and miles.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was all empty, too. They had gone away. Nobody frightened us. I
+wonder why, Boy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, if you remember <i>that</i>, you must remember the rest.
+Confess!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I remember lots of things, but I <i>know</i> I didn&rsquo;t. I never
+have&mdash;till just now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You <i>did</i>, dear.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know I didn&rsquo;t, because&mdash;oh, it&rsquo;s no use keeping
+anything back! because I truthfully meant to.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And truthfully did.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; meant to; but some one else came by.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There wasn&rsquo;t any one else. There never has been.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There was&mdash;there always is. It was another woman&mdash;out
+there&mdash;on the sea. I saw her. It was the 26th of May. I&rsquo;ve got it
+written down somewhere.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, <i>you</i>&rsquo;ve kept a record of your dreams, too? That&rsquo;s
+odd about the other woman, because I happened to be on the sea just
+then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was right. How do I know what you&rsquo;ve done when you were
+awake&mdash;and I thought it was only <i>you!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You never were more wrong in your life. What a little temper
+you&rsquo;ve got! Listen to me a minute, dear.&rdquo; And Georgie, though he
+knew it not, committed black perjury. &ldquo;It&mdash;it isn&rsquo;t the kind
+of thing one says to any one, because they&rsquo;d laugh; but on my word and
+honour, darling, I&rsquo;ve never been kissed by a living soul outside my own
+people in all my life. Don&rsquo;t laugh, dear. I wouldn&rsquo;t tell any one
+but you, but it&rsquo;s the solemn truth.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I knew! You are you. Oh, I <i>knew</i> you&rsquo;d come some day; but I
+didn&rsquo;t know you were you in the least till you spoke.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then give me another.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you never cared or looked anywhere? Why, all the round world must
+have loved you from the very minute they saw you, Boy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They kept it to themselves if they did. No; I never cared.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And we shall be late for dinner&mdash;horribly late. Oh, how can I look
+at you in the light before your mother&mdash;and mine!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll play you&rsquo;re Miss Lacy till the proper time comes.
+What&rsquo;s the shortest limit for people to get engaged? S&rsquo;pose we have
+got to go through all the fuss of an engagement, haven&rsquo;t we?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t want to talk about that. It&rsquo;s so commonplace.
+I&rsquo;ve thought of something that you don&rsquo;t know. I&rsquo;m sure of
+it. What&rsquo;s my name?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Miri&mdash;no, it isn&rsquo;t, by Jove! Wait half a second, and
+it&rsquo;ll come back to me. You aren&rsquo;t&mdash;you can&rsquo;t? Why,
+<i>those</i> old tales&mdash;before I went to school! I&rsquo;ve never thought
+of &rsquo;em from that day to this. Are you the original, only
+Annie<i>an</i>louise?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was what you always called me ever since the beginning. Oh!
+We&rsquo;ve turned into the avenue, and we must be an hour late.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What does it matter? The chain goes as far back as those days? It must,
+of course&mdash;of course it must. I&rsquo;ve got to ride round with this
+pestilent old bird&mdash;confound him!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Ha! ha!&rsquo; said the duck, laughing&mdash;do you remember
+<i>that?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I do&mdash;flower-pots on my feet, and all. We&rsquo;ve been
+together all this while; and I&rsquo;ve got to say good bye to you till dinner.
+<i>Sure</i> I&rsquo;ll see you at dinner-time? <i>Sure</i> you won&rsquo;t
+sneak up to your room, darling, and leave me all the evening? Good-bye,
+dear&mdash;good-bye.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good-bye, Boy, good-bye. Mind the arch! Don&rsquo;t let Rufus bolt into
+his stables. Good-bye. Yes, I&rsquo;ll come down to dinner; but&mdash;what
+shall I do when I see you in the light!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DAY’S WORK ***</div>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #2569 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2569)
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+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Day's Work, by Rudyard Kipling
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
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+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
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+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
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+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Day's Work, Volume 1, 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: The Day's Work, Volume 1
+
+Author: Rudyard Kipling
+
+Release Date: December 13, 2008 [EBook #2569]
+Last Updated: March 9, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DAY'S WORK, VOLUME 1 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Project Gutenberg Volunteer, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE DAY'S WORK
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Rudyard Kipling
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> A WALKING DELEGATE </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> THE TOMB OF HIS ANCESTORS </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_PART1"> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;PART
+            I </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_PART2"> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;PART
+            II </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> .007 </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> THE MALTESE CAT </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> &ldquo;BREAD UPON THE WATERS&rdquo; </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> AN ERROR IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> MY SUNDAY AT HOME </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> THE BRUSHWOOD BOY </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The least that Findlayson, of the Public Works Department, expected was a
+      C. I. E.; he dreamed of a C. S. I.: indeed, his friends told him that he
+      deserved more. For three years he had endured heat and cold,
+      disappointment, discomfort, danger, and disease, with responsibility
+      almost too heavy for one pair of shoulders; and day by day, through that
+      time, the great Kashi Bridge over the Ganges had grown under his charge.
+      Now, in less than three months, if all went well, his Excellency the
+      Viceroy would open the bridge in state, an archbishop would bless it, and
+      the first trainload of soldiers would come over it, and there would be
+      speeches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Findlayson, C. E., sat in his trolley on a construction line that ran
+      along one of the main revetments&mdash;the huge stone-faced banks that
+      flared away north and south for three miles on either side of the river&mdash;and
+      permitted himself to think of the end. With its approaches, his work was
+      one mile and three-quarters fin length; a lattice-girder bridge, trussed
+      with the Findlayson truss, standing on seven-and-twenty brick pies. Each
+      one of those piers was twenty-four feet in diameter, capped with red Agra
+      stone and sunk eighty feet below the shifting sand of the Ganges' bed.
+      Above them was a railway-line fifteen feet broad; above that, again, a
+      cart-road of eighteen feet, flanked with footpaths. At either end rose
+      towers of red brick, loopholed for musketry and pierced for big guns, and
+      the ramp of the road was being pushed forward to their haunches. The raw
+      earth-ends were crawling and alive with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny
+      asses climbing out of the yawning borrow-pit below with sackfuls of stuff;
+      and the hot afternoon air was filled with the noise of hooves, the rattle
+      of the drivers' sticks, and the swish and roll-down of the dirt. The river
+      was very low, and on the dazzling white sand between the three centre
+      piers stood squat cribs of railway-sleepers, filled within and daubed
+      without with mud, to support the last of the girders as those were riveted
+      up. In the little deep water left by the drought, an overhead-crane
+      travelled to and fro along its spile-pier, jerking sections of iron into
+      place, snorting and backing and grunting as an elephant grunts in the
+      timber-yard. Riveters by the hundred swarmed about the lattice side-work
+      and the iron roof of the railway-line, hung from invisible staging under
+      the bellies of the girders, clustered round the throats of the piers, and
+      rode on the overhang of the footpath-stanchions; their fire-pots and the
+      spurts of flame that answered each hammer-stroke showing no more than pale
+      yellow in the sun's glare. East and west and north and south the
+      construction-trains rattled and shrieked up and down the embankments, the
+      piled trucks of brown and white stone banging behind them till the
+      side-boards were unpinned, and with a roar and a grumble a few thousand
+      tons more material were flung out to hold the river in place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Findlayson, C. E., turned on his trolley and looked over the face of the
+      country that he had changed for seven miles around. Looked back on the
+      humming village of five thousand workmen; up stream and down, along the
+      vista of spurs and sand; across the river to the far piers, lessening in
+      the haze; overhead to the guard-towers&mdash;and only he knew how strong
+      those were&mdash;and with a sigh of contentment saw that his work was
+      good. There stood his bridge before him in the sunlight, lacking only a
+      few weeks' work on the girders of the three middle piers&mdash;his bridge,
+      raw and ugly as original sin, but pukka&mdash;permanent&mdash;to endure
+      when all memory of the builder, yea, even of the splendid Findlayson
+      truss, had perished. Practically, the thing was done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hitchcock, his assistant, cantered along the line on a little
+      switch-tailed Kabuli pony who through long practice could have trotted
+      securely over a trestle, and nodded to his chief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All but,&rdquo; said he, with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been thinking about it,&rdquo; the senior answered. &ldquo;Not half a bad job
+      for two men, is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One-and a half. Gad, what a Cooper's Hill cub I was when I came on the
+      works!&rdquo; Hitchcock felt very old in the crowded experiences of the past
+      three years, that had taught him power and responsibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were rather a colt,&rdquo; said Findlayson. &ldquo;I wonder how you'll like going
+      back to office-work when this job's over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall hate it!&rdquo; said the young man, and as he went on his eye followed
+      Findlayson's, and he muttered, &ldquo;Isn't it damned good?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think we'll go up the service together,&rdquo; Findlayson said to himself.
+      &ldquo;You're too good a youngster to waste on another man. Cub thou wart;
+      assistant thou art. Personal assistant, and at Simla, thou shalt be, if
+      any credit comes to me out of the business!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed; the burden of the work had fallen altogether on Findlayson and his
+      assistant, the young man whom he had chosen because of his rawness to
+      break to his own needs. There were labour contractors by the half-hundred&mdash;fitters
+      and riveters, European, borrowed from the railway workshops, with,
+      perhaps, twenty white and half-caste subordinates to direct, under
+      direction, the bevies of workmen&mdash;but none knew better than these
+      two, who trusted each other, how the underlings were not to be trusted.
+      They had been tried many times in sudden crises&mdash;by slipping of
+      booms, by breaking of tackle, failure of cranes, and the wrath of the
+      river&mdash;but no stress had brought to light any man among men whom
+      Findlayson and Hitchcock would have honoured by working as remorselessly
+      as they worked themselves. Findlayson thought it over from the beginning:
+      the months of office-work destroyed at a blow when the Government of
+      India, at the last moment, added two feet to the width of the bridge,
+      under the impression that bridges were cut out of paper, and so brought to
+      ruin at least half an acre of calculations&mdash;and Hitchcock, new to
+      disappointment, buried his head in his arms and wept; the heart-breaking
+      delays over the filling of the contracts in England; the futile
+      correspondences hinting at great wealth of commissions if one, only one,
+      rather doubtful consignment were passed; the war that followed the
+      refusal; the careful, polite obstruction at the other end that followed
+      the war, till young Hitchcock, putting one month's leave to another month,
+      and borrowing ten days from Findlayson, spent his poor little savings of a
+      year in a wild dash to London, and there, as his own tongue asserted and
+      the later consignments proved, put the fear of God into a man so great
+      that he feared only Parliament and said so till Hitchcock wrought with him
+      across his own dinner-table, and&mdash;he feared the Kashi Bridge and all
+      who spoke in its name. Then there was the cholera that came in the night
+      to the village by the bridge works; and after the cholera smote the
+      Smallpox. The fever they had always with them. Hitchcock had been
+      appointed a magistrate of the third class with whipping powers, for the
+      better government of the community, and Findlayson watched him wield his
+      powers temperately, learning what to overlook and what to look after. It
+      was a long, long reverie, and it covered storm, sudden freshets, death in
+      every manner and shape, violent and awful rage against red tape half
+      frenzying a mind that knows it should be busy on other things; drought,
+      sanitation, finance; birth, wedding, burial, and riot in the village of
+      twenty warring castes; argument, expostulation, persuasion, and the blank
+      despair that a man goes to bed upon, thankful that his rifle is all in
+      pieces in the gun-case. Behind everything rose the black frame of the
+      Kashi Bridge&mdash;plate by plate, girder by girder, span by span-and each
+      pier of it recalled Hitchcock, the all-round man, who had stood by his
+      chief without failing from the very first to this last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the bridge was two men's work&mdash;unless one counted Peroo, as Peroo
+      certainly counted himself. He was a Lascar, a Kharva from Bulsar, familiar
+      with every port between Rockhampton and London, who had risen to the rank
+      of sarang on the British India boats, but wearying of routine musters and
+      clean clothes, had thrown up the service and gone inland, where men of his
+      calibre were sure of employment. For his knowledge of tackle and the
+      handling of heavy weights, Peroo was worth almost any price he might have
+      chosen to put upon his services; but custom decreed the wage of the
+      overhead men, and Peroo was not within many silver pieces of his proper
+      value. Neither running water nor extreme heights made him afraid; and, as
+      an ex-serang, he knew how to hold authority. No piece of iron was so big
+      or so badly placed that Peroo could not devise a tackle to lift it&mdash;a
+      loose-ended, sagging arrangement, rigged with a scandalous amount of
+      talking, but perfectly equal to the work in hand. It was Peroo who had
+      saved the girder of Number Seven pier from destruction when the new wire
+      rope jammed in the eye of the crane, and the huge plate tilted in its
+      slings, threatening to slide out sideways. Then the native workmen lost
+      their heads with great shoutings, and Hitchcock's right arm was broken by
+      a falling T-plate, and he buttoned it up in his coat and swooned, and came
+      to and directed for four hours till Peroo, from the top of the crane,
+      reported &ldquo;All's well,&rdquo; and the plate swung home. There was no one like
+      Peroo, serang, to lash, and guy, and hold to control the donkey-engines,
+      to hoist a fallen locomotive craftily out of the borrow-pit into which it
+      had tumbled; to strip, and dive, if need be, to see how the concrete
+      blocks round the piers stood the scouring of Mother Gunga, or to adventure
+      up-stream on a monsoon night and report on the state of the
+      embankment-facings. He would interrupt the field-councils of Findlayson
+      and Hitchcock without fear, till his wonderful English, or his still more
+      wonderful lingua franca, half Portuguese and half Malay, ran out and he
+      was forced to take string and show the knots that he would recommend. He
+      controlled his own gang of tacklemen&mdash;mysterious relatives from Kutch
+      Mandvi gathered month by month and tried to the uttermost. No
+      consideration of family or kin allowed Peroo to keep weak hands or a giddy
+      head on the pay-roll. &ldquo;My honour is the honour of this bridge,&rdquo; he would
+      say to the about-to-be-dismissed. &ldquo;What do I care for your honour? Go and
+      work on a steamer. That is all you are fit for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little cluster of huts where he and his gang lived centred round the
+      tattered dwelling of a sea-priest&mdash;one who had never set foot on
+      black water, but had been chosen as ghostly counsellor by two generations
+      of sea-rovers all unaffected by port missions or those creeds which are
+      thrust upon sailors by agencies along Thames bank. The priest of the
+      Lascara had nothing to do with their caste, or indeed with anything at
+      all. He ate the offerings of his church, and slept and smoked, and slept
+      again &ldquo;for,&rdquo; said Peroo, who had haled him a thousand miles inland, &ldquo;he is
+      a very holy man. He never cares what you eat so long as you do not eat
+      beef, and that is good, because on land we worship Shiva, we Kharvas; but
+      at sea on the Kumpani's boats we attend strictly to the orders of the
+      Burra Malum [the first mate], and on this bridge we observe what Finlinson
+      Sahib says.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Finlinson Sahib had that day given orders to clear the scaffolding from
+      the guard-tower on the right bank, and Peroo with his mates was casting
+      loose and lowering down the bamboo poles and planks as swiftly as ever
+      they had whipped the cargo out of a coaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From his trolley he could hear the whistle of the serang's silver pipe and
+      the creak and clatter of the pulleys. Peroo was standing on the topmost
+      coping of the tower, clad in the blue dungaree of his abandoned service,
+      and as Findlayson motioned to him to be careful, for his was no life to
+      throw away, he gripped the last pole, and, shading his eyes ship-fashion,
+      answered with the long-drawn wail of the fo'c'sle lookout: &ldquo;Ham dekhta
+      hai&rdquo; (&ldquo;I am looking out&rdquo;). Findlayson laughed and then sighed. It was
+      years since he had seen a steamer, and he was sick for home. As his
+      trolley passed under the tower, Peroo descended by a rope, ape-fashion,
+      and cried: &ldquo;It looks well now, Sahib. Our bridge is all but done. What
+      think you Mother Gunga will say when the rail runs over?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has said little so far. It was never Mother Gunga that delayed us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is always time for her; and none the less there has been delay. Has
+      the Sahib forgotten last autumn's flood, when the stoneboats were sunk
+      without warning&mdash;or only a half-day's warning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but nothing save a big flood could hurt us now. The spurs are
+      holding well on the west bank.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother Gunga eats great allowances. There is always room for more stone
+      on the revetments. I tell this to the Chota Sahib&rdquo;&mdash;he meant
+      Hitchcock&mdash; &ldquo;and he laughs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No matter, Peroo. Another year thou wilt be able to build a bridge in
+      thine own fashion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Lascar grinned. &ldquo;Then it will not be in this way&mdash;with stonework
+      sunk under water, as the Quetta was sunk. I like sus-suspen-sheen bridges
+      that fly from bank to bank, with one big step, like a gang-plank. Then no
+      water can hurt. When does the Lord Sahib come to open the bridge?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In three months, when the weather is cooler.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ho! ho! He is like the Burra Malum. He sleeps below while the work is
+      being done. Then he comes upon the quarter-deck and touches with his
+      finger, and says: 'This is not clean! Dam jibboonwallah!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the Lord Sahib does not call me a dam jibboonwallah, Peroo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Sahib; but he does not come on deck till the work is all finished.
+      Even the Burra Malum of the Nerbudda said once at Tuticorin&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah! Go! I am busy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I, also!&rdquo; said Peroo, with an unshaken countenance. &ldquo;May I take the light
+      dinghy now and row along the spurs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To hold them with thy hands? They are, I think, sufficiently heavy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, Sahib. It is thus. At sea, on the Black Water, we have room to be
+      blown up and down without care. Here we have no room at all. Look you, we
+      have put the river into a dock, and run her between stone sills.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Findlayson smiled at the &ldquo;we.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have bitted and bridled her. She is not like the sea, that can beat
+      against a soft beach. She is Mother Gunga&mdash;in irons.&rdquo; His voice fell
+      a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peroo, thou hast been up and down the world more even than I. Speak true
+      talk, now. How much dolt thou in thy heart believe of Mother Gunga?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All that our priest says. London is London, Sahib. Sydney is Sydney, and
+      Port Darwin is Port Darwin. Also Mother Gunga is Mother Gunga, and when I
+      come back to her banks I know this and worship. In London I did poojah to
+      the big temple by the river for the sake of the God within . . . . Yes, I
+      will not take the cushions in the dinghy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Findlayson mounted his horse and trotted to the shed of a bungalow that he
+      shared with his assistant. The place had become home to him in the last
+      three years. He had grilled in the heat, sweated in the rains, and
+      shivered with fever under the rude thatch roof; the lime-wash beside the
+      door was covered with rough drawings and formulae, and the sentry-path
+      trodden in the matting of the verandah showed where he had walked alone.
+      There is no eight-hour limit to an engineer's work, and the evening meal
+      with Hitchcock was eaten booted and spurred: over their cigars they
+      listened to the hum of the village as the gangs came up from the river-bed
+      and the lights began to twinkle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peroo has gone up the spurs in your dinghy. He's taken a couple of
+      nephews with him, and he's lolling in the stern like a commodore,&rdquo; said
+      Hitchcock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all right. He's got something on his mind. You'd think that ten
+      years in the British India boats would have knocked most of his religion
+      out of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So it has,&rdquo; said Hitchcock, chuckling. &ldquo;I overheard him the other day in
+      the middle of a most atheistical talk with that fat old guru of theirs.
+      Peroo denied the efficacy of prayer; and wanted the guru to go to sea and
+      watch a gale out with him, and see if he could stop a monsoon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the same, if you carried off his gurus he'd leave us like a shot. He
+      was yarning away to me about praying to the dome of St. Paul's when he was
+      in London.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He told me that the first time he went into the engine-room of a steamer,
+      when he was a boy, he prayed to the low-pressure cylinder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not half a bad thing to pray to, either. He's propitiating his own Gods
+      now, and he wants to know what Mother Gunga will think of a bridge being
+      run across her. Who's there?&rdquo; A shadow darkened the doorway, and a
+      telegram was put into Hitchcock's hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She ought to be pretty well used to it by this time. Only a tar. It ought
+      to be Ralli's answer about the new rivets. . . . Great Heavens!&rdquo; Hitchcock
+      jumped to his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; said the senior, and took the form. &ldquo;That's what Mother
+      Gunga thinks, is it,&rdquo; he said, reading. &ldquo;Keep cool, young'un. We've got
+      all our work cut out for us. Let's see. Muir wired half an hour ago:
+      'Floods on the Ramgunga. Look out.' Well, that gives us&mdash;one, two&mdash;nine
+      and a half for the flood to reach Melipur Ghaut and seven's sixteen and a
+      half to Lataoli&mdash;say fifteen hours before it comes down to us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Curse that hill-fed sewer of a Ramgunga! Findlayson, this is two months
+      before anything could have been expected, and the left bank is littered up
+      with stuff still. Two full months before the time!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's why it comes. I've only known Indian rivers for five-and-twenty
+      years, and I don't pretend to understand. Here comes another tar.&rdquo;
+       Findlayson opened the telegram. &ldquo;Cockran, this time, from the Ganges
+      Canal: 'Heavy rains here. Bad.' He might have saved the last word. Well,
+      we don't want to know any more. We've got to work the gangs all night and
+      clean up the river-bed. You'll take the east bank and work out to meet me
+      in the middle. Get every thing that floats below the bridge: we shall have
+      quite enough rivercraft coming down adrift anyhow, without letting the
+      stone-boats ram the piers. What have you got on the east bank that needs
+      looking after.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pontoon&mdash;one big pontoon with the overhead crane on it. T'other
+      overhead crane on the mended pontoon, with the cart-road rivets from
+      Twenty to Twenty-three piers&mdash;two construction lines, and a
+      turning-spur. The pilework must take its chance,&rdquo; said Hitchcock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right. Roll up everything you can lay hands on. We'll give the gang
+      fifteen minutes more to eat their grub.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Close to the verandah stood a big night-gong, never used except for flood,
+      or fire in the village. Hitchcock had called for a fresh horse, and was
+      off to his side of the bridge when Findlayson took the cloth-bound stick
+      and smote with the rubbing stroke that brings out the full thunder of the
+      metal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Long before the last rumble ceased every night-gong in the village had
+      taken up the warning. To these were added the hoarse screaming of conches
+      in the little temples; the throbbing of drums and tom-toms; and, from the
+      European quarters, where the riveters lived, McCartney's bugle, a weapon
+      of offence on Sundays and festivals, brayed desperately, calling to
+      &ldquo;Stables.&rdquo; Engine after engine toiling home along the spurs at the end of
+      her day's work whistled in answer till the whistles were answered from the
+      far bank. Then the big gong thundered thrice for a sign that it was flood
+      and not fire; conch, drum, and whistle echoed the call, and the village
+      quivered to the sound of bare feet running upon soft earth. The order in
+      all cases was to stand by the day's work and wait instructions. The gangs
+      poured by in the dusk; men stopping to knot a loin-cloth or fasten a
+      sandal; gang-foremen shouting to their subordinates as they ran or paused
+      by the tool-issue sheds for bars and mattocks; locomotives creeping down
+      their tracks wheel-deep in the crowd; till the brown torrent disappeared
+      into the dusk of the river-bed, raced over the pilework, swarmed along the
+      lattices, clustered by the cranes, and stood still each man in his place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the troubled beating of the gong carried the order to take up
+      everything and bear it beyond highwater mark, and the flare-lamps broke
+      out by the hundred between the webs of dull iron as the riveters began a
+      night's work, racing against the flood that was to come. The girders of
+      the three centre piers&mdash;those that stood on the cribs&mdash;were all
+      but in position. They needed just as many rivets as could be driven into
+      them, for the flood would assuredly wash out their supports, and the
+      ironwork would settle down on the caps of stone if they were not blocked
+      at the ends. A hundred crowbars strained at the sleepers of the temporary
+      line that fed the unfinished piers. It was heaved up in lengths, loaded
+      into trucks, and backed up the bank beyond flood-level by the groaning
+      locomotives. The tool-sheds on the sands melted away before the attack of
+      shouting armies, and with them went the stacked ranks of Government
+      stores, iron-bound boxes of rivets, pliers, cutters, duplicate parts of
+      the riveting-machines, spare pumps and chains. The big crane would be the
+      last to be shifted, for she was hoisting all the heavy stuff up to the
+      main structure of the bridge. The concrete blocks on the fleet of
+      stone-boats were dropped overside, where there was any depth of water, to
+      guard the piers, and the empty boats themselves were poled under the
+      bridge down-stream. It was here that Peroo's pipe shrilled loudest, for
+      the first stroke of the big gong had brought the dinghy back at racing
+      speed, and Peroo and his people were stripped to the waist, working for
+      the honour and credit which are better than life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew she would speak,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;I knew, but the telegraph gives us
+      good warning. O sons of unthinkable begetting&mdash;children of
+      unspeakable shame&mdash;are we here for the look of the thing?&rdquo; It was two
+      feet of wire-rope frayed at the ends, and it did wonders as Peroo leaped
+      from gunnel to gunnel, shouting the language of the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Findlayson was more troubled for the stone-boats than anything else.
+      McCartney, with his gangs, was blocking up the ends of the three doubtful
+      spans, but boats adrift, if the flood chanced to be a high one, might
+      endanger the girders; and there was a very fleet in the shrunken channel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get them behind the swell of the guard-tower,&rdquo; he shouted down to Peroo.
+      &ldquo;It will be dead-water there. Get them below the bridge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Accha! [Very good.] I know; we are mooring them with wire-rope,&rdquo; was the
+      answer. &ldquo;Heh! I Listen to the Chota Sahib. He is working hard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From across the river came an almost continuous whistling of locomotives,
+      backed by the rumble of stone. Hitchcock at the last minute was spending a
+      few hundred more trucks of Tarakee stone in reinforcing his spurs and
+      embankments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The bridge challenges Mother Gunga,&rdquo; said Peroo, with a laugh. &ldquo;But when
+      she talks I know whose voice will be the loudest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For hours the naked men worked, screaming and shouting under the lights.
+      It was a hot, moonless night; the end of it was darkened by clouds and a
+      sudden squall that made Findlayson very grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She moves!&rdquo; said Peroo, just before the dawn. &ldquo;Mother Gunga is awake!
+      Hear!&rdquo; He dipped his hand over the side of a boat and the current mumbled
+      on it. A little wave hit the side of a pier with a crisp slap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Six hours before her time,&rdquo; said Findlayson, mopping his forehead
+      savagely. &ldquo;Now we can't depend on anything. We'd better clear all hands
+      out of the river-bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the big gong beat, and a second time there was the rushing of naked
+      feet on earth and ringing iron; the clatter of tools ceased. In the
+      silence, men heard the dry yawn of water crawling over thirsty sand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foreman after foreman shouted to Findlayson, who had posted himself by the
+      guard-tower, that his section of the river-bed had been cleaned out, and
+      when the last voice dropped Findlayson hurried over the bridge till the
+      iron plating of the permanent way gave place to the temporary plank-walk
+      over the three centre piers, and there he met Hitchcock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All clear your side?&rdquo; said Findlayson. The whisper rang in the box of
+      latticework.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and the east channel's filling now. We're utterly out of our
+      reckoning. When is this thing down on us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's no saying. She's filling as fast as she can. Look!&rdquo; Findlayson
+      pointed to the planks below his feet, where the sand, burned and defiled
+      by months of work, was beginning to whisper and fizz.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What orders?&rdquo; said Hitchcock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call the roll&mdash;count stores&mdash;sit on your hunkers&mdash;and pray
+      for the bridge. That's all I can think of. Good night. Don't risk your
+      life trying to fish out anything that may go down-stream.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'll be as prudent as you are! 'Night. Heavens, how she's filling!
+      Here's the rain in earnest!&rdquo; Findlayson picked his way back to his bank,
+      sweeping the last of McCartney's riveters before him. The gangs had spread
+      themselves along the embankments, regardless of the cold rain of the dawn,
+      and there they waited for the flood. Only Peroo kept his men together
+      behind the swell of the guard-tower, where the stone-boats lay tied fore
+      and aft with hawsers, wire-rope, and chains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A shrill wail ran along the line, growing to a yell, half fear and half
+      wonder: the face of the river whitened from bank to bank between the stone
+      facings, and the faraway spurs went out in spouts of foam. Mother Gunga
+      had come bank-high in haste, and a wall of chocolate-coloured water was
+      her messenger. There was a shriek above the roar of the water, the
+      complaint of the spans coming down on their blocks as the cribs were
+      whirled out from under their bellies. The stone-boats groaned and ground
+      each other in the eddy that swung round the abutment, and their clumsy
+      masts rose higher and higher against the dim sky-line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before she was shut between these walls we knew what she would do. Now
+      she is thus cramped God only knows what she will do!&rdquo; said Peroo, watching
+      the furious turmoil round the guard-tower. &ldquo;Ohe! Fight, then! Fight hard,
+      for it is thus that a woman wears herself out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mother Gunga would not fight as Peroo desired. After the first
+      down-stream plunge there came no more walls of water, but the river lifted
+      herself bodily, as a snake when she drinks in midsummer, plucking and
+      fingering along the revetments, and banking up behind the piers till even
+      Findlayson began to recalculate the strength of his work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When day came the village gasped. &ldquo;Only last night,&rdquo; men said, turning to
+      each other, &ldquo;it was as a town in the river-bed! Look now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And they looked and wondered afresh at the deep water, the racing water
+      that licked the throat of the piers. The farther bank was veiled by rain,
+      into which the bridge ran out and vanished; the spurs up-stream were
+      marked by no more than eddies and spoutings, and down-stream the pent
+      river, once freed of her guide-lines, had spread like a sea to the
+      horizon. Then hurried by, rolling in the water, dead men and oxen
+      together, with here and there a patch of thatched roof that melted when it
+      touched a pier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Big flood,&rdquo; said Peroo, and Findlayson nodded. It was as big a flood as
+      he had any wish to watch. His bridge would stand what was upon her now,
+      but not very much more, and if by any of a thousand chances there happened
+      to be a weakness in the embankments, Mother Gunga would carry his honour
+      to the sea with the other raffle. Worst of all, there was nothing to do
+      except to sit still; and Findlayson sat still under his macintosh till his
+      helmet became pulp on his head, and his boots were over-ankle in mire. He
+      took no count of time, for the river was marking the hours, inch by inch
+      and foot by foot, along the embankment, and he listened, numb and hungry,
+      to the straining of the stone-boats, the hollow thunder under the piers,
+      and the hundred noises that make the full note of a flood. Once a dripping
+      servant brought him food, but he could not eat; and once he thought that
+      he heard a faint toot from a locomotive across the river, and then he
+      smiled. The bridge's failure would hurt his assistant not a little, but
+      Hitchcock was a young man with his big work yet to do. For himself the
+      crash meant everything&mdash;everything that made a hard life worth the
+      living. They would say, the men of his own profession. . . he remembered
+      the half pitying things that he himself had said when Lockhart's new
+      waterworks burst and broke down in brickheaps and sludge, and Lockhart's
+      spirit broke in him and he died. He remembered what he himself had said
+      when the Sumao Bridge went out in the big cyclone by the sea; and most he
+      remembered poor Hartopp's face three weeks later, when the shame had
+      marked it. His bridge was twice the size of Hartopp's, and it carried the
+      Findlayson truss as well as the new pier-shoe&mdash;the Findlayson bolted
+      shoe. There were no excuses in his service. Government might listen,
+      perhaps, but his own kind would judge him by his bridge, as that stood or
+      fell. He went over it in his head, plate by plate, span by span, brick by
+      brick, pier by pier, remembering, comparing, estimating, and
+      recalculating, lest there should be any mistake; and through the long
+      hours and through the flights of formulae that danced and wheeled before
+      him a cold fear would come to pinch his heart. His side of the sum was
+      beyond question; but what man knew Mother Gunga's arithmetic? Even as he
+      was making all sure by the multiplication-table, the river might be
+      scooping a pot-hole to the very bottom of any one of those eighty-foot
+      piers that carried his reputation. Again a servant came to him with food,
+      but his mouth was dry, and he could only drink and return to the decimals
+      in his brain. And the river was still rising. Peroo, in a mat
+      shelter-coat, crouched at his feet, watching now his face and now the face
+      of the river, but saying nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the Lascar rose and floundered through the mud towards the
+      village, but he was careful to leave an ally to watch the boats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently he returned, most irreverently driving before him the priest of
+      his creed&mdash;a fat old man, with a grey beard that whipped the wind
+      with the wet cloth that blew over his shoulder. Never was seen so
+      lamentable a guru.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What good are offerings and little kerosene lamps and dry grain,&rdquo; shouted
+      Peroo, &ldquo;if squatting in the mud is all that thou canst do? Thou hast dealt
+      long with the Gods when they were contented and well-wishing. Now they are
+      angry. Speak to them!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is a man against the wrath of Gods?&rdquo; whined the priest, cowering as
+      the wind took him. &ldquo;Let me go to the temple, and I will pray there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Son of a pig, pray here! Is there no return for salt fish and curry
+      powder and dried onions? Call aloud! Tell Mother Gunga we have had enough.
+      Bid her be still for the night. I cannot pray, but I have been serving in
+      the Kumpani's boats, and when men did not obey my orders I&mdash;&rdquo; A
+      flourish of the wire-rope colt rounded the sentence, and the priest,
+      breaking free from his disciple, fled to the village.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fat pig!&rdquo; said Peroo. &ldquo;After all that we have done for him! When the
+      flood is down I will see to it that we get a new guru. Finlinson Sahib, it
+      darkens for night now, and since yesterday nothing has been eaten. Be
+      wise, Sahib. No man can endure watching and great thinking on an empty
+      belly. Lie down, Sahib. The river will do what the river will do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The bridge is mine; I cannot leave it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wilt thou hold it up with thy hands, then?&rdquo; said Peroo, laughing. &ldquo;I was
+      troubled for my boats and sheers before the flood came. Now we are in the
+      hands of the Gods. The Sahib will not eat and lie down? Take these, then.
+      They are meat and good toddy together, and they kill all weariness,
+      besides the fever that follows the rain. I have eaten nothing else to-day
+      at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took a small tin tobacco-box from his sodden waistbelt and thrust it
+      into Findlayson's hand, saying, &ldquo;Nay, do not be afraid. It is no more than
+      opium&mdash;clean Malwa opium!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Findlayson shook two or three of the dark-brown pellets into his hand, and
+      hardly knowing what he did, swallowed them. The stuff was at least a good
+      guard against fever&mdash;the fever that was creeping upon him out of the
+      wet mud&mdash;and he had seen what Peroo could do in the stewing mists of
+      autumn on the strength of a dose from the tin box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peroo nodded with bright eyes. &ldquo;In a little&mdash;in a little the Sahib
+      will find that he thinks well again. I too will&mdash;&rdquo; He dived into his
+      treasure-box, resettled the rain-coat over his head, and squatted down to
+      watch the boats. It was too dark now to see beyond the first pier, and the
+      night seemed to have given the river new strength. Findlayson stood with
+      his chin on his chest, thinking. There was one point about one of the
+      piers&mdash;the seventh&mdash;that he had not fully settled in his mind.
+      The figures would not shape themselves to the eye except one by one and at
+      enormous intervals of time. There was a sound rich and mellow in his ears
+      like the deepest note of a double-bass&mdash;an entrancing sound upon
+      which he pondered for several hours, as it seemed. Then Peroo was at his
+      elbow, shouting that a wire hawser had snapped and the stone-boats were
+      loose. Findlayson saw the fleet open and swing out fanwise to a long-drawn
+      shriek of wire straining across gunnels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A tree hit them. They will all go,&rdquo; cried Peroo. &ldquo;The main hawser has
+      parted. What does the Sahib do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An immensely complex plan had suddenly flashed into Findlayson's mind. He
+      saw the ropes running from boat to boat in straight lines and angles&mdash;each
+      rope a line of white fire. But there was one rope which was the master
+      rope. He could see that rope. If he could pull it once, it was absolutely
+      and mathematically certain that the disordered fleet would reassemble
+      itself in the backwater behind the guard-tower. But why, he wondered, was
+      Peroo clinging so desperately to his waist as he hastened down the bank?
+      It was necessary to put the Lascar aside, gently and slowly, because it
+      was necessary to save the boats, and, further, to demonstrate the extreme
+      ease of the problem that looked so difficult. And then&mdash;but it was of
+      no conceivable importance&mdash;a wirerope raced through his hand, burning
+      it, the high bank disappeared, and with it all the slowly dispersing
+      factors of the problem. He was sitting in the rainy darkness&mdash;sitting
+      in a boat that spun like a top, and Peroo was standing over him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had forgotten,&rdquo; said the Lascar, slowly, &ldquo;that to those fasting and
+      unused, the opium is worse than any wine. Those who die in Gunga go to the
+      Gods. Still, I have no desire to present myself before such great ones.
+      Can the Sahib swim?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What need? He can fly&mdash;fly as swiftly as the wind,&rdquo; was the thick
+      answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is mad!&rdquo; muttered Peroo, under his breath. &ldquo;And he threw me aside like
+      a bundle of dung-cakes. Well, he will not know his death. The boat cannot
+      live an hour here even if she strike nothing. It is not good to look at
+      death with a clear eye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He refreshed himself again from the tin box, squatted down in the bows of
+      the reeling, pegged, and stitched craft, staring through the mist at the
+      nothing that was there. A warm drowsiness crept over Findlayson, the Chief
+      Engineer, whose duty was with his bridge. The heavy raindrops struck him
+      with a thousand tingling little thrills, and the weight of all time since
+      time was made hung heavy on his eyelids. He thought and perceived that he
+      was perfectly secure, for the water was so solid that a man could surely
+      step out upon it, and, standing still with his legs apart to keep his
+      balance&mdash;this was the most important point&mdash;would be borne with
+      great and easy speed to the shore. But yet a better plan came to him. It
+      needed only an exertion of will for the soul to hurl the body ashore as
+      wind drives paper, to waft it kite-fashion to the bank. Thereafter&mdash;the
+      boat spun dizzily&mdash;suppose the high wind got under the freed body?
+      Would it tower up like a kite and pitch headlong on the far-away sands, or
+      would it duck about, beyond control, through all eternity? Findlayson
+      gripped the gunnel to anchor himself, for it seemed that he was on the
+      edge of taking the flight before he had settled all his plans. Opium has
+      more effect on the white man than the black. Peroo was only comfortably
+      indifferent to accidents. &ldquo;She cannot live,&rdquo; he grunted. &ldquo;Her seams open
+      already. If she were even a dinghy with oars we could have ridden it out;
+      but a box with holes is no good. Finlinson Sahib, she fills.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Accha! I am going away. Come thou also.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In his mind, Findlayson had already escaped from the boat, and was
+      circling high in air to find a rest for the sole of his foot. His body&mdash;he
+      was really sorry for its gross helplessness&mdash;lay in the stern, the
+      water rushing about its knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How very ridiculous!&rdquo; he said to himself, from his eyrie&mdash;&ldquo;that is
+      Findlayson&mdash;chief of the Kashi Bridge. The poor beast is going to be
+      drowned, too. Drowned when it's close to shore. I'm&mdash;I'm onshore
+      already. Why doesn't it come along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To his intense disgust, he found his soul back in his body again, and that
+      body spluttering and choking in deep water. The pain of the reunion was
+      atrocious, but it was necessary, also, to fight for the body. He was
+      conscious of grasping wildly at wet sand, and striding prodigiously, as
+      one strides in a dream, to keep foothold in the swirling water, till at
+      last he hauled himself clear of the hold of the river, and dropped,
+      panting, on wet earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not this night,&rdquo; said Peroo, in his ear. &ldquo;The Gods have protected us.&rdquo;
+       The Lascar moved his feet cautiously, and they rustled among dried stumps.
+      &ldquo;This is some island of last year's indigo-crop,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;We shall
+      find no men here; but have great care, Sahib; all the snakes of a hundred
+      miles have been flooded out. Here comes the lightning, on the heels of the
+      wind. Now we shall be able to look; but walk carefully.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Findlayson was far and far beyond any fear of snakes, or indeed any merely
+      human emotion. He saw, after he had rubbed the water from his eyes, with
+      an immense clearness, and trod, so it seemed to himself, with
+      world-encompassing strides. Somewhere in the night of time he had built a
+      bridge&mdash;a bridge that spanned illimitable levels of shining seas; but
+      the Deluge had swept it away, leaving this one island under heaven for
+      Findlayson and his companion, sole survivors of the breed of Man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An incessant lightning, forked and blue, showed all that there was to be
+      seen on the little patch in the flood&mdash;a clump of thorn, a clump of
+      swaying creaking bamboos, and a grey gnarled peepul overshadowing a Hindoo
+      shrine, from whose dome floated a tattered red flag. The holy man whose
+      summer resting-place it was had long since abandoned it, and the weather
+      had broken the red-daubed image of his god. The two men stumbled, heavy
+      limbed and heavy-eyed, over the ashes of a brick-set cooking-place, and
+      dropped down under the shelter of the branches, while the rain and river
+      roared together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stumps of the indigo crackled, and there was a smell of cattle, as a
+      huge and dripping Brahminee bull shouldered his way under the tree. The
+      flashes revealed the trident mark of Shiva on his flank, the insolence of
+      head and hump, the luminous stag-like eyes, the brow crowned with a wreath
+      of sodden marigold blooms, and the silky dewlap that almost swept the
+      ground. There was a noise behind him of other beasts coming up from the
+      floodline through the thicket, a sound of heavy feet and deep breathing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here be more beside ourselves,&rdquo; said Findlayson, his head against the
+      tree-pole, looking through half-shut eyes, wholly at ease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Truly,&rdquo; said Peroo, thickly, &ldquo;and no small ones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are they, then? I do not see clearly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Gods. Who else? Look!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, true! The Gods surely&mdash;the Gods.&rdquo; Findlayson smiled as his head
+      fell forward on his chest. Peroo was eminently right. After the Flood, who
+      should be alive in the land except the Gods that made it&mdash;the Gods to
+      whom his village prayed nightly&mdash;the Gods who were in all men's
+      mouths and about all men's ways. He could not raise his head or stir a
+      finger for the trance that held him, and Peroo was smiling vacantly at the
+      lightning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bull paused by the shrine, his head lowered to the damp earth. A green
+      Parrot in the branches preened his wet wings and screamed against the
+      thunder as the circle under the tree filled with the shifting shadows of
+      beasts. There was a black Buck at the Bull's heels&mdash;such a Buck as
+      Findlayson in his far-away life upon earth might have seen in dreams&mdash;a
+      Buck with a royal head, ebon back, silver belly, and gleaming straight
+      horns. Beside him, her head bowed to the ground, the green eyes burning
+      under the heavy brows, with restless tail switching the dead grass, paced
+      a Tigress, full-bellied and deep-jowled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bull crouched beside the shrine, and there leaped from the darkness a
+      monstrous grey Ape, who seated himself man-wise in the place of the fallen
+      image, and the rain spilled like jewels from the hair of his neck and
+      shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other shadows came and went behind the circle, among them a drunken Man
+      flourishing staff and drinking-bottle. Then a hoarse bellow broke out from
+      near the ground. &ldquo;The flood lessens even now,&rdquo; it cried. &ldquo;Hour by hour the
+      water falls, and their bridge still stands!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My bridge,&rdquo; said Findlayson to himself. &ldquo;That must be very old work now.
+      What have the Gods to do with my bridge?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes rolled in the darkness following the roar. A Mugger&mdash;the
+      blunt-nosed, ford-haunting Mugger of the Ganges&mdash;draggled herself
+      before the beasts, lashing furiously to right and left with her tail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have made it too strong for me. In all this night I have only torn
+      away a handful of planks. The walls stand. The towers stand. They have
+      chained my flood, and the river is not free any more. Heavenly Ones, take
+      this yoke away! Give me clear water between bank and bank! It is I, Mother
+      Gunga, that speak. The Justice of the Gods! Deal me the Justice of the
+      Gods!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What said I?&rdquo; whispered Peroo. &ldquo;This is in truth a Punchayet of the Gods.
+      Now we know that all the world is dead, save you and I, Sahib.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Parrot screamed and fluttered again, and the Tigress, her ears flat to
+      her head, snarled wickedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somewhere in the shadow, a great trunk and gleaming tusks swayed to and
+      fro, and a low gurgle broke the silence that followed on the snarl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We be here,&rdquo; said a deep voice, &ldquo;the Great Ones. One only and very many.
+      Shiv, my father, is here, with Indra. Kali has spoken already. Hanuman
+      listens also.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kashi is without her Kotwal tonight,&rdquo; shouted the Man with the
+      drinking-bottle, flinging his staff to the ground, while the island rang
+      to the baying of hounds. &ldquo;Give her the Justice of the Gods.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye were still when they polluted my waters,&rdquo; the great Crocodile
+      bellowed. &ldquo;Ye made no sign when my river was trapped between the walls. I
+      had no help save my own strength, and that failed&mdash;the strength of
+      Mother Gunga failed&mdash;before their guard-towers. What could I do? I
+      have done everything. Finish now, Heavenly Ones!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I brought the death; I rode the spotted sickness from hut to hut of their
+      workmen, and yet they would not cease.&rdquo; A nose-slitten, hide-worn Ass,
+      lame, scissor-legged, and galled, limped forward. &ldquo;I cast the death at
+      them out of my nostrils, but they would not cease.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peroo would have moved, but the opium lay heavy upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah!&rdquo; he said, spitting. &ldquo;Here is Sitala herself; Mata&mdash;the
+      smallpox. Has the Sahib a handkerchief to put over his face?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Little help! They fed me the corpses for a month, and I flung them out on
+      my sand-bars, but their work went forward. Demons they are, and sons of
+      demons! And ye left Mother Gunga alone for their fire-carriage to make a
+      mock of. The Justice of the Gods on the bridge-builders!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bull turned the cud in his mouth and answered slowly: &ldquo;If the Justice
+      of the Gods caught all who made a mock of holy things there would be many
+      dark altars in the land, mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But this goes beyond a mock,&rdquo; said the Tigress, darting forward a griping
+      paw. &ldquo;Thou knowest, Shiv, and ye, too, Heavenly Ones; ye know that they
+      have defiled Gunga. Surely they must come to the Destroyer. Let Indra
+      judge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Buck made no movement as he answered: &ldquo;How long has this evil been?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three years, as men count years,&rdquo; said the Mugger, close pressed to the
+      earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does Mother Gunga die, then, in a year, that she is so anxious to see
+      vengeance now? The deep sea was where she runs but yesterday, and tomorrow
+      the sea shall cover her again as the Gods count that which men call time.
+      Can any say that this their bridge endures till tomorrow?&rdquo; said the Buck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was along hush, and in the clearing of the storm the full moon stood
+      up above the dripping trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Judge ye, then,&rdquo; said the River, sullenly. &ldquo;I have spoken my shame. The
+      flood falls still. I can do no more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For my own part&rdquo;&mdash;it was the voice of the great Ape seated within
+      the shrine&mdash;&ldquo;it pleases me well to watch these men, remembering that
+      I also builded no small bridge in the world's youth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They say, too,&rdquo; snarled the Tiger, &ldquo;that these men came of the wreck of
+      thy armies, Hanuman, and therefore thou hast aided&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They toil as my armies toiled in Lanka, and they believe that their toil
+      endures. Indra is too high, but Shiv, thou knowest how the land is
+      threaded with their fire-carriages.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yea, I know,&rdquo; said the Bull. &ldquo;Their Gods instructed them in the matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A laugh ran round the circle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Their Gods! What should their Gods know? They were born yesterday, and
+      those that made them are scarcely yet cold,&rdquo; said the Mugger, &ldquo;tomorrow
+      their Gods will die.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ho!&rdquo; said Peroo. &ldquo;Mother Gunga talks good talk. I told that to the
+      padre-sahib who preached on the Mombassa, and he asked the Burra Malum to
+      put me in irons for a great rudeness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely they make these things to please their Gods,&rdquo; said the Bull again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not altogether,&rdquo; the Elephant rolled forth. &ldquo;It is for the profit of my
+      mahajuns fat money-lenders that worship me at each new year, when they
+      draw my image at the head of the account-books. I, looking over their
+      shoulders by lamplight, see that the names in the books are those of men
+      in far places&mdash;for all the towns are drawn together by the
+      fire-carriage, and the money comes and goes swiftly, and the account-books
+      grow as fat as myself. And I, who am Ganesh of Good Luck, I bless my
+      peoples.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have changed the face of the land-which is my land. They have killed
+      and made new towns on my banks,&rdquo; said the Mugger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is but the shifting of a little dirt. Let the dirt dig in the dirt if
+      it pleases the dirt,&rdquo; answered the Elephant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But afterwards?&rdquo; said the Tiger. &ldquo;Afterwards they will see that Mother
+      Gunga can avenge no insult, and they fall away from her first, and later
+      from us all, one by one. In the end, Ganesh, we are left with naked
+      altars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The drunken Man staggered to his feet, and hiccupped vehemently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kali lies. My sister lies. Also this my stick is the Kotwal of Kashi, and
+      he keeps tally of my pilgrims. When the time comes to worship Bhairon&mdash;and
+      it is always time&mdash;the fire-carriages move one by one, and each hears
+      a thousand pilgrims. They do not come afoot any more, but rolling upon
+      wheels, and my honour is increased.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gunga, I have seen thy bed at Pryag black with the pilgrims,&rdquo; said the
+      Ape, leaning forward, &ldquo;and but for the fire-carriage they would have come
+      slowly and in fewer numbers. Remember.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They come to me always,&rdquo; Bhairon went on thickly. &ldquo;By day and night they
+      pray to me, all the Common People in the fields and the roads. Who is like
+      Bhairon today? What talk is this of changing faiths? Is my staff Kotwal of
+      Kashi for nothing? He keeps the tally, and he says that never were so many
+      altars as today, and the fire carriage serves them well. Bhairon am I&mdash;Bhairon
+      of the Common People, and the chiefest of tithe Heavenly Ones today. Also
+      my staff says&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peace, thou!&rdquo; lowed the Bull. &ldquo;The worship of the schools is mine, and
+      they talk very wisely, asking whether I be one or many, as is the delight
+      of my people, and ye know what I am. Kali, my wife, thou knowest also.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yea, I know,&rdquo; said the Tigress, with lowered head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Greater am I than Gunga also. For ye know who moved the minds of men that
+      they should count Gunga holy among the rivers. Who die in that water&mdash;ye
+      know how men say&mdash;come to us without punishment, and Gunga knows that
+      the fire-carriage has borne to her scores upon scores of such anxious
+      ones; and Kali knows that she has held her chiefest festivals among the
+      pilgrimages that are fed by the fire-carriage. Who smote at Pooree, under
+      the Image there, her thousands in a day and a night, and bound the
+      sickness to the wheels of the fire-carriages, so that it ran from one end
+      of the land to the other? Who but Kali? Before the fire-carriage came it
+      was a heavy toil. The fire-carriages have served thee well, Mother of
+      Death. But I speak for mine own altars, who am not Bhairon of the Common
+      Folk, but Shiv. Men go to and fro, making words and telling talk of
+      strange Gods, and I listen. Faith follows faith among my people in the
+      schools, and I have no anger; for when all words are said, and the new
+      talk is ended, to Shiv men return at the last.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True. It is true,&rdquo; murmured Hanuman. &ldquo;To Shiv and to the others, mother,
+      they return. I creep from temple to temple in the North, where they
+      worship one God and His Prophet; and presently my image is alone within
+      their shrines.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Small thanks,&rdquo; said the Buck, turning his head slowly. &ldquo;I am that One and
+      His Prophet also.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even so, father,&rdquo; said Hanuman. &ldquo;And to the South I go who am the oldest
+      of the Gods as men know the Gods, and presently I touch the shrines of the
+      New 'Faith and the Woman whom we know is hewn twelve-armed, and still they
+      call her Mary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Small thanks, brother,&rdquo; said the Tigress. &ldquo;I am that Woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even so, sister; and I go West among the fire-carriages, and stand before
+      the bridge-builders in many shapes, and because of me they change their
+      faiths and are very wise. Ho! ho! I am the builder of bridges, indeed&mdash;bridges
+      between this and that, and each bridge leads surely to Us in the end. Be
+      content, Gunga.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Neither these men nor those that follow them mock thee at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I alone, then, Heavenly Ones? Shall I smooth out my flood lest
+      unhappily I bear away their walls? Will Indra dry my springs in the hills
+      and make me crawl humbly between their wharfs? Shall I bury me in the sand
+      ere I offend?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And all for the sake of a little iron bar with the fire-carriage atop.
+      Truly, Mother Gunga is always young!&rdquo; said Ganesh the Elephant. &ldquo;A child
+      had not spoken more foolishly. Let the dirt dig in the dirt ere it return
+      to the dirt. I know only that my people grow rich and praise me. Shiv has
+      said that the men of the schools do not forget; Bhairon is content for his
+      crowd of the Common People; and Hanuman laughs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely I laugh,&rdquo; said the Ape. &ldquo;My altars are few beside those of Ganesh
+      or Bhairon, but the fire-carriages bring me new worshippers from beyond
+      the Black Water&mdash;the men who believe that their God is toil. I run
+      before them beckoning, and they follow Hanuman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give them the toil that they desire, then,&rdquo; said the River. &ldquo;Make a bar
+      across my flood and throw the water back upon the bridge. Once thou wast
+      strong in Lanka, Hanuman. Stoop and lift my bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who gives life can take life.&rdquo; The Ape scratched in the mud with a long
+      forefinger. &ldquo;And yet, who would profit by the killing? Very many would
+      die.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There came up from the water a snatch of a love-song such as the boys sing
+      when they watch their cattle in the noon heats of late spring. The Parrot
+      screamed joyously, sidling along his branch with lowered head as the song
+      grew louder, and in a patch of clear moonlight stood revealed the young
+      herd, the darling of the Gopis, the idol of dreaming maids and of mothers
+      ere their children are born&mdash;Krishna the Well-beloved. He stooped to
+      knot up his long wet hair, and the parrot fluttered to his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fleeting and singing, and singing and fleeting,&rdquo; hiccupped Bhairon.
+      &ldquo;Those make thee late for the council, brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then?&rdquo; said Krishna, with a laugh, throwing back his head. &ldquo;Ye can do
+      little without me or Karma here.&rdquo; He fondled the Parrot's plumage and
+      laughed again. &ldquo;What is this sitting and talking together? I heard Mother
+      Gunga roaring in the dark, and so came quickly from a but where I lay
+      warm. And what have ye done to Karma, that he is so wet and silent? And
+      what does Mother Gunga here? Are the heavens full that ye must come
+      paddling in the mud beast-wise? Karma, what do they do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gunga has prayed for a vengeance on the bridgebuilders, and Kali is with
+      her. Now she bids Hanuman whelm the bridge, that her honour may be made
+      great,&rdquo; cried the Parrot. &ldquo;I waited here, knowing that thou wouldst come,
+      O my master!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the Heavenly Ones said nothing? Did Gunga and the Mother of Sorrows
+      out-talk them? Did none speak for my people?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; said Ganesh, moving uneasily from foot to foot; &ldquo;I said it was but
+      dirt at play, and why should we stamp it flat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was content to let them toil&mdash;well content,&rdquo; said Hanuman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What had I to do with Gunga's anger?&rdquo; said the Bull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am Bhairon of the Common Folk, and this my staff is Kotwal of all
+      Kashi. I spoke for the Common People.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou?&rdquo; The young God's eyes sparkled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I not the first of the Gods in their mouths today?&rdquo; returned Bhairon,
+      unabashed. &ldquo;For the sake of the Common People I said very many wise things
+      which I have now forgotten, but this my staff&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Krishna turned impatiently, saw the Mugger at his feet, and kneeling,
+      slipped an arm round the cold neck. &ldquo;Mother,&rdquo; he said gently, &ldquo;get thee to
+      thy flood again. This matter is not for thee. What harm shall thy honour
+      take of this live dirt? Thou hast given them their fields new year after
+      year, and by thy flood they are made strong. They come all to thee at the
+      last. What need to slay them now? Have pity, mother, for a little and it
+      is only for a little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it be only for a little&mdash;&rdquo; the slow beast began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are they Gods, then?&rdquo; Krishna, returned with a laugh, his eyes looking
+      into the dull eyes of the River. &ldquo;Be certain that it is only for a little.
+      The Heavenly Ones have heard thee, and presently justice will be done. Go
+      now, mother, to the flood again. Men and cattle are thick on the waters&mdash;the
+      banks fall&mdash;the villages melt because of thee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the bridge-the bridge stands.&rdquo; The Mugger turned grunting into the
+      undergrowth as Krishna rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is ended,&rdquo; said the Tigress, viciously. &ldquo;There is no more justice from
+      the Heavenly Ones. Ye have made shame and sport of Gunga, who asked no
+      more than a few score lives.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of my people&mdash;who lie under the leaf-roofs of the village yonder&mdash;of
+      the young girls, and the young men who sing to them in the dark of the
+      child that will be born next morn&mdash;of that which was begotten
+      tonight,&rdquo; said Krishna. &ldquo;And when all is done, what profit? Tomorrow sees
+      them at work. Ay, if ye swept the bridge out from end to end they would
+      begin anew. Hear me! Bhairon is drunk always. Hanuman mocks his people
+      with new riddles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, but they are very old ones,&rdquo; the Ape said, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shiv hears the talk of the schools and the dreams of the holy men; Ganesh
+      thinks only of his fat traders; but I&mdash;I live with these my people,
+      asking for no gifts, and so receiving them hourly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And very tender art thou of thy people,&rdquo; said the Tigress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are my own. The old women dream of me turning in their sleep; the
+      maids look and listen for me when they go to fill their lotahs by the
+      river. I walk by the young men waiting without the gates at dusk, and I
+      call over my shoulder to the whitebeards. Ye know, Heavenly Ones, that I
+      alone of us all walk upon the earth continually, and have no pleasure in
+      our heavens so long as a green blade springs here, or there are two voices
+      at twilight in the standing crops. Wise are ye, but ye live far off,
+      forgetting whence ye came. So do I not forget. And the fire-carriage feeds
+      your shrines, ye say? And the fire-carriages bring a thousand pilgrims
+      where but ten came in the old years? True. That is true, today.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But tomorrow they are dead, brother,&rdquo; said Ganesh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peace!&rdquo; said the Bull, as Hanuman leaned forward again. &ldquo;And tomorrow,
+      beloved&mdash;what of tomorrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This only. A new word creeping from mouth to mouth among the Common Folk&mdash;a
+      word that neither man nor God can lay hold of&mdash;an evil word&mdash;a
+      little lazy word among the Common Folk, saying (and none know who set that
+      word afoot) that they weary of ye, Heavenly Ones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Gods laughed together softly. &ldquo;And then, beloved?&rdquo; they said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And to cover that weariness they, my people, will bring to thee, Shiv,
+      and to thee, Ganesh, at first greater offerings and a louder noise of
+      worship. But the word has gone abroad, and, after, they will pay fewer
+      dues to our fat Brahmins. Next they will forget your altars, but so slowly
+      that no man can say how his forgetfulness began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew&mdash;I knew! I spoke this also, but they would not hear,&rdquo; said
+      the Tigress. &ldquo;We should have slain&mdash;we should have slain!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is too late now. Ye should have slain at the beginning when the men
+      from across the water had taught our folk nothing. Now my people see their
+      work, and go away thinking. They do not think of the Heavenly Ones
+      altogether. They think of the fire-carriage and the other things that the
+      bridge-builders have done, and when your priests thrust forward hands
+      asking alms, they give a little unwillingly. That is the beginning, among
+      one or two, or five or ten&mdash;for I, moving among my people, know what
+      is in their hearts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the end, Jester of the Gods? What shall the end be?&rdquo; said Ganesh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The end shall be as it was in the beginning, O slothful son of Shiv! The
+      flame shall die upon the altars and the prayer upon the tongue till ye
+      become little Gods again&mdash;Gods of the jungle&mdash;names that the
+      hunters of rats and noosers of dogs whisper in the thicket and among the
+      caves&mdash;rag-Gods, pot Godlings of the tree, and the villagemark, as ye
+      were at the beginning. That is the end, Ganesh, for thee, and for Bhairon&mdash;Bhairon
+      of the Common People.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very far away,&rdquo; grunted Bhairon. &ldquo;Also, it is a lie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Many women have kissed Krishna. They told him this to cheer their own
+      hearts when the grey hairs came, and he has told us the tale,&rdquo; said the
+      Bull, below his breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Their Gods came, and we changed them. I took the Woman and made her
+      twelve-armed. So shall we twist all their Gods,&rdquo; said Hanuman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Their Gods! This is no question of their Gods&mdash;one or three&mdash;man
+      or woman. The matter is with the people. They move, and not the Gods of
+      the bridgebuilders,&rdquo; said Krishna.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So be it. I have made a man worship the fire-carriage as it stood still
+      breathing smoke, and he knew not that he worshipped me,&rdquo; said Hanuman the
+      Ape. &ldquo;They will only change a little the names of their Gods. I shall lead
+      the builders of the bridges as of old; Shiv shall be worshipped in the
+      schools by such as doubt and despise their fellows; Ganesh shall have his
+      mahajuns, and Bhairon the donkey-drivers, the pilgrims, and the sellers of
+      toys. Beloved, they will do no more than change the names, and that we
+      have seen a thousand times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely they will do no more than change the names,&rdquo; echoed Ganesh; but
+      there was an uneasy movement among the Gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They will change more than the names. Me alone they cannot kill, so long
+      as a maiden and a man meet together or the spring follows the winter
+      rains. Heavenly Ones, not for nothing have I walked upon the earth. My
+      people know not now what they know; but I, who live with them, I read
+      their hearts. Great Kings, the beginning of the end is born already. The
+      fire-carriages shout the names of new Gods that are not the old under new
+      names. Drink now and eat greatly! Bathe your faces in the smoke of the
+      altars before they grow cold! Take dues and listen to the cymbals and the
+      drums, Heavenly Ones, while yet there are flowers and songs. As men count
+      time the end is far off; but as we who know reckon it is today. I have
+      spoken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young God ceased, and his brethren looked at each other long in
+      silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This I have not heard before,&rdquo; Peroo whispered in his companion's ear.
+      &ldquo;And yet sometimes, when I oiled the brasses in the engine-room of the
+      Goorkha, I have wondered if our priests were so wise&mdash;so wise. The
+      day is coming, Sahib. They will be gone by the morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A yellow light broadened in the sky, and the tone of the river changed as
+      the darkness withdrew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the Elephant trumpeted aloud as though man had goaded him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let Indra judge. Father of all, speak thou! What of the things we have
+      heard? Has Krishna lied indeed? Or&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye know,&rdquo; said the Buck, rising to his feet. &ldquo;Ye know the Riddle of the
+      Gods. When Brahm ceases to dream, the Heavens and the Hells and Earth
+      disappear. Be content. Brahm dreams still. The dreams come and go, and the
+      nature of the dreams changes, but still Brahm dreams. Krishna has walked
+      too long upon earth, and yet I love him the more for the tale he has told.
+      The Gods change, beloved-all save One!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, all save one that makes love in the hearts of men,&rdquo; said Krishna,
+      knotting his girdle. &ldquo;It is but a little time to wait, and ye shall know
+      if I lie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Truly it is but a little time, as thou sayest, and we shall know. Get
+      thee to thy huts again, beloved, and make sport for the young things, for
+      still Brahm dreams. Go, my children! Brahm dreams&mdash;and till he wakes
+      the Gods die not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whither went they?&rdquo; said the Lascar, awe-struck, shivering a little with
+      the cold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God knows!&rdquo; said Findlayson. The river and the island lay in full
+      daylight now, and there was never mark of hoof or pug on the wet earth
+      under the peepul. Only a parrot screamed in the branches, bringing down
+      showers of water-drops as he fluttered his wings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Up! We are cramped with cold! Has the opium died out? Canst thou move,
+      Sahib?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Findlayson staggered to his feet and shook himself. His head swam and
+      ached, but the work of the opium was over, and, as he sluiced his forehead
+      in a pool, the Chief Engineer of the Kashi Bridge was wondering how he had
+      managed to fall upon the island, what chances the day offered of return,
+      and, above all, how his work stood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peroo, I have forgotten much. I was under the guard-tower watching the
+      river; and then. . . . Did the flood sweep us away?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. The boats broke loose, Sahib, and&rdquo; (if the Sahib had forgotten about
+      the opium, decidedly Peroo would not remind him) &ldquo;in striving to retie
+      them, so it seemed to me&mdash;but it was darka rope caught the Sahib and
+      threw him upon a boat. Considering that we two, with Hitchcock Sahib,
+      built, as it were, that bridge, I came also upon the boat, which came
+      riding on horseback, as it were, on the nose of this island, and so,
+      splitting, cast us ashore. I made a great cry when the boat left the
+      wharf, and without doubt Hitchcock Sahib will come for us. As for the
+      bridge, so many have died in the building that it cannot fall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A fierce sun, that drew out all the smell of the sodden land, had followed
+      the storm, and in that clear light there was no room for a man to think of
+      the dreams of the dark. Findlayson stared up-stream, across the blaze of
+      moving water, till his eyes ached. There was no sign of any bank to the
+      Ganges, much less of a bridgeline.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We came down far,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It was wonderful that we were not drowned a
+      hundred times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was the least of the wonder, for no man dies before his time. I have
+      seen Sydney, I have seen London, and twenty great ports, but&rdquo;&mdash;Peroo
+      looked at the damp, discoloured shrine under the peopul&mdash;&ldquo;never man
+      has seen that we saw here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has the Sahib forgotten; or do we black men only see the Gods?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was a fever upon me.&rdquo; Findlayson was still looking uneasily across
+      the water. &ldquo;It seemed that the island was full of beasts and men talking,
+      but I do not remember. A boat could live in this water now, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oho! Then it is true. 'When Brahm ceases to dream, the Gods die.' Now I
+      know, indeed, what he meant. Once, too, the guru said as much to me; but
+      then I did not understand. Now I am wise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; said Findlayson, over his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peroo went on as if he were talking to himself. &ldquo;Six-seven-ten monsoons
+      since, I was watch on the fo'c'sle of the ehwah&mdash;the Kumpani's big
+      boat-and there was a big tufan; green and black water beating, and I held
+      fast to the life-lines, choking under the waters. Then I thought of the
+      Gods&mdash;of Those whom we saw tonight&rdquo;&mdash;he stared curiously at
+      Findlayson's back, but the white man was looking across the flood. &ldquo;Yes, I
+      say of Those whom we saw this night past, and I called upon Them to
+      protect me. And while I prayed, still keeping my lookout, a big wave came
+      and threw me forward upon the ring of the great black bowanchor, and the
+      Rewah rose high and high, leaning towards the lefthand side, and the water
+      drew away from beneath her nose, and I lay upon my belly, holding the
+      ring, and looking down into those great deeps. Then I thought, even in the
+      face of death: If I lose hold I die, and for me neither the Rewah nor my
+      place by the galley where the rice is cooked, nor Bombay, nor Calcutta,
+      nor even London, will be any more for me. 'How shall I be sure,' I said,
+      that the Gods to whom I pray will abide at all?' This I thought, and the
+      Rewah dropped her nose as a hammer falls, and all the sea came in and slid
+      me backwards along the fo'c'sle and over the break of the fo'c'sle, and I
+      very badly bruised my shin against the donkey-engine: but I did not die,
+      and I have seen the Gods. They are good for live men, but for the dead. .
+      . They have spoken Themselves. Therefore, when I come to the village I
+      will beat the guru for talking riddles which are no riddles. When Brahm
+      ceases to dream the Gods go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look up-stream. The light blinds. Is there smoke yonder?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peroo shaded his eyes with his hands. &ldquo;He is a wise man and quick.
+      Hitchcock Sahib would not trust a rowboat. He has borrowed the Rao Sahib's
+      steam launch, and comes to look for us. I have always said that there
+      should have been a steam-launch on the bridge works for us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The territory of the Rao of Baraon lay within ten miles of the bridge; and
+      Findlayson and Hitchcock had spent a fair portion of their scanty leisure
+      in playing billiards and shooting black-buck with the young man. He had
+      been bear-led by an English tutor of sporting tastes for some five or six
+      years, and was now royally wasting the revenues accumulated during his
+      minority by the Indian Government. His steam-launch, with its silverplated
+      rails, striped silk awning, and mahogany decks, was a new toy which
+      Findlayson had found horribly in the way when the Rao came to look at the
+      bridge works.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's great luck,&rdquo; murmured Findlayson, but he was none the less afraid,
+      wondering what news might be of the bridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gaudy blue and white funnel came down-stream swiftly. They could see
+      Hitchcock in the bows, with a pair of opera-glasses, and his face was
+      unusually white. Then Peroo hailed, and the launch made for the tail of
+      the island. The Rao Sahib, in tweed shooting-suit and a seven-hued turban,
+      waved his royal hand, and Hitchcock shouted. But he need have asked no
+      questions, for Findlayson's first demand was for his bridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All serene! Gad, I never expected to see you again, Findlayson. You're
+      seven koss down-stream. Yes; there's not a stone shifted anywhere; but how
+      are you? I borrowed the Rao Sahib's launch, and he was good enough to come
+      along. Jump in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Finlinson, you are very well, eh? That was most unprecedented
+      calamity last night, eh? My royal palace, too, it leaks like the devil,
+      and the crops will also be short all about my country. Now you shall back
+      her out, Hitchcock. I&mdash;I do not understand steam engines. You are
+      wet? You are cold, Finlinson? I have some things to eat here, and you will
+      take a good drink.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm immensely grateful, Rao Sahib. I believe you've saved my life. How
+      did Hitchcock&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oho! His hair was upon end. He rode to me in the middle of the night and
+      woke me up in the arms of Morpheus. I was most truly concerned, Finlinson,
+      so I came too. My head-priest he is very angry just now. We will go quick,
+      Mister Hitchcock. I am due to attend at twelve forty-five in the state
+      temple, where we sanctify some new idol. If not so I would have asked you
+      to spend the day with me. They are dam-bore, these religious ceremonies,
+      Finlinson, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peroo, well known to the crew, had possessed himself of the inlaid wheel,
+      and was taking the launch craftily up-stream. But while he steered he was,
+      in his mind, handling two feet of partially untwisted wire-rope; and the
+      back upon which he beat was the back of his guru.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A WALKING DELEGATE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      According to the custom of Vermont, Sunday afternoon is salting-time on
+      the farm, and, unless something very important happens, we attend to the
+      salting ourselves. Dave and Pete, the red oxen, are treated first; they
+      stay in the home meadow ready for work on Monday. Then come the cows, with
+      Pan, the calf, who should have been turned into veal long ago, but
+      survived on account of his manners; and lastly the horses, scattered
+      through the seventy acres of the Back Pasture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You must go down by the brook that feeds the clicking, bubbling water-ram;
+      up through the sugar-bush, where the young maple undergrowth closes round
+      you like a shallow sea; next follow the faint line of an old county-road
+      running past two green hollows fringed with wild rose that mark the
+      cellars of two ruined houses; then by Lost Orchard, where nobody ever
+      comes except in cider-time; then across another brook, and so into the
+      Back Pasture. Half of it is pine and hemlock and Spruce, with sumach and
+      little juniper bushes, and the other half is grey rock and boulder and
+      moss, with green streaks of brake and swamp; but the horses like it well
+      enough&mdash;our own, and the others that are turned down there to feed at
+      fifty cents a week. Most people walk to the Back Pasture, and find it very
+      rough work; but one can get there in a buggy, if the horse knows what is
+      expected of him. The safest conveyance is our coupe. This began life as a
+      buckboard, and we bought it for five dollars from a sorrowful man who had
+      no other sort of possessions; and the seat came off one night when we were
+      turning a corner in a hurry. After that alteration it made a beautiful
+      salting-machine, if you held tight, because there was nothing to catch
+      your feet when you fell out, and the slats rattled tunes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One Sunday afternoon we went out with the salt as usual. It was a broiling
+      hot day, and we could not find the horses anywhere till we let Tedda
+      Gabler, the bobtailed mare who throws up the dirt with her big hooves
+      exactly as a tedder throws hay, have her head. Clever as she is, she
+      tipped the coupe over in a hidden brook before she came out on a ledge of
+      rock where all the horses had gathered, and were switching flies. The
+      Deacon was the first to call to her. He is a very dark iron-grey
+      four-year-old, son of Grandee. He has been handled since he was two, was
+      driven in a light cart before he was three, and now ranks as an absolutely
+      steady lady's horse&mdash;proof against steam-rollers, grade-crossings,
+      and street processions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Salt!&rdquo; said the Deacon, joyfully. &ldquo;You're dreffle late, Tedda.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any&mdash;any place to cramp the coupe?&rdquo; Tedda panted. &ldquo;It weighs
+      turr'ble this weather. I'd 'a' come sooner, but they didn't know what they
+      wanted&mdash;ner haow. Fell out twice, both of 'em. I don't understand
+      sech foolishness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look consider'ble het up. 'Guess you'd better cramp her under them
+      pines, an' cool off a piece.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tedda scrambled on the ledge, and cramped the coupe in the shade of a tiny
+      little wood of pines, while my companion and I lay down among the brown,
+      silky needles, and gasped. All the home horses were gathered round us,
+      enjoying their Sunday leisure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were Rod and Rick, the seniors on the farm. They were the regular
+      road-pair, bay with black points, full brothers, aged, sons of a
+      Hambletonian sire and a Morgan dam. There were Nip and Tuck, seal-browns,
+      rising six, brother and sister, Black Hawks by birth, perfectly matched,
+      just finishing their education, and as handsome a pair as man could wish
+      to find in a forty-mile drive. There was Muldoon, our ex-car-horse, bought
+      at a venture, and any colour you choose that is not white; and Tweezy, who
+      comes from Kentucky, with an affliction of his left hip, which makes him a
+      little uncertain how his hind legs are moving. He and Muldoon had been
+      hauling gravel all the week for our new road. The Deacon you know already.
+      Last of all, and eating something, was our faithful Marcus Aurelius
+      Antoninus, the black buggy-horse, who had seen us through every state of
+      weather and road, the horse who was always standing in harness before some
+      door or other&mdash;a philosopher with the appetite of a shark and the
+      manners of an archbishop. Tedda Gabler was a new &ldquo;trade,&rdquo; with a
+      reputation for vice which was really the result of bad driving. She had
+      one working gait, which she could hold till further notice; a Roman nose;
+      a large, prominent eye; a shaving-brush of a tail; and an irritable
+      temper. She took her salt through her bridle; but the others trotted up
+      nuzzling and wickering for theirs, till we emptied it on the clean rocks.
+      They were all standing at ease, on three legs for the most part, talking
+      the ordinary gossip of the Back Pasture&mdash;about the scarcity of water,
+      and gaps in the fence, and how the early windfalls tasted that season&mdash;when
+      little Rick blew the last few grains of his allowance into a crevice, and
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hurry, boys! 'Might ha' knowed that livery plug would be around.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We heard a clatter of hooves, and there climbed up from the ravine below a
+      fifty-center transient&mdash;a wall-eyed, yellow frame-house of a horse,
+      sent up to board from a livery-stable in town, where they called him &ldquo;The
+      Lamb,&rdquo; and never let him out except at night and to strangers. My
+      companion, who knew and had broken most of the horses, looked at the
+      ragged hammer-head as it rose, and said quietly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ni-ice beast. Man-eater, if he gets the chance&mdash;see his eye. Kicker,
+      too&mdash;see his hocks. Western horse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The animal lumbered up, snuffling and grunting. His feet showed that he
+      had not worked for weeks and weeks, and our creatures drew together
+      significantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As usual,&rdquo; he said, with an underhung sneer&mdash;&ldquo;bowin' your heads
+      before the Oppressor that comes to spend his leisure gloatin' over you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mine's done,&rdquo; said the Deacon; he licked up the remnant of his salt,
+      dropped his nose in his master's hand, and sang a little grace all to
+      himself. The Deacon has the most enchanting manners of any one I know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An' fawnin' on them for what is your inalienable right. It's
+      humiliatin',&rdquo; said the yellow horse, sniffing to see if he could find a
+      few spare grains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go daown hill, then, Boney,&rdquo; the Deacon replied. &ldquo;Guess you'll find
+      somethin' to eat still, if yer hain't hogged it all. You've ett more'n any
+      three of us to-day&mdash;an' day 'fore that&mdash;an' the last two months&mdash;sence
+      you've been here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not addressin' myself to the young an' immature. I am speakin' to
+      those whose opinion an' experience commands respect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw Rod raise his head as though he were about to make a remark; then he
+      dropped it again, and stood three-cornered, like a plough-horse. Rod can
+      cover his mile in a shade under three minutes on an ordinary road to an
+      ordinary buggy. He is tremendously powerful behind, but, like most
+      Hambletonians, he grows a trifle sullen as he gets older. No one can love
+      Rod very much; but no one can help respecting him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish to wake those,&rdquo; the yellow horse went on, &ldquo;to an abidin' sense o'
+      their wrongs an' their injuries an' their outrages.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Haow's that?&rdquo; said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, dreamily. He thought Boney
+      was talking of some kind of feed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An' when I say outrages and injuries&rdquo;&mdash;Boney waved his tail
+      furiously&mdash;&ldquo;I mean 'em, too. Great Oats! That's just what I do mean, plain
+      an' straight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The gentleman talks quite earnest,&rdquo; said Tuck, the mare, to Nip, her
+      brother. &ldquo;There's no doubt thinkin' broadens the horizons o' the mind. His
+      language is quite lofty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hesh, sis,&rdquo; Nip answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He hain't widened nothin' 'cep' the circle he's ett in pasture. They feed
+      words fer beddin' where he comes from.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's elegant talkin', though,&rdquo; Tuck returned, with an unconvinced toss of
+      her pretty, lean little head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The yellow horse heard her, and struck an attitude which he meant to be
+      extremely impressive. It made him look as though he had been badly
+      stuffed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I ask you, I ask you without prejudice an' without favour,&mdash;what
+      has Man the Oppressor ever done for you?&mdash;Are you not inalienably
+      entitled to the free air o' heaven, blowin' acrost this boundless
+      prairie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hev ye ever wintered here?&rdquo; said the Deacon, merrily, while the others
+      snickered. &ldquo;It's kinder cool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet,&rdquo; said Boney. &ldquo;I come from the boundless confines o' Kansas,
+      where the noblest of our kind have their abidin' place among the
+      sunflowers on the threshold o' the settin' sun in his glory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An' they sent you ahead as a sample?&rdquo; said Rick, with an amused quiver of
+      his long, beautifully groomed tail, as thick and as fine and as wavy as a
+      quadroon's back hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kansas, sir, needs no advertisement. Her native sons rely on themselves
+      an' their native sires. Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Tweezy lifted up his wise and polite old head. His affliction makes
+      him bashful as a rule, but he is ever the most courteous of horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me, suh,&rdquo; he said slowly, &ldquo;but, unless I have been misinfohmed,
+      most of your prominent siahs, suh, are impo'ted from Kentucky; an' I'm
+      from Paduky.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was the least little touch of pride in the last words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any horse dat knows beans,&rdquo; said Muldoon, suddenly (he had been standing
+      with his hairy chin on Tweezy's broad quarters), &ldquo;gits outer Kansas 'fore
+      dey crip his shoes. I blew in dere from Ioway in de days o' me youth an'
+      innocence, an' I wuz grateful when dey boxed me fer N' York. You can't
+      tell me anything about Kansas I don't wanter fergit. De Belt Line stables
+      ain't no Hoffman House, but dey're Vanderbilts 'longside o' Kansas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What the horses o' Kansas think to-day, the horses of America will think
+      to-morrow; an' I tell you that when the horses of America rise in their
+      might, the day o' the Oppressor is ended.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause, till Rick said, with a little grunt:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ef you put it that way, every one of us has riz in his might, 'cep'
+      Marcus, mebbe. Marky, 'j ever rise in yer might?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nope,&rdquo; said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, thoughtfully quidding over a
+      mouthful of grass. &ldquo;I seen a heap o' fools try, though.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You admit that you riz?&rdquo; said the Kansas horse, excitedly. &ldquo;Then why&mdash;why
+      in Kansas did you ever go under again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Horse can't walk on his hind legs all the time,&rdquo; said the Deacon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not when he's jerked over on his back 'fore he knows what fetched him.
+      We've all done it, Boney,&rdquo; said Rick. &ldquo;Nip an' Tuck they tried it, spite
+      o' what the Deacon told 'em; an' the Deacon he tried it, spite o' what me
+      an' Rod told him; an' me an' Rod tried it, spite o' what Grandee told us;
+      an' I guess Grandee he tried it, spite o' what his dam told him. It's the
+      same old circus from generation to generation. 'Colt can't see why he's
+      called on to back. Same old rearm' on end&mdash;straight up. Same old
+      feelin' that you've bested 'em this time. Same old little yank at your
+      mouth when you're up good an' tall. Same old Pegasus-act, wonderin' where
+      you'll 'light. Same old wop when you hit the dirt with your head where
+      your tail should be, and your in'ards shook up like a bran-mash. Same old
+      voice in your ear: 'Waal, ye little fool, an' what did you reckon to make
+      by that?' We're through with risin in our might on this farm. We go to
+      pole er single, accordin' ez we're hitched.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An' Man the Oppressor sets an' gloats over you, same as he's settin' now.
+      Hain't that been your experience, madam?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This last remark was addressed to Tedda; and any one could see with half
+      an eye that poor, old anxious, fidgety Tedda, stamping at the flies, must
+      have left a wild and tumultuous youth behind her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Pends on the man,&rdquo; she answered, shifting from one foot to the other,
+      and addressing herself to the home horses. &ldquo;They abused me dreffle when I
+      was young. I guess I was sperrity an' nervous some, but they didn't allow
+      for that. 'Twas in Monroe County, Noo York, an' sence then till I come
+      here, I've run away with more men than 'u'd fill a boardin'-house. Why,
+      the man that sold me here he says to the boss, s' he: 'Mind, now, I've
+      warned you. 'Twon't be none of my fault if she sheds you daown the road.
+      Don't you drive her in a top-buggy, ner 'thout winkers,' s' he, 'ner
+      'thought this bit ef you look to come home behind her.' 'N' the fust thing
+      the boss did was to git the top-buggy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't say as I like top-buggies,&rdquo; said Rick; &ldquo;they don't balance good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suit me to a ha'ar,&rdquo; said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. &ldquo;Top-buggy means the
+      baby's in behind, an' I kin stop while she gathers the pretty flowers&mdash;yes,
+      an' pick a maouthful, too. The women-folk all say I hev to be humoured,
+      an' I don't kerry things to the sweatin'-point.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Course I've no prejudice against a top-buggy s' long's I can see it,&rdquo;
+       Tedda went on quickly. &ldquo;It's ha'f-seein' the pesky thing bobbin' an'
+      balancin' behind the winkers gits on my nerves. Then the boss looked at the
+      bit they'd sold with me, an' s' he: 'Jiminy Christmas! This 'u'd make a
+      clothes-horse stan' 'n end!' Then he gave me a plain bar bit, an' fitted
+      it's if there was some feelin' to my maouth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hain't ye got any, Miss Tedda?&rdquo; said Tuck, who has a mouth like velvet,
+      and knows it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Might 'a' had, Miss Tuck, but I've forgot. Then he give me an open
+      bridle,&mdash;my style's an open bridle&mdash;an'&mdash;I dunno as I ought
+      to tell this by rights&mdash;he&mdash;give&mdash;me&mdash;a kiss.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My!&rdquo; said Tuck, &ldquo;I can't tell fer the shoes o' me what makes some men so
+      fresh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pshaw, sis,&rdquo; said Nip, &ldquo;what's the sense in actin' so? You git a kiss
+      reg'lar's hitchin'-up time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you needn't tell, smarty,&rdquo; said Tuck, with a squeal and a kick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd heard o' kisses, o' course,&rdquo; Tedda went on, &ldquo;but they hadn't come my
+      way specially. I don't mind tellin' I was that took aback at that man's
+      doin's he might ha' lit fire-crackers on my saddle. Then we went out
+      jest's if a kiss was nothin', an' I wasn't three strides into my gait
+      'fore I felt the boss knoo his business, an' was trustin' me. So I studied
+      to please him, an' he never took the whip from the dash&mdash;a whip
+      drives me plumb distracted&mdash;an' the upshot was that&mdash;waal, I've
+      come up the Back Pasture to-day, an' the coupe's tipped clear over twice,
+      an' I've waited till 'twuz fixed each time. You kin judge for yourselves.
+      I don't set up to be no better than my neighbours,&mdash;specially with my
+      tail snipped off the way 'tis,&mdash;but I want you all to know Tedda's
+      quit fightin' in harness or out of it, 'cep' when there's a born fool in
+      the pasture, stuffin' his stummick with board that ain't rightly hisn,
+      'cause he hain't earned it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Meanin' me, madam?&rdquo; said the yellow horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ef the shoe fits, clinch it,&rdquo; said Tedda, snorting. &ldquo;I named no names,
+      though, to be sure, some folks are mean enough an' greedy enough to do
+      'thout 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a deal to be forgiven to ignorance,&rdquo; said the yellow horse, with
+      an ugly look in his blue eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seemin'ly, yes; or some folks 'u'd ha' been kicked raound the pasture
+      'bout onct a minute sence they came&mdash;board er no board.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what you do not understand, if you will excuse me, madam, is that the
+      whole principle o' servitood, which includes keep an' feed, starts from a
+      radically false basis; an' I am proud to say that me an' the majority o'
+      the horses o' Kansas think the entire concern should be relegated to the
+      limbo of exploded superstitions. I say we're too progressive for that. I
+      say we're too enlightened for that. 'Twas good enough's long's we didn't
+      think, but naow&mdash;but naow&mdash;a new loominary has arisen on the
+      horizon!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Meanin' you?&rdquo; said the Deacon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The horses o' Kansas are behind me with their multitoodinous thunderin'
+      hooves, an' we say, simply but grandly, that we take our stand with all
+      four feet on the inalienable rights of the horse, pure and simple,&mdash;the
+      high-toned child o' nature, fed by the same wavin' grass, cooled by the
+      same ripplin' brook&mdash;yes, an' warmed by the same gen'rous sun as
+      falls impartially on the outside an' the inside of the pampered machine o'
+      the trottin'-track, or the bloated coupe-horses o' these yere Eastern
+      cities. Are we not the same flesh an' blood?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not by a bushel an' a half,&rdquo; said the Deacon, under his breath. &ldquo;Grandee
+      never was in Kansas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My! Ain't that elegant, though, abaout the wavin' grass an' the ripplin'
+      brooks?&rdquo; Tuck whispered in Nip's ear. &ldquo;The gentleman's real convincin', I
+      think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say we are the same flesh an' blood! Are we to be separated, horse from
+      horse, by the artificial barriers of a trottin'-record, or are we to look
+      down upon each other on the strength o' the gifts o' nature&mdash;an extry
+      inch below the knee, or slightly more powerful quarters? What's the use o'
+      them advantages to you? Man the Oppressor comes along, an' sees you're
+      likely an' good-lookin', an' grinds you to the face o' the earth. What
+      for? For his own pleasure: for his own convenience! Young an' old, black
+      an' bay, white an' grey, there's no distinctions made between us. We're
+      ground up together under the remorseless teeth o' the engines of
+      oppression!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guess his breechin' must ha' broke goin' daown-hill,&rdquo; said the Deacon.
+      &ldquo;Slippery road, maybe, an' the buggy come onter him, an' he didn't know
+      'nough to hold back. That don't feel like teeth, though. Maybe he busted a
+      shaft, an' it pricked him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An' I come to you from Kansas, wavin' the tail o' friendship to all an'
+      sundry, an' in the name of the uncounted millions o' pure-minded,
+      high-toned horses now strugglin' towards the light o' freedom, I say to
+      you, Rub noses with us in our sacred an' holy cause. The power is yourn.
+      Without you, I say, Man the Oppressor cannot move himself from place to
+      place. Without you he cannot reap, he cannot sow, he cannot plough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mighty odd place, Kansas!&rdquo; said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. &ldquo;Seemin'ly
+      they reap in the spring an' plough in the fall. 'Guess it's right fer
+      them, but 'twould make me kinder giddy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The produc's of your untirin' industry would rot on the ground if you did
+      not weakly consent to help him. Let 'em rot, I say! Let him call you to
+      the stables in vain an' nevermore! Let him shake his ensnarin' oats under
+      your nose in vain! Let the Brahmas roost in the buggy, an' the rats run
+      riot round the reaper! Let him walk on his two hind feet till they blame
+      well drop off! Win no more soul-destroin' races for his pleasure! Then,
+      an' not till then, will Man the Oppressor know where he's at. Quit
+      workin', fellow-sufferers an' slaves! Kick! Rear! Plunge! Lie down on the
+      shafts, an' woller! Smash an' destroy! The conflict will be but short, an'
+      the victory is certain. After that we can press our inalienable rights to
+      eight quarts o' oats a day, two good blankets, an' a fly-net an' the best
+      o' stablin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The yellow horse shut his yellow teeth with a triumphant snap; and Tuck
+      said, with a sigh: &ldquo;Seems's if somethin' ought to be done. Don't seem
+      right, somehow,&mdash;oppressin' us an all,&mdash;to my way o' thinkin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Said Muldoon, in a far-away and sleepy voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who in Vermont's goin' to haul de inalienable oats? Dey weigh like Sam
+      Hill, an' sixty bushel at dat allowance ain't goin' to last t'ree weeks
+      here. An' dere's de winter hay for five mont's!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can settle those minor details when the great cause is won,&rdquo; said the
+      yellow horse. &ldquo;Let us return simply but grandly to our inalienable rights&mdash;the
+      right o' freedom on these yere verdant hills, an' no invijjus distinctions
+      o' track an' pedigree:&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What in stables 'jer call an invijjus distinction?&rdquo; said the Deacon,
+      stiffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fer one thing, bein' a bloated, pampered trotter jest because you happen
+      to be raised that way, an' couldn't no more help trottin' than eatin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do ye know anythin' about trotters?&rdquo; said the Deacon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've seen 'em trot. That was enough for me. I don't want to know any
+      more. Trottin's immoral.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Waal, I'll tell you this much. They don't bloat, an' they don't pamp&mdash;much.
+      I don't hold out to be no trotter myself, though I am free to say I had
+      hopes that way&mdash;onct. But I do say, fer I've seen 'em trained, that a
+      trotter don't trot with his feet: he trots with his head; an' he does more
+      work&mdash;ef you know what that is&mdash;in a week than you er your sire
+      ever done in all your lives. He's everlastingly at it, a trotter is; an'
+      when he isn't, he's studyin' haow. You seen 'em trot? Much you hev! You
+      was hitched to a rail, back o' the stand, in a buckboard with a soap-box
+      nailed on the slats, an' a frowzy buff'lo atop, while your man peddled rum
+      fer lemonade to little boys as thought they was actin' manly, till you was
+      both run off the track an' jailed&mdash;you intoed, shufflin',
+      sway-backed, wind-suckin' skate, you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't get het up, Deacon,&rdquo; said Tweezy, quietly. &ldquo;Now, suh, would you
+      consider a fox-trot, an' single-foot, an' rack, an' pace, an' amble,
+      distinctions not worth distinguishin'? I assuah you, gentlemen, there was
+      a time befo' I was afflicted in my hip, if you'll pardon me, Miss Tuck,
+      when I was quite celebrated in Paduky for all those gaits; an in my
+      opinion the Deacon's co'rect when he says that a ho'se of any position in
+      society gets his gaits by his haid, an' not by&mdash;his, ah, limbs, Miss
+      Tuck. I reckon I'm very little good now, but I'm rememberin' the things I
+      used to do befo' I took to transpo'tin' real estate with the help an'
+      assistance of this gentleman here.&rdquo; He looked at Muldoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Invijjus arterficial hind legs!&rdquo; said the ex-carhorse, with a grunt of
+      contempt. &ldquo;On de Belt Line we don't reckon no horse wuth his keep 'less he
+      kin switch de car off de track, run her round on de cobbles, an' dump her
+      in ag'in ahead o' de truck what's blockin' him. Dere is a way o' swingin'
+      yer quarters when de driver says, 'Yank her out, boys!' dat takes a year
+      to learn. Onct yer git onter it, youse kin yank a cable-car outer a
+      manhole. I don't advertise myself for no circus-horse, but I knew dat
+      trick better than most, an' dey was good to me in de stables, fer I saved
+      time on de Belt&mdash;an' time's what dey hunt in N' York.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the simple child o' nature&mdash;&rdquo; the yellow horse began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, go an' unscrew yer splints! You're talkin' through yer bandages,&rdquo;
+       said Muldoon, with a horse-laugh. &ldquo;Dere ain't no loose-box for de simple
+      child o' nature on de Belt Line, wid de Paris comin' in an' de Teutonic
+      goin' out, an' de trucks an' de coupe's sayin' things, an' de heavy
+      freight movin' down fer de Boston boat 'bout t'ree o'clock of an August
+      afternoon, in de middle of a hot wave when de fat Kanucks an' Western
+      horses drops dead on de block. De simple child o' nature had better chase
+      himself inter de water. Every man at de end of his lines is mad or loaded
+      or silly, an' de cop's madder an' loadeder an' sillier than de rest. Dey
+      all take it outer de horses. Dere's no wavin' brooks ner ripplin' grass on
+      de Belt Line. Run her out on de cobbles wid de sparks flyin', an' stop
+      when de cop slugs you on de bone o' yer nose. Dat's N'York; see?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was always told s'ciety in Noo York was dreffle refined an'
+      high-toned,&rdquo; said Tuck. &ldquo;We're lookin' to go there one o' these days, Nip
+      an' me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you won't see no Belt business where you'll go, miss. De man dat
+      wants you'll want you bad, an' he'll summer you on Long Island er at Newport,
+      wid a winky-pinky silver harness an' an English coachman. You'll make a
+      star-hitch, you an' yer brother, miss. But I guess you won't have no nice
+      smooth bar bit. Dey checks 'em, an' dey bangs deir tails, an' dey bits
+      'em, de city folk, an' dey says it's English, ye know, an' dey darsen't
+      cut a horse loose 'ca'se o' de cops. N' York's no place fer a horse, 'less
+      he's on de Belt, an' can go round wid de boys. Wisht I was in de Fire
+      Department!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But did you never stop to consider the degradin' servitood of it all?&rdquo;
+       said the yellow horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't stop on de Belt, cully. You're stopped. An' we was all in de
+      servitood business, man an' horse, an' Jimmy dat sold de papers. Guess de
+      passengers weren't out to grass neither, by de way dey acted. I done my
+      turn, an' I'm none o' Barnum's crowd; but any horse dat's worked on de
+      Belt four years don't train wid no simple child o' nature&mdash;not by de
+      whole length o' N' York.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But can it be possible that with your experience, and at your time of
+      life, you do not believe that all horses are free and equal?&rdquo; said the
+      yellow horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not till they're dead,&rdquo; Muldoon answered quietly. &ldquo;An' den it depends on
+      de gross total o' buttons an' mucilage dey gits outer youse at Barren
+      Island.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They tell me you're a prominent philosopher.&rdquo; The yellow horse turned to
+      Marcus. &ldquo;Can you deny a basic and pivotal statement such as this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't deny anythin',&rdquo; said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, cautiously; &ldquo;but
+      ef you ast me, I should say 'twuz more different sorts o' clipped oats of
+      a lie than anythin' I've had my teeth into sence I wuz foaled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you a horse?&rdquo; said the yellow horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Them that knows me best 'low I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ain't I a horse?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yep; one kind of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then ain't you an' me equal?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How fer kin you go in a day to a loaded buggy, drawin' five hundred
+      pounds?&rdquo; Marcus asked carelessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That has nothing to do with the case,&rdquo; the yellow horse answered
+      excitedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's nothing I know hez more to do with the case,&rdquo; Marcus replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kin ye yank a full car outer de tracks ten times in de mornin'?&rdquo; said
+      Muldoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kin ye go to Keene&mdash;forty-two mile in an afternoon&mdash;with a
+      mate,&rdquo; said Rick; &ldquo;an' turn out bright an' early next mornin'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was there evah any time in your careah, suh&mdash;I am not referrin' to
+      the present circumstances, but our mutual glorious past&mdash;when you
+      could carry a pretty girl to market hahnsome, an' let her knit all the way
+      on account o' the smoothness o' the motion?&rdquo; said Tweezy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kin you keep your feet through the West River Bridge, with the
+      narrer-gage comin' in on one side, an' the Montreal flyer the other, an'
+      the old bridge teeterin' between?&rdquo; said the Deacon. &ldquo;Kin you put your nose
+      down on the cow-catcher of a locomotive when you're waitin' at the depot
+      an' let 'em play 'Curfew shall not ring to-night' with the big brass
+      bell?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kin you hold back when the brichin' breaks? Kin you stop fer orders when
+      your nigh hind leg's over your trace an' ye feel good of a frosty
+      mornin'?&rdquo; said Nip, who had only learned that trick last winter, and
+      thought it was the crown of horsely knowledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the use o' talkin'?&rdquo; said Tedda Gabler, scornfully. &ldquo;What kin ye
+      do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I rely on my simple rights&mdash;the inalienable rights o' my unfettered
+      horsehood. An' I am proud to say I have never, since my first shoes,
+      lowered myself to obeyin' the will o' man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Must ha' had a heap o' whips broke over yer yaller back,&rdquo; said Tedda.
+      &ldquo;Hev ye found it paid any?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sorrer has been my portion since the day I was foaled. Blows an' boots
+      an' whips an' insults&mdash;injury, outrage, an' oppression. I would not
+      endoor the degradin' badges o' servitood that connect us with the buggy
+      an' the farm-wagon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's amazin' difficult to draw a buggy 'thout traces er collar er
+      breast-strap er somefin',&rdquo; said Marcus. &ldquo;A Power-machine for sawin' wood
+      is most the only thing there's no straps to. I've helped saw 's much as
+      three cord in an afternoon in a Power-machine. Slep', too, most o' the
+      time, I did; but 'tain't half as interestin' ez goin' daown-taown in the
+      Concord.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Concord don't hender you goin' to sleep any,&rdquo; said Nip. &ldquo;My throat-lash!
+      D'you remember when you lay down in the sharves last week, waitin' at the
+      piazza?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pshaw! That didn't hurt the sharves. They wuz good an' wide, an' I lay
+      down keerful. The folks kep' me hitched up nigh an hour 'fore they
+      started; an' larfed&mdash;why, they all but lay down themselves with
+      larfin'. Say, Boney, if you've got to be hitched to anything that goes on
+      wheels, you've got to be hitched with somefin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go an' jine a circus,&rdquo; said Muldoon, &ldquo;an' walk on your hind legs. All de
+      horses dat knows too much to work [he pronounced it 'woik,' New York
+      fashion] jine de circus.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not sayin' anythin' again' work,&rdquo; said the yellow horse; &ldquo;work is
+      the finest thing in the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Seems too fine fer some of us,&rdquo; Tedda snorted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only ask that each horse should work for himself, an' enjoy the profit
+      of his labours. Let him work intelligently, an' not as a machine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There ain't no horse that works like a machine,&rdquo; Marcus began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's no way o' workin' that doesn't mean goin' to pole er single&mdash;they
+      never put me in the Power-machine&mdash;er under saddle,&rdquo; said Rick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, shucks! We're talkin' same ez we graze,&rdquo; said Nip, &ldquo;raound an' raound
+      in circles. Rod, we hain't heard from you yet, an' you've more know-how
+      than any span here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rod, the off-horse of the pair, had been standing with one hip lifted,
+      like a tired cow; and you could only tell by the quick flutter of the haw
+      across his eye, from time to time, that he was paying any attention to the
+      argument. He thrust his jaw out sidewise, as his habit is when he pulls,
+      and changed his leg. His voice was hard and heavy, and his ears were close
+      to his big, plain Hambletonian head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How old are you?&rdquo; he said to the yellow horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nigh thirteen, I guess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mean age; ugly age; I'm gettin' that way myself. How long hev ye been
+      pawin' this firefanged stable-litter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you mean my principles, I've held 'em sence I was three.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mean age; ugly age; teeth give heaps o' trouble then. 'Set a colt to
+      actin' crazy fer a while. You've kep' it up, seemin'ly. D'ye talk much to
+      your neighbours fer a steady thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I uphold the principles o' the Cause wherever I am pastured.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Done a heap o' good, I guess?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am proud to say I have taught a few of my companions the principles o'
+      freedom an' liberty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Meanin' they ran away er kicked when they got the chanst?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was talkin' in the abstrac', an' not in the concrete. My teachin's
+      educated them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a horse, specially a young horse, hears in the abstrac', he's liable
+      to do in the Concord. You was handled late, I presoom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Four, risin' five.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's where the trouble began. Driv' by a woman, like ez not&mdash;eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not fer long,&rdquo; said the yellow horse, with a snap of his teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Spilled her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heerd she never drove again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any childern?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Buckboards full of 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Men too?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have shed conside'ble men in my time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By kickin'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any way that come along. Fallin' back over the dash is as handy as most.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They must be turr'ble afraid o' you daown taown?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They've sent me here to get rid o' me. I guess they spend their time
+      talkin' over my campaigns.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wanter know!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir. Now, all you gentlemen have asked me what I can do. I'll just
+      show you. See them two fellers lyin' down by the buggy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yep; one of 'em owns me. T'other broke me,&rdquo; said Rod.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get 'em out here in the open, an' I'll show you something. Lemme hide
+      back o' you peoples, so's they won't see what I'm at.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Meanin' ter kill 'em?&rdquo; Rod drawled. There was a shudder of horror through
+      the others; but the yellow horse never noticed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll catch 'em by the back o' the neck, an' pile-drive 'em a piece. They
+      can suit 'emselves about livin' when I'm through with 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Shouldn't wonder ef they did,&rdquo; said Rod. The yellow horse had hidden
+      himself very cleverly behind the others as they stood in a group, and was
+      swaying his head close to the ground with a curious scythe-like motion,
+      looking side-wise out of his wicked eyes. You can never mistake a
+      man-eater getting ready to knock a man down. We had had one to pasture the
+      year before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See that?&rdquo; said my companion, turning over on the pine-needles. &ldquo;Nice for
+      a woman walking 'cross lots, wouldn't it be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring 'em out!&rdquo; said the yellow horse, hunching his sharp back. &ldquo;There's
+      no chance among them tall trees. Bring out the&mdash;oh! Ouch!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a right-and-left kick from Muldoon. I had no idea that the old
+      car-horse could lift so quickly. Both blows caught the yellow horse full
+      and fair in the ribs, and knocked the breath out of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that for?&rdquo; he said angrily, when he recovered himself; but I
+      noticed he did not draw any nearer to Muldoon than was necessary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Muldoon never answered, but discoursed to himself in the whining grunt
+      that he uses when he is going down-hill in front of a heavy load. We call
+      it singing; but I think it's something much worse, really. The yellow
+      horse blustered and squealed a little, and at last said that, if it was a
+      horse-fly that had stung Muldoon, he would accept an apology.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll get it,&rdquo; said Muldoon, &ldquo;in de sweet by-and-bye&mdash;all de
+      apology you've any use for. Excuse me interruptin' you, Mr. Rod, but I'm
+      like Tweezy&mdash;I've a Southern drawback in me hind legs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naow, I want you all here to take notice, an' you'll learn something,&rdquo;
+       Rod went on. &ldquo;This yaller-backed skate comes to our pastur'-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not havin' paid his board,&rdquo; put in Tedda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not havin' earned his board, an' talks smooth to us abaout ripplin'
+      brooks an' wavin' grass, an' his high-toned, pure-souled horsehood, which
+      don't hender him sheddin' women an' childern, an' fallin' over the dash
+      onter men. You heard his talk, an' you thought it mighty fine, some o'
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tuck looked guilty here, but she did not say anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bit by bit he goes on ez you have heard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was talkin' in the abstrac',&rdquo; said the yellow horse, in an altered
+      voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Abstrac' be switched! Ez I've said, it's this yer blamed abstrac'
+      business that makes the young uns cut up in the Concord; an' abstrac' or
+      no abstrac', he crep' on an' on till he come to killin' plain an' straight&mdash;killin'
+      them as never done him no harm, jest beca'se they owned horses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An' knowed how to manage 'em,&rdquo; said Tedda. &ldquo;That makes it worse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Waal, he didn't kill 'em, anyway,&rdquo; said Marcus. &ldquo;He'd ha' been half
+      killed ef he had tried.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Makes no differ,&rdquo; Rod answered. &ldquo;He meant to; an' ef he hadn't&mdash;s'pose
+      we want the Back Pasture turned into a biffin'-ground on our only day er
+      rest? 'S'pose we want our men walkin' round with bits er lead pipe an' a
+      twitch, an' their hands full o' stones to throw at us, same's if we wuz
+      hogs er hooky keows? More'n that, leavin' out Tedda here&mdash;an' I guess
+      it's more her maouth than her manners stands in her light&mdash;there
+      ain't a horse on this farm that ain't a woman's horse, an' proud of it.
+      An' this yer bogspavined Kansas sunflower goes up an' daown the length o'
+      the country, traded off an' traded on, boastin' as he's shed women&mdash;an'
+      childern. I don't say as a woman in a buggy ain't a fool. I don't say as
+      she ain't the lastin'est kind er fool, ner I don't say a child ain't worse&mdash;spattin'
+      the lines an' standin' up an' hollerin'&mdash;but I do say, 'tain't none
+      of our business to shed 'em daown the road.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We don't,&rdquo; said the Deacon. &ldquo;The baby tried to git some o' my tail for a
+      sooveneer last fall when I was up to the haouse, an' I didn't kick.
+      Boney's talk ain't goin' to hurt us any. We ain't colts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thet's what you think. Bimeby you git into a tight corner, 'Lection day er
+      Valley Fair, like's not, daown-taown, when you're all het an' lathery, an'
+      pestered with flies, an' thirsty, an' sick o' bein' worked in an aout
+      'tween buggies. Then somethin' whispers inside o' your winkers, bringin'
+      up all that talk abaout servitood an' inalienable truck an' sech like, an'
+      jest then a Militia gun goes off; er your wheels hit, an'&mdash;waal,
+      you're only another horse ez can't be trusted. I've been there time an'
+      again. Boys&mdash;fer I've seen you all bought er broke&mdash;on my solemn
+      repitation fer a three-minute clip, I ain't givin' you no bran-mash o' my
+      own fixin'. I'm tellin' you my experiences, an' I've had ez heavy a load
+      an' ez high a check's any horse here. I wuz born with a splint on my near
+      fore ez big's a walnut, an' the cussed, three-cornered Hambletonian temper
+      that sours up an' curdles daown ez you git older. I've favoured my splint;
+      even little Rick he don't know what it's cost me to keep my end up
+      sometimes; an' I've fit my temper in stall an' harness, hitched up an' at
+      pasture, till the sweat trickled off my hooves, an' they thought I wuz off
+      condition, an' drenched me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When my affliction came,&rdquo; said Tweezy, gently, &ldquo;I was very near to losin'
+      my manners. Allow me to extend to you my sympathy, suh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rick said nothing, but he looked at Rod curiously. Rick is a
+      sunny-tempered child who never bears malice, and I don't think he quite
+      understood. He gets his temper from his mother, as a horse should.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been there too, Rod,&rdquo; said Tedda. &ldquo;Open confession's good for the
+      soul, an' all Monroe County knows I've had my experriences.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if you will excuse me, suh, that pusson&rdquo;&mdash;Tweezy looked
+      unspeakable things at the yellow horse&mdash;&ldquo;that pusson who has insulted
+      our intelligences comes from Kansas. An' what a ho'se of his position, an'
+      Kansas at that, says cannot, by any stretch of the halter, concern
+      gentlemen of our position. There's no shadow of equal'ty, suh, not even
+      for one kick. He's beneath our contempt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let him talk,&rdquo; said Marcus. &ldquo;It's always interestin' to know what another
+      horse thinks. It don't tech us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An' he talks so, too,&rdquo; said Tuck. &ldquo;I've never heard anythin' so smart for
+      a long time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Rod stuck out his jaws sidewise, and went on slowly, as though he
+      were slugging on a plain bit at the end of a thirty-mile drive:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want all you here ter understand thet ther ain't no Kansas, ner no
+      Kentucky, ner yet no Vermont, in our business. There's jest two kind o'
+      horse in the United States&mdash;them ez can an' will do their work after
+      bein' properly broke an' handled, an' them as won't. I'm sick an' tired o'
+      this everlastin' tail-switchin' an' wickerin' abaout one State er another.
+      A horse kin be proud o' his State, an' swap lies abaout it in stall or
+      when he's hitched to a block, ef he keers to put in fly-time that way; but
+      he hain't no right to let that pride o' hisn interfere with his work, ner
+      to make it an excuse fer claimin' he's different. That's colts' talk, an'
+      don't you fergit it, Tweezy. An', Marcus, you remember that bein' a
+      philosopher, an' anxious to save trouble,&mdash;fer you are,&mdash;don't
+      excuse you from jumpin' with all your feet on a slack-jawed, crazy
+      clay-bank like Boney here. It's leavin' 'em alone that gives 'em their
+      chance to ruin colts an' kill folks. An', Tuck, waal, you're a mare
+      anyways&mdash;but when a horse comes along an' covers up all his talk o'
+      killin' with ripplin' brooks, an wavin grass, an' eight quarts of oats a
+      day free, after killin' his man, don't you be run away with by his yap.
+      You're too young an' too nervous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll&mdash;I'll have nervous prostration sure ef there's a fight here,&rdquo;
+       said Tuck, who saw what was in Rod's eye; &ldquo;I'm&mdash;I'm that sympathetic
+      I'd run away clear to next caounty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yep; I know that kind o' sympathy. Jest lasts long enough to start a
+      fuss, an' then lights aout to make new trouble. I hain't been ten years in
+      harness fer nuthin'. Naow, we're goin' to keep school with Boney fer a
+      spell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, look a-here, you ain't goin' to hurt me, are you? Remember, I belong
+      to a man in town,&rdquo; cried the yellow horse, uneasily. Muldoon kept behind
+      him so that he could not run away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it. There must be some pore delooded fool in this State hez a
+      right to the loose end o' your hitchin'-strap. I'm blame sorry fer him,
+      but he shall hev his rights when we're through with you,&rdquo; said Rod.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it's all the same, gentlemen, I'd ruther change pasture. Guess I'll do
+      it now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Can't always have your 'druthers. 'Guess you won't,&rdquo; said Rod.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But look a-here. All of you ain't so blame unfriendly to a stranger.
+      S'pose we count noses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What in Vermont fer?&rdquo; said Rod, putting up his eyebrows. The idea of
+      settling a question by counting noses is the very last thing that ever
+      enters the head of a well-broken horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To see how many's on my side. Here's Miss Tuck, anyway; an' Colonel
+      Tweezy yonder's neutral; an' Judge Marcus, an' I guess the Reverend [the
+      yellow horse meant the Deacon] might see that I had my rights. He's the
+      likeliest-lookin' Trotter I've ever set eyes on. Pshaw. Boys. You ain't
+      goin' to pound me, be you? Why, we've gone round in pasture, all colts
+      together, this month o' Sundays, hain't we, as friendly as could be. There
+      ain't a horse alive I don't care who he is&mdash;has a higher opinion o'
+      you, Mr. Rod, than I have. Let's do it fair an' true an' above the exe.
+      Let's count noses same's they do in Kansas.&rdquo; Here he dropped his voice a
+      little and turned to Marcus: &ldquo;Say, Judge, there's some green food I know,
+      back o' the brook, no one hain't touched yet. After this little fracas is
+      fixed up, you an' me'll make up a party an' 'tend to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marcus did not answer for a long time, then he said: &ldquo;There's a pup up to
+      the haouse 'bout eight weeks old. He'll yap till he gits a lickin', an'
+      when he sees it comin' he lies on his back, an' yowls. But he don't go
+      through no cirkituous nose-countin' first. I've seen a noo light sence Rod
+      spoke. You'll better stand up to what's served. I'm goin' to philosophise
+      all over your carcass.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm goin' to do yer up in brown paper,&rdquo; said Muldoon. &ldquo;I can fit you on
+      apologies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold on. Ef we all biffed you now, these same men you've been so dead
+      anxious to kill 'u'd call us off. 'Guess we'll wait till they go back to
+      the haouse, an' you'll have time to think cool an' quiet,&rdquo; said Rod.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you no respec' whatever fer the dignity o' our common horsehood?&rdquo;
+       the yellow horse squealed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nary respec' onless the horse kin do something. America's paved with the
+      kind er horse you are&mdash;jist plain yaller-dog horse&mdash;waitin' ter
+      be whipped inter shape. We call 'em yearlings an' colts when they're
+      young. When they're aged we pound 'em&mdash;in this pastur'. Horse, sonny,
+      is what you start from. We know all about horse here, an' he ain't any
+      high-toned, pure souled child o' nature. Horse, plain horse, same ez you,
+      is chock-full o' tricks, an' meannesses, an' cussednesses, an' shirkin's,
+      an' monkey-shines, which he's took over from his sire an' his dam, an'
+      thickened up with his own special fancy in the way o' goin' crooked.
+      Thet's horse, an' thet's about his dignity an' the size of his soul 'fore
+      he's been broke an' rawhided a piece. Now we ain't goin' to give ornery
+      unswitched horse, that hain't done nawthin' wuth a quart of oats sence he
+      wuz foaled, pet names that would be good enough fer Nancy Hanks, or Alix,
+      or Directum, who hev. Don't you try to back off acrost them rocks. Wait
+      where you are! Ef I let my Hambletonian temper git the better o' me I'd
+      frazzle you out finer than rye-straw inside o' three minutes, you
+      woman-scarin', kid-killin', dash-breakin', unbroke, unshod, ungaited,
+      pastur'-hoggin', saw-backed, shark-mouthed, hair-trunk-thrown-in-in-trade
+      son of a bronco an' a sewin'-machine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think we'd better get home,&rdquo; I said to my companion, when Rod had
+      finished; and we climbed into the coupe, Tedda whinnying, as we bumped
+      over the ledges: &ldquo;Well, I'm dreffle sorry I can't stay fer the sociable;
+      but I hope an' trust my friends'll take a ticket fer me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bet your natchul!&rdquo; said Muldoon, cheerfully, and the horses scattered
+      before us, trotting into the ravine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning we sent back to the livery-stable what was left of the yellow
+      horse. It seemed tired, but anxious to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was her first voyage, and though she was but a cargo-steamer of
+      twenty-five hundred tons, she was the very best of her kind, the outcome
+      of forty years of experiments and improvements in framework and machinery;
+      and her designers and owner thought as much of her as though she had been
+      the Lucania. Any one can make a floating hotel that will pay expenses, if
+      he puts enough money into the saloon, and charges for private baths,
+      suites of rooms, and such like; but in these days of competition and low
+      freights every square inch of a cargo-boat must be built for cheapness,
+      great hold-capacity, and a certain steady speed. This boat was, perhaps,
+      two hundred and forty feet long and thirty-two feet wide, with
+      arrangements that enabled her to carry cattle on her main and sheep on her
+      upper deck if she wanted to; but her great glory was the amount of cargo
+      that she could store away in her holds. Her owners&mdash;they were a very
+      well known Scotch firm&mdash;came round with her from the north, where she
+      had been launched and christened and fitted, to Liverpool, where she was
+      to take cargo for New York; and the owner's daughter, Miss Frazier, went
+      to and fro on the clean decks, admiring the new paint and the brass work,
+      and the patent winches, and particularly the strong, straight bow, over
+      which she had cracked a bottle of champagne when she named the steamer the
+      Dimbula. It was a beautiful September afternoon, and the boat in all her
+      newness&mdash;she was painted lead-colour with a red funnel&mdash;looked
+      very fine indeed. Her house-flag was flying, and her whistle from time to
+      time acknowledged the salutes of friendly boats, who saw that she was new
+      to the High and Narrow Seas and wished to make her welcome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now,&rdquo; said Miss Frazier, delightedly, to the captain, &ldquo;she's a real
+      ship, isn't she? It seems only the other day father gave the order for
+      her, and now&mdash;and now&mdash;isn't she a beauty!&rdquo; The girl was proud
+      of the firm, and talked as though she were the controlling partner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, she's no so bad,&rdquo; the skipper replied cautiously. &ldquo;But I'm sayin'
+      that it takes more than christenin' to mak' a ship. In the nature o'
+      things, Miss Frazier, if ye follow me, she's just irons and rivets and
+      plates put into the form of a ship. She has to find herself yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought father said she was exceptionally well found.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So she is,&rdquo; said the skipper, with a laugh. &ldquo;But it's this way wi' ships,
+      Miss Frazier. She's all here, but the parrts of her have not learned to
+      work together yet. They've had no chance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The engines are working beautifully. I can hear them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, indeed. But there's more than engines to a ship. Every inch of her,
+      ye'll understand, has to be livened up and made to work wi' its neighbour&mdash;sweetenin'
+      her, we call it, technically.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how will you do it?&rdquo; the girl asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can no more than drive and steer her and so forth; but if we have
+      rough weather this trip&mdash;it's likely&mdash;she'll learn the rest by
+      heart! For a ship, ye'll obsairve, Miss Frazier, is in no sense a reegid
+      body closed at both ends. She's a highly complex structure o' various an'
+      conflictin' strains, wi' tissues that must give an' tak' accordin' to her
+      personal modulus of elasteecity.&rdquo; Mr. Buchanan, the chief engineer, was
+      coming towards them. &ldquo;I'm sayin' to Miss Frazier, here, that our little
+      Dimbula has to be sweetened yet, and nothin' but a gale will do it. How's
+      all wi' your engines, Buck?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well enough&mdash;true by plumb an' rule, o' course; but there's no
+      spontaneeity yet.&rdquo; He turned to the girl. &ldquo;Take my word, Miss Frazier, and
+      maybe ye'll comprehend later; even after a pretty girl's christened a ship
+      it does not follow that there's such a thing as a ship under the men that
+      work her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was sayin' the very same, Mr. Buchanan,&rdquo; the skipper interrupted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's more metaphysical than I can follow,&rdquo; said Miss Frazier, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why so? Ye're good Scotch, an'&mdash;I knew your mother's father, he was
+      fra' Dumfries&mdash;ye've a vested right in metapheesics, Miss Frazier,
+      just as ye have in the Dimbula,&rdquo; the engineer said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh, well, we must go down to the deep watters, an' earn Miss Frazier her
+      deevidends. Will you not come to my cabin for tea?&rdquo; said the skipper.
+      &ldquo;We'll be in dock the night, and when you're goin' back to Glasgie ye can
+      think of us loadin' her down an' drivin' her forth&mdash;all for your
+      sake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the next few days they stowed some four thousand tons dead-weight into
+      the Dimbula, and took her out from Liverpool. As soon as she met the lift
+      of the open water, she naturally began to talk. If you lay your ear to the
+      side of the cabin, the next time you are in a steamer, you will hear
+      hundreds of little voices in every direction, thrilling and buzzing, and
+      whispering and popping, and gurgling and sobbing and squeaking exactly
+      like a telephone in a thunder-storm. Wooden ships shriek and growl and
+      grunt, but iron vessels throb and quiver through all their hundreds of
+      ribs and thousands of rivets. The Dimbula was very strongly built, and
+      every piece of her had a letter or a number, or both, to describe it; and
+      every piece had been hammered, or forged, or rolled, or punched by man,
+      and had lived in the roar and rattle of the shipyard for months.
+      Therefore, every piece had its own separate voice, in exact proportion to
+      the amount of trouble spent upon it. Cast-iron, as a rule, says very
+      little; but mild steel plates and wrought-iron, and ribs and beams that
+      have been much bent and welded and riveted, talk continuously. Their
+      conversation, of course, is not half as wise as our human talk, because
+      they are all, though they do not know it, bound down one to the other in a
+      black darkness, where they cannot tell what is happening near them, nor
+      what will overtake them next.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as she had cleared the Irish coast, a sullen, grey-headed old wave
+      of the Atlantic climbed leisurely over her straight bows, and sat down on
+      the steam-capstan used for hauling up the anchor. Now the capstan and the
+      engine that drove it had been newly painted red and green; besides which,
+      nobody likes being ducked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you do that again,&rdquo; the capstan sputtered through the teeth of his
+      cogs. &ldquo;Hi! Where's the fellow gone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The wave had slouched overside with a plop and a chuckle; but &ldquo;Plenty more
+      where he came from,&rdquo; said a brother-wave, and went through and over the
+      capstan, who was bolted firmly to an iron plate on the iron deck-beams
+      below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't you keep still up there?&rdquo; said the deckbeams. &ldquo;What's the matter
+      with you? One minute you weigh twice as much as you ought to, and the next
+      you don't!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn't my fault,&rdquo; said the capstan. &ldquo;There's a green brute outside that
+      comes and hits me on the head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell that to the shipwrights. You've been in position for months and
+      you've never wriggled like this before. If you aren't careful you'll
+      strain us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Talking of strain,&rdquo; said a low, rasping, unpleasant voice, &ldquo;are any of
+      you fellows&mdash;you deck-beams, we mean&mdash;aware that those
+      exceedingly ugly knees of yours happen to be riveted into our structure&mdash;ours?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who might you be?&rdquo; the deck-beams inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nobody in particular,&rdquo; was the answer. &ldquo;We're only the port and
+      starboard upper-deck stringers; and if you persist in heaving and hiking
+      like this, we shall be reluctantly compelled to take steps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the stringers of the ship are long iron girders, so to speak, that run
+      lengthways from stern to bow. They keep the iron frames (what are called
+      ribs in a wooden ship) in place, and also help to hold the ends of the
+      deck-beams, which go from side to side of the ship. Stringers always
+      consider themselves most important, because they are so long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will take steps&mdash;will you?&rdquo; This was a long echoing rumble. It
+      came from the frames&mdash;scores and scores of them, each one about
+      eighteen inches distant from the next, and each riveted to the stringers
+      in four places. &ldquo;We think you will have a certain amount of trouble in
+      that&rdquo;; and thousands and thousands of the little rivets that held
+      everything together whispered: &ldquo;You Will! You will! Stop quivering and be
+      quiet. Hold on, brethren! Hold on! Hot Punches! What's that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rivets have no teeth, so they cannot chatter with fright; but they did
+      their best as a fluttering jar swept along the ship from stern to bow, and
+      she shook like a rat in a terrier's mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An unusually severe pitch, for the sea was rising, had lifted the big
+      throbbing screw nearly to the surface, and it was spinning round in a kind
+      of soda-water&mdash;half sea and half air&mdash;going much faster than was
+      proper, because there was no deep water for it to work in. As it sank
+      again, the engines&mdash;and they were triple expansion, three cylinders
+      in a row&mdash;snorted through all their three pistons. &ldquo;Was that a joke,
+      you fellow outside? It's an uncommonly poor one. How are we to do our work
+      if you fly off the handle that way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't fly off the handle,&rdquo; said the screw, twirling huskily at the end
+      of the screw-shaft. &ldquo;If I had, you'd have been scrap-iron by this time.
+      The sea dropped away from under me, and I had nothing to catch on to.
+      That's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all, d'you call it?&rdquo; said the thrust-block, whose business it is
+      to take the push of the screw; for if a screw had nothing to hold it back
+      it would crawl right into the engine-room. (It is the holding back of the
+      screwing action that gives the drive to a ship.) &ldquo;I know I do my work deep
+      down and out of sight, but I warn you I expect justice. All I ask for is
+      bare justice. Why can't you push steadily and evenly, instead of whizzing
+      like a whirligig, and making me hot under all my collars?&rdquo; The
+      thrust-block had six collars, each faced with brass, and he did not wish
+      to get them heated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the bearings that supported the fifty feet of screw-shaft as it ran to
+      the stern whispered: &ldquo;Justice&mdash;give us justice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can only give you what I can get,&rdquo; the screw answered. &ldquo;Look out! It's
+      coming again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose with a roar as the Dimbula plunged, and &ldquo;whack&mdash;flack&mdash;whack&mdash;
+      whack&rdquo; went the engines, furiously, for they had little to check them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm the noblest outcome of human ingenuity&mdash;Mr. Buchanan says so,&rdquo;
+       squealed the high-pressure cylinder. &ldquo;This is simply ridiculous!&rdquo; The
+      piston went up savagely, and choked, for half the steam behind it was
+      mixed with dirty water. &ldquo;Help! Oiler! Fitter! Stoker! Help I'm choking,&rdquo;
+       it gasped. &ldquo;Never in the history of maritime invention has such a calamity
+      over-taken one so young and strong. And if I go, who's to drive the ship?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush! oh, hush!&rdquo; whispered the Steam, who, of course, had been to sea
+      many times before. He used to spend his leisure ashore in a cloud, or a
+      gutter, or a flower-pot, or a thunder-storm, or anywhere else where water
+      was needed. &ldquo;That's only a little priming, a little carrying-over, as they
+      call it. It'll happen all night, on and off. I don't say it's nice, but
+      it's the best we can do under the circumstances.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What difference can circumstances make? I'm here to do my work&mdash;on
+      clean, dry steam. Blow circumstances!&rdquo; the cylinder roared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The circumstances will attend to the blowing. I've worked on the North
+      Atlantic run a good many times&mdash;it's going to be rough before
+      morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn't distressingly calm now,&rdquo; said the extra strong frames&mdash;they
+      were called web-frames&mdash;in the engine-room. &ldquo;There's an upward thrust
+      that we don't understand, and there's a twist that is very bad for our
+      brackets and diamond-plates, and there's a sort of west-northwesterly
+      pull, that follows the twist, which seriously annoys us. We mention this
+      because we happened to cost a good deal of money, and we feel sure that
+      the owner would not approve of our being treated in this frivolous way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid the matter is out of owner's hands for the present,&rdquo; said the
+      Steam, slipping into the condenser. &ldquo;You're left to your own devices till
+      the weather betters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't mind the weather,&rdquo; said a flat bass voice below; &ldquo;it's this
+      confounded cargo that's breaking my heart. I'm the garboard-strake, and
+      I'm twice as thick as most of the others, and I ought to know something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The garboard-strake is the lowest plate in the bottom of a ship, and the
+      Dimbula's garboard-strake was nearly three-quarters of an inch mild steel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sea pushes me up in a way I should never have expected,&rdquo; the strake
+      grunted, &ldquo;and the cargo pushes me down, and, between the two, I don't know
+      what I'm supposed to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When in doubt, hold on,&rdquo; rumbled the Steam, making head in the boilers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but there's only dark, and cold, and hurry, down here; and how do I
+      know whether the other plates are doing their duty? Those bulwark-plates
+      up above, I've heard, ain't more than five-sixteenths of an inch thick&mdash;scandalous,
+      I call it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I agree with you,&rdquo; said a huge web-frame, by the main cargo-hatch. He was
+      deeper and thicker than all the others, and curved half-way across the
+      ship in the shape of half an arch, to support the deck where deck-beams
+      would have been in the way of cargo coming up and down. &ldquo;I work entirely
+      unsupported, and I observe that I am the sole strength of this vessel, so
+      far as my vision extends. The responsibility, I assure you, is enormous. I
+      believe the money-value of the cargo is over one hundred and fifty
+      thousand pounds. Think of that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And every pound of it is dependent on my personal exertions.&rdquo; Here spoke
+      a sea-valve that communicated directly with the water outside, and was
+      seated not very far from the garboard-strake. &ldquo;I rejoice to think that I
+      am a Prince-Hyde Valve, with best Para rubber facings. Five patents cover
+      me&mdash;I mention this without pride&mdash;five separate and several
+      patents, each one finer than the other. At present I am screwed fast.
+      Should I open, you would immediately be swamped. This is
+      incontrovertible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Patent things always use the longest words they can. It is a trick that
+      they pick up from their inventors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's news,&rdquo; said a big centrifugal bilge-pump. &ldquo;I had an idea that you
+      were employed to clean decks and things with. At least, I've used you for
+      that more than once. I forget the precise number, in thousands, of gallons
+      which I am guaranteed to throw per hour; but I assure you, my complaining
+      friends, that there is not the least danger. I alone am capable of
+      clearing any water that may find its way here. By my Biggest Deliveries,
+      we pitched then!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sea was getting up in workmanlike style. It was a dead westerly gale,
+      blown from under a ragged opening of green sky, narrowed on all sides by
+      fat, grey clouds; and the wind bit like pincers as it fretted the spray
+      into lacework on the flanks of the waves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you what it is,&rdquo; the foremast telephoned down its wire-stays. &ldquo;I'm
+      up here, and I can take a dispassionate view of things. There's an
+      organised conspiracy against us. I'm sure of it, because every single one
+      of these waves is heading directly for our bows. The whole sea is
+      concerned in it&mdash;and so's the wind. It's awful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's awful?&rdquo; said a wave, drowning the capstan for the hundredth time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This organised conspiracy on your part,&rdquo; the capstan gurgled, taking his
+      cue from the mast. &ldquo;Organised bubbles and spindrift! There has been a
+      depression in the Gulf of Mexico. Excuse me!&rdquo; He leaped overside; but his
+      friends took up the tale one after another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which has advanced&mdash;&rdquo; That wave hove green water over the funnel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As far as Cape Hatteras&mdash;&rdquo; He drenched the bridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is now going out to sea&mdash;to sea&mdash;to sea!&rdquo; The third went
+      out in three surges, making a clean sweep of a boat, which turned bottom
+      up and sank in the darkening troughs alongside, while the broken falls
+      whipped the davits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all there is to it,&rdquo; seethed the white water roaring through the
+      scuppers. &ldquo;There's no animus in our proceedings. We're only meteorological
+      corollaries.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it going to get any worse?&rdquo; said the bow-anchor chained down to the
+      deck, where he could only breathe once in five minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not knowing, can't say. Wind may blow a bit by midnight. Thanks awfully.
+      Good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The wave that spoke so politely had travelled some distance aft, and found
+      itself all mixed up on the deck amidships, which was a well-deck sunk
+      between high bulwarks. One of the bulwark-plates, which was hung on hinges
+      to open outward, had swung out, and passed the bulk of the water back to
+      the sea again with a clean smack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Evidently that's what I'm made for,&rdquo; said the plate, closing again with a
+      sputter of pride. &ldquo;Oh, no, you don't, my friend!&rdquo; The top of a wave was
+      trying to get in from the outside, but as the plate did not open in that
+      direction, the defeated water spurted back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not bad for five-sixteenths of an inch,&rdquo; said the bulwark-plate. &ldquo;My
+      work, I see, is laid down for the night&rdquo;; and it began opening and
+      shutting, as it was designed to do, with the motion of the ship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are not what you might call idle,&rdquo; groaned all the frames together, as
+      the Dimbula climbed a big wave, lay on her side at the top, and shot into
+      the next hollow, twisting in the descent. A huge swell pushed up exactly
+      under her middle, and her bow and stern hung free with nothing to support
+      them. Then one joking wave caught her up at the bow, and another at the
+      stern, while the rest of the water slunk away from under her just to see
+      how she would like it; so she was held up at her two ends only, and the
+      weight of the cargo and the machinery fell on the groaning iron keels and
+      bilge-stringers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ease off! Ease off; there!&rdquo; roared the garboard-strake. &ldquo;I want
+      one-eighth of an inch fair play. D' you hear me, you rivets!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ease off! Ease off!&rdquo; cried the bilge-stringers. &ldquo;Don't hold us so tight
+      to the frames!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ease off!&rdquo; grunted the deck-beams, as the Dimbula rolled fearfully.
+      &ldquo;You've cramped our knees into the stringers, and we can't move. Ease off;
+      you flat-headed little nuisances.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then two converging seas hit the bows, one on each side, and fell away in
+      torrents of streaming thunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ease off!&rdquo; shouted the forward collision-bulkhead. &ldquo;I want to crumple up,
+      but I'm stiffened in every direction. Ease off; you dirty little
+      forge-filings. Let me breathe!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All the hundreds of plates that are riveted to the frames, and make the
+      outside skin of every steamer, echoed the call, for each plate wanted to
+      shift and creep a little, and each plate, according to its position,
+      complained against the rivets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can't help it! We can't help it!&rdquo; they murmured in reply. &ldquo;We're put
+      here to hold you, and we're going to do it; you never pull us twice in the
+      same direction. If you'd say what you were going to do next, we'd try to
+      meet your views.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As far as I could feel,&rdquo; said the upper-deck planking, and that was four
+      inches thick, &ldquo;every single iron near me was pushing or pulling in
+      opposite directions. Now, what's the sense of that? My friends, let us all
+      pull together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pull any way you please,&rdquo; roared the funnel, &ldquo;so long as you don't try
+      your experiments on me. I need fourteen wire-ropes, all pulling in
+      different directions, to hold me steady. Isn't that so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We believe you, my boy!&rdquo; whistled the funnel-stays through their clinched
+      teeth, as they twanged in the wind from the top of the funnel to the deck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense! We must all pull together,&rdquo; the decks repeated. &ldquo;Pull
+      lengthways.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good,&rdquo; said the stringers; &ldquo;then stop pushing sideways when you get
+      wet. Be content to run gracefully fore and aft, and curve in at the ends
+      as we do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;no curves at the end. A very slight workmanlike curve from side
+      to side, with a good grip at each knee, and little pieces welded on,&rdquo; said
+      the deck-beams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fiddle!&rdquo; cried the iron pillars of the deep, dark hold. &ldquo;Who ever heard
+      of curves? Stand up straight; be a perfectly round column, and carry tons
+      of good solid weight&mdash;like that! There!&rdquo; A big sea smashed on the
+      deck above, and the pillars stiffened themselves to the load.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Straight up and down is not bad,&rdquo; said the frames, who ran that way in
+      the sides of the ship, &ldquo;but you must also expand yourselves sideways.
+      Expansion is the law of life, children. Open out! open out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come back!&rdquo; said the deck-beams, savagely, as the upward heave of the sea
+      made the frames try to open. &ldquo;Come back to your bearings, you slack-jawed
+      irons!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rigidity! Rigidity! Rigidity!&rdquo; thumped the engines. &ldquo;Absolute, unvarying
+      rigidity&mdash;rigidity!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see!&rdquo; whined the rivets, in chorus. &ldquo;No two of you will ever pull
+      alike, and&mdash;and you blame it all on us. We only know how to go
+      through a plate and bite down on both sides so that it can't, and mustn't,
+      and sha'n't move.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got one fraction of an inch play, at any rate,&rdquo; said the
+      garboard-strake, triumphantly. So he had, and all the bottom of the ship
+      felt the easier for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then we're no good,&rdquo; sobbed the bottom rivets. &ldquo;We were ordered&mdash;we
+      were ordered&mdash;never to give; and we've given, and the sea will come
+      in, and we'll all go to the bottom together! First we're blamed for
+      everything unpleasant, and now we haven't the consolation of having done
+      our work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't say I told you,&rdquo; whispered the Steam, consolingly; &ldquo;but, between
+      you and me and the last cloud I came from, it was bound to happen sooner
+      or later. You had to give a fraction, and you've given without knowing it.
+      Now, hold on, as before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the use?&rdquo; a few hundred rivets chattered. &ldquo;We've given&mdash;we've
+      given; and the sooner we confess that we can't keep the ship together, and
+      go off our little heads, the easier it will be. No rivet forged can stand
+      this strain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one rivet was ever meant to. Share it among you,&rdquo; the Steam answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The others can have my share. I'm going to pull out,&rdquo; said a rivet in one
+      of the forward plates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you go, others will follow,&rdquo; hissed the Steam. &ldquo;There's nothing so
+      contagious in a boat as rivets going. Why, I knew a little chap like you&mdash;he
+      was an eighth of an inch fatter, though&mdash;on a steamer&mdash;to be
+      sure, she was only twelve hundred tons, now I come to think of it in
+      exactly the same place as you are. He pulled out in a bit of a bobble of a
+      sea, not half as bad as this, and he started all his friends on the same
+      butt-strap, and the plates opened like a furnace door, and I had to climb
+      into the nearest fog-bank, while the boat went down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now that's peculiarly disgraceful,&rdquo; said the rivet. &ldquo;Fatter than me, was
+      he, and in a steamer not half our tonnage? Reedy little peg! I blush for
+      the family, sir.&rdquo; He settled himself more firmly than ever in his place,
+      and the Steam chuckled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; he went on, quite gravely, &ldquo;a rivet, and especially a rivet in
+      your position, is really the one indispensable part of the ship.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Steam did not say that he had whispered the very same thing to every
+      single piece of iron aboard. There is no sense in telling too much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all that while the little Dimbula pitched and chopped, and swung and
+      slewed, and lay down as though she were going to die, and got up as though
+      she had been stung, and threw her nose round and round in circles half a
+      dozen times as she dipped, for the gale was at its worst. It was inky
+      black, in spite of the tearing white froth on the waves, and, to top
+      everything, the rain began to fall in sheets, so that you could not see
+      your hand before your face. This did not make much difference to the
+      ironwork below, but it troubled the foremast a good deal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now it's all finished,&rdquo; he said dismally. &ldquo;The conspiracy is too strong
+      for us. There is nothing left but to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hurraar! Brrrraaah! Brrrrrrp!&rdquo; roared the Steam through the fog-horn,
+      till the decks quivered. &ldquo;Don't be frightened, below. It's only me, just
+      throwing out a few words, in case any one happens to be rolling round
+      to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't mean to say there's any one except us on the sea in such
+      weather?&rdquo; said the funnel, in a husky snuffle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scores of 'em,&rdquo; said the Steam, clearing its throat. &ldquo;Rrrrrraaa!
+      Brraaaaa! Prrrrp! It's a trifle windy up here; and, Great Boilers! how it
+      rains!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're drowning,&rdquo; said the scuppers. They had been doing nothing else all
+      night, but this steady thrash of rain above them seemed to be the end of
+      the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all right. We'll be easier in an hour or two. First the wind and
+      then the rain. Soon you may make sail again! Grrraaaaaah! Drrrraaaa!
+      Drrrp! I have a notion that the sea is going down already. If it does
+      you'll learn something about rolling. We've only pitched till now. By the
+      way, aren't you chaps in the hold a little easier than you were?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was just as much groaning and straining as ever, but it was not so
+      loud or squeaky in tone; and when the ship quivered she did not jar
+      stiffly, like a poker hit on the floor, but gave with a supple little
+      waggle, like a perfectly balanced golf-club.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have made a most amazing discovery,&rdquo; said the stringers, one after
+      another. &ldquo;A discovery that entirely changes the situation. We have found,
+      for the first time in the history of ship-building, that the inward pull
+      of the deck-beams and the outward thrust of the frames locks us, as it
+      were, more closely in our places, and enables us to endure a strain which
+      is entirely without parallel in the records of marine architecture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Steam turned a laugh quickly into a roar up the fog-horn. &ldquo;What
+      massive intellects you great stringers have,&rdquo; he said softly, when he had
+      finished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We also,&rdquo; began the deck-beams, &ldquo;are discoverers and geniuses. We are of
+      opinion that the support of the hold-pillars materially helps us. We find
+      that we lock up on them when we are subjected to a heavy and singular
+      weight of sea above.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the Dimbula shot down a hollow, lying almost on her side; righting at
+      the bottom with a wrench and a spasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In these cases&mdash;are you aware of this, Steam?&mdash;the plating at
+      the bows, and particularly at the stern&mdash;we would also mention the
+      floors beneath us&mdash;help us to resist any tendency to spring.&rdquo; The
+      frames spoke, in the solemn awed voice which people use when they have
+      just come across something entirely new for the very first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm only a poor puffy little flutterer,&rdquo; said the Steam, &ldquo;but I have to
+      stand a good deal of pressure in my business. It's all tremendously
+      interesting. Tell us some more. You fellows are so strong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Watch us and you'll see,&rdquo; said the bow-plates, proudly. &ldquo;Ready, behind
+      there! Here's the father and mother of waves coming! Sit tight, rivets
+      all!&rdquo; A great sluicing comber thundered by, but through the scuffle and
+      confusion the Steam could hear the low, quick cries of the ironwork as the
+      various strains took them&mdash;cries like these: &ldquo;Easy, now&mdash;easy!
+      Now push for all your strength! Hold out! Give a fraction! Hold up! Pull
+      in! Shove crossways! Mind the strain at the ends! Grip, now! Bite tight!
+      Let the water get away from under&mdash;and there she goes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The wave raced off into the darkness, shouting, &ldquo;Not bad, that, if it's
+      your first run!&rdquo; and the drenched and ducked ship throbbed to the beat of
+      the engines inside her. All three cylinders were white with the salt spray
+      that had come down through the engine-room hatch; there was white fur on
+      the canvas-bound steam-pipes, and even the bright-work deep below was
+      speckled and soiled; but the cylinders had learned to make the most of
+      steam that was half water, and were pounding along cheerfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How's the noblest outcome of human ingenuity hitting it?&rdquo; said the Steam,
+      as he whirled through the engine-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing for nothing in this world of woe,&rdquo; the cylinders answered, as
+      though they had been working for centuries, &ldquo;and precious little for
+      seventy-five pounds head. We've made two knots this last hour and a
+      quarter! Rather humiliating for eight hundred horse-power, isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it's better than drifting astern, at any rate. You seem rather less&mdash;how
+      shall I put it&mdash;stiff in the back than you were.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you'd been hammered as we've been this night, you wouldn't be stiff&mdash;iff&mdash;iff;
+      either. Theoreti&mdash;retti&mdash;retti&mdash;cally, of course, rigidity
+      is the thing. Purrr&mdash;purr&mdash;practically, there has to be a little
+      give and take. We found that out by working on our sides for five minutes
+      at a stretch&mdash;chch&mdash;chh. How's the weather?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sea's going down fast,&rdquo; said the Steam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good business,&rdquo; said the high-pressure cylinder. &ldquo;Whack her up, boys.
+      They've given us five pounds more steam&rdquo;; and he began humming the first
+      bars of &ldquo;Said the young Obadiah to the old Obadiah,&rdquo; which, as you may
+      have noticed, is a pet tune among engines not built for high speed.
+      Racing-liners with twin-screws sing &ldquo;The Turkish Patrol&rdquo; and the overture
+      to the &ldquo;Bronze Horse,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Madame Angot,&rdquo; till something goes wrong, and
+      then they render Gounod's &ldquo;Funeral March of a Marionette,&rdquo; with
+      variations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll learn a song of your own some fine day,&rdquo; said the Steam, as he
+      flew up the fog-horn for one last bellow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day the sky cleared and the sea dropped a little, and the Dimbula
+      began to roll from side to side till every inch of iron in her was sick
+      and giddy. But luckily they did not all feel ill at the same time:
+      otherwise she would have opened out like a wet paper box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Steam whistled warnings as he went about his business: it is in this
+      short, quick roll and tumble that follows a heavy sea that most of the
+      accidents happen, for then everything thinks that the worst is over and
+      goes off guard. So he orated and chattered till the beams and frames and
+      floors and stringers and things had learned how to lock down and lock up
+      on one another, and endure this new kind of strain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They found ample time to practise, for they were sixteen days at sea, and
+      it was foul weather till within a hundred miles of New York. The Dimbula
+      picked up her pilot, and came in covered with salt and red rust. Her
+      funnel was dirty-grey from top to bottom; two boats had been carried away;
+      three copper ventilators looked like hats after a fight with the police;
+      the bridge had a dimple in the middle of it; the house that covered the
+      steam steering-gear was split as with hatchets; there was a bill for small
+      repairs in the engine-room almost as long as the screw-shaft; the forward
+      cargo-hatch fell into bucket-staves when they raised the iron cross-bars;
+      and the steam-capstan had been badly wrenched on its bed. Altogether, as
+      the skipper said, it was &ldquo;a pretty general average.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she's soupled,&rdquo; he said to Mr. Buchanan. &ldquo;For all her dead-weight she
+      rode like a yacht. Ye mind that last blow off the Banks&mdash;I am proud
+      of her, Buck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's vera good,&rdquo; said the chief engineer, looking along the dishevelled
+      decks. &ldquo;Now, a man judgin' superfeecially would say we were a wreck, but
+      we know otherwise&mdash;by experience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Naturally everything in the Dimbula fairly stiffened with pride, and the
+      foremast and the forward collision-bulkhead, who are pushing creatures,
+      begged the Steam to warn the Port of New York of their arrival. &ldquo;Tell
+      those big boats all about us,&rdquo; they said. &ldquo;They seem to take us quite as a
+      matter of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a glorious, clear, dead calm morning, and in single file, with less
+      than half a mile between each, their bands playing and their tugboats
+      shouting and waving handkerchiefs, were the Majestic, the Paris, the
+      Touraine, the Servia, the Kaiser Wilhelm II, and the Werkendam, all
+      statelily going out to sea. As the Dimbula shifted her helm to give the
+      great boats clear way, the Steam (who knows far too much to mind making an
+      exhibition of himself now and then) shouted:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Princes, Dukes, and Barons of the High Seas! Know ye by
+      these presents, we are the Dimbula, fifteen days nine hours from
+      Liverpool, having crossed the Atlantic with four thousand ton of cargo for
+      the first time in our career! We have not foundered. We are here. 'Eer!
+      'Eer! We are not disabled. But we have had a time wholly unparalleled in
+      the annals of ship-building! Our decks were swept! We pitched; we rolled!
+      We thought we were going to die! Hi! Hi! But we didn't. We wish to give
+      notice that we have come to New York all the way across the Atlantic,
+      through the worst weather in the world; and we are the Dimbula! We are&mdash;arr&mdash;ha&mdash;ha&mdash;ha-r-r-r!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The beautiful line of boats swept by as steadily as the procession of the
+      Seasons. The Dimbula heard the Majestic say, &ldquo;Hmph!&rdquo; and the Paris
+      grunted, &ldquo;How!&rdquo; and the Touraine said, &ldquo;Oui!&rdquo; with a little coquettish
+      flicker of steam; and the Servia said, &ldquo;Haw!&rdquo; and the Kaiser and the
+      Werkendam said, &ldquo;Hoch!&rdquo; Dutch fashion&mdash;and that was absolutely all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did my best,&rdquo; said the Steam, gravely, &ldquo;but I don't think they were
+      much impressed with us, somehow. Do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's simply disgusting,&rdquo; said the bow-plates. &ldquo;They might have seen what
+      we've been through. There isn't a ship on the sea that has suffered as we
+      have&mdash;is there, now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I wouldn't go so far as that,&rdquo; said the Steam, &ldquo;because I've worked
+      on some of those boats, and sent them through weather quite as bad as the
+      fortnight that we've had, in six days; and some of them are a little over
+      ten thousand tons, I believe. Now I've seen the Majestic, for instance,
+      ducked from her bows to her funnel; and I've helped the Arizona, I think
+      she was, to back off an iceberg she met with one dark night; and I had to
+      run out of the Paris's engine-room, one day, because there was thirty foot
+      of water in it. Of course, I don't deny&mdash;&rdquo; The Steam shut off
+      suddenly, as a tugboat, loaded with a political club and a brass band,
+      that had been to see a New York Senator off to Europe, crossed their bows,
+      going to Hoboken. There was a long silence that reached, without a break,
+      from the cut-water to the propeller-blades of the Dimbula.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a new, big voice said slowly and thickly, as though the owner had
+      just waked up: &ldquo;It's my conviction that I have made a fool of myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Steam knew what had happened at once; for when a ship finds herself
+      all the talking of the separate pieces ceases and melts into one voice,
+      which is the soul of the ship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo; he said, with a laugh. &ldquo;I am the Dimbula, of course. I've
+      never been anything else except that&mdash;and a fool!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tugboat, which was doing its very best to be run down, got away just
+      in time; its band playing clashily and brassily a popular but impolite
+      air:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+          In the days of old Rameses&mdash;are you on?
+          In the days of old Rameses&mdash;are you on?
+          In the days of old Rameses,
+          That story had paresis,
+          Are you on&mdash;are you on&mdash;are you on?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm glad you've found yourself,&rdquo; said the Steam. &ldquo;To tell the
+      truth, I was a little tired of talking to all those ribs and stringers.
+      Here's Quarantine. After that we'll go to our wharf and clean up a little,
+      and&mdash;next month we'll do it all over again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE TOMB OF HIS ANCESTORS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Some people will tell you that if there were but a single loaf of bread in
+      all India it would be divided equally between the Plowdens, the Trevors,
+      the Beadons, and the Rivett-Carnacs. That is only one way of saying that
+      certain families serve India generation after generation, as dolphins
+      follow in line across the open sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us take a small and obscure case. There has been at least one
+      representative of the Devonshire Chinns in or near Central India since the
+      days of Lieutenant-Fireworker Humphrey Chinn, of the Bombay European
+      Regiment, who assisted at the capture of Seringapatam in 1799. Alfred
+      Ellis Chinn, Humphrey's younger brother, commanded a regiment of Bombay
+      grenadiers from 1804 to 1813, when he saw some mixed fighting; and in 1834
+      John Chinn of the same family&mdash;we will call him John Chinn the First&mdash;came
+      to light as a level-headed administrator in time of trouble at a place
+      called Mundesur. He died young, but left his mark on the new country, and
+      the Honourable the Board of Directors of the Honourable the East India
+      Company embodied his virtues in a stately resolution, and paid for the
+      expenses of his tomb among the Satpura hills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was succeeded by his son, Lionel Chinn, who left the little old
+      Devonshire home just in time to be severely wounded in the Mutiny. He
+      spent his working life within a hundred and fifty miles of John Chinn's
+      grave, and rose to the command of a regiment of small, wild hill-men, most
+      of whom had known his father. His son John was born in the small
+      thatched-roofed, mud-walled cantonment, which is even to-day eighty miles
+      from the nearest railway, in the heart of a scrubby, tigerish country.
+      Colonel Lionel Chinn served thirty years and retired. In the Canal his
+      steamer passed the outward-bound troop-ship, carrying his son eastward to
+      the family duty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Chinns are luckier than most folk, because they know exactly what they
+      must do. A clever Chinn passes for the Bombay Civil Service, and gets away
+      to Central India, where everybody is glad to see him. A dull Chinn enters
+      the Police Department or the Woods and Forest, and sooner or later he,
+      too, appears in Central India, and that is what gave rise to the saying,
+      &ldquo;Central India is inhabited by Bhils, Mairs, and Chinns, all very much
+      alike.&rdquo; The breed is small-boned, dark, and silent, and the stupidest of
+      them are good shots. John Chinn the Second was rather clever, but as the
+      eldest son he entered the army, according to Chinn tradition. His duty was
+      to abide in his father's regiment for the term of his natural life, though
+      the corps was one which most men would have paid heavily to avoid. They
+      were irregulars, small, dark, and blackish, clothed in rifle-green with
+      black-leather trimmings; and friends called them the &ldquo;Wuddars,&rdquo; which
+      means a race of low-caste people who dig up rats to eat. But the Wuddars
+      did not resent it. They were the only Wuddars, and their points of pride
+      were these:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Firstly, they had fewer English officers than any native regiment.
+      Secondly, their subalterns were not mounted on parade, as is the general
+      rule, but walked at the head of their men. A man who can hold his own with
+      the Wuddars at their quickstep must be sound in wind and limb. Thirdly,
+      they were the most pukka shikarries (out-and-out hunters) in all India.
+      Fourthly-up to one-hundredthly&mdash;they were the Wuddars&mdash;Chinn's
+      Irregular Bhil Levies of the old days, but now, henceforward and for ever,
+      the Wuddars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No Englishman entered their mess except for love or through family usage.
+      The officers talked to their soldiers in a tongue not two hundred white
+      folk in India understood; and the men were their children, all drawn from
+      the Bhils, who are, perhaps, the strangest of the many strange races in
+      India. They were, and at heart are, wild men, furtive, shy, full of untold
+      superstitions. The races whom we call natives of the country found the
+      Bhil in possession of the land when they first broke into that part of the
+      world thousands of years ago. The books call them Pre-Aryan, Aboriginal,
+      Dravidian, and so forth; and, in other words, that is what the Bhils call
+      themselves. When a Rajput chief whose bards can sing his pedigree
+      backwards for twelve hundred years is set on the throne, his investiture
+      is not complete till he has been marked on the forehead with blood from
+      the veins of a Bhil. The Rajputs say the ceremony has no meaning, but the
+      Bhil knows that it is the last, last shadow of his old rights as the
+      long-ago owner of the soil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Centuries of oppression and massacre made the Bhil a cruel and half-crazy
+      thief and cattle-stealer, and when the English came he seemed to be almost
+      as open to civilisation as the tigers of his own jungles. But John Chinn
+      the First, father of Lionel, grandfather of our John, went into his
+      country, lived with him, learned his language, shot the deer that stole
+      his poor crops, and won his confidence, so that some Bhils learned to
+      plough and sow, while others were coaxed into the Company's service to
+      police their friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they understood that standing in line did not mean instant execution,
+      they accepted soldiering as a cumbrous but amusing kind of sport, and were
+      zealous to keep the wild Bhils under control. That was the thin edge of
+      the wedge. John Chinn the First gave them written promises that, if they
+      were good from a certain date, the Government would overlook previous
+      offences; and since John Chinn was never known to break his word&mdash;he
+      promised once to hang a Bhil locally esteemed invulnerable, and hanged him
+      in front of his tribe for seven proved murders&mdash;the Bhils settled
+      down as steadily as they knew how. It was slow, unseen work, of the sort
+      that is being done all over India to-day; and though John Chinn's only
+      reward came, as I have said, in the shape of a grave at Government
+      expense, the little people of the hills never forgot him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Colonel Lionel Chinn knew and loved them, too, and they were very fairly
+      civilised, for Bhils, before his service ended. Many of them could hardly
+      be distinguished from low-caste Hindoo farmers; but in the south, where
+      John Chinn the First was buried, the wildest still clung to the Satpura
+      ranges, cherishing a legend that some day Jan Chinn, as they called him,
+      would return to his own. In the mean time they mistrusted the white man
+      and his ways. The least excitement would stampede them, plundering, at
+      random, and now and then killing; but if they were handled discreetly they
+      grieved like children, and promised never to do it again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bhils of the regiment&mdash;the uniformed men&mdash;were virtuous in
+      many ways, but they needed humouring. They felt bored and homesick unless
+      taken after tiger as beaters; and their cold-blooded daring&mdash;all
+      Wuddars shoot tigers on foot: it is their caste-mark&mdash;made even the
+      officers wonder. They would follow up a wounded tiger as unconcernedly as
+      though it were a sparrow with a broken wing; and this through a country
+      full of caves and rifts and pits, where a wild beast could hold a dozen
+      men at his mercy. Now and then some little man was brought to barracks
+      with his head smashed in or his ribs torn away; but his companions never
+      learned caution; they contented themselves with settling the tiger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Young John Chinn was decanted at the verandah of the Wuddars' lonely
+      mess-house from the back seat of a two-wheeled cart, his gun-cases
+      cascading all round him. The slender little, hookey-nosed boy looked
+      forlorn as a strayed goat when he slapped the white dust off his knees,
+      and the cart jolted down the glaring road. But in his heart he was
+      contented. After all, this was the place where he had been born, and
+      things were not much changed since he had been sent to England, a child,
+      fifteen years ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were a few new buildings, but the air and the smell and the sunshine
+      were the same; and the little green men who crossed the parade-ground
+      looked very familiar. Three weeks ago John Chinn would have said he did
+      not remember a word of the Bhil tongue, but at the mess door he found his
+      lips moving in sentences that he did not understand&mdash;bits of old
+      nursery rhymes, and tail-ends of such orders as his father used to give
+      the men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Colonel watched him come up the steps, and laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look!&rdquo; he said to the Major. &ldquo;No need to ask the young un's breed. He's a
+      pukka Chinn. 'Might be his father in the Fifties over again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Hope he'll shoot as straight,&rdquo; said the Major. &ldquo;He's brought enough
+      ironmongery with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Wouldn't be a Chinn if he didn't. Watch him blowin' his nose. 'Regular
+      Chinn beak. 'Flourishes his handkerchief like his father. It's the second
+      edition&mdash;line for line.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Fairy tale, by Jove!&rdquo; said the Major, peering through the slats of the
+      jalousies. &ldquo;If he's the lawful heir, he'll.... Now old Chinn could no more
+      pass that chick without fiddling with it than....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His son!&rdquo; said the Colonel, jumping up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I be blowed!&rdquo; said the Major. The boy's eye had been caught by a
+      split-reed screen that hung on a slew between the veranda pillars, and,
+      mechanically, he had tweaked the edge to set it level. Old Chinn had sworn
+      three times a day at that screen for many years; he could never get it to
+      his satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His son entered the anteroom in the middle of a fivefold silence. They
+      made him welcome for his father's sake and, as they took stock of him, for
+      his own. He was ridiculously like the portrait of the Colonel on the wall,
+      and when he had washed a little of the dust from his throat he went to his
+      quarters with the old man's short, noiseless jungle-step.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much for heredity,&rdquo; said the Major. &ldquo;That comes of four generations
+      among the Bhils.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the men know it,&rdquo; said a Wing officer. &ldquo;They've been waiting for this
+      youth with their tongues hanging out. I am persuaded that, unless he
+      absolutely beats 'em over the head, they'll lie down by companies and
+      worship him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothin' like havin' a father before you,&rdquo; said the Major. &ldquo;I'm a parvenu
+      with my chaps. I've only been twenty years in the regiment, and my revered
+      parent he was a simple squire. There's no getting at the bottom of a
+      Bhil's mind. Now, why is the superior bearer that young Chinn brought with
+      him fleeing across country with his bundle?&rdquo; He stepped into the verandah,
+      and shouted after the man&mdash;a typical new-joined subaltern's servant
+      who speaks English and cheats in proportion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; he called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plenty bad man here. I going, sar,&rdquo; was the reply. &ldquo;Have taken Sahib's
+      keys, and say will shoot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doocid lucid&mdash;doocid convincin'. How those up-country thieves can
+      leg it! He has been badly frightened by some one.&rdquo; The Major strolled to
+      his quarters to dress for mess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Chinn, walking like a man in a dream, had fetched a compass round
+      the entire cantonment before going to his own tiny cottage. The captain's
+      quarters, in which he had been born, delayed him for a little; then he
+      looked at the well on the parade-ground, where he had sat of evenings with
+      his nurse, and at the ten-by-fourteen church, where the officers went to
+      service if a chaplain of any official creed happened to come along. It
+      seemed very small as compared with the gigantic buildings he used to stare
+      up at, but it was the same place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From time to time he passed a knot of silent soldiers, who saluted. They
+      might have been the very men who had carried him on their backs when he
+      was in his first knickerbockers. A faint light burned in his room, and, as
+      he entered, hands clasped his feet, and a voice murmured from the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is it?&rdquo; said young Chinn, not knowing he spoke in the Bhil tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I bore you in my arms, Sahib, when I was a strong man and you were a
+      small one&mdash;crying, crying, crying! I am your servant, as I was your
+      father's before you. We are all your servants.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Chinn could not trust himself to reply, and the voice went on:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have taken your keys from that fat foreigner, and sent him away; and
+      the studs are in the shirt for mess. Who should know, if I do not know?
+      And so the baby has become a man, and forgets his nurse; but my nephew
+      shall make a good servant, or I will beat him twice a day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there rose up, with a rattle, as straight as a Bhil arrow, a little
+      white-haired wizened ape of a man, with medals and orders on his tunic,
+      stammering, saluting, and trembling. Behind him a young and wiry Bhil, in
+      uniform, was taking the trees out of Chinn's mess-boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chinn's eyes were full of tears. The old man held out his keys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Foreigners are bad people. He will never come back again. We are all
+      servants of your father's son. Has the Sahib forgotten who took him to see
+      the trapped tiger in the village across the river, when his mother was so
+      frightened and he was so brave?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The scene came back to Chinn in great magic-lantern flashes. &ldquo;Bukta!&rdquo; he
+      cried; and all in a breath: &ldquo;You promised nothing should hurt me. Is it
+      Bukta?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man was at his feet a second time. &ldquo;He has not forgotten. He remembers
+      his own people as his father remembered. Now can I die. But first I will
+      live and show the Sahib how to kill tigers. That that yonder is my nephew.
+      If he is not a good servant, beat him and send him to me, and I will
+      surely kill him, for now the Sahib is with his own people. Ai, Jan haba&mdash;Jan
+      haba! My Jan haba! I will stay here and see that this does his work well.
+      Take off his boots, fool. Sit down upon the bed, Sahib, and let me look.
+      It is Jan haba.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He pushed forward the hilt of his sword as a sign of service, which is an
+      honour paid only to viceroys, governors, generals, or to little children
+      whom one loves dearly. Chinn touched the hilt mechanically with three
+      fingers, muttering he knew not what. It happened to be the old answer of
+      his childhood, when Bukta in jest called him the little General Sahib.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Major's quarters were opposite Chinn's, and when he heard his servant
+      gasp with surprise he looked across the room. Then the Major sat on the
+      bed and whistled; for the spectacle of the senior native commissioned
+      officer of the regiment, an &ldquo;unmixed&rdquo; Bhil, a Companion of the Order of
+      British India, with thirty-five years' spotless service in the army, and a
+      rank among his own people superior to that of many Bengal princelings,
+      valeting the last-joined subaltern, was a little too much for his nerves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The throaty bugles blew the Mess-call that has a long legend behind it.
+      First a few piercing notes like the shrieks of beaters in a far-away
+      cover, and next, large, full, and smooth, the refrain of the wild song:
+      &ldquo;And oh, and oh, the green pulse of Mundore&mdash;Mundore!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All little children were in bed when the Sahib heard that call last,&rdquo;
+       said Bukta, passing Chinn a clean handkerchief. The call brought back
+      memories of his cot under the mosquito-netting, his mother's kiss, and the
+      sound of footsteps growing fainter as he dropped asleep among his men. So
+      he hooked the dark collar of his new mess-jacket, and went to dinner like
+      a prince who has newly inherited his father's crown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Bukta swaggered forth curling his whiskers. He knew his own value, and
+      no money and no rank within the gift of the Government would have induced
+      him to put studs in young officers' shirts, or to hand them clean ties.
+      Yet, when he took off his uniform that night, and squatted among his
+      fellows for a quiet smoke, he told them what he had done, and they said
+      that he was entirely right. Thereat Bukta propounded a theory which to a
+      white mind would have seemed raving insanity; but the whispering,
+      level-headed little men of war considered it from every point of view, and
+      thought that there might be a great deal in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At mess under the oil-lamps the talk turned as usual to the unfailing
+      subject of shikar&mdash;big game-shooting of every kind and under all
+      sorts of conditions. Young Chinn opened his eyes when he understood that
+      each one of his companions had shot several tigers in the Wuddar style&mdash;on
+      foot, that is&mdash;making no more of the business than if the brute had
+      been a dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In nine cases out of ten,&rdquo; said the Major, &ldquo;a tiger is almost as
+      dangerous as a porcupine. But the tenth time you come home feet first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That set all talking, and long before midnight Chinn's brain was in a
+      whirl with stories of tigers&mdash;man-eaters and cattle-killers each
+      pursuing his own business as methodically as clerks in an office; new
+      tigers that had lately come into such-and-such a district; and old,
+      friendly beasts of great cunning, known by nicknames in the mess-such as
+      &ldquo;Puggy,&rdquo; who was lazy, with huge paws, and &ldquo;Mrs. Malaprop,&rdquo; who turned up
+      when you never expected her, and made female noises. Then they spoke of
+      Bhil superstitions, a wide and picturesque field, till young Chinn hinted
+      that they must be pulling his leg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Deed, we aren't,&rdquo; said a man on his left. &ldquo;We know all about you. You're
+      a Chinn and all that, and you've a sort of vested right here; but if you
+      don't believe what we're telling you, what will you do when old Bukta
+      begins his stories? He knows about ghost-tigers, and tigers that go to a
+      hell of their own; and tigers that walk on their hind feet; and your
+      grandpapa's riding-tiger, as well. 'Odd he hasn't spoken of that yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know you've an ancestor buried down Satpura way, don't you?&rdquo; said the
+      Major, as Chinn smiled irresolutely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I do,&rdquo; said Chinn, who had the chronicle of the Book of Chinn
+      by heart. It lies in a worn old ledger on the Chinese lacquer table behind
+      the piano in the Devonshire home, and the children are allowed to look at
+      it on Sundays.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I wasn't sure. Your revered ancestor, my boy, according to the
+      Bhils, has a tiger of his own&mdash;a saddle-tiger that he rides round the
+      country whenever he feels inclined. I don't call it decent in an
+      ex-Collector's ghost; but that is what the Southern Bhils believe. Even
+      our men, who might be called moderately cool, don't care to beat that
+      country if they hear that Jan Chinn is running about on his tiger. It is
+      supposed to be a clouded animal&mdash;not stripy, but blotchy, like a
+      tortoise-shell tom-cat. No end of a brute, it is, and a sure sign of war
+      or pestilence or&mdash;or something. There's a nice family legend for
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the origin of it, d' you suppose?&rdquo; said Chinn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask the Satpura Bhils. Old Jan Chinn was a mighty hunter before the Lord.
+      Perhaps it was the tiger's revenge, or perhaps he's huntin' 'em still. You
+      must go to his tomb one of these days and inquire. Bukta will probably
+      attend to that. He was asking me before you came whether by any ill-luck
+      you had already bagged your tiger. If not, he is going to enter you under
+      his own wing. Of course, for you of all men it's imperative. You'll have a
+      first-class time with Bukta.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Major was not wrong. Bukta kept an anxious eye on young Chinn at
+      drill, and it was noticeable that the first time the new officer lifted up
+      his voice in an order the whole line quivered. Even the Colonel was taken
+      aback, for it might have been Lionel Chinn returned from Devonshire with a
+      new lease of life. Bukta had continued to develop his peculiar theory
+      among his intimates, and it was accepted as a matter of faith in the
+      lines, since every word and gesture on young Chinn's part so confirmed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man arranged early that his darling should wipe out the reproach
+      of not having shot a tiger; but he was not content to take the first or
+      any beast that happened to arrive. In his own villages he dispensed the
+      high, low, and middle justice, and when his people&mdash;naked and
+      fluttered&mdash;came to him with word of a beast marked down, he bade them
+      send spies to the kills and the watering-places, that he might be sure the
+      quarry was such an one as suited the dignity of such a man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three or four times the reckless trackers returned, most truthfully saying
+      that the beast was mangy, undersized&mdash;a tigress worn with nursing, or
+      a broken-toothed old male&mdash;and Bukta would curb young Chinn's
+      impatience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last, a noble animal was marked down&mdash;a ten-foot cattle-killer
+      with a huge roll of loose skin along the belly, glossy-hided, full-frilled
+      about the neck, whiskered, frisky, and young. He had slain a man in pure
+      sport, they said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let him be fed,&rdquo; quoth Bukta, and the villagers dutifully drove out a cow
+      to amuse him, that he might lie up near by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Princes and potentates have taken ship to India and spent great moneys for
+      the mere glimpse of beasts one-half as fine as this of Bukta's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not good,&rdquo; said he to the Colonel, when he asked for
+      shooting-leave, &ldquo;that my Colonel's son who may be&mdash;that my Colonel's
+      son should lose his maidenhead on any small jungle beast. That may come
+      after. I have waited long for this which is a tiger. He has come in from
+      the Mair country. In seven days we will return with the skin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mess gnashed their teeth enviously. Bukta, had he chosen, might have
+      invited them all. But he went out alone with Chinn, two days in a
+      shooting-cart and a day on foot, till they came to a rocky, glary valley
+      with a pool of good water in it. It was a parching day, and the boy very
+      naturally stripped and went in for a bathe, leaving Bukta by the clothes.
+      A white skin shows far against brown jungle, and what Bukta beheld on
+      Chinn's back and right shoulder dragged him forward step by step with
+      staring eyeballs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd forgotten it isn't decent to strip before a man of his position,&rdquo;
+       said Chinn, flouncing in the water. &ldquo;How the little devil stares! What is
+      it, Bukta?&rdquo; &ldquo;The Mark!&rdquo; was the whispered answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is nothing. You know how it is with my people!&rdquo; Chinn was annoyed. The
+      dull-red birth-mark on his shoulder, something like a conventionalised
+      Tartar cloud, had slipped his memory or he would not have bathed. It
+      occurred, so they said at home, in alternate generations, appearing,
+      curiously enough, eight or nine years after birth, and, save that it was
+      part of the Chinn inheritance, would not be considered pretty. He hurried
+      ashore, dressed again, and went on till they met two or three Bhils, who
+      promptly fell on their faces. &ldquo;My people,&rdquo; grunted Bukta, not
+      condescending to notice them. &ldquo;And so your people, Sahib. When I was a
+      young man we were fewer, but not so weak. Now we are many, but poor stock.
+      As may be remembered. How will you shoot him, Sahib? From a tree; from a
+      shelter which my people shall build; by day or by night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On foot and in the daytime,&rdquo; said young Chinn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was your custom, as I have heard,&rdquo; said Bukta to himself &ldquo;I will get
+      news of him. Then you and I will go to him. I will carry one gun. You have
+      yours. There is no need of more. What tiger shall stand against thee?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was marked down by a little water-hole at the head of a ravine,
+      full-gorged and half asleep in the May sunlight. He was walked up like a
+      partridge, and he turned to do battle for his life. Bukta made no motion
+      to raise his rifle, but kept his eyes on Chinn, who met the shattering
+      roar of the charge with a single shot&mdash;it seemed to him hours as he
+      sighted&mdash;which tore through the throat, smashing the backbone below
+      the neck and between the shoulders. The brute couched, choked, and fell,
+      and before Chinn knew well what had happened Bukta bade him stay still
+      while he paced the distance between his feet and the ringing jaws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fifteen,&rdquo; said Bukta. &ldquo;Short paces. No need for a second shot, Sahib. He
+      bleeds cleanly where he lies, and we need not spoil the skin. I said there
+      would be no need of these, but they came&mdash;in case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the sides of the ravine were crowned with the heads of Bukta's
+      people&mdash;a force that could have blown the ribs out of the beast had
+      Chinn's shot failed; but their guns were hidden, and they appeared as
+      interested beaters, some five or six waiting the word to skin. Bukta
+      watched the life fade from the wild eyes, lifted one hand, and turned on
+      his heel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No need to show that we care,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Now, after this, we can kill
+      what we choose. Put out your hand, Sahib.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Chinn obeyed. It was entirely steady, and Bukta nodded. &ldquo;That also was
+      your custom. My men skin quickly. They will carry the skin to cantonments.
+      Will the Sahib come to my poor village for the night and, perhaps, forget
+      that I am his officer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But those men&mdash;the beaters. They have worked hard, and perhaps&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, if they skin clumsily, we will skin them. They are my people. In the
+      lines I am one thing. Here I am another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was very true. When Bukta doffed uniform and reverted to the
+      fragmentary dress of his own people, he left his civilisation of drill in
+      the next world. That night, after a little talk with his subjects, he
+      devoted to an orgie; and a Bhil orgie is a thing not to be safely written
+      about. Chinn, flushed with triumph, was in the thick of it, but the
+      meaning of the mysteries was hidden. Wild folk came and pressed about his
+      knees with offerings. He gave his flask to the elders of the village. They
+      grew eloquent, and wreathed him about with flowers. Gifts and loans, not
+      all seemly, were thrust upon him, and infernal music rolled and maddened
+      round red fires, while singers sang songs of the ancient times, and danced
+      peculiar dances. The aboriginal liquors are very potent, and Chinn was
+      compelled to taste them often, but, unless the stuff had been drugged, how
+      came he to fall asleep suddenly, and to waken late the next day&mdash;half
+      a march from the village?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Sahib was very tired. A little before dawn he went to sleep,&rdquo; Bukta
+      explained. &ldquo;My people carried him here, and now it is time we should go
+      back to cantonments.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice, smooth and deferential, the step, steady and silent, made it
+      hard to believe that only a few hours before Bukta was yelling and
+      capering with naked fellow-devils of the scrub.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My people were very pleased to see the Sahib. They will never forget.
+      When next the Sahib goes out recruiting, he will go to my people, and they
+      will give him as many men as we need.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Chinn kept his own counsel, except as to the shooting of the tiger, and
+      Bukta embroidered that tale with a shameless tongue. The skin was
+      certainly one of the finest ever hung up in the mess, and the first of
+      many. When Bukta could not accompany his boy on shooting-trips, he took
+      care to put him in good hands, and Chinn learned more of the mind and
+      desire of the wild Bhil in his marches and campings, by talks at twilight
+      or at wayside pools, than an uninstructed man could have come at in a
+      lifetime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently his men in the regiment grew bold to speak of their relatives&mdash;mostly
+      in trouble&mdash;and to lay cases of tribal custom before him. They would
+      say, squatting in his verandah at twilight, after the easy, confidential
+      style of the Wuddars, that such-and-such a bachelor had run away with
+      such-and-such a wife at a far-off village. Now, how many cows would Chinn
+      Sahib consider a just fine? Or, again, if written order came from the
+      Government that a Bhil was to repair to a walled city of the plains to
+      give evidence in a law-court, would it be wise to disregard that order? On
+      the other hand, if it were obeyed, would the rash voyager return alive?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what have I to do with these things?&rdquo; Chinn demanded of Bukta,
+      impatiently. &ldquo;I am a soldier. I do not know the law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hoo! Law is for fools and white men. Give them a large and loud order,
+      and they will abide by it. Thou art their law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But wherefore?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Every trace of expression left Bukta's countenance. The idea might have
+      smitten him for the first time. &ldquo;How can I say?&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;Perhaps it
+      is on account of the name. A Bhil does not love strange things. Give them
+      orders, Sahib&mdash;two, three, four words at a time such as they can
+      carry away in their heads. That is enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Chinn gave orders then, valiantly, not realising that a word spoken in
+      haste before mess became the dread unappealable law of villages beyond the
+      smoky hills was, in truth, no less than the Law of Jan Chinn the First,
+      who, so the whispered legend ran, had come back to earth, to oversee the
+      third generation, in the body and bones of his grandson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There could be no sort of doubt in this matter. All the Bhils knew that
+      Jan Chinn reincarnated had honoured Bukta's village with his presence
+      after slaying his first&mdash;in this life&mdash;tiger; that he had eaten
+      and drunk with the people, as he was used; and&mdash;Bukta must have
+      drugged Chinn's liquor very deeply&mdash;upon his back and right shoulder
+      all men had seen the same angry red Flying Cloud that the high Gods had
+      set on the flesh of Jan Chinn the First when first he came to the Bhil. As
+      concerned the foolish white world which has no eyes, he was a slim and
+      young officer in the Wuddars; but his own people knew he was Jan Chinn,
+      who had made the Bhil a man; and, believing, they hastened to carry his
+      words, careful never to alter them on the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Because the savage and the child who plays lonely games have one horror of
+      being laughed at or questioned, the little folk kept their convictions to
+      themselves; and the Colonel, who thought he knew his regiment, never
+      guessed that each one of the six hundred quick-footed, beady-eyed
+      rank-and-file, to attention beside their rifles, believed serenely and
+      unshakenly that the subaltern on the left flank of the line was a demi-god
+      twice born&mdash;tutelary deity of their land and people. The Earth-gods
+      themselves had stamped the incarnation, and who would dare to doubt the
+      handiwork of the Earth-gods?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chinn, being practical above all things, saw that his family name served
+      him well in the lines and in camp. His men gave no trouble&mdash;one does
+      not commit regimental offences with a god in the chair of justice&mdash;and
+      he was sure of the best beaters in the district when he needed them. They
+      believed that the protection of Jan Chinn the First cloaked them, and were
+      bold in that belief beyond the utmost daring of excited Bhils.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His quarters began to look like an amateur natural-history museum, in
+      spite of duplicate heads and horns and skulls that he sent home to
+      Devonshire. The people, very humanly, learned the weak side of their god.
+      It is true he was unbribable, but bird-skins, butterflies, beetles, and,
+      above all, news of big game pleased him. In other respects, too, he lived
+      up to the Chinn tradition. He was fever-proof. A night's sitting out over
+      a tethered goat in a damp valley, that would have filled the Major with a
+      month's malaria, had no effect on him. He was, as they said, &ldquo;salted
+      before he was born.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now in the autumn of his second year's service an uneasy rumour crept out
+      of the earth and ran about among the Bhils. Chinn heard nothing of it till
+      a brother-officer said across the mess-table: &ldquo;Your revered ancestor's on
+      the rampage in the Satpura country. You'd better look him up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want to be disrespectful, but I'm a little sick of my revered
+      ancestor. Bukta talks of nothing else. What's the old boy supposed to be
+      doing now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Riding cross-country by moonlight on his processional tiger. That's the
+      story. He's been seen by about two thousand Bhils, skipping along the tops
+      of the Satpuras, and scaring people to death. They believe it devoutly,
+      and all the Satpura chaps are worshipping away at his shrine&mdash;tomb, I
+      mean&mdash;like good uns. You really ought to go down there. Must be a
+      queer thing to see your grandfather treated as a god.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What makes you think there's any truth in the tale?&rdquo; said Chinn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because all our men deny it. They say they've never heard of Chinn's
+      tiger. Now that's a manifest lie, because every Bhil has.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's only one thing you've overlooked,&rdquo; said the Colonel,
+      thoughtfully. &ldquo;When a local god reappears on earth, it's always an excuse
+      for trouble of some kind; and those Satpura Bhils are about as wild as
+      your grandfather left them, young un. It means something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Meanin' they may go on the war-path?&rdquo; said Chinn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Can't say&mdash;as yet. 'Shouldn't be surprised a little bit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't been told a syllable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Proves it all the more. They are keeping something back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bukta tells me everything, too, as a rule. Now, why didn't he tell me
+      that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Chinn put the question directly to the old man that night, and the answer
+      surprised him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should I tell what is well known? Yes, the Clouded Tiger is out in
+      the Satpura country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do the wild Bhils think that it means?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They do not know. They wait. Sahib, what is coming? Say only one little
+      word, and we will be content.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We? What have tales from the south, where the jungly Bhils live, to do
+      with drilled men?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When Jan Chinn wakes is no time for any Bhil to be quiet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he has not waked, Bukta.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sahib&rdquo;&mdash;the old man's eyes were full of tender reproof&mdash;&ldquo;if he
+      does not wish to be seen, why does he go abroad in the moonlight? We know
+      he is awake, but we do not know what he desires. Is it a sign for all the
+      Bhils, or one that concerns the Satpura folk alone? Say one little word,
+      Sahib, that I may carry it to the lines, and send on to our villages. Why
+      does Jan Chinn ride out? Who has done wrong? Is it pestilence? Is it
+      murrain? Will our children die? Is it a sword? Remember, Sahib, we are thy
+      people and thy servants, and in this life I bore thee in my arms&mdash;not
+      knowing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bukta has evidently looked on the cup this evening,&rdquo; Chinn thought; &ldquo;but
+      if I can do anything to soothe the old chap I must. It's like the Mutiny
+      rumours on a small scale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He dropped into a deep wicker chair, over which was thrown his first
+      tiger-skin, and his weight on the cushion flapped the clawed paws over his
+      shoulders. He laid hold of them mechanically as he spoke, drawing the
+      painted hide, cloak-fashion, about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now will I tell the truth, Bukta,&rdquo; he said, leaning forward, the dried
+      muzzle on his shoulder, to invent a specious lie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see that it is the truth,&rdquo; was the answer, in a shaking voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jan Chinn goes abroad among the Satpuras, riding on the Clouded Tiger, ye
+      say? Be it so. Therefore the sign of the wonder is for the Satpura Bhils
+      only, and does not touch the Bhils who plough in the north and east, the
+      Bhils of the Khandesh, or any others, except the Satpura Bhils, who, as we
+      know, are wild and foolish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is, then, a sign for them. Good or bad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beyond doubt, good. For why should Jan Chinn make evil to those whom he
+      has made men? The nights over yonder are hot; it is ill to lie in one bed
+      over-long without turning, and Jan Chinn would look again upon his people.
+      So he rises, whistles his Clouded Tiger, and goes abroad a little to
+      breathe the cool air. If the Satpura Bhils kept to their villages, and did
+      not wander after dark, they would not see him. Indeed, Bukta, it is no
+      more than that he would see the light again in his own country. Send this
+      news south, and say that it is my word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bukta bowed to the floor. &ldquo;Good Heavens!&rdquo; thought Chinn, &ldquo;and this
+      blinking pagan is a first-class officer, and as straight as a die! I may
+      as well round it off neatly.&rdquo; He went on:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the Satpura Bhils ask the meaning of the sign, tell them that Jan
+      Chinn would see how they kept their old promises of good living. Perhaps
+      they have plundered; perhaps they mean to disobey the orders of the
+      Government; perhaps there is a dead man in the jungle; and so Jan Chinn
+      has come to see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he, then, angry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah! Am I ever angry with my Bhils? I say angry words, and threaten many
+      things. Thou knowest, Bukta. I have seen thee smile behind the hand. I
+      know, and thou knowest. The Bhils are my children. I have said it many
+      times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay. We be thy children,&rdquo; said Bukta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And no otherwise is it with Jan Chinn, my father's father. He would see
+      the land he loved and the people once again. It is a good ghost, Bukta. I
+      say it. Go and tell them. And I do hope devoutly,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;that it will
+      calm 'em down.&rdquo; Flinging back the tiger-skin, he rose with a long,
+      unguarded yawn that showed his well-kept teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bukta fled, to be received in the lines by a knot of panting inquirers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true,&rdquo; said Bukta. &ldquo;He wrapped him-self in the skin, and spoke from
+      it. He would see his own country again. The sign is not for us; and,
+      indeed, he is a young man. How should he lie idle of nights? He says his
+      bed is too hot and the air is bad. He goes to and fro for the love of
+      night-running. He has said it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The grey-whiskered assembly shuddered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He says the Bhils are his children. Ye know he does not lie. He has said
+      it to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what of the Satpura Bhils? What means the sign for them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing. It is only night-running, as I have said. He rides to see if
+      they obey the Government, as he taught them to do in his first life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what if they do not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did not say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The light went out in Chinn's quarters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look,&rdquo; said Bukta. &ldquo;Now he goes away. None the less it is a good ghost,
+      as he has said. How shall we fear Jan Chinn, who made the Bhil a man? His
+      protection is on us; and ye know Jan Chinn never broke a protection spoken
+      or written on paper. When he is older and has found him a wife he will lie
+      in his bed till morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A commanding officer is generally aware of the regimental state of mind a
+      little before the men; and this is why the Colonel said, a few days later,
+      that some one had been putting the Fear of God into the Wuddars. As he was
+      the only person officially entitled to do this, it distressed him to see
+      such unanimous virtue. &ldquo;It's too good to last,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I only wish I
+      could find out what the little chaps mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The explanation, as it seemed to him, came at the change of the moon, when
+      he received orders to hold himself in readiness to &ldquo;allay any possible
+      excitement&rdquo; among the Satpura Bhils, who were, to put it mildly, uneasy
+      because a paternal Government had sent up against them a Mahratta
+      State-educated vaccinator, with lancets, lymph, and an officially
+      registered calf. In the language of State, they had &ldquo;manifested a strong
+      objection to all prophylactic measures,&rdquo; had &ldquo;forcibly detained the
+      vaccinator,&rdquo; and &ldquo;were on the point of neglecting or evading their tribal
+      obligations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That means they are in a blue funk&mdash;same as they were at
+      census-time,&rdquo; said the Colonel; &ldquo;and if we stampede them into the hills
+      we'll never catch 'em, in the first place, and, in the second, they'll
+      whoop off plundering till further orders. 'Wonder who the God-forsaken
+      idiot is who is trying to vaccinate a Bhil. I knew trouble was coming. One
+      good thing is that they'll only use local corps, and we can knock up
+      something we'll call a campaign, and let them down easy. Fancy us potting
+      our best beaters because they don't want to be vaccinated! They're only
+      crazy with fear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you think, sir,&rdquo; said Chinn, the next day, &ldquo;that perhaps you could
+      give me a fortnight's shooting-leave?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Desertion in the face of the enemy, by Jove!&rdquo; The Colonel laughed. &ldquo;I
+      might, but I'd have to antedate it a little, because we're warned for
+      service, as you might say. However, we'll assume that you applied for
+      leave three days ago, and are now well on your way south.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd like to take Bukta with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, yes. I think that will be the best plan. You've some kind of
+      hereditary influence with the little chaps, and they may listen to you
+      when a glimpse of our uniforms would drive them wild. You've never been in
+      that part of the world before, have you? Take care they don't send you to
+      your family vault in your youth and innocence. I believe you'll be all
+      right if you can get 'em to listen to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think so, sir; but if&mdash;if they should accidentally put an&mdash;make
+      asses of 'emselves&mdash;they might, you know&mdash;I hope you'll
+      represent that they were only frightened. There isn't an ounce of real
+      vice in 'em, and I should never forgive myself if any one of&mdash;of my
+      name got them into trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Colonel nodded, but said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chinn and Bukta departed at once. Bukta did not say that, ever since the
+      official vaccinator had been dragged into the hills by indignant Bhils,
+      runner after runner had skulked up to the lines, entreating, with forehead
+      in the dust, that Jan Chinn should come and explain this unknown horror
+      that hung over his people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The portent of the Clouded Tiger was now too clear. Let Jan Chinn comfort
+      his own, for vain was the help of mortal man. Bukta toned down these
+      beseechings to a simple request for Chinn's presence. Nothing would have
+      pleased the old man better than a rough-and-tumble campaign against the
+      Satpuras, whom he, as an &ldquo;unmixed&rdquo; Bhil, despised; but he had a duty to
+      all his nation as Jan Chinn's interpreter; and he devoutly believed that
+      forty plagues would fall on his village if he tampered with that
+      obligation. Besides, Jan Chinn knew all things, and he rode the Clouded
+      Tiger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They covered thirty miles a day on foot and pony, raising the blue
+      wall-like line of the Satpuras as swiftly as might be. Bukta was very
+      silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They began the steep climb a little after noon, but it was near sunset ere
+      they reached the stone platform clinging to the side of a rifted,
+      jungle-covered hill, where Jan Chinn the First was laid, as he had
+      desired, that he might overlook his people. All India is full of neglected
+      graves that date from the beginning of the eighteenth century&mdash;tombs
+      of forgotten colonels of corps long since disbanded; mates of East India
+      men who went on shooting expeditions and never came back; factors, agents,
+      writers, and ensigns of the Honourable the East India Company by hundreds
+      and thousands and tens of thousands. English folk forget quickly, but
+      natives have long memories, and if a man has done good in his life it is
+      remembered after his death. The weathered marble four-square tomb of Jan
+      Chinn was hung about with wild flowers and nuts, packets of wax and honey,
+      bottles of native spirits, and infamous cigars, with buffalo horns and
+      plumes of dried grass. At one end was a rude clay image of a white man, in
+      the old-fashioned top-hat, riding on a bloated tiger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bukta salamed reverently as they approached. Chinn bared his head and
+      began to pick out the blurred inscription. So far as he could read it ran
+      thus&mdash;word for word, and letter for letter:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+              To the Memory of JOHN CHINN, Esq.
+                  Late Collector of............
+       ....ithout Bloodshed or...error of Authority
+      Employ.only..cans of Conciliat...and Confiden.
+              accomplished the...tire Subjection...
+                a Lawless and Predatory Peop...
+         ....taching them to...ish Government
+              by a Conquest over....Minds
+         The most perma...and rational Mode of Domini..
+          ...Governor General and Counc...engal
+              have ordered thi.....erected
+         ....arted this Life Aug.  19, 184..Ag...
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      On the other side of the grave were ancient verses, also very worn. As
+      much as Chinn could decipher said:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                           ....the savage band
+      Forsook their Haunts and b.....is Command
+     ....mended..rais check a...st for spoil.
+      And.s.ing Hamlets prove his gene....toil.
+      Humanit...survey......ights restor..
+      A Nation..ield..subdued without a Sword.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      For some little time he leaned on the tomb thinking of this dead man of
+      his own blood, and of the house in Devonshire; then, nodding to the
+      plains: &ldquo;Yes; it's a big work all of it even my little share. He must have
+      been worth knowing.... Bukta, where are my people?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not here, Sahib. No man comes here except in full sun. They wait above.
+      Let us climb and see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Chinn, remembering the first law of Oriental diplomacy, in an even
+      voice answered: &ldquo;I have come this far only because the Satpura folk are
+      foolish, and dared not visit our lines. Now bid them wait on me here. I am
+      not a servant, but the master of Bhils.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I go&mdash;I go,&rdquo; clucked the old man. Night was falling, and at any
+      moment Jan Chinn might whistle up his dreaded steed from the darkening
+      scrub.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now for the first time in a long life Bukta disobeyed a lawful command and
+      deserted his leader; for he did not come back, but pressed to the flat
+      table-top of the hill, and called softly. Men stirred all about him&mdash;little
+      trembling men with bows and arrows who had watched the two since noon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is he?&rdquo; whispered one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At his own place. He bids you come,&rdquo; said Bukta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rather let him loose the Clouded Tiger upon us. We do not go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor I, though I bore him in my arms when he was a child in this his life.
+      Wait here till the day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But surely he will be angry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will be very angry, for he has nothing to eat. But he has said to me
+      many times that the Bhils are his children. By sunlight I believe this,
+      but&mdash;by moonlight I am not so sure. What folly have ye Satpura pigs
+      compassed that ye should need him at all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One came to us in the name of the Government with little ghost-knives and
+      a magic calf, meaning to turn us into cattle by the cutting off of our
+      arms. We were greatly afraid, but we did not kill the man. He is here,
+      bound&mdash;a black man; and we think he comes from the west. He said it
+      was an order to cut us all with knives&mdash;especially the women and the
+      children. We did not hear that it was an order, so we were afraid, and
+      kept to our hills. Some of our men have taken ponies and bullocks from the
+      plains, and others pots and cloths and ear-rings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are any slain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By our men? Not yet. But the young men are blown to and fro by many
+      rumours like flames upon a hill. I sent runners asking for Jan Chinn lest
+      worse should come to us. It was this fear that he foretold by the sign of
+      the Clouded Tiger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He says it is otherwise,&rdquo; said Bukta; and he repeated, with
+      amplifications, all that young Chinn had told him at the conference of the
+      wicker chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think you,&rdquo; said the questioner, at last, &ldquo;that the Government will lay
+      hands on us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not I,&rdquo; Bukta rejoined. &ldquo;Jan Chinn will give an order, and ye will obey.
+      The rest is between the Government and Jan Chinn. I myself know something
+      of the ghost-knives and the scratching. It is a charm against the
+      Smallpox. But how it is done I cannot tell. Nor need that concern you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he stands by us and before the anger of the Government we will most
+      strictly obey Jan Chinn, except&mdash;except we do not go down to that
+      place to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They could hear young Chinn below them shouting for Bukta; but they
+      cowered and sat still, expecting the Clouded Tiger. The tomb had been holy
+      ground for nearly half a century. If Jan Chinn chose to sleep there, who
+      had better right? But they would not come within eyeshot of the place till
+      broad day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first Chinn was exceedingly angry, till it occurred to him that Bukta
+      most probably had a reason (which, indeed, he had), and his own dignity
+      might suffer if he yelled without answer. He propped himself against the
+      foot of the grave, and, alternately dozing and smoking, came through the
+      warm night proud that he was a lawful, legitimate, fever-proof Chinn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He prepared his plan of action much as his grandfather would have done;
+      and when Bukta appeared in the morning with a most liberal supply of food,
+      said nothing of the overnight desertion. Bukta would have been relieved by
+      an outburst of human anger; but Chinn finished his victual leisurely, and
+      a cheroot, ere he made any sign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are very much afraid,&rdquo; said Bukta, who was not too bold himself. &ldquo;It
+      remains only to give orders. They said they will obey if thou wilt only
+      stand between them and the Government.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I know,&rdquo; said Chinn, strolling slowly to the table-land. A few of
+      the elder men stood in an irregular semicircle in an open glade; but the
+      ruck of people&mdash;women and children were hidden in the thicket. They
+      had no desire to face the first anger of Jan Chinn the First.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seating himself on a fragment of split rock, he smoked his cheroot to the
+      butt, hearing men breathe hard all about him. Then he cried, so suddenly
+      that they jumped:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring the man that was bound!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A scuffle and a cry were followed by the appearance of a Hindoo
+      vaccinator, quaking with fear, bound hand and foot, as the Bhils of old
+      were accustomed to bind their human sacrifices. He was pushed cautiously
+      before the presence; but young Chinn did not look at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said&mdash;the man that was bound. Is it a jest to bring me one tied
+      like a buffalo? Since when could the Bhil bind folk at his pleasure? Cut!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Half a dozen hasty knives cut away the thongs, and the man crawled to
+      Chinn, who pocketed his case of lancets and tubes of lymph. Then, sweeping
+      the semicircle with one comprehensive forefinger, and in the voice of
+      compliment, he said, clearly and distinctly: &ldquo;Pigs!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ai!&rdquo; whispered Bukta. &ldquo;Now he speaks. Woe to foolish people!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have come on foot from my house&rdquo; (the assembly shuddered) &ldquo;to make
+      clear a matter which any other Satpura Bhil would have seen with both eyes
+      from a distance. Ye know the Smallpox who pits and scars your children so
+      that they look like wasp-combs. It is an order of the Government that
+      whoso is scratched on the arm with these little knives which I hold up is
+      charmed against her. All Sahibs are thus charmed, and very many Hindoos.
+      This is the mark of the charm. Look!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rolled back his sleeve to the armpit and showed the white scars of the
+      vaccination-mark on his white skin. &ldquo;Come, all, and look.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A few daring spirits came up, and nodded their heads wisely. There was
+      certainly a mark, and they knew well what other dread marks were hidden by
+      the shirt. Merciful was Jan Chinn, that then and there proclaimed his
+      godhead!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now all these things the man whom ye bound told you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did&mdash;a hundred times; but they answered with blows,&rdquo; groaned the
+      operator, chafing his wrists and ankles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, being pigs, ye did not believe; and so came I here to save you,
+      first from Smallpox, next from a great folly of fear, and lastly, it may
+      be, from the rope and the jail. It is no gain to me; it is no pleasure to
+      me: but for the sake of that one who is yonder, who made the Bhil a man&rdquo;&mdash;he
+      pointed down the hill&mdash;&ldquo;I, who am of his blood, the son of his son,
+      come to turn your people. And I speak the truth, as did Jan Chinn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The crowd murmured reverently, and men stole out of the thicket by twos
+      and threes to join it. There was no anger in their god's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These are my orders. (Heaven send they'll take 'em, but I seem to have
+      impressed 'em so far!) I myself will stay among you while this man
+      scratches your arms with the knives, after the order of the Government. In
+      three, or it may be five or seven, days, your arms will swell and itch and
+      burn. That is the power of Smallpox fighting in your base blood against
+      the orders of the Government I will therefore stay among you till I see
+      that Smallpox is conquered, and I will not go away till the men and the
+      women and the little children show me upon their arms such marks as I have
+      even now showed you. I bring with me two very good guns, and a man whose
+      name is known among beasts and men. We will hunt together, I and he and
+      your young men, and the others shall eat and lie still. This is my order.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a long pause while victory hung in the balance. A white-haired
+      old sinner, standing on one uneasy leg, piped up:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are ponies and some few bullocks and other things for which we need
+      a kowl [protection]. They were not taken in the way of trade.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The battle was won, and John Chinn drew a breath of relief. The young
+      Bhils had been raiding, but if taken swiftly all could be put straight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will write a kowl so soon as the ponies, the bullocks, and the other
+      things are counted before me and sent back whence they came. But first we
+      will put the Government mark on such as have not been visited by
+      Smallpox.&rdquo; In an undertone, to the vaccinator: &ldquo;If you show you are afraid
+      you'll never see Poona again, my friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is not sufficient ample supply of vaccination for all this
+      population,&rdquo; said the man. &ldquo;They destroyed the offeecial calf.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They won't know the difference. Scrape 'em and give me a couple of
+      lancets; I'll attend to the elders.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The aged diplomat who had demanded protection was the first victim. He
+      fell to Chinn's hand and dared not cry out. As soon as he was freed he
+      dragged up a companion, and held him fast, and the crisis became, as it
+      were, a child's sport; for the vaccinated chased the unvaccinated to
+      treatment, vowing that all the tribe must suffer equally. The women
+      shrieked, and the children ran howling; but Chinn laughed, and waved the
+      pink-tipped lancet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is an honour,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Tell them, Bukta, how great an honour it is
+      that I myself mark them. Nay, I cannot mark every one&mdash;the Hindoo
+      must also do his work&mdash;but I will touch all marks that he makes, so
+      there will be an equal virtue in them. Thus do the Rajputs stick pigs. Ho,
+      brother with one eye! Catch that girl and bring her to me. She need not
+      run away yet, for she is not married, and I do not seek her in marriage.
+      She will not come? Then she shall be shamed by her little brother, a fat
+      boy, a bold boy. He puts out his arm like a soldier. Look! He does not
+      flinch at the blood. Some day he shall be in my regiment. And now, mother
+      of many, we will lightly touch thee, for Smallpox has been before us here.
+      It is a true thing, indeed, that this charm breaks the power of Mata.
+      There will be no more pitted faces among the Satpuras, and so ye can ask
+      many cows for each maid to be wed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so on and so on&mdash;quick-poured showman's patter, sauced in the
+      Bhil hunting-proverbs and tales of their own brand of coarse humour till
+      the lancets were blunted and both operators worn out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, nature being the same the world over, the unvaccinated grew jealous
+      of their marked comrades, and came near to blows about it. Then Chinn
+      declared himself a court of justice, no longer a medical board, and made
+      formal inquiry into the late robberies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are the thieves of Mahadeo,&rdquo; said the Bhils, simply. &ldquo;It is our fate,
+      and we were frightened. When we are frightened we always steal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Simply and directly as children, they gave in the tale of the plunder, all
+      but two bullocks and some spirits that had gone amissing (these Chinn
+      promised to make good out of his own pocket), and ten ringleaders were
+      despatched to the lowlands with a wonderful document, written on the leaf
+      of a note-book, and addressed to an Assistant District Superintendent of
+      Police. There was warm calamity in that note, as Jan Chinn warned them,
+      but anything was better than loss of liberty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Armed with this protection, the repentant raiders went down-hill. They had
+      no desire whatever to meet Mr. Dundas Fawne of the Police, aged
+      twenty-two, and of a cheerful countenance, nor did they wish to revisit
+      the scene of their robberies. Steering a middle course, they ran into the
+      camp of the one Government chaplain allowed to the various irregular corps
+      through a district of some fifteen thousand square miles, and stood before
+      him in a cloud of dust. He was by way of being a priest, they knew, and,
+      what was more to the point, a good sportsman who paid his beaters
+      generously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he read Chinn's note he laughed, which they deemed a lucky omen, till
+      he called up policemen, who tethered the ponies and the bullocks by the
+      piled house-gear, and laid stern hands upon three of that smiling band of
+      the thieves of Mahadeo. The chaplain himself addressed them magisterially
+      with a riding-whip. That was painful, but Jan Chinn had prophesied it.
+      They submitted, but would not give up the written protection, fearing the
+      jail. On their way back they met Mr. D. Fawne, who had heard about the
+      robberies, and was not pleased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; said the eldest of the gang, when the second interview was at
+      an end, &ldquo;certainly Jan Chinn's protection has saved us our liberty, but it
+      is as though there were many beatings in one small piece of paper. Put it
+      away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One climbed into a tree, and stuck the letter into a cleft forty feet from
+      the ground, where it could do no harm. Warmed, sore, but happy, the ten
+      returned to Jan Chinn next day, where he sat among uneasy Bhils, all
+      looking at their right arms, and all bound under terror of their god's
+      disfavour not to scratch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a good kowl,&rdquo; said the leader. &ldquo;First the chaplain, who laughed,
+      took away our plunder, and beat three of us, as was promised. Next, we
+      meet Fawne Sahib, who frowned, and asked for the plunder. We spoke the
+      truth, and so he beat us all, one after another, and called us chosen
+      names. He then gave us these two bundles&rdquo;&mdash;they set down a bottle of
+      whisky and a box of cheroots&mdash;&ldquo;and we came away. The kowl is left in
+      a tree, because its virtue is that so soon as we show it to a Sahib we are
+      beaten.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But for that kowl&rdquo; said Jan Chinn, sternly, &ldquo;ye would all have been
+      marching to jail with a policeman on either side. Ye come now to serve as
+      beaters for me. These people are unhappy, and we will go hunting till they
+      are well. To-night we will make a feast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It is written in the chronicles of the Satpura Bhils, together with many
+      other matters not fit for print, that through five days, after the day
+      that he had put his mark upon them, Jan Chinn the First hunted for his
+      people; and on the five nights of those days the tribe was gloriously and
+      entirely drunk. Jan Chinn bought country spirits of an awful strength, and
+      slew wild pig and deer beyond counting, so that if any fell sick they
+      might have two good reasons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Between head&mdash;and stomach-aches they found no time to think of their
+      arms, but followed Jan Chinn obediently through the jungles, and with each
+      day's returning confidence men, women, and children stole away to their
+      villages as the little army passed by. They carried news that it was good
+      and right to be scratched with ghost-knives; that Jan Chinn was indeed
+      reincarnated as a god of free food and drink, and that of all nations the
+      Satpura Bhils stood first in his favour, if they would only refrain from
+      scratching. Henceforward that kindly demi-god would be connected in their
+      minds with great gorgings and the vaccine and lancets of a paternal
+      Government.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And to-morrow I go back to my home,&rdquo; said Jan Chinn to his faithful few,
+      whom neither spirits, overeating, nor swollen glands could conquer. It is
+      hard for children and savages to behave reverently at all times to the
+      idols of their make-belief; and they had frolicked excessively with Jan
+      Chinn. But the reference to his home cast a gloom on the people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the Sahib will not come again?&rdquo; said he who had been vaccinated
+      first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is to be seen,&rdquo; answered Chinn, warily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, but come as a white man&mdash;come as a young man whom we know and
+      love; for, as thou alone knowest, we are a weak people. If we again saw
+      thy&mdash;thy horse&mdash;&rdquo; They were picking up their courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no horse. I came on foot with Bukta, yonder. What is this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou knowest&mdash;the thing that thou hast chosen for a night-horse.&rdquo;
+       The little men squirmed in fear and awe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Night-horses? Bukta, what is this last tale of children?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bukta had been a silent leader in Chinn's presence since the night of his
+      desertion, and was grateful for a chance-flung question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They know, Sahib,&rdquo; he whispered. &ldquo;It is the Clouded Tiger. That that
+      comes from the place where thou didst once sleep. It is thy horse&mdash;as
+      it has been these three generations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My horse! That was a dream of the Bhils.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is no dream. Do dreams leave the tracks of broad pugs on earth? Why
+      make two faces before thy people? They know of the night-ridings, and they&mdash;and
+      they&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are afraid, and would have them cease.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bukta nodded. &ldquo;If thou hast no further need of him. He is thy horse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The thing leaves a trail, then?&rdquo; said Chinn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have seen it. It is like a village road under the tomb.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can ye find and follow it for me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By daylight&mdash;if one comes with us, and, above all, stands near by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will stand close, and we will see to it that Jan Chinn does not ride
+      any more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bhils shouted the last words again and again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Chinn's point of view the stalk was nothing more than an ordinary one&mdash;down-hill,
+      through split and crannied rocks, unsafe, perhaps, if a man did not keep
+      his wits by him, but no worse than twenty others he had undertaken. Yet
+      his men&mdash;they refused absolutely to beat, and would only trail&mdash;dripped
+      sweat at every move. They showed the marks of enormous pugs that ran,
+      always down-hill, to a few hundred feet below Jan Chinn's tomb, and
+      disappeared in a narrow-mouthed cave. It was an insolently open road, a
+      domestic highway, beaten without thought of concealment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The beggar might be paying rent and taxes,&rdquo; Chinn muttered ere he asked
+      whether his friend's taste ran to cattle or man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cattle,&rdquo; was the answer. &ldquo;Two heifers a week. We drive them for him at
+      the foot of the hill. It is his custom. If we did not, he might seek us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blackmail and piracy,&rdquo; said Chinn. &ldquo;I can't say I fancy going into the
+      cave after him. What's to be done?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bhils fell back as Chinn lodged himself behind a rock with his rifle
+      ready. Tigers, he knew, were shy beasts, but one who had been long
+      cattle-fed in this sumptuous style might prove overbold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He speaks!&rdquo; some one whispered from the rear. &ldquo;He knows, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, of all the infernal cheek!&rdquo; said Chinn. There was an angry growl
+      from the cave&mdash;a direct challenge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come out, then,&rdquo; Chinn shouted. &ldquo;Come out of that. Let's have a look at
+      you.&rdquo; The brute knew well enough that there was some connection between
+      brown nude Bhils and his weekly allowance; but the white helmet in the
+      sunlight annoyed him, and he did not approve of the voice that broke his
+      rest. Lazily as a gorged snake, he dragged himself out of the cave, and
+      stood yawning and blinking at the entrance. The sunlight fell upon his
+      flat right side, and Chinn wondered. Never had he seen a tiger marked
+      after this fashion. Except for his head, which was staringly barred, he
+      was dappled&mdash;not striped, but dappled like a child's rocking-horse in
+      rich shades of smoky black on red gold. That portion of his belly and
+      throat which should have been white was orange, and his tail and paws were
+      black.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked leisurely for some ten seconds, and then deliberately lowered
+      his head, his chin dropped and drawn in, staring intently at the man. The
+      effect of this was to throw forward the round arch of his skull, with two
+      broad bands across it, while below the bands glared the unwinking eyes; so
+      that, head on, as he stood, he showed something like a diabolically
+      scowling pantomime-mask. It was a piece of natural mesmerism that he had
+      practised many times on his quarry, and though Chinn was by no means a
+      terrified heifer, he stood for a while, held by the extraordinary oddity
+      of the attack. The head&mdash;the body seemed to have been packed away
+      behind it&mdash;the ferocious, skull-like head, crept nearer to the
+      switching of an angry tail-tip in the grass. Left and right the Bhils had
+      scattered to let John Chinn subdue his own horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My word!&rdquo; he thought. &ldquo;He's trying to frighten me!&rdquo; and fired between the
+      saucer-like eyes, leaping aside upon the shot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A big coughing mass, reeking of carrion, bounded past him up the hill, and
+      he followed discreetly. The tiger made no attempt to turn into the jungle;
+      he was hunting for sight and breath&mdash;nose up, mouth open, the
+      tremendous fore-legs scattering the gravel in spurts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scuppered!&rdquo; said John Chinn, watching the flight. &ldquo;Now if he was a
+      partridge he'd tower. Lungs must be full of blood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The brute had jerked himself over a boulder and fallen out of sight the
+      other side. John Chinn looked over with a ready barrel. But the red trail
+      led straight as an arrow even to his grandfather's tomb, and there, among
+      the smashed spirit-bottles and the fragments of the mud image, the life
+      left, with a flurry and a grunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If my worthy ancestor could see that,&rdquo; said John Chinn, &ldquo;he'd have been
+      proud of me. Eyes, lower jaw, and lungs. A very nice shot.&rdquo; He whistled
+      for Bukta as he drew the tape over the stiffening bulk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ten&mdash;six&mdash;eight&mdash;by Jove! It's nearly eleven&mdash;call it
+      eleven. Fore-arm, twenty-four&mdash;five&mdash;seven and a half. A short
+      tail, too: three feet one. But what a skin! Oh, Bukta! Bukta! The men with
+      the knives swiftly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he beyond question dead?&rdquo; said an awe-stricken voice behind a rock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was not the way I killed my first tiger,&rdquo; said Chinn. &ldquo;I did not
+      think that Bukta would run. I had no second gun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&mdash;it is the Clouded Tiger,&rdquo; said Bukta, un-heeding the taunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether all the Bhils, vaccinated and unvaccinated, of the Satpuras had
+      lain by to see the kill, Chinn could not say; but the whole hill's flank
+      rustled with little men, shouting, singing, and stamping. And yet, till he
+      had made the first cut in the splendid skin, not a man would take a knife;
+      and, when the shadows fell, they ran from the red-stained tomb, and no
+      persuasion would bring them back till dawn. So Chinn spent a second night
+      in the open, guarding the carcass from jackals, and thinking about his
+      ancestor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He returned to the lowlands to the triumphal chant of an escorting army
+      three hundred strong, the Mahratta vaccinator close at his elbow, and the
+      rudely dried skin a trophy before him. When that army suddenly and
+      noiselessly disappeared, as quail in high corn, he argued he was near
+      civilisation, and a turn in the road brought him upon the camp of a wing
+      of his own corps. He left the skin on a cart-tail for the world to see,
+      and sought the Colonel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're perfectly right,&rdquo; he explained earnestly. &ldquo;There isn't an ounce
+      of vice in 'em. They were only frightened. I've vaccinated the whole
+      boiling, and they like it awfully. What are&mdash;what are we doing here,
+      sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what I'm trying to find out,&rdquo; said the Colonel. &ldquo;I don't know yet
+      whether we're a piece of a brigade or a police force. However, I think
+      we'll call ourselves a police force. How did you manage to get a Bhil
+      vaccinated?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; said Chinn, &ldquo;I've been thinking it over, and, as far as I can
+      make out, I've got a sort of hereditary influence over 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I know, or I wouldn't have sent you; but what, exactly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's rather rummy. It seems, from what I can make out, that I'm my own
+      grandfather reincarnated, and I've been disturbing the peace of the
+      country by riding a pad-tiger of nights. If I hadn't done that, I don't
+      think they'd have objected to the vaccination; but the two together were
+      more than they could stand. And so, sir, I've vaccinated 'em, and shot my
+      tiger-horse as a sort o' proof of good faith. You never saw such a skin in
+      your life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Colonel tugged his moustache thought-fully. &ldquo;Now, how the deuce,&rdquo; said
+      he, &ldquo;am I to include that in my report?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, the official version of the Bhils' anti-vaccination stampede said
+      nothing about Lieutenant John Chinn, his godship. But Bukta knew, and the
+      corps knew, and every Bhil in the Satpura hills knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now Bukta is zealous that John Chinn shall swiftly be wedded and
+      impart his powers to a son; for if the Chinn succession fails, and the
+      little Bhils are left to their own imaginings, there will be fresh trouble
+      in the Satpuras.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      All supplies very bad and dear, and there are no facilities for even the
+      smallest repairs.&mdash;Sailing Directions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her nationality was British, but you will not find her house-flag in the
+      list of our mercantile marine. She was a nine-hundred-ton, iron,
+      schooner-rigged, screw cargo-boat, differing externally in no way from any
+      other tramp of the sea. But it is with steamers as it is with men. There
+      are those who will for a consideration sail extremely close to the wind;
+      and, in the present state of a fallen world, such people and such steamers
+      have their use. From the hour that the Aglaia first entered the Clyde&mdash;new,
+      shiny, and innocent, with a quart of cheap champagne trickling down her
+      cut-water&mdash;Fate and her owner, who was also her captain, decreed that
+      she should deal with embarrassed crowned heads, fleeing Presidents,
+      financiers of over-extended ability, women to whom change of air was
+      imperative, and the lesser law-breaking Powers. Her career led her
+      sometimes into the Admiralty Courts, where the sworn statements of her
+      skipper filled his brethren with envy. The mariner cannot tell or act a
+      lie in the face of the sea, or mis-lead a tempest; but, as lawyers have
+      discovered, he makes up for chances withheld when he returns to shore, an
+      affidavit in either hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Aglaia figured with distinction in the great Mackinaw salvage-case. It
+      was her first slip from virtue, and she learned how to change her name,
+      but not her heart, and to run across the sea. As the Guiding Light she was
+      very badly wanted in a South American port for the little matter of
+      entering harbour at full speed, colliding with a coal-hulk and the State's
+      only man-of-war, just as that man-of-war was going to coal. She put to sea
+      without explanations, though three forts fired at her for half an hour. As
+      the Julia M'Gregor she had been concerned in picking up from a raft
+      certain gentlemen who should have stayed in Noumea, but who preferred
+      making themselves vastly unpleasant to authority in quite another quarter
+      of the world; and as the Shah-in-Shah she had been overtaken on the high
+      seas, indecently full of munitions of war, by the cruiser of an agitated
+      Power at issue with its neighbour. That time she was very nearly sunk, and
+      her riddled hull gave eminent lawyers of two countries great profit. After
+      a season she reappeared as the Martin Hunt painted a dull slate-colour,
+      with pure saffron funnel, and boats of robin's-egg blue, engaging in the
+      Odessa trade till she was invited (and the invitation could not well be
+      disregarded) to keep away from Black Sea ports altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had ridden through many waves of depression. Freights might drop out
+      of sight, Seamen's Unions throw spanners and nuts at certificated masters,
+      or stevedores combine till cargo perished on the dock-head; but the boat
+      of many names came and went, busy, alert, and inconspicuous always. Her
+      skipper made no complaint of hard times, and port officers observed that
+      her crew signed and signed again with the regularity of Atlantic liner
+      boatswains. Her name she changed as occasion called; her well-paid crew
+      never; and a large percentage of the profits of her voyages was spent with
+      an open hand on her engine-room. She never troubled the underwriters, and
+      very seldom stopped to talk with a signal-station, for her business was
+      urgent and private.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But an end came to her tradings, and she perished in this manner. Deep
+      peace brooded over Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Australasia, and
+      Polynesia. The Powers dealt together more or less honestly; banks paid
+      their depositors to the hour; diamonds of price came safely to the hands
+      of their owners; Republics rested content with their Dictators; diplomats
+      found no one whose presence in the least incommoded them; monarchs lived
+      openly with their lawfully wedded wives. It was as though the whole earth
+      had put on its best Sunday bib and tucker; and business was very bad for
+      the Martin Hunt. The great, virtuous calm engulfed her, slate sides,
+      yellow funnel, and all, but cast up in another hemisphere the steam whaler
+      Haliotis, black and rusty, with a manure-coloured funnel, a litter of
+      dingy white boats, and an enormous stove, or furnace, for boiling blubber
+      on her forward well-deck. There could be no doubt that her trip was
+      successful, for she lay at several ports not too well known, and the smoke
+      of her trying-out insulted the beaches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anon she departed, at the speed of the average London four-wheeler, and
+      entered a semi-inland sea, warm, still, and blue, which is, perhaps, the
+      most strictly preserved water in the world. There she stayed for a certain
+      time, and the great stars of those mild skies beheld her playing
+      puss-in-the-corner among islands where whales are never found. All that
+      while she smelt abominably, and the smell, though fishy, was not
+      whalesome. One evening calamity descended upon her from the island of
+      Pygang-Watai, and she fled, while her crew jeered at a fat black-and-brown
+      gunboat puffing far behind. They knew to the last revolution the capacity
+      of every boat, on those seas, that they were anxious to avoid. A British
+      ship with a good conscience does not, as a rule, flee from the man-of-war
+      of a foreign Power, and it is also considered a breach of etiquette to
+      stop and search British ships at sea. These things the skipper of the
+      Haliotis did not pause to prove, but held on at an inspiriting eleven
+      knots an hour till nightfall. One thing only he overlooked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Power that kept an expensive steam-patrol moving up and down those
+      waters (they had dodged the two regular ships of the station with an ease
+      that bred contempt) had newly brought up a third and a fourteen-knot boat
+      with a clean bottom to help the work; and that was why the Haliotis,
+      driving hard from the east to the west, found herself at daylight in such
+      a position that she could not help seeing an arrangement of four flags, a
+      mile and a half behind, which read: &ldquo;Heave to, or take the consequences!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had her choice, and she took it. The end came when, presuming on her
+      lighter draught, she tried to draw away northward over a friendly shoal.
+      The shell that arrived by way of the Chief Engineer's cabin was some five
+      inches in diameter, with a practice, not a bursting, charge. It had been
+      intended to cross her bows, and that was why it knocked the framed
+      portrait of the Chief Engineer's wife&mdash;and she was a very pretty girl&mdash;on
+      to the floor, splintered his wash-hand stand, crossed the alleyway into
+      the engine-room, and striking on a grating, dropped directly in front of
+      the forward engine, where it burst, neatly fracturing both the bolts that
+      held the connecting-rod to the forward crank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What follows is worth consideration. The forward engine had no more work
+      to do. Its released piston-rod, therefore, drove up fiercely, with nothing
+      to check it, and started most of the nuts of the cylinder-cover. It came
+      down again, the full weight of the steam behind it, and the foot of the
+      disconnected connecting-rod, useless as the leg of a man with a sprained
+      ankle, flung out to the right and struck the starboard, or right-hand,
+      cast-iron supporting-column of the forward engine, cracking it clean
+      through about six inches above the base, and wedging the upper portion
+      outwards three inches towards the ship's side. There the connecting-rod
+      jammed. Meantime, the after-engine, being as yet unembarrassed, went on
+      with its work, and in so doing brought round at its next revolution the
+      crank of the forward engine, which smote the already jammed
+      connecting-rod, bending it and therewith the piston-rod cross-head&mdash;the
+      big cross-piece that slides up and down so smoothly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cross-head jammed sideways in the guides, and, in addition to putting
+      further pressure on the already broken starboard supporting-column,
+      cracked the port, or left-hand, supporting-column in two or three places.
+      There being nothing more that could be made to move, the engines brought
+      up, all standing, with a hiccup that seemed to lift the Haliotis a foot
+      out of the water; and the engine-room staff, opening every steam outlet
+      that they could find in the confusion, arrived on deck somewhat scalded,
+      but calm. There was a sound below of things happening&mdash;a rushing,
+      clicking, purring, grunting, rattling noise that did not last for more
+      than a minute. It was the machinery adjusting itself, on the spur of the
+      moment, to a hundred altered conditions. Mr. Wardrop, one foot on the
+      upper grating, inclined his ear sideways, and groaned. You cannot stop
+      engines working at twelve knots an hour in three seconds without
+      disorganising them. The Haliotis slid forward in a cloud of steam,
+      shrieking like a wounded horse. There was nothing more to do. The
+      five-inch shell with a reduced charge had settled the situation. And when
+      you are full, all three holds, of strictly preserved pearls; when you have
+      cleaned out the Tanna Bank, the Sea-Horse Bank, and four other banks from
+      one end to the other of the Amanala Sea&mdash;when you have ripped out the
+      very heart of a rich Government monopoly so that five years will not
+      repair your wrong-doings&mdash;you must smile and take what is in store.
+      But the skipper reflected, as a launch put out from the man-of-war, that
+      he had been bombarded on the high seas, with the British flag&mdash;several
+      of them&mdash;picturesquely disposed above him, and tried to find comfort
+      from the thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where,&rdquo; said the stolid naval lieutenant hoisting himself aboard, &ldquo;where
+      are those dam' pearls?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were there beyond evasion. No affidavit could do away with the
+      fearful smell of decayed oysters, the diving-dresses, and the
+      shell-littered hatches. They were there to the value of seventy thousand
+      pounds, more or less; and every pound poached.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man-of-war was annoyed; for she had used up many tons of coal, she had
+      strained her tubes, and, worse than all, her officers and crew had been
+      hurried. Every one on the Haliotis was arrested and rearrested several
+      times, as each officer came aboard; then they were told by what they
+      esteemed to be the equivalent of a midshipman that they were to consider
+      themselves prisoners, and finally were put under arrest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not the least good,&rdquo; said the skipper, suavely. &ldquo;You'd much better
+      send us a tow&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be still&mdash;you are arrest!&rdquo; was the reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where the devil do you expect we are going to escape to? We're helpless.
+      You've got to tow us into somewhere, and explain why you fired on us. Mr.
+      Wardrop, we're helpless, aren't we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ruined from end to end,&rdquo; said the man of machinery. &ldquo;If she rolls, the
+      forward cylinder will come down and go through her bottom. Both columns
+      are clean cut through. There's nothing to hold anything up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The council of war clanked off to see if Mr. Wardrop's words were true. He
+      warned them that it was as much as a man's life was worth to enter the
+      engine-room, and they contented themselves with a distant inspection
+      through the thinning steam. The Haliotis lifted to the long, easy swell,
+      and the starboard supporting-column ground a trifle, as a man grits his
+      teeth under the knife. The forward cylinder was depending on that unknown
+      force men call the pertinacity of materials, which now and then balances
+      that other heartbreaking power, the perversity of inanimate things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see!&rdquo; said Mr. Wardrop, hurrying them away. &ldquo;The engines aren't worth
+      their price as old iron.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We tow,&rdquo; was the answer. &ldquo;Afterwards we shall confiscate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man-of-war was short-handed, and did not see the necessity for putting
+      a prize-crew aboard the Haliotis. So she sent one sublieutenant, whom the
+      skipper kept very drunk, for he did not wish to make the tow too easy,
+      and, moreover, he had an inconspicuous little rope hanging from the stem
+      of his ship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they began to tow at an average speed of four knots an hour. The
+      Haliotis was very hard to move, and the gunnery-lieutenant, who had fired
+      the five-inch shell, had leisure to think upon consequences. Mr. Wardrop
+      was the busy man. He borrowed all the crew to shore up the cylinders with
+      spars and blocks from the bottom and sides of the ship. It was a day's
+      risky work; but anything was better than drowning at the end of a
+      tow-rope; and if the forward cylinder had fallen, it would have made its
+      way to the sea-bed, and taken the Haliotis after.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are we going to, and how long will they tow us?&rdquo; he asked of the
+      skipper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God knows! and this prize-lieutenant's drunk. What do you think you can
+      do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's just the bare chance,&rdquo; Mr. Wardrop whispered, though no one was
+      within hearing&mdash;&ldquo;there's just the bare chance o' repairin' her, if a
+      man knew how. They've twisted the very guts out of her, bringing her up
+      with that jerk; but I'm saying that, with time and patience, there's just
+      the chance o' making steam yet. We could do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The skipper's eye brightened. &ldquo;Do you mean,&rdquo; he began, &ldquo;that she is any
+      good?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no,&rdquo; said Mr. Wardrop. &ldquo;She'll need three thousand pounds in repairs,
+      at the lowest, if she's to take the sea again, an' that apart from any
+      injury to her structure. She's like a man fallen down five pair o' stairs.
+      We can't tell for months what has happened; but we know she'll never be
+      good again without a new inside. Ye should see the condenser-tubes an' the
+      steam connections to the donkey, for two things only. I'm not afraid of
+      them repairin' her. I'm afraid of them stealin' things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They've fired on us. They'll have to explain that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our reputation's not good enough to ask for explanations. Let's take what
+      we have and be thankful. Ye would not have consuls remembern' the Guidin'
+      Light, an' the Shah-in-Shah, an' the Aglaia, at this most alarmin' crisis.
+      We've been no better than pirates these ten years. Under Providence we're
+      no worse than thieves now. We've much to be thankful for&mdash;if we e'er
+      get back to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Make it your own way, then,&rdquo; said the skipper. &ldquo;If there's the least
+      chance&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll leave none,&rdquo; said Mr. Wardrop&mdash;&ldquo;none that they'll dare to take.
+      Keep her heavy on the tow, for we need time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The skipper never interfered with the affairs of the engine-room, and Mr.
+      Wardrop&mdash;an artist in his profession&mdash;turned to and composed a
+      work terrible and forbidding. His background was the dark-grained sides of
+      the engine-room; his material the metals of power and strength, helped out
+      with spars, baulks, and ropes. The man-of-war towed sullenly and
+      viciously. The Haliotis behind her hummed like a hive before swarming.
+      With extra and totally unneeded spars her crew blocked up the space round
+      the forward engine till it resembled a statue in its scaffolding, and the
+      butts of the shores interfered with every view that a dispassionate eye
+      might wish to take. And that the dispassionate mind might be swiftly
+      shaken out of its calm, the well-sunk bolts of the shores were wrapped
+      round untidily with loose ends of ropes, giving a studied effect of most
+      dangerous insecurity. Next, Mr. Wardrop took up a collection from the
+      after-engine, which, as you will remember, had not been affected in the
+      general wreck. The cylinder escape-valve he abolished with a
+      flogging-hammer. It is difficult in far-off ports to come by such valves,
+      unless, like Mr. Wardrop, you keep duplicates in store. At the same time
+      men took off the nuts of two of the great holding-down bolts that serve to
+      keep the engines in place on their solid bed. An engine violently arrested
+      in mid-career may easily jerk off the nut of a holding-down bolt, and this
+      accident looked very natural.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Passing along the tunnel, he removed several shaft coupling-bolts and&mdash;nuts,
+      scattering other and ancient pieces of iron underfoot. Cylinder-bolts he
+      cut off to the number of six from the after-engine cylinder, so that it
+      might match its neighbour, and stuffed the bilge&mdash;and feed-pumps with
+      cotton-waste. Then he made up a neat bundle of the various odds and ends
+      that he had gathered from the engines&mdash;little things like nuts and
+      valve-spindles, all carefully tallowed&mdash;and retired with them under
+      the floor of the engine-room, where he sighed, being fat, as he passed
+      from manhole to manhole of the double bottom, and in a fairly dry
+      submarine compartment hid them. Any engineer, particularly in an
+      unfriendly port, has a right to keep his spare stores where he chooses;
+      and the foot of one of the cylinder shores blocked all entrance into the
+      regular store-room, even if that had not been already closed with steel
+      wedges. In conclusion, he disconnected the after-engine, laid piston and
+      connecting-rod, carefully tallowed, where it would be most inconvenient to
+      the casual visitor, took out three of the eight collars of the
+      thrust-block, hid them where only he could find them again, filled the
+      boilers by hand, wedged the sliding doors of the coal-bunkers, and rested
+      from his labours. The engine-room was a cemetery, and it did not need the
+      contents of the ash-lift through the skylight to make it any worse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He invited the skipper to look at the completed work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saw ye ever such a forsaken wreck as that?&rdquo; said he, proudly. &ldquo;It almost
+      frights me to go under those shores. Now, what d' you think they'll do to
+      us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait till we see,&rdquo; said the skipper. &ldquo;It'll be bad enough when it comes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not wrong. The pleasant days of towing ended all too soon, though
+      the Haliotis trailed behind her a heavily weighted jib stayed out into the
+      shape of a pocket; and Mr. Wardrop was no longer an artist of imagination,
+      but one of seven-and-twenty prisoners in a prison full of insects. The
+      man-of-war had towed them to the nearest port, not to the headquarters of
+      the colony, and when Mr. Wardrop saw the dismal little harbour, with its
+      ragged line of Chinese junks, its one crazy tug, and the boat-building
+      shed that, under the charge of a philosophical Malay, represented a
+      dockyard, he sighed and shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did well,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;This is the habitation o' wreckers an' thieves.
+      We're at the uttermost ends of the earth. Think you they'll ever know in
+      England?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doesn't look like it,&rdquo; said the skipper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were marched ashore with what they stood up in, under a generous
+      escort, and were judged according to the customs of the country, which,
+      though excellent, are a little out of date. There were the pearls; there
+      were the poachers; and there sat a small but hot Governor. He consulted
+      for a while, and then things began to move with speed, for he did not wish
+      to keep a hungry crew at large on the beach, and the man-of-war had gone
+      up the coast. With a wave of his hand&mdash;a stroke of the pen was not
+      necessary&mdash;he consigned them to the black gang-tana, the
+      back-country, and the hand of the Law removed them from his sight and the
+      knowledge of men. They were marched into the palms, and the back-country
+      swallowed them up&mdash;all the crew of the Haliotis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deep peace continued to brood over Europe, Asia, Africa, America,
+      Australasia, and Polynesia.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      It was the firing that did it. They should have kept their counsel; but
+      when a few thousand foreigners are bursting with joy over the fact that a
+      ship under the British flag has been fired at on the high seas, news
+      travels quickly; and when it came out that the pearl-stealing crew had not
+      been allowed access to their consul (there was no consul within a few
+      hundred miles of that lonely port) even the friendliest of Powers has a
+      right to ask questions. The great heart of the British public was beating
+      furiously on account of the performance of a notorious race-horse, and had
+      not a throb to waste on distant accidents; but somewhere deep in the hull
+      of the ship of State there is machinery which more or less accurately
+      takes charge of foreign affairs. That machinery began to revolve, and who
+      so shocked and surprised as the Power that had captured the Haliotis? It
+      explained that colonial governors and far-away men-of-war were difficult
+      to control, and promised that it would most certainly make an example both
+      of the Governor and the vessel. As for the crew reported to be pressed
+      into military service in tropical climes, it would produce them as soon as
+      possible, and it would apologise, if necessary. Now, no apologies were
+      needed. When one nation apologises to another, millions of amateurs who
+      have no earthly concern with the difficulty hurl themselves into the
+      strife and embarrass the trained specialist. It was requested that the
+      crew be found, if they were still alive&mdash;they had been eight months
+      beyond knowledge&mdash;and it was promised that all would be forgotten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little Governor of the little port was pleased with himself.
+      Seven-and-twenty white men made a very compact force to throw away on a
+      war that had neither beginning nor end&mdash;a jungle and stockade fight
+      that flickered and smouldered through the wet hot years in the hills a
+      hundred miles away, and was the heritage of every wearied official. He
+      had, he thought, deserved well of his country; and if only some one would
+      buy the unhappy Haliotis, moored in the harbour below his verandah, his
+      cup would be full. He looked at the neatly silvered lamps that he had
+      taken from her cabins, and thought of much that might be turned to
+      account. But his countrymen in that moist climate had no spirit. They
+      would peep into the silent engine-room, and shake their heads. Even the
+      men-of-war would not tow her further up the coast, where the Governor
+      believed that she could be repaired. She was a bad bargain; but her cabin
+      carpets were undeniably beautiful, and his wife approved of her mirrors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three hours later cables were bursting round him like shells, for, though
+      he knew it not, he was being offered as a sacrifice by the nether to the
+      upper millstone, and his superiors had no regard for his feelings. He had,
+      said the cables, grossly exceeded his power, and failed to report on
+      events. He would, therefore&mdash;at this he cast himself back in his
+      hammock&mdash;produce the crew of the Haliotis. He would send for them,
+      and, if that failed, he would put his dignity on a pony and fetch them
+      himself. He had no conceivable right to make pearl-poachers serve in any
+      war. He would be held responsible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning the cables wished to know whether he had found the crew of
+      the Haliotis. They were to be found, freed and fed&mdash;he was to feed
+      them&mdash;till such time as they could be sent to the nearest English
+      port in a man-of-war. If you abuse a man long enough in great words
+      flashed over the sea-beds, things happen. The Governor sent inland swiftly
+      for his prisoners, who were also soldiers; and never was a militia
+      regiment more anxious to reduce its strength. No power short of death
+      could make these mad men wear the uniform of their service. They would not
+      fight, except with their fellows, and it was for that reason the regiment
+      had not gone to war, but stayed in a stockade, reasoning with the new
+      troops. The autumn campaign had been a fiasco, but here were the
+      Englishmen. All the regiment marched back to guard them, and the hairy
+      enemy, armed with blow-pipes, rejoiced in the forest. Five of the crew had
+      died, but there lined up on the Governor's verandah two-and-twenty men
+      marked about the legs with the scars of leech-bites. A few of them wore
+      fringes that had once been trousers; the others used loin-cloths of gay
+      patterns; and they existed beautifully but simply in the Governor's
+      verandah, and when he came out they sang at him. When you have lost
+      seventy thousand pounds' worth of pearls, your pay, your ship, and all
+      your clothes, and have lived in bondage for five months beyond the
+      faintest pretences of civilisation, you know what true independence means,
+      for you become the happiest of created things&mdash;natural man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor told the crew that they were evil, and they asked for food.
+      When he saw how they ate, and when he remembered that none of the pearl
+      patrol-boats were expected for two months, he sighed. But the crew of the
+      Haliotis lay down in the verandah, and said that they were pensioners of
+      the Governor's bounty. A grey-bearded man, fat and bald-headed, his one
+      garment a green-and-yellow loin-cloth, saw the Haliotis in the harbour,
+      and bellowed for joy. The men crowded to the verandah-rail, kicking aside
+      the long cane chairs. They pointed, gesticulated, and argued freely,
+      without shame. The militia regiment sat down in the Governor's garden. The
+      Governor retired to his hammock&mdash;it was as easy to be killed lying as
+      standing&mdash;and his women squeaked from the shuttered rooms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She sold?&rdquo; said the grey-bearded man, pointing to the Haliotis. He was
+      Mr. Wardrop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No good,&rdquo; said the Governor, shaking his head. &ldquo;No one come buy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's taken my lamps, though,&rdquo; said the skipper. He wore one leg of a pair
+      of trousers, and his eye wandered along the verandah. The Governor
+      quailed. There were cuddy camp-stools and the skipper's writing-table in
+      plain sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They've cleaned her out, o' course,&rdquo; said Mr. Wardrop. &ldquo;They would. We'll
+      go aboard and take an inventory. See!&rdquo; He waved his hands over the
+      harbour. &ldquo;We&mdash;live&mdash;there&mdash;now. Sorry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor smiled a smile of relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's glad of that,&rdquo; said one of the crew, reflectively. &ldquo;I shouldn't
+      wonder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They flocked down to the harbour-front, the militia regiment clattering
+      behind, and embarked themselves in what they found&mdash;it happened to be
+      the Governor's boat. Then they disappeared over the bulwarks of the
+      Haliotis, and the Governor prayed that they might find occupation inside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Wardrop's first bound took him to the engine-room; and when the others
+      were patting the well-remembered decks, they heard him giving God thanks
+      that things were as he had left them. The wrecked engines stood over his
+      head untouched; no inexpert hand had meddled with his shores; the steel
+      wedges of the store-room were rusted home; and, best of all, the hundred
+      and sixty tons of good Australian coal in the bunkers had not diminished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand it,&rdquo; said Mr. Wardrop. &ldquo;Any Malay knows the use o'
+      copper. They ought to have cut away the pipes. And with Chinese junks
+      coming here, too. It's a special interposition o' Providence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think so,&rdquo; said the skipper, from above. &ldquo;There's only been one thief
+      here, and he's cleaned her out of all my things, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the skipper spoke less than the truth, for under the planking of his
+      cabin, only to be reached by a chisel, lay a little money which never drew
+      any interest&mdash;his sheet-anchor to windward. It was all in clean
+      sovereigns that pass current the world over, and might have amounted to
+      more than a hundred pounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's left me alone. Let's thank God,&rdquo; repeated Mr. Wardrop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's taken everything else; look!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Haliotis, except as to her engine-room, had been systematically and
+      scientifically gutted from one end to the other, and there was strong
+      evidence that an unclean guard had camped in the skipper's cabin to
+      regulate that plunder. She lacked glass, plate, crockery, cutlery,
+      mattresses, cuddy carpets and chairs, all boats, and her copper
+      ventilators. These things had been removed, with her sails and as much of
+      the wire rigging as would not imperil the safety of the masts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He must have sold those,&rdquo; said the skipper. &ldquo;The other things are in his
+      house, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Every fitting that could be pried or screwed out was gone. Port,
+      starboard, and masthead lights; teak gratings; sliding sashes of the
+      deckhouse; the captain's chest of drawers, with charts and chart-table;
+      photographs, brackets, and looking-glasses; cabin doors; rubber cuddy
+      mats; hatch-irons; half the funnel-stays; cork fenders; carpenter's
+      grindstone and tool-chest; holystones, swabs, squeegees; all cabin and
+      pantry lamps; galley-fittings en bloc; flags and flag-locker; clocks,
+      chronometers; the forward compass and the ship's bell and belfry, were
+      among the missing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were great scarred marks on the deck-planking over which the
+      cargo-derricks had been hauled. One must have fallen by the way, for the
+      bulwark-rails were smashed and bent and the side-plates bruised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the Governor,&rdquo; said the skipper &ldquo;He's been selling her on the
+      instalment plan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's go up with spanners and shovels, and kill 'em all,&rdquo; shouted the
+      crew. &ldquo;Let's drown him, and keep the woman!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then we'll be shot by that black-and-tan regiment&mdash;our regiment.
+      What's the trouble ashore? They've camped our regiment on the beach.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're cut off; that's all. Go and see what they want,&rdquo; said Mr. Wardrop.
+      &ldquo;You've the trousers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In his simple way the Governor was a strategist. He did not desire that
+      the crew of the Haliotis should come ashore again, either singly or in
+      detachments, and he proposed to turn their steamer into a convict-hulk.
+      They would wait&mdash;he explained this from the quay to the skipper in
+      the barge&mdash;and they would continue to wait till the man-of-war came
+      along, exactly where they were. If one of them set foot ashore, the entire
+      regiment would open fire, and he would not scruple to use the two cannon
+      of the town. Meantime food would be sent daily in a boat under an armed
+      escort. The skipper, bare to the waist, and rowing, could only grind his
+      teeth; and the Governor improved the occasion, and revenged himself for
+      the bitter words in the cables, by saying what he thought of the morals
+      and manners of the crew. The barge returned to the Haliotis in silence,
+      and the skipper climbed aboard, white on the cheek-bones and blue about
+      the nostrils.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew it,&rdquo; said Mr. Wardrop; &ldquo;and they won't give us good food, either.
+      We shall have bananas morning, noon, and night, an' a man can't work on
+      fruit. We know that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the skipper cursed Mr. Wardrop for importing frivolous side-issues
+      into the conversation; and the crew cursed one another, and the Haliotis,
+      the voyage, and all that they knew or could bring to mind. They sat down
+      in silence on the empty decks, and their eyes burned in their heads. The
+      green harbour water chuckled at them overside. They looked at the
+      palm-fringed hills inland, at the white houses above the harbour road, at
+      the single tier of native craft by the quay, at the stolid soldiery
+      sitting round the two cannon, and, last of all, at the blue bar of the
+      horizon. Mr. Wardrop was buried in thought, and scratched imaginary lines
+      with his untrimmed finger-nails on the planking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I make no promise,&rdquo; he said, at last, &ldquo;for I can't say what may or may
+      not have happened to them. But here's the ship, and here's us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little scornful laughter at this, and Mr. Wardrop knitted his
+      brows. He recalled that in the days when he wore trousers he had been
+      Chief Engineer of the Haliotis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Harland, Mackesy, Noble, Hay, Naughton, Fink, O'Hara, Trumbull.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, sir!&rdquo; The instinct of obedience waked to answer the roll-call of
+      the engine-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Below!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They rose and went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Captain, I'll trouble you for the rest of the men as I want them. We'll
+      get my stores out, and clear away the shores we don't need, and then we'll
+      patch her up. My men will remember that they're in the Haliotis,&mdash;under
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went into the engine-room, and the others stared. They were used to the
+      accidents of the sea, but this was beyond their experience. None who had
+      seen the engine-room believed that anything short of new engines from end
+      to end could stir the Haliotis from her moorings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The engine-room stores were unearthed, and Mr. Wardrop's face, red with
+      the filth of the bilges and the exertion of travelling on his stomach, lit
+      with joy. The spare gear of the Haliotis had been unusually complete, and
+      two-and-twenty men, armed with screw-jacks, differential blocks, tackle,
+      vices, and a forge or so, can look Kismet between the eyes without
+      winking. The crew were ordered to replace the holding-down and
+      shaft-bearing bolts, and return the collars of the thrust-block. When they
+      had finished, Mr. Wardrop delivered a lecture on repairing compound
+      engines without the aid of the shops, and the men sat about on the cold
+      machinery. The cross-head jammed in the guides leered at them drunkenly,
+      but offered no help. They ran their fingers hopelessly into the cracks of
+      the starboard supporting-column, and picked at the ends of the ropes round
+      the shores, while Mr. Wardrop's voice rose and fell echoing, till the
+      quick tropic night closed down over the engine-room skylight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning the work of reconstruction began. It has been explained that
+      the foot of the connecting-rod was forced against the foot of the
+      starboard supporting-column, which it had cracked through and driven
+      outward towards the ship's skin. To all appearance the job was more than
+      hopeless, for rod and column seemed to have been welded into one. But
+      herein Providence smiled on them for one moment to hearten them through
+      the weary weeks ahead. The second engineer&mdash;more reckless than
+      resourceful&mdash;struck at random with a cold chisel into the cast-iron
+      of the column, and a greasy, grey flake of metal flew from under the
+      imprisoned foot of the connecting-rod, while the rod itself fell away
+      slowly, and brought up with a thunderous clang somewhere in the dark of
+      the crank-pit. The guides-plates above were still jammed fast in the
+      guides, but the first blow had been struck. They spent the rest of the day
+      grooming the donkey-engine, which stood immediately forward of the
+      engine-room hatch. Its tarpaulin, of course, had been stolen, and eight
+      warm months had not improved the working parts. Further, the last dying
+      hiccup of the Haliotis seemed&mdash;or it might have been the Malay from
+      the boat-house&mdash;to have lifted the thing bodily on its bolts, and set
+      it down inaccurately as regarded its steam connections.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If we only had one single cargo-derrick!&rdquo; Mr. Wardrop sighed. &ldquo;We can
+      take the cylinder-cover off by hand, if we sweat; but to get the rod out
+      o' the piston's not possible unless we use steam. Well, there'll be steam
+      the morn, if there's nothing else. She'll fizzle!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning men from the shore saw the Haliotis through a cloud, for it
+      was as though the deck smoked. Her crew were chasing steam through the
+      shaken and leaky pipes to its work in the forward donkey-engine; and where
+      oakum failed to plug a crack, they stripped off their loin-cloths for
+      lapping, and swore, half-boiled and mother-naked. The donkey-engine worked&mdash;at
+      a price&mdash;the price of constant attention and furious stoking&mdash;worked
+      long enough to allow a wire-rope (it was made up of a funnel and a
+      foremast-stay) to be led into the engine-room and made fast on the
+      cylinder-cover of the forward engine. That rose easily enough, and was
+      hauled through the skylight and on to the deck, many hands assisting the
+      doubtful steam. Then came the tug of war, for it was necessary to get to
+      the piston and the jammed piston-rod. They removed two of the piston
+      junk-ring studs, screwed in two strong iron eye-bolts by way of handles,
+      doubled the wire-rope, and set half a dozen men to smite with an
+      extemporised battering-ram at the end of the piston-rod, where it peered
+      through the piston, while the donkey-engine hauled upwards on the piston
+      itself. After four hours of this furious work, the piston-rod suddenly
+      slipped, and the piston rose with a jerk, knocking one or two men over
+      into the engine-room. But when Mr. Wardrop declared that the piston had
+      not split, they cheered, and thought nothing of their wounds; and the
+      donkey-engine was hastily stopped; its boiler was nothing to tamper with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And day by day their supplies reached them by boat. The skipper humbled
+      himself once more before the Governor, and as a concession had leave to
+      get drinking-water from the Malay boat-builder on the quay. It was not
+      good drinking-water, but the Malay was anxious to supply anything in his
+      power, if he were paid for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now when the jaws of the forward engine stood, as it were, stripped and
+      empty, they began to wedge up the shores of the cylinder itself. That work
+      alone filled the better part of three days&mdash;warm and sticky days,
+      when the hands slipped and sweat ran into the eyes. When the last wedge
+      was hammered home there was no longer an ounce of weight on the
+      supporting-columns; and Mr. Wardrop rummaged the ship for boiler-plate
+      three-quarters of an inch thick, where he could find it. There was not
+      much available, but what there was was more than beaten gold to him. In
+      one desperate forenoon the entire crew, naked and lean, haled back, more
+      or less into place, the starboard supporting-column, which, as you
+      remember, was cracked clean through. Mr. Wardrop found them asleep where
+      they had finished the work, and gave them a day's rest, smiling upon them
+      as a father while he drew chalk-marks about the cracks. They woke to new
+      and more trying labour; for over each one of those cracks a plate of
+      three-quarter-inch boiler-iron was to be worked hot, the rivet-holes being
+      drilled by hand. All that time they were fed on fruits, chiefly bananas,
+      with some sago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those were the days when men swooned over the ratchet-drill and the
+      hand-forge, and where they fell they had leave to lie unless their bodies
+      were in the way of their fellows' feet. And so, patch upon patch, and a
+      patch over all, the starboard supporting-column was clouted; but when they
+      thought all was secure, Mr. Wardrop decreed that the noble patchwork would
+      never support working engines; at the best, it could only hold the
+      guide-bars approximately true, he deadweight of the cylinders must be
+      borne by vertical struts; and, therefore, a gang would repair to the bows,
+      and take out, with files, the big bow-anchor davits, each of which was
+      some three inches in diameter. They threw hot coals at Wardrop, and
+      threatened to kill him, those who did not weep (they were ready to weep on
+      the least provocation); but he hit them with iron bars heated at the end,
+      and they limped forward, and the davits came with them when they returned.
+      They slept sixteen hours on the strength of it, and in three days two
+      struts were in place, bolted from the foot of the starboard
+      supporting-column to the under side of the cylinder. There remained now
+      the port, or condenser-column, which, though not so badly cracked as its
+      fellow, had also been strengthened in four places with boiler-plate
+      patches, but needed struts. They took away the main stanchions of the
+      bridge for that work, and, crazy with toil, did not see till all was in
+      place that the rounded bars of iron must be flattened from top to bottom
+      to allow the air-pump levers to clear them. It was Wardrop's oversight,
+      and he wept bitterly before the men as he gave the order to unbolt the
+      struts and flatten them with hammer and the flame. Now the broken engine
+      was underpinned firmly, and they took away the wooden shores from under
+      the cylinders, and gave them to the robbed bridge, thanking God for even
+      half a day's work on gentle, kindly wood instead of the iron that had
+      entered into their souls. Eight months in the back-country among the
+      leeches, at a temperature of 84 degrees moist, is very bad for the nerves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had kept the hardest work to the last, as boys save Latin prose, and,
+      worn though they were, Mr. Wardrop did not dare to give them rest. The
+      piston-rod and connecting-rod were to be straightened, and this was a job
+      for a regular dockyard with every appliance. They fell to it, cheered by a
+      little chalk showing of work done and time consumed which Mr. Wardrop
+      wrote up on the engine-room bulkhead. Fifteen days had gone&mdash;fifteen
+      days of killing labour&mdash;and there was hope before them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is curious that no man knows how the rods were straightened. The crew
+      of the Haliotis remember that week very dimly, as a fever patient
+      remembers the delirium of a long night. There were fires everywhere, they
+      say; the whole ship was one consuming furnace, and the hammers were never
+      still. Now, there could not have been more than one fire at the most, for
+      Mr. Wardrop distinctly recalls that no straightening was done except under
+      his own eye. They remember, too, that for many years voices gave orders
+      which they obeyed with their bodies, but their minds were abroad on all
+      the seas. It seems to them that they stood through days and nights slowly
+      sliding a bar backwards and forwards through a white glow that was part of
+      the ship. They remember an intolerable noise in their burning heads from
+      the walls of the stoke-hole, and they remember being savagely beaten by
+      men whose eyes seemed asleep. When their shift was over they would draw
+      straight lines in the air, anxiously and repeatedly, and would question
+      one another in their sleep, crying, &ldquo;Is she straight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At last&mdash;they do not remember whether this was by day or by night&mdash;Mr.
+      Wardrop began to dance clumsily, and wept the while; and they too danced
+      and wept, and went to sleep twitching all over; and when they woke, men
+      said that the rods were straightened, and no one did any work for two
+      days, but lay on the decks and ate fruit. Mr. Wardrop would go below from
+      time to time, and pat the two rods where they lay, and they heard him
+      singing hymns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then his trouble of mind went from him, and at the end of the third day's
+      idleness he made a drawing in chalk upon the deck, with letters of the
+      alphabet at the angles. He pointed out that, though the piston-rod was
+      more or less straight, the piston-rod cross-head&mdash;the thing that had
+      been jammed sideways in the guides&mdash;had been badly strained, and had
+      cracked the lower end of the piston-rod. He was going to forge and shrink
+      a wrought-iron collar on the neck of the piston-rod where it joined the
+      cross-head, and from the collar he would bolt a Y-shaped piece of iron
+      whose lower arms should be bolted into the cross-head. If anything more
+      were needed, they could use up the last of the boiler-plate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the forges were lit again, and men burned their bodies, but hardly felt
+      the pain. The finished connection was not beautiful, but it seemed strong
+      enough&mdash;at least, as strong as the rest of the machinery; and with
+      that job their labours came to an end. All that remained was to connect up
+      the engines, and to get food and water. The skipper and four men dealt
+      with the Malay boat-builder by night chiefly; it was no time to haggle
+      over the price of sago and dried fish. The others stayed aboard and
+      replaced piston, piston-rod, cylinder-cover, cross-head, and bolts, with
+      the aid of the faithful donkey-engine. The cylinder-cover was hardly
+      steam-proof, and the eye of science might have seen in the connecting-rod
+      a flexure something like that of a Christmas-tree candle which has melted
+      and been straightened by hand over a stove, but, as Mr. Wardrop said, &ldquo;She
+      didn't hit anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as the last bolt was in place, men tumbled over one another in
+      their anxiety to get to the hand starting-gear, the wheel and worm, by
+      which some engines can be moved when there is no steam aboard. They nearly
+      wrenched off the wheel, but it was evident to the blindest eye that the
+      engines stirred. They did not revolve in their orbits with any enthusiasm,
+      as good machines should; indeed, they groaned not a little; but they moved
+      over and came to rest in a way which proved that they still recognised
+      man's hand. Then Mr. Wardrop sent his slaves into the darker bowels of the
+      engine-room and the stoke-hole, and followed them with a flare-lamp. The
+      boilers were sound, but would take no harm from a little scaling and
+      cleaning. Mr. Wardrop would not have any one over-zealous, for he feared
+      what the next stroke of the tool might show. &ldquo;The less we know about her
+      now,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;the better for us all, I'm thinkin'. Ye'll understand me
+      when I say that this is in no sense regular engineerin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As his raiment, when he spoke, was his grey beard and uncut hair, they
+      believed him. They did not ask too much of what they met, but polished and
+      tallowed and scraped it to a false brilliancy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A lick of paint would make me easier in my mind,&rdquo; said Mr. Wardrop,
+      plaintively. &ldquo;I know half the condenser-tubes are started; and the
+      propeller-shaftin''s God knows how far out of the true, and we'll need a
+      new air-pump, an' the main-steam leaks like a sieve, and there's worse
+      each way I look; but&mdash;paint's like clothes to a man, 'an ours is near
+      all gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The skipper unearthed some stale ropy paint of the loathsome green that
+      they used for the galleys of sailing-ships, and Mr. Wardrop spread it
+      abroad lavishly to give the engines self-respect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His own was returning day by day, for he wore his loin-cloth continuously;
+      but the crew, having worked under orders, did not feel as he did. The
+      completed work satisfied Mr. Wardrop. He would at the last have made shift
+      to run to Singapore, and gone home without vengeance taken to show his
+      engines to his brethren in the craft; but the others and the captain
+      forbade him. They had not yet recovered their self-respect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be safer to make what ye might call a trial trip, but beggars
+      mustn't be choosers; an if the engines will go over to the hand-gear, the
+      probability&mdash;I'm only saying it's a probability&mdash;the chance is
+      that they'll hold up when we put steam on her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long will you take to get steam?&rdquo; said the skipper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God knows! Four hours&mdash;a day&mdash;half a week. If I can raise sixty
+      pound I'll not complain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be sure of her first; we can't afford to go out half a mile, and break
+      down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My soul and body, man, we're one continuous breakdown, fore an' aft! We
+      might fetch Singapore, though.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll break down at Pygang-Watai, where we can do good,&rdquo; was the answer,
+      in a voice that did not allow argument. &ldquo;She's my boat, and&mdash;I've had
+      eight months to think in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No man saw the Haliotis depart, though many heard her. She left at two in
+      the morning, having cut her moorings, and it was none of her crew's
+      pleasure that the engines should strike up a thundering half-seas-over
+      chanty that echoed among the hills. Mr. Wardrop wiped away a tear as he
+      listened to the new song.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's gibberin'&mdash;she's just gibberin',&rdquo; he whimpered. &ldquo;Yon's the
+      voice of a maniac.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And if engines have any soul, as their masters believe, he was quite
+      right. There were outcries and clamours, sobs and bursts of chattering
+      laughter, silences where the trained ear yearned for the clear note, and
+      torturing reduplications where there should have been one deep voice. Down
+      the screw-shaft ran murmurs and warnings, while a heart-diseased flutter
+      without told that the propeller needed re-keying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How does she make it?&rdquo; said the skipper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She moves, but&mdash;but she's breakin' my heart. The sooner we're at
+      Pygang-Watai, the better. She's mad, and we're waking the town.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she at all near safe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do I care how safe she is? She's mad. Hear that, now! To be sure,
+      nothing's hittin' anything, and the bearin's are fairly cool, but&mdash;can
+      ye not hear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she goes,&rdquo; said the skipper, &ldquo;I don't care a curse. And she's my boat,
+      too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went, trailing a fathom of weed behind her. From a slow two knots an
+      hour she crawled up to a triumphant four. Anything beyond that made the
+      struts quiver dangerously, and filled the engine-room with steam. Morning
+      showed her out of sight of land, and there was a visible ripple under her
+      bows; but she complained bitterly in her bowels, and, as though the noise
+      had called it, there shot along across the purple sea a swift, dark proa,
+      hawk-like and curious, which presently ranged alongside and wished to know
+      if the Haliotis were helpless. Ships, even the steamers of the white men,
+      had been known to break down in those waters, and the honest Malay and
+      Javanese traders would sometimes aid them in their own peculiar way. But
+      this ship was not full of lady passengers and well-dressed officers. Men,
+      white, naked and savage, swarmed down her sides&mdash;some with red-hot
+      iron bars, and others with large hammers&mdash;threw themselves upon those
+      innocent inquiring strangers, and, before any man could say what had
+      happened, were in full possession of the proa, while the lawful owners
+      bobbed in the water overside. Half an hour later the proa's cargo of sago
+      and trepang, as well as a doubtful-minded compass, was in the Haliotis.
+      The two huge triangular mat sails, with their seventy-foot yards and
+      booms, had followed the cargo, and were being fitted to the stripped masts
+      of the steamer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They rose, they swelled, they filled, and the empty steamer visibly laid
+      over as the wind took them. They gave her nearly three knots an hour, and
+      what better could men ask? But if she had been forlorn before, this new
+      purchase made her horrible to see. Imagine a respectable charwoman in the
+      tights of a ballet-dancer rolling drunk along the streets, and you will
+      come to some faint notion of the appearance of that nine-hundred-ton,
+      well-decked, once schooner-rigged cargo-boat as she staggered under her
+      new help, shouting and raving across the deep. With steam and sail that
+      marvellous voyage continued; and the bright-eyed crew looked over the
+      rail, desolate, unkempt, unshorn, shamelessly clothed beyond the
+      decencies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of the third week she sighted the island of Pygang-Watai, whose
+      harbour is the turning-point of a pearl sea-patrol. Here the gun-boats
+      stay for a week ere they retrace their line. There is no village at
+      Pygang-Watai; only a stream of water, some palms, and a harbour safe to
+      rest in till the first violence of the southeast monsoon has blown itself
+      out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They opened up the low coral beach, with its mound of whitewashed coal
+      ready for supply, the deserted huts for the sailors, and the flagless
+      flagstaff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day there was no Haliotis&mdash;only a little proa rocking in the
+      warm rain at the mouth of the harbour, whose crew watched with hungry eyes
+      the smoke of a gunboat on the horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Months afterwards there were a few lines in an English newspaper to the
+      effect that some gunboat of some foreign Power had broken her back at the
+      mouth of some far-away harbour by running at full speed into a sunken
+      wreck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART1" id="link2H_PART1">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART I
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                  I have done one braver thing
+                   Than all the worthies did;
+                  And yet a braver thence doth spring,
+                   Which is to keep that hid.
+
+                                       The Undertaking.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it officially declared yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They've gone as far as to admit 'extreme local scarcity,' and they've
+      started relief-works in one or two districts, the paper says.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That means it will be declared as soon as they can make sure of the men
+      and the rolling-stock. Shouldn't wonder if it were as bad as the '78
+      Famine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Can't be,&rdquo; said Scott, turning a little in the long cane chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've had fifteen-anna crops in the north, and Bombay and Bengal report
+      more than they know what to do with. They'll be able to check it before it
+      gets out of hand. It will only be local.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Martyn picked the &ldquo;Pioneer&rdquo; from the table, read through the telegrams
+      once more, and put up his feet on the chair-rests. It was a hot, dark,
+      breathless evening, heavy with the smell of the newly watered Mall. The
+      flowers in the Club gardens were dead and black on their stalks, the
+      little lotus-pond was a circle of caked mud, and the tamarisk-trees were
+      white with the dust of weeks. Most of the men were at the band-stand in
+      the public gardens&mdash;from the Club verandah you could hear the native
+      Police band hammering stale waltzes&mdash;or on the polo-ground, or in the
+      high-walled fives-court, hotter than a Dutch oven. Half a dozen grooms,
+      squatted at the heads of their ponies, waited their masters' return. From
+      time to time a man would ride at a foot-pace into the Club compound, and
+      listlessly loaf over to the whitewashed barracks beside the main building.
+      These were supposed to be chambers. Men lived in them, meeting the same
+      white faces night after night at dinner, and drawing out their office-work
+      till the latest possible hour, that they might escape that doleful
+      company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you going to do?&rdquo; said Martyn, with a yawn. &ldquo;Let's have a swim
+      before dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Water's hot. I was at the bath to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Play you game o' billiards&mdash;fifty up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a hundred and five in the hall now. Sit still and don't be so
+      abominably energetic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A grunting camel swung up to the porch, his badged and belted rider
+      fumbling a leather pouch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kubber-kargaz-ki-yektraaa,&rdquo; the man whined, handing down the newspaper
+      extra&mdash;a slip printed on one side only, and damp from the press. It
+      was pinned up on the green-baize board, between notices of ponies for sale
+      and fox-terriers missing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martyn rose lazily, read it, and whistled. &ldquo;It's declared!&rdquo; he cried.
+      &ldquo;One, two, three&mdash;eight districts go under the operations of the
+      Famine Code ek dum. They've put Jimmy Hawkins in charge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good business!&rdquo; said Scott, with the first sign of interest he had shown.
+      &ldquo;When in doubt hire a Punjabi. I worked under Jimmy when I first came out
+      and he belonged to the Punjab. He has more bundobust than most men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jimmy's a Jubilee Knight now,&rdquo; said Martyn. &ldquo;He's a good chap, even
+      though he is a thrice-born civilian and went to the Benighted Presidency.
+      What unholy names these Madras districts rejoice in&mdash;all ungas or
+      rungas or pillays or polliums!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A dog-cart drove up in the dusk, and a man entered, mopping his head. He
+      was editor of the one daily paper at the capital of a Province of
+      twenty-five million natives and a few hundred white men: as his staff was
+      limited to himself and one assistant, his office-hours ran variously from
+      ten to twenty a day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hi, Raines; you're supposed to know everything,&rdquo; said Martyn, stopping
+      him. &ldquo;How's this Madras 'scarcity' going to turn out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one knows as yet. There's a message as long as your arm coming in on
+      the telephone. I've left my cub to fill it out. Madras has owned she can't
+      manage it alone, and Jimmy seems to have a free hand in getting all the
+      men he needs. Arbuthnot's warned to hold himself in readiness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Badger' Arbuthnot?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Peshawur chap. Yes: and the Pi wires that Ellis and Clay have been
+      moved from the Northwest already, and they've taken half a dozen Bombay
+      men, too. It's pukka famine, by the looks of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're nearer the scene of action than we are; but if it comes to
+      indenting on the Punjab this early, there's more in this than meets the
+      eye,&rdquo; said Martyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here to-day and gone to-morrow. 'Didn't come to stay for ever,&rdquo; said
+      Scott, dropping one of Marryat's novels, and rising to his feet. &ldquo;Martyn,
+      your sister's waiting for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A rough grey horse was backing and shifting at the edge of the verandah,
+      where the light of a kerosene lamp fell on a brown-calico habit and a
+      white face under a grey-felt hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Right, O!&rdquo; said Martyn. &ldquo;I'm ready. Better come and dine with us, if
+      you've nothing to do, Scott. William, is there any dinner in the house?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll go home and see,&rdquo; was the rider's answer. &ldquo;You can drive him over&mdash;at
+      eight, remember.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Scott moved leisurely to his room, and changed into the evening-dress of
+      the season and the country: spotless white linen from head to foot, with a
+      broad silk cummerbund. Dinner at the Martyns' was a decided improvement on
+      the goat-mutton, twiney-tough fowl, and tinned entrees of the Club. But it
+      was a great pity that Martyn could not afford to send his sister to the
+      hills for the hot weather. As an Acting District Superintendent of Police,
+      Martyn drew the magnificent pay of six hundred depreciated silver rupees a
+      month, and his little four-roomed bungalow said just as much. There were
+      the usual blue-and-white-striped jail-made rugs on the uneven floor; the
+      usual glass-studded Amritsar phulkaris draped on nails driven into the
+      flaking whitewash of the walls; the usual half-dozen chairs that did not
+      match, picked up at sales of dead men's effects; and the usual streaks of
+      black grease where the leather punka-thong ran through the wall. It was as
+      though everything had been unpacked the night before to be repacked next
+      morning. Not a door in the house was true on its hinges. The little
+      windows, fifteen feet up, were darkened with wasp-nests, and lizards
+      hunted flies between the beams of the wood-ceiled roof. But all this was
+      part of Scott's life. Thus did people live who had such an income; and in
+      a land where each man's pay, age, and position are printed in a book, that
+      all may read, it is hardly worth while to play at pretence in word or
+      deed. Scott counted eight years' service in the Irrigation Department, and
+      drew eight hundred rupees a month, on the understanding that if he served
+      the State faithfully for another twenty-two years he could retire on a
+      pension of some four hundred rupees a month. His working-life, which had
+      been spent chiefly under canvas or in temporary shelters where a man could
+      sleep, eat, and write letters, was bound up with the opening and guarding
+      of irrigation canals, the handling of two or three thousand workmen of all
+      castes and creeds, and the payment of vast sums of coined silver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had finished that spring, not without credit, the last section of the
+      great Mosuhl Canal, and&mdash;much against his will, for he hated
+      office-work&mdash;had been sent in to serve during the hot weather on the
+      accounts and supply side of the Department, with sole charge of the
+      sweltering sub-office at the capital of the Province. Martyn knew this;
+      William, his sister, knew it; and everybody knew it. Scott knew, too, as
+      well as the rest of the world, that Miss Martyn had come out to India four
+      years ago to keep house for her brother, who, as every one knew, had
+      borrowed the money to pay for her passage, and that she ought, as all the
+      world said, to have married at once. In stead of this, she had refused
+      some half a dozen subalterns, a Civilian twenty years her senior, one
+      Major, and a man in the Indian Medical Department. This, too, was common
+      property. She had &ldquo;stayed down three hot weathers,&rdquo; as the saying is,
+      because her brother was in debt and could not afford the expense of her
+      keep at even a cheap hill-station. Therefore her face was white as bone,
+      and in the centre of her forehead was a big silvery scar about the size of
+      a shilling&mdash;the mark of a Delhi sore, which is the same as a &ldquo;Bagdad
+      date.&rdquo; This comes from drinking bad water, and slowly eats into the flesh
+      till it is ripe enough to be burned out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      None the less William had enjoyed herself hugely in her four years. Twice
+      she had been nearly drowned while fording a river; once she had been run
+      away with on a camel; had witnessed a midnight attack of thieves on her
+      brother's camp; had seen justice administered, with long sticks, in the
+      open under trees; could speak Urdu and even rough Punjabi with a fluency
+      that was envied by her seniors; had entirely fallen out of the habit of
+      writing to her aunts in England, or cutting the pages of the English
+      magazines; had been through a very bad cholera year, seeing sights unfit
+      to be told; and had wound up her experiences by six weeks of typhoid
+      fever, during which her head had been shaved and hoped to keep her
+      twenty-third birthday that September. It is conceivable that the aunts
+      would not have approved of a girl who never set foot on the ground if a
+      horse were within hail; who rode to dances with a shawl thrown over her
+      skirt; who wore her hair cropped and curling all over her head; who
+      answered indifferently to the name of William or Bill; whose speech was
+      heavy with the flowers of the vernacular; who could act in amateur
+      theatricals, play on the banjo, rule eight servants and two horses, their
+      accounts and their diseases, and look men slowly and deliberately between
+      the eyes&mdash;even after they had proposed to her and been rejected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like men who do things,&rdquo; she had confided to a man in the Educational
+      Department, who was teaching the sons of cloth-merchants and dyers the
+      beauty of Wordsworth's &ldquo;Excursion&rdquo; in annotated cram-books; and when he
+      grew poetical, William explained that she &ldquo;didn't understand poetry very
+      much; it made her head ache,&rdquo; and another broken heart took refuge at the
+      Club. But it was all William's fault. She delighted in hearing men talk of
+      their own work, and that is the most fatal way of bringing a man to your
+      feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scott had known her for some three years, meeting her, as a rule, under
+      canvass, when his camp and her brother's joined for a day on the edge of
+      the Indian Desert. He had danced with her several times at the big
+      Christmas gatherings, when as many as five hundred white people came in to
+      the station; and had always a great respect for her housekeeping and her
+      dinners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked more like a boy than ever when, the meal ended, she sat,
+      rolling cigarettes, her low forehead puckered beneath the dark curls as
+      she twiddled the papers and stuck out her rounded chin when the tobacco
+      stayed in place, or, with a gesture as true as a school-boy's throwing a
+      stone, tossed the finished article across the room to Martyn, who caught
+      it with one hand, and continued his talk with Scott. It was all &ldquo;shop,&rdquo;&mdash;canals
+      and the policing of canals; the sins of villagers who stole more water
+      than they had paid for, and the grosser sin of native constables who
+      connived at the thefts; of the transplanting bodily of villages to newly
+      irrigated ground, and of the coming fight with the desert in the south
+      when the Provincial funds should warrant the opening of the long-surveyed
+      Luni Protective Canal System. And Scott spoke openly of his great desire
+      to be put on one particular section of the work where he knew the land and
+      the people; and Martyn sighed for a billet in the Himalayan foot-hills,
+      and said his mind of his superiors, and William rolled cigarettes and said
+      nothing, but smiled gravely on her brother because he was happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At ten Scott's horse came to the door, and the evening was ended. The
+      lights of the two low bungalows in which the daily paper was printed
+      showed bright across the road. It was too early to try to find sleep, and
+      Scott drifted over to the editor. Raines, stripped to the waist like a
+      sailor at a gun, lay half asleep in a long chair, waiting for night
+      telegrams. He had a theory that if a man did not stay by his work all day
+      and most of the night he laid himself open to fever: so he ate and slept
+      among his files.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you do it?&rdquo; he said drowsily. &ldquo;I didn't mean to bring you over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About what? I've been dining at the Martyns'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Madras famine, of course. Martyn's warned, too. They're taking men
+      where they can find 'em. I sent a note to you at the Club just now, asking
+      if you could do us a letter once a week from the south&mdash;between two
+      and three columns, say. Nothing sensational, of course, but just plain
+      facts about who is doing what, and so forth. Our regular rates&mdash;ten
+      rupees a column.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Sorry, but it's out of my line,&rdquo; Scott answered, staring absently at the
+      map of India on the wall. &ldquo;It's rough on Martyn&mdash;very. 'Wonder what
+      he'll do with his sister? 'Wonder what the deuce they'll do with me? I've
+      no famine experience. This is the first I've heard of it. Am I ordered?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes. Here's the wire. They'll put you on to relief-works,&rdquo; Raines
+      said, &ldquo;with a horde of Madrassis dying like flies; one native apothecary
+      and half a pint of cholera-mixture among the ten thousand of you. It comes
+      of your being idle for the moment. Every man who isn't doing two men's
+      work seems to have been called upon. Hawkins evidently believes in
+      Punjabis. It's going to be quite as bad as anything they have had in the
+      last ten years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all in the day's work, worse luck. I suppose I shall get my orders
+      officially some time to-morrow. I'm awfully glad I happened to drop in.
+      Better go and pack my kit now. Who relieves me here&mdash;do you know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Raines turned over a sheaf of telegrams. &ldquo;McEuan,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;from Murree.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Scott chuckled. &ldquo;He thought he was going to be cool all summer. He'll be
+      very sick about this. Well, no good talking. 'Night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Two hours later, Scott, with a clear conscience, laid himself down to rest
+      on a string cot in a bare room. Two worn bullock trunks, a leather
+      water-bottle, a tin ice-box, and his pet saddle sewed up in sacking were
+      piled at the door, and the Club secretary's receipt for last month's bill
+      was under his pillow. His orders came next morning, and with them an
+      unofficial telegram from Sir James Hawkins; who was not in the habit of
+      forgetting good men when he had once met them, bidding him report himself
+      with all speed at some unpronounceable place fifteen hundred miles to the
+      south, for the famine was sore in the land, and white men were needed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A pink and fattish youth arrived in the red-hot noonday, whimpering a
+      little at fate and famines, which never allowed any one three months'
+      peace. He was Scott's successor&mdash;another cog in the machinery, moved
+      forward behind his fellow whose services, as the official announcement
+      ran, &ldquo;were placed at the disposal of the Madras Government for famine duty
+      until further orders.&rdquo; Scott handed over the funds in his charge, showed
+      him the coolest corner in the office, warned him against excess of zeal,
+      and, as twilight fell, departed from the Club in a hired carriage, with
+      his faithful body-servant, Faiz Ullah, and a mound of disordered baggage
+      atop, to catch the southern mail at the loopholed and bastioned
+      railway-station. The heat from the thick brick walls struck him across the
+      face as if it had been a hot towel; and he reflected that there were at
+      least five nights and four days of this travel before him. Faiz Ullah,
+      used to the chances of service, plunged into the crowd on the stone
+      platform, while Scott, a black cheroot between his teeth, waited till his
+      compartment should be set away. A dozen native policemen, with their
+      rifles and bundles, shouldered into the press of Punjabi farmers, Sikh
+      craftsmen, and greasy-locked Afreedee pedlars, escorting with all pomp
+      Martyn's uniform-case, water-bottles, ice-box, and bedding-roll. They saw
+      Faiz Ullah's lifted hand, and steered for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My Sahib and your Sahib,&rdquo; said Faiz Ullah to Martyn's man, &ldquo;will travel
+      together. Thou and I, O brother, will thus secure the servants' places
+      close by; and because of our masters' authority none will dare to disturb
+      us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Faiz Ullah reported all things ready, Scott settled down at full
+      length, coatless and bootless, on the broad leather-covered bunk. The heat
+      under the iron-arched roof of the station might have been anything over a
+      hundred degrees. At the last moment Martyn entered, dripping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't swear,&rdquo; said Scott, lazily; &ldquo;it's too late to change your carriage;
+      and we'll divide the ice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you doing here?&rdquo; said the police-man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm lent to the Madras Government, same as you. By Jove, it's a bender of
+      a night! Are you taking any of your men down?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A dozen. I suppose I shall have to superintend relief distributions.
+      'Didn't know you were under orders too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't till after I left you last night. Raines had the news first. My
+      orders came this morning. McEuan relieved me at four, and I got off at
+      once. 'Shouldn't wonder if it wouldn't be a good thing&mdash;this famine&mdash;if
+      we come through it alive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jimmy ought to put you and me to work together,&rdquo; said Martyn; and then,
+      after a pause: &ldquo;My sister's here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good business,&rdquo; said Scott, heartily. &ldquo;Going to get off at Umballa, I
+      suppose, and go up to Simla. Who'll she stay with there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No-o; that's just the trouble of it. She's going down with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Scott sat bolt upright under the oil-lamps as the train jolted past
+      Tarn-Taran. &ldquo;What! You don't mean you couldn't afford&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Tain't that. I'd have scraped up the money somehow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might have come to me, to begin with,&rdquo; said Scott, stiffly; &ldquo;we
+      aren't altogether strangers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you needn't be stuffy about it. I might, but&mdash;you don't know
+      my sister. I've been explaining and exhorting and all the rest of it all
+      day&mdash;lost my temper since seven this morning, and haven't got it back
+      yet&mdash;but she wouldn't hear of any compromise. A woman's entitled to
+      travel with her husband if she wants to; and William says she's on the
+      same footing. You see, we've been together all our lives, more or less,
+      since my people died. It isn't as if she were an ordinary sister.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the sisters I've ever heard of would have stayed where they were well
+      off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She's as clever as a man, confound&mdash;Martyn went on. &ldquo;She broke up the
+      bungalow over my head while I was talking at her. 'Settled the whole thing
+      in three hours&mdash;servants, horses, and all. I didn't get my orders
+      till nine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jimmy Hawkins won't be pleased,&rdquo; said Scott &ldquo;A famine's no place for a
+      woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Jim&mdash;I mean Lady Jim's in camp with him. At any rate, she says
+      she will look after my sister. William wired down to her on her own
+      responsibility, asking if she could come, and knocked the ground from
+      under me by showing me her answer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Scott laughed aloud. &ldquo;If she can do that she can take care of herself, and
+      Mrs. Jim won't let her run into any mischief. There aren't many women,
+      sisters or wives, who would walk into a famine with their eyes open. It
+      isn't as if she didn't know what these things mean. She was through the
+      Jalo cholera last year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The train stopped at Amritsar, and Scott went back to the ladies'
+      compartment, immediately behind their carriage. William, with a cloth
+      riding-cap on her curls, nodded affably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in and have some tea,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;'Best thing in the world for
+      heat-apoplexy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I look as if I were going to have heat-apoplexy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Never can tell,&rdquo; said William, wisely. &ldquo;It's always best to be ready.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had arranged her compartment with the knowledge of an old campaigner.
+      A felt-covered water-bottle hung in the draught of one of the shuttered
+      windows; a tea-set of Russian china, packed in a wadded basket, stood on
+      the seat; and a travelling spirit-lamp was clamped against the woodwork
+      above it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      William served them generously, in large cups, hot tea, which saves the
+      veins of the neck from swelling inopportunely on a hot night. It was
+      characteristic of the girl that, her plan of action once settled, she
+      asked for no comments on it. Life among men who had a great deal of work
+      to do, and very little time to do it in, had taught her the wisdom of
+      effacing, as well as of fending for, herself. She did not by word or deed
+      suggest that she would be useful, comforting, or beautiful in their
+      travels, but continued about her business serenely: put the cups back
+      without clatter when tea was ended, and made cigarettes for her guests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This time last night,&rdquo; said Scott, &ldquo;we didn't expect&mdash;er&mdash;this
+      kind of thing, did we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've learned to expect anything,&rdquo; said William. &ldquo;You know, in our
+      service, we live at the end of the telegraph; but, of course, this ought
+      to be a good thing for us all, departmentally&mdash;if we live.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It knocks us out of the running in our own Province,&rdquo; Scott replied, with
+      equal gravity. &ldquo;I hoped to be put on the Luni Protective Works this cold
+      weather, but there's no saying how long the famine may keep us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hardly beyond October, I should think,&rdquo; said Martyn. &ldquo;It will be ended,
+      one way or the other, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And we've nearly a week of this,&rdquo; said William. &ldquo;Sha'n't we be dusty when
+      it's over?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a night and a day they knew their surroundings, and for a night and a
+      day, skirting the edge of the great Indian Desert on a narrow-gauge
+      railway, they remembered how in the days of their apprenticeship they had
+      come by that road from Bombay. Then the languages in which the names of
+      the stations were written changed, and they launched south into a foreign
+      land, where the very smells were new. Many long and heavily laden
+      grain-trains were in front of them, and they could feel the hand of Jimmy
+      Hawkins from far off. They waited in extemporised sidings while
+      processions of empty trucks returned to the north, and were coupled on to
+      slow, crawling trains, and dropped at midnight, Heaven knew where; but it
+      was furiously hot, and they walked to and fro among sacks, and dogs
+      howled. Then they came to an India more strange to them than to the
+      untravelled Englishman&mdash;the flat, red India of palm-tree,
+      palmyra-palm, and rice&mdash;the India of the picture-books, of &ldquo;Little
+      Harry and His Bearer&rdquo;&mdash;all dead and dry in the baking heat. They had
+      left the incessant passenger-traffic of the north and west far and far
+      behind them. Here the people crawled to the side of the train, holding
+      their little ones in their arms; and a loaded truck would be left behind,
+      the men and women clustering round it like ants by spilled honey. Once in
+      the twilight they saw on a dusty plain a regiment of little brown men,
+      each bearing a body over his shoulder; and when the train stopped to leave
+      yet another truck, they perceived that the burdens were not corpses, but
+      only foodless folk picked up beside dead oxen by a corps of Irregular
+      troops. Now they met more white men, here one and there two, whose tents
+      stood close to the line, and who came armed with written authorities and
+      angry words to cut off a truck. They were too busy to do more than nod at
+      Scott and Martyn, and stare curiously at William, who could do nothing
+      except make tea, and watch how her men staved off the rush of wailing,
+      walking skeletons, putting them down three at a time in heaps, with their
+      own hands uncoupling the marked trucks, or taking receipts from the
+      hollow-eyed, weary white men, who spoke another argot than theirs. They
+      ran out of ice, out of soda-water, and out of tea; for they were six days
+      and seven nights on the road, and it seemed to them like seven times seven
+      years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last, in a dry, hot dawn, in a land of death, lit by long red fires of
+      railway-sleepers, where they were burning the dead, they came to their
+      destination, and were met by Jim Hawkins, the Head of the Famine,
+      unshaven, unwashed, but cheery, and entirely in command of affairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martyn, he decreed then and there, was to live on trains till further
+      orders; was to go back with empty trucks, filling them with starving
+      people as he found them, and dropping them at a famine-camp on the edge of
+      the Eight Districts. He would pick up supplies and return, and his
+      constables would guard the loaded grain-cars, also picking up people, and
+      would drop them at a camp a hundred miles south. Scott&mdash;Hawkins was
+      very glad to see Scott again&mdash;would that same hour take charge of a
+      convoy of bullock-carts, and would go south, feeding as he went, to yet
+      another famine-camp, where he would leave his starving&mdash;there would
+      be no lack of starving on the route&mdash;and wait for orders by
+      telegraph. Generally, Scott was in all small things to act as he thought
+      best.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      William bit her under lip. There was no one in the wide world like her one
+      brother, but Martyn's orders gave him no discretion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She came out on the platform, masked with dust from head to foot, a
+      horse-shoe wrinkle on her forehead, put here by much thinking during the
+      past week, but as self-possessed as ever. Mrs. Jim&mdash;who should have
+      been Lady Jim but that no one remembered the title&mdash;took possession
+      of her with a little gasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'm so glad you're here,&rdquo; she almost sobbed. &ldquo;You oughtn't to, of
+      course, but there&mdash;there isn't another woman in the place, and we
+      must help each other, you know; and we've all the wretched people and the
+      little babies they are selling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've seen some,&rdquo; said William.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't it ghastly? I've bought twenty; they're in our camp; but won't you
+      have something to eat first? We've more than ten people can do here; and
+      I've got a horse for you. Oh, I'm so glad you've come, dear. You're a
+      Punjabi, too, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Steady, Lizzie,&rdquo; said Hawkins, over his shoulder. &ldquo;We'll look after you,
+      Miss Martyn. 'Sorry I can't ask you to breakfast, Martyn. You'll have to
+      eat as you go. Leave two of your men to help Scott. These poor devils
+      can't stand up to load carts. Saunders&rdquo; (this to the engine-driver, who
+      was half asleep in the cab), &ldquo;back down and get those empties away. You've
+      'line clear' to Anundrapillay; they'll give you orders north of that.
+      Scott, load up your carts from that B. P. P. truck, and be off as soon as
+      you can. The Eurasian in the pink shirt is your interpreter and guide.
+      You'll find an apothecary of sorts tied to the yoke of the second wagon.
+      He's been trying to bolt; you'll have to look after him. Lizzie, drive
+      Miss Martyn to camp, and tell them to send the red horse down here for
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Scott, with Faiz Ullah and two policemen, was already busied with the
+      carts, backing them up to the truck and unbolting the sideboards quietly,
+      while the others pitched in the bags of millet and wheat. Hawkins watched
+      him for as long as it took to fill one cart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's a good man,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If all goes well I shall work him hard.&rdquo;
+       This was Jim Hawkins's notion of the highest compliment one human being
+      could pay another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An hour later Scott was under way; the apothecary threatening him with the
+      penalties of the law for that he, a member of the Subordinate Medical
+      Department, had been coerced and bound against his will and all laws
+      governing the liberty of the subject; the pink-shirted Eurasian begging
+      leave to see his mother, who happened to be dying some three miles away:
+      &ldquo;Only verree, verree short leave of absence, and will presently return,
+      sar&mdash;&ldquo;; the two constables, armed with staves, bringing up the rear;
+      and Faiz Ullah, a Mohammedan's contempt for all Hindoos and foreigners in
+      every line of his face, explaining to the drivers that though Scott Sahib
+      was a man to be feared on all fours, he, Faiz Ullah, was Authority Itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The procession creaked past Hawkins's camp&mdash;three stained tents under
+      a clump of dead trees, behind them the famine-shed, where a crowd of
+      hopeless ones tossed their arms around the cooking-kettles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Wish to Heaven William had kept out of it,&rdquo; said Scott to himself, after
+      a glance. &ldquo;We'll have cholera, sure as a gun, when the Rains break.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But William seemed to have taken kindly to the operations of the Famine
+      Code, which, when famine is declared, supersede the workings of the
+      ordinary law. Scott saw her, the centre of a mob of weeping women, in a
+      calico riding-habit, and a blue-grey felt hat with a gold puggaree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want fifty rupees, please. I forgot to ask Jack before he went away.
+      Can you lend it me? It's for condensed-milk for the babies,&rdquo; said she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scott took the money from his belt, and handed it over without a word.
+      &ldquo;For goodness sake, take care of yourself,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I shall be all right. We ought to get the milk in two days. By the
+      way, the orders are, I was to tell you, that you're to take one of Sir
+      Jim's horses. There's a grey Cabuli here that I thought would be just your
+      style, so I've said you'd take him. Was that right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's awfully good of you. We can't either of us talk much about style,
+      I am afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Scott was in a weather-stained drill shooting-kit, very white at the seams
+      and a little frayed at the wrists. William regarded him thoughtfully, from
+      his pith helmet to his greased ankle-boots. &ldquo;You look very nice, I think.
+      Are you sure you've everything you'll need&mdash;quinine, chlorodyne, and
+      so on?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Think so,&rdquo; said Scott, patting three or four of his shooting-pockets as
+      he mounted and rode alongside his convoy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, and good luck,&rdquo; said William. &ldquo;I'm awfully obliged for the
+      money.&rdquo; She turned on a spurred heel and disappeared into the tent, while
+      the carts pushed on past the famine-sheds, past the roaring lines of the
+      thick, fat fires, down to the baked Gehenna of the South.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART2" id="link2H_PART2">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART II
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                  So let us melt and make no noise,
+                   No tear-floods nor sigh-tempests move;
+                 'Twere profanation of our joys
+                   To tell the Laity our love.
+
+                                              A Valediction.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It was punishing work, even though he travelled by night and camped by
+      day; but within the limits of his vision there was no man whom Scott could
+      call master. He was as free as Jimmy Hawkins&mdash;freer, in fact, for the
+      Government held the Head of the Famine tied neatly to a telegraph-wire,
+      and if Jimmy had ever regarded telegrams seriously, the death-rate of that
+      famine would have been much higher than it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of a few days' crawling Scott learned something of the size of
+      the India which he served, and it astonished him. His carts, as you know,
+      were loaded with wheat, millet, and barley, good food-grains needing only
+      a little grinding. But the people to whom he brought the life-giving
+      stuffs were rice-eaters. They could hull rice in their mortars, but they
+      knew nothing of the heavy stone querns of the North, and less of the
+      material that the white man convoyed so laboriously. They clamoured for
+      rice&mdash;unhusked paddy, such as they were accustomed to&mdash;and, when
+      they found that there was none, broke away weeping from the sides of the
+      cart. What was the use of these strange hard grains that choked their
+      throats? They would die. And then and there very many of them kept their
+      word. Others took their allowance, and bartered enough millet to feed a
+      man through a week for a few handfuls of rotten rice saved by some less
+      unfortunate. A few put their share into the rice-mortars, pounded it, and
+      made a paste with foul water; but they were very few. Scott understood
+      dimly that many people in the India of the South ate rice, as a rule, but
+      he had spent his service in a grain Province, had seldom seen rice in the
+      blade or ear, and least of all would have believed that in time of deadly
+      need men could die at arm's length of plenty, sooner than touch food they
+      did not know. In vain the interpreters interpreted; in vain his two
+      policemen showed in vigorous pantomime what should be done. The starving
+      crept away to their bark and weeds, grubs, leaves, and clay, and left the
+      open sacks untouched. But sometimes the women laid their phantoms of
+      children at Scott's feet, looking back as they staggered away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Faiz Ullah opined it was the will of God that these foreigners should die,
+      and it remained only to give orders to burn the dead. None the less there
+      was no reason why the Sahib should lack his comforts, and Faiz Ullah, a
+      campaigner of experience, had picked up a few lean goats and had added
+      them to the procession. That they might give milk for the morning meal, he
+      was feeding them on the good grain that these imbeciles rejected. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo;
+       said Faiz Ullah; &ldquo;if the Sahib thought fit, a little milk might be given
+      to some of the babies&rdquo;; but, as the Sahib well knew, babies were cheap,
+      and, for his own part, Faiz Ullah held that there was no Government order
+      as to babies. Scott spoke forcefully to Faiz Ullah and the two policemen,
+      and bade them capture goats where they could find them. This they most
+      joyfully did, for it was a recreation, and many ownerless goats were
+      driven in. Once fed, the poor brutes were willing enough to follow the
+      carts, and a few days' good food&mdash;food such as human beings died for
+      lack of&mdash;set them in milk again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I am no goatherd,&rdquo; said Faiz Ullah. &ldquo;It is against my izzat [my
+      honour].&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When we cross the Bias River again we will talk of izzat,&rdquo; Scott replied.
+      &ldquo;Till that day thou and the policemen shall be sweepers to the camp, if I
+      give the order.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thus, then, it is done,&rdquo; grunted Faiz Ullah, &ldquo;if the Sahib will have it
+      so&rdquo;; and he showed how a goat should be milked, while Scott stood over
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now we will feed them,&rdquo; said Scott; &ldquo;twice a day we will feed them&rdquo;; and
+      he bowed his back to the milking, and took a horrible cramp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When you have to keep connection unbroken between a restless mother of
+      kids and a baby who is at the point of death, you suffer in all your
+      system. But the babies were fed. Each morning and evening Scott would
+      solemnly lift them out one by one from their nest of gunny-bags under the
+      cart-tilts. There were always many who could do no more than breathe, and
+      the milk was dropped into their toothless mouths drop by drop, with due
+      pauses when they choked. Each morning, too, the goats were fed; and since
+      they would straggle without a leader, and since the natives were
+      hirelings, Scott was forced to give up riding, and pace slowly at the head
+      of his flocks, accommodating his step to their weaknesses. All this was
+      sufficiently absurd, and he felt the absurdity keenly; but at least he was
+      saving life, and when the women saw that their children did not die, they
+      made shift to eat a little of the strange foods, and crawled after the
+      carts, blessing the master of the goats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give the women something to live for,&rdquo; said Scott to himself, as he
+      sneezed in the dust of a hundred little feet, &ldquo;and they'll hang on
+      somehow. This beats William's condensed-milk trick all to pieces. I shall
+      never live it down, though.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He reached his destination very slowly, found that a rice-ship had come in
+      from Burmah, and that stores of paddy were available; found also an
+      overworked Englishman in charge of the shed, and, loading the carts, set
+      back to cover the ground he had already passed. He left some of the
+      children and half his goats at the famine-shed. For this he was not
+      thanked by the Englishman, who had already more stray babies than he knew
+      what to do with. Scott's back was suppled to stooping now, and he went on
+      with his wayside ministrations in addition to distributing the paddy. More
+      babies and more goats were added unto him; but now some of the babies wore
+      rags, and beads round their wrists or necks. &ldquo;That&rdquo; said the interpreter,
+      as though Scott did not know, &ldquo;signifies that their mothers hope in
+      eventual contingency to resume them offeecially.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sooner, the better,&rdquo; said Scott; but at the same time he marked, with
+      the pride of ownership, how this or that little Ramasawmy was putting on
+      flesh like a bantam. As the paddy-carts were emptied he headed for
+      Hawkins's camp by the railway, timing his arrival to fit in with the
+      dinner-hour, for it was long since he had eaten at a cloth. He had no
+      desire to make any dramatic entry, but an accident of the sunset ordered
+      it that when he had taken off his helmet to get the evening breeze, the
+      low light should fall across his forehead, and he could not see what was
+      before him; while one waiting at the tent door beheld with new eyes a
+      young man, beautiful as Paris, a god in a halo of golden dust, walking
+      slowly at the head of his flocks, while at his knee ran small naked
+      Cupids. But she laughed&mdash;William, in a slate-coloured blouse, laughed
+      consumedly till Scott, putting the best face he could upon the matter,
+      halted his armies and bade her admire the kindergarten. It was an unseemly
+      sight, but the proprieties had been left ages ago, with the tea-party at
+      Amritsar Station, fifteen hundred miles to the north.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are coming on nicely,&rdquo; said William. &ldquo;We've only five-and-twenty
+      here now. The women are beginning to take them away again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you in charge of the babies, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;Mrs. Jim and I. We didn't think of goats, though. We've been
+      trying condensed-milk and water.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any losses?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More than I care to think of;&rdquo; said William, with a shudder. &ldquo;And you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Scott said nothing. There had been many little burials along his route&mdash;one
+      cannot burn a dead baby&mdash;many mothers who had wept when they did not
+      find again the children they had trusted to the care of the Government.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Hawkins came out carrying a razor, at which Scott looked hungrily,
+      for he had a beard that he did not love. And when they sat down to dinner
+      in the tent he told his tale in few words, as it might have been an
+      official report. Mrs. Jim snuffled from time to time, and Jim bowed his
+      head judicially; but William's grey eyes were on the clean-shaven face,
+      and it was to her that Scott seemed to appeal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good for the Pauper Province!&rdquo; said William, her chin on her hand, as she
+      leaned forward among the wine-glasses. Her cheeks had fallen in, and the
+      scar on her forehead was more prominent than ever, but the well-turned
+      neck rose roundly as a column from the ruffle of the blouse which was the
+      accepted evening-dress in camp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was awfully absurd at times,&rdquo; said Scott. &ldquo;You see, I didn't know much
+      about milking or babies. They'll chaff my head off, if the tale goes up
+      North.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let 'em,&rdquo; said William, haughtily. &ldquo;We've all done coolie-work since we
+      came. I know Jack has.&rdquo; This was to Hawkins's address, and the big man
+      smiled blandly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your brother's a highly efficient officer, William,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;and I've
+      done him the honour of treating him as he deserves. Remember, I write the
+      confidential reports.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you must say that William's worth her weight in gold,&rdquo; said Mrs.
+      Jim. &ldquo;I don't know what we should have done without her. She has been
+      everything to us.&rdquo; She dropped her hand upon William's, which was rough
+      with much handling of reins, and William patted it softly. Jim beamed on
+      the company. Things were going well with his world. Three of his more
+      grossly incompetent men had died, and their places had been filled by
+      their betters. Every day brought the Rains nearer. They had put out the
+      famine in five of the Eight Districts, and, after all, the death-rate had
+      not been too heavy&mdash;things considered. He looked Scott over
+      carefully, as an ogre looks over a man, and rejoiced in his thews and
+      iron-hard condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's just the least bit in the world tucked up,&rdquo; said Jim to himself,
+      &ldquo;but he can do two men's work yet.&rdquo; Then he was aware that Mrs. Jim was
+      telegraphing to him, and according to the domestic code the message ran:
+      &ldquo;A clear case. Look at them!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked and listened. All that William was saying was: &ldquo;What can you
+      expect of a country where they call a bhistee [a water-carrier] a
+      tunni-cutch?&rdquo; and all that Scott answered was: &ldquo;I shall be glad to get
+      back to the Club. Save me a dance at the Christmas Ball, won't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a far cry from here to the Lawrence Hall,&rdquo; said Jim. &ldquo;Better turn in
+      early, Scott. It's paddy-carts to-morrow; you'll begin loading at five.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aren't you going to give Mr. Scott a single day's rest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Wish I could, Lizzie, but I'm afraid I can't. As long as he can stand up
+      we must use him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I've had one Europe evening, at least. By Jove, I'd nearly
+      forgotten! What do I do about those babies of mine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave them here,&rdquo; said William&mdash;&ldquo;we are in charge of that&mdash;and
+      as many goats as you can spare. I must learn how to milk now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you care to get up early enough to-morrow I'll show you. I have to
+      milk, you see. Half of 'em have beads and things round their necks. You
+      must be careful not to take 'em off; in case the mothers turn up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You forget I've had some experience here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope to goodness you won't overdo.&rdquo; Scott's voice was unguarded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll take care of her,&rdquo; said Mrs. Jim, telegraphing hundred-word messages
+      as she carried William off; while Jim gave Scott his orders for the coming
+      campaign. It was very late&mdash;nearly nine o'clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jim, you're a brute,&rdquo; said his wife, that night; and the Head of the
+      Famine chuckled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a bit of it, dear. I remember doing the first Jandiala Settlement for
+      the sake of a girl in a crinoline, and she was slender, Lizzie. I've never
+      done as good a piece of work since. He'll work like a demon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you might have given him one day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And let things come to a head now? No, dear; it's their happiest time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't believe either of the darlings know what's the matter with them.
+      Isn't it beautiful? Isn't it lovely?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Getting up at three to learn to milk, bless her heart! Oh, ye Gods, why
+      must we grow old and fat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's a darling. She has done more work under me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Under you? The day after she came she was in charge and you were her
+      subordinate. You've stayed there ever since; she manages you almost as
+      well as you manage me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She doesn't, and that's why I love her. She's as direct as a man&mdash;as
+      her brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her brother's weaker than she is. He's always to me for orders; but he's
+      honest, and a glutton for work. I confess I'm rather fond of William, and
+      if I had a daughter&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The talk ended. Far away in the Derajat was a child's grave more than
+      twenty years old, and neither Jim nor his wife spoke of it any more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the same, you're responsible,&rdquo; Jim added, a moment's silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless 'em!&rdquo; said Mrs. Jim, sleepily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the stars paled, Scott, who slept in an empty cart, waked and went
+      about his work in silence; it seemed at that hour unkind to rouse Faiz
+      Ullah and the interpreter. His head being close to the ground, he did not
+      hear William till she stood over him in the dingy old riding-habit, her
+      eyes still heavy with sleep, a cup of tea and a piece of toast in her
+      hands. There was a baby on the ground, squirming on a piece of blanket,
+      and a six-year-old child peered over Scott's shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hai, you little rip,&rdquo; said Scott, &ldquo;how the deuce do you expect to get
+      your rations if you aren't quiet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A cool white hand steadied the brat, who forthwith choked as the milk
+      gurgled into his mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Mornin',&rdquo; said the milker. &ldquo;You've no notion how these little fellows
+      can wriggle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, I have.&rdquo; She whispered, because the world was asleep. &ldquo;Only I
+      feed them with a spoon or a rag. Yours are fatter than mine. And you've
+      been doing this day after day?&rdquo; The voice was almost lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; it was absurd. Now you try,&rdquo; he said, giving place to the girl.
+      &ldquo;Look out! A goat's not a cow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The goat protested against the amateur, and there was a scuffle, in which
+      Scott snatched up the baby. Then it was all to do over again, and William
+      laughed softly and merrily. She managed, however, to feed two babies, and
+      a third.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't the little beggars take it well?&rdquo; said Scott. &ldquo;I trained 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were very busy and interested, when lo! it was broad daylight, and
+      before they knew, the camp was awake, and they kneeled among the goats,
+      surprised by the day, both flushed to the temples. Yet all the round world
+      rolling up out of the darkness might have heard and seen all that had
+      passed between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said William, unsteadily, snatching up the tea and toast, &ldquo;I had
+      this made for you. It's stone-cold now. I thought you mightn't have
+      anything ready so early. 'Better not drink it. It's&mdash;it's
+      stone-cold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's awfully kind of you. It's just right. It's awfully good of you,
+      really. I'll leave my kids and goats with you and Mrs. Jim, and, of
+      course, any one in camp can show you about the milking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said William; and she grew pinker and pinker and statelier
+      and more stately, as she strode back to her tent, fanning herself with the
+      saucer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were shrill lamentations through the camp when the elder children
+      saw their nurse move off without them. Faiz Ullah unbent so far as to jest
+      with the policemen, and Scott turned purple with shame because Hawkins,
+      already in the saddle, roared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A child escaped from the care of Mrs. Jim, and, running like a rabbit,
+      clung to Scott's boot, William pursuing with long, easy strides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will not go&mdash;I will not go!&rdquo; shrieked the child, twining his feet
+      round Scott's ankle. &ldquo;They will kill me here. I do not know these people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say,&rdquo; said Scott, in broken Tamil, &ldquo;I say, she will do you no harm. Go
+      with her and be well fed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come!&rdquo; said William, panting, with a wrathful glance at Scott, who stood
+      helpless and, as it were, hamstrung.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go back,&rdquo; said Scott quickly to William. &ldquo;I'll send the little chap over
+      in a minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tone of authority had its effect, but in a way Scott did not exactly
+      intend. The boy loosened his grasp, and said with gravity: &ldquo;I did not know
+      the woman was thine. I will go.&rdquo; Then he cried to his companions, a mob of
+      three-, four-, and five-year-olds waiting on the success of his venture
+      ere they stampeded: &ldquo;Go back and eat. It is our man's woman. She will obey
+      his orders.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim collapsed where he sat; Faiz Ullah and the two policemen grinned; and
+      Scott's orders to the cartmen flew like hail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the custom of the Sahibs when truth is told in their presence,&rdquo;
+       said Faiz Ullah. &ldquo;The time comes that I must seek new service. Young
+      wives, especially such as speak our language and have knowledge of the
+      ways of the Police, make great trouble for honest butlers in the matter of
+      weekly accounts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What William thought of it all she did not say, but when her brother, ten
+      days later, came to camp for orders, and heard of Scott's performances, he
+      said, laughing: &ldquo;Well, that settles it. He'll be Bakri Scott to the end of
+      his days.&rdquo; (Bakri in the Northern vernacular, means a goat.) &ldquo;What a lark!
+      I'd have given a month's pay to have seen him nursing famine babies. I fed
+      some with conjee [rice-water], but that was all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's perfectly disgusting,&rdquo; said his sister, with blazing eyes. &ldquo;A man
+      does something like&mdash;like that&mdash;and all you other men think of
+      is to give him an absurd nickname, and then you laugh and think it's
+      funny.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Mrs. Jim, sympathetically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you can't talk, William. You christened little Miss Demby the
+      Button-quail, last cold weather; you know you did. India's the land of
+      nicknames.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's different,&rdquo; William replied. &ldquo;She was only a girl, and she hadn't
+      done anything except walk like a quail, and she does. But it isn't fair to
+      make fun of a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scott won't care,&rdquo; said Martyn. &ldquo;You can't get a rise out of old Scotty.
+      I've been trying for eight years, and you've only known him for three. How
+      does he look?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He looks very well,&rdquo; said William, and went away with a flushed cheek.
+      &ldquo;Bakri Scott, indeed!&rdquo; Then she laughed to herself, for she knew her
+      country. &ldquo;But it will he Bakri all the same&rdquo;; and she repeated it under
+      her breath several times slowly, whispering it into favour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he returned to his duties on the railway, Martyn spread the name far
+      and wide among his associates, so that Scott met it as he led his
+      paddy-carts to war. The natives believed it to be some English title of
+      honour, and the cart-drivers used it in all simplicity till Faiz Ullah,
+      who did not approve of foreign japes, broke their heads. There was very
+      little time for milking now, except at the big camps, where Jim had
+      extended Scott's idea and was feeding large flocks on the useless northern
+      grains. Sufficient paddy had come now into the Eight Districts to hold the
+      people safe, if it were only distributed quickly, and for that purpose no
+      one was better than the big Canal officer, who never lost his temper,
+      never gave an unnecessary order, and never questioned an order given.
+      Scott pressed on, saving his cattle, washing their galled necks daily, so
+      that no time should be lost on the road; reported himself with his rice at
+      the minor famine-sheds, unloaded, and went back light by forced
+      night-march to the next distributing centre, to find Hawkins's unvarying
+      telegram: &ldquo;Do it again.&rdquo; And he did it again and again, and yet again,
+      while Jim Hawkins, fifty miles away, marked off on a big map the tracks of
+      his wheels gridironing the stricken lands. Others did well&mdash;Hawkins
+      reported at the end they all did well&mdash;but Scott was the most
+      excellent, for he kept good coined rupees by him, settled for his own
+      cart-repairs on the spot, and ran to meet all sorts of unconsidered
+      extras, trusting to be recouped later on. Theoretically, the Government
+      should have paid for every shoe and linchpin, for every hand employed in
+      the loading; but Government vouchers cash themselves slowly, and
+      intelligent and efficient clerks write at great length, contesting
+      unauthorised expenditures of eight annas. The man who wants to make his
+      work a success must draw on his own bank-account of money or other things
+      as he goes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you he'd work,&rdquo; said Jimmy to his wife, at the end of six weeks.
+      &ldquo;He's been in sole charge of a couple of thousand men up north, on the
+      Mosuhl Canal, for a year; but he gives less trouble than young Martyn with
+      his ten constables; and I'm morally certain&mdash;only Government doesn't
+      recognise moral obligations&mdash;he's spent about half his pay to grease
+      his wheels. Look at this, Lizzie, for one week's work! Forty miles in two
+      days with twelve carts; two days' halt building a famine-shed for young
+      Rogers. (Rogers ought to have built it himself, the idiot!) Then forty
+      miles back again, loading six carts on the way, and distributing all
+      Sunday. Then in the evening he pitches in a twenty-page Demi-Official to
+      me, saying the people where he is might be 'advantageously employed on
+      relief-work,' and suggesting that he put 'em to work on some broken-down
+      old reservoir he's discovered, so as to have a good water-supply when the
+      Rains break. 'Thinks he can cauk the dam in a fortnight. Look at his
+      marginal sketches&mdash;aren't they clear and good? I knew he was pukka,
+      but I didn't know he was as pukka as this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must show these to William,&rdquo; said Mrs. Jim. &ldquo;The child's wearing
+      herself out among the babies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not more than you are, dear. Well, another two months ought to see us out
+      of the wood. I'm sorry it's not in my power to recommend you for a V. C.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      William sat late in her tent that night, reading through page after page
+      of the square handwriting, patting the sketches of proposed repairs to the
+      reservoir, and wrinkling her eyebrows over the columns of figures of
+      estimated water-supply. &ldquo;And he finds time to do all this,&rdquo; she cried to
+      herself, &ldquo;and&mdash;well, I also was present. I've saved one or two
+      babies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She dreamed for the twentieth time of the god in the golden dust, and woke
+      refreshed to feed loathsome black children, scores of them, wastrels
+      picked up by the wayside, their bones almost breaking their skin, terrible
+      and covered with sores.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scott was not allowed to leave his cart-work, but his letter was duly
+      forwarded to the Government, and he had the consolation, not rare in
+      India, of knowing that another man was reaping where he had sown. That
+      also was discipline profitable to the soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's much too good to waste on canals,&rdquo; said Jimmy. &ldquo;Any one can oversee
+      coolies. You needn't be angry, William; he can&mdash;but I need my pearl
+      among bullock-drivers, and I've transferred him to the Khanda district,
+      where he'll have it all to do over again. He should be marching now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's not a coolie,&rdquo; said William, furiously. &ldquo;He ought to be doing his
+      regulation work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's the best man in his service, and that's saying a good deal; but if
+      you must use razors to cut grindstones, why, I prefer the best cutlery.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't it almost time we saw him again?&rdquo; said Mrs. Jim. &ldquo;I'm sure the poor
+      boy hasn't had a respectable meal for a month. He probably sits on a cart
+      and eats sardines with his fingers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All in good time, dear. Duty before decency&mdash;wasn't it Mr. Chucks
+      said that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; it was Midshipman Easy,&rdquo; William laughed. &ldquo;I sometimes wonder how it
+      will feel to dance or listen to a band again, or sit under a roof. I can't
+      believe I ever wore a ball-frock in my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One minute,&rdquo; said Mrs. Jim, who was thinking. &ldquo;If he goes to Khanda, he
+      passes within five miles of us. Of course he'll ride in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, he won't,&rdquo; said William.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know, dear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will take him off his work. He won't have time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He'll make it,&rdquo; said Mrs. Jim, with a twinkle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It depends on his own judgment. There's absolutely no reason why he
+      shouldn't, if he thinks fit,&rdquo; said Jim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He won't see fit,&rdquo; William replied, without sorrow or emotion. &ldquo;It
+      wouldn't be him if he did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One certainly gets to know people rather well in times like these,&rdquo; said
+      Jim, drily; but William's face was serene as ever, and even as she
+      prophesied, Scott did not appear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rains fell at last, late, but heavily; and the dry, gashed earth was
+      red mud, and servants killed snakes in the camp, where every one was
+      weather-bound for a fortnight&mdash;all except Hawkins, who took horse and
+      plashed about in the wet, rejoicing. Now the Government decreed that
+      seed-grain should be distributed to the people, as well as advances of
+      money for the purchase of new oxen; and the white men were doubly worked
+      for this new duty, while William skipped from brick to brick laid down on
+      the trampled mud, and dosed her charges with warming medicines that made
+      them rub their little round stomachs; and the milch goats throve on the
+      rank grass. There was never a word from Scott in the Khanda district, away
+      to the southeast, except the regular telegraphic report to Hawkins. The
+      rude country roads had disappeared; his drivers were half mutinous; one of
+      Martyn's loaned policemen had died of cholera; and Scott was taking thirty
+      grains of quinine a day to fight the fever that comes with the rain: but
+      those were things Scott did not consider necessary to report. He was, as
+      usual, working from a base of supplies on a railway line, to cover a
+      circle of fifteen miles radius, and since full loads were impossible, he
+      took quarter-loads, and toiled four times as hard by consequence; for he
+      did not choose to risk an epidemic which might have grown uncontrollable
+      by assembling villagers in thousands at the relief-sheds. It was cheaper
+      to take Government bullocks, work them to death, and leave them to the
+      crows in the wayside sloughs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was the time when eight years of clean living and hard condition
+      told, though a man's head were ringing like a bell from the cinchona, and
+      the earth swayed under his feet when he stood and under his bed when he
+      slept. If Hawkins had seen fit to make him a bullock-driver, that, he
+      thought, was entirely Hawkins's own affair. There were men in the North
+      who would know what he had done; men of thirty years' service in his own
+      department who would say that it was &ldquo;not half bad&rdquo;; and above,
+      immeasurably above, all men of all grades, there was William in the thick
+      of the fight, who would approve because she understood. He had so trained
+      his mind that it would hold fast to the mechanical routine of the day,
+      though his own voice sounded strange in his own ears, and his hands, when
+      he wrote, grew large as pillows or small as peas at the end of his wrists.
+      That steadfastness bore his body to the telegraph-office at the
+      railway-station, and dictated a telegram to Hawkins saying that the Khanda
+      district was, in his judgment, now safe, and he &ldquo;waited further orders.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Madrassee telegraph-clerk did not approve of a large, gaunt man
+      falling over him in a dead faint, not so much because of the weight as
+      because of the names and blows that Faiz Ullah dealt him when he found the
+      body rolled under a bench. Then Faiz Ullah took blankets, quilts, and
+      coverlets where he found them, and lay down under them at his master's
+      side, and bound his arms with a tent-rope, and filled him with a horrible
+      stew of herbs, and set the policeman to fight him when he wished to escape
+      from the intolerable heat of his coverings, and shut the door of the
+      telegraph-office to keep out the curious for two nights and one day; and
+      when a light engine came down the line, and Hawkins kicked in the door,
+      Scott hailed him weakly but in a natural voice, and Faiz Ullah stood back
+      and took all the credit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For two nights, Heaven-born, he was pagal&rdquo; said Faiz Ullah. &ldquo;Look at my
+      nose, and consider the eye of the policeman. He beat us with his bound
+      hands; but we sat upon him, Heaven-born, and though his words were tez, we
+      sweated him. Heaven-born, never has been such a sweat! He is weaker now
+      than a child; but the fever has gone out of him, by the grace of God.
+      There remains only my nose and the eye of the constabeel. Sahib, shall I
+      ask for my dismissal because my Sahib has beaten me?&rdquo; And Faiz Ullah laid
+      his long thin hand carefully on Scott's chest to be sure that the fever
+      was all gone, ere he went out to open tinned soups and discourage such as
+      laughed at his swelled nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The district's all right,&rdquo; Scott whispered. &ldquo;It doesn't make any
+      difference. You got my wire? I shall be fit in a week. 'Can't understand
+      how it happened. I shall be fit in a few days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're coming into camp with us,&rdquo; said Hawkins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But look here&mdash;but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all over except the shouting. We sha'n't need you Punjabis any more.
+      On my honour, we sha'n't. Martyn goes back in a few weeks; Arbuthnot's
+      returned already; Ellis and Clay are putting the last touches to a new
+      feeder-line the Government's built as relief-work. Morten's dead&mdash;he
+      was a Bengal man, though; you wouldn't know him. 'Pon my word, you and
+      Will&mdash;Miss Martyn&mdash;seem to have come through it as well as
+      anybody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, how is she, by-the-way?&rdquo; The voice went up and down as he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going strong when I left her. The Roman Catholic Missions are adopting
+      the unclaimed babies to turn them into little priests; the Basil Mission
+      is taking some, and the mothers are taking the rest. You should hear the
+      little beggars howl when they're sent away from William. She's pulled down
+      a bit, but so are we all. Now, when do you suppose you'll be able to
+      move?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't come into camp in this state. I won't,&rdquo; he replied pettishly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you are rather a sight, but from what I gathered there it seemed to
+      me they'd be glad to see you under any conditions. I'll look over your
+      work here, if you like, for a couple of days, and you can pull yourself
+      together while Faiz Ullah feeds you up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Scott could walk dizzily by the time Hawkins's inspection was ended, and
+      he flushed all over when Jim said of his work that it was &ldquo;not half bad,&rdquo;
+       and volunteered, further, that he had considered Scott his right-hand man
+      through the famine, and would feel it his duty to say as much officially.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So they came back by rail to the old camp; but there were no crowds near
+      it; the long fires in the trenches were dead and black, and the
+      famine-sheds were almost empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see!&rdquo; said Jim. &ldquo;There isn't much more to do. 'Better ride up and see
+      the wife. They've pitched a tent for you. Dinner's at seven. I've some
+      work here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Riding at a foot-pace, Faiz Ullah by his stirrup, Scott came to William in
+      the brown-calico riding-habit, sitting at the dining-tent door, her hands
+      in her lap, white as ashes, thin and worn, with no lustre in her hair.
+      There did not seem to be any Mrs. Jim on the horizon, and all that William
+      could say was: &ldquo;My word, how pulled down you look!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've had a touch of fever. You don't look very well yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'm fit enough. We've stamped it out. I suppose you know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Scott nodded. &ldquo;We shall all be returned in a few weeks. Hawkins told me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before Christmas, Mrs. Jim says. Sha'n't you be glad to go back? I can
+      smell the wood-smoke already&rdquo;; William sniffed. &ldquo;We shall be in time for
+      all the Christmas doings. I don't suppose even the Punjab Government would
+      be base enough to transfer Jack till the new year?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems hundreds of years ago&mdash;the Punjab and all that&mdash;doesn't
+      it? Are you glad you came?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now it's all over, yes. It has been ghastly here, though. You know we had
+      to sit still and do nothing, and Sir Jim was away so much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do nothing! How did you get on with the milking?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I managed it somehow&mdash;after you taught me. 'Remember?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the talk stopped with an almost audible jar. Still no Mrs. Jim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That reminds me, I owe you fifty rupees for the condensed-milk. I thought
+      perhaps you'd be coming here when you were transferred to the Khanda
+      district, and I could pay you then; but you didn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I passed within five miles of the camp, but it was in the middle of a
+      march, you see, and the carts were breaking down every few minutes, and I
+      couldn't get 'em over the ground till ten o'clock that night. I wanted to
+      come awfully. You knew I did, didn't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;believe&mdash;I&mdash;did,&rdquo; said William, facing him with level
+      eyes. &ldquo;She was no longer white.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why you didn't ride in? Of course I did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you couldn't, of course. I knew that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you care?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you had come in&mdash;but I knew you wouldn't&mdash;but if you had, I
+      should have cared a great deal. You know I should.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God I didn't! Oh, but I wanted to! I couldn't trust myself to ride
+      in front of the carts, because I kept edging 'em over here, don't you
+      know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew you wouldn't,&rdquo; said William, contentedly. &ldquo;Here's your fifty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Scott bent forward and kissed the hand that held the greasy notes. Its
+      fellow patted him awkwardly but very tenderly on the head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you knew, too, didn't you?&rdquo; said William, in a new voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, on my honour, I didn't. I hadn't the&mdash;the cheek to expect
+      anything of the kind, except... I say, were you out riding anywhere the
+      day I passed by to Khanda?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      William nodded, and smiled after the manner of an angel surprised in a
+      good deed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it was just a speck I saw of your habit in the&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Palm-grove on the Southern cart-road. I saw your helmet when you came up
+      from the mullah by the temple&mdash;just enough to be sure that you were
+      all right. D' you care?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This time Scott did not kiss her hand, for they were in the dusk of the
+      dining-tent, and, because William's knees were trembling under her, she
+      had to sit down in the nearest chair, where she wept long and happily, her
+      head on her arms; and when Scott imagined that it would be well to comfort
+      her, she needing nothing of the kind, she ran to her own tent; and Scott
+      went out into the world, and smiled upon it largely and idiotically. But
+      when Faiz Ullah brought him a drink, he found it necessary to support one
+      hand with the other, or the good whisky and soda would have been spilled
+      abroad. There are fevers and fevers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was worse&mdash;much worse&mdash;the strained, eye-shirking talk at
+      dinner till the servants had withdrawn, and worst of all when Mrs. Jim,
+      who had been on the edge of weeping from the soup down, kissed Scott and
+      William, and they drank one whole bottle of champagne, hot, because there
+      was no ice, and Scott and William sat outside the tent in the starlight
+      till Mrs. Jim drove them in for fear of more fever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Apropos of these things and some others William said: &ldquo;Being engaged is
+      abominable, because, you see, one has no official position. We must be
+      thankful we've lots of things to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Things to do!&rdquo; said Jim, when that was reported to him. &ldquo;They're neither
+      of them any good any more. I can't get five hours' work a day out of
+      Scott. He's in the clouds half the time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but they're so beautiful to watch, Jimmy. It will break my heart when
+      they go. Can't you do anything for him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've given the Government the impression&mdash;at least, I hope I have&mdash;that
+      he personally conducted the entire famine. But all he wants is to get on
+      to the Luni Canal Works, and William's just as bad. Have you ever heard
+      'em talking of barrage and aprons and waste-water? It's their style of
+      spooning, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Jim smiled tenderly. &ldquo;Ah, that's in the intervals&mdash;bless 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so Love ran about the camp unrebuked in broad daylight, while men
+      picked up the pieces and put them neatly away of the Famine in the Eight
+      Districts.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      Morning brought the penetrating chill of the Northern December, the layers
+      of wood-smoke, the dusty grey-blue of the tamarisks, the domes of ruined
+      tombs, and all the smell of the white Northern plains, as the mail-train
+      ran on to the mile-long Sutlej Bridge. William, wrapped in a poshteen&mdash;a
+      silk-embroidered sheepskin jacket trimmed with rough astrakhan&mdash;looked
+      out with moist eyes and nostrils that dilated joyously. The South of
+      pagodas and palm-trees, the overpopulated Hindu South, was done with. Here
+      was the land she knew and loved, and before her lay the good life she
+      understood, among folk of her own caste and mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were picking them up at almost every station now&mdash;men and women
+      coming in for the Christmas Week, with racquets, with bundles of
+      polo-sticks, with dear and bruised cricket-bats, with fox-terriers and
+      saddles. The greater part of them wore jackets like William's, for the
+      Northern cold is as little to be trifled with as the Northern heat. And
+      William was among them and of them, her hands deep in her pockets, her
+      collar turned up over her ears, stamping her feet on the platforms as she
+      walked up and down to get warm, visiting from carriage to carriage and
+      everywhere being congratulated. Scott was with the bachelors at the far
+      end of the train, where they chaffed him mercilessly about feeding babies
+      and milking goats; but from time to time he would stroll up to William's
+      window, and murmur: &ldquo;Good enough, isn't it?&rdquo; and William would answer with
+      sighs of pure delight: &ldquo;Good enough, indeed.&rdquo; The large open names of the
+      home towns were good to listen to. Umballa, Ludianah, Phillour, Jullundur,
+      they rang like the coming marriage-bells in her ears, and William felt
+      deeply and truly sorry for all strangers and outsiders&mdash;visitors,
+      tourists, and those fresh-caught for the service of the country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a glorious return, and when the bachelors gave the Christmas Ball,
+      William was, unofficially, you might say, the chief and honoured guest
+      among the Stewards, who could make things very pleasant for their friends.
+      She and Scott danced nearly all the dances together, and sat out the rest
+      in the big dark gallery overlooking the superb teak floor, where the
+      uniforms blazed, and the spurs clinked, and the new frocks and four
+      hundred dancers went round and round till the draped flags on the pillars
+      flapped and bellied to the whirl of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About midnight half a dozen men who did not care for dancing came over
+      from the Club to play &ldquo;Waits,&rdquo; and that was a surprise the Stewards had
+      arranged&mdash;before any one knew what had happened, the band stopped,
+      and hidden voices broke into &ldquo;Good King Wenceslaus,&rdquo; and William in the
+      gallery hummed and beat time with her foot:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+             &ldquo;Mark my footsteps well, my page,
+                Tread thou in them boldly.
+              Thou shalt feel the winter's rage
+                Freeze thy blood less coldly!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I hope they are going to give us another! Isn't it pretty, coming out
+      of the dark in that way? Look&mdash;look down. There's Mrs. Gregory wiping
+      her eyes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's like Home, rather,&rdquo; said Scott. &ldquo;I remember&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hsh! Listen!&mdash;dear.&rdquo; And it began again:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+             &ldquo;When shepherds watched their flocks by night&mdash;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A-h-h!&rdquo; said William, drawing closer to Scott.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+              &ldquo;All seated on the ground,
+               The Angel of the Lord came down,
+               And glory shone around.
+              'Fear not,' said he (for mighty dread
+               Had seized their troubled mind);
+              'Glad tidings of great joy I bring
+               To you and all mankind.'&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      This time it was William that wiped her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      .007
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      A locomotive is, next to a marine engine, the most sensitive thing man
+      ever made; and No. .007, besides being sensitive, was new. The red paint
+      was hardly dry on his spotless bumper-bar, his headlight shone like a
+      fireman's helmet, and his cab might have been a hard-wood-finish parlour.
+      They had run him into the round-house after his trial&mdash;he had said
+      good-bye to his best friend in the shops, the overhead travelling-crane&mdash;the
+      big world was just outside; and the other locos were taking stock of him.
+      He looked at the semicircle of bold, unwinking headlights, heard the low
+      purr and mutter of the steam mounting in the gauges&mdash;scornful hisses
+      of contempt as a slack valve lifted a little&mdash;and would have given a
+      month's oil for leave to crawl through his own driving-wheels into the
+      brick ash-pit beneath him. .007 was an eight-wheeled &ldquo;American&rdquo; loco,
+      slightly different from others of his type, and as he stood he was worth
+      ten thousand dollars on the Company's books. But if you had bought him at
+      his own valuation, after half an hour's waiting in the darkish, echoing
+      round-house, you would have saved exactly nine thousand nine hundred and
+      ninety-nine dollars and ninety-eight cents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A heavy Mogul freight, with a short cow-catcher and a fire-box that came
+      down within three inches of the rail, began the impolite game, speaking to
+      a Pittsburgh Consolidation, who was visiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did this thing blow in from?&rdquo; he asked, with a dreamy puff of light
+      steam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;it's all I can do to keep track of our makes,&rdquo; was the answer, &ldquo;without
+      lookin' after your back-numbers. Guess it's something Peter Cooper left
+      over when he died.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      .007 quivered; his steam was getting up, but he held his tongue. Even a
+      hand-car knows what sort of locomotive it was that Peter Cooper
+      experimented upon in the far-away Thirties. It carried its coal and water
+      in two apple-barrels, and was not much bigger than a bicycle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then up and spoke a small, newish switching-engine, with a little step in
+      front of his bumper-timber, and his wheels so close together that he
+      looked like a broncho getting ready to buck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something's wrong with the road when a Pennsylvania gravel-pusher tells
+      us anything about our stock, I think. That kid's all right. Eustis
+      designed him, and Eustis designed me. Ain't that good enough?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      .007 could have carried the switching-loco round the yard in his tender,
+      but he felt grateful for even this little word of consolation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We don't use hand-cars on the Pennsylvania,&rdquo; said the Consolidation.
+      &ldquo;That&mdash;er&mdash;peanut-stand is old enough and ugly enough to speak
+      for himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He hasn't bin spoken to yet. He's bin spoke at. Hain't ye any manners on
+      the Pennsylvania?&rdquo; said the switching-loco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ought to be in the yard, Poney,&rdquo; said the Mogul, severely. &ldquo;We're all
+      long-haulers here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what you think,&rdquo; the little fellow replied. &ldquo;You'll know more
+      'fore the night's out. I've bin down to Track 17, and the freight there&mdash;oh,
+      Christmas!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've trouble enough in my own division,&rdquo; said a lean, light suburban loco
+      with very shiny brake-shoes. &ldquo;My commuters wouldn't rest till they got a
+      parlourcar. They've hitched it back of all, and it hauls worsen a
+      snow-plough. I'll snap her off someday sure, and then they'll blame every
+      one except their foolselves. They'll be askin' me to haul a vestibuled
+      next!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They made you in New Jersey, didn't they?&rdquo; said Poney. &ldquo;Thought so.
+      Commuters and truck-wagons ain't any sweet haulin', but I tell you they're
+      a heap better 'n cuttin' out refrigerator-cars or oil-tanks. Why, I've
+      hauled&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Haul! You?&rdquo; said the Mogul, contemptuously. &ldquo;It's all you can do to bunt
+      a cold-storage car up the yard. Now, I&mdash;&rdquo; he paused a little to let
+      the words sink in&mdash;&ldquo;I handle the Flying Freight&mdash;e-leven cars
+      worth just anything you please to mention. On the stroke of eleven I pull
+      out; and I'm timed for thirty-five an hour. Costly-perishable-fragile,
+      immediate&mdash;that's me! Suburban traffic's only but one degree better
+      than switching. Express freight's what pays.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I ain't given to blowing, as a rule,&rdquo; began the Pittsburgh
+      Consolidation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No? You was sent in here because you grunted on the grade,&rdquo; Poney
+      interrupted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where I grunt, you'd lie down, Poney: but, as I was saying, I don't blow
+      much. Notwithstandin', if you want to see freight that is freight moved
+      lively, you should see me warbling through the Alleghanies with
+      thirty-seven ore-cars behind me, and my brakemen fightin' tramps so's they
+      can't attend to my tooter. I have to do all the holdin' back then, and,
+      though I say it, I've never had a load get away from me yet. No, sir.
+      Haulin's's one thing, but judgment and discretion's another. You want
+      judgment in my business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! But&mdash;but are you not paralysed by a sense of your overwhelming
+      responsibilities?&rdquo; said a curious, husky voice from a corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's that?&rdquo;.007 whispered to the Jersey commuter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Compound-experiment-N.G. She's bin switchin' in the B. &amp; A. yards for
+      six months, when she wasn't in the shops. She's economical (I call it
+      mean) in her coal, but she takes it out in repairs. Ahem! I presume you
+      found Boston somewhat isolated, madam, after your New York season?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am never so well occupied as when I am alone.&rdquo; The Compound seemed to
+      be talking from half-way up her smoke-stack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure,&rdquo; said the irreverent Poney, under his breath. &ldquo;They don't hanker
+      after her any in the yard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, with my constitution and temperament&mdash;my work lies in Boston&mdash;I
+      find your outrecuidance&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Outer which?&rdquo; said the Mogul freight. &ldquo;Simple cylinders are good enough
+      for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps I should have said faroucherie,&rdquo; hissed the Compound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't hold with any make of papier-mache wheel,&rdquo; the Mogul insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Compound sighed pityingly, and said no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Git 'em all shapes in this world, don't ye?&rdquo; said Poney, &ldquo;that's
+      Mass'chusetts all over. They half start, an' then they stick on a
+      dead-centre, an' blame it all on other folk's ways o' treatin' them.
+      Talkin' o' Boston, Comanche told me, last night, he had a hot-box just
+      beyond the Newtons, Friday. That was why, he says, the Accommodation was
+      held up. Made out no end of a tale, Comanche did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I'd heard that in the shops, with my boiler out for repairs, I'd know
+      't was one o' Comanche's lies,&rdquo; the New Jersey commuter snapped. &ldquo;Hot-box!
+      Him! What happened was they'd put an extra car on, and he just lay down on
+      the grade and squealed. They had to send 127 to help him through. Made it
+      out a hotbox, did he? Time before that he said he was ditched! Looked me
+      square in the headlight and told me that as cool as&mdash;as a water-tank
+      in a cold wave. Hot-box! You ask 127 about Comanche's hot-box. Why,
+      Comanche he was side-tracked, and 127 (he was just about as mad as they
+      make 'em on account o' being called out at ten o'clock at night) took hold
+      and snapped her into Boston in seventeen minutes. Hot-box! Hot fraud!
+      that's what Comanche is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then.007 put both drivers and his pilot into it, as the saying is, for he
+      asked what sort of thing a hot-box might be?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Paint my bell sky-blue!&rdquo; said Poney, the switcher. &ldquo;Make me a
+      surface-railroad loco with a hard-wood skirtin'-board round my wheels.
+      Break me up and cast me into five-cent sidewalk-fakirs' mechanical toys!
+      Here's an eight-wheel coupled 'American' don't know what a hot-box is!
+      Never heard of an emergency-stop either, did ye? Don't know what ye carry
+      jack-screws for? You're too innocent to be left alone with your own
+      tender. Oh, you&mdash;you flatcar!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a roar of escaping steam before any one could answer, and .007
+      nearly blistered his paint off with pure mortification.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A hot-box,&rdquo; began the Compound, picking and choosing her words as though
+      they were coal, &ldquo;a hotbox is the penalty exacted from inexperience by
+      haste. Ahem!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hot-box!&rdquo; said the Jersey Suburban. &ldquo;It's the price you pay for going on
+      the tear. It's years since I've had one. It's a disease that don't attack
+      shorthaulers, as a rule.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We never have hot-boxes on the Pennsylvania,&rdquo; said the Consolidation.
+      &ldquo;They get 'em in New York&mdash;same as nervous prostration.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, go home on a ferry-boat,&rdquo; said the Mogul. &ldquo;You think because you use
+      worse grades than our road 'u'd allow, you're a kind of Alleghany angel.
+      Now, I'll tell you what you... Here's my folk. Well, I can't stop. See you
+      later, perhaps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rolled forward majestically to the turn-table, and swung like a
+      man-of-war in a tideway, till he picked up his track. &ldquo;But as for you, you
+      pea-green swiveling' coffee-pot (this to.007'), you go out and learn
+      something before you associate with those who've made more mileage in a
+      week than you'll roll up in a year. Costly-perishable-fragile immediate&mdash;that's
+      me! S' long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Split my tubes if that's actin' polite to a new member o' the
+      Brotherhood,&rdquo; said Poney. &ldquo;There wasn't any call to trample on ye like
+      that. But manners was left out when Moguls was made. Keep up your fire,
+      kid, an' burn your own smoke. 'Guess we'll all be wanted in a minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Men were talking rather excitedly in the roundhouse. One man, in a dingy
+      jersey, said that he hadn't any locomotives to waste on the yard. Another
+      man, with a piece of crumpled paper in his hand, said that the yard-master
+      said that he was to say that if the other man said anything, he (the other
+      man) was to shut his head. Then the other man waved his arms, and wanted
+      to know if he was expected to keep locomotives in his hip-pocket. Then a
+      man in a black Prince Albert, without a collar, came up dripping, for it
+      was a hot August night, and said that what he said went; and between the
+      three of them the locomotives began to go, too&mdash;first the Compound;
+      then the Consolidation; then.007.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, deep down in his fire-box, .007 had cherished a hope that as soon as
+      his trial was done, he would be led forth with songs and shoutings, and
+      attached to a green-and-chocolate vestibuled flyer, under charge of a bold
+      and noble engineer, who would pat him on his back, and weep over him, and
+      call him his Arab steed. (The boys in the shops where he was built used to
+      read wonderful stories of railroad life, and .007 expected things to
+      happen as he had heard.) But there did not seem to be many vestibuled
+      fliers in the roaring, rumbling, electric-lighted yards, and his engineer
+      only said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, what sort of a fool-sort of an injector has Eustis loaded on to this
+      rig this time?&rdquo; And he put the lever over with an angry snap, crying: &ldquo;Am
+      I supposed to switch with this thing, hey?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The collarless man mopped his head, and replied that, in the present state
+      of the yard and freight and a few other things, the engineer would switch
+      and keep on switching till the cows came home. .007 pushed out gingerly,
+      his heart in his headlight, so nervous that the clang of his own bell
+      almost made him jump the track. Lanterns waved, or danced up and down,
+      before and behind him; and on every side, six tracks deep, sliding
+      backward and forward, with clashings of couplers and squeals of
+      hand-brakes, were cars&mdash;more cars than .007 had dreamed of. There
+      were oil-cars, and hay-cars, and stock-cars full of lowing beasts, and
+      ore-cars, and potato-cars with stovepipe-ends sticking out in the middle;
+      cold-storage and refrigerator cars dripping ice water on the tracks;
+      ventilated fruit&mdash;and milk-cars; flatcars with truck-wagons full of
+      market-stuff; flat-cars loaded with reapers and binders, all red and green
+      and gilt under the sizzling electric lights; flat-cars piled high with
+      strong-scented hides, pleasant hemlock-plank, or bundles of shingles;
+      flat-cars creaking to the weight of thirty-ton castings, angle-irons, and
+      rivet-boxes for some new bridge; and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
+      box-cars loaded, locked, and chalked. Men&mdash;hot and angry&mdash;crawled
+      among and between and under the thousand wheels; men took flying jumps
+      through his cab, when he halted for a moment; men sat on his pilot as he
+      went forward, and on his tender as he returned; and regiments of men ran
+      along the tops of the box-cars beside him, screwing down brakes, waving
+      their arms, and crying curious things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was pushed forward a foot at a time; whirled backward, his rear drivers
+      clinking and clanking, a quarter of a mile; jerked into a switch
+      (yard-switches are very stubby and unaccommodating), bunted into a Red D,
+      or Merchant's Transport car, and, with no hint or knowledge of the weight
+      behind him, started up anew. When his load was fairly on the move, three
+      or four cars would be cut off, and .007 would bound forward, only to be
+      held hiccupping on the brake. Then he would wait a few minutes, watching
+      the whirled lanterns, deafened with the clang of the bells, giddy with the
+      vision of the sliding cars, his brake-pump panting forty to the minute,
+      his front coupler lying sideways on his cow-catcher, like a tired dog's
+      tongue in his mouth, and the whole of him covered with half-burnt
+      coal-dust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Tisn't so easy switching with a straight-backed tender,&rdquo; said his little
+      friend of the round-house, bustling by at a trot. &ldquo;But you're comin' on
+      pretty fair. 'Ever seen a flyin' switch? No? Then watch me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poney was in charge of a dozen heavy flat-cars. Suddenly he shot away from
+      them with a sharp &ldquo;Whutt!&rdquo; A switch opened in the shadows ahead; he turned
+      up it like a rabbit as it snapped behind him, and the long line of
+      twelve-foot-high lumber jolted on into the arms of a full-sized road-loco,
+      who acknowledged receipt with a dry howl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My man's reckoned the smartest in the yard at that trick,&rdquo; he said,
+      returning. &ldquo;Gives me cold shivers when another fool tries it, though.
+      That's where my short wheel-base comes in. Like as not you'd have your
+      tender scraped off if you tried it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      .007 had no ambitions that way, and said so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No? Of course this ain't your regular business, but say, don't you think
+      it's interestin'? Have you seen the yard-master? Well, he's the greatest
+      man on earth, an' don't you forget it. When are we through? Why, kid, it's
+      always like this, day an' night&mdash;Sundays an' week-days. See that
+      thirty-car freight slidin' in four, no, five tracks off? She's all mixed
+      freight, sent here to be sorted out into straight trains. That's why we're
+      cuttin' out the cars one by one.&rdquo; He gave a vigorous push to a west-bound
+      car as he spoke, and started back with a little snort of surprise, for the
+      car was an old friend&mdash;an M. T. K. box-car.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jack my drivers, but it's Homeless Kate! Why, Kate, ain't there no
+      gettin' you back to your friends? There's forty chasers out for you from
+      your road, if there's one. Who's holdin' you now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wish I knew,&rdquo; whimpered Homeless Kate. &ldquo;I belong in Topeka, but I've bin
+      to Cedar Rapids; I've bin to Winnipeg; I've bin to Newport News; I've bin
+      all down the old Atlanta and West Point; an' I've bin to Buffalo. Maybe
+      I'll fetch up at Haverstraw. I've only bin out ten months, but I'm
+      homesick&mdash;I'm just achin' homesick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Try Chicago, Katie,&rdquo; said the switching-loco; and the battered old car
+      lumbered down the track, jolting: &ldquo;I want to be in Kansas when the
+      sunflowers bloom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Yard's full o' Homeless Kates an' Wanderin' Willies,&rdquo; he explained
+      to.007. &ldquo;I knew an old Fitchburg flat-car out seventeen months; an' one of
+      ours was gone fifteen 'fore ever we got track of her. Dunno quite how our
+      men fix it. 'Swap around, I guess. Anyway, I've done my duty. She's on her
+      way to Kansas, via Chicago; but I'll lay my next boilerful she'll be held
+      there to wait consignee's convenience, and sent back to us with wheat in
+      the fall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then the Pittsburgh Consolidation passed, at the head of a dozen
+      cars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm goin' home,&rdquo; he said proudly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't get all them twelve on to the flat. Break 'em in half, Dutchy!&rdquo;
+       cried Poney. But it was.007 who was backed down to the last six cars, and
+      he nearly blew up with surprise when he found himself pushing them on to a
+      huge ferry-boat. He had never seen deep water before, and shivered as the
+      flat drew away and left his bogies within six inches of the black, shiny
+      tide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After this he was hurried to the freight-house, where he saw the
+      yard-master, a smallish, white-faced man in shirt, trousers, and slippers,
+      looking down upon a sea of trucks, a mob of bawling truckmen, and
+      squadrons of backing, turning, sweating, spark-striking horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's shippers' carts loadin' on to the receivin' trucks,&rdquo; said the
+      small engine, reverently. &ldquo;But he don't care. He lets 'em cuss. He's the
+      Czar-King-Boss! He says 'Please,' and then they kneel down an' pray.
+      There's three or four strings o' today's freight to be pulled before he
+      can attend to them. When he waves his hand that way, things happen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A string of loaded cars slid out down the track, and a string of empties
+      took their place. Bales, crates, boxes, jars, carboys, frails, cases, and
+      packages flew into them from the freight-house as though the cars had been
+      magnets and they iron filings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ki-yah!&rdquo; shrieked little Poney. &ldquo;Ain't it great?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A purple-faced truckman shouldered his way to the yard-master, and shook
+      his fist under his nose. The yard-master never looked up from his bundle
+      of freight receipts. He crooked his forefinger slightly, and a tall young
+      man in a red shirt, lounging carelessly beside him, hit the truckman under
+      the left ear, so that he dropped, quivering and clucking, on a hay-bale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eleven, seven, ninety-seven, L. Y. S.; fourteen ought ought three;
+      nineteen thirteen; one one four; seventeen ought twenty-one M. B.; and the
+      ten westbound. All straight except the two last. Cut 'em off at the
+      junction. An' that's all right. Pull that string.&rdquo; The yard-master, with
+      mild blue eyes, looked out over the howling truckmen at the waters in the
+      moonlight beyond, and hummed:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                 &ldquo;All things bright and beautiful,
+                  All creatures great and small,
+                  All things wise and wonderful,
+                  The Lawd Gawd He made all!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      .007 moved out the cars and delivered them to the regular road-engine. He
+      had never felt quite so limp in his life before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Curious, ain't it?&rdquo; said Poney, puffing, on the next track. &ldquo;You an' me,
+      if we got that man under our bumpers, we'd work him into red waste an' not
+      know what we'd done; but-up there&mdash;with the steam hummin' in his
+      boiler that awful quiet way...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; said.007. &ldquo;Makes me feel as if I'd dropped my Fire an' was
+      getting cold. He is the greatest man on earth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were at the far north end of the yard now, under a switchtower,
+      looking down on the four-track way of the main traffic. The Boston
+      Compound was to haul .007's string to some far-away northern junction over
+      an indifferent road-bed, and she mourned aloud for the ninety-six pound
+      rails of the B. &amp; A.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're young; you're young,&rdquo; she coughed. &ldquo;You don't realise your
+      responsibilities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he does,&rdquo; said Poney, sharply; &ldquo;but he don't lie down under 'em.&rdquo;
+       Then, with aside-spurt of steam, exactly like a tough spitting: &ldquo;There
+      ain't more than fifteen thousand dollars' worth o' freight behind her
+      anyway, and she goes on as if 't were a hundred thousand&mdash;same as the
+      Mogul's. Excuse me, madam, but you've the track.... She's stuck on a
+      dead-centre again&mdash;bein' specially designed not to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Compound crawled across the tracks on a long slant, groaning horribly
+      at each switch, and moving like a cow in a snow-drift. There was a little
+      pause along the yard after her tail-lights had disappeared; switches
+      locked crisply, and every one seemed to be waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I'll show you something worth,&rdquo; said Poney. &ldquo;When the Purple Emperor
+      ain't on time, it's about time to amend the Constitution. The first stroke
+      of twelve is&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Boom!&rdquo; went the clock in the big yard-tower, and far away.007 heard a
+      full, vibrating &ldquo;Yah! Yah! Yah!&rdquo; A headlight twinkled on the horizon like
+      a star, grew an overpowering blaze, and whooped up the humming track to
+      the roaring music of a happy giant's song:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;With a michnai&mdash;ghignai&mdash;shtingal!  Yah!  Yah!  Yah!
+   Ein&mdash;zwei&mdash;drei&mdash;Mutter!  Yah!  Yah!  Yah!
+        She climb upon der shteeple,
+        Und she frighten all der people.
+   Singin' michnai&mdash;ghignai&mdash;shtingal!  Yah!  Yah!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      The last defiant &ldquo;yah! yah!&rdquo; was delivered a mile and a half beyond the
+      passenger-depot; but .007 had caught one glimpse of the superb
+      six-wheel-coupled racing-locomotive, who hauled the pride and glory of the
+      road&mdash;the gilt-edged Purple Emperor, the millionaires' south-bound
+      express, laying the miles over his shoulder as a man peels a shaving from
+      a soft board. The rest was a blur of maroon enamel, a bar of white light
+      from the electrics in the cars, and a flicker of nickel-plated hand-rail
+      on the rear platform.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ooh!&rdquo; said.007.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seventy-five miles an hour these five miles. Baths, I've heard; barber's
+      shop; ticker; and a library and the rest to match. Yes, sir; seventy-five
+      an hour! But he'll talk to you in the round-house just as democratic as I
+      would. And I&mdash;cuss my wheel-base!&mdash;I'd kick clean off the track
+      at half his gait. He's the Master of our Lodge. Cleans up at our house.
+      I'll introdooce you some day. He's worth knowin'! There ain't many can
+      sing that song, either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      .007 was too full of emotions to answer. He did not hear a raging of
+      telephone-bells in the switch-tower, nor the man, as he leaned out and
+      called to .007's engineer: &ldquo;Got any steam?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Nough to run her a hundred mile out o' this, if I could,&rdquo; said the
+      engineer, who belonged to the open road and hated switching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then get. The Flying Freight's ditched forty mile out, with fifty rod o'
+      track ploughed up. No; no one's hurt, but both tracks are blocked. Lucky
+      the wreckin'-car an' derrick are this end of the yard. Crew 'll be along
+      in a minute. Hurry! You've the track.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I could jest kick my little sawed-off self,&rdquo; said Poney, as .007
+      was backed, with a bang, on to a grim and grimy car like a caboose, but
+      full of tools&mdash;a flatcar and a derrick behind it. &ldquo;Some folks are one
+      thing, and some are another; but you're in luck, kid. They push a
+      wrecking-car. Now, don't get rattled. Your wheel-base will keep you on the
+      track, and there ain't any curves worth mentionin'. Oh, say! Comanche told
+      me there's one section o' sawedged track that's liable to jounce ye a
+      little. Fifteen an' a half out, after the grade at Jackson's crossin'.
+      You'll know it by a farmhouse an' a windmill an' five maples in the
+      dooryard. Windmill's west o' the maples. An' there's an eighty-foot iron
+      bridge in the middle o' that section with no guard-rails. See you later.
+      Luck!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before he knew well what had happened, .007 was flying up the track into
+      the dumb, dark world. Then fears of the night beset him. He remembered all
+      he had ever heard of landslides, rain-piled boulders, blown trees, and
+      strayed cattle, all that the Boston Compound had ever said of
+      responsibility, and a great deal more that came out of his own head. With
+      a very quavering voice he whistled for his first grade-crossing (an event
+      in the life of a locomotive), and his nerves were in no way restored by
+      the sight of a frantic horse and a white-faced man in a buggy less than a
+      yard from his right shoulder. Then he was sure he would jump the track;
+      felt his flanges mounting the rail at every curve; knew that his first
+      grade would make him lie down even as Comanche had done at the Newtons. He
+      whirled down the grade to Jackson's crossing, saw the windmill west of the
+      maples, felt the badly laid rails spring under him, and sweated big drops
+      all over his boiler. At each jarring bump he believed an axle had smashed,
+      and he took the eighty-foot bridge without the guard-rail like a hunted
+      cat on the top of a fence. Then a wet leaf stuck against the glass of his
+      headlight and threw a flying shadow on the track, so that he thought it
+      was some little dancing animal that would feel soft if he ran over it; and
+      anything soft underfoot frightens a locomotive as it does an elephant. But
+      the men behind seemed quite calm. The wrecking-crew were climbing
+      carelessly from the caboose to the tender&mdash;even jesting with the
+      engineer, for he heard a shuffling of feet among the coal, and the snatch
+      of a song, something like this:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &ldquo;Oh, the Empire State must learn to wait,
+    And the Cannon-ball go hang!
+    When the West-bound's ditched, and the tool-car's hitched,
+    And it's 'way for the Breakdown Gang (Tare-ra!)
+    'Way for the Breakdown Gang!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say! Eustis knew what he was doin' when he designed this rig. She's a
+      hummer. New, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Snff! Phew! She is new. That ain't paint, that's&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A burning pain shot through .007's right rear driver&mdash;a crippling,
+      stinging pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This,&rdquo; said .007, as he flew, &ldquo;is a hot-box. Now I know what it means. I
+      shall go to pieces, I guess. My first road-run, too!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Het a bit, ain't she?&rdquo; the fireman ventured to suggest to the engineer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'll hold for all we want of her. We're 'most there. Guess you chaps
+      back had better climb into your car,&rdquo; said the engineer, his hand on the
+      brake lever. &ldquo;I've seen men snapped off&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the crew fled back with laughter. They had no wish to be jerked on to
+      the track. The engineer half turned his wrist, and .007 found his drivers
+      pinned firm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now it's come!&rdquo; said .007, as he yelled aloud, and slid like a sleigh.
+      For the moment he fancied that he would jerk bodily from off his
+      underpinning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That must be the emergency-stop that Poney guyed me about,&rdquo; he gasped, as
+      soon as he could think. &ldquo;Hot-box-emergency-stop. They both hurt; but now I
+      can talk back in the round-house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was halted, all hissing hot, a few feet in the rear of what doctors
+      would call a compound-comminuted car. His engineer was kneeling down among
+      his drivers, but he did not call.007 his &ldquo;Arab steed,&rdquo; nor cry over him,
+      as the engineers did in the newspapers. He just bad worded.007, and pulled
+      yards of charred cotton-waste from about the axles, and hoped he might
+      some day catch the idiot who had packed it. Nobody else attended to him,
+      for Evans, the Mogul's engineer, a little cut about the head, but very
+      angry, was exhibiting, by lantern-light, the mangled corpse of a slim blue
+      pig.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;T were n't even a decent-sized hog,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;'T were a shote.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dangerousest beasts they are,&rdquo; said one of the crew. &ldquo;Get under the pilot
+      an' sort o' twiddle ye off the track, don't they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't they?&rdquo; roared Evans, who was a red-headed Welshman. &ldquo;You talk as if
+      I was ditched by a hog every fool-day o' the week. I ain't friends with
+      all the cussed half-fed shotes in the State o' New York. No, indeed! Yes,
+      this is him&mdash;an' look what he's done!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not a bad night's work for one stray piglet. The Flying Freight
+      seemed to have flown in every direction, for the Mogul had mounted the
+      rails and run diagonally a few hundred feet from right to left, taking
+      with him such cars as cared to follow. Some did not. They broke their
+      couplers and lay down, while rear cars frolicked over them. In that game,
+      they had ploughed up and removed and twisted a good deal of the left-hand
+      track. The Mogul himself had waddled into a corn-field, and there he knelt&mdash;fantastic
+      wreaths of green twisted round his crankpins; his pilot covered with solid
+      clods of field, on which corn nodded drunkenly; his fire put out with dirt
+      (Evans had done that as soon as he recovered his senses); and his broken
+      headlight half full of half-burnt moths. His tender had thrown coal all
+      over him, and he looked like a disreputable buffalo who had tried to
+      wallow in a general store. For there lay scattered over the landscape,
+      from the burst cars, type-writers, sewing-machines, bicycles in crates, a
+      consignment of silver-plated imported harness, French dresses and gloves,
+      a dozen finely moulded hard-wood mantels, a fifteen-foot naphtha-launch,
+      with a solid brass bedstead crumpled around her bows, a case of telescopes
+      and microscopes, two coffins, a case of very best candies, some gilt-edged
+      dairy produce, butter and eggs in an omelette, a broken box of expensive
+      toys, and a few hundred other luxuries. A camp of tramps hurried up from
+      nowhere, and generously volunteered to help the crew. So the brakemen,
+      armed with coupler-pins, walked up and down on one side, and the
+      freight-conductor and the fireman patrolled the other with their hands in
+      their hip-pockets. A long-bearded man came out of a house beyond the
+      corn-field, and told Evans that if the accident had happened a little
+      later in the year, all his corn would have been burned, and accused Evans
+      of carelessness. Then he ran away, for Evans was at his heels shrieking:
+      &ldquo;'T was his hog done it&mdash;his hog done it! Let me kill him! Let me
+      kill him!&rdquo; Then the wrecking-crew laughed; and the farmer put his head out
+      of a window and said that Evans was no gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But .007 was very sober. He had never seen a wreck before, and it
+      frightened him. The crew still laughed, but they worked at the same time;
+      and 007 forgot horror in amazement at the way they handled the Mogul
+      freight. They dug round him with spades; they put ties in front of his
+      wheels, and jack-screws under him; they embraced him with the
+      derrick-chain and tickled him with crowbars; while .007 was hitched on to
+      wrecked cars and backed away till the knot broke or the cars rolled clear
+      of the track. By dawn thirty or forty men were at work, replacing and
+      ramming down the ties, gauging the rails and spiking them. By daylight all
+      cars who could move had gone on in charge of another loco; the track was
+      freed for traffic; and 007 had hauled the old Mogul over a small pavement
+      of ties, inch by inch, till his flanges bit the rail once more, and he
+      settled down with a clank. But his spirit was broken, and his nerve was
+      gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'T weren't even a hog,&rdquo; he repeated dolefully; &ldquo;'t were a shote; and you&mdash;you
+      of all of 'em&mdash;had to help me on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how in the whole long road did it happen?&rdquo; asked 007, sizzling with
+      curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Happen! It didn't happen! It just come! I sailed right on top of him
+      around that last curve&mdash;thought he was a skunk. Yes; he was all as
+      little as that. He hadn't more 'n squealed once 'fore I felt my bogies
+      lift (he'd rolled right under the pilot), and I couldn't catch the track
+      again to save me. Swivelled clean off, I was. Then I felt him sling
+      himself along, all greasy, under my left leadin' driver, and, oh, Boilers!
+      that mounted the rail. I heard my flanges zippin' along the ties, an' the
+      next I knew I was playin' 'Sally, Sally Waters' in the corn, my tender
+      shuckin' coal through my cab, an' old man Evans lyin' still an' bleedin'
+      in front o' me. Shook? There ain't a stay or a bolt or a rivet in me that
+      ain't sprung to glory somewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Umm!&rdquo; said 007. &ldquo;What d' you reckon you weigh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Without these lumps o' dirt I'm all of a hundred thousand pound.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the shote?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eighty. Call him a hundred pound at the outside. He's worth about four
+      'n' a half dollars. Ain't it awful? Ain't it enough to give you nervous
+      prostration? Ain't it paralysin'? Why, I come just around that curve&mdash;&rdquo;
+       and the Mogul told the tale again, for he was very badly shaken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it's all in the day's run, I guess,&rdquo; said 007, soothingly; &ldquo;an'&mdash;an'
+      a corn-field's pretty soft fallin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it had bin a sixty-foot bridge, an' I could ha' slid off into deep
+      water an' blown up an' killed both men, same as others have done, I
+      wouldn't ha' cared; but to be ditched by a shote&mdash;an' you to help me
+      out&mdash;in a corn-field&mdash;an' an old hayseed in his nightgown
+      cussin' me like as if I was a sick truck-horse!... Oh, it's awful! Don't
+      call me Mogul! I'm a sewin'-machine, they'll guy my sand-box off in the
+      yard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And 007, his hot-box cooled and his experience vastly enlarged, hauled the
+      Mogul freight slowly to the roundhouse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, old man! Bin out all night, hain't ye?&rdquo; said the irrepressible
+      Poney, who had just come off duty. &ldquo;Well, I must say you look it.
+      Costly-perishable-fragile-immediate&mdash;that's you! Go to the shops,
+      take them vine-leaves out o' your hair, an' git 'em to play the hose on
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave him alone, Poney,&rdquo; said 007 severely, as he was swung on the
+      turn-table, &ldquo;or I'll&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Didn't know the old granger was any special friend o' yours, kid. He
+      wasn't over-civil to you last time I saw him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it; but I've seen a wreck since then, and it has about scared the
+      paint off me. I'm not going to guy anyone as long as I steam&mdash;not
+      when they're new to the business an' anxious to learn. And I'm not goin'
+      to guy the old Mogul either, though I did find him wreathed around with
+      roastin'-ears. 'T was a little bit of a shote&mdash;not a hog&mdash;just a
+      shote, Poney&mdash;no bigger'n a lump of anthracite&mdash;I saw it&mdash;that
+      made all the mess. Anybody can be ditched, I guess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Found that out already, have you? Well, that's a good beginnin'.&rdquo; It was
+      the Purple Emperor, with his high, tight, plate-glass cab and green velvet
+      cushion, waiting to be cleaned for his next day's fly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me make you two gen'lemen acquainted,&rdquo; said Poney. &ldquo;This is our
+      Purple Emperor, kid, whom you were admirin' and, I may say, envyin' last
+      night. This is a new brother, worshipful sir, with most of his mileage
+      ahead of him, but, so far as a serving-brother can, I'll answer for him.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Happy to meet you,&rdquo; said the Purple Emperor, with a glance round the
+      crowded round-house. &ldquo;I guess there are enough of us here to form a full
+      meetin'. Ahem! By virtue of the authority vested in me as Head of the
+      Road, I hereby declare and pronounce No..007 a full and accepted Brother
+      of the Amalgamated Brotherhood of Locomotives, and as such entitled to all
+      shop, switch, track, tank, and round-house privileges throughout my
+      jurisdiction, in the Degree of Superior Flier, it bein' well known and
+      credibly reported to me that our Brother has covered forty-one miles in
+      thirty-nine minutes and a half on an errand of mercy to the afflicted. At
+      a convenient time, I myself will communicate to you the Song and Signal of
+      this Degree whereby you may be recognised in the darkest night. Take your
+      stall, newly entered Brother among Locomotives!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      Now, in the darkest night, even as the Purple Emperor said, if you will
+      stand on the bridge across the freightyard, looking down upon the
+      four-track way, at 2:30 A. M., neither before nor after, when the White
+      Moth, that takes the overflow from the Purple Emperor, tears south with
+      her seven vestibuled cream-white cars, you will hear, as the yard-clock
+      makes the half-hour, a far-away sound like the bass of a violoncello, and
+      then, a hundred feet to each word,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    &ldquo;With a michnai&mdash;ghignai&mdash;shtingal!  Yah!  Yah!  Yah!
+     Ein&mdash;zwei&mdash;drei&mdash;Mutter!  Yah!  Yah!  Yah!
+           She climb upon der shteeple,
+           Und she frighten all der people,
+     Singin' michnai&mdash;ghignai&mdash;shtingal!  Yah!  Yah!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      That is 007 covering his one hundred and fifty-six miles in two hundred
+      and twenty-one minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE MALTESE CAT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      They had good reason to be proud, and better reason to be afraid, all
+      twelve of them; for though they had fought their way, game by game, up the
+      teams entered for the polo tournament, they were meeting the Archangels
+      that afternoon in the final match; and the Archangels men were playing
+      with half a dozen ponies apiece. As the game was divided into six quarters
+      of eight minutes each, that meant a fresh pony after every halt. The
+      Skidars' team, even supposing there were no accidents, could only supply
+      one pony for every other change; and two to one is heavy odds. Again, as
+      Shiraz, the grey Syrian, pointed out, they were meeting the pink and pick
+      of the polo-ponies of Upper India, ponies that had cost from a thousand
+      rupees each, while they themselves were a cheap lot gathered, often from
+      country-carts, by their masters, who belonged to a poor but honest native
+      infantry regiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Money means pace and weight,&rdquo; said Shiraz, rubbing his black-silk nose
+      dolefully along his neat-fitting boot, &ldquo;and by the maxims of the game as I
+      know it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but we aren't playing the maxims,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat. &ldquo;We're
+      playing the game; and we've the great advantage of knowing the game. Just
+      think a stride, Shiraz! We've pulled up from bottom to second place in two
+      weeks against all those fellows on the ground here. That's because we play
+      with our heads as well as our feet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It makes me feel undersized and unhappy all the same,&rdquo; said Kittiwynk, a
+      mouse-coloured mare with a red brow-band and the cleanest pair of legs
+      that ever an aged pony owned. &ldquo;They've twice our style, these others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kittiwynk looked at the gathering and sighed. The hard, dusty polo-ground
+      was lined with thousands of soldiers, black and white, not counting
+      hundreds and hundreds of carriages and drags and dogcarts, and ladies with
+      brilliant-coloured parasols, and officers in uniform and out of it, and
+      crowds of natives behind them; and orderlies on camels, who had halted to
+      watch the game, instead of carrying letters up and down the station; and
+      native horse-dealers running about on thin-eared Biluchi mares, looking
+      for a chance to sell a few first-class polo-ponies. Then there were the
+      ponies of thirty teams that had entered for the Upper India Free-for-All
+      Cup&mdash;nearly every pony of worth and dignity, from Mhow to Peshawar,
+      from Allahabad to Multan; prize ponies, Arabs, Syrian, Barb, country-bred,
+      Deccanee, Waziri, and Kabul ponies of every colour and shape and temper
+      that you could imagine. Some of them were in mat-roofed stables, close to
+      the polo-ground, but most were under saddle, while their masters, who had
+      been defeated in the earlier games, trotted in and out and told the world
+      exactly how the game should be played.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a glorious sight, and the come and go of the little, quick hooves,
+      and the incessant salutations of ponies that had met before on other
+      polo-grounds or race-courses were enough to drive a four-footed thing
+      wild.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Skidars' team were careful not to know their neighbours, though
+      half the ponies on the ground were anxious to scrape acquaintance with the
+      little fellows that had come from the North, and, so far, had swept the
+      board.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's see,&rdquo; said a soft gold-coloured Arab, who had been playing very
+      badly the day before, to The Maltese Cat; &ldquo;didn't we meet in Abdul
+      Rahman's stable in Bombay, four seasons ago? I won the Paikpattan Cup next
+      season, you may remember?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not me,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat, politely. &ldquo;I was at Malta then, pulling a
+      vegetable-cart. I don't race. I play the game.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said the Arab, cocking his tail and swaggering off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep yourselves to yourselves,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat to his companions.
+      &ldquo;We don't want to rub noses with all those goose-rumped half-breeds of
+      Upper India. When we've won this Cup they'll give their shoes to know us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We sha'n't win the Cup,&rdquo; said Shiraz. &ldquo;How do you feel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stale as last night's feed when a muskrat has run over it,&rdquo; said Polaris,
+      a rather heavy-shouldered grey; and the rest of the team agreed with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sooner you forget that the better,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat, cheerfully.
+      &ldquo;They've finished tiffin in the big tent. We shall be wanted now. If your
+      saddles are not comfy, kick. If your bits aren't easy, rear, and let the
+      saises know whether your boots are tight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Each pony had his sais, his groom, who lived and ate and slept with the
+      animal, and had betted a good deal more than he could afford on the result
+      of the game. There was no chance of anything going wrong, but to make
+      sure, each sais was shampooing the legs of his pony to the last minute.
+      Behind the saises sat as many of the Skidars' regiment as had leave to
+      attend the match&mdash;about half the native officers, and a hundred or
+      two dark, black-bearded men with the regimental pipers nervously fingering
+      the big, beribboned bagpipes. The Skidars were what they call a Pioneer
+      regiment, and the bagpipes made the national music of half their men. The
+      native officers held bundles of polo-sticks, long cane-handled mallets,
+      and as the grand stand filled after lunch they arranged themselves by ones
+      and twos at different points round the ground, so that if a stick were
+      broken the player would not have far to ride for a new one. An impatient
+      British Cavalry Band struck up &ldquo;If you want to know the time, ask a
+      p'leeceman!&rdquo; and the two umpires in light dust-coats danced out on two
+      little excited ponies. The four players of the Archangels' team followed,
+      and the sight of their beautiful mounts made Shiraz groan again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait till we know,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat. &ldquo;Two of 'em are playing in
+      blinkers, and that means they can't see to get out of the way of their own
+      side, or they may shy at the umpires' ponies. They've all got white
+      web-reins that are sure to stretch or slip!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; said Kittiwynk, dancing to take the stiffness out of her, &ldquo;they
+      carry their whips in their hands instead of on their wrists. Hah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True enough. No man can manage his stick and his reins and his whip that
+      way,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat. &ldquo;I've fallen over every square yard of the
+      Malta ground, and I ought to know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He quivered his little, flea-bitten withers just to show how satisfied he
+      felt; but his heart was not so light. Ever since he had drifted into India
+      on a troop-ship, taken, with an old rifle, as part payment for a racing
+      debt, The Maltese Cat had played and preached polo to the Skidars' team on
+      the Skidars' stony pologround. Now a polo-pony is like a poet. If he is
+      born with a love for the game, he can be made. The Maltese Cat knew that
+      bamboos grew solely in order that poloballs might be turned from their
+      roots, that grain was given to ponies to keep them in hard condition, and
+      that ponies were shod to prevent them slipping on a turn. But, besides all
+      these things, he knew every trick and device of the finest game in the
+      world, and for two seasons had been teaching the others all he knew or
+      guessed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Remember,&rdquo; he said for the hundredth time, as the riders came up, &ldquo;you
+      must play together, and you must play with your heads. Whatever happens,
+      follow the ball. Who goes out first?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kittiwynk, Shiraz, Polaris, and a short high little bay fellow with
+      tremendous hocks and no withers worth speaking of (he was called Corks)
+      were being girthed up, and the soldiers in the background stared with all
+      their eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you men to keep quiet,&rdquo; said Lutyens, the captain of the team,
+      &ldquo;and especially not to blow your pipes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not if we win, Captain Sahib?&rdquo; asked the piper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If we win you can do what you please,&rdquo; said Lutyens, with a smile, as he
+      slipped the loop of his stick over his wrist, and wheeled to canter to his
+      place. The Archangels' ponies were a little bit above themselves on
+      account of the many-coloured crowd so close to the ground. Their riders
+      were excellent players, but they were a team of crack players instead of a
+      crack team; and that made all the difference in the world. They honestly
+      meant to play together, but it is very hard for four men, each the best of
+      the team he is picked from, to remember that in polo no brilliancy in
+      hitting or riding makes up for playing alone. Their captain shouted his
+      orders to them by name, and it is a curious thing that if you call his
+      name aloud in public after an Englishman you make him hot and fretty.
+      Lutyens said nothing to his men, because it had all been said before. He
+      pulled up Shiraz, for he was playing &ldquo;back,&rdquo; to guard the goal. Powell on
+      Polaris was half-back, and Macnamara and Hughes on Corks and Kittiwynk
+      were forwards. The tough, bamboo ball was set in the middle of the ground,
+      one hundred and fifty yards from the ends, and Hughes crossed sticks,
+      heads up, with the Captain of the Archangels, who saw fit to play forward;
+      that is a place from which you cannot easily control your team. The little
+      click as the cane-shafts met was heard all over the ground, and then
+      Hughes made some sort of quick wrist-stroke that just dribbled the ball a
+      few yards. Kittiwynk knew that stroke of old, and followed as a cat
+      follows a mouse. While the Captain of the Archangels was wrenching his
+      pony round, Hughes struck with all his strength, and next instant
+      Kittiwynk was away, Corks following close behind her, their little feet
+      pattering like raindrops on glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pull out to the left,&rdquo; said Kittiwynk between her teeth; &ldquo;it's coming
+      your way, Corks!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The back and half-back of the Archangels were tearing down on her just as
+      she was within reach of the ball. Hughes leaned forward with a loose rein,
+      and cut it away to the left almost under Kittiwynk's foot, and it hopped
+      and skipped off to Corks, who saw that, if he was not quick it would run
+      beyond the boundaries. That long bouncing drive gave the Archangels time
+      to wheel and send three men across the ground to head off Corks. Kittiwynk
+      stayed where she was; for she knew the game. Corks was on the ball half a
+      fraction of a second before the others came up, and Macnamara, with a
+      backhanded stroke, sent it back across the ground to Hughes, who saw the
+      way clear to the Archangels' goal, and smacked the ball in before any one
+      quite knew what had happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's luck,&rdquo; said Corks, as they changed ends. &ldquo;A goal in three minutes
+      for three hits, and no riding to speak of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Don't know,&rdquo; said Polaris. &ldquo;We've made 'em angry too soon. Shouldn't
+      wonder if they tried to rush us off our feet next time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep the ball hanging, then,&rdquo; said Shiraz. &ldquo;That wears out every pony
+      that is not used to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Next time there was no easy galloping across the ground. All the
+      Archangels closed up as one man, but there they stayed, for Corks,
+      Kittiwynk, and Polaris were somewhere on the top of the ball, marking time
+      among the rattling sticks, while Shiraz circled about outside, waiting for
+      a chance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can do this all day,&rdquo; said Polaris, ramming his quarters into the side
+      of another pony. &ldquo;Where do you think you're shoving to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll&mdash;I'll be driven in an ekka if I know,&rdquo; was the gasping reply,
+      &ldquo;and I'd give a week's feed to get my blinkers off. I can't see anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The dust is rather bad. Whew! That was one for my off-hock. Where's the
+      ball, Corks?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Under my tail. At least, the man's looking for it there! This is
+      beautiful. They can't use their sticks, and it's driving 'em wild. Give
+      old Blinkers a push and then he'll go over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, don't touch me! I can't see. I'll&mdash;I'll back out, I think,&rdquo;
+       said the pony in blinkers, who knew that if you can't see all round your
+      head, you cannot prop yourself against the shock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Corks was watching the ball where it lay in the dust, close to his near
+      fore-leg, with Macnamara's shortened stick tap-tapping it from time to
+      time. Kittiwynk was edging her way out of the scrimmage, whisking her
+      stump of a tail with nervous excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ho! They've got it,&rdquo; she snorted. &ldquo;Let me out!&rdquo; and she galloped like a
+      rifle-bullet just behind a tall lanky pony of the Archangels, whose rider
+      was swinging up his stick for a stroke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not to-day, thank you,&rdquo; said Hughes, as the blow slid off his raised
+      stick, and Kittiwynk laid her shoulder to the tall pony's quarters, and
+      shoved him aside just as Lutyens on Shiraz sent the ball where it had come
+      from, and the tall pony went skating and slipping away to the left.
+      Kittiwynk, seeing that Polaris had joined Corks in the chase for the ball
+      up the ground, dropped into Polaris' place, and then &ldquo;time&rdquo; was called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Skidars' ponies wasted no time in kicking or fuming. They knew that
+      each minute's rest meant so much gain, and trotted off to the rails, and
+      their saises began to scrape and blanket and rub them at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whew!&rdquo; said Corks, stiffening up to get all the tickle of the big
+      vulcanite scraper. &ldquo;If we were playing pony for pony, we would bend those
+      Archangels double in half an hour. But they'll bring up fresh ones and
+      fresh ones and fresh ones after that&mdash;you see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who cares?&rdquo; said Polaris. &ldquo;We've drawn first blood. Is my hock swelling?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Looks puffy,&rdquo; said Corks. &ldquo;You must have had rather a wipe. Don't let it
+      stiffen. You 'll be wanted again in half an hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the game like?&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ground's like your shoe, except where they put too much water on it,&rdquo;
+       said Kittiwynk. &ldquo;Then it's slippery. Don't play in the centre. There's a
+      bog there. I don't know how their next four are going to behave, but we
+      kept the ball hanging, and made 'em lather for nothing. Who goes out? Two
+      Arabs and a couple of country-breds! That's bad. What a comfort it is to
+      wash your mouth out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kitty was talking with a neck of a lather-covered soda-water bottle
+      between her teeth, and trying to look over her withers at the same time.
+      This gave her a very coquettish air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's bad?&rdquo; said Grey Dawn, giving to the girth and admiring his
+      well-set shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You Arabs can't gallop fast enough to keep yourselves warm&mdash;that's
+      what Kitty means,&rdquo; said Polaris, limping to show that his hock needed
+      attention. &ldquo;Are you playing back, Grey Dawn?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Looks like it,&rdquo; said Grey Dawn, as Lutyens swung himself up. Powell
+      mounted The Rabbit, a plain bay country-bred much like Corks, but with
+      mulish ears. Macnamara took Faiz-Ullah, a handy, short-backed little red
+      Arab with a long tail, and Hughes mounted Benami, an old and sullen brown
+      beast, who stood over in front more than a polo-pony should.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Benami looks like business,&rdquo; said Shiraz. &ldquo;How's your temper, Ben?&rdquo; The
+      old campaigner hobbled off without answering, and The Maltese Cat looked
+      at the new Archangel ponies prancing about on the ground. They were four
+      beautiful blacks, and they saddled big enough and strong enough to eat the
+      Skidars' team and gallop away with the meal inside them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blinkers again,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat. &ldquo;Good enough!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're chargers-cavalry chargers!&rdquo; said Kittiwynk, indignantly. &ldquo;They'll
+      never see thirteen-three again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They've all been fairly measured, and they've all got their
+      certificates,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat, &ldquo;or they wouldn't be here. We must
+      take things as they come along, and keep your eyes on the ball.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The game began, but this time the Skidars were penned to their own end of
+      the ground, and the watching ponies did not approve of that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Faiz-Ullah is shirking&mdash;as usual,&rdquo; said Polaris, with a scornful
+      grunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Faiz-Ullah is eating whip,&rdquo; said Corks. They could hear the
+      leather-thonged polo-quirt lacing the little fellow's well-rounded barrel.
+      Then The Rabbit's shrill neigh came across the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't do all the work,&rdquo; he cried, desperately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Play the game&mdash;don't talk,&rdquo; The Maltese Cat whickered; and all the
+      ponies wriggled with excitement, and the soldiers and the grooms gripped
+      the railings and shouted. A black pony with blinkers had singled out old
+      Benami, and was interfering with him in every possible way. They could see
+      Benami shaking his head up and down, and flapping his under lip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There'll be a fall in a minute,&rdquo; said Polaris. &ldquo;Benami is getting
+      stuffy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The game flickered up and down between goal-post and goal-post, and the
+      black ponies were getting more confident as they felt they had the legs of
+      the others. The ball was hit out of a little scrimmage, and Benami and The
+      Rabbit followed it, Faiz-Ullah only too glad to be quiet for an instant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The blinkered black pony came up like a hawk, with two of his own side
+      behind him, and Benami's eye glittered as he raced. The question was which
+      pony should make way for the other, for each rider was perfectly willing
+      to risk a fall in a good cause. The black, who had been driven nearly
+      crazy by his blinkers, trusted to his weight and his temper; but Benami
+      knew how to apply his weight and how to keep his temper. They met, and
+      there was a cloud of dust. The black was lying on his side, all the breath
+      knocked out of his body. The Rabbit was a hundred yards up the ground with
+      the ball, and Benami was sitting down. He had slid nearly ten yards on his
+      tail, but he had had his revenge, and sat cracking his nostrils till the
+      black pony rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what you get for interfering. Do you want any more?&rdquo; said Benami,
+      and he plunged into the game. Nothing was done that quarter, because
+      Faiz-Ullah would not gallop, though Macnamara beat him whenever he could
+      spare a second. The fall of the black pony had impressed his companions
+      tremendously, and so the Archangels could not profit by Faiz-Ullah's bad
+      behaviour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as The Maltese Cat said when &ldquo;time&rdquo; was called, and the four came back
+      blowing and dripping, Faiz-Ullah ought to have been kicked all round
+      Umballa. If he did not behave better next time The Maltese Cat promised to
+      pull out his Arab tail by the roots and&mdash;eat it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no time to talk, for the third four were ordered out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third quarter of a game is generally the hottest, for each side thinks
+      that the others must be pumped; and most of the winning play in a game is
+      made about that time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lutyens took over The Maltese Cat with a pat and a hug, for Lutyens valued
+      him more than anything else in the world; Powell had Shikast, a little
+      grey rat with no pedigree and no manners outside polo; Macnamara mounted
+      Bamboo, the largest of the team; and Hughes Who's Who, alias The Animal.
+      He was supposed to have Australian blood in his veins, but he looked like
+      a clothes-horse, and you could whack his legs with an iron crow-bar
+      without hurting him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went out to meet the very flower of the Archangels' team; and when
+      Who's Who saw their elegantly booted legs and their beautiful satin skins,
+      he grinned a grin through his light, well-worn bridle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My word!&rdquo; said Who's Who. &ldquo;We must give 'em a little football. These
+      gentlemen need a rubbing down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No biting,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat, warningly; for once or twice in his
+      career Who's Who had been known to forget himself in that way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who said anything about biting? I'm not playing tiddly-winks. I'm playing
+      the game.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Archangels came down like a wolf on the fold, for they were tired of
+      football, and they wanted polo. They got it more and more. Just after the
+      game began, Lutyens hit a ball that was coming towards him rapidly, and it
+      rolled in the air, as a ball sometimes will, with the whirl of a
+      frightened partridge. Shikast heard, but could not see it for the minute,
+      though he looked everywhere and up into the air as The Maltese Cat had
+      taught him. When he saw it ahead and overhead he went forward with Powell
+      as fast as he could put foot to ground. It was then that Powell, a quiet
+      and level-headed man, as a rule, became inspired, and played a stroke that
+      sometimes comes off successfully after long practice. He took his stick in
+      both hands, and, standing up in his stirrups, swiped at the ball in the
+      air, Munipore fashion. There was one second of paralysed astonishment, and
+      then all four sides of the ground went up in a yell of applause and
+      delight as the ball flew true (you could see the amazed Archangels ducking
+      in their saddles to dodge the line of flight, and looking at it with open
+      mouths), and the regimental pipes of the Skidars squealed from the
+      railings as long as the pipers had breath. Shikast heard the stroke; but
+      he heard the head of the stick fly off at the same time. Nine hundred and
+      ninety-nine ponies out of a thousand would have gone tearing on after the
+      ball with a useless player pulling at their heads; but Powell knew him,
+      and he knew Powell; and the instant he felt Powell's right leg shift a
+      trifle on the saddle-flap, he headed to the boundary, where a native
+      officer was frantically waving a new stick. Before the shouts had ended,
+      Powell was armed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once before in his life The Maltese Cat had heard that very same stroke
+      played off his own back, and had profited by the confusion it wrought.
+      This time he acted on experience, and leaving Bamboo to guard the goal in
+      case of accidents, came through the others like a flash, head and tail low&mdash;Lutyens
+      standing up to ease him&mdash;swept on and on before the other side knew
+      what was the matter, and nearly pitched on his head between the
+      Archangels' goal-post as Lutyens kicked the ball in after a straight
+      scurry of a hundred and fifty yards. If there was one thing more than
+      another upon which The Maltese Cat prided himself, it was on this quick,
+      streaking kind of run half across the ground. He did not believe in taking
+      balls round the field unless you were clearly overmatched. After this they
+      gave the Archangels five-minuted football; and an expensive fast pony
+      hates football because it rumples his temper. Who's Who showed himself
+      even better than Polaris in this game. He did not permit any wriggling
+      away, but bored joyfully into the scrimmage as if he had his nose in a
+      feed-box and was looking for something nice. Little Shikast jumped on the
+      ball the minute it got clear, and every time an Archangel pony followed
+      it, he found Shikast standing over it, asking what was the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If we can live through this quarter,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat, &ldquo;I sha'n't
+      care. Don't take it out of yourselves. Let them do the lathering.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So the ponies, as their riders explained afterwards, &ldquo;shut-up.&rdquo; The
+      Archangels kept them tied fast in front of their goal, but it cost the
+      Archangels' ponies all that was left of their tempers; and ponies began to
+      kick, and men began to repeat compliments, and they chopped at the legs of
+      Who's Who, and he set his teeth and stayed where he was, and the dust
+      stood up like a tree over the scrimmage until that hot quarter ended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They found the ponies very excited and confident when they went to their
+      saises; and The Maltese Cat had to warn them that the worst of the game
+      was coming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now we are all going in for the second time,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;and they are
+      trotting out fresh ponies. You think you can gallop, but you'll find you
+      can't; and then you'll be sorry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But two goals to nothing is a halter-long lead,&rdquo; said Kittiwynk,
+      prancing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long does it take to get a goal?&rdquo; The Maltese Cat answered. &ldquo;For
+      pity's sake, don't run away with a notion that the game is half-won just
+      because we happen to be in luck now! They'll ride you into the grand
+      stand, if they can; you must not give 'em a chance. Follow the ball.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Football, as usual?&rdquo; said Polaris. &ldquo;My hock's half as big as a nose-bag.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't let them have a look at the ball, if you can help it. Now leave me
+      alone. I must get all the rest I can before the last quarter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He hung down his head and let all his muscles go slack, Shikast, Bamboo,
+      and Who's Who copying his example.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better not watch the game,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We aren't playing, and we shall
+      only take it out of ourselves if we grow anxious. Look at the ground and
+      pretend it's fly-time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They did their best, but it was hard advice to follow. The hooves were
+      drumming and the sticks were rattling all up and down the ground, and
+      yells of applause from the English troops told that the Archangels were
+      pressing the Skidars hard. The native soldiers behind the ponies groaned
+      and grunted, and said things in undertones, and presently they heard a
+      long-drawn shout and a clatter of hurrahs!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One to the Archangels,&rdquo; said Shikast, without raising his head. &ldquo;Time's
+      nearly up. Oh, my sire and dam!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Faiz-Ullah,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat, &ldquo;if you don't play to the last nail in
+      your shoes this time, I'll kick you on the ground before all the other
+      ponies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll do my best when my time comes,&rdquo; said the little Arab, sturdily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The saises looked at each other gravely as they rubbed their ponies' legs.
+      This was the time when long purses began to tell, and everybody knew it.
+      Kittiwynk and the others came back, the sweat dripping over their hooves
+      and their tails telling sad stories.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're better than we are,&rdquo; said Shiraz. &ldquo;I knew how it would be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shut your big head,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat; &ldquo;we've one goal to the good
+      yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but it's two Arabs and two country-breds to play now,&rdquo; said Corks.
+      &ldquo;Faiz-Ullah, remember!&rdquo; He spoke in a biting voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Lutyens mounted Grey Dawn he looked at his men, and they did not look
+      pretty. They were covered with dust and sweat in streaks. Their yellow
+      boots were almost black, their wrists were red and lumpy, and their eyes
+      seemed two inches deep in their heads; but the expression in the eyes was
+      satisfactory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you take anything at tiffin?&rdquo; said Lutyens; and the team shook their
+      heads. They were too dry to talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right. The Archangels did. They are worse pumped than we are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They've got the better ponies,&rdquo; said Powell. &ldquo;I sha'n't be sorry when
+      this business is over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That fifth quarter was a painful one in every way. Faiz-Ullah played like
+      a little red demon, and The Rabbit seemed to be everywhere at once, and
+      Benami rode straight at anything and everything that came in his way;
+      while the umpires on their ponies wheeled like gulls outside the shifting
+      game. But the Archangels had the better mounts,&mdash;they had kept their
+      racers till late in the game,&mdash;and never allowed the Skidars to play
+      football. They hit the ball up and down the width of the ground till
+      Benami and the rest were outpaced. Then they went forward, and time and
+      again Lutyens and Grey Dawn were just, and only just, able to send the
+      ball away with a long, spitting backhander. Grey Dawn forgot that he was
+      an Arab; and turned from grey to blue as he galloped. Indeed, he forgot
+      too well, for he did not keep his eyes on the ground as an Arab should,
+      but stuck out his nose and scuttled for the dear honour of the game. They
+      had watered the ground once or twice between the quarters, and a careless
+      waterman had emptied the last of his skinful all in one place near the
+      Skidars' goal. It was close to the end of the play, and for the tenth time
+      Grey Dawn was bolting after the ball, when his near hind-foot slipped on
+      the greasy mud, and he rolled over and over, pitching Lutyens just clear
+      of the goal-post; and the triumphant Archangels made their goal. Then
+      &ldquo;time&rdquo; was called-two goals all; but Lutyens had to be helped up, and Grey
+      Dawn rose with his near hind-leg strained somewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the damage?&rdquo; said Powell, his arm around Lutyens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Collar-bone, of course,&rdquo; said Lutyens, between his teeth. It was the
+      third time he had broken it in two years, and it hurt him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Powell and the others whistled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Game's up,&rdquo; said Hughes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold on. We've five good minutes yet, and it isn't my right hand. We 'll
+      stick it out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say,&rdquo; said the Captain of the Archangels, trotting up, &ldquo;are you hurt,
+      Lutyens? We'll wait if you care to put in a substitute. I wish&mdash;I
+      mean&mdash;the fact is, you fellows deserve this game if any team does.
+      'Wish we could give you a man, or some of our ponies&mdash;or something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You 're awfully good, but we'll play it to a finish, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Captain of the Archangels stared for a little. &ldquo;That's not half bad,&rdquo;
+       he said, and went back to his own side, while Lutyens borrowed a scarf
+      from one of his native officers and made a sling of it. Then an Archangel
+      galloped up with a big bath-sponge, and advised Lutyens to put it under
+      his armpit to ease his shoulder, and between them they tied up his left
+      arm scientifically; and one of the native officers leaped forward with
+      four long glasses that fizzed and bubbled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The team looked at Lutyens piteously, and he nodded. It was the last
+      quarter, and nothing would matter after that. They drank out the dark
+      golden drink, and wiped their moustaches, and things looked more hopeful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Maltese Cat had put his nose into the front of Lutyens' shirt and was
+      trying to say how sorry he was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He knows,&rdquo; said Lutyens, proudly. &ldquo;The beggar knows. I've played him
+      without a bridle before now&mdash;for fun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's no fun now,&rdquo; said Powell. &ldquo;But we haven't a decent substitute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Lutyens. &ldquo;It's the last quarter, and we've got to make our goal
+      and win. I'll trust The Cat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you fall this time, you'll suffer a little,&rdquo; said Macnamara.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll trust The Cat,&rdquo; said Lutyens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You hear that?&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat, proudly, to the others. &ldquo;It's worth
+      while playing polo for ten years to have that said of you. Now then, my
+      sons, come along. We'll kick up a little bit, just to show the Archangels
+      this team haven't suffered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, sure enough, as they went on to the ground, The Maltese Cat, after
+      satisfying himself that Lutyens was home in the saddle, kicked out three
+      or four times, and Lutyens laughed. The reins were caught up anyhow in the
+      tips of his strapped left hand, and he never pretended to rely on them. He
+      knew The Cat would answer to the least pressure of the leg, and by way of
+      showing off&mdash;for his shoulder hurt him very much&mdash;he bent the
+      little fellow in a close figure-of-eight in and out between the
+      goal-posts. There was a roar from the native officers and men, who dearly
+      loved a piece of dugabashi (horse-trick work), as they called it, and the
+      pipes very quietly and scornfully droned out the first bars of a common
+      bazaar tune called &ldquo;Freshly Fresh and Newly New,&rdquo; just as a warning to the
+      other regiments that the Skidars were fit. All the natives laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat, as they took their place, &ldquo;remember that
+      this is the last quarter, and follow the ball!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't need to be told,&rdquo; said Who's Who.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me go on. All those people on all four sides will begin to crowd in&mdash;just
+      as they did at Malta. You'll hear people calling out, and moving forward
+      and being pushed back; and that is going to make the Archangel ponies very
+      unhappy. But if a ball is struck to the boundary, you go after it, and let
+      the people get out of your way. I went over the pole of a four-in-hand
+      once, and picked a game out of the dust by it. Back me up when I run, and
+      follow the ball.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a sort of an all-round sound of sympathy and wonder as the last
+      quarter opened, and then there began exactly what The Maltese Cat had
+      foreseen. People crowded in close to the boundaries, and the Archangels'
+      ponies kept looking sideways at the narrowing space. If you know how a man
+      feels to be cramped at tennis&mdash;not because he wants to run out of the
+      court, but because he likes to know that he can at a pinch&mdash;you will
+      guess how ponies must feel when they are playing in a box of human beings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll bend some of those men if I can get away,&rdquo; said Who's Who, as he
+      rocketed behind the ball; and Bamboo nodded without speaking. They were
+      playing the last ounce in them, and The Maltese Cat had left the goal
+      undefended to join them. Lutyens gave him every order that he could to
+      bring him back, but this was the first time in his career that the little
+      wise grey had ever played polo on his own responsibility, and he was going
+      to make the most of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you doing here?&rdquo; said Hughes, as The Cat crossed in front of him
+      and rode off an Archangel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Cat's in charge&mdash;mind the goal!&rdquo; shouted Lutyens, and bowing
+      forward hit the ball full, and followed on, forcing the Archangels towards
+      their own goal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No football,&rdquo; said The Maltese Cat. &ldquo;Keep the ball by the boundaries and
+      cramp 'em. Play open order, and drive 'em to the boundaries.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Across and across the ground in big diagonals flew the ball, and whenever
+      it came to a flying rush and a stroke close to the boundaries the
+      Archangel ponies moved stiffly. They did not care to go headlong at a wall
+      of men and carriages, though if the ground had been open they could have
+      turned on a sixpence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wriggle her up the sides,&rdquo; said The Cat. &ldquo;Keep her close to the crowd.
+      They hate the carriages. Shikast, keep her up this side.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Shikast and Powell lay left and right behind the uneasy scuffle of an open
+      scrimmage, and every time the ball was hit away Shikast galloped on it at
+      such an angle that Powell was forced to hit it towards the boundary; and
+      when the crowd had been driven away from that side, Lutyens would send the
+      ball over to the other, and Shikast would slide desperately after it till
+      his friends came down to help. It was billiards, and no football, this
+      time&mdash;billiards in a corner pocket; and the cues were not well
+      chalked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they get us out in the middle of the ground they'll walk away from us.
+      Dribble her along the sides,&rdquo; cried The Maltese Cat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So they dribbled all along the boundary, where a pony could not come on
+      their right-hand side; and the Archangels were furious, and the umpires
+      had to neglect the game to shout at the people to get back, and several
+      blundering mounted policemen tried to restore order, all close to the
+      scrimmage, and the nerves of the Archangels' ponies stretched and broke
+      like cob-webs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Five or six times an Archangel hit the ball up into the middle of the
+      ground, and each time the watchful Shikast gave Powell his chance to send
+      it back, and after each return, when the dust had settled, men could see
+      that the Skidars had gained a few yards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every now and again there were shouts of &ldquo;Side! Off side!&rdquo; from the
+      spectators; but the teams were too busy to care, and the umpires had all
+      they could do to keep their maddened ponies clear of the scuffle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Lutyens missed a short easy stroke, and the Skidars had to fly
+      back helter-skelter to protect their own goal, Shikast leading. Powell
+      stopped the ball with a backhander when it was not fifty yards from the
+      goalposts, and Shikast spun round with a wrench that nearly hoisted Powell
+      out of his saddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now's our last chance,&rdquo; said The Cat, wheeling like a cockchafer on a
+      pin. &ldquo;We've got to ride it out. Come along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lutyens felt the little chap take a deep breath, and, as it were, crouch
+      under his rider. The ball was hopping towards the right-hand boundary, an
+      Archangel riding for it with both spurs and a whip; but neither spur nor
+      whip would make his pony stretch himself as he neared the crowd. The
+      Maltese Cat glided under his very nose, picking up his hind legs sharp,
+      for there was not a foot to spare between his quarters and the other
+      pony's bit. It was as neat an exhibition as fancy figure-skating. Lutyens
+      hit with all the strength he had left, but the stick slipped a little in
+      his hand, and the ball flew off to the left instead of keeping close to
+      the boundary. Who's Who was far across the ground, thinking hard as he
+      galloped. He repeated stride for stride The Cat's manoeuvres with another
+      Archangel pony, nipping the ball away from under his bridle, and clearing
+      his opponent by half a fraction of an inch, for Who's Who was clumsy
+      behind. Then he drove away towards the right as The Maltese Cat came up
+      from the left; and Bamboo held a middle course exactly between them. The
+      three were making a sort of Government-broad-arrow-shaped attack; and
+      there was only the Archangels' back to guard the goal; but immediately
+      behind them were three Archangels racing all they knew, and mixed up with
+      them was Powell sending Shikast along on what he felt was their last hope.
+      It takes a very good man to stand up to the rush of seven crazy ponies in
+      the last quarters of a Cup game, when men are riding with their necks for
+      sale, and the ponies are delirious. The Archangels' back missed his stroke
+      and pulled aside just in time to let the rush go by. Bamboo and Who's Who
+      shortened stride to give The Cat room, and Lutyens got the goal with a
+      clean, smooth, smacking stroke that was heard all over the field. But
+      there was no stopping the ponies. They poured through the goalposts in one
+      mixed mob, winners and losers together, for the pace had been terrific.
+      The Maltese Cat knew by experience what would happen, and, to save
+      Lutyens, turned to the right with one last effort, that strained a
+      back-sinew beyond hope of repair. As he did so he heard the right-hand
+      goalpost crack as a pony cannoned into it&mdash;crack, splinter and fall
+      like a mast. It had been sawed three parts through in case of accidents,
+      but it upset the pony nevertheless, and he blundered into another, who
+      blundered into the left-hand post, and then there was confusion and dust
+      and wood. Bamboo was lying on the ground, seeing stars; an Archangel pony
+      rolled beside him, breathless and angry; Shikast had sat down dog-fashion
+      to avoid falling over the others, and was sliding along on his little
+      bobtail in a cloud of dust; and Powell was sitting on the ground,
+      hammering with his stick and trying to cheer. All the others were shouting
+      at the top of what was left of their voices, and the men who had been
+      spilt were shouting too. As soon as the people saw no one was hurt, ten
+      thousand native and English shouted and clapped and yelled, and before any
+      one could stop them the pipers of the Skidars broke on to the ground, with
+      all the native officers and men behind them, and marched up and down,
+      playing a wild Northern tune called &ldquo;Zakhme Began,&rdquo; and through the
+      insolent blaring of the pipes and the high-pitched native yells you could
+      hear the Archangels' band hammering, &ldquo;For they are all jolly good
+      fellows,&rdquo; and then reproachfully to the losing team, &ldquo;Ooh, Kafoozalum!
+      Kafoozalum! Kafoozalum!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides all these things and many more, there was a Commander-in-chief,
+      and an Inspector-General of Cavalry, and the principal veterinary officer
+      of all India standing on the top of a regimental coach, yelling like
+      school-boys; and brigadiers and colonels and commissioners, and hundreds
+      of pretty ladies joined the chorus. But The Maltese Cat stood with his
+      head down, wondering how many legs were left to him; and Lutyens watched
+      the men and ponies pick themselves out of the wreck of the two goal-posts,
+      and he patted The Maltese Cat very tenderly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say,&rdquo; said the Captain of the Archangels, spitting a pebble out of his
+      mouth, &ldquo;will you take three thousand for that pony&mdash;as he stands?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No thank you. I've an idea he's saved my life,&rdquo; said Lutyens, getting off
+      and lying down at full length. Both teams were on the ground too, waving
+      their boots in the air, and coughing and drawing deep breaths, as the
+      saises ran up to take away the ponies, and an officious water-carrier
+      sprinkled the players with dirty water till they sat up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My aunt!&rdquo; said Powell, rubbing his back, and looking at the stumps of the
+      goal-posts, &ldquo;That was a game!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They played it over again, every stroke of it, that night at the big
+      dinner, when the Free-for-All Cup was filled and passed down the table,
+      and emptied and filled again, and everybody made most eloquent speeches.
+      About two in the morning, when there might have been some singing, a wise
+      little, plain little, grey little head looked in through the open door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hurrah! Bring him in,&rdquo; said the Archangels; and his sais, who was very
+      happy indeed, patted The Maltese Cat on the flank, and he limped in to the
+      blaze of light and the glittering uniforms, looking for Lutyens. He was
+      used to messes, and men's bedrooms, and places where ponies are not
+      usually encouraged, and in his youth had jumped on and off a mess-table
+      for a bet. So he behaved himself very politely, and ate bread dipped in
+      salt, and was petted all round the table, moving gingerly; and they drank
+      his health, because he had done more to win the Cup than any man or horse
+      on the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was glory and honour enough for the rest of his days, and The Maltese
+      Cat did not complain much when the veterinary surgeon said that he would
+      be no good for polo any more. When Lutyens married, his wife did not allow
+      him to play, so he was forced to be an umpire; and his pony on these
+      occasions was a flea-bitten grey with a neat polo-tail, lame all round,
+      but desperately quick on his feet, and, as everybody knew, Past Pluperfect
+      Prestissimo Player of the Game.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      &ldquo;BREAD UPON THE WATERS&rdquo;
+     </h2>
+    <p>
+      If you remember my improper friend Brugglesmith, you will also bear in
+      mind his friend McPhee, Chief Engineer of the Breslau, whose dingey
+      Brugglesmith tried to steal. His apologies for the performances of
+      Brugglesmith may one day be told in their proper place: the tale before us
+      concerns McPhee. He was never a racing engineer, and took special pride in
+      saying as much before the Liverpool men; but he had a thirty-two years'
+      knowledge of machinery and the humours of ships. One side of his face had
+      been wrecked through the bursting of a pressure-gauge in the days when men
+      knew less than they do now, and his nose rose grandly out of the wreck,
+      like a club in a public riot. There were cuts and lumps on his head, and
+      he would guide your forefinger through his short iron-grey hair and tell
+      you how he had come by his trade-marks. He owned all sorts of certificates
+      of extra-competency, and at the bottom of his cabin chest of drawers,
+      where he kept the photograph of his wife, were two or three Royal Humane
+      Society medals for saving lives at sea. Professionally&mdash;it was
+      different when crazy steerage-passengers jumped overboard&mdash;professionally,
+      McPhee does not approve of saving life at sea, and he has often told me
+      that a new Hell awaits stokers and trimmers who sign for a strong man's
+      pay and fall sick the second day out. He believes in throwing boots at
+      fourth and fifth engineers when they wake him up at night with word that a
+      bearing is redhot, all because a lamp's glare is reflected red from the
+      twirling metal. He believes that there are only two poets in the world;
+      one being Robert Burns, of course, and the other Gerald Massey. When he
+      has time for novels he reads Wilkie Collins and Charles Reade chiefly the
+      latter&mdash;and knows whole pages of &ldquo;Very Hard Cash&rdquo; by heart. In the
+      saloon his table is next to the captain's, and he drinks only water while
+      his engines work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was good to me when we first met, because I did not ask questions, and
+      believed in Charles Reade as a most shamefully neglected author. Later he
+      approved of my writings to the extent of one pamphlet of twenty-four pages
+      that I wrote for Holdock, Steiner &amp; Chase, owners of the line, when
+      they bought some ventilating patent and fitted it to the cabins of the
+      Breslau, Spandau, and Koltzau. The purser of the Breslau recommended me to
+      Holdock's secretary for the job; and Holdock, who is a Wesleyan Methodist,
+      invited me to his house, and gave me dinner with the governess when the
+      others had finished, and placed the plans and specifications in my hand,
+      and I wrote the pamphlet that same afternoon. It was called &ldquo;Comfort in
+      the Cabin,&rdquo; and brought me seven pound ten, cash down&mdash;an important
+      sum of money in those days; and the governess, who was teaching Master
+      John Holdock his scales, told me that Mrs. Holdock had told her to keep an
+      eye on me, in case I went away with coats from the hat-rack. McPhee liked
+      that pamphlet enormously, for it was composed in the Bouverie-Byzantine
+      style, with baroque and rococo embellishments; and afterwards he
+      introduced me to Mrs. McPhee, who succeeded Dinah in my heart; for Dinah
+      was half a world away, and it is wholesome and antiseptic to love such a
+      woman as Janet McPhee. They lived in a little twelve-pound house, close to
+      the shipping. When McPhee was away Mrs. McPhee read the Lloyds column in
+      the papers, and called on the wives of senior engineers of equal social
+      standing. Once or twice, too, Mrs. Holdock visited Mrs. McPhee in a
+      brougham with celluloid fittings, and I have reason to believe that, after
+      she had played owner's wife long enough, they talked scandal. The Holdocks
+      lived in an old-fashioned house with a big brick garden not a mile from
+      the McPhees, for they stayed by their money as their money stayed by them;
+      and in summer you met their brougham solemnly junketing by Theydon Bois or
+      Loughton. But I was Mrs. McPhee's friend, for she allowed me to convoy her
+      westward, sometimes, to theatres where she sobbed or laughed or shivered
+      with a simple heart; and she introduced me to a new world of doctors'
+      wives, captains' wives, and engineers' wives, whose whole talk and thought
+      centred in and about ships and lines of ships you have never heard of.
+      There were sailing-ships, with stewards and mahogany and maple saloons,
+      trading to Australia, taking cargoes of consumptives and hopeless
+      drunkards for whom a sea-voyage was recommended; there were frowzy little
+      West African boats, full of rats and cockroaches, where men died anywhere
+      but in their bunks; there were Brazilian boats whose cabins could be hired
+      for merchandise, that went out loaded nearly awash; there were Zanzibar
+      and Mauritius steamers and wonderful reconstructed boats that plied to the
+      other tide of Borneo. These were loved and known, for they earned our
+      bread and a little butter, and we despised the big Atlantic boats, and
+      made fun of the P. &amp; O. and Orient liners, and swore by our respective
+      owners&mdash;Wesleyan, Baptist, or Presbyterian, as the case might be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had only just come back to England when Mrs. McPhee invited me to dinner
+      at three o'clock in the afternoon, and the notepaper was almost bridal in
+      its scented creaminess. When I reached the house I saw that there were new
+      curtains in the window that must have cost forty-five shillings a pair;
+      and as Mrs. McPhee drew me into the little marble-papered hall, she looked
+      at me keenly, and cried:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have ye not heard? What d' ye think o' the hatrack?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, that hat-rack was oak-thirty shillings, at least. McPhee came
+      down-stairs with a sober foot&mdash;he steps as lightly as a cat, for all
+      his weight, when he is at sea&mdash;and shook hands in a new and awful
+      manner&mdash;a parody of old Holdock's style when he says good-bye to his
+      skippers. I perceived at once that a legacy had come to him, but I held my
+      peace, though Mrs. McPhee begged me every thirty seconds to eat a great
+      deal and say nothing. It was rather a mad sort of meal, because McPhee and
+      his wife took hold of hands like little children (they always do after
+      voyages), and nodded and winked and choked and gurgled, and hardly ate a
+      mouthful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A female servant came in and waited; though Mrs. McPhee had told me time
+      and again that she would thank no one to do her housework while she had
+      her health. But this was a servant with a cap, and I saw Mrs. McPhee swell
+      and swell under her garance-coloured gown. There is no small free-board to
+      Janet McPhee, nor is garance any subdued tint; and with all this
+      unexplained pride and glory in the air I felt like watching fireworks
+      without knowing the festival. When the maid had removed the cloth she
+      brought a pineapple that would have cost half a guinea at that season
+      (only McPhee has his own way of getting such things), and a Canton china
+      bowl of dried lichis, and a glass plate of preserved ginger, and a small
+      jar of sacred and Imperial chow-chow that perfumed the room. McPhee gets
+      it from a Dutchman in Java, and I think he doctors it with liqueurs. But
+      the crown of the feast was some Madeira of the kind you can only come by
+      if you know the wine and the man. A little maize-wrapped fig of clotted
+      Madeira cigars went with the wine, and the rest was a pale blue smoky
+      silence; Janet, in her splendour, smiling on us two, and patting McPhee's
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll drink,&rdquo; said McPhee, slowly, rubbing his chin, &ldquo;to the eternal
+      damnation o' Holdock, Steiner &amp; Chase.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course I answered &ldquo;Amen,&rdquo; though I had made seven pound ten shillings
+      out of the firm. McPhee's enemies were mine, and I was drinking his
+      Madeira.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye've heard nothing?&rdquo; said Janet. &ldquo;Not a word, not a whisper?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a word, nor a whisper. On my word, I have not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell him, Mac,&rdquo; said she; and that is another proof of Janet's goodness
+      and wifely love. A smaller woman would have babbled first, but Janet is
+      five feet nine in her stockings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're rich,&rdquo; said McPhee. I shook hands all round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're damned rich,&rdquo; he added. I shook hands all round a second time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll go to sea no more&mdash;unless&mdash;there's no sayin'&mdash;a
+      private yacht, maybe&mdash;wi' a small an' handy auxiliary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not enough for that,&rdquo; said Janet. &ldquo;We're fair rich&mdash;well-to-do,
+      but no more. A new gown for church, and one for the theatre. We'll have it
+      made west.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much is it?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twenty-five thousand pounds.&rdquo; I drew a long breath. &ldquo;An' I've been
+      earnin' twenty-five an' twenty pound a month!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The last words came away with a roar, as though the wide world was
+      conspiring to beat him down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All this time I'm waiting,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I know nothing since last September.
+      Was it left you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They laughed aloud together. &ldquo;It was left,&rdquo; said McPhee, choking. &ldquo;Ou, ay,
+      it was left. That's vara good. Of course it was left. Janet, d' ye note
+      that? It was left. Now if you'd put that in your pamphlet it would have
+      been vara jocose. It was left.&rdquo; He slapped his thigh and roared till the
+      wine quivered in the decanter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Scotch are a great people, but they are apt to hang over a joke too
+      long, particularly when no one can see the point but themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I rewrite my pamphlet I'll put it in, McPhee. Only I must know
+      something more first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      McPhee thought for the length of half a cigar, while Janet caught my eye
+      and led it round the room to one new thing after another&mdash;the new
+      vine-pattern carpet, the new chiming rustic clock between the models of
+      the Colombo outrigger-boats, the new inlaid sideboard with a purple
+      cut-glass flower-stand, the fender of gilt and brass, and last, the new
+      black-and-gold piano.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In October o' last year the Board sacked me,&rdquo; began McPhee. &ldquo;In October
+      o' last year the Breslau came in for winter overhaul. She'd been runnin'
+      eight months&mdash;two hunder an' forty days&mdash;an' I was three days
+      makin' up my indents, when she went to dry-dock. All told, mark you, it
+      was this side o' three hunder pound&mdash;to be preceese, two hunder an'
+      eighty-six pound four shillings. There's not another man could ha' nursed
+      the Breslau for eight months to that tune. Never again&mdash;never again!
+      They may send their boats to the bottom, for aught I care.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's no need,&rdquo; said Janet, softly. &ldquo;We're done wi' Holdock, Steiner
+      &amp; Chase.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's irritatin', Janet, it's just irritatin'. I ha' been justified from
+      first to last, as the world knows, but&mdash;but I canna forgie 'em. Ay,
+      wisdom is justified o' her children; an' any other man than me wad ha'
+      made the indent eight hunder. Hay was our skipper&mdash;ye'll have met
+      him. They shifted him to the Torgau, an' bade me wait for the Breslau
+      under young Bannister. Ye'll obsairve there'd been a new election on the
+      Board. I heard the shares were sellin' hither an' yon, an' the major part
+      of the Board was new to me. The old Board would ne'er ha' done it. They
+      trusted me. But the new Board were all for reorganisation. Young Steiner&mdash;Steiner's
+      son&mdash;the Jew, was at the bottom of it, an' they did not think it
+      worth their while to send me word. The first I knew&mdash;an' I was Chief
+      Engineer&mdash;was the notice of the line's winter sailin's, and the
+      Breslau timed for sixteen days between port an' port! Sixteen days, man!
+      She's a good boat, but eighteen is her summer time, mark you. Sixteen was
+      sheer flytin', kitin' nonsense, an' so I told young Bannister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've got to make it,' he said. 'Ye should not ha' sent in a three hunder
+      pound indent.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do they look for their boats to be run on air?' I said. 'The Board's
+      daft.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'E'en tell 'em so,' he says. 'I'm a married man, an' my fourth's on the
+      ways now, she says.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A boy&mdash;wi' red hair,&rdquo; Janet put in. Her own hair is the splendid
+      red-gold that goes with a creamy complexion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My word, I was an angry man that day! Forbye I was fond o' the old
+      Breslau, I looked for a little consideration from the Board after twenty
+      years' service. There was Board-meetin' on Wednesday, an' I slept
+      overnight in the engine-room, takin' figures to support my case. Well, I
+      put it fair and square before them all. 'Gentlemen,' I said, 'I've run the
+      Breslau eight seasons, an' I believe there's no fault to find wi' my wark.
+      But if ye haud to this'&mdash;I waggled the advertisement at 'em&mdash;'this
+      that I've never heard of it till I read it at breakfast, I do assure you
+      on my professional reputation, she can never do it. That is to say, she
+      can for a while, but at a risk no thinkin' man would run.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'What the deil d' ye suppose we pass your indents for?' says old Holdock.
+      'Man, we're spendin' money like watter.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I'll leave it in the Board's hands,' I said, 'if two hunder an'
+      eighty-seven pound is anything beyond right and reason for eight months.'
+      I might ha' saved my breath, for the Board was new since the last
+      election, an' there they sat, the damned deevidend-huntin' ship-chandlers,
+      deaf as the adders o' Scripture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'We must keep faith wi' the public,' said young Steiner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Keep faith wi' the Breslau, then,' I said. 'She's served you well, an'
+      your father before you. She'll need her bottom restiffenin', an' new
+      bed-plates, an' turnin' out the forward boilers, an' re-turnin' all three
+      cylinders, an' refacin' all guides, to begin with. It's a three months'
+      job.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Because one employee is afraid? 'says young Steiner. 'Maybe a piano in
+      the Chief Engineer's cabin would be more to the point.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I crushed my cap in my hands, an' thanked God we'd no bairns an' a bit
+      put by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Understand, gentlemen,' I said. 'If the Breslau is made a sixteen-day
+      boat, ye'll find another engineer.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Bannister makes no objection,' said Holdock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I'm speakin' for myself,' I said. 'Bannister has bairns. 'An' then I
+      lost my temper. 'Ye can run her into Hell an' out again if ye pay
+      pilotage,' I said, 'but ye run without me.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'That's insolence,' said young Steiner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'At your pleasure,' I said, turnin' to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Ye can consider yourself dismissed. We must preserve discipline among
+      our employees,' said old Holdock, an' he looked round to see that the
+      Board was with him. They knew nothin'&mdash;God forgie 'em&mdash;an' they
+      nodded me out o' the line after twenty years&mdash;after twenty years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I went out an' sat down by the hall porter to get my wits again. I'm
+      thinkin' I swore at the Board. Then auld McRimmon&mdash;o' McNaughten
+      &amp; McRimmon&mdash;came, oot o' his office, that's on the same floor,
+      an' looked at me, proppin' up one eyelid wi' his forefinger. Ye know they
+      call him the Blind Deevil, forbye he onythin' but blind, an' no deevil in
+      his dealin's wi' me&mdash;McRimmon o' the Black Bird Line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'What's here, Mister McPhee?' said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was past prayin' for by then. 'A Chief Engineer sacked after twenty
+      years' service because he'll not risk the Breslau on the new timin', an'
+      be damned to ye, McRimmon,' I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The auld man sucked in his lips an' whistled. 'AH,' said he, 'the new
+      timin'. I see!' He doddered into the Board-room I'd just left, an' the
+      Dandie-dog that is just his blind man's leader stayed wi' me. That was
+      providential. In a minute he was back again. 'Ye've cast your bread on the
+      watter, McPhee, an' be damned to you,' he says. 'Whaur's my dog? My word,
+      is he on your knee? There's more discernment in a dog than a Jew. What
+      garred ye curse your Board, McPhee? It's expensive.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'They'll pay more for the Breslau,' I said. 'Get off my knee, ye
+      smotherin' beast.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Bearin's hot, eh?' said McRimmon. 'It's thirty year since a man daur
+      curse me to my face. Time was I'd ha' cast ye doon the stairway for that.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Forgie's all!' I said. He was wearin' to eighty, as I knew. 'I was
+      wrong, McRimmon; but when a man's shown the door for doin' his plain duty
+      he's not always ceevil.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'So I hear,' says McRimmon. 'Ha' ye ony objection to a tramp freighter?
+      It's only fifteen a month, but they say the Blind Deevil feeds a man
+      better than others. She's my Kite. Come ben. Ye can thank Dandie, here.
+      I'm no used to thanks. An' noo,' says he, 'what possessed ye to throw up
+      your berth wi' Holdock?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'The new timin',' said I. 'The Breslau will not stand it.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Hoot, oot,' said he. 'Ye might ha' crammed her a little&mdash;enough to
+      show ye were drivin' her&mdash;an' brought her in twa days behind. What's
+      easier than to say ye slowed for bearin's, eh? All my men do it, and&mdash;I
+      believe 'em.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'McRimmon,' says I, 'what's her virginity to a lassie?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He puckered his dry face an' twisted in his chair. 'The warld an' a','
+      says he. 'My God, the vara warld an' a'. (But what ha' you or me to do wi'
+      virginity, this late along?)'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'This,' I said. 'There's just one thing that each one of us in his trade
+      or profession will not do for ony consideration whatever. If I run to time
+      I run to time, barrin' always the risks o' the high seas. Less than that,
+      under God, I have not done. More than that, by God, I will not do! There's
+      no trick o' the trade I'm not acquaint wi'&mdash;'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'So I've heard,' says McRimmon, dry as a biscuit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'But yon matter o' fair rennin' s just my Shekinah, ye'll understand. I
+      daurna tamper wi' that. Nursing weak engines is fair craftsmanship; but
+      what the Board ask is cheatin', wi' the risk o' manslaughter addeetional.'
+      Ye'll note I know my business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was some more talk, an' next week I went aboard the Kite,
+      twenty-five hunder ton, simple compound, a Black Bird tramp. The deeper
+      she rode, the better she'd steam. I've snapped as much as eleven out of
+      her, but eight point three was her fair normal. Good food forward an'
+      better aft, all indents passed wi'out marginal remarks, the best coal, new
+      donkeys, and good crews. There was nothin' the old man would not do,
+      except paint. That was his deeficulty. Ye could no more draw paint than
+      his last teeth from him. He'd come down to dock, an' his boats a scandal
+      all along the watter, an' he'd whine an' cry an' say they looked all he
+      could desire. Every owner has his non plus ultra, I've obsairved. Paint
+      was McRimmon's. But you could get round his engines without riskin' your
+      life, an', for all his blindness, I've seen him reject five flawed
+      intermediates, one after the other, on a nod from me; an' his
+      cattle-fittin's were guaranteed for North Atlantic winter weather. Ye ken
+      what that means? McRimmon an' the Black Bird Line, God bless him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I forgot to say she would lie down an' fill her forward deck green,
+      an' snore away into a twenty-knot gale forty-five to the minute, three an'
+      a half knots an hour, the engines runnin' sweet an' true as a bairn
+      breathin' in its sleep. Bell was skipper; an' forbye there's no love lost
+      between crews an' owners, we were fond o' the auld Blind Deevil an' his
+      dog, an' I'm thinkin' he liked us. He was worth the windy side o' twa
+      million sterlin', an' no friend to his own blood-kin. Money's an awfu'
+      thing&mdash;overmuch&mdash;for a lonely man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd taken her out twice, there an' back again, when word came o' the
+      Breslau's breakdown, just as I prophesied. Calder was her engineer&mdash;he's
+      not fit to run a tug down the Solent&mdash;and he fairly lifted the
+      engines off the bed-plates, an' they fell down in heaps, by what I heard.
+      So she filled from the after stuffin'-box to the after bulkhead, an' lay
+      star-gazing, with seventy-nine squealin' passengers in the saloon, till
+      the Camaralzaman o' Ramsey &amp; Gold's Cartagena line gave her a tow to
+      the tune o' five thousand seven hunder an' forty pound, wi' costs in the
+      Admiralty Court. She was helpless, ye'll understand, an' in no case to
+      meet ony weather. Five thousand seven hunder an' forty pounds, with costs,
+      an' exclusive o' new engines! They'd ha' done better to ha' kept me on the
+      old timin'.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, even so, the new Board were all for retrenchment. Young Steiner, the
+      Jew, was at the bottom of it. They sacked men right an' left, that would
+      not eat the dirt the Board gave 'em. They cut down repairs; they fed crews
+      wi' leavin's an' scrapin's; and, reversin', McRimmon's practice, they hid
+      their defeeciencies wi' paint an' cheap gildin'. Quem Deus vult perrdere
+      prrius dementat, ye remember.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In January we went to dry-dock, an' in the next dock lay the Grotkau,
+      their big freighter that was the Dolabella o' Piegan, Piegan &amp; Walsh's
+      line in '84&mdash;a Clyde-built iron boat, a flat-bottomed,
+      pigeon-breasted, under-engined, bull-nosed bitch of a five thousand ton
+      freighter, that would neither steer, nor steam, nor stop when ye asked
+      her. Whiles she'd attend to her helm, whiles she'd take charge, whiles
+      she'd wait to scratch herself, an' whiles she'd buttock into a dockhead.
+      But Holdock and Steiner had bought her cheap, and painted her all over
+      like the Hoor o' Babylon, an' we called her the Hoor for short.&rdquo; (By the
+      way, McPhee kept to that name throughout the rest of his tale; so you must
+      read accordingly.) &ldquo;I went to see young Bannister&mdash;he had to take
+      what the Board gave him, an' he an' Calder were shifted together from the
+      Breslau to this abortion&mdash;an' talkin' to him I went into the dock
+      under her. Her plates were pitted till the men that were paint, paint,
+      paintin' her laughed at it. But the warst was at the last. She'd a great
+      clumsy iron twelve-foot Thresher propeller&mdash;Aitcheson designed the
+      Kites'&mdash;and just on the tail o' the shaft, behind the boss, was a red
+      weepin' crack ye could ha' put a penknife to. Man, it was an awful crack!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'When d' ye ship a new tail-shaft?' I said to Bannister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He knew what I meant. 'Oh, yon's a superfeecial flaw,' says he, not
+      lookin' at me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Superfeecial Gehenna!' I said. 'Ye'll not take her oot wi' a solution o'
+      continuity that like.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'They'll putty it up this evening,' he said. 'I'm a married man, an'&mdash;ye
+      used to know the Board.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I e'en said what was gied me in that hour. Ye know how a drydock echoes.
+      I saw young Steiner standin' listenin' above me, an', man, he used
+      language provocative of a breach o' the peace. I was a spy and a disgraced
+      employ, an' a corrupter o' young Bannister's morals, an' he'd prosecute me
+      for libel. He went away when I ran up the steps&mdash;I'd ha' thrown him
+      into the dock if I'd caught him&mdash;an' there I met McRimmon, wi' Dandie
+      pullin' on the chain, guidin' the auld man among the railway lines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'McPhee,' said he, 'ye're no paid to fight Holdock, Steiner, Chase &amp;
+      Company, Limited, when ye meet. What's wrong between you?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'No more than a tail-shaft rotten as a kail-stump. For ony sakes go an'
+      look, McRimmon. It's a comedietta.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I'm feared o' yon conversational Hebrew,' said he. 'Whaur's the flaw,
+      an' what like?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'A seven-inch crack just behind the boss. There's no power on earth will
+      fend it just jarrin' off.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'When?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'That's beyon' my knowledge,' I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'So it is; so it is,' said McRimmon. 'We've all oor leemitations. Ye're
+      certain it was a crack?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Man, it's a crevasse,' I said, for there were no words to describe the
+      magnitude of it. 'An' young Bannister's sayin' it's no more than a
+      superfeecial flaw!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Weell, I tak' it oor business is to mind oor business. If ye've ony
+      friends aboard her, McPhee, why not bid them to a bit dinner at Radley's?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I was thinkin' o' tea in the cuddy,' I said. 'Engineers o' tramp
+      freighters cannot afford hotel prices.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Na! na!' says the auld man, whimperin'. 'Not the cuddy. They'll laugh at
+      my Kite, for she's no plastered with paint like the Hoor. Bid them to
+      Radley's, McPhee, an' send me the bill. Thank Dandie, here, man. I'm no
+      used to thanks.' Then he turned him round. (I was just thinkin' the vara
+      same thing.) 'Mister McPhee,' said he, 'this is not senile dementia.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Preserve 's!' I said, clean jumped oot o' mysel'. 'I was but thinkin'
+      you're fey, McRimmon.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dod, the auld deevil laughed till he nigh sat down on Dandie. 'Send me
+      the bill,' says he. 'I'm long past champagne, but tell me how it tastes
+      the morn.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bell and I bid young Bannister and Calder to dinner at Radley's. They'll
+      have no laughin' an' singin' there, but we took a private room&mdash;like
+      yacht-owners fra' Cowes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      McPhee grinned all over, and lay back to think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then?&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were no drunk in ony preceese sense o' the word, but Radley's showed
+      me the dead men. There were six magnums o' dry champagne an' maybe a
+      bottle o' whisky.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to tell me that you four got away with a magnum and a half a
+      piece, besides whisky?&rdquo; I demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      McPhee looked down upon me from between his shoulders with toleration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man, we were not settin' down to drink,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They no more than made
+      us wutty. To be sure, young Bannister laid his head on the table an'
+      greeted like a bairn, an' Calder was all for callin' on Steiner at two in
+      the morn an' painting him galley-green; but they'd been drinkin' the
+      afternoon. Lord, how they twa cursed the Board, an' the Grotkau, an' the
+      tail-shaft, an' the engines, an' a'! They didna talk o' superfeecial flaws
+      that night. I mind young Bannister an' Calder shakin' hands on a bond to
+      be revenged on the Board at ony reasonable cost this side o' losing their
+      certificates. Now mark ye how false economy ruins business. The Board fed
+      them like swine (I have good reason to know it), an' I've obsairved wi' my
+      ain people that if ye touch his stomach ye wauken the deil in a Scot. Men
+      will tak' a dredger across the Atlantic if they 're well fed, an' fetch
+      her somewhere on the broadside o' the Americas; but bad food's bad service
+      the warld over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The bill went to McRimmon, an' he said no more to me till the week-end,
+      when I was at him for more paint, for we'd heard the Kite was chartered
+      Liverpool-side. 'Bide whaur ye're put,' said the Blind Deevil. 'Man, do ye
+      wash in champagne? The Kite's no leavin' here till I gie the order, an'&mdash;how
+      am I to waste paint onher, wi' the Lammergeyer docked for who knows how
+      long an' a'?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was our big freighter&mdash;McIntyre was engineer&mdash;an' I knew
+      she'd come from overhaul not three months. That morn I met McRimmon's
+      head-clerk&mdash;ye'll not know him&mdash;fair bitin' his nails off wi'
+      mortification.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'The auld man's gone gyte,' says he. 'He's withdrawn the Lammergeyer.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Maybe he has reasons,' says I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Reasons! He's daft!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'He'll no be daft till he begins to paint,' I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'That's just what he's done&mdash;and South American freights higher than
+      we'll live to see them again. He's laid her up to paint her&mdash;to paint
+      her&mdash;to paint her!' says the little clerk, dancin' like a hen on a
+      hot plate. 'Five thousand ton o' potential freight rottin' in drydock,
+      man; an' he dolin' the paint out in quarter-pound tins, for it cuts him to
+      the heart, mad though he is. An' the Grotkau&mdash;the Grotkau of all
+      conceivable bottoms&mdash;soaking up every pound that should be ours at
+      Liverpool!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was staggered wi' this folly&mdash;considerin' the dinner at Radley's
+      in connection wi' the same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye may well stare, McPhee,' says the head-clerk. 'There's engines, an'
+      rollin' stock, an' iron bridgesd' ye know what freights are noo? an'
+      pianos, an' millinery, an' fancy Brazil cargo o' every species pourin'
+      into the Grotkau&mdash;the Grotkau o' the Jerusalem firm&mdash;and the
+      Lammergeyer's bein' painted!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Losh, I thought he'd drop dead wi' the fits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could say no more than 'Obey orders, if ye break owners,' but on the
+      Kite we believed McRimmon was mad; an' McIntyre of the Lammergeyer was for
+      lockin' him up by some patent legal process he'd found in a book o'
+      maritime law. An' a' that week South American freights rose an' rose. It
+      was sinfu'!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Syne Bell got orders to tak' the Kite round to Liverpool in
+      water-ballast, and McRimmon came to bid's good-bye, yammerin' an' whinin'
+      o'er the acres o' paint he'd lavished on the Lammergeyer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I look to you to retrieve it,' says he. 'I look to you to reimburse me!
+      'Fore God, why are ye not cast off? Are ye dawdlin' in dock for a
+      purpose?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'What odds, McRimmon?' says Bell. 'We'll be a day behind the fair at
+      Liverpool. The Grotkau's got all the freight that might ha' been ours an'
+      the Lammergeyer's.' McRimmon laughed an' chuckled&mdash;the pairfect
+      eemage o' senile dementia. Ye ken his eyebrows wark up an' down like a
+      gorilla's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Ye're under sealed orders,' said he, tee-heein' an' scratchin' himself.
+      'Yon's they'&mdash;to be opened seriatim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Says Bell, shufflin' the envelopes when the auld man had gone ashore:
+      'We're to creep round a' the south coast, standin' in for orders his
+      weather, too. There's no question o' his lunacy now.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we buttocked the auld Kite along&mdash;vara bad weather we made&mdash;standin'
+      in all alongside for telegraphic orders, which are the curse o' skippers.
+      Syne we made over to Holyhead, an' Bell opened the last envelope for the
+      last instructions. I was wi' him in the cuddy, an' he threw it over to me,
+      cryin': 'Did ye ever know the like, Mac?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll no say what McRimmon had written, but he was far from mad. There was
+      a sou'wester brewin' when we made the mouth o' the Mersey, a bitter cold
+      morn wi' a grey-green sea and a grey-green sky&mdash;Liverpool weather, as
+      they say; an' there we lay choppin', an' the crew swore. Ye canna keep
+      secrets aboard ship. They thought McRimmon was mad, too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Syne we saw the Grotkau rollin' oot on the top o' flood, deep an' double
+      deep, wi' her new-painted funnel an' her new-painted boats an' a'. She
+      looked her name, an', moreover, she coughed like it. Calder tauld me at
+      Radley's what ailed his engines, but my own ear would ha' told me twa mile
+      awa', by the beat o' them. Round we came, plungin' an' squatterin' in her
+      wake, an' the wind cut wi' good promise o' more to come. By six it blew
+      hard but clear, an' before the middle watch it was a sou'wester in
+      airnest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'She'll edge into Ireland, this gait,' says Bell. I was with him on the
+      bridge, watchin' the Grotkau's port light. Ye canna see green so far as
+      red, or we'd ha' kept to leeward. We'd no passengers to consider, an' (all
+      eyes being on the Grotkau) we fair walked into a liner rampin' home to
+      Liverpool. Or, to be preceese, Bell no more than twisted the Kite oot from
+      under her bows, and there was a little damnin' betwix' the twa bridges.
+      &ldquo;Noo a passenger&rdquo;&mdash;McPhee regarded me benignantly&mdash;&ldquo;wad ha' told
+      the papers that as soon as he got to the Customs. We stuck to the
+      Grotkau's tail that night an' the next twa days&mdash;she slowed down to
+      five knot by my reckonin' and we lapped along the weary way to the
+      Fastnet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you don't go by the Fastnet to get to any South American port, do
+      you?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We do not. We prefer to go as direct as may be. But we were followin' the
+      Grotkau, an' she'd no walk into that gale for ony consideration. Knowin'
+      what I did to her discredit, I couldna blame young Bannister. It was
+      warkin' up to a North Atlantic winter gale, snow an' sleet an' a perishin'
+      wind. Eh, it was like the Deil walkin' abroad o' the surface o' the deep,
+      whuppin' off the top o' the waves before he made up his mind. They'd bore
+      up against it so far, but the minute she was clear o' the Skelligs she
+      fair tucked up her skirts an' ran for it by Dunmore Head. Wow, she rolled!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'She'll be makin' Smerwick,' says Bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'd ha' tried for Ventry by noo if she meant that,' I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'They'll roll the funnel oot o' her, this gait,' says Bell. 'Why canna
+      Bannister keep her head to sea?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the tail-shaft. Ony rollin''s better than pitchin' wi' superfeecial
+      cracks in the tail-shaft. Calder knows that much,' I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'It's ill wark retreevin' steamers this weather,' said Bell. His beard
+      and whiskers were frozen to his oilskin, an' the spray was white on the
+      weather side of him. Pairfect North Atlantic winter weather!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One by one the sea raxed away our three boats, an' the davits were
+      crumpled like ram's horns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Yon's bad,' said Bell, at the last. 'Ye canna pass a hawser wi'oot a
+      boat.' Bell was a vara judeecious man&mdash;for an Aberdonian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not one that fashes himself for eventualities outside the
+      engine-room, so I e'en slipped down betwixt waves to see how the Kite
+      fared. Man, she's the best geared boat of her class that ever left Clyde!
+      Kinloch, my second, knew her as well as I did. I found him dryin' his
+      socks on the main-steam, an' combin' his whiskers wi' the comb Janet gied
+      me last year, for the warld an' a' as though we were in port. I tried the
+      feed, speered into the stoke-hole, thumbed all bearin's, spat on the
+      thrust for luck, gied 'em my blessin', an' took Kinloch's socks before I
+      went up to the bridge again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then Bell handed me the wheel, an' went below to warm himself. When he
+      came up my gloves were frozen to the spokes an' the ice clicked over my
+      eyelids. Pairfect North Atlantic winter weather, as I was sayin'.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The gale blew out by night, but we lay in smotherin' cross-seas that made
+      the auld Kite chatter from stem to stern. I slowed to thirty-four, I mind&mdash;no,
+      thirty-seven. There was a long swell the morn, an' the Grotkau was headin'
+      into it west awa'.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'She'll win to Rio yet, tail-shaft or no tail-shaft,' says Bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Last night shook her,' I said. 'She'll jar it off yet, mark my word.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were then, maybe, a hunder and fifty mile westsou'west o' Slyne Head,
+      by dead reckonin'. Next day we made a hunder an' thirty&mdash;ye'll note
+      we were not racin-boats&mdash;an' the day after a hunder an' sixty-one,
+      an' that made us, we'll say, Eighteen an' a bittock west, an' maybe
+      Fifty-one an' a bittock north, crossin' all the North Atlantic liner lanes
+      on the long slant, always in sight o' the Grotkau, creepin' up by night
+      and fallin' awa' by day. After the gale it was cold weather wi' dark
+      nights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was in the engine-room on Friday night, just before the middle watch,
+      when Bell whustled down the tube: 'She's done it'; an' up I came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Grotkau was just a fair distance south, an' one by one she ran up the
+      three red lights in a vertical line&mdash;the sign of a steamer not under
+      control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Yon's a tow for us,' said Bell, lickin' his chops. 'She'll be worth more
+      than the Breslau. We'll go down to her, McPhee!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Bide a while,' I said. 'The seas fair throng wi' ships here.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Reason why,' said Bell. 'It's a fortune gaun beggin'. What d' ye think,
+      man?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Gie her till daylight. She knows we're here. If Bannister needs help
+      he'll loose a rocket.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Wha told ye Bannister's need? We'll ha' some rag-an'-bone tramp snappin'
+      her up under oor nose,' said he; an' he put the wheel over. We were goin'
+      slow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Bannister wad like better to go home on a liner an' eat in the saloon.
+      Mind ye what they said o' Holdock &amp; Steiner's food that night at
+      Radley's? Keep her awa', man&mdash;keep her awa'. A tow's a tow, but a
+      derelict's big salvage.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'E-eh! 'said Bell. 'Yon's an inshot o' yours, Mac. I love ye like a
+      brother. We'll bide whaur we are till daylight'; an' he kept her awa'.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Syne up went a rocket forward, an' twa on the bridge, an' a blue light
+      aft. Syne a tar-barrel forward again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'She's sinkin',' said Bell. 'It's all gaun, an' I'll get no more than a
+      pair o' night-glasses for pickin' up young Bannister&mdash;the fool!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;' Fair an' soft again,' I said. 'She's signallin' to the south of us.
+      Bannister knows as well as I that one rocket would bring the Breslau.
+      He'll no be wastin' fireworks for nothin'. Hear her ca'!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Grotkau whustled an' whustled for five minutes, an' then there were
+      more fireworks&mdash;a regular exhibeetion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'That's no for men in the regular trade,' says Bell. 'Ye're right, Mac.
+      That's for a cuddy full o' passengers.' He blinked through the
+      night-glasses when it lay a bit thick to southward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'What d' ye make of it?' I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Liner,' he says. 'Yon's her rocket. Ou, ay; they've waukened the
+      gold-strapped skipper, an'&mdash;noo they've waukened the passengers.
+      They're turnin' on the electrics, cabin by cabin. Yon's anither rocket!
+      They're comin' up to help the perishin' in deep watters.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Gie me the glass,' I said. But Bell danced on the bridge, clean
+      dementit. 'Mails-mails-mails!' said he. 'Under contract wi' the Government
+      for the due conveyance o' the mails; an' as such, Mac, yell note, she may
+      rescue life at sea, but she canna tow!&mdash;she canna tow! Yon's her
+      night-signal. She'll be up in half an hour!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Gowk!' I said, 'an' we blazin' here wi' all oor lights. Oh, Bell, ye're
+      a fool!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He tumbled off the bridge forward, an' I tumbled aft, an' before ye could
+      wink our lights were oot, the engine-room hatch was covered, an' we lay
+      pitch-dark, watchin' the lights o' the liner come up that the Grotkau'd
+      been signallin' to. Twenty knot an hour she came, every cabin lighted, an'
+      her boats swung awa'. It was grandly done, an' in the inside of an hour.
+      She stopped like Mrs. Holdock's machine; down went the gangway, down went
+      the boats, an' in ten minutes we heard the passengers cheerin', an' awa'
+      she fled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'They'll tell o' this all the days they live,' said Bell. 'A rescue at
+      sea by night, as pretty as a play. Young Bannister an' Calder will be
+      drinkin' in the saloon, an' six months hence the Board o' Trade 'll gie
+      the skipper a pair o' binoculars. It's vara philanthropic all round.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll lay by till day&mdash;ye may think we waited for it wi' sore eyes
+      an' there sat the Grotkau, her nose a bit cocked, just leerin' at us. She
+      looked paifectly ridiculous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'She'll be fillin' aft,' says Bell; 'for why is she down by the stern?
+      The tail-shaft's punched a hole in her, an'&mdash;we 've no boats. There's
+      three hunder thousand pound sterlin', at a conservative estimate, droonin'
+      before our eyes. What's to do?' An' his bearin's got hot again in a
+      minute: he was an incontinent man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Run her as near as ye daur,' I said. 'Gie me a jacket an' a lifeline,
+      an' I'll swum for it.' There was a bit lump of a sea, an' it was cold in
+      the wind&mdash;vara cold; but they'd gone overside like passengers, young
+      Bannister an' Calder an' a', leaving the gangway down on the lee-side. It
+      would ha' been a flyin' in the face o' manifest Providence to overlook the
+      invitation. We were within fifty yards o' her while Kinloch was garmin' me
+      all over wi' oil behind the galley; an' as we ran past I went outboard for
+      the salvage o' three hunder thousand pound. Man, it was perishin' cold,
+      but I'd done my job judgmatically, an' came scrapin' all along her side
+      slap on to the lower gratin' o' the gangway. No one more astonished than
+      me, I assure ye. Before I'd caught my breath I'd skinned both my knees on
+      the gratin', an' was climbin' up before she rolled again. I made my line
+      fast to the rail, an' squattered aft to young Bannister's cabin, whaaur I
+      dried me wi' everything in his bunk, an' put on every conceivable sort o'
+      rig I found till the blood was circulatin'. Three pair drawers, I mind I
+      found&mdash;to begin upon&mdash;an' I needed them all. It was the coldest
+      cold I remember in all my experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Syne I went aft to the engine-room. The Grotkau sat on her own tail, as
+      they say. She was vara shortshafted, an' her gear was all aft. There was
+      four or five foot o' water in the engine-room slummockin' to and fro,
+      black an' greasy; maybe there was six foot. The stoke-hold doors were
+      screwed home, an' the stoke-hold was tight enough, but for a minute the
+      mess in the engine-room deceived me. Only for a minute, though, an' that
+      was because I was not, in a manner o' speakin', as calm as ordinar'. I
+      looked again to mak' sure. 'T was just black wi' bilge: dead watter that
+      must ha' come in fortuitously, ye ken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;McPhee, I'm only a passenger,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;but you don't persuade me that
+      six foot o' water can come into an engine-room fortuitously.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's tryin' to persuade one way or the other?&rdquo; McPhee retorted. &ldquo;I'm
+      statin' the facts o' the case&mdash;the simple, natural facts. Six or
+      seven foot o' dead watter in the engine-room is a vara depressin' sight if
+      ye think there's like to be more comin'; but I did not consider that such
+      was likely, and so, yell note, I was not depressed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all very well, but I want to know about the water,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've told ye. There was six feet or more there, wi' Calder's cap floatin'
+      on top.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did it come from?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Weel, in the confusion o' things after the propeller had dropped off an'
+      the engines were racin' an' a', it's vara possible that Calder might ha'
+      lost it off his head an' no troubled himself to pick it up again. I
+      remember seem' that cap on him at Southampton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want to know about the cap. I'm asking where the water came from
+      and what it was doing there, and why you were so certain that it wasn't a
+      leak, McPhee?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For good reason-for good an' sufficient reason.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give it to me, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Weel, it's a reason that does not properly concern myself only. To be
+      preceese, I'm of opinion that it was due, the watter, in part to an error
+      o' judgment in another man. We can a' mak' mistakes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I beg your pardon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got me to the rail again, an', 'What's wrang?' said Bell, hailin'.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'She'll do,' I said. 'Send's o'er a hawser, an' a man to steer. I'll pull
+      him in by the life-line.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could see heads bobbin' back an' forth, an' a whuff or two o' strong
+      words. Then Bell said: 'They'll not trust themselves&mdash;one of 'em&mdash;in
+      this waiter&mdash;except Kinloch, an' I'll no spare him.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'The more salvage to me, then,' I said. 'I'll make shift solo.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Says one dock-rat, at this: 'D' ye think she's safe?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I'll guarantee ye nothing,' I said, 'except maybe a hammerin' for
+      keepin' me this long.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then he sings out: 'There's no more than one lifebelt, an' they canna
+      find it, or I'd come.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Throw him over, the Jezebel,' I said, for I was oot o' patience; an'
+      they took haud o' that volunteer before he knew what was in store, and
+      hove him over, in the bight of my life-line. So I e'en hauled him upon the
+      sag of it, hand over fist&mdash;a vara welcome recruit when I'd tilted the
+      salt watter oot of him: for, by the way, he could na swim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Syne they bent a twa-inch rope to the life-line, an' a hawser to that,
+      an' I led the rope o'er the drum of a hand-winch forward, an' we sweated
+      the hawser inboard an' made it fast to the Grotkau's bitts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bell brought the Kite so close I feared she'd roll in an' do the
+      Grotkau's plates a mischief. He hove anither life-line to me, an' went
+      astern, an' we had all the weary winch work to do again wi' a second
+      hawser. For all that, Bell was right: we'd along tow before us, an' though
+      Providence had helped us that far, there was no sense in leavin' too much
+      to its keepin'. When the second hawser was fast, I was wet wi' sweat, an'
+      I cried Bell to tak' up his slack an' go home. The other man was by way o'
+      helpin' the work wi' askin' for drinks, but I e'en told him he must hand
+      reef an' steer, beginnin' with steerin', for I was goin' to turn in. He
+      steered&mdash;oh, ay, he steered, in a manner o' speakin'. At the least,
+      he grippit the spokes an' twiddled 'em an' looked wise, but I doubt if the
+      Hoor ever felt it. I turned in there an' then, to young Bannister's bunk,
+      an' slept past expression. I waukened ragin' wi' hunger, a fair lump o'
+      sea runnin', the Kite snorin' awa' four knots an hour; an' the Grotkau
+      slappin' her nose under, an' yawin' an' standin' over at discretion. She
+      was a most disgracefu' tow. But the shameful thing of all was the food. I
+      raxed me a meal fra galley-shelves an' pantries an' lazareetes an'
+      cubby-holes that I would not ha' gied to the mate of a Cardiff collier;
+      an' ye ken we say a Cardiff mate will eat clinkers to save waste. I'm
+      sayin' it was simply vile! The crew had written what they thought of it on
+      the new paint o' the fo'c'sle, but I had not a decent soul wi' me to
+      complain on. There was nothin' for me to do save watch the hawsers an' the
+      Kite's tail squatterin' down in white watter when she lifted to a sea; so
+      I got steam on the after donkey-pump, an' pumped oot the engine-room.
+      There's no sense in leavin' waiter loose in a ship. When she was dry, I
+      went doun the shaft-tunnel, an' found she was leakin' a little through the
+      stuffin'box, but nothin' to make wark. The propeller had e'en jarred off,
+      as I knew it must, an' Calder had been waitin' for it to go wi' his hand
+      on the gear. He told me as much when I met him ashore. There was nothin'
+      started or strained. It had just slipped awa' to the bed o' the Atlantic
+      as easy as a man dyin' wi' due warning&mdash;a most providential business
+      for all concerned. Syne I took stock o' the Grotkau's upper works. Her
+      boats had been smashed on the davits, an' here an' there was the rail
+      missin', an' a ventilator or two had fetched awa', an' the bridge-rails
+      were bent by the seas; but her hatches were tight, and she'd taken no sort
+      of harm. Dod, I came to hate her like a human bein', for I was eight weary
+      days aboard, starvin'&mdash;ay, starvin'&mdash;within a cable's length o'
+      plenty. All day I laid in the bunk reading the' Woman-Hater,' the grandest
+      book Charlie Reade ever wrote, an' pickin' a toothful here an' there. It
+      was weary, weary work. Eight days, man, I was aboard the Grotkau, an' not
+      one full meal did I make. Sma' blame her crew would not stay by her. The
+      other man? Oh I warked him wi' a vengeance to keep him warm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It came on to blow when we fetched soundin's, an' that kept me standin'
+      by the hawsers, lashed to the capstan, breathin' twixt green seas. I near
+      died o' cauld an' hunger, for the Grotkau towed like a barge, an' Bell
+      howkit her along through or over. It was vara thick up-Channel, too. We
+      were standin' in to make some sort o' light, an' we near walked over twa
+      three fishin'-boats, an' they cried us we were overclose to Falmouth. Then
+      we were near cut down by a drunken foreign fruiter that was blunderin'
+      between us an' the shore, and it got thicker an' thicker that night, an' I
+      could feel by the tow Bell did not know whaur he was. Losh, we knew in the
+      morn, for the wind blew the fog oot like a candle, an' the sun came clear;
+      and as surely as McRimmon gied me my cheque, the shadow o' the Eddystone
+      lay across our tow-rope! We were that near&mdash;ay, we were that near!
+      Bell fetched the Kite round with the jerk that came close to tearin' the
+      bitts out o' the Grotkau, an' I mind I thanked my Maker in young
+      Bannister's cabin when we were inside Plymouth breakwater.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The first to come aboard was McRimmon, wi' Dandie. Did I tell you our
+      orders were to take anything we found into Plymouth? The auld deil had
+      just come down overnight, puttin' two an' two together from what Calder
+      had told him when the liner landed the Grotkau's men. He had preceesely
+      hit oor time. I'd hailed Bell for something to eat, an' he sent it o'er in
+      the same boat wi' McRimmon, when the auld man came to me. He grinned an'
+      slapped his legs and worked his eyebrows the while I ate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'How do Holdock, Steiner &amp; Chase feed their men?' said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Ye can see,' I said, knockin' the top off another beer-bottle. 'I did
+      not sign to be starved, McRimmon.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Nor to swum, either,' said he, for Bell had tauld him how I carried the
+      line aboard. 'Well, I'm thinkin' you'll be no loser. What freight could we
+      ha' put into the Lammergeyer would equal salvage on four hunder thousand
+      pounds&mdash;hull an' cargo? Eh, McPhee? This cuts the liver out o'
+      Holdock, Steiner, Chase &amp; Company, Limited. Eh, McPhee? An' I'm
+      sufferin' from senile dementia now? Eh, MCPhee? An' I'm not daft, am I,
+      till I begin to paint the Lammergeyer? Eh, McPhee? Ye may weel lift your
+      leg, Dandie! I ha' the laugh o' them all. Ye found watter in the
+      engine-room?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'To speak wi'oot prejudice,' I said, 'there was some watter.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'They thought she was sinkin' after the propeller went. She filled wi'
+      extraordinary rapeedity. Calder said it grieved him an' Bannister to
+      abandon her.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought o' the dinner at Radley's, an' what like o' food I'd eaten for
+      eight days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'It would grieve them sore,' I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'But the crew would not hear o' stayin' and workin' her back under
+      canvas. They're gaun up an' down sayin' they'd ha' starved first.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'They'd ha' starved if they'd stayed,' said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I tak' it, fra Calder's account, there was a mutiny a'most.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Ye know more than I, McRimmon' I said. 'Speakin' wi'oot prejudice, for
+      we're all in the same boat, who opened the bilgecock?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Oh, that's it&mdash;is it?' said the auld man, an' I could see he was
+      surprised. 'A bilge-cock, ye say?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I believe it was a bilge-cock. They were all shut when I came aboard,
+      but some one had flooded the engine-room eight feet over all, and shut it
+      off with the worm-an'-wheel gear from the second gratin' afterwards.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Losh!' said McRimmon. 'The ineequity o' man's beyond belief. But it's
+      awfu' discreditable to Holdock, Steiner &amp; Chase, if that came oot in
+      court.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'It's just my own curiosity,' I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Aweel, Dandie's afflicted wi' the same disease. Dandie, strive against
+      curiosity, for it brings a little dog into traps an' suchlike. Whaur was
+      the Kite when yon painted liner took off the Grotkau's people?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Just there or thereabouts,' I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'An' which o' you twa thought to cover your lights?' said he, winkin'.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Dandle,' I said to the dog, 'we must both strive against curiosity. It's
+      an unremunerative business. What's our chance o' salvage, Dandie?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He laughed till he choked. 'Tak' what I gie you, McPhee, an' be content,'
+      he said. 'Lord, how a man wastes time when he gets old. Get aboard the
+      Kite, mon, as soon as ye can. I've clean forgot there's a Baltic charter
+      yammerin' for you at London. That'll be your last voyage, I'm thinkin',
+      excep' by way o' pleasure.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Steiner's men were comin' aboard to take charge an' tow her round, an' I
+      passed young Steiner in a boat as I went to the Kite. He looked down his
+      nose; but McRimmon pipes up: 'Here's the man ye owe the Grotkau to&mdash;at
+      a price, Steiner&mdash;at a price! Let me introduce Mr. McPhee to you.
+      Maybe ye've met before; but ye've vara little luck in keepin' your men&mdash;ashore
+      or afloat!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Young Steiner looked angry enough to eat him as he chuckled an' whustled
+      in his dry old throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Ye've not got your award yet,' Steiner says.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Na, na,' says the auld man, in a screech ye could hear to the Hoe, 'but
+      I've twa million sterlin', an' no bairns, ye Judeeas Apella, if ye mean to
+      fight; an' I'll match ye p'und for p'und till the last p'und's oot. Ye ken
+      me, Steiner! I'm McRimmon o' McNaughten &amp; McRimmon!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Dod,' he said betwix' his teeth, sittin' back in the boat, 'I've waited
+      fourteen year to break that Jewfirm, an' God be thankit I'll do it now.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Kite was in the Baltic while the auld man was warkin' his warks, but
+      I know the assessors valued the Grotkau, all told, at over three hunder
+      and sixty thousand&mdash;her manifest was a treat o' richness&mdash;an'
+      McRimmon got a third for salvin' an abandoned ship. Ye see, there's vast
+      deeference between towin' a ship wi' men on her an' pickin' up a derelict&mdash;a
+      vast deeference&mdash;in pounds sterlin'. Moreover, twa three o' the
+      Grotkau's crew were burnin' to testify about food, an' there was a note o'
+      Calder to the Board, in regard to the tail-shaft, that would ha' been vara
+      damagin' if it had come into court. They knew better than to fight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Syne the Kite came back, an' McRimmon paid off me an' Bell personally,
+      an' the rest of the crew pro rata, I believe it's ca'ed. My share&mdash;oor
+      share, I should say&mdash;was just twenty-five thousand pound sterlin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point Janet jumped up and kissed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Five-and-twenty thousand pound sterlin'. Noo, I'm fra the North, and I'm
+      not the like to fling money awa' rashly, but I'd gie six months' pay&mdash;one
+      hunder an' twenty pounds&mdash;to know who flooded the engine-room of the
+      Grotkau. I'm fairly well acquaint wi' McRimmon's eediosyncrasies, and he'd
+      no hand in it. It was not Calder, for I've asked him, an' he wanted to
+      fight me. It would be in the highest degree unprofessional o' Calder&mdash;not
+      fightin', but openin' bilge-cocks&mdash;but for a while I thought it was
+      him. Ay, I judged it might be him&mdash;under temptation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's your theory?&rdquo; I demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Weel, I'm inclined to think it was one o' those singular providences that
+      remind us we're in the hands o' Higher Powers.&rdquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It couldn't open and shut itself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not mean that; but some half-starvin' oiler or, maybe, trimmer must
+      ha' opened it awhile to mak' sure o' leavin' the Grotkau. It's a
+      demoralisin' thing to see an engine-room flood up after any accident to
+      the gear&mdash;demoralisin' and deceptive both. Aweel, the man got what he
+      wanted, for they went aboard the liner cryin' that the Grotkau was
+      sinkin'. But it's curious to think o' the consequences. In a' human
+      probability, he's bein' damned in heaps at the present moment aboard
+      another tramp freighter; an' here am I, wi' five-an'-twenty thousand pound
+      invested, resolute to go to sea no more&mdash;providential's the preceese
+      word&mdash;except as a passenger, ye'll understand, Janet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      McPhee kept his word. He and Janet went for a voyage as passengers in the
+      first-class saloon. They paid seventy pounds for their berths; and Janet
+      found a very sick woman in the second-class saloon, so that for sixteen
+      days she lived below, and chatted with the stewardesses at the foot of the
+      second-saloon stairs while her patient slept. McPhee was a passenger for
+      exactly twenty-four hours. Then the engineers' mess&mdash;where the
+      oilcloth tables are&mdash;joyfully took him to its bosom, and for the rest
+      of the voyage that company was richer by the unpaid services of a highly
+      certificated engineer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      AN ERROR IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Before he was thirty, he discovered that there was no one to play with
+      him. Though the wealth of three toilsome generations stood to his account,
+      though his tastes in the matter of books, bindings, rugs, swords, bronzes,
+      lacquer, pictures, plate, statuary, horses, conservatories, and
+      agriculture were educated and catholic, the public opinion of his country
+      wanted to know why he did not go to office daily, as his father had before
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he fled, and they howled behind him that he was an unpatriotic
+      Anglomaniac, born to consume fruits, one totally lacking in public spirit.
+      He wore an eyeglass; he had built a wall round his country house, with a
+      high gate that shut, instead of inviting America to sit on his
+      flower-beds; he ordered his clothes from England; and the press of his
+      abiding city cursed him, from his eye-glass to his trousers, for two
+      consecutive days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he rose to light again, it was where nothing less than the tents of
+      an invading army in Piccadilly would make any difference to anybody. If he
+      had money and leisure, England stood ready to give him all that money and
+      leisure could buy. That price paid, she would ask no questions. He took
+      his cheque-book and accumulated things&mdash;warily at first, for he
+      remembered that in America things own the man. To his delight, he
+      discovered that in England he could put his belongings under his feet; for
+      classes, ranks, and denominations of people rose, as it were, from the
+      earth, and silently and discreetly took charge of his possessions. They
+      had been born and bred for that sole purpose&mdash;servants of the
+      cheque-book. When that was at an end they would depart as mysteriously as
+      they had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The impenetrability of this regulated life irritated him, and he strove to
+      learn something of the human side of these people. He retired baffled, to
+      be trained by his menials. In America, the native demoralises the English
+      servant. In England, the servant educates the master. Wilton Sargent
+      strove to learn all they taught as ardently as his father had striven to
+      wreck, before capture, the railways of his native land; and it must have
+      been some touch of the old bandit railway blood that bade him buy, for a
+      song, Holt Hangars, whose forty-acre lawn, as every one knows, sweeps down
+      in velvet to the quadruple tracks of the Great Buchonian Railway. Their
+      trains flew by almost continuously, with a bee-like drone in the day and a
+      flutter of strong wings at night. The son of Merton Sargent had good right
+      to be interested in them. He owned controlling interests in several
+      thousand miles of track,&mdash;not permanent way,&mdash;built on
+      altogether different plans, where locomotives eternally whistled for
+      grade-crossings, and parlor-cars of fabulous expense and unrestful design
+      skated round curves that the Great Buchonian would have condemned as
+      unsafe in a construction-line. From the edge of his lawn he could trace
+      the chaired metals falling away, rigid as a bowstring, into the valley of
+      the Prest, studded with the long perspective of the block signals,
+      buttressed with stone, and carried, high above all possible risk, on a
+      forty-foot embankment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Left to himself, he would have builded a private car, and kept it at the
+      nearest railway-station, Amberley Royal, five miles away. But those into
+      whose hands he had committed himself for his English training had little
+      knowledge of railways and less of private cars. The one they knew was
+      something that existed in the scheme of things for their convenience. The
+      other they held to be &ldquo;distinctly American&rdquo;; and, with the versatility of
+      his race, Wilton Sargent had set out to be just a little more English than
+      the English.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He succeeded to admiration. He learned not to redecorate Holt Hangars,
+      though he warmed it; to leave his guests alone; to refrain from
+      superfluous introductions; to abandon manners of which he had great store,
+      and to hold fast by manner which can after labour be acquired. He learned
+      to let other people, hired for the purpose, attend to the duties for which
+      they were paid. He learned&mdash;this he got from a ditcher on the estate&mdash;that
+      every man with whom he came in contact had his decreed position in the
+      fabric of the realm, which position he would do well to consult. Last
+      mystery of all, he learned to golf&mdash;well: and when an American knows
+      the innermost meaning of &ldquo;Don't press, slow back, and keep your eye on the
+      ball,&rdquo; he is, for practical purposes, denationalised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His other education proceeded on the pleasantest lines. Was he interested
+      in any conceivable thing in heaven above, or the earth beneath, or the
+      waters under the earth? Forthwith appeared at his table, guided by those
+      safe hands into which he had fallen, the very men who had best said, done,
+      written, explored, excavated, built, launched, created, or studied that
+      one thing&mdash;herders of books and prints in the British Museum;
+      specialists in scarabs, cartouches, and dynasties Egyptian; rovers and
+      raiders from the heart of unknown lands; toxicologists; orchid-hunters;
+      monographers on flint implements, carpets, prehistoric man, or early
+      Renaissance music. They came, and they played with him. They asked no
+      questions; they cared not so much as a pin who or what he was. They
+      demanded only that he should be able to talk and listen courteously. Their
+      work was done elsewhere and out of his sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were also women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never,&rdquo; said Wilton Sargent to himself, &ldquo;has an American seen England as
+      I'm seeing it&rdquo;; and he thought, blushing beneath the bedclothes, of the
+      unregenerate and blatant days when he would steam to office, down the
+      Hudson, in his twelve-hundred-ton ocean-going steam-yacht, and arrive, by
+      gradations, at Bleecker Street, hanging on to a leather strap between an
+      Irish washerwoman and a German anarchist. If any of his guests had seen
+      him then they would have said: &ldquo;How distinctly American!&rdquo; and&mdash;Wilton
+      did not care for that tone. He had schooled himself to an English walk,
+      and, so long as he did not raise it, an English voice. He did not
+      gesticulate with his hands; he sat down on most of his enthusiasms, but he
+      could not rid himself of The Shibboleth. He would ask for the
+      Worcestershire sauce: even Howard, his immaculate butler, could not break
+      him of this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was decreed that he should complete his education in a wild and
+      wonderful manner, and, further, that I should be in at that death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wilton had more than once asked me to Holt Hangars, for the purpose of
+      showing how well the new life fitted him, and each time I had declared it
+      creaseless. His third invitation was more informal than the others, and he
+      hinted of some matter in which he was anxious for my sympathy or counsel,
+      or both. There is room for an infinity of mistakes when a man begins to
+      take liberties with his nationality; and I went down expecting things. A
+      seven-foot dog-cart and a groom in the black Holt Hangars livery met me at
+      Amberley Royal. At Holt Hangars I was received by a person of elegance and
+      true reserve, and piloted to my luxurious chamber. There were no other
+      guests in the house, and this set me thinking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wilton came into my room about half an hour before dinner, and though his
+      face was masked with a drop-curtain of highly embroidered indifference, I
+      could see that he was not at ease. In time, for he was then almost as
+      difficult to move as one of my own countrymen, I extracted the tale&mdash;simple
+      in its extravagance, extravagant in its simplicity. It seemed that Hackman
+      of the British Museum had been staying with him about ten days before,
+      boasting of scarabs. Hackman has a way of carrying really priceless
+      antiquities on his tie-ring and in his trouser pockets. Apparently, he had
+      intercepted something on its way to the Boulak Museum which, he said, was
+      &ldquo;a genuine Amen-Hotepa queen's scarab of the Fourth Dynasty.&rdquo; Now Wilton
+      had bought from Cassavetti, whose reputation is not above suspicion, a
+      scarab of much the same scarabeousness, and had left it in his London
+      chambers. Hackman at a venture, but knowing Cassavetti, pronounced it an
+      imposition. There was long discussion&mdash;savant versus millionaire, one
+      saying: &ldquo;ut I know it cannot be&rdquo;; and the other: &ldquo;But I can and will prove
+      it.&rdquo; Wilton found it necessary for his soul's satisfaction to go up to
+      town, then and there,&mdash;a forty-mile run,&mdash;and bring back the
+      scarab before dinner. It was at this point that he began to cut corners
+      with disastrous results. Amberley Royal station being five miles away, and
+      putting in of horses a matter of time, Wilton had told Howard, the
+      immaculate butler, to signal the next train to stop; and Howard, who was
+      more of a man of resource than his master gave him credit for, had, with
+      the red flag of the ninth hole of the links which crossed the bottom of
+      the lawn, signalled vehemently to the first down-train; and it had
+      stopped. Here Wilton's account became confused. He attempted, it seems, to
+      get into that highly indignant express, but a guard restrained him with
+      more or less force&mdash;hauled him, in fact, backyards from the window of
+      a locked carriage. Wilton must have struck the gravel with some vehemence,
+      for the consequences, he admitted, were a free fight on the line in which
+      he lost his hat, and was at last dragged into the guard's van and set down
+      breathless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had pressed money upon the man, and very foolishly had explained
+      everything but his name. This he clung to, for he had a vision of tall
+      head-lines in the New York papers, and well knew no son of Merton Sargent
+      could expect mercy that side the water. The guard, to Wilton's amazement,
+      refused the money on the grounds that this was a matter for the Company to
+      attend to. Wilton insisted on his incognito, and, therefore, found two
+      policemen waiting for him at St. Botolph terminus. When he expressed a
+      wish to buy a new hat and telegraph to his friends, both policemen with
+      one voice warned him that whatever he said would be used as evidence
+      against him; and this had impressed Wilton tremendously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They were so infernally polite,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If they had clubbed me I
+      wouldn't have cared; but it was, 'Step this way, sir,' and, 'Up those
+      stairs, please, sir,' till they jailed me&mdash;jailed me like a common
+      drunk, and I had to stay in a filthy little cubby-hole of a cell all
+      night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That comes of not giving your name and not wiring your lawyer,&rdquo; I
+      replied. &ldquo;What did you get?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forty shillings, or a month,&rdquo; said Wilton, promptly,&mdash;&ldquo;next morning
+      bright and early. They were working us off, three a minute. A girl in a
+      pink hat&mdash;she was brought in at three in the morning&mdash;got ten
+      days. I suppose I was lucky. I must have knocked his senses out of the
+      guard. He told the old duck on the bench that I had told him I was a
+      sergeant in the army, and that I was gathering beetles on the track. That
+      comes of trying to explain to an Englishman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I said nothing. I wanted to get out. I paid my fine, and bought a new
+      hat, and came up here before noon next morning. There were a lot of people
+      in the house, and I told 'em I'd been unavoidably detained, and then they
+      began to recollect engagements elsewhere. Hackman must have seen the fight
+      on the track and made a story of it. I suppose they thought it was
+      distinctly American&mdash;confound 'em! It's the only time in my life that
+      I've ever flagged a train, and I wouldn't have done it but for that
+      scarab. 'T wouldn't hurt their old trains to be held up once in a while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it's all over now,&rdquo; I said, choking a little. &ldquo;And your name didn't
+      get into the papers. It is rather transatlantic when you come to think of
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Over!&rdquo; Wilton grunted savagely. &ldquo;It's only just begun. That trouble with
+      the guard was just common, ordinary assault&mdash;merely a little criminal
+      business. The flagging of the train is civil, infernally civil,&mdash;and
+      means something quite different. They're after me for that now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Great Buchonian. There was a man in court watching the case on behalf
+      of the Company. I gave him my name in a quiet corner before I bought my
+      hat, and&mdash;come to dinner now; I'll show you the results afterwards.&rdquo;
+       The telling of his wrongs had worked Wilton Sargent into a very fine
+      temper, and I do not think that my conversation soothed him. In the course
+      of the dinner, prompted by a devil of pure mischief, I dwelt with loving
+      insistence on certain smells and sounds of New York which go straight to
+      the heart of the native in foreign parts; and Wilton began to ask many
+      questions about his associates aforetime&mdash;men of the New York Yacht
+      Club, Storm King, or the Restigouche, owners of rivers, ranches, and
+      shipping in their playtime, lords of railways, kerosene, wheat, and cattle
+      in their offices. When the green mint came, I gave him a peculiarly oily
+      and atrocious cigar, of the brand they sell in the tessellated,
+      electric-lighted, with expensive-pictures of the nude adorned bar of the
+      Pandemonium, and Wilton chewed the end for several minutes ere he lit it.
+      The butler left us alone, and the chimney of the oak-panelled diningroom
+      began to smoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's another!&rdquo; said he, poking the fire savagely, and I knew what he
+      meant. One cannot put steam-heat in houses where Queen Elizabeth slept.
+      The steady beat of a night-mail, whirling down the valley, recalled me to
+      business. &ldquo;What about the Great Buchonian?&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come into my study. That's all&mdash;as yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a pile of Seidlitz-powders-coloured correspondence, perhaps nine
+      inches high, and it looked very businesslike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can go through it,&rdquo; said Wilton. &ldquo;Now I could take a chair and a red
+      flag and go into Hyde Park and say the most atrocious things about your
+      Queen, and preach anarchy and all that, y' know, till I was hoarse, and no
+      one would take any notice. The Police damn 'em!&mdash;would protect me if
+      I got into trouble. But for a little thing like flagging a dirty little
+      sawed-off train,&mdash;running through my own grounds, too,&mdash;I get
+      the whole British Constitution down on me as if I sold bombs. I don't
+      understand it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more does the Great Buchonian&mdash;apparently.&rdquo; I was turning over
+      the letters. &ldquo;Here's the traffic superintendent writing that it's utterly
+      incomprehensible that any man should... Good heavens, Wilton, you have
+      done it!&rdquo; I giggled, as I read on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's funny now?&rdquo; said my host.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems that you, or Howard for you, stopped the three-forty Northern
+      down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ought to know that! They all had their knife into me, from the
+      engine-driver up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it's the three-forty&mdash;the Induna&mdash;surely you've heard of
+      the Great Buchonian's Induna!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How the deuce am I to know one train from another? They come along about
+      every two minutes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so. But this happens to be the Induna&mdash;the one train of the
+      whole line. She's timed for fifty-seven miles an hour. She was put on
+      early in the Sixties, and she has never been stopped&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know! Since William the Conqueror came over, or King Charles hid in her
+      smoke-stack. You're as bad as the rest of these Britishers. If she's been
+      run all that while, it's time she was flagged once or twice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The American was beginning to ooze out all over Wilton, and his
+      small-boned hands were moving restlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose you flagged the Empire State Express, or the Western Cyclone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose I did. I know Otis Harvey&mdash;or used to. I'd send him a wire,
+      and he'd understand it was a ground-hog case with me. That's exactly what
+      I told this British fossil company here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you been answering their letters without legal advice, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my Sainted Country! Go ahead, Wilton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wrote 'em that I'd be very happy to see their president and explain to
+      him in three words all about it; but that wouldn't do. 'Seems their
+      president must be a god. He was too busy, and&mdash;well, you can read for
+      yourself&mdash;they wanted explanations. The stationmaster at Amberley
+      Royal&mdash;and he grovels before me, as a rule&mdash;wanted an
+      explanation, and quick, too. The head sachem at St. Botolph's wanted three
+      or four, and the Lord High Mukkamuk that oils the locomotives wanted one
+      every fine day. I told 'em&mdash;I've told hem about fifty times&mdash;I
+      stopped their holy and sacred train because I wanted to board her. Did
+      they think I wanted to feel her pulse?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn't say that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Feel her pulse'? Of course not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. 'Board her.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What else could I say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Wilton, what is the use of Mrs. Sherborne, and the Clays, and all
+      that lot working over you for four years to make an Englishman out of you,
+      if the very first time you're rattled you go back to the vernacular?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm through with Mrs. Sherborne and the rest of the crowd. America's good
+      enough for me. What ought I to have said? 'Please,' or 'thanks awf'ly or
+      how?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no chance now of mistaking the man's nationality. Speech,
+      gesture, and step, so carefully drilled into him, had gone away with the
+      borrowed mask of indifference. It was a lawful son of the Youngest People,
+      whose predecessors were the Red Indian. His voice had risen to the high,
+      throaty crow of his breed when they labour under excitement. His close-set
+      eyes showed by turns unnecessary fear, annoyance beyond reason, rapid and
+      purposeless flights of thought, the child's lust for immediate revenge,
+      and the child's pathetic bewilderment, who knocks his head against the
+      bad, wicked table. And on the other side, I knew, stood the Company, as
+      unable as Wilton to understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I could buy their old road three times over,&rdquo; he muttered, playing
+      with a paper-knife, and moving restlessly to and fro.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn't tell 'em that, I hope!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no answer; but as I went through the letters, I felt that Wilton
+      must have told them many surprising things. The Great Buchonian had first
+      asked for an explanation of the stoppage of their Induna, and had found a
+      certain levity in the explanation tendered. It then advised &ldquo;Mr. W.
+      Sargent&rdquo; to refer his solicitor to their solicitor, or whatever the legal
+      phrase is.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you didn't?&rdquo; I said, looking up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. They were treating me exactly as if I had been a kid playing on the
+      cable-tracks. There was not the least necessity for any solicitor. Five
+      minutes' quiet talk would have settled everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I returned to the correspondence. The Great Buchonian regretted that,
+      owing to pressure of business, none of their directors could accept Mr. W.
+      Sargent's invitation to run down and discuss the difficulty. The Great
+      Buchonian was careful to point out that no animus underlay their action,
+      nor was money their object. Their duty was to protect the interests of
+      their line, and these interests could not be protected if a precedent were
+      established whereby any of the Queen's subjects could stop a train in
+      mid-career. Again (this was another branch of the correspondence, not more
+      than five heads of departments being concerned), the Company admitted that
+      there was some reasonable doubt as to the duties of express-trains in all
+      crises, and the matter was open to settlement by process of law till an
+      authoritative ruling was obtained&mdash;from the House of Lords, if
+      necessary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That broke me all up,&rdquo; said Wilton, who was reading over my shoulder. &ldquo;I
+      knew I'd struck the British Constitution at last. The House of Lords&mdash;my
+      Lord! And, anyway, I'm not one of the Queen's subjects.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, I had a notion that you'd got yourself naturalised.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wilton blushed hotly as he explained that very many things must happen to
+      the British Constitution ere he took out his papers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How does it all strike you?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Isn't the Great Buchonian crazy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know. You've done something that no one ever thought of doing
+      before, and the Company don't know what to make of it. I see they offer to
+      send down their solicitor and another official of the Company to talk
+      things over informally. Then here's another letter suggesting that you put
+      up a fourteen-foot wall, crowned with bottle-glass, at the bottom of the
+      garden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Talk of British insolence! The man who recommends that (he's another
+      bloated functionary) says that I shall 'derive great pleasure from
+      watching the wall going up day by day'! Did you ever dream of such gall?
+      I've offered 'em money enough to buy a new set of cars and pension the
+      driver for three generations; but that doesn't seem to be what they want.
+      They expect me to go to the House of Lords and get a ruling, and build
+      walls between times. Are they all stark, raving mad? One 'ud think I made
+      a profession of flagging trains. How in Tophet was I to know their old
+      Induna from a waytrain? I took the first that came along, and I've been
+      jailed and fined for that once already.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was for slugging the guard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had no right to haul me out when I was half-way through a window.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you going to do about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Their lawyer and the other official (can't they trust their men unless
+      they send 'em in pairs?) are coming hereto-night. I told 'em I was busy,
+      as a rule, till after dinner, but they might send along the entire
+      directorate if it eased 'em any.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, after-dinner visiting, for business or pleasure, is the custom of the
+      smaller American town, and not that of England, where the end of the day
+      is sacred to the owner, not the public. Verily, Wilton Sargent had hoisted
+      the striped flag of rebellion!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't it time that the humour of the situation began to strike you,
+      Wilton?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's the humour of baiting an American citizen just because he happens
+      to be a millionaire&mdash;poor devil.&rdquo; He was silent for a little time,
+      and then went on: &ldquo;Of course. Now I see!&rdquo; He spun round and faced me
+      excitedly. &ldquo;It's as plain as mud. These ducks are laying their pipes to
+      skin me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They say explicitly they don't want money!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all a blind. So's their addressing me as W. Sargent. They know
+      well enough who I am. They know I'm the old man's son. Why didn't I think
+      of that before?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One minute, Wilton. If you climbed to the top of the dome of St. Paul's
+      and offered a reward to any Englishman who could tell you who or what
+      Merton Sargent had been, there wouldn't be twenty men in all London to
+      claim it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's their insular provincialism, then. I don't care a cent. The old
+      man would have wrecked the Great Buchonian before breakfast for a
+      pipe-opener. My God, I'll do it in dead earnest! I'll show 'em that they
+      can't bulldoze a foreigner for flagging one of their little tinpot trains,
+      and&mdash;I've spent fifty thousand a year here, at least, for the last
+      four years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was glad I was not his lawyer. I re-read the correspondence, notably the
+      letter which recommended him&mdash;almost tenderly, I fancied&mdash;to
+      build a fourteen-foot brick wall at the end of his garden, and half-way
+      through it a thought struck me which filled me with pure joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The footman ushered in two men, frock-coated, grey-trousered,
+      smooth-shaven, heavy of speech and gait. It was nearly nine o'clock, but
+      they looked as newly come from a bath. I could not understand why the
+      elder and taller of the pair glanced at me as though we had an
+      understanding; nor why he shook hands with an unEnglish warmth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This simplifies the situation,&rdquo; he said in an undertone, and, as I
+      stared, he whispered to his companion: &ldquo;I fear I shall be of very little
+      service at present. Perhaps Mr. Folsom had better talk over the affair
+      with Mr. Sargent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what I am here for,&rdquo; said Wilton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man of law smiled pleasantly, and said that he saw no reason why the
+      difficulty should not be arranged in two minutes' quiet talk. His air, as
+      he sat down opposite Wilton, was soothing to the last degree, and his
+      companion drew me up-stage. The mystery was deepening, but I followed
+      meekly, and heard Wilton say, with an uneasy laugh:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've had insomnia over this affair, Mr. Folsom. Let's settle it one way
+      or the other, for heaven's sake!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Has he suffered much from this lately?&rdquo; said my man, with a
+      preliminary cough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really can't say,&rdquo; I replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I suppose you have only lately taken charge here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came this evening. I am not exactly in charge of anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see. Merely to observe the course of events in case&mdash;&rdquo; He nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly.&rdquo; Observation, after all, is my trade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He coughed again slightly, and came to business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&mdash;I am asking solely for information's sake,&mdash;do you find
+      the delusions persistent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which delusions?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are variable, then? That is distinctly curious, because&mdash;but do
+      I understand that the type of the delusion varies? For example, Mr.
+      Sargent believes that he can buy the Great Buchonian.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he write you that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He made the offer to the Company&mdash;on a half-sheet of note-paper.
+      Now, has he by chance gone to the other extreme, and believed that he is
+      in danger of becoming a pauper? The curious economy in the use of a
+      half-sheet of paper shows that some idea of that kind might have flashed
+      through his mind, and the two delusions can coexist, but it is not common.
+      As you must know, the delusion of vast wealth&mdash;the folly of
+      grandeurs, I believe our friends the French call it&mdash;is, as a rule,
+      persistent, to the exclusion of all others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I heard Wilton's best English voice at the end of the study:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear sir, I have explained twenty times already, I wanted to get that
+      scarab in time for dinner. Suppose you had left an important legal
+      document in the same way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That touch of cunning is very significant,&rdquo; my fellow-practitioner&mdash;since
+      he insisted on it&mdash;muttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very happy, of course, to meet you; but if you had only sent your
+      president down to dinner here, I could have settled the thing in half a
+      minute. Why, I could have bought the Buchonian from him while your clerks
+      were sending me this.&rdquo; Wilton dropped his hand heavily on the
+      blue-and-white correspondence, and the lawyer started.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, speaking frankly,&rdquo; the lawyer replied, &ldquo;it is, if I may say so,
+      perfectly inconceivable, even in the case of the most important legal
+      documents, that any one should stop the three-forty express&mdash;the
+      Induna&mdash;Our Induna, my dear sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Absolutely!&rdquo; my companion echoed; then to me in a lower tone: &ldquo;You
+      notice, again, the persistent delusion of wealth. I was called in when he
+      wrote us that. You can see it is utterly impossible for the Company to
+      continue to run their trains through the property of a man who may at any
+      moment fancy himself divinely commissioned to stop all traffic. If he had
+      only referred us to his lawyer&mdash;but, naturally, that he would not do,
+      under the circumstances. A pity&mdash;a great pity. He is so young. By the
+      way, it is curious, is it not, to note the absolute conviction in the
+      voice of those who are similarly afflicted,&mdash;heart-rending, I might
+      say, and the inability to follow a chain of connected thought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't see what you want,&rdquo; Wilton was saying to the lawyer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It need not be more than fourteen feet high&mdash;a really desirable
+      structure, and it would be possible to grow pear trees on the sunny side.&rdquo;
+       The lawyer was speaking in an unprofessional voice. &ldquo;There are few things
+      pleasanter than to watch, so to say, one's own vine and fig tree in full
+      bearing. Consider the profit and amusement you would derive from it. If
+      you could see your way to doing this, we could arrange all the details
+      with your lawyer, and it is possible that the Company might bear some of
+      the cost. I have put the matter, I trust, in a nutshell. If you, my dear
+      sir, will interest yourself in building that wall, and will kindly give us
+      the name of your lawyers, I dare assure you that you will hear no more
+      from the Great Buchonian.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why am I to disfigure my lawn with a new brick wall?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Grey flint is extremely picturesque.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Grey flint, then, if you put it that way. Why the dickens must I go
+      building towers of Babylon just because I have held up one of your
+      trains-once?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The expression he used in his third letter was that he wished to 'board
+      her,'&rdquo; said my companion in my ear. &ldquo;That was very curious&mdash;a marine
+      delusion impinging, as it were, upon a land one. What a marvellous world
+      he must move in&mdash;and will before the curtain falls. So young, too&mdash;so
+      very young!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if you want the plain English of it, I'm damned if I go
+      wall-building to your orders. You can fight it all along the line, into
+      the House of Lords and out again, and get your rulings by the running foot
+      if you like,&rdquo; said Wilton, hotly. &ldquo;Great heavens, man, I only did it
+      once!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have at present no guarantee that you may not do it again; and, with
+      our traffic, we must, in justice to our passengers, demand some form of
+      guarantee. It must not serve as a precedent. All this might have been
+      saved if you had only referred us to your legal representative.&rdquo; The
+      lawyer looked appealingly around the room. The dead-lock was complete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wilton,&rdquo; I asked, &ldquo;may I try my hand now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anything you like,&rdquo; said Wilton. &ldquo;It seems I can't talk English. I won't
+      build any wall, though.&rdquo; He threw himself back in his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gentlemen,&rdquo; I said deliberately, for I perceived that the doctor's mind
+      would turn slowly, &ldquo;Mr. Sargent has very large interests in the chief
+      railway systems of his own country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His own country?&rdquo; said the lawyer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At that age?&rdquo; said the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly. He inherited them from his father, Mr. Sargent, who was an
+      American.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And proud of it,&rdquo; said Wilton, as though he had been a Western Senator
+      let loose on the Continent for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear sir,&rdquo; said the lawyer, half rising, &ldquo;why did you not acquaint the
+      Company with this fact&mdash;this vital fact&mdash;early in our
+      correspondence? We should have understood. We should have made
+      allowances.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allowances be damned. Am I a Red Indian or a lunatic?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men looked guilty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Mr. Sargent's friend had told us as much in the beginning,&rdquo; said the
+      doctor, very severely, &ldquo;much might have been saved.&rdquo; Alas! I had made a
+      life's enemy of that doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hadn't a chance,&rdquo; I replied. &ldquo;Now, of course, you can see that a man
+      who owns several thousand miles of line, as Mr. Sargent does, would be apt
+      to treat railways a shade more casually than other people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course; of course. He is an American; that accounts. Still, it was the
+      Induna; but I can quite understand that the customs of our cousins across
+      the water differ in these particulars from ours. And do you always stop
+      trains in this way in the States, Mr. Sargent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should if occasion ever arose; but I've never had to yet. Are you going
+      to make an international complication of the business?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You need give yourself no further concern whatever in the matter. We see
+      that there is no likelihood of this action of yours establishing a
+      precedent, which was the only thing we were afraid of. Now that you
+      understand that we cannot reconcile our system to any sudden stoppages, we
+      feel quite sure that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sha'n't be staying long enough to flag another train,&rdquo; Wilton said
+      pensively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are returning, then, to our fellow-kinsmen across the-ah-big pond,
+      you call it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir. The ocean&mdash;the North Atlantic Ocean. It's three thousand
+      miles broad, and three miles deep in places. I wish it were ten thousand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not so fond of sea-travel myself; but I think it is every
+      Englishman's duty once in his life to study the great branch of our
+      Anglo-Saxon race across the ocean,&rdquo; said the lawyer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If ever you come over, and care to flag any train on my system, I'll&mdash;I'll
+      see you through,&rdquo; said Wilton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you&mdash;ah, thank you. You're very kind. I'm sure I should enjoy
+      myself immensely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have overlooked the fact,&rdquo; the doctor whispered to me, &ldquo;that your
+      friend proposed to buy the Great Buchonian.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is worth anything from twenty to thirty million dollars&mdash;four to
+      five million pounds,&rdquo; I answered, knowing that it would be hopeless to
+      explain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really! That is enormous wealth. But the Great Buchonian is not in the
+      market.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps he does not want to buy it now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be impossible under any circumstances,&rdquo; said the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How characteristic!&rdquo; murmured the lawyer, reviewing matters in his mind.
+      &ldquo;I always understood from books that your countrymen were in a hurry. And
+      so you would have gone forty miles to town and back&mdash;before dinner&mdash;to
+      get a scarab? How intensely American! But you talk exactly like an
+      Englishman, Mr. Sargent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a fault that can be remedied. There's only one question I'd like
+      to ask you. You said it was inconceivable that any man should stop a train
+      on your road?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so it is-absolutely inconceivable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any sane man, that is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what I meant, of course. I mean, with excep&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men departed. Wilton checked himself as he was about to fill a
+      pipe, took one of my cigars instead, and was silent for fifteen minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then said he: &ldquo;Have you got a list of the Southampton sailings on you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Far away from the greystone wings, the dark cedars, the faultless gravel
+      drives, and the mint-sauce lawns of Holt Hangars runs a river called the
+      Hudson, whose unkempt banks are covered with the palaces of those wealthy
+      beyond the dreams of avarice. Here, where the hoot of the Haverstraw
+      brick-barge-tug answers the howl of the locomotive on either shore, you
+      shall find, with a complete installation of electric light, nickel-plated
+      binnacles, and a calliope attachment to her steam-whistle, the
+      twelve-hundred-ton ocean-going steam-yacht Columbia, lying at her private
+      pier, to take to his office, at an average speed of seventeen knots an
+      hour,&mdash;and the barges can look out for themselves,&mdash;Wilton
+      Sargent, American.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      MY SUNDAY AT HOME
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   If the Red Slayer think he slays,
+     Or if the slain think he is slain,
+   They know not well the subtle ways
+      I keep and pass and turn again.
+                                   EMERSON.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It was the unreproducible slid r, as he said this was his &ldquo;fy-ist&rdquo; visit
+      to England, that told me he was a New-Yorker from New York; and when, in
+      the course of our long, lazy journey westward from Waterloo, he enlarged
+      upon the beauties of his city, I, professing ignorance, said no word. He
+      had, amazed and delighted at the man's civility, given the London porter a
+      shilling for carrying his bag nearly fifty yards; he had thoroughly
+      investigated the first-class lavatory compartment, which the London and
+      Southwestern sometimes supply without extra charge; and now, half-awed,
+      half-contemptuous, but wholly interested, he looked out upon the ordered
+      English landscape wrapped in its Sunday peace, while I watched the wonder
+      grow upon his face. Why were the cars so short and stilted? Why had every
+      other freight-car a tarpaulin drawn over it? What wages would an engineer
+      get now? Where was the swarming population of England he had read so much
+      about? What was the rank of all those men on tricycles along the roads?
+      When were we due at Plymouth I told him all I knew, and very much that I
+      did not. He was going to Plymouth to assist in a consultation upon a
+      fellow-countryman who had retired to a place called The Hoe&mdash;was that
+      up-town or down-town&mdash;to recover from nervous dyspepsia. Yes, he
+      himself was a doctor by profession, and how any one in England could
+      retain any nervous disorder passed his comprehension. Never had he dreamed
+      of an atmosphere so soothing. Even the deep rumble of London traffic was
+      monastical by comparison with some cities he could name; and the country&mdash;why,
+      it was Paradise. A continuance of it, he confessed, would drive him mad;
+      but for a few months it was the most sumptuous rest-cure in his knowledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll come over every year after this,&rdquo; he said, in a burst of delight, as
+      we ran between two ten-foot hedges of pink and white may. &ldquo;It's seeing all
+      the things I've ever read about. Of course it doesn't strike you that way.
+      I presume you belong here? What a finished land it is! It's arrived. 'Must
+      have been born this way. Now, where I used to live&mdash;Hello! what's
+      up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The train stopped in a blaze of sunshine at Framlynghame Admiral, which is
+      made up entirely of the name-board, two platforms, and an overhead bridge,
+      without even the usual siding. I had never known the slowest of locals
+      stop here before; but on Sunday all things are possible to the London and
+      Southwestern. One could hear the drone of conversation along the
+      carriages, and, scarcely less loud, the drone of the bumblebees in the
+      wallflowers up the bank. My companion thrust his head through the window
+      and sniffed luxuriously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are we now?&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Wiltshire,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! A man ought to be able to write novels with his left hand in a
+      country like this. Well, well! And so this is about Tess's country, ain't
+      it? I feel just as if I were in a book. Say, the conduc&mdash;the guard
+      has something on his mind. What's he getting at?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The splendid badged and belted guard was striding up the platform at the
+      regulation official pace, and in the regulation official voice was saying
+      at each door:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has any gentleman here a bottle of medicine? A gentleman has taken a
+      bottle of poison (laudanum) by mistake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Between each five paces he looked at an official telegram in his hand,
+      refreshed his memory, and said his say. The dreamy look on my companion's
+      face&mdash;he had gone far away with Tess&mdash;passed with the speed of a
+      snap-shutter. After the manner of his countrymen, he had risen to the
+      situation, jerked his bag down from the overhead rail, opened it, and I
+      heard the click of bottles. &ldquo;Find out where the man is,&rdquo; he said briefly.
+      &ldquo;I've got something here that will fix him&mdash;if he can swallow still.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Swiftly I fled up the line of carriages in the wake of the guard. There
+      was clamour in a rear compartment&mdash;the voice of one bellowing to be
+      let out, and the feet of one who kicked. With the tail of my eye I saw the
+      New York doctor hastening thither, bearing in his hand a blue and brimming
+      glass from the lavatory compartment. The guard I found scratching his head
+      unofficially, by the engine, and murmuring: &ldquo;Well, I put a bottle of
+      medicine off at Andover&mdash;I'm sure I did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better say it again, any'ow',&rdquo; said the driver. &ldquo;Orders is orders. Say it
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more the guard paced back, I, anxious to attract his attention,
+      trotting at his heels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a minute&mdash;in a minute, sir,&rdquo; he said, waving an arm capable of
+      starting all the traffic on the London and Southwestern Railway at a wave.
+      &ldquo;Has any gentleman here got a bottle of medicine? A gentleman has taken a
+      bottle of poison (laudanum) by mistake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's the man?&rdquo; I gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Woking. 'Ere's my orders.&rdquo; He showed me the telegram, on which were the
+      words to be said. &ldquo;'E must have left 'is bottle in the train, an' took
+      another by mistake. 'E's been wirin' from Woking awful, an', now I come to
+      think of, it, I'm nearly sure I put a bottle of medicine off at Andover.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then the man that took the poison isn't in the train?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord, no, sir. No one didn't take poison that way. 'E took it away with
+      'im, in 'is 'ands. 'E's wirin' from Wokin'. My orders was to ask everybody
+      in the train, and I 'ave, an' we're four minutes late now. Are you comin'
+      on, sir? No? Right be'ind!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There is nothing, unless, perhaps, the English language, more terrible
+      than the workings of an English railway-line. An instant before it seemed
+      as though we were going to spend all eternity at Framlynghame Admiral, and
+      now I was watching the tail of the train disappear round the curve of the
+      cutting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I was not alone. On the one bench of the down platform sat the largest
+      navvy I have ever seen in my life, softened and made affable (for he
+      smiled generously) with liquor. In his huge hands he nursed an empty
+      tumbler marked &ldquo;L.S.W.R.&rdquo;&mdash;marked also, internally, with streaks of
+      blue-grey sediment. Before him, a hand on his shoulder, stood the doctor,
+      and as I came within ear-shot, this is what I heard him say: &ldquo;Just you
+      hold on to your patience for a minute or two longer, and you'll be as
+      right as ever you were in your life. I'll stay with you till you're
+      better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord! I'm comfortable enough,&rdquo; said the navvy. &ldquo;Never felt better in my
+      life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turning to me, the doctor lowered his voice. &ldquo;He might have died while
+      that fool conduct-guard was saying his piece. I've fixed him, though. The
+      stuff's due in about five minutes, but there's a heap to him. I don't see
+      how we can make him take exercise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For the moment I felt as though seven pounds of crushed ice had been
+      neatly applied in the form of a compress to my lower stomach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How&mdash;how did you manage it?&rdquo; I gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I asked him if he'd have a drink. He was knocking spots out of the car&mdash;strength
+      of his constitution, I suppose. He said he'd go 'most anywhere for a
+      drink, so I lured onto the platform, and loaded him up. 'Cold-blooded
+      people, you Britishers are. That train's gone, and no one seemed to care a
+      cent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've missed it,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at me curiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll get another before sundown, if that's your only trouble. Say,
+      porter, when's the next train down?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seven forty-five,&rdquo; said the one porter, and passed out through the
+      wicket-gate into the landscape. It was then three-twenty of a hot and
+      sleepy afternoon. The station was absolutely deserted. The navvy had
+      closed his eyes, and now nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's bad,&rdquo; said the doctor. &ldquo;The man, I mean, not the train. We must
+      make him walk somehow&mdash;walk up and down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Swiftly as might be, I explained the delicacy of the situation, and the
+      doctor from New York turned a full bronze-green. Then he swore
+      comprehensively at the entire fabric of our glorious Constitution, cursing
+      the English language, root, branch, and paradigm, through its most obscure
+      derivatives. His coat and bag lay on the bench next to the sleeper.
+      Thither he edged cautiously, and I saw treachery in his eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What devil of delay possessed him to slip on his spring overcoat, I cannot
+      tell. They say a slight noise rouses a sleeper more surely than a heavy
+      one, and scarcely had the doctor settled himself in his sleeves than the
+      giant waked and seized that silk-faced collar in a hot right hand. There
+      was rage in his face-rage and the realisation of new emotions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm&mdash;I'm not so comfortable as I were,&rdquo; he said from the deeps of
+      his interior. &ldquo;You'll wait along o' me, you will.&rdquo; He breathed heavily
+      through shut lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, if there was one thing more than another upon which the doctor had
+      dwelt in his conversation with me, it was upon the essential
+      law-abidingness, not to say gentleness, of his much-misrepresented
+      country. And yet (truly, it may have been no more than a button that irked
+      him) I saw his hand travel backwards to his right hip, clutch at
+      something, and come away empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He won't kill you,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;He'll probably sue you in court, if I know
+      my own people. Better give him some money from time to time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he keeps quiet till the stuff gets in its work,&rdquo; the doctor answered,
+      &ldquo;I'm all right. If he doesn't... my name is Emory&mdash;Julian B. Emory&mdash;193
+      'Steenth Street, corner of Madison and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel worse than I've ever felt,&rdquo; said the navvy, with suddenness.
+      &ldquo;What-did-you-give-me-the-drink-for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The matter seemed to be so purely personal that I withdrew to a strategic
+      position on the overhead bridge, and, abiding in the exact centre, looked
+      on from afar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I could see the white road that ran across the shoulder of Salisbury
+      Plain, unshaded for mile after mile, and a dot in the middle distance, the
+      back of the one porter returning to Framlynghame Admiral, if such a place
+      existed, till seven forty-five. The bell of a church invisible clanked
+      softly. There was a rustle in the horse-chestnuts to the left of the line,
+      and the sound of sheep cropping close.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The peace of Nirvana lay upon the land, and, brooding in it, my elbow on
+      the warm iron girder of the footbridge (it is a forty-shilling fine to
+      cross by any other means), I perceived, as never before, how the
+      consequences of our acts run eternal through time and through space. If we
+      impinge never so slightly upon the life of a fellow-mortal, the touch of
+      our personality, like the ripple of a stone cast into a pond, widens and
+      widens in unending circles across the aeons, till the far-off Gods
+      themselves cannot say where action ceases. Also, it was I who had silently
+      set before the doctor the tumbler of the first-class lavatory compartment
+      now speeding Plymouthward. Yet I was, in spirit at least, a million
+      leagues removed from that unhappy man of another nationality, who had
+      chosen to thrust an inexpert finger into the workings of an alien life.
+      The machinery was dragging him up and down the sunlit platform. The two
+      men seemed to be learning polka-mazurkas together, and the burden of their
+      song, borne by one deep voice, was: &ldquo;What did you give me the drink for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw the flash of silver in the doctor's hand. The navvy took it and
+      pocketed it with his left; but never for an instant did his strong right
+      leave the doctor's coat-collar, and as the crisis approached, louder and
+      louder rose his bull-like roar: &ldquo;What did you give me the drink for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They drifted under the great twelve-inch pinned timbers of the foot-bridge
+      towards the bench, and, I gathered, the time was very near at hand. The
+      stuff was getting in its work. Blue, white, and blue again, rolled over
+      the navvy's face in waves, till all settled to one rich clay-bank yellow
+      and&mdash;that fell which fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought of the blowing up of Hell Gate; of the geysers in the
+      Yellowstone Park; of Jonah and his whale: but the lively original, as I
+      watched it foreshortened from above, exceeded all these things. He
+      staggered to the bench, the heavy wooden seat cramped with iron cramps
+      into the enduring stone, and clung there with his left hand. It quivered
+      and shook, as a breakwater-pile quivers to the rush of landward-racing
+      seas; nor was there lacking when he caught his breath, the &ldquo;scream of a
+      maddened beach dragged down by the tide.&rdquo; His right hand was upon the
+      doctor's collar, so that the two shook to one paroxysm, pendulums
+      vibrating together, while I, apart, shook with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was colossal-immense; but of certain manifestations the English
+      language stops short. French only, the caryatid French of Victor Hugo,
+      would have described it; so I mourned while I laughed, hastily shuffling
+      and discarding inadequate adjectives. The vehemence of the shock spent
+      itself, and the sufferer half fell, half knelt, across the bench. He was
+      calling now upon God and his wife, huskily, as the wounded bull calls upon
+      the unscathed herd to stay. Curiously enough, he used no bad language:
+      that had gone from him with the rest. The doctor exhibited gold. It was
+      taken and retained. So, too, was the grip on the coat-collar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I could stand,&rdquo; boomed the giant, despairingly, &ldquo;I'd smash you&mdash;you
+      an' your drinks. I'm dyin'&mdash;dyin'&mdash;dyin'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what you think,&rdquo; said the doctor. &ldquo;You'll find it will do you a
+      lot of good&rdquo;; and, making a virtue of a somewhat imperative necessity, he
+      added: &ldquo;I'll stay by you. If you'd let go of me a minute I'd give you
+      something that would settle you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've settled me now, you damned anarchist. Takin' the bread out of the
+      mouth of an English workin'man! But I'll keep 'old of you till I'm well or
+      dead. I never did you no 'arm. S'pose I were a little full. They pumped me
+      out once at Guy's with a stummick-pump. I could see that, but I can't see
+      this 'ere, an' it's killin' of me by slow degrees.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll be all right in half-an-hour. What do you suppose I'd want to kill
+      you for?&rdquo; said the doctor, who came of a logical breed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Ow do I know? Tell 'em in court. You'll get seven years for this, you
+      body-snatcher. That's what you are&mdash;a bloomin' bodysnatcher. There's
+      justice, I tell you, in England; and my Union'll prosecute, too. We don't
+      stand no tricks with people's insides 'ere. They give a woman ten years
+      for a sight less than this. An' you'll 'ave to pay 'undreds an' 'undreds
+      o' pounds, besides a pension to the missus. You'll see, you physickin'
+      furriner. Where's your licence to do such? You'll catch it, I tell you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I observed what I have frequently observed before, that a man who is
+      but reasonably afraid of an altercation with an alien has a most poignant
+      dread of the operations of foreign law. The doctor's voice was flute-like
+      in its exquisite politeness, as he answered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I've given you a very great deal of money&mdash;fif-three pounds, I
+      think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An' what's three pound for poisonin' the likes o' me? They told me at
+      Guy's I'd fetch twenty-cold-on the slates. Ouh! It's comin' again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A second time he was cut down by the foot, as it were, and the straining
+      bench rocked to and fro as I averted my eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the very point of perfection in the heart of an English May-day.
+      The unseen tides of the air had turned, and all nature was setting its
+      face with the shadows of the horse-chestnuts towards the peace of the
+      coming night. But there were hours yet, I knew&mdash;long, long hours of
+      the eternal English twilight&mdash;to the ending of the day. I was well
+      content to be alive&mdash;to abandon myself to the drift of Time and Fate;
+      to absorb great peace through my skin, and to love my country with the
+      devotion that three thousand miles of intervening sea bring to fullest
+      flower. And what a garden of Eden it was, this fatted, clipped, and washen
+      land! A man could camp in any open field with more sense of home and
+      security than the stateliest buildings of foreign cities could afford. And
+      the joy was that it was all mine alienably&mdash;groomed hedgerow,
+      spotless road, decent greystone cottage, serried spinney, tasselled copse,
+      apple-bellied hawthorn, and well-grown tree. A light puff of wind&mdash;it
+      scattered flakes of may over the gleaming rails&mdash;gave me a faint
+      whiff as it might have been of fresh cocoanut, and I knew that the golden
+      gorse was in bloom somewhere out of sight. Linnaeus had thanked God on his
+      bended knees when he first saw a field of it; and, by the way, the navvy
+      was on his knees, too. But he was by no means praying. He was purely
+      disgustful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor was compelled to bend over him, his face towards the back of
+      the seat, and from what I had seen I supposed the navvy was now dead. If
+      that were the case it would be time for me to go; but I knew that so long
+      as a man trusts himself to the current of Circumstance, reaching out for
+      and rejecting nothing that comes his way, no harm can overtake him. It is
+      the contriver, the schemer, who is caught by the Law, and never the
+      philosopher. I knew that when the play was played, Destiny herself would
+      move me on from the corpse; and I felt very sorry for the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the far distance, presumably upon the road that led to Framlynghame
+      Admiral, there appeared a vehicle and a horse&mdash;the one ancient fly
+      that almost every village can produce at need. This thing was advancing,
+      unpaid by me, towards the station; would have to pass along the deep-cut
+      lane, below the railway-bridge, and come out on the doctor's side. I was
+      in the centre of things, so all sides were alike to me. Here, then, was my
+      machine from the machine. When it arrived; something would happen, or
+      something else. For the rest, I owned my deeply interested soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor, by the seat, turned so far as his cramped position allowed,
+      his head over his left shoulder, and laid his right hand upon his lips. I
+      threw back my hat and elevated my eyebrows in the form of a question. The
+      doctor shut his eyes and nodded his head slowly twice or thrice, beckoning
+      me to come. I descended cautiously, and it was as the signs had told. The
+      navvy was asleep, empty to the lowest notch; yet his hand clutched still
+      the doctor's collar, and at the lightest movement (the doctor was really
+      very cramped) tightened mechanically, as the hand of a sick woman tightens
+      on that of the watcher. He had dropped, squatting almost upon his heels,
+      and, falling lower, had dragged the doctor over to the left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor thrust his right hand, which was free, into his pocket, drew
+      forth some keys, and shook his head. The navvy gurgled in his sleep.
+      Silently I dived into my pocket, took out one sovereign, and held it up
+      between finger and thumb. Again the doctor shook his head. Money was not
+      what was lacking to his peace. His bag had fallen from the seat to the
+      ground. He looked towards it, and opened his mouth-O-shape. The catch was
+      not a difficult one, and when I had mastered it, the doctor's right
+      forefinger was sawing the air. With an immense caution, I extracted from
+      the bag such a knife as they use for cutting collops off legs. The doctor
+      frowned, and with his first and second fingers imitated the action of
+      scissors. Again I searched, and found a most diabolical pair of cock-nosed
+      shears, capable of vandyking the interiors of elephants. The doctor then
+      slowly lowered his left shoulder till the navvy's right wrist was
+      supported by the bench, pausing a moment as the spent volcano rumbled
+      anew. Lower and lower the doctor sank, kneeling now by the navvy's side,
+      till his head was on a level with, and just in front of, the great hairy
+      fist, and&mdash;there was no tension on the coat-collar. Then light dawned
+      on me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beginning a little to the right of the spinal column, I cut a huge
+      demilune out of his new spring overcoat, bringing it round as far under
+      his left side (which was the right side of the navvy) as I dared. Passing
+      thence swiftly to the back of the seat, and reaching between the splines,
+      I sawed through the silk-faced front on the left-hand side of the coat
+      till the two cuts joined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cautiously as the box-turtle of his native heath, the doctor drew away
+      sideways and to the right, with the air of a frustrated burglar coming out
+      from under a bed, and stood up free, one black diagonal shoulder
+      projecting through the grey of his ruined overcoat. I returned the
+      scissors to the bag, snapped the catch, and held all out to him as the
+      wheels of the fly rang hollow under the railway arch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It came at a footpace past the wicket-gate of the station, and the doctor
+      stopped it with a whisper. It was going some five miles across country to
+      bring home from church some one,&mdash;I could not catch the name,&mdash;because
+      his own carriage-horses were lame. Its destination happened to be the one
+      place in all the world that the doctor was most burningly anxious to
+      visit, and he promised the driver untold gold to drive to some ancient
+      flame of his&mdash;Helen Blazes, she was called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aren't you coming, too?&rdquo; he said, bundling his overcoat into his bag.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the fly had been so obviously sent to the doctor, and to no one else,
+      that I had no concern with it. Our roads, I saw, divided, and there was,
+      further, a need upon me to laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall stay here,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;It's a very pretty country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My God!&rdquo; he murmured, as softly as he shut the door, and I felt that it
+      was a prayer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he went out of my life, and I shaped my course for the
+      railway-bridge. It was necessary to pass by the bench once more, but the
+      wicket was between us. The departure of the fly had waked the navvy. He
+      crawled on to the seat, and with malignant eyes watched the driver flog
+      down the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The man inside o' that,&rdquo; he called, &ldquo;'as poisoned me. 'E's a
+      body-snatcher. 'E's comin' back again when I'm cold. 'Ere's my evidence!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He waved his share of the overcoat, and I went my way, because I was
+      hungry. Framlynghame Admiral village is a good two miles from the station,
+      and I waked the holy calm of the evening every step of that way with
+      shouts and yells, casting myself down in the flank of the good green hedge
+      when I was too weak to stand. There was an inn,&mdash;a blessed inn with a
+      thatched roof, and peonies in the garden,&mdash;and I ordered myself an
+      upper chamber in which the Foresters held their courts for the laughter
+      was not all out of me. A bewildered woman brought me ham and eggs, and I
+      leaned out of the mullioned window, and laughed between mouthfuls. I sat
+      long above the beer and the perfect smoke that followed, till the lights
+      changed in the quiet street, and I began to think of the seven forty-five
+      down, and all that world of the &ldquo;Arabian Nights&rdquo; I had quitted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Descending, I passed a giant in moleskins who filled the low-ceiled
+      tap-room. Many empty plates stood before him, and beyond them a fringe of
+      the Framlynghame Admiralty, to whom he was unfolding a wondrous tale of
+      anarchy, of body-snatching, of bribery, and the Valley of the Shadow from
+      the which he was but newly risen. And as he talked he ate, and as he ate
+      he drank, for there was much room in him; and anon he paid royally,
+      speaking of Justice and the Law, before whom all Englishmen are equal, and
+      all foreigners and anarchists vermin and slime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On my way to the station, he passed me with great strides, his head high
+      among the low-flying bats, his feet firm on the packed road-metal, his
+      fists clinched, and his breath coming sharply. There was a beautiful smell
+      in the air&mdash;the smell of white dust, bruised nettles, and smoke, that
+      brings tears to the throat of a man who sees his country but seldom&mdash;a
+      smell like the echoes of the lost talk of lovers; the infinitely
+      suggestive odour of an immemorial civilisation. It was a perfect walk;
+      and, lingering on every step, I came to the station just as the one porter
+      lighted the last of a truckload of lamps, and set them back in the
+      lamp-room, while he dealt tickets to four or five of the population who,
+      not contented with their own peace, thought fit to travel. It was no
+      ticket that the navvy seemed to need. He was sitting on a bench,
+      wrathfully grinding a tumbler into fragments with his heel. I abode in
+      obscurity at the end of the platform, interested as ever, thank Heaven, in
+      my surroundings. There was a jar of wheels on the road. The navvy rose as
+      they approached, strode through the wicket, and laid a hand upon a horse's
+      bridle that brought the beast up on his hireling hind legs. It was the
+      providential fly coming back, and for a moment I wondered whether the
+      doctor had been mad enough to revisit his practice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get away; you're drunk,&rdquo; said the driver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not,&rdquo; said the navvy. &ldquo;I've been waitin' 'ere hours and hours. Come
+      out, you beggar inside there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on, driver,&rdquo; said a voice I did not know&mdash;a crisp, clear, English
+      voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said the navvy. &ldquo;You wouldn't 'ear me when I was polite. Now
+      will you come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a chasm in the side of the fly, for he had wrenched the door
+      bodily off its hinges, and was feeling within purposefully. A well-booted
+      leg rewarded him, and there came out, not with delight, hopping on one
+      foot, a round and grey-haired Englishman, from whose armpits dropped
+      hymn-books, but from his mouth an altogether different service of song.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on, you bloomin' body-snatcher! You thought I was dead, did you?&rdquo;
+       roared the navvy. And the respectable gentleman came accordingly,
+      inarticulate with rage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ere's a man murderin' the Squire,&rdquo; the driver shouted, and fell from his
+      box upon the navvy's neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To do them justice, the people of Framlynghame Admiral, so many as were on
+      the platform, rallied to the call in the best spirit of feudalism. It was
+      the one porter who beat the navvy on the nose with a ticket-punch, but it
+      was the three third-class tickets who attached themselves to his legs and
+      freed the captive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Send for a constable! lock him up!&rdquo; said that man, adjusting his collar;
+      and unitedly they cast him into the lamp-room, and turned the key, while
+      the driver mourned over the wrecked fly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Till then the navvy, whose only desire was justice, had kept his temper
+      nobly. Then he went Berserk before our amazed eyes. The door of the
+      lamp-room was generously constructed, and would not give an inch, but the
+      window he tore from its fastenings and hurled outwards. The one porter
+      counted the damage in a loud voice, and the others, arming themselves with
+      agricultural implements from the station garden, kept up a ceaseless
+      winnowing before the window, themselves backed close to the wall, and bade
+      the prisoner think of the gaol. He answered little to the point, so far as
+      they could understand; but seeing that his exit was impeded, he took a
+      lamp and hurled it through the wrecked sash. It fell on the metals and
+      went out. With inconceivable velocity, the others, fifteen in all,
+      followed, looking like rockets in the gloom, and with the last (he could
+      have had no plan) the Berserk rage left him as the doctor's deadly brewage
+      waked up, under the stimulus of violent exercise and a very full meal, to
+      one last cataclysmal exhibition, and&mdash;we heard the whistle of the
+      seven forty-five down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were all acutely interested in as much of the wreck as they could
+      see, for the station smelt to Heaven of oil, and the engine skittered over
+      broken glass like a terrier in a cucumber-frame. The guard had to hear of
+      it, and the Squire had his version of the brutal assault, and heads were
+      out all along the carriages as I found me a seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the row?&rdquo; said a young man, as I entered. &ldquo;'Man drunk?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the symptoms, so far as my observation has gone, more resemble
+      those of Asiatic cholera than anything else,&rdquo; I answered, slowly and
+      judicially, that every word might carry weight in the appointed scheme of
+      things. Up till then, you will observe, I had taken no part in that war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was an Englishman, but he collected his belongings as swiftly as had
+      the American, ages before, and leaped upon the platform, crying: &ldquo;Can I be
+      of any service? I'm a doctor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From the lamp-room I heard a wearied voice wailing &ldquo;Another bloomin'
+      doctor!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the seven forty-five carried me on, a step nearer to Eternity, by the
+      road that is worn and seamed and channelled with the passions, and
+      weaknesses, and warring interests of man who is immortal and master of his
+      fate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE BRUSHWOOD BOY
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   Girls and boys, come out to play
+   The moon is shining as bright as day!
+   Leave your supper and leave your sleep,
+   And come with your playfellows out in the street!
+   Up the ladder and down the wall&mdash;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      A CHILD of three sat up in his crib and screamed at the top of his voice,
+      his fists clinched and his eyes full of terror. At first no one heard, for
+      his nursery was in the west wing, and the nurse was talking to a gardener
+      among the laurels. Then the housekeeper passed that way, and hurried to
+      soothe him. He was her special pet, and she disapproved of the nurse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was it, then? What was it, then? There's nothing to frighten him,
+      Georgie dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was&mdash;it was a policeman! He was on the Down&mdash;I saw him! He
+      came in. Jane said he would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Policemen don't come into houses, dearie. Turn over, and take my hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw him&mdash;on the Down. He came here. Where is your hand, Harper?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The housekeeper waited till the sobs changed to the regular breathing of
+      sleep before she stole out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jane, what nonsense have you been telling Master Georgie about
+      policemen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't told him anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have. He's been dreaming about them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We met Tisdall on Dowhead when we were in the donkey-cart this morning.
+      P'r'aps that's what put it into his head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Now you aren't going to frighten the child into fits with your silly
+      tales, and the master know nothing about it. If ever I catch you again,&rdquo;
+       etc.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      A child of six was telling himself stories as he lay in bed. It was a new
+      power, and he kept it a secret. A month before it had occurred to him to
+      carry on a nursery tale left unfinished by his mother, and he was
+      delighted to find the tale as it came out of his own head just as
+      surprising as though he were listening to it &ldquo;all new from the beginning.&rdquo;
+       There was a prince in that tale, and he killed dragons, but only for one
+      night. Ever afterwards Georgie dubbed himself prince, pasha, giant-killer,
+      and all the rest (you see, he could not tell any one, for fear of being
+      laughed at), and his tales faded gradually into dreamland, where
+      adventures were so many that he could not recall the half of them. They
+      all began in the same way, or, as Georgie explained to the shadows of the
+      night-light, there was &ldquo;the same starting-off place&rdquo;&mdash;a pile of
+      brushwood stacked somewhere near a beach; and round this pile Georgie
+      found himself running races with little boys and girls. These ended, ships
+      ran high up the dry land and opened into cardboard boxes; or
+      gilt-and-green iron railings that surrounded beautiful gardens turned all
+      soft and could be walked through and overthrown so long as he remembered
+      it was only a dream. He could never hold that knowledge more than a few
+      seconds ere things became real, and instead of pushing down houses full of
+      grown-up people (a just revenge), he sat miserably upon gigantic
+      door-steps trying to sing the multiplication-table up to four times six.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The princess of his tales was a person of wonderful beauty (she came from
+      the old illustrated edition of Grimm, now out of print), and as she always
+      applauded Georgie's valour among the dragons and buffaloes, he gave her
+      the two finest names he had ever heard in his life&mdash;Annie and Louise,
+      pronounced &ldquo;Annieanlouise.&rdquo; When the dreams swamped the stories, she would
+      change into one of the little girls round the brushwood-pile, still
+      keeping her title and crown. She saw Georgie drown once in a dream-sea by
+      the beach (it was the day after he had been taken to bathe in a real sea
+      by his nurse); and he said as he sank: &ldquo;Poor Annieanlouise! She'll be
+      sorry for me now!&rdquo; But &ldquo;Annieanlouise,&rdquo; walking slowly on the beach,
+      called, &ldquo;'Ha! ha!' said the duck, laughing,&rdquo; which to a waking mind might
+      not seem to bear on the situation. It consoled Georgie at once, and must
+      have been some kind of spell, for it raised the bottom of the deep, and he
+      waded out with a twelve-inch flower-pot on each foot. As he was strictly
+      forbidden to meddle with flower-pots in real life, he felt triumphantly
+      wicked.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      The movements of the grown-ups, whom Georgie tolerated, but did not
+      pretend to understand, removed his world, when he was seven years old, to
+      a place called &ldquo;Oxford-on-a-visit. &ldquo;Here were huge buildings surrounded by
+      vast prairies, with streets of infinite length, and, above all, something
+      called the &ldquo;buttery,&rdquo; which Georgie was dying to see, because he knew it
+      must be greasy, and therefore delightful. He perceived how correct were
+      his judgments when his nurse led him through a stone arch into the
+      presence of an enormously fat man, who asked him if he would like some,
+      bread and cheese. Georgie was used to eat all round the clock, so he took
+      what &ldquo;buttery&rdquo; gave him, and would have taken some brown liquid called
+      &ldquo;auditale&rdquo; but that his nurse led him away to an afternoon performance of
+      a thing called &ldquo;Pepper's Ghost.&rdquo; This was intensely thrilling. People's
+      heads came off and flew all over the stage, and skeletons danced bone by
+      bone, while Mr. Pepper himself, beyond question a man of the worst, waved
+      his arms and flapped a long gown, and in a deep bass voice (Georgie had
+      never heard a man sing before) told of his sorrows unspeakable. Some
+      grown-up or other tried to explain that the illusion was made with
+      mirrors, and that there was no need to be frightened. Georgie did not know
+      what illusions were, but he did know that a mirror was the looking-glass
+      with the ivory handle on his mother's dressing-table. Therefore the
+      &ldquo;grown-up&rdquo; was &ldquo;just saying things&rdquo; after the distressing custom of
+      &ldquo;grown-ups,&rdquo; and Georgie cast about for amusement between scenes. Next to
+      him sat a little girl dressed all in black, her hair combed off her
+      forehead exactly like the girl in the book called &ldquo;Alice in Wonderland,&rdquo;
+       which had been given him on his last birthday. The little girl looked at
+      Georgie, and Georgie looked at her. There seemed to be no need of any
+      further introduction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got a cut on my thumb,&rdquo; said he. It was the first work of his first
+      real knife, a savage triangular hack, and he esteemed it a most valuable
+      possession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm tho thorry!&rdquo; she lisped. &ldquo;Let me look pleathe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a di-ack-lum plaster on, but it's all raw under,&rdquo; Georgie
+      answered, complying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dothent it hurt?&rdquo;&mdash;her grey eyes were full of pity and interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Awf'ly. Perhaps it will give me lockjaw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It lookth very horrid. I'm tho thorry!&rdquo; She put a forefinger to his hand,
+      and held her head sidewise for a better view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the nurse turned, and shook him severely. &ldquo;You mustn't talk to
+      strange little girls, Master Georgie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She isn't strange. She's very nice. I like her, an' I've showed her my
+      new cut.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The idea! You change places with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She moved him over, and shut out the little girl from his view, while the
+      grown-up behind renewed the futile explanations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not afraid, truly,&rdquo; said the boy, wriggling in despair; &ldquo;but why
+      don't you go to sleep in the afternoons, same as Provost of Oriel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Georgie had been introduced to a grown-up of that name, who slept in his
+      presence without apology. Georgie understood that he was the most
+      important grown-up in Oxford; hence he strove to gild his rebuke with
+      flatteries. This grown-up did not seem to like it, but he collapsed, and
+      Georgie lay back in his seat, silent and enraptured. Mr. Pepper was
+      singing again, and the deep, ringing voice, the red fire, and the misty,
+      waving gown all seemed to be mixed up with the little girl who had been so
+      kind about his cut. When the performance was ended she nodded to Georgie,
+      and Georgie nodded in return. He spoke no more than was necessary till
+      bedtime, but meditated on new colors and sounds and lights and music and
+      things as far as he understood them; the deep-mouthed agony of Mr. Pepper
+      mingling with the little girl's lisp. That night he made a new tale, from
+      which he shamelessly removed the Rapunzel-Rapunzel-let-down-your-hair
+      princess, gold crown, Grimm edition, and all, and put a new Annieanlouise
+      in her place. So it was perfectly right and natural that when he came to
+      the brushwood-pile he should find her waiting for him, her hair combed off
+      her forehead more like Alice in Wonderland than ever, and the races and
+      adventures began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten years at an English public school do not encourage dreaming. Georgie
+      won his growth and chest measurement, and a few other things which did not
+      appear in the bills, under a system of cricket, foot-ball, and
+      paper-chases, from four to five days a week, which provided for three
+      lawful cuts of a ground-ash if any boy absented himself from these
+      entertainments. He became a rumple-collared, dusty-hatted fag of the Lower
+      Third, and a light half-back at Little Side foot-ball; was pushed and
+      prodded through the slack backwaters of the Lower Fourth, where the raffle
+      of a school generally accumulates; won his &ldquo;second-fifteen&rdquo; cap at
+      foot-ball, enjoyed the dignity of a study with two companions in it, and
+      began to look forward to office as a sub-prefect. At last he blossomed
+      into full glory as head of the school, ex-officio captain of the games;
+      head of his house, where he and his lieutenants preserved discipline and
+      decency among seventy boys from twelve to seventeen; general arbiter in
+      the quarrels that spring up among the touchy Sixth&mdash;and intimate
+      friend and ally of the Head himself. When he stepped forth in the black
+      jersey, white knickers, and black stockings of the First Fifteen, the new
+      match-ball under his arm, and his old and frayed cap at the back of his
+      head, the small fry of the lower forms stood apart and worshipped, and the
+      &ldquo;new caps&rdquo; of the team talked to him ostentatiously, that the world might
+      see. And so, in summer, when he came back to the pavilion after a slow but
+      eminently safe game, it mattered not whether he had made nothing or, as
+      once happened, a hundred and three, the school shouted just the same, and
+      women-folk who had come to look at the match looked at Cottar&mdash;Cottar,
+      major; &ldquo;that's Cottar!&rdquo; Above all, he was responsible for that thing
+      called the tone of the school, and few realise with what passionate
+      devotion a certain type of boy throws himself into this work. Home was a
+      faraway country, full of ponies and fishing and shooting, and men-visitors
+      who interfered with one's plans; but school was the real world, where
+      things of vital importance happened, and crises arose that must be dealt
+      with promptly and quietly. Not for nothing was it written, &ldquo;Let the
+      Consuls look to it that the Republic takes no harm,&rdquo; and Georgie was glad
+      to be back in authority when the holidays ended. Behind him, but not too
+      near, was the wise and temperate Head, now suggesting the wisdom of the
+      serpent, now counselling the mildness of the dove; leading him on to see,
+      more by half-hints than by any direct word, how boys and men are all of a
+      piece, and how he who can handle the one will assuredly in time control
+      the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the rest, the school was not encouraged to dwell on its emotions, but
+      rather to keep in hard condition, to avoid false quantities, and to enter
+      the army direct, without the help of the expensive London crammer, under
+      whose roof young blood learns too much. Cottar, major, went the way of
+      hundreds before him. The Head gave him six months' final polish, taught
+      him what kind of answers best please a certain kind of examiners, and
+      handed him over to the properly constituted authorities, who passed him
+      into Sandhurst. Here he had sense enough to see that he was in the Lower
+      Third once more, and behaved with respect toward his seniors, till they in
+      turn respected him, and he was promoted to the rank of corporal, and sat
+      in authority over mixed peoples with all the vices of men and boys
+      combined. His reward was another string of athletic cups, a good-conduct
+      sword, and, at last, Her Majesty's commission as a subaltern in a
+      first-class line regiment. He did not know that he bore with him from
+      school and college a character worth much fine gold, but was pleased to
+      find his mess so kindly. He had plenty of money of his own; his training
+      had set the public school mask upon his face, and had taught him how many
+      were the &ldquo;things no fellow can do.&rdquo; By virtue of the same training he kept
+      his pores open and his mouth shut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The regular working of the Empire shifted his world to India, where he
+      tasted utter loneliness in subaltern's quarters,&mdash;one room and one
+      bullock-trunk,&mdash;and, with his mess, learned the new life from the
+      beginning. But there were horses in the land-ponies at reasonable price;
+      there was polo for such as could afford it; there were the disreputable
+      remnants of a pack of hounds; and Cottar worried his way along without too
+      much despair. It dawned on him that a regiment in India was nearer the
+      chance of active service than he had conceived, and that a man might as
+      well study his profession. A major of the new school backed this idea with
+      enthusiasm, and he and Cottar accumulated a library of military works, and
+      read and argued and disputed far into the nights. But the adjutant said
+      the old thing: &ldquo;Get to know your men, young un, and they 'll follow you
+      anywhere. That's all you want&mdash;know your men.&rdquo; Cottar thought he knew
+      them fairly well at cricket and the regimental sports, but he never
+      realised the true inwardness of them till he was sent off with a
+      detachment of twenty to sit down in a mud fort near a rushing river which
+      was spanned by a bridge of boats. When the floods came they went forth and
+      hunted strayed pontoons along the banks. Otherwise there was nothing to
+      do, and the men got drunk, gambled, and quarrelled. They were a sickly
+      crew, for a junior subaltern is by custom saddled with the worst men.
+      Cottar endured their rioting as long as he could, and then sent
+      down-country for a dozen pairs of boxing-gloves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't blame you for fightin',&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;if you only knew how to use
+      your hands; but you don't. Take these things, and I'll show you.&rdquo; The men
+      appreciated his efforts. Now, instead of blaspheming and swearing at a
+      comrade, and threatening to shoot him, they could take him apart, and
+      soothe themselves to exhaustion. As one explained whom Cottar found with a
+      shut eye and a diamond-shaped mouth spitting blood through an embrasure:
+      &ldquo;We tried it with the gloves, sir, for twenty minutes, and that done us no
+      good, sir. Then we took off the gloves and tried it that way for another
+      twenty minutes, same as you showed us, sir, an' that done us a world o'
+      good. 'T wasn't fightin', sir; there was a bet on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cottar dared not laugh, but he invited his men to other sports, such as
+      racing across country in shirt and trousers after a trail of torn paper,
+      and to single-stick in the evenings, till the native population, who had a
+      lust for sport in every form, wished to know whether the white men
+      understood wrestling. They sent in an ambassador, who took the soldiers by
+      the neck and threw them about the dust; and the entire command were all
+      for this new game. They spent money on learning new falls and holds, which
+      was better than buying other doubtful commodities; and the peasantry
+      grinned five deep round the tournaments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That detachment, who had gone up in bullock-carts, returned to
+      headquarters at an average rate of thirty miles a day, fair heel-and-toe;
+      no sick, no prisoners, and no court martials pending. They scattered
+      themselves among their friends, singing the praises of their lieutenant
+      and looking for causes of offense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you do it, young un?&rdquo; the adjutant asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I sweated the beef off 'em, and then I sweated some muscle on to 'em.
+      It was rather a lark.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If that's your way of lookin' at it, we can give you all the larks you
+      want. Young Davies isn't feelin' quite fit, and he's next for detachment
+      duty. Care to go for him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Sure he wouldn't mind? I don't want to shove myself forward, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't bother on Davies's account. We'll give you the sweepin's of
+      the corps, and you can see what you can make of 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Cottar. &ldquo;It's better fun than loafin' about
+      cantonments.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rummy thing,&rdquo; said the adjutant, after Cottar had returned to his
+      wilderness with twenty other devils worse than the first. &ldquo;If Cottar only
+      knew it, half the women in the station would give their eyes&mdash;confound
+      'em!&mdash;to have the young un in tow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That accounts for Mrs. Elery sayin' I was workin' my nice new boy too
+      hard,&rdquo; said a wing commander.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes; and 'Why doesn't he come to the bandstand in the evenings?' and
+      'Can't I get him to make up a four at tennis with the Hammon girls?'&rdquo; the
+      adjutant snorted. &ldquo;Look at young Davies makin' an ass of himself over
+      mutton-dressed-as-lamb old enough to be his mother!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one can accuse young Cottar of runnin' after women, white or black,&rdquo;
+       the major replied thoughtfully. &ldquo;But, then, that's the kind that generally
+      goes the worst mucker in the end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not Cottar. I've only run across one of his muster before&mdash;a fellow
+      called Ingles, in South Africa. He was just the same hard trained,
+      athletic-sports build of animal. Always kept himself in the pink of
+      condition. Didn't do him much good, though. 'Shot at Wesselstroom the week
+      before Majuba. Wonder how the young un will lick his detachment into
+      shape.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cottar turned up six weeks later, on foot, with his pupils. He never told
+      his experiences, but the men spoke enthusiastically, and fragments of it
+      leaked back to the colonel through sergeants, batmen, and the like.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was great jealousy between the first and second detachments, but the
+      men united in adoring Cottar, and their way of showing it was by sparing
+      him all the trouble that men know how to make for an unloved officer. He
+      sought popularity as little as he had sought it at school, and therefore
+      it came to him. He favoured no one&mdash;not even when the company sloven
+      pulled the company cricket-match out of the fire with an unexpected
+      forty-three at the last moment. There was very little getting round him,
+      for he seemed to know by instinct exactly when and where to head off a
+      malingerer; but he did not forget that the difference between a dazed and
+      sulky junior of the upper school and a bewildered, browbeaten lump of a
+      private fresh from the depot was very small indeed. The sergeants, seeing
+      these things, told him secrets generally hid from young officers. His
+      words were quoted as barrack authority on bets in canteen and at tea; and
+      the veriest shrew of the corps, bursting with charges against other women
+      who had used the cooking-ranges out of turn, forbore to speak when Cottar,
+      as the regulations ordained, asked of a morning if there were &ldquo;any
+      complaints.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm full o' complaints,&rdquo; said Mrs. Corporal Morrison, &ldquo;an' I'd kill
+      O'Halloran's fat sow of a wife any day, but ye know how it is. 'E puts 'is
+      head just inside the door, an' looks down 'is blessed nose so bashful, an'
+      'e whispers, 'Any complaints' Ye can't complain after that. I want to kiss
+      him. Some day I think I will. Heigh-ho! she'll be a lucky woman that gets
+      Young Innocence. See 'im now, girls. Do ye blame me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cottar was cantering across to polo, and he looked a very satisfactory
+      figure of a man as he gave easily to the first excited bucks of his pony,
+      and slipped over a low mud wall to the practice-ground. There were more
+      than Mrs. Corporal Morrison who felt as she did. But Cottar was busy for
+      eleven hours of the day. He did not care to have his tennis spoiled by
+      petticoats in the court; and after one long afternoon at a garden-party,
+      he explained to his major that this sort of thing was &ldquo;futile piffle,&rdquo;
+       and the major laughed. Theirs was not a married mess, except for the
+      colonel's wife, and Cottar stood in awe of the good lady. She said &ldquo;my
+      regiment,&rdquo; and the world knows what that means. None the less when they
+      wanted her to give away the prizes after a shooting-match, and she refused
+      because one of the prize-winners was married to a girl who had made a jest
+      of her behind her broad back, the mess ordered Cottar to &ldquo;tackle her,&rdquo; in
+      his best calling-kit. This he did, simply and laboriously, and she gave
+      way altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She only wanted to know the facts of the case,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;I just
+      told her, and she saw at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye-es,&rdquo; said the adjutant. &ldquo;I expect that's what she did. Comin' to the
+      Fusiliers' dance to-night, Galahad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, thanks. I've got a fight on with the major.&rdquo; The virtuous apprentice
+      sat up till midnight in the major's quarters, with a stop-watch and a pair
+      of compasses, shifting little painted lead-blocks about a four-inch map.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he turned in and slept the sleep of innocence, which is full of
+      healthy dreams. One peculiarity of his dreams he noticed at the beginning
+      of his second hot weather. Two or three times a month they duplicated or
+      ran in series. He would find himself sliding into dreamland by the same
+      road&mdash;a road that ran along a beach near a pile of brushwood. To the
+      right lay the sea, sometimes at full tide, sometimes withdrawn to the very
+      horizon; but he knew it for the same sea. By that road he would travel
+      over a swell of rising ground covered with short, withered grass, into
+      valleys of wonder and unreason. Beyond the ridge, which was crowned with
+      some sort of street-lamp, anything was possible; but up to the lamp it
+      seemed to him that he knew the road as well as he knew the parade-ground.
+      He learned to look forward to the place; for, once there, he was sure of a
+      good night's rest, and Indian hot weather can be rather trying. First,
+      shadowy under closing eyelids, would come the outline of the
+      brushwood-pile; next the white sand of the beach-road, almost overhanging
+      the black, changeful sea; then the turn inland and uphill to the single
+      light. When he was unrestful for any reason, he would tell himself how he
+      was sure to get there&mdash;sure to get there&mdash;if he shut his eyes
+      and surrendered to the drift of things. But one night after a foolishly
+      hard hour's polo (the thermometer was 94° in his quarters at ten o'clock),
+      sleep stood away from him altogether, though he did his best to find the
+      well-known road, the point where true sleep began. At last he saw the
+      brushwood-pile, and hurried along to the ridge, for behind him he felt was
+      the wide-awake, sultry world. He reached the lamp in safety, tingling with
+      drowsiness, when a policeman&mdash;a common country policeman&mdash;sprang
+      up before him and touched him on the shoulder ere he could dive into the
+      dim valley below. He was filled with terror,&mdash;the hopeless terror of
+      dreams,&mdash;for the policeman said, in the awful, distinct voice of
+      dream-people, &ldquo;I am Policeman Day coming back from the City of Sleep. You
+      come with me.&rdquo; Georgie knew it was true&mdash;that just beyond him in the
+      valley lay the lights of the City of Sleep, where he would have been
+      sheltered, and that this Policeman-Thing had full power and authority to
+      head him back to miserable wakefulness. He found himself looking at the
+      moonlight on the wall, dripping with fright; and he never overcame that
+      horror, though he met the Policeman several times that hot weather, and
+      his coming was the forerunner of a bad night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But other dreams-perfectly absurd ones-filled him with an incommunicable
+      delight. All those that he remembered began by the brushwood-pile. For
+      instance, he found a small clockwork steamer (he had noticed it many
+      nights before) lying by the sea-road, and stepped into it, whereupon it
+      moved with surpassing swiftness over an absolutely level sea. This was
+      glorious, for he felt he was exploring great matters; and it stopped by a
+      lily carved in stone, which, most naturally, floated on the water. Seeing
+      the lily was labelled &ldquo;Hong-Kong,&rdquo; Georgie said: &ldquo;Of course. This is
+      precisely what I expected Hong-Kong would be like. How magnificent!&rdquo;
+       Thousands of miles farther on it halted at yet another stone lily,
+      labelled &ldquo;Java.&rdquo;; and this, again, delighted him hugely, because he knew
+      that now he was at the world's end. But the little boat ran on and on till
+      it lay in a deep fresh-water lock, the sides of which were carven marble,
+      green with moss. Lilypads lay on the water, and reeds arched above. Some
+      one moved among the reeds&mdash;some one whom Georgie knew he had
+      travelled to this world's end to reach. Therefore everything was entirely
+      well with him. He was unspeakably happy, and vaulted over the ship's side
+      to find this person. When his feet touched that still water, it changed,
+      with the rustle of unrolling maps, to nothing less than a sixth quarter of
+      the globe, beyond the most remote imagining of man&mdash;a place where
+      islands were coloured yellow and blue, their lettering strung across their
+      faces. They gave on unknown seas, and Georgie's urgent desire was to
+      return swiftly across this floating atlas to known bearings. He told
+      himself repeatedly that it was no good to hurry; but still he hurried
+      desperately, and the islands slipped and slid under his feet; the straits
+      yawned and widened, till he found himself utterly lost in the world's
+      fourth dimension, with no hope of return. Yet only a little distance away
+      he could see the old world with the rivers and mountain-chains marked
+      according to the Sandhurst rules of mapmaking. Then that person for whom
+      he had come to the Lily Lock (that was its name) ran up across unexplored
+      territories, and showed him away. They fled hand in hand till they reached
+      a road that spanned ravines, and ran along the edge of precipices, and was
+      tunnelled through mountains. &ldquo;This goes to our brushwood-pile,&rdquo; said his
+      companion; and all his trouble was at an end. He took a pony, because he
+      understood that this was the Thirty-Mile Ride and he must ride swiftly,
+      and raced through the clattering tunnels and round the curves, always
+      downhill, till he heard the sea to his left, and saw it raging under a
+      full moon, against sandy cliffs. It was heavy going, but he recognised the
+      nature of the country, the dark-purple downs inland, and the bents that
+      whistled in the wind. The road was eaten away in places, and the sea
+      lashed at him-black, foamless tongues of smooth and glossy rollers; but he
+      was sure that there was less danger from the sea than from &ldquo;Them,&rdquo; whoever
+      &ldquo;They&rdquo; were, inland to his right. He knew, too, that he would be safe if
+      he could reach the down with the lamp on it. This came as he expected: he
+      saw the one light a mile ahead along the beach, dismounted, turned to the
+      right, walked quietly over to the brushwood-pile, found the little steamer
+      had returned to the beach whence he had unmoored it, and&mdash;must have
+      fallen asleep, for he could remember no more. &ldquo;I'm gettin' the hang of the
+      geography of that place,&rdquo; he said to himself, as he shaved next morning.
+      &ldquo;I must have made some sort of circle. Let's see. The Thirty-Mile Ride
+      (now how the deuce did I know it was called the Thirty-Mile, Ride?) joins
+      the sea-road beyond the first down where the lamp is. And that
+      atlas-country lies at the back of the Thirty-Mile Ride, somewhere out to
+      the right beyond the hills and tunnels. Rummy things, dreams. 'Wonder what
+      makes mine fit into each other so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He continued on his solid way through the recurring duties of the seasons.
+      The regiment was shifted to another station, and he enjoyed road-marching
+      for two months, with a good deal of mixed shooting thrown in, and when
+      they reached their new cantonments he became a member of the local Tent
+      Club, and chased the mighty boar on horseback with a short stabbing-spear.
+      There he met the mahseer of the Poonch, beside whom the tarpon is as a
+      herring, and he who lands him can say that he is a fisherman. This was as
+      new and as fascinating as the big-game shooting that fell to his portion,
+      when he had himself photographed for the mother's benefit, sitting on the
+      flank of his first tiger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the adjutant was promoted, and Cottar rejoiced with him, for he
+      admired the adjutant greatly, and marvelled who might be big enough to
+      fill his place; so that he nearly collapsed when the mantle fell on his
+      own shoulders, and the colonel said a few sweet things that made him
+      blush. An adjutant's position does not differ materially from that of head
+      of the school, and Cottar stood in the same relation to the colonel as he
+      had to his old Head in England. Only, tempers wear out in hot weather, and
+      things were said and done that tried him sorely, and he made glorious
+      blunders, from which the regimental sergeant-major pulled him with a loyal
+      soul and a shut mouth. Slovens and incompetents raged against him; the
+      weak-minded strove to lure him from the ways of justice; the small-minded&mdash;yea,
+      men whom Cottar believed would never do &ldquo;things no fellow can do&rdquo;&mdash;imputed
+      motives mean and circuitous to actions that he had not spent a thought
+      upon; and he tasted injustice, and it made him very sick. But his
+      consolation came on parade, when he looked down the full companies, and
+      reflected how few were in hospital or cells, and wondered when the time
+      would come to try the machine of his love and labour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But they needed and expected the whole of a man's working-day, and maybe
+      three or four hours of the night. Curiously enough, he never dreamed about
+      the regiment as he was popularly supposed to. The mind, set free from the
+      day's doings, generally ceased working altogether, or, if it moved at all,
+      carried him along the old beach-road to the downs, the lamp-post, and,
+      once in a while, to terrible Policeman Day. The second time that he
+      returned to the world's lost continent (this was a dream that repeated
+      itself again and again, with variations, on the same ground) he knew that
+      if he only sat still the person from the Lily Lock would help him, and he
+      was not disappointed. Sometimes he was trapped in mines of vast depth
+      hollowed out of the heart of the world, where men in torment chanted
+      echoing songs; and he heard this person coming along through the
+      galleries, and everything was made safe and delightful. They met again in
+      low-roofed Indian railway-carriages that halted in a garden surrounded by
+      gilt-and-green railings, where a mob of stony white people, all
+      unfriendly, sat at breakfast-tables covered with roses, and separated
+      Georgie from his companion, while underground voices sang deep-voiced
+      songs. Georgie was filled with enormous despair till they two met again.
+      They foregathered in the middle of an endless, hot tropic night, and crept
+      into a huge house that stood, he knew, somewhere north of the
+      railway-station where the people ate among the roses. It was surrounded
+      with gardens, all moist and dripping; and in one room, reached through
+      leagues of whitewashed passages, a Sick Thing lay in bed. Now the least
+      noise, Georgie knew, would unchain some waiting horror, and his companion
+      knew it, too; but when their eyes met across the bed, Georgie was
+      disgusted to see that she was a child&mdash;a little girl in strapped
+      shoes, with her black hair combed back from her forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What disgraceful folly!&rdquo; he thought. &ldquo;Now she could do nothing whatever
+      if Its head came off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the Thing coughed, and the ceiling shattered down in plaster on the
+      mosquito-netting, and &ldquo;They&rdquo; rushed in from all quarters. He dragged the
+      child through the stifling garden, voices chanting behind them, and they
+      rode the Thirty-Mile Ride under whip and spur along the sandy beach by the
+      booming sea, till they came to the downs, the lamp-post, and the
+      brushwood-pile, which was safety. Very often dreams would break up about
+      them in this fashion, and they would be separated, to endure awful
+      adventures alone. But the most amusing times were when he and she had a
+      clear understanding that it was all make-believe, and walked through
+      mile-wide roaring rivers without even taking off their shoes, or set light
+      to populous cities to see how they would burn, and were rude as any
+      children to the vague shadows met in their rambles. Later in the night
+      they were sure to suffer for this, either at the hands of the Railway
+      People eating among the roses, or in the tropic uplands at the far end of
+      the Thirty-Mile Ride. Together, this did no much affright them; but often
+      Georgie would hear her shrill cry of &ldquo;Boy! Boy!&rdquo; half a world away, and
+      hurry to her rescue before &ldquo;They&rdquo; maltreated her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He and she explored the dark-purple downs as far inland from the
+      brushwood-pile as they dared, but that was always a dangerous matter. The
+      interior was filled with &ldquo;Them,&rdquo; and &ldquo;They&rdquo; went about singing in the
+      hollows, and Georgie and she felt safer on or near the seaboard. So
+      thoroughly had he come to know the place of his dreams that even waking he
+      accepted it as a real country, and made a rough sketch of it. He kept his
+      own counsel, of course; but the permanence of the land puzzled him. His
+      ordinary dreams were as formless and as fleeting as any healthy dreams
+      could be, but once at the brushwood-pile he moved within known limits and
+      could see where he was going. There were months at a time when nothing
+      notable crossed his sleep. Then the dreams would come in a batch of five
+      or six, and next morning the map that he kept in his writing case would be
+      written up to date, for Georgie was a most methodical person. There was,
+      indeed, a danger&mdash;his seniors said so&mdash;of his developing into a
+      regular &ldquo;Auntie Fuss&rdquo; of an adjutant, and when an officer once takes to
+      old-maidism there is more hope for the virgin of seventy than for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But fate sent the change that was needed, in the shape of a little winter
+      campaign on the Border, which, after the manner of little campaigns,
+      flashed out into a very ugly war; and Cottar's regiment was chosen among
+      the first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said a major, &ldquo;this'll shake the cobwebs out of us all&mdash;especially
+      you, Galahad; and we can see what your hen-with-one-chick attitude has
+      done for the regiment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cottar nearly wept with joy as the campaign went forward. They were fit&mdash;physically
+      fit beyond the other troops; they were good children in camp, wet or dry,
+      fed or unfed; and they followed their officers with the quick suppleness
+      and trained obedience of a first-class foot-ball fifteen. They were cut
+      off from their apology for a base, and cheerfully cut their way back to it
+      again; they crowned and cleaned out hills full of the enemy with the
+      precision of well-broken dogs of chase; and in the hour of retreat, when,
+      hampered with the sick and wounded of the column, they were persecuted
+      down eleven miles of waterless valley, they, serving as rearguard, covered
+      themselves with a great glory in the eyes of fellow-professionals. Any
+      regiment can advance, but few know how to retreat with a sting in the
+      tail. Then they turned to made roads, most often under fire, and
+      dismantled some inconvenient mud redoubts. They were the last corps to be
+      withdrawn when the rubbish of the campaign was all swept up; and after a
+      month in standing camp, which tries morals severely, they departed to
+      their own place in column of fours, singing:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                &ldquo;'E's goin' to do without 'em&mdash;
+                   Don't want 'em any more;
+                 'E's goin' to do without 'em,
+                    As 'e's often done before.
+                 'E's goin' to be a martyr
+                    On a 'ighly novel plan,
+                  An' all the boys and girls will say,
+                  'Ow! what a nice young man-man-man!
+                  Ow! what a nice young man!'&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      There came out a &ldquo;Gazette&rdquo; in which Cottar found that he had been behaving
+      with &ldquo;courage and coolness and discretion&rdquo; in all his capacities; that he
+      had assisted the wounded under fire, and blown in a gate, also under fire.
+      Net result, his captaincy and a brevet majority, coupled with the
+      Distinguished Service Order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to his wounded, he explained that they were both heavy men, whom he
+      could lift more easily than any one else. &ldquo;Otherwise, of course, I should
+      have sent out one of my men; and, of course, about that gate business, we
+      were safe the minute we were well under the walls.&rdquo; But this did not
+      prevent his men from cheering him furiously whenever they saw him, or the
+      mess from giving him a dinner on the eve of his departure to England. (A
+      year's leave was among the things he had &ldquo;snaffled out of the campaign,&rdquo; I
+      to use his own words.) The doctor, who had taken quite as much as was good
+      for him, quoted poetry about &ldquo;a good blade carving the casques of men,&rdquo;
+       and so on, and everybody told Cottar that he was an excellent person; but
+      when he rose to make his maiden speech they shouted so that he was
+      understood to say, &ldquo;It isn't any use tryin' to speak with you chaps
+      rottin' me like this. Let's have some pool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      It is not unpleasant to spend eight-and-twenty days in an easy-going
+      steamer on warm waters, in the company of a woman who lets you see that
+      you are head and shoulders superior to the rest of the world, even though
+      that woman may be, and most often is, ten counted years your senior. P.O.
+      boats are not lighted with the disgustful particularity of Atlantic
+      liners. There is more phosphorescence at the bows, and greater silence and
+      darkness by the hand-steering gear aft.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Awful things might have happened to Georgie but for the little fact that
+      he had never studied the first principles of the game he was expected to
+      play. So when Mrs. Zuleika, at Aden, told him how motherly an interest she
+      felt in his welfare, medals, brevet, and all, Georgie took her at the foot
+      of the letter, and promptly talked of his own mother, three hundred miles
+      nearer each day, of his home, and so forth, all the way up the Red Sea. It
+      was much easier than he had supposed to converse with a woman for an hour
+      at a time. Then Mrs. Zuleika, turning from parental affection, spoke of
+      love in the abstract as a thing not unworthy of study, and in discreet
+      twilights after dinner demanded confidences. Georgie would have been
+      delighted to supply them, but he had none, and did not know it was his
+      duty to manufacture them. Mrs. Zuleika expressed surprise and unbelief,
+      and asked&mdash;those questions which deep asks of deep. She learned all
+      that was necessary to conviction, and, being very much a woman, resumed
+      (Georgie never knew that she had abandoned) the motherly attitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know,&rdquo; she said, somewhere in the Mediterranean, &ldquo;I think you're
+      the very dearest boy I have ever met in my life, and I'd like you to
+      remember me a little. You will when you are older, but I want you to
+      remember me now. You'll make some girl very happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Hope so,&rdquo; said Georgie, gravely; &ldquo;but there's heaps of time for
+      marryin' an' all that sort of thing, ain't there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That depends. Here are your bean-bags for the Ladies' Competition. I
+      think I'm growing too old to care for these tamashas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were getting up sports, and Georgie was on the committee. He never
+      noticed how perfectly the bags were sewn, but another woman did, and
+      smiled&mdash;once. He liked Mrs. Zuleika greatly. She was a bit old, of
+      course, but uncommonly nice. There was no nonsense about her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few nights after they passed Gibraltar his dream returned to him. She
+      who waited by the brushwood-pile was no longer a little girl, but a woman
+      with black hair that grew into a &ldquo;widow's peak,&rdquo; combed back from her
+      forehead. He knew her for the child in black, the companion of the last
+      six years, and, as it had been in the time of the meetings on the Lost
+      Continent, he was filled with delight unspeakable. &ldquo;They,&rdquo; for some
+      dreamland reason, were friendly or had gone away that night, and the two
+      flitted together over all their country, from the brushwood-pile up the
+      Thirty-Mile Ride, till they saw the House of the Sick Thing, a pin-point
+      in the distance to the left; stamped through the Railway Waiting-room
+      where the roses lay on the spread breakfast-tables; and returned, by the
+      ford and the city they had once burned for sport, to the great swells of
+      the downs under the lamp-post. Wherever they moved a strong singing
+      followed them underground, but this night there was no panic. All the land
+      was empty except for themselves, and at the last (they were sitting by the
+      lamp-post hand in hand) she turned and kissed him. He woke with a start,
+      staring at the waving curtain of the cabin door; he could almost have
+      sworn that the kiss was real.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning the ship was rolling in a Biscay sea, and people were not
+      happy; but as Georgie came to breakfast, shaven, tubbed, and smelling of
+      soap, several turned to look at him because of the light in his eyes and
+      the splendour of his countenance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you look beastly fit,&rdquo; snapped a neighbour. &ldquo;Any one left you a
+      legacy in the middle of the Bay?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Georgie reached for the curry, with a seraphic grin. &ldquo;I suppose it's the
+      gettin' so near home, and all that. I do feel rather festive this mornin.
+      'Rolls a bit, doesn't she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Zuleika stayed in her cabin till the end of the voyage, when she left
+      without bidding him farewell, and wept passionately on the dock-head for
+      pure joy of meeting her children, who, she had often said, were so like
+      their father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Georgie headed for his own country, wild with delight of his first long
+      furlough after the lean seasons. Nothing was changed in that orderly life,
+      from the coachman who met him at the station to the white peacock that
+      stormed at the carriage from the stone wall above the shaven lawns. The
+      house took toll of him with due regard to precedence&mdash;first the
+      mother; then the father; then the housekeeper, who wept and praised God;
+      then the butler, and so on down to the under-keeper, who had been dogboy
+      in Georgie's youth, and called him &ldquo;Master Georgie,&rdquo; and was reproved by
+      the groom who had taught Georgie to ride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a thing changed,&rdquo; he sighed contentedly, when the three of them sat
+      down to dinner in the late sunlight, while the rabbits crept out upon the
+      lawn below the cedars, and the big trout in the ponds by the home paddock
+      rose for their evening meal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our changes are all over, dear,&rdquo; cooed the mother; &ldquo;and now I am getting
+      used to your size and your tan (you're very brown, Georgie), I see you
+      haven't changed in the least. You're exactly like the pater.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The father beamed on this man after his own heart,&mdash;&ldquo;youngest major
+      in the army, and should have had the V.C., sir,&rdquo;&mdash;and the butler
+      listened with his professional mask off when Master Georgie spoke of war
+      as it is waged to-day, and his father cross-questioned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went out on the terrace to smoke among the roses, and the shadow of
+      the old house lay long across the wonderful English foliage, which is the
+      only living green in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfect! By Jove, it's perfect!&rdquo; Georgie was looking at the round-bosomed
+      woods beyond the home paddock, where the white pheasant boxes were ranged;
+      and the golden air was full of a hundred sacred scents and sounds. Georgie
+      felt his father's arm tighten in his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not half bad&mdash;but hodie mihi, cras tibi, isn't it? I suppose
+      you'll be turning up some fine day with a girl under your arm, if you
+      haven't one now, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can make your mind easy, sir. I haven't one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in all these years?&rdquo; said the mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hadn't time, mummy. They keep a man pretty busy, these days, in the
+      service, and most of our mess are unmarried, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you must have met hundreds in society&mdash;at balls, and so on?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm like the Tenth, mummy: I don't dance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't dance! What have you been doing with yourself, then&mdash;backing
+      other men's bills?&rdquo; said the father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes; I've done a little of that too; but you see, as things are now,
+      a man has all his work cut out for him to keep abreast of his profession,
+      and my days were always too full to let me lark about half the night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hmm!&rdquo;&mdash;suspiciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's never too late to learn. We ought to give some kind of housewarming
+      for the people about, now you've come back. Unless you want to go straight
+      up to town, dear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I don't want anything better than this. Let's sit still and enjoy
+      ourselves. I suppose there will be something for me to ride if I look for
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seeing I've been kept down to the old brown pair for the last six weeks
+      because all the others were being got ready for Master Georgie, I should
+      say there might be,&rdquo; the father chuckled. &ldquo;They're reminding me in a
+      hundred ways that I must take the second place now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brutes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The pater doesn't mean it, dear; but every one has been trying to make
+      your home-coming a success; and you do like it, don't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfect! Perfect! There's no place like England&mdash;when you 've done
+      your work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the proper way to look at it, my son.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so up and down the flagged walk till their shadows grew long in the
+      moonlight, and the mother went indoors and played such songs as a small
+      boy once clamoured for, and the squat silver candlesticks were brought in,
+      and Georgie climbed to the two rooms in the west wing that had been his
+      nursery and his playroom in the beginning. Then who should come to tuck
+      him up for the night but the mother? And she sat down on the bed, and they
+      talked for a long hour, as mother and son should, if there is to be any
+      future for the Empire. With a simple woman's deep guile she asked
+      questions and suggested answers that should have waked some sign in the
+      face on the pillow, and there was neither quiver of eyelid nor quickening
+      of breath, neither evasion nor delay in reply. So she blessed him and
+      kissed him on the mouth, which is not always a mother's property, and said
+      something to her husband later, at which he laughed profane and
+      incredulous laughs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the establishment waited on Georgie next morning, from the tallest
+      six-year-old, &ldquo;with a mouth like a kid glove, Master Georgie,&rdquo; to the
+      under-keeper strolling carelessly along the horizon, Georgie's pet rod in
+      his hand, and &ldquo;There's a four-pounder risin' below the lasher. You don't
+      'ave 'em in Injia, Mast-Major Georgie.&rdquo; It was all beautiful beyond
+      telling, even though the mother insisted on taking him out in the landau
+      (the leather had the hot Sunday smell of his youth) and showing him off to
+      her friends at all the houses for six miles round; and the pater bore him
+      up to town and a lunch at the club, where he introduced him, quite
+      carelessly, to not less than thirty ancient warriors whose sons were not
+      the youngest majors in the army and had not the D.S.O. After that it was
+      Georgie's turn; and remembering his friends, he filled up the house with
+      that kind of officer who live in cheap lodgings at Southsea or Montpelier
+      Square, Brompton&mdash;good men all, but not well off. The mother
+      perceived that they needed girls to play with; and as there was no
+      scarcity of girls, the house hummed like a dovecote in spring. They tore
+      up the place for amateur theatricals; they disappeared in the gardens when
+      they ought to have been rehearsing; they swept off every available horse
+      and vehicle, especially the governess-cart and the fat pony; they fell
+      into the trout-ponds; they picnicked and they tennised; and they sat on
+      gates in the twilight, two by two, and Georgie found that he was not in
+      the least necessary to their entertainment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My word!&rdquo; said he, when he saw the last of their dear backs. &ldquo;They told
+      me they've enjoyed 'emselves, but they haven't done half the things they
+      said they would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know they've enjoyed themselves&mdash;immensely,&rdquo; said the mother.
+      &ldquo;You're a public benefactor, dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now we can be quiet again, can't we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, quite. I've a very dear friend of mine that I want you to know. She
+      couldn't come with the house so full, because she's an invalid, and she
+      was away when you first came. She's a Mrs. Lacy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lacy! I don't remember the name about here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; they came after you went to India&mdash;from Oxford. Her husband died
+      there, and she lost some money, I believe. They bought The Firs on the
+      Bassett Road. She's a very sweet woman, and we're very fond of them both.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's a widow, didn't you say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has a daughter. Surely I said so, dear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does she fall into trout-ponds, and gas and giggle, and 'Oh, Major
+      Cottah!' and all that sort of thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, indeed. She's a very quiet girl, and very musical. She always came
+      over here with her music-books&mdash;composing, you know; and she
+      generally works all day, so you won't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Talking about Miriam?&rdquo; said the pater, coming up. The mother edged
+      toward him within elbow-reach. There was no finesse about Georgie's
+      father. &ldquo;Oh, Miriam's a dear girl. Plays beautifully. Rides beautifully,
+      too. She's a regular pet of the household. Used to call me&mdash;&rdquo; The
+      elbow went home, and ignorant but obedient always, the pater shut himself
+      off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What used she to call you, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All sorts of pet names. I'm very fond of Miriam.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sounds Jewish&mdash;Miriam.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jew! You'll be calling yourself a Jew next. She's one of the
+      Herefordshire Lacys. When her aunt dies&mdash;&rdquo; Again the elbow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you won't see anything of her, Georgie. She's busy with her music or
+      her mother all day. Besides, you're going up to town tomorrow, aren't you?
+      I thought you said something about an Institute meeting?&rdquo; The mother
+      spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go up to town now! What nonsense!&rdquo; Once more the pater was shut off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had some idea of it, but I'm not quite sure,&rdquo; said the son of the
+      house. Why did the mother try to get him away because a musical girl and
+      her invalid parent were expected? He did not approve of unknown females
+      calling his father pet names. He would observe these pushing persons who
+      had been only seven years in the county.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All of which the delighted mother read in his countenance, herself keeping
+      an air of sweet disinterestedness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They'll be here this evening for dinner. I'm sending the carriage over
+      for them, and they won't stay more than a week.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps I shall go up to town. I don't quite know yet.&rdquo; Georgie moved
+      away irresolutely. There was a lecture at the United Services Institute on
+      the supply of ammunition in the field, and the one man whose theories most
+      irritated Major Cottar would deliver it. A heated discussion was sure to
+      follow, and perhaps he might find himself moved to speak. He took his rod
+      that afternoon and went down to thrash it out among the trout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good sport, dear!&rdquo; said the mother, from the terrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fraid it won't be, mummy. All those men from town, and the girls
+      particularly, have put every trout off his feed for weeks. There isn't one
+      of 'em that cares for fishin'&mdash;really. Fancy stampin' and shoutin' on
+      the bank, and tellin' every fish for half a mile exactly what you're goin'
+      to do, and then chuckin' a brute of a fly at him! By Jove, it would scare
+      me if I was a trout!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But things were not as bad as he had expected. The black gnat was on the
+      water, and the water was strictly preserved. A three-quarter-pounder at
+      the second cast set him for the campaign, and he worked down-stream,
+      crouching behind the reed and meadowsweet; creeping between a hornbeam
+      hedge and a foot-wide strip of bank, where he could see the trout, but
+      where they could not distinguish him from the background; lying almost on
+      his stomach to switch the blue-upright sidewise through the checkered
+      shadows of a gravelly ripple under overarching trees. But he had known
+      every inch of the water since he was four feet high. The aged and astute
+      between sunk roots, with the large and fat that lay in the frothy scum
+      below some strong rush of water, sucking as lazily as carp, came to
+      trouble in their turn, at the hand that imitated so delicately the flicker
+      and wimple of an egg-dropping fly. Consequently, Georgie found himself
+      five miles from home when he ought to have been dressing for dinner. The
+      housekeeper had taken good care that her boy should not go empty, and
+      before he changed to the white moth he sat down to excellent claret with
+      sandwiches of potted egg and things that adoring women make and men never
+      notice. Then back, to surprise the otter grubbing for fresh-water mussels,
+      the rabbits on the edge of the beechwoods foraging in the clover, and the
+      policeman-like white owl stooping to the little fieldmice, till the moon
+      was strong, and he took his rod apart, and went home through
+      well-remembered gaps in the hedges. He fetched a compass round the house,
+      for, though he might have broken every law of the establishment every
+      hour, the law of his boyhood was unbreakable: after fishing you went in by
+      the south garden back-door, cleaned up in the outer scullery, and did not
+      present yourself to your elders and your betters till you had washed and
+      changed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Half-past ten, by Jove! Well, we'll make the sport an excuse. They
+      wouldn't want to see me the first evening, at any rate. Gone to bed,
+      probably.&rdquo; He skirted by the open French windows of the drawing-room. &ldquo;No,
+      they haven't. They look very comfy in there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He could see his father in his own particular chair, the mother in hers,
+      and the back of a girl at the piano by the big potpourri-jar. The gardens
+      looked half divine in the moonlight, and he turned down through the roses
+      to finish his pipe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A prelude-ended, and there floated out a voice of the kind that in his
+      childhood he used to call &ldquo;creamy&rdquo; a full, true contralto; and this is the
+      song that he heard, every syllable of it:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Over the edge of the purple down,
+        Where the single lamplight gleams,
+  Know ye the road to the Merciful Town
+        That is hard by the Sea of Dreams&mdash;
+  Where the poor may lay their wrongs away,
+        And the sick may forget to weep?
+  But we&mdash;pity us!  Oh, pity us!
+        We wakeful; ah, pity us!&mdash;
+  We must go back with Policeman Day&mdash;
+        Back from the City of Sleep!
+
+  Weary they turn from the scroll and crown,
+        Fetter and prayer and plough
+  They that go up to the Merciful Town,
+        For her gates are closing now.
+  It is their right in the Baths of Night
+        Body and soul to steep
+  But we&mdash;pity us! ah, pity us!
+        We wakeful; oh, pity us!&mdash;
+  We must go back with Policeman Day&mdash;
+        Back from the City of Sleep!
+
+  Over the edge of the purple down,
+        Ere the tender dreams begin,
+  Look&mdash;we may look&mdash;at the Merciful Town,
+        But we may not enter in!
+  Outcasts all, from her guarded wall
+        Back to our watch we creep:
+  We&mdash;pity us! ah, pity us!
+        We wakeful; oh, pity us!&mdash;
+  We that go back with Policeman Day&mdash;
+        Back from the City of Sleep
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At the last echo he was aware that his mouth was dry and unknown pulses
+      were beating in the roof of it. The housekeeper, who would have it that he
+      must have fallen in and caught a chill, was waiting to catch him on the
+      stairs, and, since he neither saw nor answered her, carried a wild tale
+      abroad that brought his mother knocking at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anything happened, dear? Harper said she thought you weren't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; it's nothing. I'm all right, mummy. Please don't bother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not recognise his own voice, but that was a small matter beside
+      what he was considering. Obviously, most obviously, the whole coincidence
+      was crazy lunacy. He proved it to the satisfaction of Major George Cottar,
+      who was going up to town to-morrow to hear a lecture on the supply of
+      ammunition in the field; and having so proved it, the soul and brain and
+      heart and body of Georgie cried joyously: &ldquo;That's the Lily Lock girl&mdash;the
+      Lost Continent girl&mdash;the Thirty-Mile Ride girl&mdash;the Brushwood
+      girl! I know her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He waked, stiff and cramped in his chair, to reconsider the situation by
+      sunlight, when it did not appear normal. But a man must eat, and he went
+      to breakfast, his heart between his teeth, holding himself severely in
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Late, as usual,&rdquo; said the mother. &ldquo;'My boy, Miss Lacy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A tall girl in black raised her eyes to his, and Georgie's life training
+      deserted him&mdash;just as soon as he realised that she did not know. He
+      stared coolly and critically. There was the abundant black hair, growing
+      in a widow's peak, turned back from the forehead, with that peculiar
+      ripple over the right ear; there were the grey eyes set a little close
+      together; the short upper lip, resolute chin, and the known poise of the
+      head. There was also the small well-cut mouth that had kissed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Georgie&mdash;dear!&rdquo; said the mother, amazedly, for Miriam was flushing
+      under the stare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I beg your pardon!&rdquo; he gulped. &ldquo;I don't know whether the mother
+      has told you, but I'm rather an idiot at times, specially before I've had
+      my breakfast. It's&mdash;it's a family failing.&rdquo; He turned to explore
+      among the hot-water dishes on the sideboard, rejoicing that she did not
+      know&mdash;she did not know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His conversation for the rest of the meal was mildly insane, though the
+      mother thought she had never seen her boy look half so handsome. How could
+      any girl, least of all one of Miriam's discernment, forbear to fall down
+      and worship? But deeply Miriam was displeased. She had never been stared
+      at in that fashion before, and promptly retired into her shell when
+      Georgie announced that he had changed his mind about going to town, and
+      would stay to play with Miss Lacy if she had nothing better to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but don't let me throw you out. I'm at work. I've things to do all
+      the morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What possessed Georgie to behave so oddly?&rdquo; the mother sighed to herself.
+      &ldquo;Miriam's a bundle of feelings&mdash;like her mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You compose&mdash;don't you? Must be a fine thing to be able to do that.
+      ['Pig-oh, pig!' thought Miriam.] I think I heard you singin' when I came
+      in last night after fishin'. All about a Sea of Dreams, wasn't it? [Miriam
+      shuddered to the core of the soul that afflicted her.] Awfully pretty
+      song. How d' you think of such things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You only composed the music, dear, didn't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The words too. I'm sure of it,&rdquo; said Georgie, with a sparkling eye. No;
+      she did not know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yeth; I wrote the words too.&rdquo; Miriam spoke slowly, for she knew she
+      lisped when she was nervous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now how could you tell, Georgie?&rdquo; said the mother, as delighted as though
+      the youngest major in the army were ten years old, showing off before
+      company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was sure of it, somehow. Oh, there are heaps of things about me, mummy,
+      that you don't understand. Looks as if it were goin' to be a hot day&mdash;for
+      England. Would you care for a ride this afternoon, Miss Lacy? We can start
+      out after tea, if you'd like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miriam could not in decency refuse, but any woman might see she was not
+      filled with delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will be very nice, if you take the Bassett Road. It will save me
+      sending Martin down to the village,&rdquo; said the mother, filling in gaps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like all good managers, the mother had her one weakness&mdash;a mania for
+      little strategies that should economise horses and vehicles. Her men-folk
+      complained that she turned them into common carriers, and there was a
+      legend in the family that she had once said to the pater on the morning of
+      a meet: &ldquo;If you should kill near Bassett, dear, and if it isn't too late,
+      would you mind just popping over and matching me this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew that was coming. You'd never miss a chance, mother. If it's a fish
+      or a trunk I won't.&rdquo; Georgie laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's only a duck. They can do it up very neatly at Mallett's,&rdquo; said the
+      mother, simply. &ldquo;You won't mind, will you? We'll have a scratch dinner at
+      nine, because it's so hot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The long summer day dragged itself out for centuries; but at last there
+      was tea on the lawn, and Miriam appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was in the saddle before he could offer to help, with the clean spring
+      of the child who mounted the pony for the Thirty-Mile Ride. The day held
+      mercilessly, though Georgie got down thrice to look for imaginary stones
+      in Rufus's foot. One cannot say even simple things in broad light, and
+      this that Georgie meditated was not simple. So he spoke seldom, and Miriam
+      was divided between relief and scorn. It annoyed her that the great
+      hulking thing should know she had written the words of the song overnight;
+      for though a maiden may sing her most secret fancies aloud, she does not
+      care to have them trampled over by the male Philistine. They rode into the
+      little red-brick street of Bassett, and Georgie made untold fuss over the
+      disposition of that duck. It must go in just such a package, and be
+      fastened to the saddle in just such a manner, though eight o'clock had
+      struck and they were miles from dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must be quick!&rdquo; said Miriam, bored and angry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's no great hurry; but we can cut over Dowhead Down, and let 'em out
+      on the grass. That will save us half an hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The horses capered on the short, sweet-smelling turf, and the delaying
+      shadows gathered in the valley as they cantered over the great dun down
+      that overhangs Bassett and the Western coaching-road. Insensibly the pace
+      quickened without thought of mole-hills; Rufus, gentleman that he was,
+      waiting on Miriam's Dandy till they should have cleared the rise. Then
+      down the two-mile slope they raced together, the wind whistling in their
+      ears, to the steady throb of eight hoofs and the light click-click of the
+      shifting bits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that was glorious!&rdquo; Miriam cried, reining in. &ldquo;Dandy and I are old
+      friends, but I don't think we've ever gone better together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; but you've gone quicker, once or twice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really? When?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Georgie moistened his lips. &ldquo;Don't you remember the Thirty-Mile Ride&mdash;with
+      me&mdash;when 'They' were after us&mdash;on the beach-road, with the sea
+      to the left&mdash;going toward the lamp-post on the downs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl gasped. &ldquo;What&mdash;what do you mean?&rdquo; she said hysterically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Thirty-Mile Ride, and&mdash;and all the rest of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean&mdash;? I didn't sing anything about the Thirty-Mile Ride. I
+      know I didn't. I have never told a living soul.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You told about Policeman Day, and the lamp at the top of the downs, and
+      the City of Sleep. It all joins on, you know&mdash;it's the same country&mdash;and
+      it was easy enough to see where you had been.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good God!&mdash;It joins on&mdash;of course it does; but&mdash;I have
+      been&mdash;you have been&mdash;Oh, let's walk, please, or I shall fall
+      off!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Georgie ranged alongside, and laid a hand that shook below her
+      bridle-hand, pulling Dandy into a walk. Miriam was sobbing as he had seen
+      a man sob under the touch of the bullet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all right&mdash;it's all right,&rdquo; he whispered feebly. &ldquo;Only&mdash;only
+      it's true, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True! Am I mad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not unless I'm mad as well. Do try to think a minute quietly. How could
+      any one conceivably know anything about the Thirty-Mile Ride having
+      anything to do with you, unless he had been there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But where? But where? Tell me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&mdash;wherever it may be&mdash;in our country, I suppose. Do you
+      remember the first time you rode it&mdash;the Thirty-Mile Ride, I mean?
+      You must.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was all dreams&mdash;all dreams!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but tell, please; because I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me think. I&mdash;we were on no account to make any noise&mdash;on no
+      account to make any noise.&rdquo; She was staring between Dandy's ears, with
+      eyes that did not see, and a suffocating heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because 'It' was dying in the big house?&rdquo; Georgie went on, reining in
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was a garden with green-and-gilt railings&mdash;all hot. Do you
+      remember?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ought to. I was sitting on the other side of the bed before 'It'
+      coughed and 'They' came in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo;&mdash;the deep voice was unnaturally full and strong, and the
+      girl's wide-opened eyes burned in the dusk as she stared him through and
+      through. &ldquo;Then you're the Boy&mdash;my Brushwood Boy, and I've known you
+      all my life!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She fell forward on Dandy's neck. Georgie forced himself out of the
+      weakness that was overmastering his limbs, and slid an arm round her
+      waist. The head dropped on his shoulder, and he found himself with parched
+      lips saying things that up till then he believed existed only in printed
+      works of fiction. Mercifully the horses were quiet. She made no attempt to
+      draw herself away when she recovered, but lay still, whispering, &ldquo;Of
+      course you're the Boy, and I didn't know&mdash;I didn't know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew last night; and when I saw you at breakfast&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that was why! I wondered at the time. You would, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn't speak before this. Keep your head where it is, dear. It's all
+      right now&mdash;all right now, isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how was it I didn't know&mdash;after all these years and years? I
+      remember&mdash;oh, what lots of things I remember!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me some. I'll look after the horses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember waiting for you when the steamer came in. Do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the Lily Lock, beyond Hong-Kong and Java?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you call it that, too?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You told me it was when I was lost in the continent. That was you that
+      showed me the way through the mountains?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When the islands slid? It must have been, because you're the only one I
+      remember. All the others were 'Them.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Awful brutes they were, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember showing you the Thirty-Mile Ride the first time. You ride just
+      as you used to&mdash;then. You are you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's odd. I thought that of you this afternoon. Isn't it wonderful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does it all mean? Why should you and I of the millions of people in
+      the world have this&mdash;this thing between us? What does it mean? I'm
+      frightened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This!&rdquo; said Georgie. The horses quickened their pace. They thought they
+      had heard an order. &ldquo;Perhaps when we die we may find out more, but it
+      means this now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no answer. What could she say? As the world went, they had known
+      each other rather less than eight and a half hours, but the matter was one
+      that did not concern the world. There was a very long silence, while the
+      breath in their nostrils drew cold and sharp as it might have been a fume
+      of ether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the second,&rdquo; Georgie whispered. &ldquo;You remember, don't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not!&rdquo;&mdash;furiously. &ldquo;It's not!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the downs the other night-months ago. You were just as you are now,
+      and we went over the country for miles and miles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was all empty, too. They had gone away. Nobody frightened us. I wonder
+      why, Boy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, if you remember that, you must remember the rest. Confess!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember lots of things, but I know I didn't. I never have&mdash;till
+      just now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did, dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know I didn't, because&mdash;oh, it's no use keeping anything back!
+      because I truthfully meant to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And truthfully did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; meant to; but some one else came by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There wasn't any one else. There never has been.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was&mdash;there always is. It was another woman&mdash;out there&mdash;on
+      the sea. I saw her. It was the 26th of May. I've got it written down
+      somewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you've kept a record of your dreams, too? That's odd about the other
+      woman, because I happened to be on the sea just then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was right. How do I know what you've done when you were awake&mdash;and
+      I thought it was only you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You never were more wrong in your life. What a little temper you've got!
+      Listen to me a minute, dear.&rdquo; And Georgie, though he knew it not,
+      committed black perjury. &ldquo;It&mdash;it isn't the kind of thing one says to
+      any one, because they'd laugh; but on my word and honour, darling, I've
+      never been kissed by a living soul outside my own people in all my life.
+      Don't laugh, dear. I wouldn't tell any one but you, but it's the solemn
+      truth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew! You are you. Oh, I knew you'd come some day; but I didn't know
+      you were you in the least till you spoke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then give me another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you never cared or looked anywhere? Why, all the round world must
+      have loved you from the very minute they saw you, Boy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They kept it to themselves if they did. No; I never cared.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And we shall be late for dinner&mdash;horribly late. Oh, how can I look
+      at you in the light before your mother&mdash;and mine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll play you're Miss Lacy till the proper time comes. What's the
+      shortest limit for people to get engaged? S'pose we have got to go through
+      all the fuss of an engagement, haven't we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don't want to talk about that. It's so commonplace. I've thought of
+      something that you don't know. I'm sure of it. What's my name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miri&mdash;no, it isn't, by Jove! Wait half a second, and it'll come back
+      to me. You aren't&mdash;you can't? Why, those old tales&mdash;before I
+      went to school! I've never thought of 'em from that day to this. Are you
+      the original, only Annieanlouise?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was what you always called me ever since the beginning. Oh! We've
+      turned into the avenue, and we must be an hour late.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does it matter? The chain goes as far back as those days? It must,
+      of course&mdash;of course it must. I've got to ride round with this
+      pestilent old bird-confound him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'"Ha! ha!&rdquo; said the duck, laughing'&mdash;do you remember that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I do&mdash;flower-pots on my feet, and all. We've been together all
+      this while; and I've got to say good bye to you till dinner. Sure I'll see
+      you at dinner-time? Sure you won't sneak up to your room, darling, and
+      leave me all the evening? Good-bye, dear&mdash;good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, Boy, good-bye. Mind the arch! Don't let Rufus bolt into his
+      stables. Good-bye. Yes, I'll come down to dinner; but&mdash;what shall I
+      do when I see you in the light!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext The Day's Work [Vol. 1], by Kipling
+#14 in our series by Rudyard Kipling
+
+
+What we have here is a one volume edition, BUT there are two stories
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+Title:  The Day's Work [Vol. 1]
+
+Author:  Rudyard Kipling
+
+March, 2001  [Etext #2569]
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext The Day's Work [Vol. 1], by Kipling
+*****This file should be named dyswk10.txt or dyswk10.zip******
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+What we have here is a one volume edition, BUT there are two stories
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+
+
+
+
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+This Etext prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE DAY'S WORK
+
+by Rudyard Kipling
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS
+A WALKING DELEGATE
+THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF
+THE TOMB OF HIS ANCESTORS
+THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA
+WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR
+.007
+THE MALTESE CAT
+BREAD UPON THE WATERS"
+AN ERROR IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION
+MY SUNDAY AT HOME
+THE BRUSHWOOD BOY
+
+
+
+
+THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS
+
+
+The least that Findlayson, of the Public Works Department, expected
+was a C. I. E.; he dreamed of a C. S. I.: indeed, his friends told
+him that he deserved more.  For three years he had endured heat and
+cold, disappointment, discomfort, danger, and disease, with
+responsibility almost too heavy for one pair of shoulders; and day
+by day, through that time, the great Kashi Bridge over the Ganges
+had grown under his charge.  Now, in less than three months, if all
+went well, his Excellency the Viceroy would open the bridge in state,
+an archbishop would bless it, and the first trainload of soldiers
+would come over it, and there would be speeches.
+
+Findlayson, C. E., sat in his trolley on a construction line that
+ran along one of the main revetments - the huge stone-faced banks
+that flared away north and south for three miles on either side of
+the river - and permitted himself to think of the end.  With its
+approaches, his work was one mile and three-quarters fin length; a
+lattice-girder bridge, trussed with the Findlayson truss, standing
+on seven-and-twenty brick pies.  Each one of those piers was
+twenty-four feet in diameter, capped with red Agra stone and sunk
+eighty feet below the shifting sand of the Ganges' bed.  Above them
+was a railway-line fifteen feet broad; above that, again, a cart-road
+of eighteen feet, flanked with footpaths.  At either end rose towers
+of red brick, loopholed for musketry and pierced for big guns, and
+the ramp of the road was being pushed forward to their haunches.
+The raw earth-ends were crawling and alive with hundreds upon
+hundreds of tiny asses climbing out of the yawning borrow-pit below
+with sackfuls of stuff; and the hot afternoon air was filled with
+the noise of hooves, the rattle of the drivers' sticks, and the
+swish and roll-down of the dirt.  The river was very low, and on the
+dazzling white sand between the three centre piers stood squat cribs
+of railway-sleepers, filled within and daubed without with mud, to
+support the last of the girders as those were riveted up.  In the
+little deep water left by the drought, an overhead-crane travelled
+to and fro along its spile-pier, jerking sections of iron into place,
+snorting and backing and grunting as an elephant grunts in the
+timber-yard.  Riveters by the hundred swarmed about the lattice
+side-work and the iron roof of the railway-line, hung from invisible
+staging under the bellies of the girders, clustered round the throats
+of the piers, and rode on the overhang of the footpath-stanchions;
+their fire-pots and the spurts of flame that answered each
+hammer-stroke showing no more than pale yellow in the sun's glare.
+East and west and north and south the construction-trains rattled
+and shrieked up and down the embankments, the piled trucks of brown
+and white stone banging behind them till the side-boards were
+unpinned, and with a roar and a grumble a few thousand tons more
+material were flung out to hold the river in place.
+
+Findlayson, C. E., turned on his trolley and looked over the face
+of the country that he had changed for seven miles around.  Looked
+back on the humming village of five thousand workmen; up stream and
+down, along the vista of spurs and sand; across the river to the far
+piers, lessening in the haze; overhead to the guard-towers - and
+only he knew how strong those were - and with a sigh of contentment
+saw that his work was good.  There stood his bridge before him in
+the sunlight, lacking only a few weeks' work on the girders of the
+three middle piers - his bridge, raw and ugly as original sin, but
+pukka - permanent - to endure when all memory of the builder, yea,
+even of the splendid Findlayson truss, had perished.  Practically,
+the thing was done.
+
+Hitchcock, his assistant, cantered along the line on a little
+switch-tailed Kabuli pony who through long practice could have
+trotted securely over a trestle, and nodded to his chief.
+
+"All but," said he, with a smile.
+
+"I've been thinking about it," the senior answered.  "Not half a
+bad job for two men, is it?"
+
+"One-and a half.  Gad, what a Cooper's Hill cub I was when I came
+on the works!"  Hitchcock felt very old in the crowded experiences
+of the past three years, that had taught him power and responsibility.
+
+
+"You were rather a colt," said Findlayson.  "I wonder how you'll
+like going back to office-work when this job's over."
+
+"I shall hate it!" said the young man, and as he went on his eye
+followed Findlayson's, and he muttered, "Isn't it damned good?"
+
+"I think we'll go up the service together," Findlayson said to
+himself.  "You're too good a youngster to waste on another man.
+Cub thou wart; assistant thou art.  Personal assistant, and at
+Simla, thou shalt be, if any credit comes to me out of the
+business!"
+
+Indeed; the burden of the work had fallen altogether on Findlayson
+and his assistant, the young man whom he had chosen because of his
+rawness to break to his own needs.  There were labour contractors
+by the half-hundred - fitters and riveters, European, borrowed from
+the railway workshops, with, perhaps, twenty white and half-caste
+subordinates to direct, under direction, the bevies of workmen - but
+none knew better than these two, who trusted each other, how the
+underlings were not to be trusted.  They had been tried many times
+in sudden crises - by slipping of booms, by breaking of tackle,
+failure of cranes, and the wrath of the river - but no stress had
+brought to light any man among men whom Findlayson and Hitchcock
+would have honoured by working as remorselessly as they worked
+themselves.  Findlayson thought it over from the beginning: the
+months of office-work destroyed at a blow when the Government of
+India, at the last moment, added two feet to the width of the
+bridge, under the impression that bridges were cut out of paper,
+and so brought to ruin at least half an acre of calculations - and
+Hitchcock, new to disappointment, buried his head in his arms and
+wept; the heart-breaking delays over the filling of the contracts
+in England; the futile correspondences hinting at great wealth of
+commissions if one, only one, rather doubtful consignment were
+passed; the war that followed the refusal; the careful, polite
+obstruction at the other end that followed the war, till young
+Hitchcock, putting one month's leave to another month, and borrowing
+ten days from Findlayson, spent his poor little savings of a year
+in a wild dash to London, and there, as his own tongue asserted
+and the later consignments proved, put the fear of God into a man
+so great that he feared only Parliament and said so till Hitchcock
+wrought with him across his own dinner-table, and - he feared the
+Kashi Bridge and all who spoke in its name.  Then there was the
+cholera that came in the night to the village by the bridge works;
+and after the cholera smote the Smallpox.  The fever they had
+always with them.  Hitchcock had been appointed a magistrate of
+the third class with whipping powers, for the better government of
+the community, and Findlayson watched him wield his powers
+temperately, learning what to overlook and what to look after.  It
+was a long, long reverie, and it covered storm, sudden freshets,
+death in every manner and shape, violent and awful rage against red
+tape half frenzying a mind that knows it should be busy on other
+things; drought, sanitation, finance; birth, wedding, burial, and
+riot in the village of twenty warring castes; argument, expostulation,
+persuasion, and the blank despair that a man goes to bed upon,
+thankful that his rifle is all in pieces in the gun-case.  Behind
+everything rose the black frame of the Kashi Bridge - plate by plate,
+girder by girder, span by span-and each pier of it recalled
+Hitchcock, the all-round man, who had stood by his chief without
+failing from the very first to this last.
+
+So the bridge was two men's work - unless one counted Peroo, as Peroo
+certainly counted himself.  He was a Lascar, a Kharva from Bulsar,
+familiar with every port between Rockhampton and London, who had
+risen to the rank of sarang on the British India boats, but wearying
+of routine musters and clean clothes, had thrown up the service and
+gone inland, where men of his calibre were sure of employment.  For
+his knowledge of tackle and the handling of heavy weights, Peroo was
+worth almost any price he might have chosen to put upon his services;
+but custom decreed the wage of the overhead men, and Peroo was not
+within many silver pieces of his proper value.  Neither running
+water nor extreme heights made him afraid; and, as an ex-serang, he
+knew how to hold authority.  No piece of iron was so big or so badly
+placed that Peroo could not devise a tackle to lift it - a
+loose-ended, sagging arrangement, rigged with a scandalous amount
+of talking, but perfectly equal to the work in hand.  It was Peroo
+who had saved the girder of Number Seven pier from destruction when
+the new wire rope jammed in the eye of the crane, and the huge plate
+tilted in its slings, threatening to slide out sideways.  Then the
+native workmen lost their heads with great shoutings, and Hitchcock's
+right arm was broken by a falling T-plate, and he buttoned it up in
+his coat and swooned, and came to and directed for four hours till
+Peroo, from the top of the crane, reported "All's well," and the
+plate swung home.  There was no one like Peroo, serang, to lash, and
+guy, and hold to control the donkey-engines, to hoist a fallen
+locomotive craftily out of the borrow-pit into which it had tumbled;
+to strip, and dive, if need be, to see how the concrete blocks round
+the piers stood the scouring of Mother Gunga, or to adventure
+up-stream on a monsoon night and report on the state of the
+embankment-facings.  He would interrupt the field-councils of
+Findlayson and Hitchcock without fear, till his wonderful English,
+or his still more wonderful lingua franca, half Portuguese and half
+Malay, ran out and he was forced to take string and show the knots
+that he would recommend.  He controlled his own gang of tacklemen
+- mysterious relatives from Kutch Mandvi gathered month by month
+and tried to the uttermost.  No consideration of family or kin
+allowed Peroo to keep weak hands or a giddy head on the pay-roll.
+"My honour is the honour of this bridge," he would say to the
+about-to-bedismissed.  "What do I care for your honour?  Go and
+work on a steamer.  That is all you are fit for."
+
+The little cluster of huts where he and his gang lived centred
+round the tattered dwelling of a sea-priest - one who had never set
+foot on black water, but had been chosen as ghostly counsellor by
+two generations of sea-rovers all unaffected by port missions or
+those creeds which are thrust upon sailors by agencies along Thames
+bank.  The priest of the Lascara had nothing to do with their caste,
+or indeed with anything at all.  He ate the offerings of his church,
+and slept and smoked, and slept again "for," said Peroo, who had
+haled him a thousand miles inland, "he is a very holy man.  He never
+cares what you eat so long as you do not eat beef, and that is
+good, because on land we worship Shiva, we Kharvas; but at sea on
+the Kumpani's boats we attend strictly to the orders of the Burra
+Malum [the first mate], and on this bridge we observe what Finlinson
+Sahib says."
+
+Finlinson Sahib had that day given orders to clear the scaffolding
+from the guard-tower on the right bank, and Peroo with his mates was
+casting loose and lowering down the bamboo poles and planks as
+swiftly as ever they had whipped the cargo out of a coaster.
+
+>From his trolley he could hear the whistle of the serang's silver
+pipe and the creak and clatter of the pulleys.  Peroo was standing
+on the topmost coping of the tower, clad in the blue dungaree of
+his abandoned service, and as Findlayson motioned to him to be
+careful, for his was no life to throw away, he gripped the last
+pole, and, shading his eyes ship-fashion, answered with the
+long-drawn wail of the fo'c'sle lookout: "Ham dekhta hai " ("I am
+looking out").  Findlayson laughed and then sighed.  It was years
+since he had seen a steamer, and he was sick for home.  As his
+trolley passed under the tower, Peroo descended by a rope,
+ape-fashion, and cried: "It looks well now, Sahib.  Our bridge is
+all but done.  What think you Mother Gunga will say when the rail
+runs over?"
+
+"She has said little so far.  It was never Mother Gunga that delayed
+us."
+
+"There is always time for her; and none the less there has been
+delay.  Has the Sahib forgotten last autumn's flood, when the
+stoneboats were sunk without warning - or only a half-day's
+warning? "
+
+"Yes, but nothing save a big flood could hurt us now.  The spurs are
+holding well on the west bank."
+
+"Mother Gunga eats great allowances.  There is always room for more
+stone on the revetments.  I tell this to the Chota Sahib" - he meant
+Hitchcock-" and he laughs."
+
+"No matter, Peroo.  Another year thou wilt be able to build a bridge
+in thine own fashion."
+
+The Lascar grinned.  "Then it will not be in this way - with
+stonework sunk under water, as the Quetta was sunk.  I like
+sus-suspen-sheen bridges that fly from bank to bank, with one big
+step, like a gang-plank.  Then no water can hurt.  When does the
+Lord Sahib come to open the bridge?"
+
+"In three months, when the weather is cooler."
+
+"Ho!  ho!  He is like the Burra Malum.  He sleeps below while the
+work is being done.  Then he comes upon the quarter-deck and touches
+with his finger, and says: 'This is not clean!  Dam jibboonwallah!'"
+
+"But the Lord Sahib does not call me a dam jibboonwallah, Peroo."
+
+"No, Sahib; but he does not come on deck till the work is all
+finished.  Even the Burra Malum of the Nerbudda said once at
+Tuticorin -"
+
+"Bah!  Go!  I am busy."
+
+"I, also!" said Peroo, with an unshaken countenance.  "May I take
+the light dinghy now and row along the spurs?"
+
+"To hold them with thy hands?  They are, I think, sufficiently
+heavy."
+
+"Nay, Sahib.  It is thus.  At sea, on the Black Water, we have room
+to be blown up and down without care.  Here we have no room at all.
+Look you, we have put the river into a dock, and run her between
+stone sills."
+
+Findlayson smiled at the " we."
+
+"We have bitted and bridled her.  She is not like the sea, that can
+beat against a soft beach.  She is Mother Gunga - in irons."  His
+voice fell a little.
+
+"Peroo, thou hast been up and down the world more even than I.  Speak
+true talk, now.  How much dolt thou in thy heart believe of Mother
+Gunga?"
+
+"All that our priest says.  London is London, Sahib.  Sydney is
+Sydney, and Port Darwin is Port Darwin.  Also Mother Gunga is Mother
+Gunga, and when I come back to her banks I know this and worship.
+In London I did poojah to the big temple by the river for the sake
+of the God within .  .  .  .  Yes, I will not take the cushions in
+the dinghy."
+
+Findlayson mounted his horse and trotted to the shed of a bungalow
+that he shared with his assistant.  The place had become home to
+him in the last three years.  He had grilled in the heat, sweated
+in the rains, and shivered with fever under the rude thatch roof;
+the lime-wash beside the door was covered with rough drawings and
+formulae, and the sentry-path trodden in the matting of the verandah
+showed where he had walked alone.  There is no eight-hour limit to
+an engineer's work, and the evening meal with Hitchcock was eaten
+booted and spurred: over their cigars they listened to the hum of
+the village as the gangs came up from the river-bed and the lights
+began to twinkle.
+
+"Peroo has gone up the spurs in your dinghy.  He's taken a couple
+of nephews with him, and he's lolling in the stern like a
+commodore," said Hitchcock.
+
+"That's all right.  He's got something on his mind.  You'd think
+that ten years in the British India boats would have knocked most
+of his religion out of him."
+
+"So it has," said Hitchcock, chuckling.  "I overheard him the other
+day in the middle of a most atheistical talk with that fat old guru
+of theirs.  Peroo denied the efficacy of prayer; and wanted the
+guru to go to sea and watch a gale out with him, and see if he
+could stop a monsoon."
+
+"All the same, if you carried off his gurus he'd leave us like a
+shot.  He was yarning away to me about praying to the dome of St.
+Paul's when he was in London."
+
+"He told me that the first time he went into the engine-room of a
+steamer, when he was a boy, he prayed to the low-pressure cylinder."
+
+"Not half a bad thing to pray to, either.  He's propitiating his own
+Gods now, and he wants to know what Mother Gunga will think of a
+bridge being run across her.  Who's there?"  A shadow darkened the
+doorway, and a telegram was put into Hitchcock's hand.
+
+"She ought to be pretty well used to it by this time.  Only a tar.
+It ought to be Ralli's answer about the new rivets .  .  .  .  Great
+Heavens!" Hitchcock jumped to his feet.
+
+"What is it?" said the senior, and took the form.  "That's what
+Mother Gunga thinks, is it," he said, reading.  "Keep cool, young'un.
+We've got all our work cut out for us.  Let's see.  Muir wired half
+an hour ago: 'Floods on the Ramgunga.  Look out.'  Well, that gives
+us - one, two - nine and a half for the flood to reach Melipur Ghaut
+and seven's sixteen and a half to Lataoli - say fifteen hours before
+it comes down to us."
+
+"Curse that hill-fed sewer of a Ramgunga!  Findlayson, this is two
+months before anything could have been expected, and the left bank
+is littered up with stuff still.  Two full months before the time!"
+
+" That's why it comes.  I've only known Indian rivers for
+five-and-twenty years, and I don't pretend to understand.  Here comes
+another tar."  Findlayson opened the telegram.  "Cockran, this time,
+from the Ganges Canal: 'Heavy rains here.  Bad.'  He might have saved
+the last word.  Well, we don't want to know any more.  We've got to
+work the gangs all night and clean up the river-bed.  You'll take the
+east bank and work out to meet me in the middle.  Get every thing that
+floats below the bridge: we shall have quite enough rivercraft coming
+down adrift anyhow, without letting the stone-boats ram the piers.
+What have you got on the east bank that needs looking after "
+
+"Pontoon - one big pontoon with the overhead crane on it.  T'other
+overhead crane on the mended pontoon, with the cart-road rivets from
+Twenty to Twenty-three piers - two construction lines, and a
+turning-spur.  The pilework must take its chance," said Hitchcock.
+
+All right.  Roll up everything you can lay hands on.  We'll give the
+gang fifteen minutes more to eat their grub."
+
+Close to the verandah stood a big night-gong, never used except for
+flood, or fire in the village.  Hitchcock had called for a fresh
+horse, and was off to his side of the bridge when Findlayson took
+the cloth-bound stick and smote with the rubbing stroke that brings
+out the full thunder of the metal.
+
+Long before the last rumble ceased every night-gong in the village
+had taken up the warning.  To these were added the hoarse screaming
+of conches in the little temples; the throbbing of drums and tom-toms;
+and, from the European quarters, where the riveters lived,
+McCartney's bugle, a weapon of offence on Sundays and festivals,
+brayed desperately, calling to "Stables."  Engine after engine
+toiling home along the spurs at the end of her day's work whistled
+in answer till the whistles were answered from the far bank.  Then
+the big gong thundered thrice for a sign that it was flood and not
+fire; conch, drum, and whistle echoed the call, and the village
+quivered to the sound of bare feet running upon soft earth.  The
+order in all cases was to stand by the day's work and wait
+instructions.  The gangs poured by in the dusk; men stopping to knot
+a loin-cloth or fasten a sandal; gang-foremen shouting to their
+subordinates as they ran or paused by the tool-issue sheds for bars
+and mattocks; locomotives creeping down their tracks wheel-deep in
+the crowd; till the brown torrent disappeared into the dusk of the
+river-bed, raced over the pilework, swarmed along the lattices,
+clustered by the cranes, and stood still each man in his place.
+
+Then the troubled beating of the gong carried the order to take up
+everything and bear it beyond highwater mark, and the flare-lamps
+broke out by the hundred between the webs of dull iron as the
+riveters began a night's work, racing against the flood that was to
+come.  The girders of the three centre piers - those that stood on
+the cribs - were all but in position.  They needed just as many
+rivets as could be driven into them, for the flood would assuredly
+wash out their supports, and the ironwork would settle down on the
+caps of stone if they were not blocked at the ends.  A hundred
+crowbars strained at the sleepers of the temporary line that fed
+the unfinished piers.  It was heaved up in lengths, loaded into
+trucks, and backed up the bank beyond flood-level by the groaning
+locomotives.  The tool-sheds on the sands melted away before the
+attack of shouting armies, and with them went the stacked ranks of
+Government stores, iron-bound boxes of rivets, pliers, cutters,
+duplicate parts of the riveting-machines, spare pumps and chains.
+The big crane would be the last to be shifted, for she was hoisting
+all the heavy stuff up to the main structure of the bridge.  The
+concrete blocks on the fleet of stone-boats were dropped overside,
+where there was any depth of water, to guard the piers, and the
+empty boats themselves were poled under the bridge down-stream.  It
+was here that Peroo's pipe shrilled loudest, for the first stroke
+of the big gong had brought the dinghy back at racing speed, and
+Peroo and his people were stripped to the waist, working for the
+honour and credit which are better than life.
+
+"I knew she would speak," he cried.  "I knew, but the telegraph
+gives us good warning.  O sons of unthinkable begetting - children
+of unspeakable shame - are we here for the look of the thing?"  It
+was two feet of wire-rope frayed at the ends, and it did wonders
+as Peroo leaped from gunnel to gunnel, shouting the language of
+the sea.
+
+Findlayson was more troubled for the stone-boats than anything else.
+McCartney, with his gangs, was blocking up the ends of the three
+doubtful spans, but boats adrift, if the flood chanced to be a high
+one, might endanger the girders; and there was a very fleet in the
+shrunken channel.
+
+"Get them behind the swell of the guard-tower," he shouted down to
+Peroo.  "It will be dead-water there.  Get them below the bridge."
+
+"Accha! [Very good.]  I know; we are mooring them with wire-rope,"
+was the answer.  " Heh!  I Listen to the Chota Sahib.  He is working
+hard."
+
+>From across the river came an almost continuous whistling of
+locomotives, backed by the rumble of stone.  Hitchcock at the last
+minute was spending a few hundred more trucks of Tarakee stone in
+reinforcing his spurs and embankments.
+
+"The bridge challenges Mother Gunga," said Peroo, with a laugh.
+"But when she talks I know whose voice will be the loudest."
+
+For hours the naked men worked, screaming and shouting under the
+lights.  It was a hot, moonless night; the end of it was darkened by
+clouds and a sudden squall that made Findlayson very grave.
+
+"She moves! " said Peroo, just before the dawn.  "Mother Gunga is
+awake!  Hear!"  He dipped his hand over the side of a boat and the
+current mumbled on it.  A little wave hit the side of a pier with
+a crisp slap.
+
+"Six hours before her time," said Findlayson, mopping his forehead
+savagely.  "Now we can't depend on anything.  We'd better clear
+all hands out of the river-bed."
+
+Again the big gong beat, and a second time there was the rushing
+of naked feet on earth and ringing iron; the clatter of tools ceased.
+In the silence, men heard the dry yawn of water crawling over
+thirsty sand.
+
+Foreman after foreman shouted to Findlayson, who had posted himself
+by the guard-tower, that his section of the river-bed had been
+cleaned out, and when the last voice dropped Findlayson hurried over
+the bridge till the iron plating of the permanent way gave place to
+the temporary plank-walk over the three centre piers, and there he
+met Hitchcock.
+
+"All clear your side?" said Findlayson.  The whisper rang in the box
+of latticework.
+
+"Yes, and the east channel's filling now.  We're utterly out of our
+reckoning.  When is this thing down on us?"
+
+"There's no saying.  She's filling as fast as she can.  Look!"
+Findlayson pointed to the planks below his feet, where the sand,
+burned and defiled by months of work, was beginning to whisper
+and fizz.
+
+"What orders?" said Hitchcock.
+
+"Call the roll - count stores  -sit on your hunkers - and pray for
+the bridge.  That's all I can think of.  Good night.  Don't risk your
+life trying to fish out anything that may go down-stream."
+
+"Oh, I'll be as prudent as you are!  'Night.  Heavens, how she's
+filling!  Here's the rain in earnest!"  Findlayson picked his way
+back to his bank, sweeping the last of McCartney's riveters before
+him.  The gangs had spread themselves along the embankments,
+regardless of the cold rain of the dawn, and there they waited
+for the flood.  Only Peroo kept his men together behind the swell
+of the guard-tower, where the stone-boats lay tied fore and aft
+with hawsers, wire-rope, and chains.
+
+A shrill wail ran along the line, growing to a yell, half fear and
+half wonder: the face of the river whitened from bank to bank
+between the stone facings, and the faraway spurs went out in spouts
+of foam.  Mother Gunga had come bank-high in haste, and a wall of
+chocolate-coloured water was her messenger.  There was a shriek
+above the roar of the water, the complaint of the spans coming down
+on their blocks as the cribs were whirled out from under their
+bellies.  The stone-boats groaned and ground each other in the eddy
+that swung round the abutment, and their clumsy masts rose higher
+and higher against the dim sky-line.
+
+"Before she was shut between these walls we knew what she would do.
+Now she is thus cramped God only knows what she will do!" said Peroo,
+watching the furious turmoil round the guard-tower.  "Ohe!  Fight,
+then!  Fight hard, for it is thus that a woman wears herself out."
+
+But Mother Gunga would not fight as Peroo desired.  After the first
+down-stream plunge there came no more walls of water, but the river
+lifted herself bodily, as a snake when she drinks in midsummer,
+plucking and fingering along the revetments, and banking up behind
+the piers till even Findlayson began to recalculate the strength of
+his work.
+
+When day came the village gasped.  "Only last night," men said,
+turning to each other," it was as a town in the river-bed!  Look
+now!"
+
+And they looked and wondered afresh at the deep water, the racing
+water that licked the throat of the piers.  The farther bank was
+veiled by rain, into which the bridge ran out and vanished; the
+spurs up-stream were marked by no more than eddies and spoutings,
+and down-stream the pent river, once freed of her guide-lines, had
+spread like a sea to the horizon.  Then hurried by, rolling in the
+water, dead men and oxen together, with here and there a patch of
+thatched roof that melted when it touched a pier.
+
+"Big flood," said Peroo, and Findlayson nodded.  It was as big a
+flood as he had any wish to watch.  His bridge would stand what was
+upon her now, but not very much more, and if by any of a thousand
+chances there happened to be a weakness in the embankments, Mother
+Gunga would carry his honour to the sea with the other raffle.
+Worst of all, there was nothing to do except to sit still; and
+Findlayson sat still under his macintosh till his helmet became
+pulp on his head, and his boots were over-ankle in mire.  He took
+no count of time, for the river was marking the hours, inch by
+inch and foot by foot, along the embankment, and he listened, numb
+and hungry, to the straining of the stone-boats, the hollow thunder
+under the piers, and the hundred noises that make the full note of
+a flood.  Once a dripping servant brought him food, but he could
+not eat; and once he thought that he heard a faint toot from a
+locomotive across the river, and then he smiled.  The bridge's
+failure would hurt his assistant not a little, but Hitchcock was a
+young man with his big work yet to do.  For himself the crash meant
+everything - everything that made a hard life worth the living.
+They would say, the men of his own profession .  .  .  he remembered
+the half pitying things that he himself had said when Lockhart's
+new waterworks burst and broke down in brickheaps and sludge, and
+Lockhart's spirit broke in him and he died.  He remembered what he
+himself had said when the Sumao Bridge went out in the big cyclone
+by the sea; and most he remembered poor Hartopp's face three weeks
+later, when the shame had marked it.  His bridge was twice the size
+of Hartopp's, and it carried the Findlayson truss as well as the
+new pier-shoe - the Findlayson bolted shoe.  There were no excuses
+in his service.  Government might listen, perhaps, but his own kind
+would judge him by his bridge, as that stood or fell.  He went over
+it in his head, plate by plate, span by span, brick by brick, pier
+by pier, remembering, comparing, estimating, and recalculating,
+lest there should be any mistake; and through the long hours and
+through the flights of formulae that danced and wheeled before him
+a cold fear would come to pinch his heart.  His side of the sum
+was beyond question; but what man knew Mother Gunga's arithmetic?
+Even as he was making all sure by the multiplication-table, the
+river might be scooping a pot-hole to the very bottom of any one of
+those eighty-foot piers that carried his reputation.  Again a servant
+came to him with food, but his mouth was dry, and he could only
+drink and return to the decimals in his brain.  And the river was
+still rising.  Peroo, in a mat shelter-coat, crouched at his feet,
+watching now his face and now the face of the river, but saying
+nothing.
+
+At last the Lascar rose and floundered through the mud towards the
+village, but he was careful to leave an ally to watch the boats.
+
+Presently he returned, most irreverently driving before him the
+priest of his creed - a fat old man, with a grey beard that
+whipped the wind with the wet cloth that blew over his shoulder.
+Never was seen so lamentable a guru.
+
+"What good are offerings and little kerosene lamps and dry grain,"
+shouted Peroo, " if squatting in the mud is all that thou canst
+do?  Thou hast dealt long with the Gods when they were contented
+and well-wishing.  Now they are angry.  Speak to them!"
+
+"What is a man against the wrath of Gods?" whined the priest,
+cowering as the wind took him.  "Let me go to the temple, and I
+will pray there."
+
+"Son of a pig, pray here!  Is there no return for salt fish and
+curry powder and dried onions?  Call aloud!  Tell Mother Gunga
+we have had enough.  Bid her be still for the night.  I cannot
+pray, but I have been serving in the Kumpani's boats, and when
+men did not obey my orders I -"  A flourish of the wire-rope
+colt rounded the sentence, and the priest, breaking free from his
+disciple, fled to the village.
+
+"Fat pig!" said Peroo.  "After all that we have done for him!
+When the flood is down I will see to it that we get a new guru.
+Finlinson Sahib, it darkens for night now, and since yesterday
+nothing has been eaten.  Be wise, Sahib.  No man can endure
+watching and great thinking on an empty belly.  Lie down, Sahib.
+The river will do what the river will do."
+
+"The bridge is mine; I cannot leave it."
+
+"Wilt thou hold it up with thy hands, then?" said Peroo, laughing.
+"I was troubled for my boats and sheers before the flood came.  Now
+we are in the hands of the Gods.  The Sahib will not eat and lie
+down?  Take these, then.  They are meat and good toddy together,
+and they kill all weariness, besides the fever that follows the
+rain.  I have eaten nothing else to-day at all."
+
+He took a small tin tobacco-box from his sodden waistbelt and
+thrust it into Findlayson's hand, saying " Nay, do not be afraid.
+It is no more than opium - clean Malwa opium!"
+
+Findlayson shook two or three of the dark-brown pellets into his
+hand, and hardly knowing what he did, swallowed them.  The stuff
+was at least a good guard against fever - the fever that was
+creeping upon him out of the wet mud - and he had seen what Peroo
+could do in the stewing mists of autumn on the strength of a dose
+from the tin box.
+
+Peroo nodded with bright eyes.  "In a little - in a little the
+Sahib will find that he thinks well again.  I too will -"  He dived
+into his treasure-box, resettled the rain-coat over his head, and
+squatted down to watch the boats.  It was too dark now to see beyond
+the first pier, and the night seemed to have given the river new
+strength.  Findlayson stood with his chin on his chest, thinking.
+There was one point about one of the piers - the seventh - that he
+had not fully settled in his mind.  The figures would not shape
+themselves to the eye except one by one and at enormous intervals
+of time.  There was a sound rich and mellow in his ears like the
+deepest note of a double-bass - an entrancing sound upon which he
+pondered for several hours, as it seemed.  Then Peroo was at his
+elbow, shouting that a wire hawser had snapped and the stone-boats
+were loose.  Findlayson saw the fleet open and swing out fanwise
+to a long-drawn shriek of wire straining across gunnels.
+
+"A tree hit them.  They will all go," cried Peroo.  "The main
+hawser has parted.  What does the Sahib do? "
+
+An immensely complex plan had suddenly flashed into Findlayson's
+mind.  He saw the ropes running from boat to boat in straight
+lines and angles - each rope a line of white fire.  But there was
+one rope which was the master rope.  He could see that rope.  If
+he could pull it once, it was absolutely and mathematically
+certain that the disordered fleet would reassemble itself in the
+backwater behind the guard-tower.  But why, he wondered, was Peroo
+clinging so desperately to his waist as he hastened down the bank?
+It was necessary to put the Lascar aside, gently and slowly, because
+it was necessary to save the boats, and, further, to demonstrate
+the extreme ease of the problem that looked so difficult.  And then
+ - but it was of no conceivable importance - a wirerope raced
+through his hand, burning it, the high bank disappeared, and with
+it all the slowly dispersing factors of the problem.  He was sitting
+in the rainy darkness - sitting in a boat that spun like a top,
+and Peroo was standing over him.
+
+"I had forgotten," said the Lascar, slowly, "that to those fasting
+and unused, the opium is worse than any wine.  Those who die in
+Gunga go to the Gods.  Still, I have no desire to present myself
+before such great ones.  Can the Sahib swim?"
+
+"What need?  He can fly - fly as swiftly as the wind," was the thick
+answer.
+
+"He is mad!" muttered Peroo, under his breath.  "And he threw me
+aside like a bundle of dung-cakes.  Well, he will not know his death.
+The boat cannot live an hour here even if she strike nothing.  It
+is not good to look at death with a clear eye."
+
+He refreshed himself again from the tin box, squatted down in the
+bows of the reeling, pegged, and stitched craft, staring through
+the mist at the nothing that was there.  A warm drowsiness crept
+over Findlayson, the Chief Engineer, whose duty was with his bridge.
+The heavy raindrops struck him with a thousand tingling little
+thrills, and the weight of all time since time was made hung heavy
+on his eyelids.  He thought and perceived that he was perfectly
+secure, for the water was so solid that a man could surely step out
+upon it, and, standing still with his legs apart to keep his
+balance - this was the most important point - would be borne with
+great and easy speed to the shore.  But yet a better plan came to
+him.  It needed only an exertion of will for the soul to hurl the
+body ashore as wind drives paper, to waft it kite-fashion to the
+bank.  Thereafter - the boat spun dizzily - suppose the high wind
+got under the freed body?  Would it tower up like a kite and pitch
+headlong on the far-away sands, or would it duck about, beyond
+control, through all eternity?  Findlayson gripped the gunnel to
+anchor himself, for it seemed that he was on the edge of taking
+the flight before he had settled all his plans.  Opium has more
+effect on the white man than the black.  Peroo was only
+comfortably indifferent to accidents.  "She cannot live," he
+grunted.  "Her seams open already.  If she were even a dinghy with
+oars we could have ridden it out; but a box with holes is no good.
+Finlinson Sahib, she fills."
+
+"Accha!  I am going away.  Come thou also."
+
+In his mind, Findlayson had already escaped from the boat, and was
+circling high in air to find a rest for the sole of his foot.  His
+body - he was really sorry for its gross helplessness - lay in the
+stern, the water rushing about its knees.
+
+"How very ridiculous!" he said to himself, from his eyrie - "that
+is Findlayson - chief of the Kashi Bridge.  The poor beast is going
+to be drowned, too.  Drowned when it's close to shore.  I'm - I'm
+onshore already.  Why doesn't it come along."
+
+To his intense disgust, he found his soul back in his body again,
+and that body spluttering and choking in deep water.  The pain of
+the reunion was atrocious, but it was necessary, also, to fight for
+the body.  He was conscious of grasping wildly at wet sand, and
+striding prodigiously, as one strides in a dream, to keep foothold
+in the swirling water, till at last he hauled himself clear of the
+hold of the river, and dropped, panting, on wet earth.
+
+"Not this night," said Peroo, in his ear.  "The Gods have protected
+us."  The Lascar moved his feet cautiously, and they rustled among
+dried stumps.  "This is some island of last year's indigo-crop," he
+went on.  "We shall find no men here; but have great care, Sahib;
+all the snakes of a hundred miles have been flooded out.  Here comes
+the lightning, on the heels of the wind.  Now we shall be able to
+look; but walk carefully."
+
+Findlayson was far and far beyond any fear of snakes, or indeed any
+merely human emotion.  He saw, after he had rubbed the water from
+his eyes, with an immense clearness, and trod, so it seemed to
+himself, with world-encompassing strides.  Somewhere in the night
+of time he had built a bridge - a bridge that spanned illimitable
+levels of shining seas; but the Deluge had swept it away, leaving
+this one island under heaven for Findlayson and his companion,
+sole survivors of the breed of Man.
+
+An incessant lightning, forked and blue, showed all that there was
+to be seen on the little patch in the flood - a clump of thorn, a
+clump of swaying creaking bamboos, and a grey gnarled peepul
+overshadowing a Hindoo shrine, from whose dome floated a tattered
+red flag.  The holy man whose summer resting-place it was had long
+since abandoned it, and the weather had broken the red-daubed image
+of his god.  The two men stumbled, heavy limbed and heavy-eyed, over
+the ashes of a brick-set cooking-place, and dropped down under the
+shelter of the branches, while the rain and river roared together.
+
+The stumps of the indigo crackled, and there was a smell of cattle,
+as a huge and dripping Brahminee bull shouldered his way under the
+tree.  The flashes revealed the trident mark of Shiva on his flank,
+the insolence of head and hump, the luminous stag-like eyes, the
+brow crowned with a wreath of sodden marigold blooms, and the silky
+dewlap that almost swept the ground.  There was a noise behind him
+of other beasts coming up from the floodline through the thicket,
+a sound of heavy feet and deep breathing.
+
+"Here be more beside ourselves," said Findlayson, his head against
+the tree-pole, looking through half-shut eyes, wholly at ease.
+
+" Truly," said Peroo, thickly, "and no small ones."
+
+"What are they, then?  I do not see clearly."
+
+"The Gods.  Who else?  Look!"
+
+"Ah, true!  The Gods surely - the Gods."  Findlayson smiled as his
+head fell forward on his chest.  Peroo was eminently right.  After
+the Flood, who should be alive in the land except the Gods that
+made it - the Gods to whom his village prayed nightly - the Gods
+who were in all men's mouths and about all men's ways.  He could
+not raise his head or stir a finger for the trance that held him,
+and Peroo was smiling vacantly at the lightning.
+
+The Bull paused by the shrine, his head lowered to the damp earth.
+A green Parrot in the branches preened his wet wings and screamed
+against the thunder as the circle under the tree filled with the
+shifting shadows of beasts.  There was a black Buck at the Bull's
+heels - such a Buck as Findlayson in his far-away life upon earth
+might have seen in dreams - a Buck with a royal head, ebon back,
+silver belly, and gleaming straight horns.  Beside him, her head
+bowed to the ground, the green eyes burning under the heavy brows,
+with restless tail switching the dead grass, paced a Tigress,
+full-bellied and deep-jowled.
+
+The Bull crouched beside the shrine, and there leaped from the
+darkness a monstrous grey Ape, who seated himself man-wise in the
+place of the fallen image, and the rain spilled like jewels from
+the hair of his neck and shoulders.
+
+Other shadows came and went behind the circle, among them a drunken
+Man flourishing staff and drinking-bottle.  Then a hoarse bellow
+broke out from near the ground.  "The flood lessens even now," it
+cried.  "Hour by hour the water falls, and their bridge still
+stands!"
+
+"My bridge," said Findlayson to himself.  "That must be very old
+work now.  What have the Gods to do with my bridge?"
+
+His eyes rolled in the darkness following the roar.  A Mugger - the
+blunt-nosed, ford-haunting Mugger of the Ganges - draggled herself
+before the beasts, lashing furiously to right and left with her tail.
+
+"They have made it too strong for me.  In all this night I have
+only torn away a handful of planks.  The walls stand.  The towers
+stand.  They have chained my flood, and the river is not free any
+more.  Heavenly Ones, take this yoke away!  Give me clear water
+between bank and bank!  It is I, Mother Gunga, that speak.  The
+Justice of the Gods!  Deal me the Justice of the Gods!"
+
+"What said I?" whispered Peroo.  "This is in truth a Punchayet of
+the Gods.  Now we know that all the world is dead, save you and I,
+Sahib."
+
+The Parrot screamed and fluttered again, and the Tigress, her ears
+flat to her head, snarled wickedly.
+
+Somewhere in the shadow, a great trunk and gleaming tusks swayed to
+and fro, and a low gurgle broke the silence that followed on the
+snarl.
+
+"We be here," said a deep voice, " the Great Ones.  One only and
+very many.  Shiv, my father, is here, with Indra.  Kali has spoken
+already.  Hanuman listens also."
+
+"Kashi is without her Kotwal tonight," shouted the Man with the
+drinking-bottle, flinging his staff to the ground, while the island
+rang to the baying of hounds.  "Give her the Justice of the Gods."
+
+"Ye were still when they polluted my waters," the great Crocodile
+bellowed.  "Ye made no sign when my river was trapped between the
+walls.  I had no help save my own strength, and that failed - the
+strength of Mother Gunga failed - before their guard-towers.  What
+could I do?  I have done everything.  Finish now, Heavenly Ones!"
+
+"I brought the death; I rode the spotted sickness from hut to hut
+of their workmen, and yet they would not cease."  A nose-slitten,
+hide-worn Ass, lame, scissor-legged, and galled, limped forward.
+"I cast the death at them out of my nostrils, but they would not
+cease."
+
+Peroo would have moved, but the opium lay heavy upon him.
+
+"Bah!" he said, spitting.  "Here is Sitala herself; Mata - the
+smallpox.  Has the Sahib a handkerchief to put over his face?"
+
+"Little help!  They fed me the corpses for a month, and I flung
+them out on my sand-bars, but their work went forward.  Demons they
+are, and sons of demons!  And ye left Mother Gunga alone for their
+fire-carriage to make a mock of.  The Justice of the Gods on the
+bridge-builders!"
+
+The Bull turned the cud in his mouth and answered slowly: "If the
+Justice of the Gods caught all who made a mock of holy things
+there would be many dark altars in the land, mother."
+
+"But this goes beyond a mock," said the Tigress, darting forward a
+griping paw.  "Thou knowest, Shiv, and ye, too, Heavenly Ones; ye
+know that they have defiled Gunga.  Surely they must come to the
+Destroyer.  Let Indra judge."
+
+The Buck made no movement as he answered: " How long has this
+evil been?"
+
+"Three years, as men count years," said the Mugger, close pressed
+to the earth.
+
+"Does Mother Gunga die, then, in a year, that she is so anxious to
+see vengeance now?  The deep sea was where she runs but yesterday,
+and tomorrow the sea shall cover her again as the Gods count that
+which men call time.  Can any say that this their bridge endures
+till tomorrow?" said the Buck.
+
+There was along hush, and in the clearing of the storm the full
+moon stood up above the dripping trees.
+
+"Judge ye, then," said the River, sullenly.  "I have spoken my shame.
+The flood falls still.  I can do no more."
+
+"For my own part" - it was the voice of the great Ape seated within
+the shrine - "it pleases me well to watch these men, remembering
+that I also builded no small bridge in the world's youth."
+
+"They say, too," snarled the Tiger, "that these men came of the wreck
+of thy armies, Hanuman, and therefore thou hast aided -"
+
+"They toil as my armies toiled in Lanka, and they believe that their
+toil endures.  Indra is too high, but Shiv, thou knowest how the
+land is threaded with their fire-carriages."
+
+"Yea, I know," said the Bull.  "Their Gods instructed them in the
+matter."
+
+A laugh ran round the circle.
+
+"Their Gods!  What should their Gods know?  They were born
+yesterday, and those that made them are scarcely yet cold," said
+the Mugger.  "tomorrow their Gods will die."
+
+"Ho!" said Peroo.  "Mother Gunga talks good talk.  I told that to
+the padre-sahib who preached on the Mombassa, and he asked the Burra
+Malum to put me in irons for a great rudeness."
+
+"Surely they make these things to please their Gods," said the Bull
+again.
+
+"Not altogether," the Elephant rolled forth.  "It is for the profit
+of my mahajuns fat money-lenders that worship me at each new year,
+when they draw my image at the head of the account-books.  I,
+looking over their shoulders by lamplight, see that the names in
+the books are those of men in far places - for all the towns are
+drawn together by the fire-carriage, and the money comes and goes
+swiftly, and the account-books grow as fat as myself.  And I, who
+am Ganesh of Good Luck, I bless my peoples."
+
+"They have changed the face of the land-which is my land.  They have
+killed and made new towns on my banks," said the Mugger.
+
+"It is but the shifting of a little dirt.  Let the dirt dig in the
+dirt if it pleases the dirt," answered the Elephant.
+
+"But afterwards? "said the Tiger.  "Afterwards they will see that
+Mother Gunga can avenge no insult, and they fall away from her
+first, and later from us all, one by one.  In the end, Ganesh, we
+are left with naked altars."
+
+The drunken Man staggered to his feet, and hiccupped vehemently.
+
+"Kali lies.  My sister lies.  Also this my stick is the Kotwal of
+Kashi, and he keeps tally of my pilgrims.  When the time comes to
+worship Bhairon - and it is always time - the fire-carriages move
+one by one, and each hears a thousand pilgrims.  They do not come
+afoot any more, but rolling upon wheels, and my honour is increased."
+
+"Gunga, I have seen thy bed at Pryag black with the pilgrims," said
+the Ape, leaning forward, "and but for the fire-carriage they would
+have come slowly and in fewer numbers.  Remember."
+
+"They come to me always," Bhairon went on thickly.  "By day and
+night they pray to me, all the Common People in the fields and the
+roads.  Who is like Bhairon today?  What talk is this of changing
+faiths?  Is my staff Kotwal of Kashi for nothing?  He keeps the
+tally, and he says that never were so many altars as today, and
+the fire carriage serves them well.  Bhairon am I - Bhairon of the
+Common People, and the chiefest of tithe Heavenly Ones today.
+Also my staff says -"
+
+"Peace, thou!" lowed the Bull.  "The worship of the schools is mine,
+and they talk very wisely, asking whether I be one or many, as is
+the delight of my people, and ye know what I am.  Kali, my wife,
+thou knowest also."
+
+"Yea, I know," said the Tigress, with lowered head.
+
+"Greater am I than Gunga also.  For ye know who moved the minds of
+men that they should count Gunga holy among the rivers.  Who die in
+that water - ye know how men say - come to us without punishment,
+and Gunga knows that the fire-carriage has borne to her scores upon
+scores of such anxious ones; and Kali knows that she has held her
+chiefest festivals among the pilgrimages that are fed by the
+fire-carriage.  Who smote at Pooree, under the Image there, her
+thousands in a day and a night, and bound the sickness to the wheels
+of the fire-carriages, so that it ran from one end of the land to
+the other?  Who but Kali?  Before the fire-carriage came it was a
+heavy toil.  The fire-carriages have served thee well, Mother of
+Death.  But I speak for mine own altars, who am not Bhairon of the
+Common Folk, but Shiv.  Men go to and fro, making words and telling
+talk of strange Gods, and I listen.  Faith follows faith among my
+people in the schools, and I have no anger; for when all words are
+said, and the new talk is ended, to Shiv men return at the last."
+
+"True.  It is true," murmured Hanuman.  "To Shiv and to the others,
+mother, they return.  I creep from temple to temple in the North,
+where they worship one God and His Prophet; and presently my image
+is alone within their shrines."
+
+"Small thanks," said the Buck, turning his head slowly.  "I am that
+One and His Prophet also."
+
+"Even so, father," said Hanuman.  "And to the South I go who am the
+oldest of the Gods as men know the Gods, and presently I touch the
+shrines of the New 'Faith and the Woman whom we know is hewn
+twelve-armed, and still they call her Mary."
+
+Small thanks, brother," said the Tigress.  "I am that Woman."
+
+"Even so, sister; and I go West among the fire-carriages, and stand
+before the bridge-builders in many shapes, and because of me they
+change their faiths and are very wise.  Ho!  ho!  I am the builder
+of bridges, indeed - bridges between this and that, and each bridge
+leads surely to Us in the end.  Be content, Gunga.
+
+"Neither these men nor those that follow them mock thee at all."
+
+"Am I alone, then, Heavenly Ones?  Shall I smooth out my flood lest
+unhappily I bear away their walls?  Will Indra dry my springs in
+the hills and make me crawl humbly between their wharfs?  Shall I
+bury me in the sand ere I offend?"
+
+"And all for the sake of a little iron bar with the fire-carriage
+atop.  Truly, Mother Gunga is always young!" said Ganesh the Elephant.
+"A child had not spoken more foolishly.  Let the dirt dig in the
+dirt ere it return to the dirt.  I know only that my people grow
+rich and praise me.  Shiv has said that the men of the schools do
+not forget; Bhairon is content for his crowd of the Common People;
+and Hanuman laughs."
+
+"Surely I laugh," said the Ape.  "My altars are few beside those of
+Ganesh or Bhairon, but the fire-carriages bring me new worshippers
+from beyond the Black Water - the men who believe that their God is
+toil.  I run before them beckoning, and they follow Hanuman."
+
+"Give them the toil that they desire, then," said the River.  "Make
+a bar across my flood and throw the water back upon the bridge.
+Once thou wast strong in Lanka, Hanuman.  Stoop and lift my bed."
+
+"Who gives life can take life."  The Ape scratched in the mud with
+a long forefinger.  "And yet, who would profit by the killing?  Very
+many would die."
+
+There came up from the water a snatch of a love-song such as the
+boys sing when they watch their cattle in the noon heats of late
+spring.  The Parrot screamed joyously, sidling along his branch with
+lowered head as the song grew louder, and in a patch of clear
+moonlight stood revealed the young herd, the darling of the Gopis,
+the idol of dreaming maids and of mothers ere their children are
+born - Krishna the Well-beloved.  He stooped to knot up his long wet
+hair, and the parrot fluttered to his shoulder.
+
+"Fleeting and singing, and singing and fleeting," hiccupped Bhairon.
+"Those make thee late for the council, brother."
+
+"And then?" said Krishna, with a laugh, throwing back his head.  "Ye
+can do little without me or Karma here."  He fondled the Parrot's
+plumage and laughed again.  "What is this sitting and talking
+together?  I heard Mother Gunga roaring in the dark, and so came
+quickly from a but where I lay warm.  And what have ye done to Karma,
+that he is so wet and silent?  And what does Mother Gunga here?  Are
+the heavens full that ye must come paddling in the mud beast-wise?
+Karma, what do they do?"
+
+"Gunga has prayed for a vengeance on the bridgebuilders, and Kali is
+with her.  Now she bids Hanuman whelm the bridge, that her honour
+may be made great," cried the Parrot.  "I waited here, knowing that
+thou wouldst come, O my master!"
+
+"And the Heavenly Ones said nothing?  Did Gunga and the Mother of
+Sorrows out-talk them?  Did none speak for my people?"
+
+"Nay," said Ganesh, moving uneasily from foot to foot; "I said it
+was but dirt at play, and why should we stamp it flat?"
+
+"I was content to let them toil - well content," said Hanuman.
+
+"What had I to do with Gunga's anger "said the Bull.
+
+"I am Bhairon of the Common Folk, and this my staff is Kotwal of
+all Kashi.  I spoke for the Common People."
+
+"Thou?"  The young God's eyes sparkled.
+
+"Am I not the first of the Gods in their mouths today?" returned
+Bhairon, unabashed.  "For the sake of the Common People I said very
+many wise things which I have now forgotten, but this my staff -"
+
+Krishna turned impatiently, saw the Mugger at his feet, and kneeling,
+slipped an arm round the cold neck.  "Mother," he said gently, "get
+thee to thy flood again.  This matter is not for thee.  What harm
+shall thy honour take of this live dirt?  Thou hast given them their
+fields new year after year, and by thy flood they are made strong.
+They come all to thee at the last.  What need to slay them now?
+Have pity, mother, for a little and it is only for a little."
+
+"If it be only for a little -" the slow beast began.
+
+"Are they Gods, then?" Krishna, returned with a laugh, his eyes
+looking into the dull eyes of the River.  "Be certain that it is
+only for a little.  The Heavenly Ones have heard thee, and
+presently justice will be done.  Go now, mother, to the flood again.
+Men and cattle are thick on the waters - the banks fall - the
+villages melt because of thee."
+
+"But the bridge-the bridge stands."  The Mugger turned grunting
+into the undergrowth as Krishna rose.
+
+"It is ended," said the Tigress, viciously.  "There is no more
+justice from the Heavenly Ones.  Ye have made shame and sport of
+Gunga, who asked no more than a few score lives."
+
+"Of my people - who lie under the leaf-roofs of the village yonder
+ - of the young girls, and the young men who sing to them in the
+dark of the child that will be born next morn - of that which was
+begotten tonight," said Krishna.  "And when all is done, what
+profit?  Tomorrow sees them at work.  Ay, if ye swept the bridge out
+from end to end they would begin anew.  Hear me!  Bhairon is drunk
+always.  Hanuman mocks his people with new riddles."
+
+"Nay, but they are very old ones," the Ape said, laughing.
+
+"Shiv hears the talk of the schools and the dreams of the holy men;
+Ganesh thinks only of his fat traders; but I - I live with these my
+people, asking for no gifts, and so receiving them hourly."
+
+"And very tender art thou of thy people," said the Tigress.
+
+"They are my own.  The old women dream of me turning in their sleep;
+the maids look and listen for me when they go to fill their lotahs
+by the river.  I walk by the young men waiting without the gates at
+dusk, and I call over my shoulder to the whitebeards.  Ye know,
+Heavenly Ones, that I alone of us all walk upon the earth continually,
+and have no pleasure in our heavens so long ,as a green blade springs
+here, or there are two voices at twilight in the standing crops.
+Wise are ye, but ye live far off, forgetting whence ye came.  So do
+I not forget.  And the fire-carriage feeds your shrines, ye say?  And
+the fire-carriages bring a thousand pilgrims where but ten came in
+the old years?  True.  That is true, today."
+
+But tomorrow they are dead, brother," said Ganesh.
+
+"Peace!" said the Bull, as Hanuman leaned forward again.  "And
+tomorrow, beloved - what of tomorrow?"
+
+"This only.  A new word creeping from mouth to mouth among the
+Common Folk - a word that neither man nor God can lay hold of - an
+evil word - a little lazy word among the Common Folk, saying (and
+none know who set that word afoot) that they weary of ye, Heavenly
+Ones."
+
+The Gods laughed together softly.  "And then, beloved?" they said.
+
+"And to cover that weariness they, my people, will bring to thee,
+Shiv, and to thee, Ganesh, at first greater offerings and a louder
+noise of worship.  But the word has gone abroad, and, after, they
+will pay fewer dues to our fat Brahmins.  Next they will forget your
+altars, but so slowly that no man can say how his forgetfulness
+began.
+
+"I knew - I knew! I spoke this also, but they would not hear," said
+the Tigress.  "We should have slain - we should have slain! "
+
+"It is too late now.  Ye should have slain at the beginning when the
+men from across the water had taught our folk nothing.  Now my
+people see their work, and go away thinking.  They do not think of
+the Heavenly Ones altogether.  They think of the fire-carriage and
+the other things that the bridge-builders have done, and when your
+priests thrust forward hands asking alms, they give a little
+unwillingly.  That is the beginning, among one or two, or five or
+ten - for I, moving among my people, know what is in their hearts."
+
+"And the end, Jester of the Gods?  What shall the end be? " said
+Ganesh.
+
+"The end shall be as it was in the beginning, O slothful son of
+Shiv!  The flame shall die upon the altars and the prayer upon the
+tongue till ye become little Gods again - Gods of the jungle - names
+that the hunters of rats and noosers of dogs whisper in the thicket
+and among the caves - rag-Gods, pot Godlings of the tree, and the
+villagemark, as ye were at the beginning.  That is the end, Ganesh,
+for thee, and for Bhairon - Bhairon of the Common People."
+
+"It is very far away," grunted Bhairon.  "Also, it is a lie."
+
+"Many women have kissed Krishna.  They told him this to cheer
+their own hearts when the grey hairs came, and he has told us the
+tale," said the Bull, below his breath.
+
+"Their Gods came, and we changed them.  I took the Woman and made
+her twelve-armed.  So shall we twist all their Gods," said Hanuman.
+
+" Their Gods!  This is no question of their Gods - one or three - man
+or woman.  The matter is with the people.  They move, and not the
+Gods of the bridgebuilders," said Krishna.
+
+"So be it.  I have made a man worship the fire-carriage as it stood
+still breathing smoke, and he knew not that he worshipped me," said
+Hanuman the Ape.  "They will only change a little the names of their
+Gods.  I shall lead the builders of the bridges as of old; Shiv
+shall be worshipped in the schools by such as doubt and despise
+their fellows; Ganesh shall have his mahajuns, and Bhairon the
+donkey-drivers, the pilgrims, and the sellers of toys.  Beloved,
+they will do no more than change the names, and that we have seen
+a thousand times."
+
+"Surely they will do no more than change the names," echoed Ganesh;
+but there was an uneasy movement among the Gods.
+
+"They will change more than the names.  Me alone they cannot kill,
+so long as a maiden and a man meet together or the spring follows
+the winter rains.  Heavenly Ones, not for nothing have I walked
+upon the earth.  My people know not now what they know; but I, who
+live with them, I read their hearts.  Great Kings, the beginning
+of the end is born already.  The fire-carriages shout the names of
+new Gods that are not the old under new names.  Drink now and eat
+greatly!  Bathe your faces in the smoke of the altars before they
+grow cold!  Take dues and listen to the cymbals and the drums,
+Heavenly Ones, while yet there are flowers and songs.  As men count
+time the end is far off; but as we who know reckon it is today.  I
+have spoken."
+
+The young God ceased, and his brethren looked at each other long
+in silence.
+
+"This I have not heard before," Peroo whispered in his companion's
+ear.  "And yet sometimes, when I oiled the brasses in the
+engine-room of the Goorkha, I have wondered if our priests were so
+wise - so wise.  The day is coming, Sahib.  They will be gone by
+the morning."
+
+A yellow light broadened in the sky, and the tone of the river
+changed as the darkness withdrew.
+
+Suddenly the Elephant trumpeted aloud as though man had goaded him.
+
+"Let Indra judge.  Father of all, speak thou!  What of the things
+we have heard?  Has Krishna lied indeed?  Or -"
+
+"Ye know, " said the Buck, rising to his feet.  "Ye know the Riddle
+of the Gods.  When Brahm ceases to dream, the Heavens and the Hells
+and Earth disappear.  Be content.  Brahm dreams still.  The dreams
+come and go, and the nature of the dreams changes, but still Brahm
+dreams.  Krishna has walked too long upon earth, and yet I love him
+the more for the tale he has told.  The Gods change, beloved-all
+save One!"
+
+"Ay, all save one that makes love in the hearts of men," said
+Krishna, knotting his girdle.  "It is but a little time to wait,
+and ye shall know if I lie."
+
+"Truly it is but a little time, as thou sayest, and we shall know.
+Get thee to thy huts again, beloved, and make sport for the young
+things, for still Brahm dreams.  Go, my children!  Brahm dreams
+ - and till he wakes the Gods die not."
+
+"Whither went they?" said the Lascar, awe-struck, shivering a
+little with the cold.
+
+"God knows!" said Findlayson.  The river and the island lay in
+full daylight now, and there was never mark of hoof or pug on the
+wet earth under the peepul.  Only a parrot screamed in the branches,
+bringing down showers of water-drops as he fluttered his wings.
+
+"Up!  We are cramped with cold!  Has the opium died out?  Canst
+thou move, Sahib?"
+
+Findlayson staggered to his feet and shook himself.  His head swam
+and ached, but the work of the opium was over, and, as he sluiced
+his forehead in a pool, the Chief Engineer of the Kashi Bridge was
+wondering how he had managed to fall upon the island, what chances
+the day offered of return, and, above all, how his work stood.
+
+"Peroo, I have forgotten much.  I was under the guard-tower watching
+the river; and then .  .  .  .  Did the flood sweep us away?"
+
+"No.  The boats broke loose, Sahib, and" (if the Sahib had forgotten
+about the opium, decidedly Peroo would not remind him) "in striving
+to retie them, so it seemed to me - but it was darka rope caught the
+Sahib and threw him upon a boat.  Considering that we two, with
+Hitchcock Sahib, built, as it were, that bridge, I came also upon
+the boat, which came riding on horseback, as it were, on the nose of
+this island, and so, splitting, cast us ashore.  I made a great cry
+when the boat left the wharf, and without doubt Hitchcock Sahib will
+come for us.  As for the bridge, so many have died in the building
+that it cannot fall."
+
+A fierce sun, that drew out all the smell of the sodden land, had
+followed the storm, and in that clear light there was no room for
+a man to think of the dreams of the dark.  Findlayson stared
+up-stream, across the blaze of moving water, till his eyes ached.
+There was no sign of any bank to the Ganges, much less of a
+bridgeline.
+
+"We came down far," he said.  "It was wonderful that we were not
+drowned a hundred times."
+
+"That was the least of the wonder, for no man dies before his time.
+I have seen Sydney, I have seen London, and twenty great ports, but"
+ - Peroo looked at the damp, discoloured shrine under the "peopul -"
+never man has seen that we saw here."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Has the Sahib forgotten; or do we black men only see the Gods?"
+
+"There was a fever upon me."  Findlayson was still looking uneasily
+across the water.  "It seemed that the island was full of beasts
+and men talking, but I do not remember.  A boat could live in this
+water now, I think."
+
+"Oho! Then it is true.  'When Brahm ceases to dream, the Gods die.'
+Now I know, indeed, what he meant.  Once, too, the guru said as much
+to me; but then I did not understand.  Now I am wise."
+
+"What?" said Findlayson, over his shoulder.
+
+Peroo went on as if he were talking to himself.  " Six-seven-ten
+monsoons since, I was watch on the fo'c'sle of the ehwah - the
+Kumpani's big boat-and there was a big tufan; green and black water
+beating, and I held fast to the life-lines, choking under the waters.
+Then I thought of the Gods - of Those whom we saw tonight" - he
+stared curiously at Findlayson's back, but the white man was looking
+across the flood.  "Yes, I say of Those whom we saw this night past,
+and I called upon Them to protect me.  And while I prayed, still
+keeping my lookout, a big wave came and threw me forward upon the
+ring of the great black bowanchor, and the Rewah rose high and high,
+leaning towards the lefthand side, and the water drew away from
+beneath her nose, and I lay upon my belly, holding the ring, and
+looking down into those great deeps.  Then I thought, even in the
+face of death: If I lose hold I die, and for me neither the Rewah nor
+my place by the galley where the rice is cooked, nor Bombay, nor
+Calcutta, nor even London, will be any more for me.  'How shall I be
+sure,' I said, that the Gods to whom I pray will abide at all?' This
+I thought, and the Rewah dropped her nose as a hammer falls, and all
+the sea came in and slid me backwards along the fo'c'sle and over
+the break of the fo'c'sle, and I very badly bruised my shin against
+the donkey-engine: but I did not die, and I have seen the Gods.
+They are good for live men, but for the dead .  .  .  They have spoken
+Themselves.  Therefore, when I come to the village I will beat the
+guru for talking riddles which are no riddles.  When Brahm ceases to
+dream the Gods go."
+
+"Look up-stream.  The light blinds.  Is there smoke yonder?"
+
+Peroo shaded his eyes with his hands.  "He is a wise man and quick.
+Hitchcock Sahib would not trust a rowboat.  He has borrowed the
+Rao Sahib's steam launch, and comes to look for us.  I have always
+said that there should have been a steam-launch on the bridge works
+for us."
+
+The territory of the Rao of Baraon lay within ten miles of the
+bridge; and Findlayson and Hitchcock had spent a fair portion of
+their scanty leisure in playing billiards and shooting black-buck
+with the young man.  He had been bear-led by an English tutor of
+sporting tastes for some five or six years, and was now royally
+wasting the revenues accumulated during his minority by the Indian
+Government.  His steam-launch, with its silverplated rails, striped
+silk awning, and mahogany decks, was a new toy which Findlayson
+had found horribly in the way when the Rao came to look at the
+bridge works.
+
+"It's great luck," murmured Findlayson, but he was none the less
+afraid, wondering what news might be of the bridge.
+
+The gaudy blue and white funnel came down-stream swiftly.  They
+could see Hitchcock in the bows, with a pair of opera-glasses, and
+his face was unusually white.  Then Peroo hailed, and the launch
+made for the tail of the island.  The Rao Sahib, in tweed
+shooting-suit and a seven-hued turban, waved his royal hand, and
+Hitchcock shouted.  But he need have asked no questions, for
+Findlayson's first demand was for his bridge.
+
+"All serene!  Gad, I never expected to see you again, Findlayson.
+You're seven koss down-stream.  Yes; there's not a stone shifted
+anywhere; but how are you?  I borrowed the Rao Sahib's launch, and
+he was good enough to come along.  Jump in."
+
+"Ah, Finlinson, you are very well, eh?  That was most unprecedented
+calamity last night, eh?  My royal palace, too, it leaks like the
+devil, and the crops will also be short all about my country.  Now
+you shall back her out, Hitchcock.  I - I do not understand
+steam engines.  You are wet?  You are cold, Finlinson?  I have some
+things to eat here, and you will take a good drink."
+
+"I'm immensely grateful, Rao Sahib.  I believe you've saved my life.
+How did Hitchcock -"
+
+"Oho!  His hair was upon end.  He rode to me in the middle of the
+night and woke me up in the arms of Morpheus.  I was most truly
+concerned, Finlinson, so I came too.  My head-priest he is very
+angry just now.  We will go quick, Mister Hitchcock.  I am due to
+attend at twelve forty-five in the state temple, where we sanctify
+some new idol.  If not so I would have asked you to spend the day
+with me.  They are dam-bore, these religious ceremonies, Finlinson,
+eh?"
+
+Peroo, well known to the crew, had possessed himself of the inlaid
+wheel, and was taking the launch craftily up-stream.  But while he
+steered he was, in his mind, handling two feet of partially untwisted
+wire-rope; and the back upon which he beat was the back of his guru.
+
+
+
+
+A WALKING DELEGATE
+
+
+According to the custom of Vermont, Sunday afternoon is salting-time
+on the farm, and, unless something very important happens, we attend
+to the salting ourselves.  Dave and Pete, the red oxen, are treated
+first; they stay in the home meadow ready for work on Monday.  Then
+come the cows, with Pan, the calf, who should have been turned into
+veal long ago, but survived on account of his manners; and lastly
+the horses, scattered through the seventy acres of the Back Pasture.
+
+You must go down by the brook that feeds the clicking, bubbling
+water-ram; up through the sugar-bush, where the young maple
+undergrowth closes round you like a shallow sea; next follow the
+faint line of an old county-road running past two green hollows
+fringed with wild rose that mark the cellars of two ruined  houses;
+then by Lost Orchard, where nobody ever comes except in cider-time;
+then across another brook, and so into the Back Pasture.  Half of
+it is pine and hemlock and Spruce, with sumach and little juniper
+bushes, and the other half is grey rock and  boulder and moss, with
+green streaks of brake and swamp; but the horses like it well
+enough - our own, and the others that are turned down there to
+feed at fifty cents a week.  Most people walk to the Back Pasture,
+and find it very rough work; but one can get there in a buggy, if
+the horse knows what is expected of him.  The safest conveyance is
+our coupe.  This began life as a buckboard, and we bought it for
+five dollars from a sorrowful man who had no other sort of
+possessions; and the seat came off one night when we were turning a
+corner in a hurry.  After that alteration it made a beautiful
+salting-machine, if you held tight, because there was nothing to
+catch your feet when you fell out, and the slats rattled tunes.
+
+One Sunday afternoon we went out with the salt as usual.  It was
+a broiling hot day, and we could not find the horses anywhere till
+we let Tedda Gabler, the bobtailed mare who throws up the dirt with
+her big hooves exactly as a tedder throws hay, have her head.
+Clever as she is, she tipped the coupe over in a hidden brook before
+she came out on a ledge of rock where all the horses had gathered,
+and were switching flies.  The Deacon was the first to call to her.
+He is a very dark iron-grey four-year-old, son of Grandee.  He has
+been handled since he was two, was driven in a light cart before he
+was three, and now ranks as an absolutely steady lady's horse -
+proof against steam-rollers, grade-crossings, and street processions.
+
+"Salt!" said the Deacon, joyfully.  "You're dreffle late, Tedda."
+
+"Any - any place to cramp the coupe?" Tedda panted.  "It weighs
+turr'ble this weather.  I'd 'a' come sooner, but they didn't know
+what they wanted - ner haow.  Fell out twice, both of 'em.  I don't
+understand sech foolishness."
+
+"You look consider'ble het up.  'Guess you'd better cramp her under
+them pines, an' cool off a piece."
+
+Tedda scrambled on the ledge, and cramped the coupe in the shade of
+a tiny little wood of pines, while my companion and I lay  down
+among the brown, silky needles, and gasped.  All the home  horses
+were gathered round us, enjoying their Sunday leisure.
+
+There were Rod and Rick, the seniors on the farm.  They were the
+regular road-pair, bay with black points, full brothers, aged, sons
+of a Hambletonian sire and a Morgan dam.  There were Nip and Tuck,
+seal-browns, rising six, brother and sister, Black Hawks by birth,
+perfectly matched, just finishing their education, and as handsome
+a pair as man could wish to find in a forty-mile drive.  There was
+Muldoon, our ex-car-horse, bought at a venture, and any colour you
+choose that is not white; and Tweezy, who comes from Kentucky, with
+an affliction of his left hip, which makes him a little uncertain
+how his hind legs are moving.  He and Muldoon had been hauling
+gravel all the week for our new road.  The Deacon you know already.
+Last of all, and eating something, was our faithful Marcus Aurelius
+Antoninus, the black buggy-horse, who had seen us through every
+state of weather and road, the horse who was always standing in
+harness before some door or other - a philosopher with the appetite
+of a shark and the manners of an archbishop.  Tedda Gabler was a
+new "trade," with a reputation for vice which was really the result
+of bad driving.  She had one working gait, which she could hold
+till further notice; a Roman nose; a large, prominent eye; a
+shaving-brush of a tail; and an irritable temper.  She took her
+salt through her bridle; but the others trotted up nuzzling and
+wickering for theirs, till we emptied it on the clean rocks.  They
+were all standing at ease, on three legs for the most part, talking
+the ordinary gossip of the Back Pasture - about the scarcity of
+water, and gaps in the fence, and how the early windfalls tasted
+that season - when little Rick blew the last few grains of his
+allowance into a crevice, and said:
+
+"Hurry, boys!  'Might ha' knowed that livery plug would be around."
+
+We heard a clatter of hooves, and there climbed up from the ravine
+below a fifty-center transient - a wall-eyed, yellow frame-house of
+a horse, sent up to board from a livery-stable in town, where they
+called him "The Lamb," and never let him out except at night and to
+strangers.  My companion, who knew and had broken most of the horses,
+looked at the ragged hammer-head as it rose, and said quietly:
+
+"Ni-ice beast.  Man-eater, if he gets the chance - see his eye.
+Kicker, too - see his hocks.  Western horse."
+
+The animal lumbered up, snuffling and grunting.  His feet showed
+that he had not worked for weeks and weeks, and our creatures drew
+together significantly.
+
+"As usual," he said, with an underhung sneer - "bowin' your heads
+before the Oppressor that comes to spend his leisure gloatin' over
+you."
+
+"Mine's done," said the Deacon; he licked up the remnant of his
+salt, dropped his nose in his master's hand, and sang a little
+grace all to himself.  The Deacon has the most enchanting manners
+of any one I know.
+
+"An' fawnin' on them for what is your inalienable right.  It's
+humiliatin'," said the yellow horse, sniffing to see if he could
+find a few spare grains.
+
+"Go daown hill, then, Boney," the Deacon replied.  "Guess you'll
+find somethin' to eat still, if yer hain't hogged it all.  You've
+ett more'n any three of us to-day - an' day 'fore that - an' the
+last two months - sence you've been here."
+
+"I am not addressin' myself to the young an' immature.  I am
+speakin' to those whose opinion an' experience commands respect."
+
+I saw Rod raise his head as though he were about to make a remark;
+then he dropped it again, and stood three-cornered, like a
+plough-horse.  Rod can cover his mile in a shade under three minutes
+on an ordinary road to an ordinary buggy.  He is tremendously
+powerful behind, but, like most Hambletonians, he grows a trifle
+sullen as he gets older.  No one can love Rod very much; but no one
+can help respecting him.
+
+"I wish to wake those," the yellow horse went on, "to an abidin'
+sense o' their wrongs an' their injuries an' their outrages."
+
+"Haow's that?" said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, dreamily.  He
+thought Boney was talking of some kind of feed.
+
+"An' when I say outrages and injuries" - Boney waved his tail
+furiously  "I mean 'em, too.  Great Oats!  That's just what I do
+mean, plain an' straight."
+
+"The gentleman talks quite earnest," said Tuck, the mare, to Nip,
+her brother.  There's no doubt thinkin' broadens the horizons o' the
+mind.  His language is quite lofty."
+
+"Hesh, sis," Nip answered.
+
+"He hain't widened nothin' 'cep' the  circle he's ett in pasture.
+They feed words fer beddin' where he comes from."
+
+"It's elegant talkin', though," Tuck returned, with an unconvinced
+toss of her pretty, lean little head.
+
+The yellow horse heard her, and struck an attitude which he meant
+to be extremely impressive.  It made him look as though he had
+been badly stuffed.
+
+"Now I ask you, I ask you without prejudice an' without  favour, -
+what has Man the Oppressor ever done for you?  - Are you not
+inalienably entitled to the free air o' heaven, blowin' acrost this
+boundless prairie?"
+
+"Hev ye ever wintered here?" said the Deacon, merrily, while the
+others snickered.  "It's kinder cool."
+
+"Not yet," said Boney.  "I come from the boundless confines o'
+Kansas, where the noblest of our kind have their abidin' place among
+the sunflowers on the threshold o' the settin' sun in his glory."
+
+"An' they sent you ahead as a sample?" said Rick, with an amused
+quiver of his long, beautifully groomed tail, as thick and as fine
+and as wavy as a quadroon's back hair.
+
+"Kansas, sir, needs no advertisement.  Her native sons rely on
+themselves an' their native sires.  Yes, sir."
+
+Then Tweezy lifted up his wise and polite old head.  His affliction
+makes him bashful as a rule, but he is ever the most courteous of
+horses.
+
+"Excuse me, suh," he said slowly, "but, unless I have been
+misinfohmed, most of your prominent siahs, suh, are impo'ted  from
+Kentucky; an' I'm from Paduky."
+
+There was the least little touch of pride in the last words.
+
+"Any horse dat knows beans," said Muldoon, suddenly (he had been
+standing with his hairy chin on Tweezy's broad quarters), "gits
+outer Kansas 'fore dey crip his shoes.  I blew in dere from Ioway
+in de days o' me youth an' innocence, an' I wuz grateful when dey
+boxed me fer N' York.  You can't tell me anything about Kansas I
+don't wanter fergit.  De Belt Line stables ain't no Hoffman House,
+but dey're Vanderbilts 'longside o' Kansas."
+
+"What the horses o' Kansas think to-day, the horses of America will
+think to-morrow; an' I tell you that when the horses of America
+rise in their might, the day o' the Oppressor is ended."
+
+There was a pause, till Rick said, with a little grunt:
+
+"Ef you put it that way, every one of us has riz in his might, 'cep'
+Marcus, mebbe.  Marky, 'j ever rise in yer might?"
+
+"Nope," said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, thoughtfully quidding over
+a mouthful of grass.  "I seen a heap o' fools try, though."
+
+"You admit that you riz?" said the Kansas horse, excitedly.  "Then
+why - why in Kansas did you ever go under again?"
+
+"Horse can't walk on his hind legs all the time," said the  Deacon.
+
+"Not when he's jerked over on his back 'fore he knows what fetched
+him.  We've all done it, Boney," said Rick.  "Nip an' Tuck they
+tried it, spite o' what the Deacon told 'em; an' the Deacon he tried
+it, spite o' what me an' Rod told him; an' me an' Rod tried it,
+spite o' what Grandee told us; an' I guess Grandee he tried it, spite
+o' what his dam told him.  It's the same old circus from generation
+to generation.  'Colt can't see why he's  called on to back.  Same
+old rearm' on end - straight up.  Same old feelin' that you've bested
+'em this time.  Same old little yank at your mouth when you're up
+good an' tall.  Same old Pegasus-act, wonderin' where you'll 'light.
+Same old wop when you hit the dirt  with your head where your tail
+should be, and your in'ards shook up like a bran-mash.  Same old
+voice in your ear: 'Waal, ye little fool, an' what did you reckon
+to make by that?'  We're through with risin in our might on this
+farm.  We go to pole er single, accordin' ez we're hitched."
+
+"An' Man the Oppressor sets an' gloats over you, same as he's settin'
+now.  Hain't that been your experience, madam?"
+
+This last remark was addressed to Tedda; and any one could see with
+half an eye that poor, old anxious, fidgety Tedda, stamping at the
+flies, must have left a wild and tumultuous youth behind her.
+
+"'Pends on the man," she answered, shifting from one foot to the
+other, and addressing herself to the home horses.  "They abused me
+dreffle when I was young.  I guess I was sperrity an' nervous some,
+but they didn't allow for that.  'Twas in Monroe County, Noo York,
+an' sence then till I come here, I've run away with more men than
+'u'd fill a boardin'-house.  Why, the man that sold me here he says
+to the boss, s' he:  'Mind, now, I've warned you.  'Twon't be none
+of my fault if she sheds you daown the road.  Don't you drive her
+in a top-buggy, ner 'thout winkers,' s' he, 'ner 'thought this bit
+ef you look to come home behind her.'  'N' the fust thing the boss
+did was to git the top-buggy.
+
+"Can't say as I like top-buggies," said Rick; "they don't balance
+good."
+
+"Suit me to a ha'ar," said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.  "Top-buggy
+means the baby's in behind, an' I kin stop while she gathers the
+pretty flowers - yes, an' pick a maouthful, too.  The women-folk
+all say I hev to be humoured, an' I don't kerry things to the
+sweatin'-point."
+
+"'Course I've no prejudice against a top-buggy s' long's I can
+see it," Tedda went on quickly.  "It's ha'f-seein' the pesky thing
+bobbin' an' balancn' behind the winkers gits on my nerves.  Then
+the boss looked at the bit they'd sold with me, an' s' he: 'Jiminy
+Christmas!  This 'u'd make a clothes-horse Stan' 'n end!'  Then he
+gave me a plain bar bit, an' fitted it's if there was some feelin'
+to my maouth."
+
+"Hain't ye got any, Miss Tedda?" said Tuck, who has a mouth like
+velvet, and knows it.
+
+"Might 'a' had, Miss Tuck, but I've forgot.  Then he give me an
+open bridle,- my style's an open bridle - an' - I dunno as I ought
+to tell this by rights -he - give - me - a kiss."
+
+"My!" said Tuck, "I can't tell fer the shoes o' me what makes some
+men so fresh."
+
+"Pshaw, sis," said Nip, "what's the sense in actin' so? You git a
+kiss reg'lar's hitchin'-up time."
+
+"Well, you needn't tell, smarty," said Tuck, with a squeal and a
+kick.
+
+"I'd heard o' kisses, o' course," Tedda went on, "but they hadn't
+come my way specially.  I don't mind tellin' I was that took aback
+at that man's doin's he might ha' lit fire-crackers on my saddle.
+Then we went out jest's if a kiss was nothin', an' I wasn't three
+strides into my gait 'fore I felt the boss knoo his business, an'
+was trustin' me.  So I studied to please him, an' he never took the
+whip from the dash - a whip drives me plumb distracted - an' the
+upshot was that - waal, I've come up the  Back Pasture to-day, an'
+the coupe's tipped clear over twice, an' I've waited till 'twuz
+fixed each time.  You kin judge for yourselves.  I don't set up to
+be no better than my neighbours, - specially with my tail snipped
+off the way 'tis,- but I want you all to know Tedda's quit fightin'
+in harness or out of it, 'cep' when there's a born fool in the
+pasture, stuffin' his stummick with board that ain't rightly hisn,
+'cause he hain't earned it."
+
+"Meanin' me, madam?" said the yellow horse.
+
+"Ef the shoe fits, clinch it," said Tedda, snorting.  "I named no
+names, though, to be sure, some folks are mean enough an' greedy
+enough to do 'thout 'em."
+
+"There's a deal to be forgiven to ignorance," said the yellow horse,
+with an ugly look in his blue eye.
+
+"Seemin'ly, yes; or some folks 'u'd ha' been kicked raound the
+pasture 'bout onct a minute sence they came - board er no board."
+
+"But what you do not understand, if you will excuse me, madam, is
+that the whole principle o' servitood, which includes keep an' feed,
+starts from a radically false basis; an' I am proud to say that me
+an' the majority o' the horses o' Kansas think the entire concern
+should be relegated to the limbo of exploded superstitions.  I say
+we're too progressive for that.  I say we're too enlightened for
+that.  'Twas good enough's long's we didn't think, but naow -
+but naow - a new loominary has arisen on the  horizon!"
+
+"Meanin' you?" said the Deacon.
+
+"The horses o' Kansas are behind me with their multitoodinous
+thunderin' hooves, an' we say, simply but grandly, that we take
+our stand with all four feet on the inalienable rights of the horse,
+pure and simple,- the high-toned child o' nature, fed by the same
+wavin' grass, cooled by the same ripplin' brook - yes, an' warmed
+by the same gen'rous sun as falls impartially on the outside an'
+the inside of the pampered machine o' the trottin'-track, or the
+bloated coupe-horses o' these yere Eastern cities.  Are we not the
+same flesh an' blood?"
+
+"Not by a bushel an' a half," said the Deacon, under his breath.
+"Grandee never was in Kansas."
+
+"My! Ain't that elegant, though, abaout the wavin' grass an' the
+ripplin' brooks?" Tuck whispered in Nip's ear.  "The gentleman's
+real convincin' I think."
+
+"I say we are the same flesh an' blood!  Are we to be separated,
+horse from horse, by the artificial barriers of a trottin'-record,
+or are we to look down upon each other on the strength o' the gifts
+o' nature - an extry inch below the knee, or slightly more powerful
+quarters?  What's the use o' them  advantages to you?  Man the
+Oppressor comes along, an' sees you're likely an' good-lookin', an'
+grinds you to the face o' the earth.  What for?  For his own
+pleasure: for his own  convenience!  Young an' old, black an' bay,
+white an' grey, there's no distinctions made between us.  We're
+ground up together under the remorseless teeth o' the engines of
+oppression !"
+
+"Guess his breechin' must ha' broke goin' daown-hill," said the
+Deacon.  "Slippery road, maybe, an' the buggy come onter him, an'
+he didn't know 'nough to hold back.  That don't feel like teeth,
+though.  Maybe he busted a shaft, an' it pricked him."
+
+"An' I come to you from Kansas, wavin' the tail o' friendship to
+all an' sundry, an' in the name of the uncounted millions o'
+pure-minded, high-toned horses now strugglin' towards the light
+o' freedom, I say to you, Rub noses with us in our sacred an' holy
+cause.  The power is yourn.  Without you, I say, Man the Oppressor
+cannot move himself from place to place.  Without you he cannot
+reap, he cannot sow, he cannot plough."
+
+"Mighty odd place, Kansas!" said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.
+"Seemin'ly they reap in the spring an' plough in the fall.  'Guess
+it's right fer them, but 'twould make me kinder giddy."
+
+"The produc's of your untirin' industry would rot on the ground if
+you did not weakly consent to help him.  Let 'em rot, I say!  Let
+him call you to the stables in vain an' nevermore!  Let him shake
+his ensnarin' oats under your nose in vain!  Let the Brahmas roost
+in the buggy, an' the rats run riot round the reaper!  Let him
+walk on his two hind feet till they blame well drop off!  Win no
+more soul-destroyn' races for his pleasure!  Then, an' not till
+then, will Man the Oppressor know where he's at.  Quit workin',
+fellow-sufferers an' slaves!  Kick!  Rear!  Plunge!  Lie down on
+the shafts, an' woller!  Smash an' destroy!  The conflict will be
+but short, an' the victory is certain.  After that we can press
+our inalienable rights to eight quarts o' oats a day, two good
+blankets, an' a fly-net an' the best o' stablin'."
+
+The yellow horse shut his yellow teeth with a triumphant snap; and
+Tuck said, with a sigh:  'Seems's if somethin' ought to be  done.
+Don't seem right, somehow, - oppressin' us an all, - to my way o'
+thinkin'."
+
+Said Muldoon, in a far-away and sleepy voice:
+
+"Who in Vermont's goin' to haul de inalienable oats?  Dey weigh
+like Sam Hill, an' sixty bushel at dat allowance ain't goin' to
+last t'ree weeks here.  An' dere's de winter hay for five mont's!"
+
+"We can settle those minor details when the great cause is won,"
+said the yellow horse.  "Let us return simply but grandly to our
+inalienable rights - the right o' freedom on these yere verdant
+hills, an' no invijjus distinctions o' track an' pedigree:"
+
+"What in stables 'jer call an invijjus distinction?" said the
+Deacon, stiffly.
+
+"Fer one thing, bein' a bloated, pampered trotter jest because you
+happen to be raised that way, an' couldn't no more help trottin'
+than eatin'."
+
+"Do ye know anythin' about trotters?" said the Deacon.
+
+"I've seen 'em trot.  That was enough for me.  I don't want to know
+any more.  Trottin''s immoral."
+
+"Waal, I'll tell you this much.  They don't bloat, an' they don't
+pamp - much.  I don't hold out to be no trotter myself, though I
+am free to say I had hopes that way - onct.  But I do say, fer I've
+seen 'em trained, that a trotter don't trot with his feet:  he trots
+with his head; an' he does more work - ef you know what  that is -
+in a week than you er your sire ever done in all your lives.  He's
+everlastingly at it, a trotter is; an' when he isn't, he's studyin'
+haow.  You seen 'em trot?  Much you hev!  You was hitched to a rail,
+back o' the stand, in a buckboard with a  soap-box nailed on the
+slats, an' a frowzy buff'lo atop, while your man peddled rum fer
+lemonade to little boys as thought they was actin' manly, till you
+was both run off the track an' jailed - you intoed, shufflin',
+sway-backed, wind-suckin' skate, you!"
+
+"Don't get het up, Deacon," said Tweezy, quietly.  "Now, suh, would
+you consider a fox-trot, an' single-foot, an' rack, an' pace, an'
+amble, distinctions not worth distinguishin'?  I assuah you,
+gentlemen, there was a time befo' I was afflicted in my hip, if
+you'll pardon me, Miss Tuck, when I was quite celebrated in Paduky
+for all those gaits; an in my opinion the Deacon's co'rect when he
+says that a ho'se of any position in society gets his gaits by his
+haid, an' not by - his, ah, limbs, Miss Tuck.  I reckon I'm very
+little good now, but I'm rememberin' the things I used to do befo'
+I took to transpo'tin' real estate with the help an' assistance of
+this gentleman here."  He looked at Muldoon.
+
+"Invijjus arterficial hind legs!" said the ex-carhorse, with a grunt
+of contempt.  "On de Belt Line we don't reckon no horse wuth his
+keep 'less he kin switch de car off de track, run her round on de
+cobbles, an' dump her in ag'in ahead o' de truck  what's blockin'
+him.  Dere is a way o' swingin' yer quarters when  de driver says,
+'Yank her out, boys!' dat takes a year to learn.  Onct yer git onter
+it, youse kin yank a cable-car outer a  manhole.  I don't advertise
+myself for no circus-horse, but I  knew dat trick better than most,
+an' dey was good to me in de stables, fer I saved time on de Belt
+- an' time's what dey hunt in N' York."
+
+"But the simple child o' nature -" the yellow horse began.
+
+"Oh, go an' unscrew yer splints!  You're talkin' through yer
+bandages," said Muldoon, with a horse-laugh.  "Dere ain't no
+loose-box for de simple child o' nature on de Belt Line, wid de
+Paris comin' in an' de Teutonic goin' out, an' de trucks an' de
+coupe's sayin' things, an' de heavy freight movin' down fer de
+Boston boat 'bout t'ree o'clock of an August afternoon, in de
+middle of a hot wave when de fat Kanucks an' Western horses drops
+dead on de block.  De simple child o' nature had better chase
+himself inter de water.  Every man at de end of his lines is mad
+or loaded or silly, an' de cop's madder an' loadeder an' sillier
+than de rest.  Dey all take it outer de horses.  Dere's no wavin'
+brooks ner ripplin' grass on de Belt Line.  Run her out on de
+cobbles wid de sparks flyin', an' stop when de cop slugs you on
+de bone o' yer nose.  Dat's N'York; see?
+
+ "I was always told s'ciety in Noo York was dreffle refined an'
+high-toned," said Tuck.  "We're lookin' to go there one o' these
+days, Nip an' me."
+
+"Oh, you won't see no Belt business where you'll go, miss.  De man
+dat wants you'll want bad, an' he'll summer you on Long Island er
+at Newport, wid a winky-pinky silver harness an' an English coachman.
+You'll make a star-hitch, you an' yer brother, miss.  But I guess
+you won't have no nice smooth bar bit.  Dey checks 'em, an' dey bangs
+deir tails, an' dey bits 'em, de city folk, an' dey says it's
+English, ye know, an' dey darsen't cut a horse loose 'ca'se o' de
+cops.  N' York's no place fer a horse, 'less he's on de Belt, an'
+can go round wid de boys.  Wisht I was in de Fire Department!"
+
+"But did you never stop to consider the degradin' servitood of it
+all?" said the yellow horse.
+
+"You don't stop on de Belt, cully.  You're stopped.  An' we was all
+in de servitood business, man an' horse, an' Jimmy dat sold de
+papers.  Guess de passengers weren't out to grass neither, by de
+way dey acted.  I done my turn, an' I'm none o' Barnum's crowd; but
+any horse dat's worked on de Belt four years don't train wid no
+simple child o' nature - not by de whole length o' N' York."
+
+"But can it be possible that with your experience, and at your time
+of life, you do not believe that all horses are free and  equal?"
+said the yellow horse.
+
+"Not till they're dead," Muldoon  answered quietly.  "An' den it
+depends on de gross total o' buttons an' mucilage dey gits outer
+youse at Barren Island."
+
+"They tell me you're a prominent philosopher." The yellow horse
+turned to Marcus.  "Can you deny a basic and pivotal statement such
+as this?"
+
+"I don't deny anythin'," said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, cautiously;
+"but ef you ast me, I should say 'twuz more different sorts o'
+clipped oats of a lie than anythin' I've had  my teeth into sence I
+wuz foaled."
+
+"Are you a horse?" said the yellow horse.
+
+"Them that knows me best 'low I am."
+
+"Ain't I a horse?"
+
+"Yep; one kind of."
+
+"Then ain't you an' me equal?"
+
+"How fer kin you go in a day to a loaded buggy, drawin' five hundred
+pounds?" Marcus asked carelessly.
+
+"That has nothing to do with the case," the yellow horse answered
+excitedly.
+
+"There's nothing I know hez more to do with the case," Marcus replied.
+
+"Kin ye yank a full car outer de tracks ten times in de mornin'?"
+said Muldoon.
+
+"Kin ye go to Keene - forty-two mile in an afternoon - with a mate,"
+said Rick; "an' turn out bright an' early next mornin'?"
+
+"Was there evah any time in your careah, suh - I am not referrin'
+to the present circumstances, but our mutual glorious past - when
+you could carry a pretty girl to market hahnsome, an' let her knit
+all the way on account o' the smoothness o' the motion?" said Tweezy.
+
+"Kin you keep your feet through the West River Bridge, with the
+narrer-gage comin' in on one side, an' the Montreal flyer the other,
+an' the old bridge teeterin' between?" said the Deacon.  "Kin you
+put your nose down on the cow-catcher of a locomotive when you're
+waitin' at the depot an' let 'em play 'Curfew shall not ring
+to-night' with the big brass bell?"
+
+"Kin you hold back when the brichin' breaks? Kin you stop fer orders
+when your nigh hind leg's over your trace an' ye feel good of a
+frosty mornin'?" said Nip, who had only learned that trick last
+winter, and thought it was the crown of horsely  knowledge.
+
+"What's the use o' talk in'?" said Tedda Gabler, scornfully.  "What
+kin ye do?"
+
+"I rely on my simple rights - the inalienable rights o' my
+unfettered horsehood.  An' I am proud to say I have never, since
+my first shoes, lowered myself to obeyin' the will o' man."
+
+"'Must ha' had a heap o' whips broke over yer yaller back," said
+Tedda.  "Hev ye found it paid any?"
+
+"Sorrer has been my portion since the day I was foaled.  Blows an'
+boots an' whips an' insults - injury, outrage, an' oppression.  I
+would not endoor the degradin' badges o' servitood that connect us
+with the buggy an' the farm-wagon."
+
+"It's amazin' difficult to draw a buggy 'thout traces er collar er
+breast-strap er somefin'," said Marcus.  "A Power-machine for sawin'
+wood is most the only thing there's no straps to.  I've helped saw
+'s much as three cord in an afternoon in a  Power-machine.  Slep',
+too, most o' the time, I did; but 'tain't half as interestin' ez
+goin' daown-taown in the Concord."
+
+"Concord don't hender you goin' to sleep any," said Nip.  "My
+throat-lash!  D'you remember when you lay down in the sharves last
+week, waitin' at the piazza?"
+
+"Pshaw! That didn't hurt the sharves.  They wuz good an' wide, an'
+I lay down keerful.  The folks kep' me hitched up nigh an hour
+'fore they started; an' larfed - why, they all but lay down
+themselves with larfin'.  Say, Boney, if you've got to be hitched
+to anything that goes on wheels, you've got to be hitched with
+somefin'."
+
+"Go an' jine a circus," said Muldoon, "an' walk on your hind legs.
+All de horses dat knows too much to work [he pronounced it "woik,"
+New York fashion] jine de circus."
+
+"I am not sayin' anythin' again' work," said the yellow horse;
+"work is the finest thing in the world."
+
+"'Seems too fine fer some of us," Tedda snorted.
+
+"I only ask that each horse should work for himself, an' enjoy
+the profit of his labours.  Let him work intelligently, an' not
+as a machine."
+
+"There ain't no horse that works like a machine," Marcus began.
+
+"There's no way o' workin' that doesn't mean goin' to pole er
+single - they never put me in the Power-machine - er under saddle,"
+said Rick.
+
+"Oh, shucks!  We're talkin' same ez we graze," said Nip, "raound an'
+raound in circles.  Rod, we hain't heard from you yet, an' you've
+more know-how than any span here."
+
+Rod, the off-horse of the pair, had been standing with one hip
+lifted, like a tired cow; and you could only tell by the quick
+flutter of the haw across his eye, from time to time, that he was
+paying any attention to the argument.  He thrust his jaw out
+sidewise, as his habit is when he pulls, and changed his leg.  His
+voice was hard and heavy, and his ears were close to his big, plain
+Hambletonian head.
+
+"How old are you?" he said to the yellow horse.
+
+"Nigh thirteen, I guess."
+
+"Mean age; ugly age; I'm gettin' that way myself.  How long hev ye
+been pawin' this firefanged stable-litter?"
+
+"If you mean my principles, I've held 'em sence I was three."
+
+"Mean age; ugly age; teeth give heaps o' trouble then.  'Set a colt
+to actin' crazy fer a while.  You've kep' it up, seemin'ly.  D'ye
+talk much to your neighbours fer a steady thing?"
+
+"I uphold the principles o' the Cause wherever I am pastured."
+
+"'Done a heap o' good, I guess?"
+
+"I am proud to say I have taught a few of my companions the
+principles o' freedom an' liberty."
+
+"Meanin' they ran away er kicked when they got the chanst?"
+
+"I was talkin' in the abstrac', an' not in the concrete.  My
+teachin's educated them."
+
+"What a horse, specially a young horse, hears in the abstrac', he's
+liable to do in the Concord.  You was handled late, I presoom."
+
+"Four, risin' five."
+
+"That's where the trouble began.  Driv' by a woman, like ez not -
+eh?"
+
+"Not fer long," said the yellow horse, with a snap of his teeth.
+
+"Spilled her?"
+
+"I heerd she never drove again."
+
+"Any childern?"
+
+"Buckboards full of 'em."
+
+"Men too?"
+
+"I have shed conside'ble men in my time."
+
+"By kickin'?"
+
+"Any way that come along.  Fallin' back over the dash is as handy
+as most."
+
+"They must be turr'ble afraid o' you daown taown?"
+
+"They've sent me here to get rid o' me.  I guess they spend their
+time talkin' over my campaigns."
+
+"I wanter know!"
+
+"Yes, sir.  Now, all you gentlemen have asked me what I can do.
+I'll just show you.  See them two fellers lyin' down by the buggy?"
+
+"Yep; one of 'em owns me.  T'other broke me," said Rod.
+
+"Get 'em out here in the open, an' I'll show you something.  Lemme
+hide back o' you peoples, so's they won't see what I'm at."
+
+"Meanin' ter kill 'em?" Rod drawled.  There was a shudder of horror
+through the others; but the yellow horse never noticed.
+
+"I'll catch 'em by the back o' the neck, an' pile-drive 'em a piece.
+They can suit 'emselves about livin' when I'm through  with 'em."
+
+"'Shouldn't wonder ef they did," said Rod.  The yellow horse had
+hidden himself very cleverly behind the others as they stood in a
+group, and was swaying his head close to the ground with a curious
+scythe-like motion, looking side-wise out of his wicked eyes.  You
+can never mistake a man-eater getting ready to knock a man down.
+We had had one to pasture the year before.
+
+"See that?" said my companion, turning over on the pine-needles.
+"Nice for a woman walking 'cross lots, wouldn't it be?"
+
+"Bring 'em out!" said the yellow horse, hunching his sharp back.
+"There's no chance among them tall trees.  Bring out the - oh!
+Ouch!"
+
+It was a right-and-left kick from Muldoon.  I had no idea that the
+old car-horse could lift so quickly.  Both blows caught the yellow
+horse full and fair in the ribs, and knocked the breath  out of him.
+
+"What's that for?" he said angrily, when he recovered himself; but
+I noticed he did not draw any nearer to Muldoon than was necessary.
+
+Muldoon never answered, but discoursed to himself in the whining
+grunt that he uses when he is going down-hill in front of a heavy
+load.  We call it singing; but I think it's something much worse,
+really.  The yellow horse blustered and squealed a little, and at
+last said that, if it was a horse-fly that had stung Muldoon, he
+would accept an apology.
+
+"You'll get it," said Muldoon, "in de sweet by-and-bye - all de
+apology you've any use for.  Excuse me interruptin' you, Mr.  Rod,
+but I'm like Tweezy - I've a Southern drawback in me hind legs."
+
+"Naow, I want you all here to take notice, an' you'll learn
+something," Rod went on.  "This yaller-backed skate comes to our
+pastur'-"
+
+"Not havin' paid his board," put in Tedda.
+
+"Not havin' earned his board, an' talks smooth to us abaout ripplin'
+brooks an' wavin' grass, an' his high-toned, pure-souled horsehood,
+which don't hender him sheddin' women an' childern, an' fallin' over
+the dash onter men.  You heard his  talk, an' you thought it mighty
+fine, some o' you."
+
+Tuck looked guilty here, but she did not say anything.
+
+"Bit by bit he goes on ez you have heard."
+
+"I was talkin' in the abstrac'," said the yellow horse, in an
+altered voice.
+
+"Abstrac' be switched!  Ez I've said, it's this yer blamed abstrac'
+business that makes the young uns cut up in the Concord; an' abstrac'
+or no abstrac', he crep' on an' on till he come to killin' plain an'
+straight - killin' them as never done him no harm, jest beca'se they
+owned horses."
+
+"An' knowed how to manage 'em," said Tedda.  That makes it worse."
+
+"Waal, he didn't kill 'em, anyway," said Marcus.  "He'd ha' been
+half killed ef he had tried."
+
+"'Makes no differ," Rod answered.  "He meant to; an' ef he hadn't
+  - s'pose we want the Back Pasture turned into a biffin'-ground
+on our only day er rest?  'S'pose we want our men walkin' round
+with bits er lead pipe an' a twitch, an' their hands full o' stones
+to throw at us, same's if we wuz hogs er hooky keows?  More'n that,
+leavin' out Tedda here - an' I guess it's more her maouth than her
+manners stands in her light -there ain't a horse on this farm that
+ain't a woman's horse, an' proud of it.  An' this yer bogspavined
+Kansas sunflower goes up an' daown the length o' the country, traded
+off an' traded on, boastin' as he's shed women - an' childern.  I
+don't say as a woman in a buggy ain't a fool.  I don't say as she
+ain't the lastin'est kind er fool, ner I don't say a child ain't
+worse - spattin' the lines an' standin' up an' hollerin' - but I do
+say, 'tain't none of  our business to shed 'em daown the road."
+
+"We don't," said the  Deacon.  "The baby tried to git some o' my
+tail for a sooveneer last fall when I was up to the haouse, an' I
+didn't kick.  Boney's talk ain't goin' to hurt us any.  We ain't
+colts."
+
+"Thet's what you think Bimeby you git into a tight corner, 'Lection
+day er Valley Fair, like's not, daown-taown, when you're all het
+an' lathery, an' pestered with flies, an' thirsty, an' sick o' bein'
+worked in an aout 'tween buggies.  Then somethin' whispers inside o'
+your winkers, bringin' up all that talk abaout servitood an'
+inalienable truck an' sech like, an' jest then a Militia gun goes
+off; er your wheels hit, an' -  waal, you're only another horse ez
+can't be trusted.  I've been  there time an' again.  Boys - fer I've
+seen you all bought er broke - on my solemn repitation fer a
+three-minute clip, I ain't  givin' you no bran-mash o' my own fixin'.
+I'm tellin' you my  experiences, an' I've had ez heavy a load an'
+ez high a check's any horse here.  I wuz born with a splint on my
+near fore ez big's a walnut, an' the cussed, three-cornered
+Hambletonian temper that sours up an' curdles daown ez you git
+older.  I've favoured my splint; even little Rick he don't know what
+it's cost me to keep my end up sometimes; an' I've fit my temper in
+stall an' harness, hitched up an' at pasture, till the sweat trickled
+off my hooves, an' they thought I wuz off condition, an' drenched  me."
+
+"When my affliction came," said Tweezy, gently, "I was very near to
+losin' my manners.  Allow me to extend to you my sympathy,  suh."
+
+Rick said nothing, but he looked at Rod curiously.  Rick is a
+sunny-tempered child who never bears malice, and I don't think he
+quite understood.  He gets his temper from his mother, as a horse
+should.
+
+"I've been there too, Rod," said Tedda.  "Open confession's good
+for the soul, an' all Monroe County knows I've had my experriences."
+
+"But if you will excuse me, suh, that pusson" - Tweezy looked
+unspeakable things at the yellow horse - "that pusson who has
+insulted our intelligences comes from Kansas.  An' what a ho'se
+of his position, an' Kansas at that, says cannot, by any stretch of
+the halter, concern gentlemen of our position.  There's no shadow
+of equal'ty, suh, not even for one kick.  He's beneath our contempt."
+
+"Let him talk," said Marcus.  "It's always interestin' to know what
+another horse thinks.  It don't tech us."
+
+"An' he talks so, too," said Tuck.  "I've never heard anythin' so
+smart for a long time."
+
+Again Rod stuck out his jaws sidewise, and went on slowly, as
+though he were slugging on a plain bit at the end of a thirty-mile
+drive:
+
+ "I want all you here ter understand thet ther ain't no Kansas, ner
+no Kentucky, ner yet no Vermont, in our business.  There's jest two
+kind o' horse in the United States - them ez can an' will do their
+work after bein' properly broke an' handled, an' them as won't.
+I'm sick an' tired o' this everlastin' tail-switchin' an' wickerin'
+abaout one State er another.  A horse kin be proud o' his State, an'
+swap lies abaout it in stall or when he's hitched to a block, ef he
+keers to put in fly-time that way; but he hain't no right to let
+that pride o' hisn interfere with his  work, ner to make it an
+excuse fer claimin' he's different.  That's colts' talk, an' don't
+you fergit it, Tweezy.  An', Marcus, you remember that hem' a
+philosopher, an' anxious to save trouble, - fer you ate,- don't
+excuse you from jumpin' with all your feet on a slack-jawed, crazy
+clay-bank like Boney here.  It's leavin' 'em alone that gives 'em
+their chance to ruin colts an' kill folks.  An', Tuck, waal, you're
+a mare anyways - but when a horse comes along an' covers up all his
+talk o' killin' with  ripplin' brooks, an wavin grass, an' eight
+quarts of oats a day free, after killn' his man, don't you be run
+away with by his  yap.  You're too young an' too nervous."
+
+"I'll - I'll have nervous prostration sure ef there's a fight here,"
+said Tuck, who saw what was in Rod's eye; "I'm - I'm that sympathetic
+I'd run away clear to next caounty."
+
+"Yep; I know that kind o' sympathy.  Jest lasts long enough to start
+a fuss, an' then lights aout to make new trouble.  I hain't  been
+ten years in harness fer nuthin'.  Naow, we're goin' to keep school
+with Boney fer a spell."
+
+"Say, look a-here, you ain't goin' to hurt me, are you?  Remember,
+I belong to a man in town," cried the yellow horse, uneasily.
+Muldoon kept behind him so that he could not run away.
+
+"I know it.  There must be some pore delooded fool in this State
+hez a right to the loose end o' your hitchin'-strap.  I'm blame
+sorry fer him, but he shall hev his rights when we're through with
+you," said Rod.
+
+If it's all the same, gentlemen, I'd ruther change pasture.  Guess
+I'll do it now."
+
+"'Can't always have your 'druthers.  'Guess you won't," said Rod.
+
+"But look a-here.  All of you ain't so blame unfriendly to a
+stranger.  S'pose we count noses."
+
+"What in Vermont fer?" said Rod, putting up his eyebrows.  The
+idea of settling a question by counting noses is the very last
+thing that ever enters the head of a well-broken horse.
+
+"To see how many's on my side.  Here's Miss Tuck, anyway; an'
+Colonel Tweezy yonder's neutral; an' Judge Marcus, an' I guess the
+Reverend [the yellow horse meant the Deacon] might see that I had
+my rights.  He's the likeliest-lookin' Trotter I've ever set eyes
+on.  Pshaw.  Boys.  You ain't goin' to pound me, be you?  Why,
+we've gone round in pasture, all colts together,  this month o'
+Sundays, hain't we, as friendly as could be.  There ain't a horse
+alive I don't care who he is - has a higher  opinion o' you, Mr.
+Rod, than I have.  Let's do it fair an' true an' above the exe.
+Let's count noses same's they do in  Kansas."  Here he dropped his
+voice a little and turned to Marcus: "Say, Judge, there's some green
+food I know, back o' the brook, no one hain't touched yet.  After
+this little fracas is  fixed up, you an' me'll make up a party an'
+'tend to it.
+
+Marcus  did not answer for a long time, then he said:  "There's a
+pup up to the haouse 'bout eight weeks old.  He'll yap till he gits
+a lickin', an' when he sees it comin' he lies on his back, an'
+yowls.  But he don't go through no cirkituous nose-countin' first.
+I've seen a noo light sence Rod spoke.  You'll better stand up to
+what's served.  I'm goin' to philosophise all over your carcass."
+
+I'm goin' to do yer up in brown paper," said Muldoon.  "I can fit
+you on apologies."
+
+"Hold on.  Ef we all biffed you now, these same men you've been so
+dead anxious to kill 'u'd call us off.  'Guess we'll wait till they
+go back to the haouse, an' you'll have time to think cool an' quiet,"
+said Rod.
+
+ "Have you no respec' whatever fer the dignity o' our common
+horsehood?" the yellow horse squealed.
+
+"Nary respec' onless the horse kin do something.  America's paved
+with the kind er horse you are -jist plain yaller-dog horse -
+waitin' ter be whipped inter shape.  We call 'em yearlings an'
+colts when they're young.  When they're aged we pound 'em - in
+this pastur'.  Horse, sonny, is what you start from.  We know all
+about horse here, an' he ain't any high-toned, pure souled child
+o' nature.  Horse, plain horse, same ez you, is chock-full o'
+tricks, an' meannesses, an' cussednesses, an' shirkin's, an'
+monkey-shines, which he's took over from his sire an' his dam,
+an' thickened up with his own special fancy in the way o' goin'
+crooked.  Thet's horse, an' thet's about his dignity an' the size
+of his soul 'fore he's been broke an' rawhided a piece.  Now we
+ain't goin' to give ornery unswitched horse, that hain't done
+nawthin' wuth a quart of oats sence he wuz foaled, pet names that
+would be good enough fer Nancy Hanks, or Alix, or Directum,  who
+hev.  Don't you try to back off acrost them rocks.  Wait where
+you are!  Ef I let my Hambletonian temper git the better o' me I'd
+frazzle you out finer than rye-straw inside o' three minutes, you
+woman-scarin', kid-killin', dash-breakin', unbroke, unshod,
+ungaited, pastur'-hoggin', saw-backed, shark-mouthed,
+hair-trunk-thrown-in-in-trade son of a bronco an' a sewin'-machine!"
+
+" I think we'd better get home," I said to my companion, when Rod
+had finished; and we climbed into the coupe, Tedda whinnying, as we
+bumped over the ledges: "Well, I'm dreffle sorry I can't stay fer
+the sociable; but I hope an' trust my friends'll take a  ticket fer
+me."
+
+"Bet your natchul!" said Muldoon, cheerfully, and the horses
+scattered before us, trotting into the ravine.
+
+Next morning we sent back to the livery-stable what was left of the
+yellow horse.  It seemed tired, but anxious to go.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF
+
+
+It was her first voyage, and though she was but a cargo-steamer
+of twenty-five hundred tons, she was the very best of her kind,
+the outcome of forty years of experiments and improvements in
+framework and machinery; and her designers and owner thought as
+much of her as though she had been the Lucania.  Any one can make
+a floating hotel that will pay expenses, if he puts enough money
+into the saloon, and charges for private baths, suites of rooms,
+and such like; but in these days of competition and low freights
+every square inch of a cargo-boat must be built for cheapness,
+great hold-capacity, and a certain steady speed.  This boat was,
+perhaps, two hundred and forty feet long and thirty-two feet
+wide, with arrangements that enabled her to carry cattle on her
+main and sheep on her upper deck if she wanted to; but her great
+glory was the amount of cargo that she could store away in her
+holds.  Her owners - they were a very well known Scotch firm -
+came round with her from the north, where she had been launched
+and christened and fitted, to Liverpool, where she was to take
+cargo for New York; and the owner's daughter, Miss Frazier, went
+to and fro on the clean decks, admiring the new paint and the
+brass work, and the patent winches, and particularly the strong,
+straight bow, over which she had cracked a bottle of champagne
+when she named the steamer the Dimbula.  It was a beautiful
+September afternoon, and the boat in all her newness - she was
+painted lead-colour with a red funnel - looked very fine indeed.
+Her house-flag was flying, and her whistle from time to time
+acknowledged the salutes of friendly boats, who saw that she was
+new to the High and Narrow Seas and wished to make her welcome.
+
+"And now," said Miss Frazier, delightedly, to the captain, "she's
+a real ship, isn't she?  It seems only the other day father gave
+the order for her, and now - and now - isn't she a beauty!"  The
+girl was proud of the firm, and talked as though she were the
+controlling partner.
+
+"Oh, she's no so bad," the skipper replied cautiously.  "But I'm
+sayin' that it takes more than christenin' to mak' a ship.  In
+the nature o' things, Miss Frazier, if ye follow me, she's just
+irons and rivets and plates put into the form of a ship.  She has
+to find herself yet."
+
+"I thought father said she was exceptionally well found."
+
+"So she is, said the skipper, with a laugh.  "But it's this way wi'
+ships, Miss Frazier.  She's all here, but the parrts of her have
+not learned to work together yet.  They've had no chance."
+
+"The engines are working beautifully.  I can hear them."
+
+"Yes, indeed.  But there's more than engines to a ship.  Every
+inch of her, ye'll understand, has to be livened up and made to
+work wi' its neighbour - sweetenin' her, we call it, technically."
+
+"And how will you do it?" the girl asked.
+
+"We can no more than drive and steer her and so forth; but if we
+have rough weather this trip - it's likely - she'll learn the
+rest by heart!  For a ship, ye'll obsairve, Miss Frazier, is in
+no sense a reegid body closed at both ends.  She's a highly
+complex structure o' various an' conflictin' strains, wi' tissues
+that must give an' tak' accordin' to her personal modulus of
+elasteecity."  Mr.  Buchanan, the chief engineer, was coming towards
+them.  "I'm sayin' to Miss Frazier, here, that our little Dimbula
+has to be sweetened yet, and nothin' but a gale will do it.  How's
+all wi' your engines, Buck?"
+
+"Well enough - true by plumb an' rule, o' course; but there's no
+spontaneeity yet."  He turned to the girl.  "Take my word, Miss
+Frazier, and maybe ye'll comprehend later; even after a pretty
+girl's christened a ship it does not follow that there's such a
+thing as a ship under the men that work her."
+
+"I was sayin' the very same, Mr.  Buchanan," the skipper interrupted.
+
+"That's more metaphysical than I can follow," said Miss Frazier,
+laughing.
+
+"Why so?  Ye're good Scotch, an' - I knew your mother's father,
+he was fra' Dumfries - ye've a vested right in metapheesics, Miss
+Frazier, just as ye have in the Dimbula," the engineer said.
+
+"Eh, well, we must go down to the deep watters, an' earn Miss
+Frazier her deevidends.  Will you not come to my cabin for tea?"
+said the skipper.  "We'll be in dock the night, and when you're
+goin' back to Glasgie ye can think of us loadin' her down an'
+drivin' her forth - all for your sake."
+
+In the next few days they stowed some four thousand tons dead-weight
+into the Dimbula, and took her out from Liverpool.  As soon as she
+met the lift of the open water, she naturally began to talk.  If
+you lay your ear to the side of the cabin, the next time you are
+in a steamer, you will hear hundreds of little voices in every
+direction, thrilling and buzzing, and whispering and popping, and
+gurgling and sobbing and squeaking exactly like a telephone in a
+thunder-storm.  Wooden ships shriek and growl and grunt, but iron
+vessels throb and quiver through all their hundreds of ribs and
+thousands of rivets.  The Dimbula was very strongly built, and
+every piece of her had a letter or a number, or both, to describe
+it; and every piece had been hammered, or forged, or rolled, or
+punched by man, and had lived in the roar and rattle of the shipyard
+for months.  Therefore, every piece had its own separate voice, in
+exact proportion to the amount of trouble spent upon it.  Cast-iron,
+as a rule, says very little; but mild steel plates and wrought-iron,
+and ribs and beams that have been much bent and welded and riveted,
+talk continuously.  Their conversation, of course, is not half as
+wise as our human talk, because they are all, though they do not
+know it, bound down one to the other in a black darkness, where
+they cannot tell what is happening near them, nor what will overtake
+them next.
+
+As soon as she had cleared the Irish coast, a sullen, grey-headed
+old wave of the Atlantic climbed leisurely over her straight bows,
+and sat down on the steam-capstan used for hauling up the anchor.
+Now the capstan and the engine that drove it had been newly painted
+red and green; besides which, nobody likes being ducked.
+
+"Don't you do that again," the capstan sputtered through the
+teeth of his cogs.  "Hi! Where's the fellow gone?"
+
+The wave had slouched overside with a plop and a chuckle; but
+"Plenty more where he came from," said a brother-wave, and went
+through and over the capstan, who was bolted firmly to an iron
+plate on the iron deck-beams below.
+
+"Can't you keep still up there?" said the deckbeams.  "What's the
+matter with you?  One minute you weigh twice as much as you ought
+to, and the next you don't!"
+
+"It isn't my fault," said the capstan.  "There's a green brute
+outside that comes and hits me on the head."
+
+"Tell that to the shipwrights.  You've been in position for months
+and you've never wriggled like this before.  If you aren't careful
+you'll strain us."
+
+"Talking of strain," said a low, rasping, unpleasant voice, are
+any of you fellows - you deck-beams, we mean - aware that those
+exceedingly ugly knees of yours happen to be riveted into our
+structure - ours?"
+
+"Who might you be?" the deck-beams inquired.
+
+"Oh, nobody in particular," was the answer.  "We're only the port
+and starboard upper-deck stringers; and if you persist in heaving
+and hiking like this, we shall be reluctantly compelled to take
+steps."
+
+Now the stringers of the ship are long iron girders, so to speak,
+that run lengthways from stern to bow.  They keep the iron frames
+(what are called ribs in a wooden ship) in place, and also help
+to hold the ends of the deck-beams, which go from side to side of
+the ship.  Stringers always consider themselves most important,
+because they are so long.
+
+"You will take steps - will you?"  This was a long echoing
+rumble.  It came from the frames - scores and scores of them,
+each one about eighteen inches  distant from the next, and each
+riveted to the stringers in four places.  "We think you will have
+a certain amount of trouble in that"; and thousands and thousands
+of the little rivets that held everything together whispered: "You
+Will!  You will!  Stop quivering and be quiet.  Hold on, brethren!
+Hold on!  Hot Punches!  What's that?"
+
+Rivets have no teeth, so they cannot chatter with fright; but they
+did their best as a fluttering jar swept along the ship from stern
+to bow, and she shook like a rat in a terrier's mouth.
+
+An unusually severe pitch, for the sea was rising, had lifted the
+big throbbing screw nearly to the surface, and it was spinning
+round in a kind of soda-water - half sea and half air - going
+much faster than was proper, because there was no deep water for
+it to work in.  As it sank again, the engines - and they were
+triple expansion, three cylinders in a row - snorted through all
+their three pistons.  "Was that a joke, you fellow outside?  It's
+an uncommonly poor one.  How are we to do our work if you fly off
+the handle that way?"
+
+"I didn't fly off the handle," said the screw, twirling huskily
+at the end of the screw-shaft.  "If I had, you'd have been
+scrap-iron by this time.  The sea dropped away from under me, and
+I had nothing to catch on to.  That's all."
+
+That's all, d'you call it?" said the thrust-block, whose business
+it is to take the push of the screw; for if a screw had nothing to
+hold it back it would crawl right into the engine-room.  (It is
+the holding back of the screwing action that gives the drive to a
+ship.)  "I know I do my work deep down and out of sight, but I warn
+you I expect justice.  All I ask for is bare justice.  Why can't
+you push steadily and evenly, instead of whizzing like a whirligig,
+and making me hot under all my collars?"  The thrust-block had six
+collars, each faced with brass, and he did not wish to get them
+heated.
+
+All the bearings that supported the fifty feet of screw-shaft as
+it ran to the stern whispered: "Justice - give us justice."
+
+"I can only give you what I can get," the screw answered.  "Look
+out! It's coming again!"
+
+He rose with a roar as the Dimbula plunged, and "whack - flack -
+whack - whack" went the engines, furiously, for they had little
+to check them.
+
+"I'm the noblest outcome of human ingenuity - Mr.  Buchanan says
+so," squealed the high-pressure cylinder.  "This is simply
+ridiculous!" The piston went up savagely, and choked, for half
+the steam behind it was mixed with dirty water.  "Help!  Oiler!
+Fitter!  Stoker!  Help I'm choking," it gasped.  "Never in the
+history of maritime invention has such a calamity over-taken one
+so young and strong.  And if I go, who's to drive the ship?"
+
+"Hush! oh, hush!" whispered the Steam, who, of course, had been
+to sea many times before.  He used to spend his leisure ashore in
+a cloud, or a gutter, or a flower-pot, or a thunder-storm, or
+anywhere else where water was needed.  "That's only a little
+priming, a little carrying-over, as they call it.  It'll happen
+all night, on and off.  I don't say it's nice, but it's the best
+we can do under the circumstances."
+
+"What difference can circumstances make?  I'm here to do my work
+- on clean, dry steam.  Blow circumstances!" the cylinder roared.
+
+"The circumstances will attend to the blowing.  I've worked on the
+North Atlantic run a good many times - it's going to be rough
+before morning."
+
+"It isn't distressingly calm now," said the extra strong frames -
+they were called web-frames - in the engine-room.  "There's an
+upward thrust that we don't understand, and there's a twist that
+is very bad for our brackets and diamond-plates, and there's a
+sort of west-northwesterly pull, that follows the twist,  which
+seriously annoys us.  We mention this because we happened to cost
+a good deal of money, and we feel sure that the owner would not
+approve of our being treated in this frivolous way."
+
+I'm afraid the matter is out of owner's hands for the present,"
+said the Steam, slipping into the condenser.  "You're left to
+your own devices till the weather betters."
+
+"I wouldn't mind the weather," said a flat bass voice below;
+"it's this confounded cargo that's breaking my heart.  I'm the
+garboard-strake, and I'm twice as thick as most of the others,
+and I ought to know something."
+
+The garboard-strake is the lowest plate in the bottom of a ship,
+and the Dimbula's garboard-strake was nearly three-quarters of an
+inch mild steel.
+
+"The sea pushes me up in a way I should never have expected," the
+strake grunted, "and the cargo pushes me down, and, between the
+two, I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
+
+"When in doubt, hold on," rumbled the Steam, making head in the
+boilers.
+
+"Yes; but there's only dark, and cold, and hurry, down here; and
+how do I know whether the other plates are doing their duty?
+Those bulwark-plates up above, I've heard, ain't more than
+five-sixteenths of an inch thick - scandalous, I call it."
+
+"I agree with you," said a huge web-frame, by the main cargo-hatch.
+He was deeper and thicker than all the others, and curved half-way
+across the ship in the shape of half an arch, to support the deck
+where deck-beams would have been in the way of cargo coming up and
+down.  "I work entirely unsupported, and I observe that I am the
+sole strength of this vessel, so far as my vision extends.  The
+responsibility, I assure you, is enormous.  I believe the
+money-value of the cargo is over one hundred and fifty thousand
+pounds.  Think of that!"
+
+"And every pound of it is dependent on my personal exertions."
+Here spoke a sea-valve that communicated directly with the water
+outside, and was seated not very far from the garboard-strake.
+"I rejoice to think that I am a Prince-Hyde Valve, with best Para
+rubber facings.  Five patents cover me - I mention this without
+pride - five separate and several patents, each one finer than
+the other.  At present I am screwed fast.  Should I open, you
+would immediately be swamped.  This is incontrovertible!"
+
+Patent things always use the longest words they can.  It is a
+trick that they pick up from their inventors.
+
+"That's news," said a big centrifugal bilge-pump.  "I had an idea
+that you were employed to clean decks and things with.  At least,
+I've used you for that more than once.  I forget the precise number,
+in thousands, of gallons which I am guaranteed to throw per hour;
+but I assure you, my complaining friends, that there is not the
+least danger.  I alone am capable of clearing any water that may
+find its way here.  By my Biggest Deliveries, we pitched then!"
+
+The sea was getting up in workmanlike style.  It was a dead westerly
+gale, blown from under a ragged opening of green sky, narrowed on
+all sides by fat, grey clouds; and the wind bit like pincers as it
+fretted the spray into lacework on the flanks of the waves.
+
+"I tell you what it is," the foremast telephoned down its
+wire-stays.  "I'm up here, and I can take a dispassionate view
+of things.  There's an organised conspiracy against us.  I'm
+sure of it, because every single one of these waves is heading
+directly for our bows.  The whole sea is concerned in it - and
+so's the wind.  It's awful!"
+
+"What's awful?" said a wave, drowning the capstan for the
+hundredth time.
+
+"This organised conspiracy on your part," the capstan gurgled,
+taking his cue from the mast.  "Organised bubbles and spindrift!
+There has been a depression in the Gulf of Mexico.  Excuse me!"
+He leaped overside; but his friends took up the tale one after
+another.
+
+"Which has advanced - "That wave hove green water over the funnel.
+
+"As far as Cape Hatteras - "  He drenched the bridge.
+
+"And is now going out to sea - to sea - to sea!"  The third went
+out in three surges, making a clean sweep of a boat, which turned
+bottom up and sank in the darkening troughs alongside, while the
+broken falls whipped the davits.
+
+"That's all there is to it," seethed the white water roaring through
+the scuppers.  "There's no animus in our proceedings.  We're only
+meteorological corollaries."
+
+"Is it going to get any worse?" said the bow-anchor chained down
+to the deck, where he could only breathe once in five minutes.
+
+"Not knowing, can't say.  Wind may blow a bit by midnight.
+Thanks awfully.  Good-bye."
+
+The wave that spoke so politely had travelled some distance aft,
+and found itself all mixed up on the deck amidships, which was a
+well-deck sunk between high bulwarks.  One of the bulwark-plates,
+which was hung on hinges to open outward, had swung out, and
+passed the bulk of the water back to the sea again with a clean
+smack.
+
+"Evidently that's what I'm made for," said the plate, closing
+again with a sputter of pride.  "Oh, no, you don't, my friend!"
+The top of a wave was trying to get in from the outside, but as
+the plate did not open in that direction, the defeated water
+spurted back.
+
+"Not bad for five-sixteenths of an inch," said the bulwark-plate.
+"My work, I see, is laid down for the night"; and it began opening
+and shutting, as it was designed to do, with the motion of the ship.
+
+"We are not what you might call idle," groaned all the frames
+together, as the Dimbula climbed a big wave, lay on her side at
+the top, and shot into the next hollow, twisting in the descent.
+A huge swell pushed up exactly under her middle, and her bow and
+stern hung free with nothing to support them.  Then one joking
+wave caught her up at the bow, and another at the stern, while
+the rest of the water slunk away from under her just to see how
+she would like it; so she was held up at her two ends only, and
+the weight of the cargo and the machinery fell on the groaning
+iron keels and bilge-stringers.
+
+"Ease off!  Ease off; there!" roared the garboard-strake.  "I want
+one-eighth of an inch fair play.  D' you hear me, you rivets!"
+
+"Ease off! Ease off!" cried the bilge-stringers.  "Don't hold us
+so tight to the frames!"
+
+"Ease off!" grunted the deck-beams, as the Dimbula rolled
+fearfully.  "You've cramped our knees into the stringers, and we
+can't move.  Ease off; you flat-headed little nuisances."
+
+Then two converging seas hit the bows, one on each side, and fell
+away in torrents of streaming thunder.
+
+"Ease off!" shouted the forward collision-bulkhead.  "I want to
+crumple up, but I'm stiffened in every direction.  Ease off; you
+dirty little forge-filings.  Let me breathe!"
+
+All the hundreds of plates that are riveted to the frames, and
+make the outside skin of every steamer, echoed the call, for
+each plate wanted to shift and creep a little, and each plate,
+according to its position, complained against the rivets.
+
+"We can't help it! We can't help it!" they murmured in reply.
+"We're put here to hold you, and we're going to do it; you never
+pull us twice in the same direction.  If you'd say what you were
+going to do next, we'd try to meet your views.
+
+"As far as I could feel," said the upper-deck planking, and that
+was four inches thick, "every single iron near me was pushing or
+pulling in opposite directions.  Now, what's the sense of that?
+My friends, let us all pull together."
+
+"Pull any way you please," roared the funnel, "so long as you
+don't try your experiments on me.  I need fourteen wire-ropes,
+all pulling in different directions, to hold me steady.  Isn't
+that so?"
+
+We believe you, my boy!" whistled the funnel-stays through their
+clinched teeth, as they twanged in the wind from the top of the
+funnel to the deck.
+
+"Nonsense!  We must all pull together," the decks repeated.  "Pull
+lengthways."
+
+"Very good," said the stringers; "then stop pushing sideways when
+you get wet.  Be content to run gracefully fore and aft, and curve
+in at the ends as we do."
+
+"No - no curves at the end.  A very slight workmanlike curve from
+side to side, with a good grip at each knee, and little pieces
+welded on," said the deck-beams.
+
+"Fiddle!" cried the iron pillars of the deep, dark hold.  "Who
+ever heard of curves?  Stand up straight; be a perfectly round
+column, and carry tons of good solid weight - like that!  There!"
+A big sea smashed on the deck above, and the pillars stiffened
+themselves to the load.
+
+"Straight up and down is not bad," said the frames, who ran that
+way in the sides of the ship, "but you must also expand yourselves
+sideways.  Expansion is the law of life, children.  Open out! open
+ out!"
+
+"Come back!" said the deck-beams, savagely, as the upward heave
+of the sea made the frames try to open.  "Come back to your bearings,
+you slack-jawed irons!"
+
+"Rigidity!  Rigidity!  Rigidity!" thumped the engines.  "Absolute,
+unvarying rigidity - rigidity!"
+
+"You see!" whined the rivets, in chorus.  "No two of you will ever
+pull alike, and - and you blame it all on us.  We only know how to
+go through a plate and bite down on both sides so that it can't,
+and mustn't, and sha'n't move."
+
+"I've got one fraction of an inch play, at any rate," said the
+garboard-strake, triumphantly.  So he had, and all the bottom of
+the ship felt the easier for it.
+
+"Then we're no good," sobbed the bottom rivets.  "We were ordered
+- we were ordered - never to give; and we've given, and the sea
+will come in, and we'll all go to the bottom together!  First
+we're blamed for everything unpleasant, and now we haven't the
+consolation of having done our work."
+
+"Don't say I told you," whispered the Steam, consolingly; "but,
+between  you and me and the last cloud I came from, it was bound
+to happen sooner or later.  You had to give a fraction, and you've
+given without knowing it.  Now, hold on, as before."
+
+"What's the use?" a few hundred rivets chattered.  "We've given -
+we've given; and the sooner we confess that we can't keep the ship
+together, and go off our little heads, the easier it will be.  No
+rivet forged can stand this strain."
+
+"No one rivet was ever meant to.  Share it among you," the Steam
+answered.
+
+"The others can have my share.  I'm going to pull out," said a rivet
+in one of the forward plates.
+
+"If you go, others will follow," hissed the Steam.  "There's
+nothing so contagious in a boat as rivets going.  Why, I knew a
+little chap like you - he was an eighth of an inch fatter, though
+ - on a steamer - to be sure, she was only twelve hundred tons,
+now I come to think of it in exactly the same place as you are.
+He pulled out in a bit of a bobble of a sea, not half as bad as
+this, and he started all his friends on the same butt-strap, and
+the plates opened like a furnace door, and I had to climb into
+the nearest fog-bank, while the boat went down."
+
+"Now that's peculiarly disgraceful," said the rivet.  "Fatter than
+me, was he, and in a steamer not half our tonnage?  Reedy little
+peg!  I blush for the family, sir."  He settled himself more firmly
+than ever in his place, and the Steam chuckled.
+
+"You see," he went on, quite gravely, " a rivet, and especially a
+rivet in your position, is really the one indispensable part of
+the ship."
+
+The Steam did not say that be had whispered the very same thing
+to every single piece of iron aboard.  There is no sense in telling
+too much.
+
+And all that while the little Dimbula pitched and chopped, and
+swung and slewed, and lay down as though she were going to die,
+and got up as though she had been stung, and threw her nose
+round and round in circles half a dozen times as she dipped, for
+the gale was at its worst.  It was inky black, in spite of the
+tearing white froth on the waves, and, to top everything, the
+rain began to fall in sheets, so that you could not see your hand
+before your face.  This did not make much difference to the
+ironwork below, but it troubled the foremast a good deal.
+
+"Now it's all finished," he said dismally.  "The conspiracy is too
+strong for us.  There is nothing left but to - "
+
+"Hurraar!  Brrrraaah!  Brrrrrrp!" roared the Steam through the
+fog-horn, till the decks quivered.  "Don't be frightened, below.
+It's only me, just throwing out a few words, in case any one
+happens to be rolling round to-night."
+
+"You don't mean to say there's any one except us on the sea in
+such weather?" said the funnel, in a husky snuffle.
+
+"Scores of 'em," said the Steam, clearing its throat.  "Rrrrrraaa!
+Brraaaaa!  Prrrrp!  It's a trifle windy up here; and, Great
+Boilers! how it rains!"
+
+"We're drowning," said the scuppers.  They had been doing nothing
+else all night, but this steady thrash of rain above them seemed
+to be the end of the world.
+
+"That's all right.  We'll be easier in an hour or two.  First the
+wind and then the rain.  Soon you may make sail again!  Grrraaaaaah!
+Drrrraaaa!  Drrrp!  I have a notion that the sea is going down
+already.  If it does you'll learn something about rolling.  We've
+only pitched till now.  By the way, aren't you chaps in the hold a
+little easier than you were?"
+
+There was just as much groaning and straining as ever, but it was
+not so loud or squeaky in tone; and when the ship quivered she
+did not jar stiffly, like a poker hit on the floor, but gave
+with a supple little waggle, like a perfectly balanced golf-club.
+
+"We have made a most amazing discovery," said the stringers, one
+after another.  "A discovery that entirely changes the situation.
+We have found, for the first time in the history of ship-building,
+that the inward pull of the deck-beams and the outward thrust of
+the frames locks us, as it were, more closely in our places, and
+enables us to endure a strain which is entirely without parallel
+in the records of marine architecture."
+
+The Steam turned a laugh quickly into a roar up the fog-horn.
+"What  massive intellects you great stringers have," he said
+softly, when he had finished.
+
+"We also," began the deck-beams, "are discoverers and geniuses.
+We are of opinion that the support of the hold-pillars materially
+helps us.  We find that we lock up on them when we are subjected
+to a heavy and singular weight of sea above."
+
+Here the Dimbula shot down a hollow, lying almost on her side;
+righting at the bottom with a wrench and a spasm.
+
+"In these cases - are you aware of this, Steam? - the plating at
+the bows, and particularly at the stern - we would also mention
+the floors beneath us - help us to resist any tendency to spring.
+"The frames spoke, in the solemn awed voice which people use when
+they have just come across something entirely new for the very
+first time.
+
+"I'm only a poor puffy little flutterer," said the Steam, "but I
+have to stand a good deal of pressure in my business.  It's all
+tremendously interesting.  Tell us some more.  You fellows are so
+strong."
+
+"Watch us and you'll see," said the bow-plates, proudly.  "Ready,
+behind there!  Here's the father and mother of waves coming!  Sit
+tight, rivets all!"  A great sluicing comber thundered by, but
+through the scuffle and confusion the Steam could hear the low,
+quick cries of the ironwork as the various strains took them -
+cries like these: "Easy, now - easy!  Now push for all your
+strength!  Hold out!  Give a fraction!  Hold up!  Pull in!  Shove
+crossways!  Mind the strain at the ends!  Grip, now!  Bite tight!
+Let the water get away from under - and there she goes!"
+
+The wave raced off into the darkness, shouting, "Not bad, that,
+if it's your first run!" and the drenched and ducked ship throbbed
+to the beat of the engines inside her.  All three cylinders were
+white with the salt spray that had come down through the engine-room
+hatch; there was white fur on the canvas-bound steam-pipes, and
+even the bright-work deep below was speckled and soiled; but the
+cylinders had learned to make the most of steam that was half water,
+and were pounding along cheerfully.
+
+"How's the noblest outcome of human ingenuity hitting it?" said
+the Steam, as he whirled through the engine-room.
+
+"Nothing for nothing in this world of woe," the cylinders answered,
+as though they had been working for centuries, "and precious little
+for seventy-five pounds head.  We've made two knots this last hour
+and a quarter!  Rather humiliating for eight hundred horse-power,
+isn't it?"
+
+"Well, it's better than drifting astern, at any rate.  You seem
+rather less - how shall I put it - stiff in the back than you
+were."
+
+"If you'd been hammered as we've been this night, you wouldn't be
+stiff - iff - iff; either.  Theoreti - retti - retti - cally, of
+course, rigidity is the thing.  Purrr - purr - practically, there
+has to be a little give and take.  We found that out by working on
+our sides for five minutes at a stretch - chch - chh.  How's the
+weather?"
+
+"Sea's going down fast," said the Steam.
+
+"Good business," said the high-pressure cylinder.  "Whack her up,
+boys.  They've given us five pounds more steam"; and he began
+humming the first bars of "Said the young Obadiah to the old
+Obadiah," which, as you may have noticed, is a pet tune among
+engines not built for high speed.  Racing-liners with twin-screws
+sing "The Turkish Patrol" and the overture to the "Bronze Horse,"
+and "Madame Angot," till something goes wrong, and then they
+render Gounod's "Funeral March of a Marionette," with variations.
+
+"You'll learn a song of your own some fine day," said the Steam,
+as he flew up the fog-horn for one last bellow.
+
+Next day the sky cleared and the sea dropped a little, and the
+Dimbula began to roll from side to side till every inch of iron
+in her was sick and giddy.  But luckily they did not all feel ill
+at the same time: otherwise she would have opened out like a wet
+paper box.
+
+The Steam whistled warnings as he went about his business: it is
+in this short, quick roll and tumble that follows a heavy sea that
+most of the accidents happen, for then everything thinks that the
+worst is over and goes off guard.  So he orated and chattered till
+the beams and frames and floors and stringers and things had
+learned how to lock down and lock up on one another, and endure
+this new kind of strain.
+
+They found ample time to practise, for they were sixteen days at
+sea, and it was foul weather till within a hundred miles of New
+York.  The Dimbula picked up her pilot, and came in covered with
+salt and red rust.  Her funnel was dirty-grey from top to bottom;
+two boats had been carried away; three copper ventilators looked
+like hats after a fight with the police; the bridge had a dimple
+in the middle of it; the house that covered the steam steering-gear
+was split as with hatchets; there was a bill for small repairs in
+the engine-room almost as long as the screw-shaft; the forward
+cargo-hatch fell into bucket-staves when they raised the iron
+cross-bars; and the steam-capstan had been badly wrenched on its
+bed.  Altogether, as the skipper said, it was "a pretty general
+average."
+
+"But she's soupled," he said to Mr.  Buchanan.  "For all her
+dead-weight she rode like a yacht.  Ye mind that last blow off
+the Banks - I am proud of her, Buck."
+
+"It's vera good," said the chief engineer, looking along the
+dishevelled decks.  "Now, a man judgin' superfeecially would say
+we were a wreck, but we know otherwise - by experience."
+
+Naturally everything in the Dimbula fairly stiffened with pride,
+and the foremast and the forward collision-bulkhead, who are
+pushing creatures, begged the Steam to warn the Port of New York
+of their arrival.  "Tell those big boats all about us," they said.
+"They seem to take us quite as a matter of course."
+
+It was a glorious, clear, dead calm morning, and in single file,
+with less than half a mile between each, their bands playing and
+their tugboats shouting and waving handkerchiefs, were the Majestic,
+the Paris, the Touraine, the Servia, the Kaiser Wilhelm II, and
+the Werkendam, all statelily going out to sea.  As the Dimbula
+shifted her helm to give the great boats clear way, the Steam
+(who knows far too much to mind making an exhibition of himself
+now and then) shouted:
+
+Oyez!  Oyez!  Oyez!  Princes, Dukes, and Barons of the High Seas!
+Know ye by these presents, we are the Dimbula, fifteen days nine
+hours from Liverpool, having crossed the Atlantic with four thousand
+ton of cargo for the first time in our career!  We have not
+foundered.  We are here.  'Eer!  'Eer!  We are not disabled.  But
+we have had a time wholly unparalleled in the annals of ship-building!
+Our decks were swept!  We pitched; we rolled!  We thought we were
+going to die!  Hi!  Hi!  But we didn't.  We wish to give notice that
+we have come to New York all the way across the Atlantic, through the
+worst weather in the world; and we are the Dimbula!  We are - arr
+- ha - ha - ha-r-r-r!"
+
+The beautiful line of boats swept by as steadily as the procession
+of the Seasons.  The Dimbula heard the Majestic say, "Hmph!" and
+the Paris grunted, "How!" and the Touraine said, "Oui!" with a
+little coquettish flicker of steam; and the Servia said, "Haw!" and
+the Kaiser and the Werkendam said, "Hoch!" Dutch fashion - and that
+was absolutely all.
+
+"I did my best," said the Steam, gravely, "but I don't think they
+were much impressed with us, somehow.  Do you?"
+
+"It's simply disgusting," said the bow-plates.  "They might have
+seen what we've been through.  There isn't a ship on the sea that
+has suffered as we have - is there, now?"
+
+"Well, I wouldn't go so far as that," said the Steam, "because
+I've worked on some of those boats, and sent them through
+weather quite as bad as the fortnight that we've had, in six
+days; and some of them are a little over ten thousand tons, I
+believe.  Now I've seen the Majestic, for instance, ducked from
+her bows to her funnel; and I've helped the Arizona, I think she
+was, to back off an iceberg she met with one dark night; and I
+had to run out of the Paris's engine-room, one day, because
+there was thirty foot of water in it.  Of course, I don't deny - "
+The Steam shut off suddenly, as a tugboat, loaded with a political
+club and a brass band, that had been to see a New York Senator off
+to Europe, crossed their bows, going to Hoboken.  There was a
+long silence that reached, without a break, from the cut-water to
+the propeller-blades of the Dimbula.
+
+Then a new, big voice said slowly and thickly, as though the
+owner had just waked up: "It's my conviction that I have made a
+fool of myself."
+
+The Steam knew what had happened at once; for when a ship finds
+herself all the talking of the separate pieces ceases and melts
+into one voice, which is the soul of the ship.
+
+"Who are you?" he said, with a laugh.
+"I am the Dimbula, of course.  I've never been anything else
+except that - and a fool!"
+
+The tugboat, which was doing its very best to be run down, got
+away just in time; its band playing clashily and brassily a
+popular but impolite air:
+
+          In the days of old Rameses - are you on?
+          In the days of old Rameses - are you on?
+          In the days of old Rameses,
+          That story had paresis,
+          Are you on - are you on - are you on?
+
+"Well, I'm glad you've found yourself," said the Steam.  "To tell
+the truth, I was a little tired of talking to all those ribs and
+stringers.  Here's Quarantine.  After that we'll go to our wharf
+and clean up a little, and - next month we'll do it all over again."
+
+
+
+THE TOMB OF HIS ANCESTORS
+
+
+
+Some people will tell you that if there were but a single loaf of
+bread in all India it would be divided equally between the Plowdens,
+the Trevors, the Beadons, and the Rivett-Carnacs.  That is only one
+way of saying that certain families serve India generation after
+generation, as dolphins follow in line across the open sea.
+
+Let us take a small and obscure case.  There has been at least one
+representative of the Devonshire Chinns in or near Central India
+since the days of Lieutenant-Fireworker Humphrey Chinn, of the
+Bombay European Regiment, who assisted at the capture of
+Seringapatam in 1799.  Alfred Ellis Chinn, Humphrey's younger
+brother, commanded a regiment of Bombay grenadiers from 1804 to
+1813, when he saw some mixed fighting; and in 1834 John Chinn of
+the same family - we will call him John Chinn the First - came to
+light as a level-headed administrator in time of trouble at a
+place called Mundesur.  He died young, but left his mark on the
+new country, and the Honourable the Board of Directors of the
+Honourable the East India Company embodied his virtues in a
+stately resolution, and paid for the expenses of his tomb among
+the Satpura hills.
+
+He was succeeded by his son, Lionel Chinn, who left the little
+old Devonshire home just in time to be severely wounded in the
+Mutiny.  He spent his working life within a hundred and fifty miles
+of John Chinn's grave, and rose to the command of a regiment of
+small, wild hill-men, most of whom had known his father.  His son
+John was born in the small thatched-roofed, mud-walled cantonment,
+which is even to-day eighty miles from the nearest railway, in the
+heart of a scrubby, tigerish country.  Colonel Lionel Chinn served
+thirty years and retired.  In the Canal his steamer passed the
+outward-bound troop-ship, carrying his son eastward to the family
+duty.
+
+The Chinns are luckier than most folk, because they know exactly
+what they must do.  A clever Chinn passes for the Bombay Civil
+Service, and gets away to Central India, where everybody is glad
+to see him.  A dull Chinn enters the Police Department or the Woods
+and Forest, and sooner or later he, too, appears in Central India,
+and that is what gave rise to the saying, "Central India is
+inhabited by Bhils, Mairs, and Chinns, all very much alike."  The
+breed is small-boned, dark, and silent, and the stupidest of them
+are good shots.  John Chinn the Second was rather clever, but as
+the eldest son he entered the army, according to Chinn tradition.
+His duty was to abide in his father's regiment for the term of his
+natural life, though the corps was one which most men would have
+paid heavily to avoid.  They were irregulars, small, dark, and
+blackish, clothed in rifle-green with black-leather trimmings;
+and friends called them the "Wuddars," which means a race of
+low-caste people who dig up rats to eat.  But the Wuddars did not
+resent it.  They were the only Wuddars, and their points of pride
+were these:
+
+Firstly, they had fewer English officers than any native regiment.
+Secondly, their subalterns were not mounted on parade, as is the
+general rule, but walked at the head of their men.  A man who can
+hold his own with the Wuddars at their quickstep must be sound in
+wind and limb.  Thirdly, they were the most pukka shikarries
+(out-and-out hunters) in all India.  Fourthly-up to one-hundredthly
+ - they were the Wuddars - Chinn's Irregular Bhil Levies of the
+old days, but now, henceforward and for ever, the Wuddars.
+
+No Englishman entered their mess except for love or through family
+usage.  The officers talked to their soldiers in a tongue not two
+hundred white folk in India understood; and the men were their
+children, all drawn from the Bhils, who are, perhaps, the strangest
+of the many strange races in India.  They were, and at heart are,
+wild men, furtive, shy, full of untold superstitions.  The races
+whom we call natives of the country found the Bhil in possession of
+the land when they first broke into that part of the world thousands
+of years ago.  The books call them Pre-Aryan, Aboriginal, Dravidian,
+and so forth; and, in other words, that is what the Bhils call
+themselves.  When a Rajput chief whose bards can sing his pedigree
+backwards for twelve hundred years is set on the throne, his
+investiture is not complete till he has been marked on the forehead
+with blood from the veins of a Bhil.  The Rajputs say the ceremony
+has no meaning, but the Bhil knows that it is the last, last shadow
+of his old rights as the long-ago owner of the soil.
+
+Centuries of oppression and massacre made the Bhil a cruel and
+half-crazy thief and cattle-stealer, and when the English came he
+seemed to be almost as open to civilisation as the tigers of his
+own jungles.  But John Chinn the First, father of Lionel,
+grandfather of our John, went into his country, lived with him,
+learned his language, shot the deer that stole his poor crops, and
+won his confidence, so that some Bhils learned to plough and sow,
+while others were coaxed into the Company's service to police
+their friends.
+
+When they understood that standing in line did not mean instant
+execution, they accepted soldiering as a cumbrous but amusing kind
+of sport, and were zealous to keep the wild Bhils under control.
+That was the thin edge of the wedge.  John Chinn the First gave
+them written promises that, if they were good from a certain date,
+the Government would overlook previous offences; and since John
+Chinn was never known to break his word - he promised once to hang
+a Bhil locally esteemed invulnerable, and hanged him in front of
+his tribe for seven proved murders - the Bhils settled down as
+steadily as they knew how.  It was slow, unseen work, of the sort
+that is being done all over India to-day; and though John Chinn's
+only reward came, as I have said, in the shape of a grave at
+Government expense, the little people of the hills never forgot him.
+
+Colonel Lionel Chinn knew and loved them, too, and they were very
+fairly civilised, for Bhils, before his service ended.  Many of
+them could hardly be distinguished from low-caste Hindoo farmers;
+but in the south, where John Chinn the First was buried, the
+wildest still clung to the Satpura ranges, cherishing a legend
+that some day Jan Chinn, as they called him, would return to his
+own.  In the mean time they mistrusted the white man and his ways.
+The least excitement would stampede them, plundering, at random,
+and now and then killing; but if they were handled discreetly they
+grieved like children, and promised never to do it again.
+
+The Bhils of the regiment - the uniformed men - were virtuous in
+many ways, but they needed humouring.  They felt bored and
+homesick unless taken after tiger as beaters; and their
+cold-blooded daring - all Wuddars shoot tigers on foot: it is
+their caste-mark - made even the officers wonder.  They would
+follow up a wounded tiger as unconcernedly as though it were a
+sparrow with a broken wing; and this through a country full of
+caves and rifts and pits, where a wild beast could hold a dozen
+men at his mercy.  Now and then some little man was brought to
+barracks with his head smashed in or his ribs torn away; but his
+companions never learned caution; they contented themselves with
+settling the tiger.
+
+Young John Chinn was decanted at the verandah of the Wuddars'
+lonely mess-house from the back seat of a two-wheeled cart, his
+gun-cases cascading all round him.  The slender little, hookey-nosed
+boy looked forlorn as a strayed goat when he slapped the white dust
+off his knees, and the cart jolted down the glaring road.  But in
+his heart he was contented.  After all, this was the place where
+he had been born, and things were not much changed since he had
+been sent to England, a child, fifteen years ago.
+
+There were a few new buildings, but the air and the smell and the
+sunshine were the same; and the little green men who crossed the
+parade-ground looked very familiar.  Three weeks ago John Chinn
+would have said he did not remember a word of the Bhil tongue, but
+at the mess door he found his lips moving in sentences that he did
+not understand - bits of old nursery rhymes, and tail-ends of such
+orders as his father used to give the men.
+
+The Colonel watched him come up the steps, and laughed.
+
+"Look!" he said to the Major.  "No need to ask the young un's
+breed.  He's a pukka Chinn.  'Might be his father in the Fifties
+over again."
+
+"'Hope he'll shoot as straight," said the Major.  "He's brought
+enough ironmongery with him."
+
+"'Wouldn't be a Chinn if he didn't.  Watch him blowin' his nose.
+'Regular Chinn beak.  'Flourishes his handkerchief like his father.
+It's the second edition - line for line."
+
+"'Fairy tale, by Jove!" said the Major, peering through the slats
+of the jalousies.  "If he's the lawful heir, he'll ....  Now
+old Chinn could no more pass that chick without fiddling with it
+than ...."
+
+"His son!" said the Colonel, jumping up.
+
+"Well, I be blowed!" said the Major.  The boy's eye had been
+caught by a split-reed screen that hung on a slew between the
+veranda pillars, and, mechanically, he had tweaked the edge to
+set it level.  Old Chinn had sworn three times a day at that
+screen for many years; he could never get it to his satisfaction.
+
+His son entered the anteroom in the middle of a fivefold silence.
+They made him welcome for his father's sake and, as they took stock
+of him, for his own.  He was ridiculously like the portrait of the
+Colonel on the wall, and when he had washed a little of the dust
+from his throat he went to his quarters with the old man's short,
+noiseless jungle-step.
+
+"So much for heredity," said the Major.  "That comes of four
+generations among the Bhils."
+
+"And the men know it," said a Wing officer.  "They've been waiting
+for this youth with their tongues hanging out.  I am persuaded
+that, unless he absolutely beats 'em over the head, they'll lie
+down by companies and worship him."
+
+"Nothin' like havin' a father before you," said the Major.  "I'm
+a parvenu with my chaps.  I've only been twenty years in the
+regiment, and my revered parent he was a simple squire.  There's
+no getting at the bottom of a Bhil's mind.  Now, why is the
+superior bearer that young Chinn brought with him fleeing across
+country with his bundle?"  He stepped into the verandah, and
+shouted after the man - a typical new-joined subaltern's servant
+who speaks English and cheats in proportion.
+
+What is it?" he called.
+
+Plenty bad man here.  I going, sar," was the reply.  "'Have taken
+Sahib's keys, and say will shoot."
+
+"Doocid lucid - doocid convincin'.  How those up-country thieves
+can leg it!  He has been badly frightened by some one."  The Major
+strolled to his quarters to dress for mess.
+
+Young Chinn, walking like a man in a dream, had fetched a compass
+round the entire cantonment before going to his own tiny cottage.
+The captain's quarters, in which he had been born, delayed him for
+a little; then he looked at the well on the parade-ground, where
+he had sat of evenings with his nurse, and at the ten-by-fourteen
+church, where the officers went to service if a chaplain of any
+official creed happened to come along.  It seemed very small as
+compared with the gigantic buildings he used to stare up at, but
+it was the same place.
+
+>From time to time he passed a knot of silent soldiers, who saluted.
+They might have been the very men who had carried him on their
+backs when he was in his first knickerbockers.  A faint light
+burned in his room, and, as he entered, hands clasped his feet,
+and a voice murmured from the floor.
+
+"Who is it?" said young Chinn, not knowing he spoke in the Bhil
+tongue.
+
+"I bore you in my arms, Sahib, when I was a strong man and you
+were a small one - crying, crying, crying!  I am your servant,
+as I was your father's before you.  We are all your servants."
+
+Young Chinn could not trust himself to reply, and the voice went
+on:
+
+"I have taken your keys from that fat foreigner, and sent him
+away; and the studs are in the shirt for mess.  Who should know,
+if I do not know?  And so the baby has become a man, and forgets
+his nurse; but my nephew shall make a good servant, or I will
+beat him twice a day."
+
+Then there rose up, with a rattle, as straight as a Bhil arrow, a
+little white-haired wizened ape of a man, with medals and orders
+on his tunic, stammering, saluting, and trembling.  Behind him a
+young and wiry Bhil, in uniform, was taking the trees out of
+Chinn's mess-boots.
+
+Chinn's eyes were full of tears.  The old man held out his keys.
+
+"Foreigners are bad people.  He will never come back again.  We
+are all servants of your father's son.  Has the Sahib forgotten
+who took him to see the trapped tiger in the village across the
+river, when his mother was so frightened and he was so brave?"
+
+The scene came back to Chinn in great magic-lantern flashes.
+"Bukta!" he cried; and all in a breath: "You promised nothing
+should hurt me.  Is it Bukta?"
+
+The man was at his feet a second time.  "He has not forgotten.  He
+remembers his own people as his father remembered.  Now can I die.
+But first I will live and show the Sahib how to kill tigers.  That
+that yonder is my nephew.  If he is not a good servant, beat him
+and send him to me, and I will surely kill him, for now the Sahib
+is with his own people.  Ai, Jan haba - Jan haba!  My Jan haba!
+I will stay here and see that this does his work well.  Take off
+his boots, fool.  Sit down upon the bed, Sahib, and let me look.
+It is Jan haba."
+
+He pushed forward the hilt of his sword as a sign of service,
+which is an honour paid only to viceroys, governors, generals,
+or to little children whom one loves dearly.  Chinn touched the
+hilt mechanically with three fingers, muttering he knew not what.
+It happened to be the old answer of his childhood, when Bukta in
+jest called him the little General Sahib.
+
+The Major's quarters were opposite Chinn's, and when he heard his
+servant gasp with surprise he looked across the room.  Then the
+Major sat on the bed and whistled; for the spectacle of the
+senior native commissioned officer of the regiment, an "unmixed"
+Bhil, a Companion of the Order of British India, with thirty-five
+years' spotless service in the army, and a rank among his own
+people superior to that of many Bengal princelings, valeting the
+last-joined subaltern, was a little too much for his nerves.
+
+The throaty bugles blew the Mess-call that has a long legend
+behind it.  First a few piercing notes like the shrieks of
+beaters in a far-away cover, and next, large, full, and smooth,
+the refrain of the wild song: "And oh, and oh, the green pulse
+of Mundore - Mundore!"
+
+"All little children were in bed when the Sahib heard that call
+last," said Bukta, passing Chinn a clean handkerchief.  The call
+brought back memories of his cot under the mosquito-netting, his
+mother's kiss, and the sound of footsteps growing fainter as he
+dropped asleep among his men.  So he hooked the dark collar of
+his new mess-jacket, and went to dinner like a prince who has
+newly inherited his father's crown.
+
+Old Bukta swaggered forth curling his whiskers.  He knew his own
+value, and no money and no rank within the gift of the Government
+would have induced him to put studs in young officers' shirts, or
+to hand them clean ties.  Yet, when he took off his uniform that
+night, and squatted among his fellows for a quiet smoke, he told
+them what he had done, and they said that he was entirely right.
+Thereat Bukta propounded a theory which to a white mind would
+have seemed raving insanity; but the whispering, level-headed
+little men of war considered it from every point of view, and
+thought that there might be a great deal in it.
+
+At mess under the oil-lamps the talk turned as usual to the
+unfailing subject of shikar - big game-shooting of every kind
+and under all sorts of conditions.  Young Chinn opened his eyes
+when he understood that each one of his companions had shot
+several tigers in the Wuddar style - on foot, that is - making no
+more of the business than if the brute had been a dog.
+
+"In nine cases out of ten," said the Major, "a tiger is almost as
+dangerous as a porcupine.  But the tenth time you come home feet
+first."
+
+That set all talking, and long before midnight Chinn's brain was
+in a whirl with stories of tigers - man-eaters and cattle-killers
+each pursuing his own business as methodically as clerks in an
+office; new tigers that had lately come into such-and-such a
+district; and old, friendly beasts of great cunning, known by
+nicknames in the mess-such as "Puggy," who was lazy, with huge
+paws, and "Mrs. Malaprop," who turned up when you never expected
+her, and made female noises.  Then they spoke of Bhil superstitions,
+a wide and picturesque field, till young Chinn hinted that they
+must be pulling his leg.
+
+"'Deed, we aren't," said a man on his left.  "We know all about
+you.  You're a Chinn and all that, and you've a sort of vested
+right here; but if you don't believe what we're telling you, what
+will you do when old Bukta begins his stories?  He knows about
+ghost-tigers, and tigers that go to a hell of their own; and
+tigers that walk on their hind feet; and your grandpapa's
+riding-tiger, as well.  'Odd he hasn't spoken of that yet."
+
+"You know you've an ancestor buried down Satpura way, don't you?"
+said the Major, as Chinn smiled irresolutely.
+
+"Of course I do," said Chinn, who had the chronicle of the Book
+of Chinn by heart.  It lies in a worn old ledger on the Chinese
+lacquer table behind the piano in the Devonshire home, and the
+children are allowed to look  at it on Sundays.
+
+"Well, I wasn't sure.  Your revered ancestor, my boy, according
+to the Bhils, has a tiger of his own - a saddle-tiger that he
+rides round the country whenever he feels inclined.  I don't call
+it decent in an ex-Collector's ghost; but that is what the Southern
+Bhils believe.  Even our men, who might be called moderately cool,
+don't care to beat that country if they hear that Jan Chinn is
+running about on his tiger.  It is supposed to be a clouded animal
+ - not stripy, but blotchy, like a tortoise-shell tom-cat.  No
+end of a brute, it is, and a sure sign of war or pestilence or
+ - or something.  There's a nice family legend for you."
+
+"What's the origin of it, d' you suppose?" said Chinn.
+
+"Ask the Satpura Bhils.  Old Jan Chinn was a mighty hunter before
+the Lord.  Perhaps it was the tiger's revenge, or perhaps he's
+huntin' 'em still.  You must go to his tomb one of these days and
+inquire.  Bukta will probably attend to that.  He was asking me
+before you came whether by any ill-luck you had already bagged
+your tiger.  If not, he is going to enter you under his own wing.
+Of course, for you of all men it's imperative.  You'll have a
+first-class time with Bukta."
+
+The Major was not wrong.  Bukta kept an anxious eye on young Chinn
+at drill, and it was noticeable that the first time the new officer
+lifted up his voice in an order the whole line quivered.  Even the
+Colonel was taken aback, for it might have been Lionel Chinn
+returned from Devonshire with a new lease of life.  Bukta had
+continued to develop his peculiar theory among his intimates, and
+it was accepted as a matter of faith in the lines, since every
+word and gesture on young Chinn's part so confirmed it.
+
+The old man arranged early that his darling should wipe out the
+reproach of not having shot a tiger; but he was not content to
+take the first or any beast that happened to arrive.  In his own
+villages he dispensed the high, low, and middle justice, and when
+his people - naked and fluttered - came to him with word of a
+beast marked down, he bade them send spies to the kills and the
+watering-places, that he might be sure the quarry was such an one
+as suited the dignity of such a man.
+
+Three or four times the reckless trackers returned, most truthfully
+saying that the beast was mangy, undersized - a tigress worn with
+nursing, or a broken-toothed old male - and Bukta would curb young
+Chinn's impatience.
+
+At last, a noble animal was marked down - a ten-foot cattle-killer
+with a huge roll of loose skin along the belly, glossy-hided,
+full-frilled about the neck, whiskered, frisky, and young.  He
+had slain a man in pure sport, they said.
+
+"Let him be fed," quoth Bukta, and the villagers dutifully drove
+out a cow to amuse him, that he might lie up near by.
+
+Princes and potentates have taken ship to India and spent great
+moneys for the mere glimpse of beasts one-half as fine as this
+of Bukta's.
+
+"It is not good," said he to the Colonel, when he asked for
+shooting-leave, "that my Colonel's son who may be - that my
+Colonel's son should lose his maidenhead on any small jungle
+beast.  That may come after.  I have waited long for this which
+is a tiger.  He has come in from the Mair country.  In seven days
+we will return with the skin."
+
+The mess gnashed their teeth enviously.  Bukta, had he chosen,
+might have invited them all.  But he went out alone with Chinn,
+two days in a shooting-cart and a day on foot, till they came to
+a rocky, glary valley with a pool of good water in it.  It was a
+parching day, and the boy very naturally stripped and went in for
+a bathe, leaving Bukta by the clothes.  A white skin shows far
+against brown jungle, and what Bukta beheld on Chinn's back and
+right shoulder dragged him forward step by step with staring
+eyeballs.
+
+"I'd forgotten it isn't decent to strip before a man of his
+position," said Chinn, flouncing in the water.  "How the little
+devil stares! What is it, Bukta?" "The Mark!" was the whispered
+answer.
+
+"It is nothing.  You know how it is with my people!" Chinn was
+annoyed.  The dull-red birth-mark on his shoulder, something like
+a conventionalised Tartar cloud, had slipped his memory or he
+would not have bathed.  It occurred, so they said at home, in
+alternate generations, appearing, curiously enough, eight or nine
+years after birth, and, save that it was part of the Chinn
+inheritance, would not be considered pretty.  He hurried ashore,
+dressed again, and went on till they met two or three Bhils, who
+promptly fell on their faces.  "My people," grunted Bukta, not
+condescending to notice them.  "And so your people, Sahib.  When I
+was a young man we were fewer, but not so weak.  Now we are many,
+but poor stock.  As may be remembered.  How will you shoot him,
+Sahib?  From a tree; from a shelter which my people shall build;
+by day or by night?"
+
+"On foot and in the daytime," said young Chinn.
+
+"That was your custom, as I have heard," said Bukta to himself "I
+will get news of him.  Then you and I will go to him.  I will
+carry one gun.  You have yours.  There is no need of more.  What
+tiger shall stand against thee?"
+
+He was marked down by a little water-hole at the head of a ravine,
+full-gorged and half asleep in the May sunlight.  He was walked up
+like a partridge, and he turned to do battle for his life.  Bukta
+made no motion to raise his rifle, but kept his eyes on Chinn, who
+met the shattering roar of the charge with a single shot - it
+seemed to him hours as he sighted - which tore through the throat,
+smashing the backbone below the neck and between the shoulders.
+The brute couched, choked, and fell, and before Chinn knew well
+what had happened Bukta bade him stay still while he paced the
+distance between his feet and the ringing jaws.
+
+"Fifteen," said Bukta.  "Short paces.  No need for a second shot,
+Sahib.  He bleeds cleanly where he lies, and we need not spoil
+the skin.  I said there would be no need of these, but they came
+- in case."
+
+Suddenly the sides of the ravine were crowned with the heads of
+Bukta's people - a force that could have blown the ribs out of
+the beast had Chinn's shot failed; but their guns were hidden,
+and they appeared as interested beaters, some five or six waiting
+the word to skin.  Bukta watched the life fade from the wild eyes,
+lifted one hand, and turned on his heel.
+
+"No need to show that we care," said he.  "Now, after this, we can
+kill what we choose.  Put out your hand, Sahib."
+
+Chinn obeyed.  It was entirely steady, and Bukta nodded.  "That
+also was  your custom.  My men skin quickly.  They will carry the
+skin to cantonments.  Will the Sahib come to my poor village for
+the night and, perhaps, forget  that I am his officer?"
+
+"But those men - the beaters.  They have worked hard, and perhaps -"
+
+"Oh, if they skin clumsily, we will skin them.  They are my people.
+In the lines I am one thing.  Here I am another."
+
+This was very true.  When Bukta doffed uniform and reverted to the
+fragmentary dress of his own people, he left his civilisation of
+drill in the next world.  That night, after a little talk with his
+subjects, he devoted to an orgie; and a Bhil orgie is a thing not
+to be safely written about.  Chinn, flushed with triumph, was in
+the thick of it, but the meaning of the mysteries was hidden.
+Wild folk came and pressed about his knees with offerings.  He
+gave his flask to the elders of the village.  They grew eloquent,
+and wreathed him about with flowers.  Gifts and loans, not all
+seemly, were thrust upon him, and infernal music rolled and
+maddened round red fires, while singers sang songs of the ancient
+times, and danced peculiar dances.  The aboriginal liquors are
+very potent, and Chinn was compelled to taste them often, but,
+unless the stuff had been drugged, how came he to fall asleep
+suddenly, and to waken late the next day - half a march from the
+village?
+
+"The Sahib was very tired.  A little before dawn he went to sleep,"
+Bukta explained.  "My people carried him here, and now it is time
+we should go back to cantonments."
+
+The voice, smooth and deferential, the step, steady and silent,
+made it hard to believe that only a few hours before Bukta was
+yelling and capering with naked fellow-devils of the scrub.
+
+"My people were very pleased to see the Sahib.  They will never
+forget.  When next the Sahib goes out recruiting, he will go to
+my people, and they will give him as many men as we need."
+
+Chinn kept his own counsel, except as to the shooting of the
+tiger, and Bukta embroidered that tale with a shameless tongue.
+The skin was certainly one of the finest ever hung up in the
+mess, and the first of many.  When Bukta could not accompany his
+boy on shooting-trips, he took care to put him in good hands,
+and Chinn learned more of the mind and desire of the wild Bhil
+in his marches and campings, by talks at twilight or at wayside
+pools, than an uninstructed man could have come at in a
+lifetime.
+
+Presently his men in the regiment grew bold to speak of their
+relatives - mostly in trouble - and to lay cases of tribal custom
+before him.  They would say, squatting in his verandah at
+twilight, after the easy, confidential style of the Wuddars,
+that such-and-such a bachelor had run away with such-and-such a
+wife at a far-off village.  Now, how many cows would Chinn Sahib
+consider a just fine?  Or, again, if written order came from the
+Government that a Bhil was to repair to a walled city of the
+plains to give evidence in a law-court, would it be wise to
+disregard that order?  On the other hand, if it were obeyed, would
+the rash voyager return alive?
+
+"But what have I to do with these things?" Chinn demanded of Bukta,
+impatiently.  "I am a soldier.  I do not know the law."
+
+"Hoo!  Law is for fools and white men.  Give them a large and
+loud order, and they will abide by it.  Thou art their law."
+
+"But wherefore?"
+
+Every trace of expression left Bukta's countenance.  The idea might
+have smitten him for the first time.  "How can I say?" he replied.
+"Perhaps it is on account of the name.  A Bhil does not love
+strange things.  Give them orders, Sahib-  two, three, four words
+at a time such as they can carry away in their heads.  That is
+enough."
+
+Chinn gave orders then, valiantly, not realising that a word spoken
+in haste before mess became the dread unappealable law of villages
+beyond the smoky hills was, in truth, no less than the Law of Jan
+Chinn the First, who, so the whispered legend ran, had come back
+to earth, to oversee the third generation, in the body and bones
+of his grandson.
+
+There could be no sort of doubt in this matter.  All the Bhils
+knew that Jan Chinn reincarnated had honoured Bukta's village
+with his presence after slaying his first - in this life - tiger;
+that he had eaten and drunk with the people, as he was used; and
+- Bukta must have drugged Chinn's liquor very deeply - upon his
+back and right shoulder all men had seen the same angry red
+Flying Cloud that the high Gods had set on the flesh of Jan
+Chinn the First when first he came to the Bhil.  As concerned the
+foolish white world which has no eyes, he was a slim and young
+officer in the Wuddars; but his own people knew he was Jan Chinn,
+who had made the Bhil a man; and, believing, they hastened to
+carry his words, careful never to alter them on the way.
+
+Because the savage and the child who plays lonely games have one
+horror of being laughed at or questioned, the little folk kept
+their convictions to themselves; and the Colonel, who thought he
+knew his regiment, never guessed that each one of the six hundred
+quick-footed, beady-eyed rank-and-file, to attention beside their
+rifles, believed serenely and unshakenly that the subaltern on the
+left flank of the line was a demi-god twice born - tutelary deity
+of their land and people.  The Earth-gods themselves had stamped
+the incarnation, and who would dare to doubt the handiwork of the
+Earth-gods?
+
+Chinn, being practical above all things, saw that his family name
+served him well in the lines and in camp.  His men gave no
+trouble - one does not commit regimental offences with a god in
+the chair of justice - and he was sure of the best beaters in the
+district when he needed them.  They believed that the protection
+of Jan Chinn the First cloaked them, and were bold in that belief
+beyond the utmost daring of excited Bhils.
+
+His quarters began to look like an amateur natural-history museum,
+in spite of duplicate heads and horns and skulls that he sent home
+to Devonshire.  The people, very humanly, learned the weak side of
+their god.  It is true he was unbribable, but bird-skins,
+butterflies, beetles, and, above all, news of big game pleased him.
+ In other respects, too, he lived up to the Chinn tradition.  He
+was fever-proof.  A night's sitting out over a tethered goat in a
+damp valley, that would have filled the Major with a month's malaria,
+had no effect on him.  He was, as they said, "salted before he was
+born."
+
+Now in the autumn of his second year's service an uneasy rumour
+crept out of the earth and ran about among the Bhils.  Chinn heard
+nothing of it till a brother-officer said across the mess-table:
+"Your revered ancestor's on the rampage in the Satpura country.
+You'd better look him up."
+
+"I don't want to be disrespectful, but I'm a little sick of my
+revered ancestor.  Bukta talks of nothing else.  What's the old
+boy supposed to be doing now?"
+
+"Riding cross-country by moonlight on his processional tiger.
+That's the story.  He's been seen by about two thousand Bhils,
+skipping along the tops of the Satpuras, and scaring people to
+death.  They believe it devoutly, and all the Satpura chaps are
+worshipping away at his shrine - tomb, I mean - like good uns.  You
+really ought to go down there.  Must be a queer thing to see your
+grandfather treated as a god."
+
+"What makes you think there's any truth in the tale?" said Chinn.
+
+"Because all our men deny it.  They say they've never heard of
+Chinn's tiger.  Now that's a manifest lie, because every Bhil has."
+
+"There's only one thing you've overlooked," said the Colonel,
+thoughtfully.  "When a local god reappears on earth, it's always
+an excuse for trouble of some kind; and those Satpura Bhils are
+about as wild as your grandfather left them, young un.  It means
+something."
+
+"Meanin' they may go on the war-path?" said Chinn.
+
+"'Can't say - as yet.  'Shouldn't be surprised a little bit."
+
+"I haven't been told a syllable."
+
+"Proves it all the more.  They are keeping something back."
+
+"Bukta tells me everything, too, as a rule.  Now, why didn't he
+tell me that?"
+
+Chinn put the question directly to the old man that night, and
+the answer surprised him.
+
+"Why should I tell what is well known?  Yes, the Clouded Tiger is
+out in the Satpura country."
+
+"What do the wild Bhils think that it means?"
+
+They do not know.  They wait.  Sahib, what is coming? Say only one
+little word, and we will be content."
+
+"We?  What have tales from the south, where the jungly Bhils live,
+to do with drilled men?"
+
+"When Jan Chinn wakes is no time for any Bhil to be quiet."
+
+"But he has not waked, Bukta."
+
+"Sahib" - the old man's eyes were full of tender reproof - "if he
+does not wish to be seen, why does he go abroad in the moonlight?
+We know he is awake, but we do not know what he desires.  Is it a
+sign for all the Bhils, or one that concerns the Satpura folk alone?
+Say one little word, Sahib, that I may carry it to the lines, and
+send on to our villages.  Why does Jan Chinn ride out?  Who has done
+wrong?  Is it pestilence?  Is it murrain?  Will our children die?
+Is it a sword?  Remember, Sahib, we are thy people and thy servants,
+and in this life I bore thee in my arms - not knowing."
+
+"Bukta has evidently looked on the cup this evening," Chinn thought;
+"but if I can do anything to soothe the old chap I must.  It's like
+the Mutiny rumours on a small scale."
+
+He dropped into a deep wicker chair, over which was thrown his
+first tiger-skin, and his weight on the cushion flapped the clawed
+paws over his shoulders.  He laid hold of them mechanically as he
+spoke, drawing the painted hide, cloak-fashion, about him.
+
+"Now will I tell the truth, Bukta," he said, leaning forward, the
+dried muzzle on his shoulder, to invent a specious lie.
+
+"I see that it is the truth," was the answer, in a shaking voice.
+
+"Jan Chinn goes abroad among the Satpuras, riding on the Clouded
+Tiger, ye say?  Be it so.  Therefore the sign of the wonder is for
+the Satpura Bhils only, and does not touch the Bhils who plough
+in the north and east, the Bhils of the Khandesh, or any others,
+except the Satpura Bhils, who, as we know, are wild and foolish."
+
+"It is, then, a sign for them.  Good or bad?"
+
+"Beyond doubt, good.  For why should Jan Chinn make evil to those
+whom he has made men?  The nights over yonder are hot; it is ill
+to lie in one bed over-long without turning, and Jan Chinn would
+look again upon his people.  So he rises, whistles his Clouded
+Tiger, and goes abroad a little to breathe the cool air.  If the
+Satpura Bhils kept to their villages, and did not wander after
+dark, they would not see him.  Indeed, Bukta, it is no more than
+that he would see the light again in his own country.  Send this
+news south, and say that it is my word."
+
+Bukta bowed to the floor.  "Good Heavens!" thought Chinn, "and
+this blinking pagan is a first-class officer, and as straight as
+a die!  I may as well round it off neatly."  He went on:
+
+"If the Satpura Bhils ask the meaning of the sign, tell them that
+Jan Chinn would see how they kept their old promises of good living.
+Perhaps they have plundered; perhaps they mean to disobey the
+orders of the Government; perhaps there is a dead man in the jungle;
+and so Jan Chinn has come to see."
+
+"Is he, then, angry?"
+
+"Bah!  Am I ever angry with my Bhils?  I say angry words, and
+threaten many things.  Thou knowest, Bukta.  I have seen thee smile
+behind the hand.  I know, and thou knowest.  The Bhils are my
+children.  I have said it many times."
+
+"Ay.  We be thy children," said Bukta.
+
+"And no otherwise is it with Jan Chinn, my father's father.  He
+would see the land he loved and the people once again.  It is a
+good ghost, Bukta.  I say it.  Go and tell them.  And I do hope
+devoutly," he added, "that it will calm 'em down."  Flinging back
+the tiger-skin, he rose with a long, unguarded yawn that showed
+his well-kept teeth.
+
+Bukta fled, to be received in the lines by a knot of panting
+inquirers.
+
+"It is true," said Bukta.  "He wrapped him-self in the skin, and
+spoke from it.  He would see his own country again.  The sign is
+not for us; and, indeed, he is a young man.  How should he lie
+idle of nights?  He says his bed is too hot and the air is bad.
+He goes to and fro for the love of night-running.  He has said it."
+
+The grey-whiskered assembly shuddered.
+
+"He says the Bhils are his children.  Ye know he does not lie.  He
+has said it to me."
+
+"But what of the Satpura Bhils?  What means the sign for them?"
+
+"Nothing.  It is only night-running, as I have said.  He rides to
+see if they obey the Government, as he taught them to do in his
+first life."
+
+"And what if they do not?"
+
+"He did not say."
+
+The light went out in Chinn's quarters.
+
+"Look," said Bukta.  "Now he goes away.  None the less it is a
+good ghost, as he has said.  How shall we fear Jan Chinn, who made
+the Bhil a man?  His protection is on us; and ye know Jan Chinn
+never broke a protection  spoken or written on paper.  When he is
+older and has found him a wife he will lie in his bed till morning."
+
+A commanding officer is generally aware of the regimental state of
+mind a little before the men; and this is why the Colonel  said, a
+few days later, that some one had been putting the Fear of God into
+the Wuddars.  As he was the only person officially entitled to do
+this, it distressed him to see such unanimous virtue.  "It's too
+good to last," he said.  "I only wish I could find out what the
+little chaps mean."
+
+The explanation, as it seemed to him, came at the change of the
+moon, when he received orders to hold himself in readiness to
+"allay any possible excitement" among the Satpura Bhils, who were,
+to put it mildly, uneasy because a paternal Government had sent
+up against them a Mahratta State-educated vaccinator, with lancets,
+lymph, and an officially registered calf.  In the language of
+State, they had "manifested a strong objection to all prophylactic
+measures," had "forcibly detained the vaccinator," and "were on
+the point of neglecting or evading their tribal obligations."
+
+"That means they are in a blue funk - same as they were at
+census-time," said the Colonel; "and if we stampede them into
+the hills we'll never catch 'em, in the first place, and, in the
+second, they'll whoop off plundering till further orders.  'Wonder
+who the God-forsaken idiot is who is trying to vaccinate a Bhil.
+I knew trouble was coming.  One good thing is that they'll only
+use local corps, and we can knock up something we'll call a
+campaign, and let them down easy.  Fancy us potting our best
+beaters because they don't want to be vaccinated!  They're only
+crazy with fear."
+
+"Don't you think, sir," said Chinn, the next day, "that perhaps
+you could give me a fortnight's shooting-leave?"
+
+"Desertion in the face of the enemy, by Jove!" The Colonel laughed.
+"I might, but I'd have to antedate it a little, because we're
+warned for service, as you might say.  However, we'll assume that
+you applied for leave three days ago, and are now well on your way
+south."
+
+"I'd like to take Bukta with me."
+
+"Of course, yes.  I think that will be the best plan.  You've some
+kind of hereditary influence with the little chaps, and they may
+listen to you when a glimpse of our uniforms would drive them wild.
+You've never been in that part of the world before, have you?  Take
+care they don't send you to your family vault in your youth and
+innocence.  I believe you'll be all right if you can get 'em to
+listen to you."
+
+"I think so, sir; but if - if they should accidentally put an -
+make asses of 'emselves - they might, you know - I hope you'll
+represent that they were only frightened.  There isn't an ounce of
+real vice in 'em, and I should never forgive myself if any one of
+ - of my name got them into trouble."
+
+The Colonel nodded, but said nothing.
+
+Chinn and Bukta departed at once.  Bukta did not say that, ever
+since the official vaccinator had been dragged into the hills by
+indignant Bhils, runner after runner had skulked up to the lines,
+entreating, with forehead in the dust, that Jan Chinn should come
+and explain this unknown horror that hung over his people.
+
+The portent of the Clouded Tiger was now too clear.  Let Jan Chinn
+comfort his own, for vain was the help of mortal man.  Bukta toned
+down these beseechings to a simple request for Chinn's presence.
+Nothing would have pleased the old man better than a rough-and-tumble
+campaign against the Satpuras, whom he, as an "unmixed" Bhil,
+despised; but he had a duty to all his nation as Jan Chinn's
+interpreter; and he devoutly believed that forty plagues would fall
+on his village if he tampered with that obligation.  Besides, Jan
+Chinn knew all things, and he rode the Clouded Tiger.
+
+They covered thirty miles a day on foot and pony, raising the blue
+wall-like line of the Satpuras as swiftly as might be.  Bukta was
+very silent.
+
+They began the steep climb a little after noon, but it was near
+sunset ere they reached the stone platform clinging to the side of
+a rifted, jungle-covered hill, where Jan Chinn the First was laid,
+as he had desired, that he might overlook his people.  All India
+is full of neglected graves that date from the beginning of the
+eighteenth century - tombs of forgotten colonels of corps long
+since disbanded; mates of East India men who went on shooting
+expeditions and never came back; factors, agents, writers, and
+ensigns of the Honourable the East India Company by hundreds and
+thousands and tens of thousands.  English folk forget quickly, but
+natives have long memories, and if a man has done good in his life
+it is remembered after his death.  The weathered marble four-square
+tomb of Jan Chinn was hung about with wild flowers and nuts,
+packets of wax and honey, bottles of native spirits, and infamous
+cigars, with buffalo horns and plumes of dried grass.  At one end
+was a rude clay image of a white man, in the old-fashioned top-hat,
+riding on a bloated tiger.
+
+Bukta salamed reverently as they approached.  Chinn bared his head
+and began to pick out the blurred inscription.  So far as he could
+read it ran thus - word for word, and letter for letter:
+
+              To the Memory of JOHN CHINN, Esq.
+                  Late Collector of............
+        ....ithout Bloodshed or...error of Authority
+      Employ.only..cans of Conciliat...and Confiden.
+              accomplished the...tire Subjection...
+                a Lawless and Predatory Peop...
+          ....taching them to...ish Government
+              by a Conquest over....Minds
+         The most perma...and rational Mode of Domini..
+           ...Governor General and Counc...engal
+              have ordered thi.....erected
+          ....arted this Life Aug.  19, 184..Ag...
+
+On the other side of the grave were ancient verses, also very worn.
+As much as Chinn could decipher said:
+
+                            ....the savage band
+      Forsook their Haunts and b.....is Command
+      ....mended..rais check a...st for spoil.
+      And.s.ing Hamlets prove his gene....toil.
+      Humanit...survey......ights restor..
+      A Nation..ield..subdued without a Sword.
+
+For some little time he leaned on the tomb thinking of this dead
+man of his own blood, and of the house in Devonshire; then,
+nodding to the plains: "Yes; it's a big work all of it  even my
+little share.  He must have been worth knowing....  Bukta, where
+are my people?"
+
+"Not here, Sahib.  No man comes here except in full sun.  They
+wait above.  Let us climb and see."
+
+But Chinn, remembering the first law of Oriental diplomacy, in an
+even voice answered: "I have come this far only because the Satpura
+folk are foolish, and dared not visit our lines.  Now bid them wait
+on me here.  I am not a servant, but the master of Bhils."
+
+"I go - I go," clucked the old man.  Night was falling, and at any
+moment Jan Chinn might whistle up his dreaded steed from the
+darkening scrub.
+
+Now for the first time in a long life Bukta disobeyed a lawful
+command and deserted his leader; for he did not come back, but
+pressed to the flat table-top of the hill, and called softly.  Men
+stirred all about him - little trembling men with bows and arrows
+who had watched the two since noon.
+
+"Where is he?" whispered one.
+
+"At his own place.  He bids you come," said Bukta.
+
+"Now?"
+
+"Now."
+
+"Rather let him loose the Clouded Tiger upon us.  We do not go."
+
+"Nor I, though I bore him in my arms when he was a child in this
+his life.  Wait here till the day."
+
+"But surely he will be angry."
+
+"He will be very angry, for he has nothing to eat.  But he has said
+to me many times that the Bhils are his children.  By sunlight I
+believe this, but - by moonlight I am not so sure.  What folly have
+ye Satpura pigs compassed that ye should need him at all?"
+
+"One came to us in the name of the Government with little
+ghost-knives and a magic calf, meaning to turn us into cattle by
+the cutting off of our arms.  We were greatly afraid, but we did
+not kill the man.  He is here, bound - a black man; and we think
+he comes from the west.  He said it was an order to cut us all
+with knives - especially the women and the children.  We did not
+hear that it was an order, so we were afraid, and kept to our
+hills.  Some of our men have taken ponies and bullocks from the
+plains, and others pots and cloths and ear-rings."
+
+"Are any slain?"
+
+"By our men? Not yet.  But the young men are blown to and fro by
+many rumours like flames upon a hill.  I sent runners asking for
+Jan Chinn lest worse should come to us.  It was this fear that he
+foretold by the sign of the Clouded Tiger.
+
+He says it is otherwise," said Bukta; and he repeated, with
+amplifications, all that young Chinn had told him at the conference
+of the wicker chair.
+
+"Think you," said the questioner, at last, "that the Government
+will lay hands on us?"
+
+"Not I," Bukta rejoined.  "Jan Chinn will give an order, and ye
+will obey.  The rest is between the Government and Jan Chinn.  I
+myself know something of the ghost-knives and the scratching.  It
+is a charm against the Smallpox.  But how it is done I cannot tell.
+Nor need that concern you."
+
+"If he stands by us and before the anger of the Government we will
+most strictly obey Jan Chinn, except - except we do not go down to
+that place to-night."
+
+They could hear young Chinn below them shouting for Bukta; but they
+cowered and sat still, expecting the Clouded Tiger.  The tomb had
+been holy ground for nearly half a century.  If Jan Chinn chose to
+sleep there, who had better right?  But they would not come within
+eyeshot of the place till broad day.
+
+At first Chinn was exceedingly angry, till it occurred to him that
+Bukta most probably had a reason (which, indeed, he had), and his
+own dignity might suffer if he yelled without answer.  He propped
+himself against the foot of the grave, and, alternately dozing and
+smoking, came through the warm night proud that he was a lawful,
+legitimate, fever-proof Chinn.
+
+He prepared his plan of action much as his grandfather would have
+done; and when Bukta appeared in the morning with a most liberal
+supply of food, said nothing of the overnight desertion.  Bukta
+would have been relieved by an outburst of human anger; but Chinn
+finished his victual leisurely, and a cheroot, ere he made any
+sign.
+
+They are very much afraid," said Bukta, who was not too bold
+himself.  "It remains only to give orders.  They said they will
+obey if thou wilt only stand between them and the Government."
+
+"That I know," said Chinn, strolling slowly to the table-land.  A
+few of the elder men stood in an irregular semicircle in an open
+glade; but the ruck of people - women and children  were hidden
+in the thicket.  They had no desire to face the first anger of Jan
+Chinn the First.
+
+Seating himself on a fragment of split rock, he smoked his cheroot
+to the butt, hearing men breathe hard all about him.  Then he
+cried, so suddenly that they jumped:
+
+"Bring the man that was bound!"
+
+A scuffle and a cry were followed by the appearance of a Hindoo
+vaccinator, quaking with fear, bound hand and foot, as the Bhils
+of old were accustomed to bind their human sacrifices.  He was
+pushed cautiously before the presence; but young Chinn did not
+look at him.
+
+"I said - the man that was bound.  Is it a jest to bring me one
+tied like a buffalo?  Since when could the Bhil bind folk at his
+pleasure?  Cut!"
+
+Half a dozen hasty knives cut away the thongs, and the man
+crawled to Chinn, who pocketed his case of lancets and tubes of
+lymph.  Then, sweeping the semicircle with one comprehensive
+forefinger, and in the voice of compliment, he said, clearly and
+distinctly: " Pigs!
+
+"Ai!" whispered Bukta.  "Now he speaks.  Woe to foolish people!"
+
+"I have come on foot from my house" (the assembly shuddered) "to
+make clear a matter which any other Satpura Bhil would have seen
+with both eyes from a distance.  Ye know the Smallpox who pits
+and scars your children so that they look like wasp-combs.  It is
+an order of the Government that whoso is scratched on the arm with
+these little knives which I hold up is charmed against her.  All
+Sahibs are thus charmed, and very many Hindoos.  This is the mark
+of the charm.  Look!"
+
+He rolled back his sleeve to the armpit and showed the white scars
+of the vaccination-mark on his white skin.  "Come, all, and look."
+
+A few daring spirits came up, and nodded their heads wisely.  There
+was certainly a mark, and they knew well what other dread marks
+were hidden by the shirt.  Merciful was Jan Chinn, that then and
+there proclaimed his godhead!
+
+"Now all these things the man whom ye bound told you."
+
+"I did - a hundred times; but they answered with blows," groaned
+the operator, chafing his wrists and ankles.
+
+"But, being pigs, ye did not believe; and so came I here to save
+you, first from Smallpox, next from a great folly of fear, and
+lastly, it may be, from the rope and the jail.  It is no gain to
+me; it is no pleasure to me: but for the sake of that one who is
+yonder, who made the Bhil a man" - he pointed down the hill - "
+I, who am of his blood, the son of his son, come to turn your
+people.  And I speak the truth, as did Jan Chinn."
+
+The crowd murmured reverently, and men stole out of the thicket
+by twos and threes to join it.  There was no anger in their god's
+face.
+
+"These are my orders.  (Heaven send they'll take 'em, but I seem
+to have impressed 'em so far!)  I myself will stay among you while
+this man scratches your arms with the knives, after the order of
+the Government.  In three, or it may be five or seven, days, your
+arms will swell and itch and burn.  That is the power of Smallpox
+fighting in your base blood against the orders of the Government
+I will therefore stay among you till I see that Smallpox is
+conquered, and I will not go away till the men and the women and
+the little children show me upon their arms such marks as I have
+even now showed you.  I bring with me two very good guns, and a
+man whose name is known among beasts and men.  We will hunt
+together, I and he and your young men, and the others shall eat
+and lie still.  This is my order."
+
+There was a long pause while victory hung in the balance.  A
+white-haired old sinner, standing on one uneasy leg, piped up:
+
+"There are ponies and some few bullocks and other things for
+which we need a kowl [protection].  They were not taken in the
+way of trade."
+
+The battle was won, and John Chinn drew a breath of relief.  The
+young Bhils had been raiding, but if taken swiftly all could be
+put straight.
+
+"I will write a kowl so soon as the ponies, the bullocks, and the
+other things are counted before me and sent back whence they came.
+But first we will put the Government mark on such as have not been
+visited by Smallpox."  In an undertone, to the vaccinator: "If you
+show you are afraid you'll never see Poona again, my friend."
+
+"There is not sufficient ample supply of vaccination for all this
+population," said the man.  "They destroyed the offeecial calf."
+
+They won't know the difference.  Scrape 'em and give me a couple
+of lancets; I'll attend to the elders."
+
+The aged diplomat who had demanded protection was the first victim.
+He fell to Chinn's hand and dared not cry out.  As soon as he was
+freed he dragged up a companion, and held him fast, and the crisis
+became, as it were, a child's sport; for the vaccinated chased the
+unvaccinated to treatment, vowing that all the tribe must suffer
+equally.  The women shrieked, and the children ran howling; but
+Chinn laughed, and waved the pink-tipped lancet.
+
+"It is an honour," he cried.  "Tell them, Bukta, how great an honour
+it is that I myself mark them.  Nay, I cannot mark every one - the
+Hindoo must also do his work - but I will touch all marks that he
+makes, so there will be an equal virtue in them.  Thus do the
+Rajputs stick pigs.  Ho, brother with one eye!  Catch that girl and
+bring her to me.  She need not run away yet, for she is not married,
+and I do not seek her in marriage.  She will not come?  Then she
+shall be shamed by her little brother, a fat boy, a bold boy.  He
+puts out his arm like a soldier.  Look!  He does not flinch at the
+blood.  Some day he shall be in my regiment.  And now, mother of
+many, we will lightly touch thee, for Smallpox has been before us
+here.  It is a true thing, indeed, that this charm breaks the power
+of Mata.  There will be no more pitted faces among the Satpuras,
+and so ye can ask many cows for each maid to be wed."
+
+And so on and so on - quick-poured showman's patter, sauced in
+the Bhil hunting-proverbs and tales of their own brand of coarse
+humour till the lancets were blunted and both operators worn out.
+
+But, nature being the same the world over, the unvaccinated grew
+jealous of their marked comrades, and came near to blows about
+it.  Then Chinn declared himself a court of justice, no longer a
+medical board, and made formal inquiry into the late robberies.
+
+"We are the thieves of Mahadeo," said the Bhils, simply.  "It is
+our fate, and we were frightened.  When we are frightened we always
+steal."
+
+Simply and directly as children, they gave in the tale of the
+plunder, all but two bullocks and some spirits that had gone
+amissing (these Chinn promised to make good out of his own pocket),
+and ten ringleaders were despatched to the lowlands with a
+wonderful document, written on the leaf of a note-book, and
+addressed to an Assistant District Superintendent of Police.  There
+was warm calamity in that note, as Jan Chinn warned them, but
+anything was better than loss of liberty.
+
+Armed with this protection, the repentant raiders went down-hill.
+They had no desire whatever to meet Mr. Dundas Fawne of the Police,
+aged twenty-two, and of a cheerful countenance, nor did they wish
+to revisit the scene of their robberies.  Steering a middle course,
+they ran into the camp of the one Government chaplain allowed to
+the various irregular corps through a district of some fifteen
+thousand square miles, and stood before him in a cloud of dust.  He
+was by way of being a priest, they knew, and, what was more to the
+point, a good sportsman who paid his beaters generously.
+
+When he read Chinn's note he laughed, which they deemed a lucky
+omen, till he called up policemen, who tethered the ponies and the
+bullocks by the piled house-gear, and laid stern hands upon three
+of that smiling band of the thieves of Mahadeo.  The chaplain
+himself addressed them magisterially with a riding-whip.  That was
+painful, but Jan Chinn had prophesied it.  They submitted, but
+would not give up the written protection, fearing the jail.  On
+their way back they met Mr. D. Fawne, who had heard about the
+robberies, and was not pleased.
+
+"Certainly," said the eldest of the gang, when the second
+interview was at an end, "certainly Jan Chinn's protection has
+saved us our liberty, but it is as though there were many beatings
+in one small piece of paper.  Put it away."
+
+One climbed into a tree, and stuck the letter into a cleft forty
+feet from the ground, where it could do no harm.  Warmed, sore,
+but happy, the ten returned to Jan Chinn next day, where he sat
+among uneasy Bhils, all looking at their right arms, and all
+bound under terror of their god's disfavour not to scratch.
+
+"It was a good kowl," said the leader.  "First the chaplain, who
+laughed, took away our plunder, and beat three of us, as was
+promised.  Next, we meet Fawne Sahib, who frowned, and asked for
+the plunder.  We spoke the truth, and so he beat us all, one
+after another, and called us chosen names.  He then gave us these
+two bundles" - they set down a bottle of whisky and a box of
+cheroots -" and we came away.  The kowl is left in a tree, because
+its virtue is that so soon as we show it to a Sahib we are beaten."
+
+"But for that kowl" said Jan Chinn, sternly, "ye would all have
+been marching to jail with a policeman on either side.  Ye come
+now to serve as beaters for me.  These people are unhappy, and we
+will go hunting till they are well.  To-night we will make a feast."
+
+It is written in the chronicles of the Satpura Bhils, together
+with many other matters not fit for print, that through five days,
+after the day that he had put his mark upon them, Jan Chinn the
+First hunted for his people; and on the five nights of those days
+the tribe was gloriously and entirely drunk.  Jan Chinn bought
+country spirits of an awful strength, and slew wild pig and deer
+beyond counting, so that if any fell sick they might have two good
+reasons.
+
+Between head- and stomach-aches they found no time to think of
+their arms, but followed Jan Chinn obediently through the jungles,
+and with each day's returning confidence men, women, and children
+stole away to their villages as the little army passed by.  They
+carried news that it was good and right to be scratched with
+ghost-knives; that Jan Chinn was indeed reincarnated as a god of
+free food and drink, and that of all nations the Satpura Bhils
+stood first in his favour, if they would only refrain from
+scratching.  Henceforward that kindly demi-god would be connected
+in their minds with great gorgings and the vaccine and lancets of
+a paternal Government.
+
+"And to-morrow I go back to my home," said Jan Chinn to his
+faithful few, whom neither spirits, overeating, nor swollen glands
+could conquer.  It is hard for children and savages to behave
+reverently at all times to the idols of their make-belief; and
+they had frolicked excessively with Jan Chinn.  But the reference
+to his home cast a gloom on the people.
+
+"And the Sahib will not come again?" said he who had been vaccinated
+first.
+
+"That is to be seen," answered Chinn, warily.
+
+"Nay, but come as a white man - come as a young man whom we know
+and love; for, as thou alone knowest, we are a weak people.  If
+we again saw thy - thy horse -"  They were picking up their courage.
+
+"I have no horse.  I came on foot with Bukta, yonder.  What is
+this?"
+
+"Thou knowest - the thing that thou hast chosen for a night-horse."
+ The little men squirmed in fear and awe.
+
+"Night-horses?  Bukta, what is this last tale of children?"
+
+Bukta had been a silent leader in Chinn's presence since the night
+of his desertion, and was grateful for a chance-flung question.
+
+They know, Sahib," he whispered.  "It is the Clouded Tiger.  That
+that comes from the place where thou didst once sleep.  It is thy
+horse - as it has been these three generations."
+
+"My horse! That was a dream of the Bhils."
+
+"It is no dream.  Do dreams leave the tracks of broad pugs on
+earth?  Why make two faces before thy people?  They know of the
+night-ridings, and they - and they - "
+
+"Are afraid, and would have them cease."
+
+Bukta nodded.  "If thou hast no further need of him.  He is thy
+horse."
+
+"The thing leaves a trail, then?" said Chinn.
+
+"We have seen it.  It is like a village road under the tomb."
+
+"Can ye find and follow it for me?"
+
+"By daylight - if one comes with us, and, above all, stands near
+by."
+
+"I will stand close, and we will see to it that Jan Chinn does
+not ride any more."
+
+The Bhils shouted the last words again and again.
+
+>From Chinn's point of view the stalk was nothing more than an
+ordinary one - down-hill, through split and crannied rocks, unsafe,
+perhaps, if a man did not keep his wits by him, but no worse than
+twenty others he had undertaken.  Yet his men - they refused
+absolutely to beat, and would only trail - dripped sweat at every
+move.  They showed the marks of enormous pugs that ran, always
+down-hill, to a few hundred feet below Jan Chinn's tomb, and
+disappeared in a narrow-mouthed cave.  It was an insolently open
+road, a domestic highway, beaten without thought of concealment.
+
+"The beggar might be paying rent and taxes," Chinn muttered ere
+he asked whether his friend's taste ran to cattle or man.
+
+"Cattle," was the answer.  "Two heifers a week.  We drive them for
+him at the foot of the hill.  It is his custom.  If we did not, he
+might seek us."
+
+"Blackmail and piracy," said Chinn.  "I can't say I fancy going
+into the cave after him.  What's to be done?"
+
+The Bhils fell back as Chinn lodged himself behind a rock with
+his rifle ready.  Tigers, he knew, were shy beasts, but one who
+had been long cattle-fed in this sumptuous style might prove
+overbold.
+
+"He speaks!" some one whispered from the rear.  "He knows, too."
+
+"Well, of all the infernal cheek!" said Chinn.  There was an angry
+growl from the cave - a direct challenge.
+
+"Come out, then," Chinn shouted.  "Come out of that.  Let's have a
+look at you."  The brute knew well enough that there was some
+connection between brown nude Bhils and his weekly allowance; but
+the white helmet in the sunlight annoyed him, and he did not approve
+of the voice that broke his rest.  Lazily as a gorged snake, he
+dragged himself out of the cave, and stood yawning and blinking at
+the entrance.  The sunlight fell upon his flat right side, and
+Chinn wondered.  Never had he seen a tiger marked after this fashion.
+Except for his head, which was staringly barred, he was dappled -
+not striped, but dappled like a child's rocking-horse in rich shades
+of smoky black on red gold.  That portion of his belly and throat
+which should have been white was orange, and his tail and paws were
+black.
+
+He looked leisurely for some ten seconds, and then deliberately
+lowered his head, his chin dropped and drawn in, staring intently
+at the man.  The effect of this was to throw forward the round
+arch of his skull, with two broad bands across it, while below the
+bands glared the unwinking eyes; so that, head on, as he stood, he
+showed something like a diabolically scowling pantomime-mask.  It
+was a piece of natural mesmerism that he had practised many times
+on his quarry, and though Chinn was by no means a terrified heifer,
+he stood for a while, held by the extraordinary oddity of the
+attack.  The head - the body seemed to have been packed away behind
+it - the ferocious, skull-like head, crept nearer to the switching
+of an angry tail-tip in the grass.  Left and right the Bhils had
+scattered to let John Chinn subdue his own horse.
+
+"My word!" he thought.  "He's trying to frighten me!" and fired
+between the saucer-like eyes, leaping aside upon the shot.
+
+A big coughing mass, reeking of carrion, bounded past him up the
+hill, and he followed discreetly.  The tiger made no attempt to
+turn into the jungle; he was hunting for sight and breath - nose
+up, mouth open, the tremendous fore-legs scattering the gravel in
+spurts.
+
+Scuppered!" said John Chinn, watching the flight.  "Now if he was
+a partridge he'd tower.  Lungs must be full of blood."
+
+The brute had jerked himself over a boulder and fallen out of
+sight the other side.  John Chinn looked over with a ready barrel.
+But the red trail led straight as an arrow even to his grandfather's
+tomb, and there, among the smashed spirit-bottles and the fragments
+of the mud image, the life left, with  a flurry and a grunt.
+
+"If my worthy ancestor could see that," said John Chinn, "he'd
+have been proud of me.  Eyes, lower jaw, and lungs.  A very nice
+shot."  He whistled for Bukta as he drew the tape over the
+stiffening bulk.
+
+"Ten - six - eight - by Jove!  It's nearly eleven - call it eleven.
+Fore-arm, twenty-four - five - seven and a half.  A short tail, too:
+three feet one.  But what a skin!  Oh, Bukta!  Bukta!  The men with
+the knives swiftly."
+
+"Is he beyond question dead?" said an awe-stricken voice behind a
+rock.
+
+"That was not the way I killed my first tiger," said Chinn.  "I
+did not think that Bukta would run.  I had no second gun."
+
+"It - it is the Clouded Tiger," said Bukta, un-heeding the taunt.
+
+"He is dead."
+
+Whether all the Bhils, vaccinated and unvaccinated, of the
+Satpuras had lain by to see the kill, Chinn could not say; but
+the whole hill's flank rustled with little men, shouting,
+singing, and stamping.  And yet, till he had made the first cut
+in the splendid skin, not a man would take a knife; and, when the
+shadows fell, they ran from the red-stained tomb, and no persuasion
+would bring them back till dawn.  So Chinn spent a second night in
+the open, guarding the carcass from jackals, and thinking about his
+ancestor.
+
+He returned to the lowlands to the triumphal chant of an escorting
+army three hundred strong, the Mahratta vaccinator close at his
+elbow, and the rudely dried skin a trophy before him.  When that
+army suddenly and noiselessly disappeared, as quail in high corn,
+he argued he was near civilisation, and a turn in the road brought
+him upon the camp of a wing of his own corps.  He left the skin on
+a cart-tail for the world to see, and sought the Colonel.
+
+"They're perfectly right," he explained earnestly.  "There isn't
+an ounce of vice in 'em.  They were only frightened.  I've
+vaccinated the whole boiling, and they like it awfully.  What are
+- what are we doing here, sir?"
+
+"That's what I'm trying to find out," said the Colonel.  "I don't
+know yet whether we're a piece of a brigade or a police force.
+However, I think we'll call ourselves a police force.  How did you
+manage to get a Bhil vaccinated?"
+
+"Well, sir," said Chinn, " I've been thinking it over, and, as far
+as I can make out, I've got a sort of hereditary influence over 'em."
+
+"So I know, or I wouldn't have sent you; but what, exactly?"
+
+"It's rather rummy.  It seems, from what I can make out, that I'm
+my own grandfather reincarnated, and I've been disturbing the
+peace of the country by riding a pad-tiger of nights.  If I hadn't
+done that, I don't think they'd have objected to the vaccination;
+but the two together were more than they could stand.  And so, sir,
+I've vaccinated 'em, and shot my tiger-horse as a sort o' proof of
+good faith.  You never saw such a skin in your life."
+
+The Colonel tugged his moustache thought-fully.  "Now, how the
+deuce," said he, "am I to include that in my report?"
+
+Indeed, the official version of the Bhils' anti-vaccination
+stampede said nothing about Lieutenant John Chinn, his godship.
+But Bukta knew, and the corps knew, and every Bhil in the Satpura
+hills knew.
+
+And now Bukta is zealous that John Chinn shall swiftly be wedded
+and impart his powers to a son; for if the Chinn succession fails,
+and the little Bhils are left to their own imaginings, there will
+be fresh trouble in the Satpuras.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA
+
+All supplies very bad and dear, and there are no facilities for
+even the smallest repairs.  - Sailing Directions.
+
+
+Her nationality was British, but you will not find her house-flag
+in the list of our mercantile marine.  She was a nine-hundred-ton,
+iron, schooner-rigged, screw cargo-boat, differing externally in
+no way from any other tramp of the sea.  But it is with steamers
+as it is with men.  There are those who will for a consideration
+sail extremely close to the wind; and, in the present state of a
+fallen world, such people and such steamers have their use.  From
+the hour that the Aglaia first entered the Clyde - new, shiny, and
+innocent, with a quart of cheap champagne trickling down her
+cut-water - Fate and her owner, who was also her captain, decreed
+that she should deal with embarrassed crowned heads, fleeing
+Presidents, financiers of over-extended ability, women to whom
+change of air was imperative, and the lesser law-breaking Powers.
+Her career led her sometimes into the Admiralty Courts, where the
+sworn statements of her skipper filled his brethren with envy. The
+mariner cannot tell or act a lie in the face of the sea, or
+mis-lead a tempest; but, as lawyers have discovered, he makes up
+for chances withheld when he returns to shore, an affidavit in
+either hand.
+
+The Aglaia figured with distinction in the great Mackinaw
+salvage-case.  It was her first slip from virtue, and she learned
+how to change her name, but not her heart, and to run across the
+sea.  As the Guiding Light she was very badly wanted in a South
+American port for the little matter of entering harbour at full
+speed, colliding with a coal-hulk and the State's only man-of-war,
+just as that man-of-war was going to coal.  She put to sea without
+explanations, though three forts fired at her for half an hour.
+As the Julia M'Gregor she had been concerned in picking up from a
+raft certain gentlemen who should have stayed in Noumea, but who
+preferred making themselves vastly unpleasant to authority in
+quite another quarter of the world; and as the Shah-in-Shah she
+had been overtaken on the high seas, indecently full of munitions
+of war, by the cruiser of an agitated Power at issue with its
+neighbour.  That time she was very nearly sunk, and her riddled
+hull gave eminent lawyers of two countries great profit.  After a
+season she reappeared as the Martin Hunt painted a dull slate-colour,
+with pure saffron funnel, and boats of robin's-egg blue, engaging
+in the Odessa trade till she was invited (and the invitation could
+not well be disregarded) to keep away from Black Sea ports
+altogether.
+
+She had ridden through many waves of depression.  Freights might
+drop out of sight, Seamen's Unions throw spanners and nuts at
+certificated masters, or stevedores combine till cargo perished
+on the dock-head; but the boat of many names came and went, busy,
+alert, and inconspicuous always.  Her skipper made no complaint of
+hard times, and port officers observed that her crew signed and
+signed again with the regularity of Atlantic liner boatswains.  Her
+name she changed as occasion called; her well-paid crew never; and
+a large percentage of the profits of her voyages was spent with an
+open hand on her engine-room.  She never troubled the underwriters,
+and very seldom stopped to talk with a signal-station, for her
+business was urgent and private.
+
+But an end came to her tradings, and she perished in this manner.
+Deep peace brooded over Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Australasia,
+and Polynesia.  The Powers dealt together more or less honestly;
+banks paid their depositors to the hour; diamonds of price came
+safely to the hands of their owners; Republics rested content with
+their Dictators; diplomats found no one whose presence in the least
+incommoded them; monarchs lived openly with their lawfully wedded
+wives.  It was as though the whole earth had put on its best Sunday
+bib and tucker; and business was very bad for the Martin Hunt.  The
+great, virtuous calm engulfed her, slate sides, yellow funnel, and
+all, but cast up in another hemisphere the steam whaler Haliotis,
+black and rusty, with a manure-coloured funnel, a litter of dingy
+white boats, and an enormous stove, or furnace, for boiling blubber
+on her forward well-deck.  There could be no doubt that her trip
+was successful, for she lay at several ports not too well known,
+and the smoke of her trying-out insulted the beaches.
+
+Anon she departed, at the speed of the average London four-wheeler,
+and entered a semi-inland sea, warm, still, and blue, which is,
+perhaps, the most strictly preserved water in the world.  There she
+stayed for a certain time, and the great stars of those mild skies
+beheld her playing puss-in-the-corner among islands where whales
+are never found.  All that while she smelt abominably, and the
+smell, though fishy, was not whalesome.  One evening calamity
+descended upon her from the island of Pygang-Watai, and she fled,
+while her crew jeered at a fat black-and-brown gunboat puffing far
+behind.  They knew to the last revolution the capacity of every
+boat, on those seas, that they were anxious to avoid.  A British
+ship with a good conscience does not, as a rule, flee from the
+man-of-war of a foreign Power, and it is also considered a breach
+of etiquette to stop and search British ships at sea.  These things
+the skipper of the Haliotis did not pause to prove, but held on at
+an inspiriting eleven knots an hour till nightfall.  One thing only
+he overlooked.
+
+The Power that kept an expensive steam-patrol moving up and down
+those waters (they had dodged the two regular ships of the station
+with an ease that bred contempt) had newly brought up a third and
+a fourteen-knot boat with a clean bottom to help the work; and that
+was why the Haliotis, driving hard from the east to the west, found
+herself at daylight in such a position that she could not help
+seeing an arrangement of four flags, a mile and a half behind, which
+read:  "Heave to, or take the consequences!"
+
+She had her choice, and she took it.  The end came when, presuming
+on her lighter draught, she tried to draw away northward over a
+friendly shoal.  The shell that arrived by way of the Chief
+Engineer's cabin was some five inches in diameter, with a practice,
+not a bursting, charge.  It had been intended to cross her bows,
+and that was why it knocked the framed portrait of the Chief
+Engineer's wife - and she was a very pretty girl - on to the floor,
+splintered his wash-hand stand, crossed the alleyway into the
+engine-room, and striking on a grating, dropped directly in front
+of the forward engine, where it burst, neatly fracturing both the
+bolts that held the connecting-rod to the forward crank.
+
+What follows is worth consideration.  The forward engine had no more
+work to do.  Its released piston-rod, therefore, drove up fiercely,
+with nothing to check it, and started most of the nuts of the
+cylinder-cover.  It came down again, the full weight of the steam
+behind it, and the foot of the disconnected connecting-rod, useless
+as the leg of a man with a sprained ankle, flung out to the right
+and struck the starboard, or right-hand, cast-iron supporting-column
+of the forward engine, cracking it clean through about six inches
+above the base, and wedging the upper portion outwards three inches
+towards the ship's side.  There the connecting-rod jammed.  Meantime,
+the after-engine, being as yet unembarrassed, went on with its work,
+and in so doing brought round at its next revolution the crank of
+the forward engine, which smote the already jammed connecting-rod,
+bending it and therewith the piston-rod cross-head - the big
+cross-piece that slides up and down so smoothly.
+
+The cross-head jammed sideways in the guides, and, in addition to
+putting further pressure on the already broken starboard
+supporting-column, cracked the port, or left-hand, supporting-column
+in two or three places.  There being nothing more that could be
+made to move, the engines brought up, all standing, with a hiccup
+that seemed to lift the Haliotis a foot out of the water; and the
+engine-room staff, opening every steam outlet that they could find
+in the confusion, arrived on deck somewhat scalded, but calm.  There
+was a sound below of things happening - a rushing, clicking, purring,
+grunting, rattling noise that did not last for more than a minute.
+It was the machinery adjusting itself, on the spur of the moment,
+to a hundred altered conditions.  Mr.  Wardrop, one foot on the
+upper grating, inclined his ear sideways, and groaned.  You cannot
+stop engines working at twelve knots an hour in three seconds
+without disorganising them.  The Haliotis slid forward in a cloud
+of steam, shrieking like a wounded horse.  There was nothing more
+to do.  The five-inch shell with a reduced charge had settled the
+situation.  And when you are full, all three holds, of strictly
+preserved pearls; when you have cleaned out the Tanna Bank, the
+Sea-Horse Bank, and four other banks from one end to the other
+of the Amanala Sea - when you have ripped out the very heart of
+a rich Government monopoly so that five years will not repair your
+wrong-doings - you must smile and take what is in store.  But the
+skipper reflected, as a launch put out from the man-of-war, that
+he had been bombarded on the high seas, with the British flag -
+several of them - picturesquely disposed above him, and tried to
+find comfort from the thought.
+
+Where," said the stolid naval lieutenant hoisting himself aboard,
+"where are those dam' pearls?"
+
+They were there beyond evasion.  No affidavit could do away with
+the fearful smell of decayed oysters, the diving-dresses, and the
+shell-littered hatches.  They were there to the value of seventy
+thousand pounds, more or less; and every pound poached.
+
+The man-of-war was annoyed; for she had used up many tons of coal,
+she had strained her tubes, and, worse than all, her officers and
+crew had been hurried.  Every one on the Haliotis was arrested and
+rearrested several times, as each officer came aboard; then they
+were told by what they esteemed to be the equivalent of a
+midshipman that they were to consider themselves prisoners, and
+finally were put under arrest.
+
+It's not the least good," said the skipper, suavely.  "You'd much
+better send us a tow - "
+
+"Be still - you are arrest!" was the reply.
+
+"Where the devil do you expect we are going to escape to?"  We're
+helpless.  You've got to tow us into somewhere, and explain why
+you fired on us.  Mr. Wardrop, we're helpless, aren't we?"
+
+"Ruined from end to end," said the man of machinery.  "If she rolls,
+the forward cylinder will come down and go through her bottom.  Both
+columns are clean cut through.  There's nothing to hold anything up."
+
+The council of war clanked off to see if Mr. Wardrop's words were
+true.  He warned them that it was as much as a man's life was worth
+to enter the engine-room, and they contented themselves with a
+distant inspection through the thinning steam.  The Haliotis lifted
+to the long, easy swell, and the starboard supporting-column ground
+a trifle, as a man grits his teeth under the knife.  The forward
+cylinder was depending on that unknown force men call the pertinacity
+of materials, which now and then balances that other heartbreaking
+power, the perversity of inanimate things.
+
+"You see!" said Mr.  Wardrop, hurrying them away.  "The engines
+aren't worth their price as old iron."
+
+"We tow," was the answer.  "Afterwards we shall confiscate."
+
+The man-of-war was short-handed, and did not see the necessity
+for putting a prize-crew aboard the Haliotis.  So she sent one
+sublieutenant, whom the skipper kept very drunk, for he did not
+wish to make the tow too easy, and, moreover, he had an
+inconspicuous little rope hanging from the stem of his ship.
+
+Then they began to tow at an average speed of four knots an hour.
+The Haliotis was very hard to move, and the gunnery-lieutenant,
+who had fired the five-inch shell, had leisure to think upon
+consequences.  Mr. Wardrop was the busy man.  He borrowed all the
+crew to shore up the cylinders with spars and blocks from the
+bottom and sides of the ship.  It was a day's risky work; but
+anything was better than drowning at the end of a tow-rope; and
+if the forward cylinder had fallen, it would have made its way to
+the sea-bed, and taken the Haliotis after.
+
+"Where are we going to, and how long will they tow us?" he asked
+of the skipper.
+
+"God knows! and this prize-lieutenant's drunk.  What do you think
+you can do?"
+
+"There's just the bare chance," Mr. Wardrop whispered, though no
+one was within hearing -"there's just the bare chance o' repairin'
+her, if a man knew how.  They've twisted the very guts out of her,
+bringing her up with that jerk; but I'm saying that, with time
+and patience, there's just the chance o' making steam yet.  We
+could do it."
+
+The skipper's eye brightened.  "Do you mean," he began, "that she
+is any good?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Mr.  Wardrop.  "She'll need three thousand pounds in
+repairs, at the lowest, if she's to take the sea again, an' that
+apart from any injury to her structure.  She's like a man fallen
+down five pair o' stairs.  We can't tell for months what has
+happened; but we know she'll never be good again without a new
+inside.  Ye should see the condenser-tubes an' the steam connections
+to the donkey, for two things only.  I'm not afraid of them repairin'
+her.  I'm afraid of them stealin' things."
+
+"They've fired on us.  They'll have to explain that."
+
+"Our reputation's not good enough to ask for explanations.  Let's
+take what we have and be thankful.  Ye would not have consuls
+remembern' the Guidin' Light, an' the Shah-in-Shah, an' the Aglaia,
+at this most alarmin' crisis.  We've been no better than pirates
+these ten years.  Under Providence we're no worse than thieves now.
+We've much to be thankful for - if we e'er get back to her."
+
+"Make it your own way, then," said the skipper.  "If there's the
+least chance - "
+
+"I'll leave none," said Mr.  Wardrop - "none that they'll dare to
+take.  Keep her heavy on the tow, for we need time."
+
+The skipper never interfered with the affairs of the engine-room,
+and Mr. Wardrop - an artist in his profession - turned to and
+composed a work terrible and forbidding.  His background was the
+dark-grained sides of the engine-room; his material the metals
+of power and strength, helped out with spars, baulks, and ropes.
+The man-of-war towed sullenly and viciously.  The Haliotis behind
+her hummed like a hive before swarming.  With extra and totally
+unneeded spars her crew blocked up the space round the forward
+engine till it resembled a statue in its scaffolding, and the
+butts of the shores interfered with every view that a dispassionate
+eye might wish to take.  And that the dispassionate mind might be
+swiftly shaken out of its calm, the well-sunk bolts of the shores
+were wrapped round untidily with loose ends of ropes, giving a
+studied effect of most dangerous insecurity.  Next, Mr. Wardrop
+took up a collection from the after-engine, which, as you will
+remember, had not been affected in the general wreck.  The cylinder
+escape-valve he abolished with a flogging-hammer.  It is difficult
+in far-off ports to come by such valves, unless, like Mr. Wardrop,
+you keep duplicates in store.  At the same time men took off the
+nuts of two of the great holding-down bolts that serve to keep the
+engines in place on their solid bed.  An engine violently arrested
+in mid-career may easily jerk off the nut of a holding-down bolt,
+and this accident looked very natural.
+
+Passing along the tunnel, he removed several shaft coupling-bolts
+and -nuts, scattering other and ancient pieces of iron underfoot.
+Cylinder-bolts he cut off to the number of six from the after-engine
+cylinder, so that it might match its neighbour, and stuffed the
+bilge - and feed-pumps with cotton-waste.  Then he made up a neat
+bundle of the various odds and ends that he had gathered from the
+engines - little things like nuts and valve-spindles, all carefully
+tallowed - and retired with them under the floor of the engine-room,
+where he sighed, being fat, as he passed from manhole to manhole of
+the double bottom, and in a fairly dry submarine compartment hid
+them.  Any engineer, particularly in an unfriendly port, has a
+right to keep his spare stores where he chooses; and the foot of
+one of the cylinder shores blocked all entrance into the regular
+store-room, even if that had not been already closed with steel
+wedges.  In conclusion, he disconnected the after-engine, laid
+piston and connecting-rod, carefully tallowed, where it would be
+most inconvenient to the casual visitor, took out three of the
+eight collars of the thrust-block, hid them where only he could find
+them again, filled the boilers by hand, wedged the sliding doors
+of the coal-bunkers, and rested from his labours.  The engine-room
+was a cemetery, and it did not need the contents of the ash-lift
+through the skylight to make it any worse.
+
+He invited the skipper to look at the completed work.
+
+Saw ye ever such a forsaken wreck as that?" said he, proudly.
+"It almost frights me to go under those shores.  Now, what d' you
+think they'll do to us?"
+
+"Wait till we see," said the skipper.  "It'll be bad enough when
+it comes."
+
+He was not wrong.  The pleasant days of towing ended all too soon,
+though the Haliotis trailed behind her a heavily weighted jib
+stayed out into the shape of a pocket; and Mr. Wardrop was no
+longer an artist of imagination, but one of seven-and-twenty
+prisoners in a prison full of insects.  The man-of-war had towed
+them to the nearest port, not to the headquarters of the colony,
+and when Mr. Wardrop saw the dismal little harbour, with its
+ragged line of Chinese junks, its one crazy tug, and the
+boat-building shed that, under the charge of a philosophical
+Malay, represented a dockyard, he sighed and shook his head.
+
+"I did well," he said.  "This is the habitation o' wreckers an'
+thieves.  We're at the uttermost ends of the earth.  Think you
+they'll ever know in England?"
+
+"Doesn't look like it," said the skipper.
+
+They were marched ashore with what they stood up in, under a
+generous escort, and were judged according to the customs of the
+country, which, though excellent, are a little out of date.
+There were the pearls; there were the poachers; and there sat a
+small but hot Governor.  He consulted for a while, and then
+things began to move with speed, for he did not wish to keep a
+hungry crew at large on the beach, and the man-of-war had gone
+up the coast.  With a wave of his hand - a stroke of the pen was
+not necessary - he consigned them to the black gang-tana, the
+back-country, and the hand of the Law removed them from his sight
+and the knowledge of men.  They were marched into the palms, and
+the back-country swallowed them up - all the crew of the Haliotis.
+
+Deep peace continued to brood over Europe, Asia, Africa, America,
+Australasia, and Polynesia.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
+
+It was the firing that did it.  They should have kept their
+counsel; but when a few thousand foreigners are bursting with joy
+over the fact that a ship under the British flag has been fired at
+on the high seas, news travels quickly; and when it came out that
+the pearl-stealing crew had not been allowed access to their consul
+(there was no consul within a few hundred miles of that lonely port)
+even the friendliest of Powers has a right to ask questions.  The
+great heart of the British public was beating furiously on account
+of the performance of a notorious race-horse, and had not a throb
+to waste on distant accidents; but somewhere deep in the hull of
+the ship of State there is machinery which more or less accurately
+takes charge of foreign affairs.  That machinery began to revolve,
+and who so shocked and surprised as the Power that had captured the
+Haliotis?  It explained that colonial governors and far-away
+men-of-war were difficult to control, and promised that it would
+most certainly make an example both of the Governor and the vessel.
+As for the crew reported to be pressed into military service in
+tropical climes, it would produce them as soon as possible, and it
+would apologise, if necessary.  Now, no apologies were needed.
+When one nation apologises to another, millions of amateurs who
+have no earthly concern with the difficulty hurl themselves into
+the strife and embarrass the trained specialist.  It was requested
+that the crew be found, if they were still alive - they had been
+eight months beyond knowledge - and it was promised that all
+would be forgotten.
+
+The little Governor of the little port was pleased with himself.
+Seven-and-twenty white men made a very compact force to throw
+away on a war that had neither beginning nor end - a jungle and
+stockade fight that flickered and smouldered through the wet hot
+years in the hills a hundred miles away, and was the heritage of
+every wearied official.  He had, he thought, deserved well of his
+country; and if only some one would buy the unhappy Haliotis,
+moored in the harbour below his verandah, his cup would be full.
+He looked at the neatly silvered lamps that he had taken from her
+cabins, and thought of much that might be turned to account.  But
+his countrymen in that moist climate had no spirit.  They would
+peep into the silent engine-room, and shake their heads.  Even
+the men-of-war would not tow her further up the coast, where the
+Governor believed that she could be repaired.  She was a bad
+bargain; but her cabin carpets were undeniably beautiful, and his
+wife approved of her mirrors.
+
+Three hours later cables were bursting round him like shells, for,
+though he knew it not, he was being offered as a sacrifice by the
+nether to the upper millstone, and his superiors had no regard for
+his feelings.  He had, said the cables, grossly exceeded his power,
+and failed to report on events.  He would, therefore - at this he
+cast himself back in his hammock - produce the crew of the Haliotis.
+He would send for them, and, if that failed, he would put his
+dignity on a pony and fetch them himself.  He had no conceivable
+right to make pearl-poachers serve in any war.  He would be held
+responsible.
+
+Next morning the cables wished to know whether he had found the
+crew of the Haliotis.  They were to be found, freed and fed - he
+was to feed them - till such time as they could be sent to the
+nearest English port in a man-of-war.  If you abuse a man long
+enough in great words flashed over the sea-beds, things happen.
+The Governor sent inland swiftly for his prisoners, who were also
+soldiers; and never was a militia regiment more anxious to reduce
+its strength.  No power short of death could make these mad men
+wear the uniform of their service.  They would not fight, except
+with their fellows, and it was for that reason the regiment had
+not gone to war, but stayed in a stockade, reasoning with the new
+troops.  The autumn campaign had been a fiasco, but here were the
+Englishmen.  All the regiment marched back to guard them, and the
+hairy enemy, armed with blow-pipes, rejoiced in the forest.  Five
+of the crew had died, but there lined up on the Governor's verandah
+two-and-twenty men marked about the legs with the scars of
+leech-bites.  A few of them wore fringes that had once been trousers;
+the others used loin-cloths of gay patterns; and they existed
+beautifully but simply in the Governor's verandah, and when he came
+out they sang at him.  When you have lost seventy thousand pounds'
+worth of pearls, your pay, your ship, and all your clothes, and have
+lived in bondage for five months beyond the faintest pretences of
+civilisation, you know what true independence means, for you become
+the happiest of created things - natural man.
+
+The Governor told the crew that they were evil, and they asked for
+food.  When he saw how they ate, and when he remembered that none of
+the pearl patrol-boats were expected for two months, he sighed.  But
+the crew of the Haliotis lay down in the verandah, and said that
+they were pensioners of the Governor's bounty.  A grey-bearded man,
+fat and bald-headed, his one garment a green-and-yellow loin-cloth,
+saw the Haliotis in the harbour, and bellowed for joy.  The men
+crowded to the verandah-rail, kicking aside the long cane chairs.
+They pointed,  gesticulated, and argued freely, without shame.  The
+militia regiment sat down in the Governor's garden.  The Governor
+retired to his hammock - it was as easy to be killed lying as
+standing - and his women squeaked from the shuttered rooms.
+
+"She sold?" said the grey-bearded man, pointing to the Haliotis.
+He was Mr. Wardrop.
+
+"No good," said the Governor, shaking his head.  "No one come buy."
+
+"He's taken my lamps, though," said the skipper.  He wore one leg
+of a pair of trousers, and his eye wandered along the verandah.
+The Governor quailed.  There were cuddy camp-stools and the skipper's
+writing-table in plain sight.
+
+"They've cleaned her out, o' course," said Mr. Wardrop.  "They
+would.  We'll go aboard and take an inventory.  See!" He waved his
+hands over the harbour.  "We - live - there - now.  Sorry?"
+
+The Governor smiled a smile of relief.
+
+"He's glad of that," said one of the crew, reflectively.  "I
+shouldn't wonder."
+
+They flocked down to the harbour-front, the militia regiment
+clattering behind, and embarked themselves in what they found -
+it happened to be the Governor's boat.  Then they disappeared over
+the bulwarks of the Haliotis, and the Governor prayed that they
+might find occupation inside.
+
+Mr. Wardrop's first bound took him to the engine-room; and when
+the others were patting the well-remembered decks, they heard him
+giving God thanks that things were as he had left them.  The
+wrecked engines stood over his head untouched; no inexpert hand
+had meddled with his shores; the steel wedges of the store-room
+were rusted home; and, best of all, the hundred and sixty tons of
+good Australian coal in the bunkers had not diminished.
+
+"I don't understand it," said Mr.  Wardrop.  "Any Malay knows the
+use o' copper.  They ought to have cut away the pipes.  And with
+Chinese junks coming here, too.  It's a special interposition o'
+Providence."
+
+"You think so," said the skipper, from above.  "There's only been
+one thief here, and he's cleaned her out of all my things, anyhow."
+
+Here the skipper spoke less than the truth, for under the planking
+of his cabin, only to be reached by a chisel, lay a little money
+which never drew any interest - his sheet-anchor to windward.  It
+was all in clean sovereigns that pass current the world over, and
+might have amounted to more than a hundred pounds.
+
+"He's left me alone.  Let's thank God," repeated Mr. Wardrop.
+
+"He's taken everything else; look!"
+
+The Haliotis, except as to her engine-room, had been systematically
+and scientifically gutted from one end to the other, and there was
+strong evidence that an unclean guard had camped in the skipper's
+cabin to regulate that plunder.  She lacked glass, plate, crockery,
+cutlery, mattresses, cuddy carpets and chairs, all boats, and her
+copper ventilators.  These things had been removed, with her sails
+and as much of the wire rigging as would not imperil the safety of
+the masts.
+
+"He must have sold those," said the skipper.  "The other things are
+in  his house, I suppose."
+
+Every fitting that could be pried or screwed out was gone.  Port,
+starboard, and masthead lights; teak gratings; sliding sashes of
+the deckhouse; the captain's chest of drawers, with charts and
+chart-table; photographs, brackets, and looking-glasses; cabin
+doors; rubber cuddy mats; hatch-irons; half the funnel-stays;
+cork fenders; carpenter's grindstone and tool-chest; holystones,
+swabs, squeegees; all cabin and pantry lamps; galley-fittings en
+bloc; flags and  flag-locker; clocks, chronometers; the forward
+compass and the ship's bell and belfry, were among the missing.
+
+There were great scarred marks on the deck-planking over which
+the cargo-derricks had been hauled.  One must have fallen by the
+way, for the bulwark-rails were smashed and bent and the
+side-plates bruised.
+
+"It's the Governor," said the skipper  "He's been selling her on
+the instalment plan."
+
+"Let's go up with spanners and shovels, and kill 'em all," shouted
+the crew.  "Let's drown him, and keep the woman!"
+
+"Then we'll be shot by that black-and-tan regiment - our regiment.
+What's the trouble ashore?  They've camped our regiment on the beach."
+
+"We're cut off; that's all.  Go and see what they want," said Mr.
+Wardrop.  "You've the trousers."
+
+In his simple way the Governor was a strategist.  He did not desire
+that the crew of the Haliotis should come ashore again, either
+singly or in detachments, and he proposed to turn their steamer into
+a convict-hulk.  They would wait - he explained this from the quay
+to the skipper in the barge - and they would continue to wait till
+the man-of-war came along, exactly where they were.  If one of them
+set foot ashore, the entire regiment would open fire, and he would
+not scruple to use the two cannon of the town.  Meantime food would
+be sent daily in a boat under an armed escort.  The skipper, bare
+to the waist, and rowing, could only grind his teeth; and the
+Governor improved the occasion, and revenged himself for the bitter
+words in the cables, by saying what he thought of the morals and
+manners of the crew.  The barge returned to the Haliotis in silence,
+and the skipper climbed aboard, white on the cheek-bones and blue
+about the nostrils.
+
+"I knew it," said Mr. Wardrop; "and they won't give us good food,
+either.  We shall have bananas morning, noon, and night, an' a man
+can't work on  fruit.  We know that."
+
+Then the skipper cursed Mr. Wardrop for importing frivolous
+side-issues into the conversation; and the crew cursed one another,
+and the Haliotis, the voyage, and all that they knew or could bring
+to mind.  They sat down in silence on the empty decks, and their
+eyes burned in their heads.  The green harbour water chuckled at
+them overside.  They looked at the palm-fringed hills inland, at
+the white houses above the harbour road, at the single tier of
+native craft by the quay, at the stolid soldiery sitting round the
+two cannon, and, last of all, at the blue bar of the horizon.  Mr.
+Wardrop was buried in thought, and scratched imaginary lines with
+his untrimmed finger-nails on the planking.
+
+"I make no promise," he said, at last, "for I can't say what may
+or may not have happened to them.  But here's the ship, and here's
+us."
+
+There was a little scornful laughter at this, and Mr.  Wardrop
+knitted his brows.  He recalled that in the days when be wore
+trousers he had been Chief Engineer  of the Haliotis.
+
+"Harland, Mackesy, Noble, Hay, Naughton, Fink, O'Hara, Trumbull."
+
+"Here, sir!"  The instinct of obedience waked to answer the
+roll-call of the engine-room.
+
+"Below!"
+
+They rose and went.
+
+"Captain, I'll trouble you for the rest of the men as I want them.
+We'll get my stores out, and clear away the shores we don't need,
+and then we'll patch her up.  My men will remember that they're in
+the Haliotis, - under me."
+
+He went into the engine-room, and the others stared.  They were
+used to the accidents of the sea, but this was beyond their
+experience.  None who had seen the engine-room believed that
+anything short of new engines from end to end could stir the
+Haliotis from her moorings.
+
+The engine-room stores were unearthed, and Mr. Wardrop's face, red
+with the filth of the bilges and the exertion of travelling on his
+stomach, lit with joy.  The spare gear of the Haliotis had been
+unusually complete, and two-and-twenty men, armed with screw-jacks,
+differential blocks, tackle, vices, and a forge or so, can look
+Kismet between the eyes without winking.  The crew were ordered to
+replace the holding-down and shaft-bearing bolts, and return the
+collars of the thrust-block.  When they had finished, Mr. Wardrop
+delivered a lecture on repairing compound engines without the aid
+of the shops, and the men sat about on the cold machinery.  The
+cross-head jammed in the guides leered at them drunkenly, but
+offered no help.  They ran their fingers hopelessly into the cracks
+of the starboard supporting-column, and picked at the ends of the
+ropes round the shores, while Mr. Wardrop's voice rose and fell
+echoing, till the quick tropic night closed down over the
+engine-room skylight.
+
+Next morning the work of reconstruction began.  It has been
+explained that the foot of the connecting-rod was forced against
+the foot of the starboard supporting-column, which it had cracked
+through and driven outward towards the ship's skin.  To all
+appearance the job was more than hopeless, for rod and column
+seemed to have been welded into one.  But herein Providence
+smiled on them for one moment to hearten them through the weary
+weeks ahead.  The second engineer - more reckless than resourceful
+- struck at random with a cold chisel into the cast-iron of the
+column, and a greasy, grey flake of metal flew from under the
+imprisoned foot of the connecting-rod, while the rod itself fell
+away slowly, and brought up with a thunderous clang somewhere in
+the dark of the crank-pit.  The guides-plates above were still
+jammed fast in the guides, but the first blow had been struck.
+They spent the rest of the day grooming the donkey-engine, which
+stood immediately forward of the engine-room hatch.  Its tarpaulin,
+of course, had been stolen, and eight warm months had not improved
+the working parts.  Further, the last dying hiccup of the Haliotis
+seemed - or it might have been the Malay from the boat-house - to
+have lifted the thing bodily on its bolts, and set it down
+inaccurately as regarded its steam connections.
+
+"If we only had one single cargo-derrick!" Mr. Wardrop sighed.  "We
+can take the cylinder-cover off by hand, if we sweat; but to get
+the rod out o' the piston's not possible unless we use steam.  Well,
+there'll be steam the morn, if there's nothing else.  She'll fizzle!"
+
+Next morning men from the shore saw the Haliotis through a cloud,
+for it was as though the deck smoked.  Her crew were chasing steam
+through the shaken and leaky pipes to its work in the forward
+donkey-engine; and where oakum failed to plug a crack, they stripped
+off their loin-cloths for lapping, and swore, half-boiled and
+mother-naked.  The donkey-engine worked - at a price - the price of
+constant attention and furious stoking - worked long enough to allow
+a wire-rope (it was made up of a funnel and a foremast-stay) to be
+led into the engine-room and made fast on the cylinder-cover of the
+forward engine.  That rose easily enough, and was hauled through the
+skylight and on to the deck, many hands assisting the doubtful steam.
+Then came the tug of war, for it was necessary to get to the piston
+and the jammed piston-rod.  They removed two of the piston junk-ring
+studs, screwed in two strong iron eye-bolts by way of handles,
+doubled the wire-rope, and set half a dozen men to smite with an
+extemporised battering-ram at the end of the piston-rod, where it
+peered through the piston, while the donkey-engine hauled upwards
+on the piston itself.  After four hours of this furious work, the
+piston-rod suddenly slipped, and the piston rose with a jerk,
+knocking one or two men over into the engine-room.  But when Mr.
+Wardrop declared that the piston had not split, they cheered, and
+thought nothing of their wounds; and the donkey-engine was hastily
+stopped; its boiler was nothing to tamper with.
+
+And day by day their supplies reached them by boat.  The skipper
+humbled himself once more before the Governor, and as a concession
+had leave to get drinking-water from the Malay boat-builder on the
+quay.  It was not good drinking-water, but the Malay was anxious
+to supply anything in his power, if he were paid for it.
+
+Now when the jaws of the forward engine stood, as it were, stripped
+and empty, they began to wedge up the shores of the cylinder itself.
+That work alone filled the better part of three days - warm and
+sticky days, when the hands slipped and sweat ran into the eyes.
+When the last wedge was hammered home there was no longer an ounce
+of weight on the supporting-columns; and Mr. Wardrop rummaged the
+ship for boiler-plate three-quarters of an inch thick, where he
+could find it.  There was not much available, but what there was
+was more than beaten gold to him.  In one desperate forenoon the
+entire crew, naked and lean, haled back, more or less into place,
+the starboard supporting-column, which, as you remember, was cracked
+clean through.  Mr. Wardrop found them asleep where they had
+finished the work, and gave them a day's rest, smiling upon them
+as a father while he drew chalk-marks about the cracks.  They woke
+to new and more trying labour; for over each one of those cracks a
+plate of three-quarter-inch boiler-iron was to be worked hot, the
+rivet-holes being drilled by hand.  All that time they were fed on
+fruits, chiefly bananas, with some sago.
+
+Those were the days when men swooned over the ratchet-drill and the
+hand-forge, and where they fell they had leave to lie unless their
+bodies were in the way of their fellows' feet.  And so, patch upon
+patch, and a patch over all, the starboard supporting-column was
+clouted; but when they thought all was secure, Mr. Wardrop decreed
+that the noble patchwork would never support working engines; at
+the best, it could only hold the guide-bars approximately true.
+he deadweight of the cylinders must be borne by vertical struts;
+and, therefore, a gang would repair to the bows, and take out, with
+files, the big bow-anchor davits, each of which was some three
+inches in diameter.  They threw hot coals at Wardrop, and threatened
+to kill him, those who did not weep (they were ready to weep on the
+least provocation); but he hit them with iron bars heated at the
+end, and they limped forward, and the davits came with them when
+they returned.  They slept sixteen hours on the strength of it, and
+in three days two struts were in place, bolted from the foot of
+the starboard supporting-column to the under side of the cylinder.
+There remained now the port, or condenser-column, which, though not
+so badly cracked as its fellow, had also been strengthened in four
+places with boiler-plate patches, but needed struts.  They took
+away the main stanchions of the bridge for that work, and, crazy
+with toil, did not see till all was in place that the rounded
+bars of iron must be flattened from top to bottom to allow the
+air-pump levers to clear them.  It was Wardrop's oversight, and he
+wept bitterly before the men as he gave the order to unbolt the
+struts and flatten them with hammer and the flame.  Now the broken
+engine was underpinned firmly, and they took away the wooden
+shores from under the cylinders, and gave them to the robbed
+bridge, thanking God for even half a day's work on gentle, kindly
+wood instead of the iron that had entered into their souls.  Eight
+months in the back-country among the leeches, at a temperature of
+84 degrees moist, is very bad for the nerves.
+
+They had kept the hardest work to the last, as boys save Latin
+prose, and, worn though they were, Mr. Wardrop did not dare to
+give them rest.  The piston-rod and connecting-rod were to be
+straightened, and this was a job for a regular dockyard with every
+appliance.  They fell to it, cheered by a little chalk showing of
+work done and time consumed which Mr.  Wardrop wrote up on the
+engine-room bulkhead.  Fifteen days had gone - fifteen days of
+killing labour - and there was hope before them.
+
+It is curious that no man knows how the rods were straightened.
+The crew of the Haliotis remember that week very dimly, as a
+fever patient remembers the delirium of a long night.  There were
+fires everywhere, they say; the whole ship was one consuming
+furnace, and the hammers were never still.  Now, there could not
+have been more than one fire at the most, for Mr. Wardrop
+distinctly recalls that no straightening was done except under
+his own eye.  They remember, too, that for many years voices gave
+orders which they obeyed with their bodies, but their minds were
+abroad on all the seas.  It seems to them that they stood through
+days and nights slowly sliding a bar backwards and forwards
+through a white glow that was part of the ship.  They remember an
+intolerable noise in their burning heads from the walls of the
+stoke-hole, and they remember being savagely beaten by men whose
+eyes seemed asleep.  When their shift was over they would draw
+straight lines in the air, anxiously and repeatedly, and would
+question one another in their sleep, crying, "Is she straight?"
+
+At last - they do not remember whether this was by day or by
+night - Mr. Wardrop began to dance clumsily, and wept the while;
+and they too danced and wept, and went to sleep twitching all
+over; and when they woke, men said that the rods were straightened,
+and no one did any work for two days, but lay on the decks and ate
+fruit.  Mr.  Wardrop would go below from time to time, and pat the
+two rods where they lay, and they heard him singing hymns.
+
+Then his trouble of mind went from him, and at the end of the third
+day's idleness he made a drawing in chalk upon the deck, with
+letters of the alphabet at the angles.  He pointed out that, though
+the piston-rod was  more or less straight, the piston-rod cross-head
+ - the thing that had been jammed sideways in the guides - had been
+badly strained, and had cracked the lower end of the piston-rod.
+He was going to forge and shrink a wrought-iron collar on the neck
+of the piston-rod where it joined the cross-head, and from the
+collar he would bolt a Y-shaped piece of iron whose lower arms
+should be bolted into the cross-head.  If anything more were needed,
+they could use up the last of the boiler-plate.
+
+So the forges were lit again, and men burned their bodies, but
+hardly felt the pain.  The finished connection was not beautiful,
+but it seemed strong enough - at least, as strong as the rest of
+the machinery; and with that job their labours came to an end.
+All that remained was to connect up the engines, and to get food
+and water.  The skipper and four men dealt with the Malay
+boat-builder by night chiefly; it was no time to haggle over the
+price of sago and dried fish.  The others stayed aboard and
+replaced piston, piston-rod, cylinder-cover, cross-head, and bolts,
+with the aid of the faithful donkey-engine.  The cylinder-cover
+was hardly steam-proof, and the eye of science might have seen in
+the connecting-rod a flexure something like that of a
+Christmas-tree candle which has melted and been straightened by
+hand over a stove, but, as Mr.  Wardrop said, "She didn't hit
+anything."
+
+As soon as the last bolt was in place, men tumbled over one
+another in their anxiety to get to the hand starting-gear, the
+wheel and worm, by which some engines can be moved when there is
+no steam aboard.  They nearly wrenched off the wheel, but it was
+evident to the blindest eye that the engines stirred.  They did
+not revolve in their orbits with any enthusiasm, as good machines
+should; indeed, they groaned not a little; but they moved over
+and came to rest in a way which proved that they still recognised
+man's hand.  Then Mr.  Wardrop sent his slaves into the darker
+bowels of the engine-room and the stoke-hole, and followed them
+with a flare-lamp.  The boilers were sound, but would take no harm
+from a little scaling and cleaning.  Mr. Wardrop would not have
+any one over-zealous, for he feared what the next stroke of the
+tool might show.  "The less we know about her now," said he, "the
+better for us all, I'm thinkin'.  Ye'll understand me when I say
+that this is in no sense regular engineerin'."
+
+As his raiment, when he spoke, was his grey beard and uncut hair,
+they believed him.  They did not ask too much of what they met,
+but polished and tallowed and scraped it to a false brilliancy.
+
+"A lick of paint would make me easier in my mind," said Mr.
+Wardrop, plaintively.  "I know half the condenser-tubes are
+started; and the propeller-shaftin''s God knows how far out of
+the true, and we'll need a new air-pump, an' the main-steam
+leaks like a sieve, and there's worse each way I look; but -
+paint's like clothes to a man, 'an ours is near all gone."
+
+The skipper unearthed some stale ropy paint of the loathsome
+green that they used for the galleys of sailing-ships, and Mr.
+Wardrop spread it abroad lavishly to give the engines
+self-respect.
+
+His own was returning day by day, for he wore his loin-cloth
+continuously; but the crew, having worked under orders, did not
+feel as he did.  The completed work satisfied Mr. Wardrop.  He
+would at the last have made shift to run to Singapore, and gone
+home without vengeance taken to show his engines to his brethren
+in the craft; but the others and the captain forbade him.  They
+had not yet recovered their self-respect.
+
+"It would be safer to make what ye might call a trial trip, but
+beggars mustn't be choosers; an if the engines will go over to the
+hand-gear, the probability - I'm only saying it's a probability -
+the chance is that they'll hold up when we put steam on her."
+
+"How long will you take to get steam?" said the skipper.
+
+"God knows!  Four hours - a day - half a week.  If I can raise
+sixty pound I'll not complain."
+
+"Be sure of her first; we can't afford to go out half a mile, and
+break down."
+
+"My soul and body, man, we're one continuous breakdown, fore an'
+aft! We might fetch Singapore, though."
+
+"We'll break down at Pygang-Watai, where we can do good," was the
+answer, in a voice that did not allow argument.  "She's my boat,
+and - I've had eight  months to think in."
+
+No man saw the Haliotis depart, though many heard her.  She left
+at two in the morning, having cut her moorings, and it was none
+of her crew's pleasure that the engines should strike up a
+thundering half-seas-over chanty that echoed among the hills.
+Mr. Wardrop wiped away a tear as he listened to the new song.
+
+"She's gibberin' -  she's just gibberin'," he whimpered.  "Yon's
+the  voice of a maniac.
+
+And if engines have any soul, as their masters believe, he was
+quite right.  There were outcries and clamours, sobs and bursts of
+chattering laughter, silences where the trained ear yearned for the
+clear note, and torturing reduplications where there should have
+been one deep voice.  Down the screw-shaft ran murmurs and warnings,
+while a heart-diseased flutter without told that the propeller
+needed re-keying.
+
+"How does she make it?" said the skipper.
+
+"She moves, but - but she's breakin' my heart.  The sooner we're
+at Pygang-Watai, the better.  She's mad, and we're waking the town."
+
+"Is she at all near safe?"
+
+"What do I care how safe she is?  She's mad.  Hear that, now!  To
+be sure, nothing's hittin' anything, and the bearin's are fairly
+cool, but - can ye not hear?"
+
+"If she goes," said the skipper, "I don't care a curse.  And she's
+my boat, too."
+
+She went, trailing a fathom of weed behind her.  From a slow two
+knots an hour she crawled up to a triumphant four.  Anything
+beyond that made the struts quiver dangerously, and filled the
+engine-room with steam.  Morning showed her out of sight of land,
+and there was a visible ripple under her bows; but she complained
+bitterly in her bowels, and, as though the noise had called it,
+there shot along across the purple sea a swift, dark proa,
+hawk-like and curious, which presently ranged alongside and wished
+to know if the Haliotis were helpless.  Ships, even the steamers
+of the white men, had been known to break down in those waters,
+and the honest Malay and Javanese traders would sometimes aid them
+in their own peculiar way.  But this ship was not full of lady
+passengers and well-dressed officers.  Men, white, naked and savage,
+swarmed down her sides - some with red-hot iron bars, and others
+with large hammers - threw themselves upon those innocent inquiring
+strangers, and, before any man could say what had happened, were
+in full possession of the proa, while the lawful owners bobbed in
+the water overside.  Half an hour later the proa's cargo of sago
+and trepang, as well as a doubtful-minded compass, was in the
+Haliotis.  The two huge triangular mat sails, with their
+seventy-foot yards and booms, had followed the cargo, and were
+being fitted to the stripped masts of the steamer.
+
+They rose, they swelled, they filled, and the empty steamer visibly
+laid over as the wind took them.  They gave her nearly three knots
+an hour, and what better could men ask?  But if she had been forlorn
+before, this new purchase made her horrible to see.  Imagine a
+respectable charwoman in the tights of a ballet-dancer rolling drunk
+along the streets, and you will come to some faint notion of the
+appearance of that nine-hundred-ton, well-decked, once schooner-rigged
+cargo-boat as she staggered under her new help, shouting and raving
+across the deep.  With steam and sail that marvellous voyage
+continued; and the bright-eyed crew looked over the rail, desolate,
+unkempt, unshorn, shamelessly clothed  beyond the decencies.
+
+At the end of the third week she sighted the island of Pygang-Watai,
+whose harbour is the turning-point of a pearl sea-patrol.  Here the
+gun-boats stay for a week ere they retrace their line.  There is no
+village at Pygang-Watai; only a stream of water, some palms, and a
+harbour safe to rest in till the first violence of the southeast
+monsoon has blown itself out.
+
+They opened up the low coral beach, with its mound of whitewashed
+coal ready for supply, the deserted huts for the sailors, and the
+flagless flagstaff.
+
+Next day there was no Haliotis - only a little proa rocking in
+the warm rain at the mouth of the harbour, whose crew watched
+with hungry eyes the smoke of a gunboat on the horizon.
+
+Months afterwards there were a few lines in an English newspaper
+to the effect that some gunboat of some foreign Power had broken
+her back at the mouth of some far-away harbour by running at full
+speed into a sunken wreck.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR
+
+PART I
+
+
+                  I have done one braver thing
+                   Than all the worthies did;
+                  And yet a braver thence doth spring,
+                   Which is to keep that hid.
+
+                                       The Undertaking.
+
+"Is it officially declared yet?"
+
+They've gone as far as to admit 'extreme local scarcity,' and they've
+started relief-works in one or two districts, the paper says."
+
+"That means it will be declared as soon as they can make sure of the
+men and the rolling-stock.  'Shouldn't wonder if it were as bad as
+the '78 Famine."
+
+"'Can't be," said Scott, turning a little in the long cane chair.
+
+"We've had fifteen-anna crops in the north, and Bombay and Bengal
+report more than they know what to do with.  They'll be able to
+check it before it gets out of hand.  It will only be local."
+
+Martyn picked the "Pioneer" from the table, read through the
+telegrams once more, and put up his feet on the chair-rests.  It
+was a hot, dark, breathless evening, heavy with the smell of the
+newly watered Mall.  The flowers in the Club gardens were dead and
+black on their stalks, the little lotus-pond was a circle of caked
+mud, and the tamarisk-trees were white with the dust of weeks.
+Most of the men were at the band-stand in the public gardens - from
+the Club verandah you could hear the native Police band hammering
+stale waltzes - or on the polo-ground, or in the high-walled
+fives-court, hotter than a Dutch oven.  Half a dozen grooms,
+squatted at the heads of their ponies, waited their masters' return.
+>From time to time a man would ride at a foot-pace into the Club
+compound, and listlessly loaf over to the whitewashed barracks
+beside the main building.  These were supposed to be chambers.  Men
+lived in them, meeting the same white faces night after night at
+dinner, and drawing out their office-work till the latest possible
+hour, that they might escape that doleful company.
+
+"What are you going to do?." said Martyn, with a yawn.  "Let's
+have a swim before dinner."
+
+"'Water's hot.  I was at the bath to-day."
+
+"Play you game o' billiards - fifty up."
+
+"It's a hundred and five in the hall now.  Sit still and don't be
+so abominably energetic."
+
+A grunting camel swung up to the porch, his badged and belted
+rider fumbling a leather pouch.
+
+"Kubber-kargaz-ki-yektraaa," the man whined, handing down the
+newspaper extra - a slip printed on one side only, and damp from
+the press.  It was pinned up on the green-baize board, between
+notices of ponies for sale and fox-terriers missing.
+
+Martyn rose lazily, read it, and whistled.  "It's declared!" he
+cried.  "One, two, three - eight districts go under the operations
+of the Famine Code ek dum.  They've put Jimmy Hawkins in charge."
+
+"Good business!" said Scott, with the first sign of interest he
+had shown.  "When in doubt hire a Punjabi.  I worked under Jimmy
+when I first came out and he belonged to the Punjab.  He has more
+bundobust than most men."
+
+"Jimmy's a Jubilee Knight now," said Martyn.  "He's a good chap,
+even though he is a thrice-born civilian and went to the
+Benighted Presidency.  What unholy names these Madras districts
+rejoice in - all ungas or rungas or pillays or polliums!"
+
+A dog-cart drove up in the dusk, and a man entered, mopping his
+head.  He was editor of the one daily paper at the capital of a
+Province of twenty-five million natives and a few hundred white
+men: as his staff was limited to himself and one assistant, his
+office-hours ran variously from ten to twenty a day.
+
+"Hi, Raines; you're supposed to know everything," said Martyn,
+stopping him.  "How's this Madras 'scarcity' going to turn out?"
+
+"No one knows as yet. There's a message as long as your arm coming
+in on the telephone.  I've left my cub to fill it out.  Madras has
+owned she can't manage it alone, and Jimmy seems to have a free
+hand in getting all the men he needs.  Arbuthnot's warned to hold
+himself in readiness."
+
+"'Badger' Arbuthnot?"
+
+"The Peshawur chap.  Yes: and the Pi wires that Ellis and Clay
+have been moved from the Northwest already, and they've taken
+half a dozen Bombay men, too.  It's pukka famine, by the looks
+of it."
+
+"They're nearer the scene of action than we are; but if it comes
+to indenting on the Punjab this early, there's more in this than
+meets the eye," said Martyn.
+
+"Here to-day and gone to-morrow.  'Didn't come to stay for ever,"
+said Scott, dropping one of Marryat's novels, and rising to his
+feet.  "Martyn, your sister's waiting for you."
+
+A rough grey horse was backing and shifting at the edge of the
+verandah, where the light of a kerosene lamp fell on a brown-calico
+habit and a white face under a grey-felt hat.
+
+"Right, O!" said Martyn.  "I'm ready.  Better come and dine with
+us, if you've nothing to do, Scott.  William, is there any dinner
+in the house?"
+
+"I'll go home and see," was the rider's answer.  "You can drive
+him over - at eight, remember."
+
+Scott moved leisurely to his room, and changed into the evening-dress
+of the season and the country: spotless white linen from head to
+foot, with a broad silk cummerbund.  Dinner at the Martyns' was a
+decided improvement on the goat-mutton, twiney-tough fowl, and
+tinned entrees of the Club.  But it was a great pity that Martyn
+could not afford to send his sister to the hills for the hot weather.
+As an Acting District Superintendent of Police, Martyn drew the
+magnificent pay of six hundred depreciated silver rupees a month,
+and his little four-roomed bungalow said just as much.  There were
+the usual blue-and-white-striped jail-made rugs on the uneven floor;
+the usual glass-studded Amritsar phulkaris draped on nails driven
+into the flaking whitewash of the walls; the usual half-dozen chairs
+that did not match, picked up at sales of dead men's effects; and
+the usual streaks of black grease where the leather punka-thong ran
+through the wall.  It was as though everything had been unpacked
+the night before to be repacked next morning.  Not a door in the
+house was true on its hinges.  The little windows, fifteen feet up,
+were darkened with wasp-nests, and lizards hunted flies between the
+beams of the wood-ceiled roof.  But all this was part of Scott's
+life.  Thus did people live who had such an income; and in a land
+where each man's pay, age, and position are printed in a book, that
+all may read, it is hardly worth while to play at pretence in word
+or deed.  Scott counted eight years' service in the Irrigation
+Department, and drew eight hundred rupees a month, on the
+understanding that if he served the State faithfully for another
+twenty-two years he could retire on a pension of some four hundred
+rupees a month.  His working-life, which had been spent chiefly
+under canvas or in temporary shelters where a man could sleep, eat,
+and write letters, was bound up with the opening and guarding of
+irrigation canals, the handling of two or three thousand workmen of
+all castes and creeds, and the payment of vast sums of coined silver.
+
+He had finished that spring, not without credit, the last section
+of the great Mosuhl Canal, and - much against his will, for he
+hated office-work - had been sent in to serve during the hot
+weather on the accounts and supply side of the Department, with
+sole charge of the sweltering sub-office at the capital of the
+Province.  Martyn knew this; William, his sister, knew it; and
+everybody knew it.  Scott knew, too, as well as the rest of the
+world, that Miss Martyn had come out to India four years ago to
+keep house for her brother, who, as every one knew, had borrowed
+the money to pay for her passage, and that she ought, as all the
+world said, to have married at once.  In stead of this, she had
+refused some half a dozen subalterns, a Civilian twenty years her
+senior, one Major, and a man in the Indian Medical Department.
+This, too, was common property.  She had "stayed down three hot
+weathers," as the saying is, because her brother was in debt and
+could not afford the expense of her keep at even a cheap
+hill-station.  Therefore her face was white as bone, and in the
+centre of her forehead was a big silvery scar about the size of a
+shilling - the mark of a Delhi sore, which is the same as a
+"Bagdad date."  This comes from drinking bad water, and slowly
+eats into the flesh till it is ripe enough to be burned out.
+
+None the less William had enjoyed herself hugely in her four years.
+Twice she had been nearly drowned while fording a river; once she
+had been run away with on a camel; had witnessed a midnight attack
+of thieves on her brother's camp; had seen justice administered,
+with long sticks, in the open under trees; could speak Urdu and
+even rough Punjabi with a fluency that was envied by her seniors;
+had entirely fallen out of the habit of writing to her aunts in
+England, or cutting the pages of the English magazines; had been
+through a very bad cholera year, seeing sights unfit to be told;
+and had wound up her experiences by six weeks of typhoid fever,
+during which her head had been shaved and hoped to keep her
+twenty-third birthday that September.  It is conceivable that the
+aunts would not have approved of a girl who never set foot on the
+ground if a horse were within hail; who rode to dances with a shawl
+thrown over her skirt; who wore her hair cropped and curling all
+over her head; who answered indifferently to the name of William
+or Bill; whose speech was heavy with the flowers of the vernacular;
+who could act in amateur theatricals, play on the banjo, rule eight
+servants and two horses, their accounts and their diseases, and
+look men slowly and deliberately between the eyes - even after they
+had proposed to her and been rejected.
+
+"I like men who do things," she had confided to a man in the
+Educational Department, who was teaching the sons of cloth-merchants
+and dyers the beauty of Wordsworth's "Excursion" in annotated
+cram-books; and when he grew poetical, William explained that she
+"didn't understand poetry very much; it made her head ache," and
+another broken heart took refuge at the Club.  But it was all
+William's fault.  She delighted in hearing men talk of their own
+work, and that is the most fatal way of bringing a man to your feet.
+
+Scott had known her for some three years, meeting her, as a rule,
+under canvass, when his camp and her brother's joined for a day
+on the edge of the Indian Desert.  He had danced with her several
+times at the big Christmas gatherings, when as many as five hundred
+white people came in to the station; and had always a great respect
+for her housekeeping and her dinners.
+
+She looked more like a boy than ever when, the meal ended, she
+sat, rolling cigarettes, her low forehead puckered beneath the
+dark curls as she twiddled the papers and stuck out her rounded
+chin when the tobacco stayed in place, or, with a gesture as
+true as a school-boy's throwing a stone, tossed the finished
+article across the room to Martyn, who caught it with one hand,
+and continued his talk with Scott.  It was all "shop," - canals
+and the policing of canals; the sins of villagers who stole more
+water than they had paid for, and the grosser sin of native
+constables who connived at the thefts; of the transplanting
+bodily of villages to newly irrigated ground, and of the coming
+fight with the desert in the south when the Provincial funds
+should warrant the opening of the long-surveyed Luni Protective
+Canal System.  And Scott spoke openly of his great desire to be
+put on one particular section of the work where he knew the land
+and the people; and Martyn sighed for a billet in the Himalayan
+foot-hills, and said his mind of his superiors, and William
+rolled cigarettes and said nothing, but smiled gravely on her
+brother because he was happy.
+
+At ten Scott's horse came to the door, and the evening was ended.
+The lights of the two low bungalows in which the daily paper was
+printed showed bright across the road.  It was too early to try
+to find sleep, and Scott drifted over to the editor.  Raines,
+stripped to the waist like a sailor at a gun, lay half asleep in
+a long chair, waiting for night telegrams.  He had a theory that
+if a man did not stay by his work all day and most of the night he
+laid himself open to fever: so he ate and slept among his files.
+
+"Can you do it?" be said drowsily.  "I didn't mean to bring you
+over."
+
+"About what?  I've been dining at the Martyns'."
+
+"The Madras famine, of course.  Martyn's warned, too.  They're
+taking men where they can find 'em.  I sent a note to you at the
+Club just now, asking if you could do us a letter once a week from
+the south - between two and three columns, say.  Nothing sensational,
+of course, but just plain facts about who is doing what, and so
+forth.  Our regular rates - ten rupees a column."
+
+"'Sorry, but it's out of my line," Scott answered, staring absently
+at the map of India on the wall.  "It's rough on Martyn - very.
+'Wonder what he'll do with his sister?  'Wonder what the deuce
+they'll do with me?  I've no famine experience.  This is the first
+I've heard of it.  Am I ordered?"
+
+"Oh, yes.  Here's the wire.  They'll put you on to relief-works,"
+Raines said, "with a horde of Madrassis dying like flies; one
+native apothecary and half a pint of cholera-mixture among the
+ten thousand of you.  It comes of your being idle for the moment.
+Every man who isn't doing two men's work seems to have been called
+upon.  Hawkins evidently believes in Punjabis.  It's going to be
+quite as bad as anything they have had in the last ten years."
+
+"It's all in the day's work, worse luck.  I suppose I shall get my
+orders officially some time to-morrow.  I'm awfully glad I happened
+to drop in.  Better go and pack my kit now.  Who relieves me here
+ - do you know?"
+
+Raines turned over a sheaf of telegrams.  "McEuan," said he, "from
+Murree."
+
+Scott chuckled.  "He thought he was going to be cool all summer.
+He'll be very sick about this.  Well, no good talking.  'Night."
+
+Two hours later, Scott, with a clear conscience, laid himself
+down to rest on a string cot in a bare room.  Two worn bullock
+trunks, a leather water-bottle, a tin ice-box, and his pet saddle
+sewed up in sacking were piled at the door, and the Club secretary's
+receipt for last month's bill was under his pillow.  His orders
+came next morning, and with them an unofficial telegram from Sir
+James Hawkins; who was not in the habit of forgetting good men when
+he had once met them, bidding him report himself with all speed at
+some unpronounceable place fifteen hundred miles to the south, for
+the famine was sore in the land, and white men were needed.
+
+A pink and fattish youth arrived in the red-hot noonday, whimpering
+a little at fate and famines, which never allowed any one three
+months' peace.  He was Scott's successor - another cog in the
+machinery, moved forward behind his fellow whose services, as the
+official announcement ran, "were placed at the disposal of the
+Madras Government for famine duty until further orders."  Scott
+handed over the funds in his charge, showed him the coolest corner
+in the office, warned him against excess of zeal, and, as twilight
+fell, departed from the Club in a hired carriage, with his faithful
+body-servant, Faiz Ullah, and a mound of disordered baggage atop,
+to catch the southern mail at the loopholed and bastioned
+railway-station.  The heat from the thick brick walls struck him
+across the face as if it had been a hot towel; and he reflected that
+there were at least five nights and four days of this travel before
+him.  Faiz Ullah, used to the chances of service, plunged into the
+crowd on the stone platform, while Scott, a black cheroot between
+his teeth, waited till his compartment should be set away.  A dozen
+native policemen, with their rifles and bundles, shouldered into
+the press of Punjabi farmers, Sikh craftsmen, and greasy-locked
+Afreedee pedlars, escorting with all pomp Martyn's uniform-case,
+water-bottles, ice-box, and bedding-roll.  They saw Faiz Ullah's
+lifted hand, and steered for it.
+
+"My Sahib and your Sahib," said Faiz Ullah to Martyn's man, "will
+travel together.  Thou and I, O brother, will thus secure the
+servants' places close by; and because of our masters' authority
+none will dare to disturb us."
+
+When Faiz Ullah reported all things ready, Scott settled down at
+full length, coatless and bootless, on the broad leather-covered
+bunk.  The heat under the iron-arched roof of the station might
+have been anything over a hundred degrees.  At the last moment
+Martyn entered, dripping.
+
+"Don't swear," said Scott, lazily; "it's too late to change your
+carriage; and we'll divide the ice."
+
+"What are you doing here?" said the police-man.
+
+"I'm lent to the Madras Government, same as you.  By Jove, it's a
+bender of a night!  Are you taking any of your men down?"
+
+"A dozen.  I suppose I shall have to superintend relief
+distributions.  'Didn't know you were under orders too."
+
+"I didn't till after I left you last night.  Raines had the news
+first.  My orders came this morning.  McEuan relieved me at four,
+and I got off at once.  'Shouldn't wonder if it wouldn't be a
+good thing - this famine - if we come through it alive."
+
+"Jimmy ought to put you and me to work together," said Martyn;
+and then, after a pause:  "My sister's here."
+
+"Good business," said Scott, heartily.  "Going to get off at Umballa,
+I suppose, and go up to Simla.  Who'll she stay with there?"
+
+"No-o; that's just the trouble of it.  She's going down with me."
+
+Scott sat bolt upright under the oil-lamps as the train jolted
+past Tarn-Taran.  "What!  You don't mean you couldn't afford -"
+
+"'Tain't that.  I'd have scraped up the money somehow."
+
+"You might have come to me, to begin with," said Scott, stiffly;
+"we aren't altogether strangers."
+
+"Well, you needn't be stuffy about it.  I might, but - you don't
+know my sister.  I've been explaining and exhorting and all the
+rest of it all day - lost my temper since seven this morning,
+and haven't got it back yet - but she wouldn't hear of any
+compromise.  A woman's entitled to travel with her husband if she
+wants to; and William says she's on the same footing.  You see,
+we've been together all our lives, more or less, since my people
+died.  It isn't as if she were an ordinary sister."
+
+"All the sisters I've ever heard of would have stayed where they
+were well off."
+
+She's as clever as a man, confound - Martyn went on.  "She broke
+up the bungalow over my head while I was talking at her.  'Settled
+the whole thing in three hours - servants, horses, and all.  I
+didn't get my orders till nine."
+
+"Jimmy Hawkins won't be pleased," said Scott "A famine's no place
+for a woman."
+
+"Mrs. Jim - I mean Lady Jim's in camp with him.  At any rate, she
+says she will look after my sister.  William wired down to her on
+her own responsibility, asking if she could come, and knocked the
+ground from under me by showing me her answer."
+
+Scott laughed aloud.  "If she can do that she can take care of
+herself, and Mrs. Jim won't let her run into any mischief.  There
+aren't many women, sisters or wives, who would walk into a famine
+with their eyes open.  It isn't as if she didn't know what these
+things mean.  She was through the Jalo cholera last year."
+
+The train stopped at Amritsar, and Scott went back to the ladies'
+compartment, immediately behind their carriage.  William, with a
+cloth riding-cap on her curls, nodded affably.
+
+"Come in and have some tea," she said.  "'Best thing in the world
+for heat-apoplexy."
+
+"Do I look as if I were going to have heat-apoplexy?"
+
+"'Never can tell," said William, wisely.  "It's always best to be
+ready."
+
+She had arranged her compartment with the knowledge of an old
+campaigner.  A felt-covered water-bottle hung in the draught of
+one of the shuttered windows; a tea-set of Russian china, packed
+in a wadded basket, stood on the seat; and a travelling
+spirit-lamp was clamped against the woodwork above it.
+
+William served them generously, in large cups, hot tea, which
+saves the veins of the neck from swelling inopportunely on a hot
+night.  It was characteristic of the girl that, her plan of action
+once settled, she asked for no comments on it.  Life among men who
+had a great deal of work to do, and very little time to do it in,
+had taught her the wisdom of effacing, as well as of fending for,
+herself.  She did not by word or deed suggest that she would be
+useful, comforting, or beautiful in their travels, but continued
+about her business serenely: put the cups back without clatter when
+tea was ended, and made cigarettes for her guests.
+
+"This time last night," said Scott, "we didn't expect - er - this
+kind of thing, did we?"
+
+"I've learned to expect anything," said William.  "You know, in
+our service, we live at the end of the telegraph; but, of course,
+this ought to be a good thing for us all, departmentally - if we
+live."
+
+"It knocks us out of the running in our own Province," Scott
+replied, with equal gravity.  "I hoped to be put on the Luni
+Protective Works this cold weather, but there's no saying how
+long the famine may keep us."
+
+"Hardly beyond October, I should think," said Martyn.  "It will be
+ended, one way or the other, then."
+
+"And we've nearly a week of this," said William.  "Sha'n't we be
+dusty when it's over?"
+
+For a night and a day they knew their surroundings, and for a
+night and a day, skirting the edge of the great Indian Desert on
+a narrow-gauge railway, they remembered how in the days of their
+apprenticeship they had come by that road from Bombay.  Then the
+languages in which the names of the stations were written changed,
+and they launched south into a foreign land, where the very smells
+were new.  Many long and heavily laden grain-trains were in front
+of them, and they could feel the hand of Jimmy Hawkins from far off.
+They waited in extemporised sidings while processions of empty
+trucks returned to the north, and were coupled on to slow, crawling
+trains, and dropped at midnight, Heaven knew where; but it was
+furiously hot, and they walked to and fro among sacks, and dogs
+howled.  Then they came to an India more strange to them than to
+the untravelled Englishman - the flat, red India of palm-tree,
+palmyra-palm, and rice - the India of the picture-books, of "Little
+Harry and His Bearer" - all dead and dry in the baking heat.  They
+had left the incessant passenger-traffic of the north and west far
+and far behind them.  Here the people crawled to the side of the
+train, holding their little ones in their arms; and a loaded truck
+would be left behind, the men and women clustering round it like
+ants by spilled honey.  Once in the twilight they saw on a dusty
+plain a regiment of little brown men, each bearing a body over his
+shoulder; and when the train stopped to leave yet another truck,
+they perceived that the burdens were not corpses, but only
+foodless folk picked up beside dead oxen by a corps of Irregular
+troops.  Now they met more white men, here one and there two, whose
+tents stood close to the line, and who came armed with written
+authorities and angry words to cut off a truck.  They were too busy
+to do more than nod at Scott and Martyn, and stare curiously at
+William, who could do nothing except make tea, and watch how her
+men staved off the rush of wailing, walking skeletons, putting them
+down three at a time in heaps, with their own hands uncoupling the
+marked trucks, or taking receipts from the hollow-eyed, weary white
+men, who spoke another argot than theirs.  They ran out of ice, out
+of soda-water, and out of tea; for they were six days and seven
+nights on the road, and it seemed to them like seven times seven
+years.
+
+At last, in a dry, hot dawn, in a land of death, lit by long red
+fires of railway-sleepers, where they were burning the dead, they
+came to their destination, and were met by Jim Hawkins, the Head of
+the Famine, unshaven, unwashed, but cheery, and entirely in command
+of affairs.
+
+Martyn, he decreed then and there, was to live on trains till
+further orders; was to go back with empty trucks, filling them with
+starving people as he found them, and dropping them at a famine-camp
+on the edge of the Eight Districts.  He would pick up supplies and
+return, and his constables would guard the loaded grain-cars, also
+picking up people, and would drop them at a camp a hundred miles
+south.  Scott - Hawkins was very glad to see Scott again - would
+that same hour take charge of a convoy of bullock-carts, and would
+go south, feeding as he went, to yet another famine-camp, where he
+would leave his starving - there would he no lack of starving on the
+route - and wait for orders by telegraph.  Generally, Scott was in
+all small things to act as he thought best.
+
+William bit her under lip.  There was no one in the wide world like
+her one brother, but Martyn's orders gave him no discretion.
+
+She came out on the platform, masked with dust from head to foot,
+a horse-shoe wrinkle on her forehead, put here by much thinking
+during the past week, but as self-possessed as ever.  Mrs. Jim -
+who should have been Lady Jim but that no one remembered the
+title - took possession of her with a little gasp.
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad you're here," she almost sobbed.  "You oughtn't
+to, of course, but there - there isn't another woman in the
+place, and we must help each other, you know; and we've all the
+wretched people and the little babies they are selling."
+
+"I've seen some," said William.
+
+"Isn't it ghastly? I've bought twenty; they're in our camp; but
+won't you have something to eat first?  We've more than ten people
+can do here; and I've got a horse for you.  Oh, I'm so glad you've
+come, dear.  You're a Punjabi, too, you know."
+
+"Steady, Lizzie," said Hawkins, over his shoulder.  "We'll look
+after you, Miss Martyn.  'Sorry I can't ask you to breakfast,
+Martyn.  You'll have to eat as you go.  Leave two of your men to
+help Scott.  These poor devils can't stand up to load carts.
+Saunders" (this to the engine-driver, who was half asleep in the
+cab), "back down and get those empties away.  You've 'line clear'
+to Anundrapillay; they'll give you orders north of that.  Scott,
+load up your carts from that B. P. P. truck, and be off as soon
+as you can.  The Eurasian in the pink shirt is your interpreter
+and guide.  You'll find an apothecary of sorts tied to the yoke of
+the second wagon.  He's been trying to bolt; you'll have to look
+after him.  Lizzie, drive Miss Martyn to camp, and tell them to
+send the red horse down here for me."
+
+Scott, with Faiz Ullah and two policemen, was already busied with
+the carts, backing them up to the truck and unbolting the sideboards
+quietly, while the others pitched in the bags of millet and wheat.
+Hawkins watched him for as long as it took to fill one cart.
+
+"That's a good man," he said.  "If all goes well I shall work him
+hard."  This was Jim Hawkins's notion of the highest compliment one
+human being could pay another.
+
+An hour later Scott was under way; the apothecary threatening him
+with the penalties of the law for that he, a member of the
+Subordinate Medical Department, had been coerced and bound against
+his will and all laws governing the liberty of the subject; the
+pink-shirted Eurasian begging leave to see his mother, who happened
+to be dying some three miles away: "Only verree, verree short leave
+of absence, and will presently return, sar -"; the two constables,
+armed with staves, bringing up the rear; and Faiz Ullah, a
+Mohammedan's contempt for all Hindoos and foreigners in every line
+of his face, explaining to the drivers that though Scott Sahib was
+a man to be feared on all fours, he, Faiz Ullah, was Authority
+Itself.
+
+The procession creaked past Hawkins's camp - three stained tents
+under a clump of dead trees, behind them the famine-shed, where
+a crowd of hopeless ones tossed their arms around the cooking-kettles.
+
+"'Wish to Heaven William had kept out of it," said Scott to himself,
+after a glance.  "We'll have cholera, sure as a gun, when the Rains
+break."
+
+But William seemed to have taken kindly to the operations of the
+Famine Code, which, when famine is declared, supersede the workings
+of the ordinary law.  Scott saw her, the centre of a mob of weeping
+women, in a calico riding-habit, and a blue-grey felt hat with a
+gold puggaree.
+
+"I want fifty rupees, please.  I forgot to ask Jack before he went
+away.  Can you lend it me?  It's for condensed-milk for the babies,"
+said she.
+
+Scott took the money from his belt, and handed it over without a
+word.  "For goodness sake, take care of yourself," he said.
+
+"Oh, I shall be all right.  We ought to get the milk in two days.
+By the way, the orders are, I was to tell you, that you're to take
+one of Sir Jim's horses.  There's a grey Cabuli here that I thought
+would be just your style, so I've said you'd take him.  Was that
+right?"
+
+"That's awfully good of you.  We can't either of us talk much about
+style, I am afraid."
+
+Scott was in a weather-stained drill shooting-kit, very white at
+the seams and a little frayed at the wrists.  William regarded him
+thoughtfully, from his pith helmet to his greased ankle-boots.
+"You look very nice, I think.  Are you sure you've everything
+you'll need - quinine, chlorodyne, and so on?"
+
+"'Think so," said Scott, patting three or four of his
+shooting-pockets as he mounted and rode alongside his convoy.
+
+"Good-bye," he cried.
+
+"Good-bye, and good luck," said William.  "I'm awfully obliged for
+the money." She turned on a spurred heel and disappeared into the
+tent, while the carts pushed on past the famine-sheds, past the
+roaring lines of the thick, fat fires, down to the baked Gehenna
+of the South.
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+                  So let us melt and make no noise,
+                   No tear-floods nor sigh-tempests move;
+                 'Twere profanation of our joys
+                   To tell the Laity our love.
+
+                                              A Valediction.
+
+It was punishing work, even though he travelled by night and camped
+by day; but within the limits of his vision there was no man whom
+Scott could call master.  He was as free as Jimmy Hawkins - freer,
+in fact, for the Government held the Head of the Famine tied neatly
+to a telegraph-wire, and if Jimmy had ever regarded telegrams
+seriously, the death-rate of that famine would have been much higher
+than it was.
+
+At the end of a few days' crawling Scott learned something of the
+size of the India which he served, and it astonished him.  His
+carts, as you know, were loaded with wheat, millet, and barley,
+good food-grains needing only a little grinding.  But the people
+to whom he brought the life-giving stuffs were rice-eaters.  They
+could hull rice in their mortars, but they knew nothing of the
+heavy stone querns of the North, and less of the material that
+the white man convoyed so laboriously.  They clamoured for rice -
+unhusked paddy, such as they were accustomed to - and, when they
+found that there was none, broke away weeping from the sides of
+the cart.  What was the use of these strange hard grains that
+choked their throats?  They would die.  And then and there very
+many of them kept their word.  Others took their allowance, and
+bartered enough millet to feed a man through a week for a few
+handfuls of rotten rice saved by some less unfortunate.  A few put
+their share into the rice-mortars, pounded it, and made a paste
+with foul water; but they were very few.  Scott understood dimly
+that many people in the India of the South ate rice, as a rule,
+but he had spent his service in a grain Province, had seldom seen
+rice in the blade or ear, and least of all would have believed
+that in time of deadly need men could die at arm's length of
+plenty, sooner than touch food they did not know.  In vain the
+interpreters interpreted; in vain his two policemen showed in
+vigorous pantomime what should be done.  The starving crept away
+to their bark and weeds, grubs, leaves, and clay, and left the
+open sacks untouched.  But sometimes the women laid their phantoms
+of children at Scott's feet, looking back as they staggered away.
+
+Faiz Ullah opined it was the will of God that these foreigners
+should die, and it remained only to give orders to burn the dead.
+None the less there was no reason why the Sahib should lack his
+comforts, and Faiz Ullah, a campaigner of experience, had picked
+up a few lean goats and had added them to the procession.  That
+they might give milk for the morning meal, he was feeding them on
+the good grain that these imbeciles rejected.  "Yes," said Faiz
+Ullah; "if the Sahib thought fit, a little milk might be given to
+some of the babies"; but, as the Sahib well knew, babies were cheap,
+and, for his own part, Faiz Ullah held that there was no Government
+order as to babies.  Scott spoke forcefully to Faiz Ullah and the
+two policemen, and bade them capture goats where they could find
+them.  This they most joyfully did, for it was a recreation, and
+many ownerless goats were driven in.  Once fed, the poor brutes
+were willing enough to follow the carts, and a few days' good food
+ - food such as human beings died for lack of - set them in milk
+again.
+
+"But I am no goatherd," said Faiz Ullah.  "It is against my izzat
+[my honour]."
+
+"When we cross the Bias River again we will talk of izzat," Scott
+replied.  "Till that day thou and the policemen shall be sweepers
+to the camp, if I give the order."
+
+"Thus, then, it is done," grunted Faiz Ullah, "if the Sahib will
+have it so"; and he showed how a goat should be milked, while
+Scott stood over him.
+
+"Now we will feed them," said Scott; "twice a day we will feed
+them"; and he bowed his back to the milking, and took a horrible
+cramp.
+
+When you have to keep connection unbroken between a restless
+mother of kids and a baby who is at the point of death, you
+suffer in all your system.  But the babies were fed.  Each morning
+and evening Scott would solemnly lift them out one by one from
+their nest of gunny-bags under the cart-tilts.  There were always
+many who could do no more than breathe, and the milk was dropped
+into their toothless mouths drop by drop, with due pauses when
+they choked.  Each morning, too, the goats were fed; and since
+they would straggle without a leader, and since the natives were
+hirelings, Scott was forced to give up riding, and pace slowly at
+the head of his flocks, accommodating his step to their weaknesses.
+All this was sufficiently absurd, and he felt the absurdity keenly;
+but at least he was saving life, and when the women saw that their
+children did not die, they made shift to eat a little of the
+strange foods, and crawled after the carts, blessing the master
+of the goats.
+
+"Give the women something to live for," said Scott to himself, as
+he sneezed in the dust of a hundred little feet, "and they'll
+hang on somehow.  This beats William's condensed-milk trick all to
+pieces.  I shall never live it down, though."
+
+He reached his destination very slowly, found that a rice-ship
+had come in from Burmah, and that stores of paddy were available;
+found also an overworked Englishman in charge of the shed, and,
+loading the carts, set back to cover the ground he had already
+passed.  He left some of the children and half his goats at the
+famine-shed.  For this he was not thanked by the Englishman, who
+had already more stray babies than he knew what to do with.
+Scott's back was suppled to stooping now, and he went on with his
+wayside ministrations in addition to distributing the paddy.  More
+babies and more goats were added unto him; but now some of the
+babies wore rags, and beads round their wrists or necks.  "That"
+said the interpreter, as though Scott did not know, "signifies
+that their mothers hope in eventual contingency to resume them
+offeecially."
+
+The sooner, the better," said Scott; but at the same time he
+marked, with the pride of ownership, how this or that little
+Ramasawmy was putting on flesh like a bantam.  As the paddy-carts
+were emptied he headed for Hawkins's camp by the railway, timing
+his arrival to fit in with the dinner-hour, for it was long since
+he had eaten at a cloth.  He had no desire to make any dramatic
+entry, but an accident of the sunset ordered it that when he had
+taken off his helmet to get the evening breeze, the low light
+should fall across his forehead, and he could not see what was
+before him; while one waiting at the tent door beheld with new
+eyes a young man, beautiful as Paris, a god in a halo of golden
+dust, walking slowly at the head of his flocks, while at his knee
+ran small naked Cupids.  But she laughed - William, in a
+slate-coloured blouse, laughed consumedly till Scott, putting the
+best face he could upon the matter, halted his armies and bade her
+admire the kindergarten.  It was an unseemly sight, but the
+proprieties had been left ages ago, with the tea-party at Amritsar
+Station, fifteen hundred miles to the north.
+
+"They are coming on nicely," said William.  "We've only
+five-and-twenty here now.  The women are beginning to take them
+away again."
+
+"Are you in charge of the babies, then?"
+
+"Yes - Mrs. Jim and I.  We didn't think of goats, though.  We've
+been trying condensed-milk and water."
+
+"Any losses?"
+
+More than I care to think of;" said William, with a shudder.
+"And you?"
+
+Scott said nothing.  There had been many little burials along his
+route - one cannot burn a dead baby - many mothers who had wept
+when they did not find again the children they had trusted to the
+care of the Government.
+
+Then Hawkins came out carrying a razor, at which Scott looked
+hungrily, for he had a beard that he did not love.  And when they
+sat down to dinner in the tent he told his tale in few words, as
+it might have been an official report.  Mrs. Jim snuffled from
+time to time, and Jim bowed his head judicially; but William's
+grey eyes were on the clean-shaven face, and it was to her that
+Scott seemed to appeal.
+
+"Good for the Pauper Province!" said William, her chin on her hand,
+as she leaned forward among the wine~glasses.  Her cheeks had
+fallen in, and the scar on her forehead was more prominent than
+ever, but the well-turned neck rose roundly as a column from the
+ruffle of the blouse which was the accepted evening-dress in camp.
+
+"It was awfully absurd at times," said Scott.  "You see, I didn't
+know much about milking or babies.  They'll chaff my head off, if
+the tale goes up North."
+
+"Let 'em," said William, haughtily.  "We've all done coolie-work
+since we came.  I know Jack has."  This was to Hawkins's address,
+and the big man smiled blandly.
+
+"Your brother's a highly efficient officer, William," said he,
+"and I've done him the honour of treating him as he deserves.
+Remember, I write the confidential reports."
+
+"Then you must say that William's worth her weight in gold," said
+Mrs. Jim.  "I don't know what we should have done without her.  She
+has been everything to us."  She dropped her hand upon William's,
+which was rough with much handling of reins, and William patted
+it softly.  Jim beamed on the company.  Things were going well with
+his world.  Three of his more grossly incompetent men had died,
+and their places had been filled by their betters.  Every day
+brought the Rains nearer.  They had put out the famine in five of
+the Eight Districts, and, after all, the death-rate had not been
+too heavy - things considered.  He looked Scott over carefully, as
+an ogre looks over a man, and rejoiced in his thews and iron-hard
+condition.
+
+"He's just the least bit in the world tucked up," said Jim to
+himself, "but he can do two men's work yet."  Then he was aware
+that Mrs. Jim was telegraphing to him, and according to the
+domestic code the message ran: "A clear case.  Look at them!"
+
+He looked and listened.  All that William was saying was: "What
+can you expect of a country where they call a bhistee [a
+water-carrier] a tunni-cutch?" and all that Scott answered was:
+"I shall be glad to get back to the Club.  Save me a dance at the
+Christmas Ball, won't you?"
+
+"It's a far cry from here to the Lawrence Hall," said Jim.  "Better
+turn in early, Scott.  It's paddy-carts to-morrow; you'll begin
+loading at five."
+
+"Aren't you going to give Mr. Scott a single day's rest?"
+
+"'Wish I could, Lizzie, but I'm afraid I can't.  As long as he can
+stand up we must use him."
+
+"Well, I've had one Europe evening, at least.  By Jove, I'd nearly
+forgotten!  What do I do about those babies of mine?"
+
+"Leave them here," said William -" we are in charge of that - and
+as many goats as you can spare.  I must learn how to milk now."
+
+"If you care to get up early enough to-morrow I'll show you.  I
+have to milk, you see.  Half of 'em have beads and things round
+their necks.  You must be careful not to take 'em off; in case the
+mothers turn up."
+
+"You forget I've had some experience here."
+
+"I hope to goodness you won't overdo."  Scott's voice was
+unguarded.
+
+"I'll take care of her," said Mrs. Jim, telegraphing hundred-word
+messages as she carried William off; while Jim gave Scott his
+orders for the coming campaign.  It was very late - nearly nine
+o'clock.
+
+"Jim, you're a brute," said his wife, that night; and the Head of
+the Famine chuckled.
+
+"Not a bit of it, dear.  I remember doing the first Jandiala
+Settlement for the sake of a girl in a crinoline, and she was
+slender, Lizzie.  I've never done as good a piece of work since.
+He'll work like a demon."
+
+"But you might have given him one day."
+
+"And let things come to a head now?  No, dear; it's their happiest
+time."
+
+"I don't believe either of the darlings know what's the matter with
+them.  Isn't it beautiful?  Isn't it lovely?"
+
+"Getting up at three to learn to milk, bless her heart!  Oh, ye
+Gods, why must we grow old and fat?"
+
+"She's a darling.  She has done more work under me -"
+
+"Under you?  The day after she came she was in charge and you were
+her subordinate.  You've stayed there ever since; she manages you
+almost as well as you manage me."
+
+"She doesn't, and that's why I love her.  She's as direct as a
+man - as her brother."
+
+"Her brother's weaker than she is.  He's always to me for orders;
+but he's honest, and a glutton for work.  I confess I'm rather
+fond of William, and if I had a daughter -"
+
+The talk ended.  Far away in the Derajat was a child's grave more
+than twenty years old, and neither Jim nor his wife spoke of it
+any more.
+
+All the same, you're responsible," Jim added, a moment's silence.
+
+"Bless 'em!" said Mrs.  Jim, sleepily.
+
+Before the stars paled, Scott, who slept in an empty cart, waked
+and went about his work in silence; it seemed at that hour unkind
+to rouse Faiz Ullah and the interpreter.  His head being close to
+the ground, he did not hear William till she stood over him in the
+dingy old riding-habit, her eyes still heavy with sleep, a cup of
+tea and a piece of toast in her hands.  There was a baby on the
+ground, squirming on a piece of blanket, and a six-year-old child
+peered over Scott's shoulder.
+
+"Hai, you little rip," said Scott, "how the deuce do you expect to
+get your rations if you aren't quiet?"
+
+A cool white hand steadied the brat, who forthwith choked as the
+milk gurgled into his mouth.
+
+"'Mornin'," said the milker.  "You've no notion how these little
+fellows can wriggle."
+
+"Oh, yes, I have."  She whispered, because the world was asleep.
+"Only I feed them with a spoon or a rag.  Yours are fatter than
+mine.  And you've been doing this day after day?" The voice was
+almost lost.
+
+"Yes; it was absurd.  Now you try," he said, giving place to the
+girl.  "Look out!  A goat's not a cow."
+
+The goat protested against the amateur, and there was a scuffle,
+in which Scott snatched up the baby.  Then it was all to do over
+again, and William laughed softly and merrily.  She managed,
+however, to feed two babies, and a third.
+
+"Don't the little beggars take it well?" said Scott.  "I trained
+'em."
+
+They were very busy and interested, when lo! it was broad daylight,
+and before they knew, the camp was awake, and they kneeled among
+the goats, surprised by the day, both flushed to the temples.  Yet
+all the round world rolling up out of the darkness might have heard
+and seen all that had passed between them.
+
+"Oh," said William, unsteadily, snatching up the tea and toast, "I
+had this made for you.  It's stone-cold now.  I thought you mightn't
+have anything ready so early.  'Better not drink it.  It's - it's
+stone-cold."
+
+"That's awfully kind of you.  It's just right.  It's awfully good
+of you, really.  I'll leave my kids and goats with you and Mrs.
+Jim, and, of course, any one in camp can show you about the
+milking."
+
+"Of course," said William; and she grew pinker and pinker and
+statelier and more stately, as she strode back to her tent,
+fanning herself with the saucer.
+
+There were shrill lamentations through the camp when the elder
+children saw their nurse move off without them.  Faiz Ullah unbent
+so far as to jest with the policemen, and Scott turned purple with
+shame because Hawkins, already in the saddle, roared.
+
+A child escaped from the care of Mrs. Jim, and, running like a
+rabbit, clung to Scott's boot, William pursuing with long, easy
+strides.
+
+"I will not go - I will not go!" shrieked the child, twining his
+feet round Scott's ankle.  They will kill me here.  I do not know
+these people."
+
+"I say," said Scott, in broken Tamil, "I say, she will do you no
+harm.  Go with her and be well fed."
+
+"Come!" said William, panting, with a wrathful glance at Scott,
+who stood helpless and, as it were, hamstrung.
+
+"Go back," said Scott quickly to William.  I'll send the little
+chap over in a minute."
+
+The tone of authority had its effect, but in a way Scott did not
+exactly intend.  The boy loosened his grasp, and said with
+gravity: "I did not know the woman was thine.  I will go."  Then
+he cried to his companions, a mob of three-, four-, and
+five-year-olds waiting on the success of his venture ere they
+stampeded:  "Go back and eat.  It is our man's woman.  She will
+obey his orders."
+
+Jim collapsed where he sat; Faiz Ullah and the two policemen
+grinned; and Scott's orders to the cartmen flew like hail.
+
+"That is the custom of the Sahibs when truth is told in their
+presence," said Faiz Ullah.  "The time comes that I must seek new
+service.  Young wives, especially such as speak our language and
+have knowledge of the ways of the Police, make great trouble for
+honest butlers in the matter of weekly accounts."
+
+What William thought of it all she did not say, but when her
+brother, ten days later, came to camp for orders, and heard of
+Scott's performances, he said, laughing: "Well, that settles it.
+He'll be Bakri Scott to the end of his days."  (Bakri in the
+Northern vernacular, means a goat.)  "What a lark!  I'd have given
+a month's pay to have seen him nursing famine babies.  I fed some
+with conjee [rice-water], but that was all right."
+
+"It's perfectly disgusting," said his sister, with blazing eyes.
+"A man does something like - like that - and all you other men
+think of is to give him an absurd nickname, and then you laugh
+and think it's funny."
+
+"Ah," said Mrs. Jim, sympathetically.
+
+"Well, you can't talk, William.  You christened little Miss Demby
+the Button-quail, last cold weather; you know you did.  India's
+the land of nicknames."
+
+"That's different," William replied.  "She was only a girl, and
+she hadn't done anything except walk like a quail, and she does.
+But it isn't fair to make fun of a man."
+
+"Scott won't care," said Martyn.  "You can't get a rise out of old
+Scotty.  I've been trying for eight years, and you've only known
+him for three.  How does he look?"
+
+"He looks very well," said William, and went away with a flushed
+cheek.  "Bakri Scott, indeed!"  Then she laughed to herself, for
+she knew her country.  "But it will he Bakri all the same"; and
+she repeated it under her breath several times slowly,
+whispering it into favour.
+
+When he returned to his duties on the railway, Martyn spread the
+name far and wide among his associates, so that Scott met it as
+he led his paddy-carts to war.  The natives believed it to be
+some English title of honour, and the cart-drivers used it in
+all simplicity till Faiz Ullah, who did not approve of foreign
+japes, broke their heads.  There was very little time for milking
+now, except at the big camps, where Jim had extended Scott's
+idea and was feeding large flocks on the useless northern grains.
+Sufficient paddy had come now into the Eight Districts to hold
+the people safe, if it were only distributed quickly, and for that
+purpose no one was better than the big Canal officer, who never
+lost his temper, never gave an unnecessary order, and never
+questioned an order given.  Scott pressed on, saving his cattle,
+washing their galled necks daily, so that no time should be lost
+on the road; reported himself with his rice at the minor
+famine-sheds, unloaded, and went back light by forced night-march
+to the next distributing centre, to find Hawkins's unvarying
+telegram:  "Do it again."  And he did it again and again, and yet
+again, while Jim Hawkins, fifty miles away, marked off on a big
+map the tracks of his wheels gridironing the stricken lands.
+Others did well - Hawkins reported at the end they all did well
+ - but Scott was the most excellent, for he kept good coined
+rupees by him, settled for his own cart-repairs on the spot, and
+ran to meet all sorts of unconsidered extras, trusting to be
+recouped later on.  Theoretically, the Government should have
+paid for every shoe and linchpin, for every hand employed in the
+loading; but Government vouchers cash themselves slowly, and
+intelligent and efficient clerks write at great length, contesting
+unauthorised expenditures of eight annas.  The man who wants to
+make his work a success must draw on his own bank-account of money
+or other things as he goes.
+
+"I told you he'd work," said Jimmy to his wife, at the end of six
+weeks.  "He's been in sole charge of a couple of thousand men up
+north, on the Mosuhl Canal, for a year; but he gives less trouble
+than young Martyn with his ten constables; and I'm morally certain
+ - only Government doesn't recognise moral obligations - he's spent
+about half his pay to grease his wheels.  Look at this, Lizzie, for
+one week's work!  Forty miles in two days with twelve carts; two
+days' halt building a famine-shed for young Rogers.  (Rogers ought
+to have built it himself, the idiot!)  Then forty miles back again,
+loading six carts on the way, and distributing all Sunday.  Then in
+the evening he pitches in a twenty-page Demi-Official to me, saying
+the people where he is might be 'advantageously employed on
+relief-work,' and suggesting that he put 'em to work on some
+broken-down old reservoir he's discovered, so as to have a good
+water-supply when the Rains break.  'Thinks he can cauk the dam
+in a fortnight.  Look at his marginal sketches - aren't they
+clear and good?  I knew he was pukka, but I didn't know he was
+as pukka as this."
+
+"I must show these to William," said Mrs.  Jim.  "The child's
+wearing herself out among the babies."
+
+"Not more than you are, dear.  Well, another two months ought to
+see us out of the wood.  I'm sorry it's not in my power to
+recommend you for a V. C."
+
+William sat late in her tent that night, reading through page
+after page of the square handwriting, patting the sketches of
+proposed repairs to the reservoir, and wrinkling her eyebrows
+over the columns of figures of estimated water-supply.  "And he
+finds time to do all this," she cried to herself, "and - well, I
+also was present.  I've saved one or two babies.
+
+She dreamed for the twentieth time of the god in the golden dust,
+and woke refreshed to feed loathsome black children, scores of them,
+wastrels picked up by the wayside, their bones almost breaking their
+skin, terrible and covered with sores.
+
+Scott was not allowed to leave his cart-work, but his letter was
+duly forwarded to the Government, and he had the consolation,
+not rare in India, of knowing that another man was reaping where
+he had sown.  That also was discipline profitable to the soul.
+
+"He's much too good to waste on canals," said Jimmy.  "Any one can
+oversee coolies.  You needn't be angry, William; he can - but I
+need my pearl among bullock-drivers, and I've transferred him to
+the Khanda district, where he'll have it all to do over again.  He
+should be marching now.
+
+"He's not a coolie," said William, furiously.  "He ought to be
+doing his regulation work."
+
+"He's the best man in his service, and that's saying a good deal;
+but if you must use razors to cut grindstones, why, I prefer the
+best cutlery."
+
+"Isn't it almost time we saw him again?" said Mrs. Jim.  "I'm sure
+the poor boy hasn't had a respectable meal for a month.  He probably
+sits on a cart and eats sardines with his fingers."
+
+"All in good time, dear.  Duty before decency - wasn't it Mr.
+Chucks said that?"
+
+"No; it was Midshipman Easy," William laughed.  "I sometimes
+wonder how it will feel to dance or listen to a band again, or
+sit under a roof.  I can't believe I ever wore a ball-frock in my
+life."
+
+"One minute," said Mrs. Jim, who was thinking.  "If he goes to
+Khanda, he passes within five miles of us.  Of course he'll ride
+in."
+
+"Oh, no, he won't," said William.
+
+"How do you know, dear?"
+
+"It will take him off his work.  He won't have time."
+
+"He'll make it," said Mrs.  Jim, with a twinkle.
+
+ "It depends on his own judgment.  There's absolutely no reason
+why he shouldn't, if he thinks fit," said Jim.
+
+"He won't see fit," William replied, without sorrow or emotion.
+"It wouldn't be him if he did."
+
+"One certainly gets to know people rather well in times like these,"
+said Jim, drily; but William's face was serene as ever, and even
+as she prophesied, Scott did not appear.
+
+The Rains fell at last, late, but heavily; and the dry, gashed
+earth was red mud, and servants killed snakes in the camp, where
+every one was weather-bound for a fortnight - all except Hawkins,
+who took horse and plashed about in the wet, rejoicing.  Now the
+Government decreed that seed-grain should be distributed to the
+people, as well as advances of money for the purchase of new oxen;
+and the white men were doubly worked for this new duty, while
+William skipped from brick to brick laid down on the trampled mud,
+and dosed her charges with warming medicines that made them rub
+their little round stomachs; and the milch goats throve on the
+rank grass.  There was never a word from Scott in the Khanda
+district, away to the southeast, except the regular telegraphic
+report to Hawkins.  The rude country roads had disappeared; his
+drivers were half mutinous; one of Martyn's loaned policemen had
+died of cholera; and Scott was taking thirty grains of quinine a
+day to fight the fever that comes with the rain: but those were
+things Scott did not consider necessary to report.  He was, as
+usual, working from a base of supplies on a railway line, to cover
+a circle of fifteen miles radius, and since full loads were
+impossible, he took quarter-loads, and toiled four times as hard
+by consequence; for he did not choose to risk an epidemic which
+might have grown uncontrollable by assembling villagers in
+thousands at the relief-sheds.  It was cheaper to take Government
+bullocks, work them to death, and leave them to the crows in the
+wayside sloughs.
+
+That was the time when eight years of clean living and hard condition
+told, though a man's head were ringing like a bell from the cinchona,
+and the earth swayed under his feet when he stood and under his bed
+when he slept.  If Hawkins had seen fit to make him a bullock-driver,
+that, he thought, was entirely Hawkins's own affair.  There were men
+in the North who would know what he had done; men of thirty years'
+service in his own department who would say that it was "not half
+bad"; and above, immeasurably above, all men of all grades, there
+was William in the thick of the fight, who would approve because she
+understood.  He had so trained his mind that it would hold fast to
+the mechanical routine of the day, though his own voice sounded
+strange in his own ears, and his hands, when he wrote, grew large
+as pillows or small as peas at the end of his wrists.  That
+steadfastness bore his body to the telegraph-office at the
+railway-station, and dictated a telegram to Hawkins saying that
+the Khanda district was, in his judgment, now safe, and he "waited
+further orders."
+
+The Madrassee telegraph-clerk did not approve of a large, gaunt
+man falling over him in a dead faint, not so much because of the
+weight as because of the names and blows that Faiz Ullah dealt
+him when he found the body rolled under a bench.  Then Faiz Ullah
+took blankets, quilts, and coverlets where he found them, and lay
+down under them at his master's side, and bound his arms with a
+tent-rope, and filled him with a horrible stew of herbs, and set
+the policeman to fight him when he wished to escape from the
+intolerable heat of his coverings, and shut the door of the
+telegraph-office to keep out the curious for two nights and one
+day; and when a light engine came down the line, and Hawkins
+kicked in the door, Scott hailed him weakly but in a natural
+voice, and Faiz Ullah stood back and took all the credit.
+
+"For two nights, Heaven-born, he was pagal" said Faiz Ullah.  "Look
+at my nose, and consider the eye of the policeman.  He beat us with
+his bound hands; but we sat upon him, Heaven-born, and though his
+words were tez, we sweated him.  Heaven-born, never has been such
+a sweat!  He is weaker now than a child; but the fever has gone out
+of him, by the grace of God.  There remains only my nose and the eye
+of the constabeel.  Sahib, shall I ask for my dismissal because my
+Sahib has beaten me?"  And Faiz Ullah laid his long thin hand
+carefully on Scott's chest to be sure that the fever was all gone,
+ere he went out to open tinned soups and discourage such as laughed
+at his swelled nose.
+
+"The district's all right," Scott whispered.  "It doesn't make any
+difference.  You got my wire?"  I shall be fit in a week.  'Can't
+understand how it happened.  I shall be fit in a few days."
+
+"You're coming into camp with us," said Hawkins.
+
+"But look here - but -"
+
+"It's all over except the shouting.  We sha'n't need you Punjabis
+any more.  On my honour, we sha'n't.  Martyn goes back in a few
+weeks; Arbuthnot's returned already; Ellis and Clay are putting
+the last touches to a new feeder-line the Government's built as
+relief-work.  Morten's dead - he was a Bengal man, though; you
+wouldn't know him.  'Pon my word, you and Will - Miss Martyn -
+seem to have come through it as well as anybody."
+
+"Oh, how is she, by-the-way"."  The voice went up and down as he
+spoke.
+
+"Going strong when I left her.  The Roman Catholic Missions are
+adopting the unclaimed babies to turn them into little priests;
+the Basil Mission is taking some, and the mothers are taking the
+rest.  You should hear the little beggars howl when they're sent
+away from William.  She's pulled down a bit, but so are we all.
+Now, when do you suppose you'll be able to move?"
+
+"I can't come into camp in this state.  I won't," he replied
+pettishly.
+
+"Well, you are rather a sight, but from what I gathered there it
+seemed to me they'd be glad to see you under any conditions.  I'll
+look over your work here, if you like, for a couple of days, and
+you can pull yourself together while Faiz Ullah feeds you up."
+
+Scott could walk dizzily by the time Hawkins's inspection was
+ended, and he flushed all over when Jim said of his work that it
+was "not half bad," and volunteered, further, that he had considered
+Scott his right-hand man through the famine, and would feel it his
+duty to say as much officially.
+
+So they came back by rail to the old camp; but there were no crowds
+near it; the long fires in the trenches were dead and black, and
+the famine-sheds were almost empty.
+
+"You see!" said Jim.  "There isn't much more to do.  'Better ride
+up and see the wife.  They've pitched a tent for you.  Dinner's at
+seven.  I've some work here."
+
+Riding at a foot-pace, Faiz Ullah by his stirrup, Scott came to
+William in the brown-calico riding-habit, sitting at the
+dining-tent door, her hands in her lap, white as ashes, thin and
+worn, with no lustre in her hair.  There did not seem to be any
+Mrs. Jim on the horizon, and all that William could say was: "My
+word, how pulled down you look!"
+
+"I've had a touch of fever.  You don't look very well yourself."
+
+"Oh, I'm fit enough.  We've stamped it out.  I suppose you know?"
+
+Scott nodded.  "We shall all be returned in a few weeks.  Hawkins
+told me."
+
+"Before Christmas, Mrs. Jim says.  Sha'n't you be glad to go back?
+I can smell the wood-smoke already"; William sniffed.  "We shall
+be in time for all the Christmas doings.  I don't suppose even the
+Punjab Government would be base enough to transfer Jack till the
+new year?"
+
+"It seems hundreds of years ago - the Punjab and all that - doesn't
+it?  Are you glad you came?"
+
+"Now it's all over, yes.  It has been ghastly here, though.  You
+know we had to sit still and do nothing, and Sir Jim was away so
+much."
+
+"Do nothing! How did you get on with the milking?"
+
+"I managed it somehow - after you taught me.  'Remember?"
+
+Then the talk stopped with an almost audible jar.  Still no Mrs.
+Jim.
+
+"That reminds me, I owe you fifty rupees for the condensed-milk.
+I thought perhaps you'd be coming here when you were transferred
+to the Khanda district, and I could pay you then; but you
+didn't."
+
+"I passed within five miles of the camp, but it was in the middle
+of a march, you see, and the carts were breaking down every few
+minutes, and I couldn't get 'em over the ground till ten o'clock
+that night.  I wanted to come awfully.  You knew I did, didn't you?"
+
+"I - believe - I - did," said William, facing him with level eyes.
+She was no longer white."
+
+"Did you understand?"
+
+"Why you didn't ride in?  Of course I did."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you couldn't, of course.  I knew that."
+
+"Did you care?"
+
+"If you had come in - but I knew you wouldn't - but if you had, I
+should have cared a great deal.  You know I should."
+
+"Thank God I didn't!  Oh, but I wanted to!  I couldn't trust myself
+to ride in front of the carts, because I kept edging 'em over
+here, don't you know?"
+
+"I knew you wouldn't," said William, contentedly.  "Here's your
+fifty."
+
+Scott bent forward and kissed the hand that held the greasy
+notes.  Its fellow patted him awkwardly but very tenderly on the
+head.
+
+"And you knew, too, didn't you?" said William, in a new voice.
+
+"No, on my honour, I didn't.  I hadn't the - the cheek to expect
+anything of the kind, except ...  I say, were you out riding
+anywhere the day I passed by to Khanda?"
+
+William nodded, and smiled after the manner of an angel surprised
+in a good deed.
+
+"Then it was just a speck I saw of your habit in the -"
+
+"Palm-grove on the Southern cart-road.  I saw your helmet when you
+came up from the mullah by the temple - just enough to be sure
+that you were all right.  D' you care?"
+
+This time Scott did not kiss her hand, for they were in the dusk
+of the dining-tent, and, because William's knees were trembling
+under her, she had to sit down in the nearest chair, where she wept
+long and happily, her head on her arms; and when Scott imagined
+that it would be well to comfort her, she needing nothing of the
+kind, she ran to her own tent; and Scott went out into the world,
+and smiled upon it largely and idiotically.  But when Faiz Ullah
+brought him a drink, he found it necessary to support one hand
+with the other, or the good whisky and soda would have been spilled
+abroad.  There are fevers and fevers.
+
+But it was worse - much worse - the strained, eye-shirking talk at
+dinner till the servants had withdrawn, and worst of all when Mrs.
+Jim, who had been on the edge of weeping from the soup down, kissed
+Scott and William, and they drank one whole bottle of champagne,
+hot, because there was no ice, and Scott and William sat outside the
+tent in the starlight till Mrs. Jim drove them in for fear of more
+fever.
+
+Apropos of these things and some others William said: "Being engaged
+is abominable, because, you see, one has no official position.  We
+must be thankful we've lots of things to do."
+
+"Things to do!" said Jim, when that was reported to him.  "They're
+neither of them any good any more.  I can't get five hours' work a
+day out of Scott.  He's in the clouds half the time."
+
+"Oh, but they're so beautiful to watch, Jimmy.  It will break my
+heart when they go.  Can't you do anything for him?"
+
+"I've given the Government the impression - at least, I hope I have
+ - that he personally conducted the entire famine.  But all he wants
+is to get on to the Luni Canal Works, and William's just as bad.
+Have you ever heard 'em talking of barrage and aprons and
+waste-water?  It's their style of spooning, I suppose."
+
+Mrs.  Jim smiled tenderly.  "Ah, that's in the intervals - bless
+'em."
+
+And so Love ran about the camp unrebuked in broad daylight, while
+men picked up the pieces and put them neatly away of the Famine in
+the Eight Districts.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
+Morning brought the penetrating chill of the Northern December, the
+layers of wood-smoke, the dusty grey-blue of the tamarisks, the
+domes of ruined tombs, and all the smell of the white Northern
+plains, as the mail-train ran on to the mile-long Sutlej Bridge.
+William, wrapped in a poshteen - a silk-embroidered sheepskin jacket
+trimmed with rough astrakhan - looked out with moist eyes and
+nostrils that dilated joyously.  The South of pagodas and palm-trees,
+the overpopulated Hindu South, was done with.  Here was the land she
+knew and loved, and before her lay the good life she understood,
+among folk of her own caste and mind.
+
+They were picking them up at almost every station now - men and
+women coming in for the Christmas Week, with racquets, with bundles
+of polo-sticks, with dear and bruised cricket-bats, with fox-terriers
+and saddles.  The greater part of them wore jackets like William's,
+for the Northern cold is as little to be trifled with as the Northern
+heat.  And William was among them and of them, her hands deep in her
+pockets, her collar turned up over her ears, stamping her feet on
+the platforms as she walked up and down to get warm, visiting from
+carriage to carriage and everywhere being congratulated.  Scott was
+with the bachelors at the far end of the train, where they chaffed
+him mercilessly about feeding babies and milking goats; but from
+time to time he would stroll up to William's window, and murmur:
+"Good enough, isn't it?" and William would answer with sighs of pure
+delight:  "Good enough, indeed."  The large open names of the home
+towns were good to listen to.  Umballa, Ludianah, Phillour, Jullundur,
+they rang like the coming marriage-bells in her ears, and William
+felt deeply and truly sorry for all strangers and outsiders -
+visitors, tourists, and those fresh-caught for the service of the
+country.
+
+It was a glorious return, and when the bachelors gave the Christmas
+Ball, William was, unofficially, you might say, the chief and
+honoured guest among the Stewards, who could make things very
+pleasant for their friends.  She and Scott danced nearly all the
+dances together, and sat out the rest in the big dark gallery
+overlooking the superb teak floor, where the uniforms blazed, and
+the spurs clinked, and the new frocks and four hundred dancers went
+round and round till the draped flags on the pillars flapped and
+bellied to the whirl of it.
+
+About midnight half a dozen men who did not care for dancing came
+over from the Club to play "Waits," and that was a surprise the
+Stewards had arranged - before any one knew what had happened,
+the band stopped, and hidden voices broke into "Good King
+Wenceslaus," and William in the gallery hummed and beat time with
+her foot:
+
+             "Mark my footsteps well, my page,
+                Tread thou in them boldly.
+              Thou shalt feel the winter's rage
+                Freeze thy blood less coldly!"
+
+"Oh, I hope they are going to give us another!  Isn't it pretty,
+coming out of the dark in that way?  Look - look down.  There's
+Mrs.  Gregory wiping her eyes!"
+
+"It's like Home, rather," said Scott.  "I remember -"
+
+"Hsh!  Listen! - dear."  And it began again:
+
+             "When shepherds watched their flocks by night -"
+
+"A-h-h!" said William, drawing closer to Scott.
+
+              "All seated on the ground,
+               The Angel of the Lord came down,
+               And glory shone around.
+              'Fear not,' said he (for mighty dread
+               Had seized their troubled mind);
+              'Glad tidings of great joy I bring
+               To you and all mankind.'"
+
+This time it was William that wiped her eyes.
+
+
+
+
+.007
+
+
+A locomotive is, next to a marine engine, the most sensitive thing
+man ever made; and No.  .007, besides being sensitive, was new.  The
+red paint was hardly dry on his spotless bumper-bar, his headlight
+shone like a fireman's helmet, and his cab might have been a
+hard-wood-finish parlour.  They had run him into the round-house
+after his trial - he had said good-bye to his best friend in the
+shops, the overhead travelling-crane - the big world was just
+outside; and the other locos were taking stock of him.  He looked
+at the semicircle of bold, unwinking headlights, heard the low purr
+and mutter of the steam mounting in the gauges - scornful hisses of
+contempt as a slack valve lifted a little - and would have given a
+month's oil for leave to crawl through his own driving-wheels into
+the brick ash-pit beneath him.  .007 was an eight-wheeled "American"
+loco,     slightly different from others of his type, and as he stood
+he was worth ten thousand dollars on the Company's books.  But if
+you had bought him at his own valuation, after half an hour's waiting
+in the darkish, echoing round-house, you would have saved exactly
+nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars and ninety-eight
+cents.
+
+A heavy Mogul freight, with a short cow-catcher and a fire-box that
+came down within three inches of the rail, began the impolite game,
+speaking to a Pittsburgh Consolidation, who was visiting.
+
+"Where did this thing blow in from?" he asked, with a dreamy puff
+of light steam.
+
+"it's all I can do to keep track of our makes," was the answer,
+"without lookin' after your back-numbers.  Guess it's something Peter
+Cooper left over when he died."
+
+.007 quivered; his steam was getting up, but he held his tongue.
+Even a hand-car knows what sort of locomotive it was that Peter
+Cooper experimented upon in the far-away Thirties.  It carried its
+coal and water in two apple-barrels, and was not much bigger than
+a bicycle.
+
+Then up and spoke a small, newish switching-engine, with a little
+step in front of his bumper-timber, and his wheels so close together
+that he looked like a broncho getting ready to buck.
+
+"Something's wrong with the road when a Pennsylvania gravelpusher
+tells us anything about our stock, I think.  That kid's all right.
+Eustis designed him, and Eustis designed me.  Ain't that good enough?"
+
+.007 could have carried the switching-loco round the yard in his
+tender, but he felt grateful for even this little word of consolation.
+
+"We don't use hand-cars on  the Pennsylvania," said the Consolidation.
+"That - er - peanut-stand is old enough and ugly enough to speak for
+himself."
+
+"He hasn't bin spoken to yet.  He's bin spoke at.  Hain't ye any
+manners on the Pennsylvania?" said the switching-loco.
+
+"You ought to be in the yard, Poney," said the Mogul, severely.
+"We're all long-haulers here."
+
+"That's what you think," the little fellow replied.  "You'll know
+more 'fore the night's out.  I've bin down to Track 17, and the
+freight there - oh, Christmas!"
+
+"I've trouble enough in my own division," said a lean, light suburban
+loco with very shiny brake-shoes.  "My commuters wouldn't rest till
+they got a parlourcar.  They've hitched it back of all, and it hauls
+worsen a snow-plough.  I'll snap her off someday sure, and then
+they'll blame every one except their foolselves.  They'll be askin'
+me to haul a vestibuled next!"
+
+"They made you in New Jersey, didn't they?" said Poney.  "Thought so.
+Commuters and truck-wagons ain't any sweet haulin', but I tell you
+they're a heap better 'n cuttin' out refrigerator-cars or oil-tanks.
+Why, I've hauled -"
+
+"Haul!  You?" said the Mogul, contemptuously.  "It's all you can do
+to bunt a cold-storage car up the yard.  Now, I - " he paused a
+little to let the words sink in - "I handle the Flying Freight
+ - e-leven cars worth just anything you please to mention.  On the
+stroke of eleven I pull out; and I'm timed for thirty-five an hour.
+Costly-perishable-fragile-immediate - that's me!  Suburban traffic's
+only but one degree better than switching.  Express freight's what
+pays."
+
+"Well, I ain't given to blowing, as a rule," began the Pittsburgh
+Consolidation.
+
+"No?  You was sent in here because you grunted on the grade," Poney
+interrupted.
+
+"Where I grunt, you'd lie down, Poney: but, as I was saying, I don't
+blow much.  Notwithstandin', if you want to see freight that is
+freight moved lively, you should see me warbling through the
+Alleghanies with thirty-seven ore-cars behind me, and my brakemen
+fightin' tramps so's they can't attend to my tooter.  I have to do
+all the holdin' back then, and, though I say it, I've never had a
+load get away from me yet.  No, sir.  Haulin's's one thing, but
+judgment and discretion's another.  You want judgment in my
+business."
+
+"Ah!  But - but are you not paralysed by a sense of your overwhelming
+responsibilities?" said a curious, husky voice from a corner.
+
+"Who's that?" .007 whispered to the Jersey commuter.
+
+"Compound-experiment-N.G.  She's bin switchin' in the B. & A. yards
+for six months, when she wasn't in the shops.  She's economical (I
+call it mean) in her coal, but she takes it out in repairs.  Ahem!
+I presume you found Boston somewhat isolated, madam, after your New
+York season?"
+
+"I am never so well occupied as when I am alone."  The Compound
+seemed to be talking from half-way up her smoke-stack.
+
+"Sure," said the irreverent Poney, under his breath.  "They don't
+hanker after her any in the yard."
+
+"But, with my constitution and temperament - my work lies in Boston
+ - I find your outrecuidance - "
+
+"Outer which?" said the Mogul freight.  "Simple cylinders are good
+enough for me."
+
+"Perhaps I should have said faroucherie," hissed the Compound.
+
+"I don't hold with any make of papier-mache wheel," the Mogul
+insisted.
+
+The Compound sighed pityingly, and said no more.
+
+"Git 'em all shapes in this world, don't ye?" said Poney.  "that's
+Mass'chusetts all over.  They half start, an' then they stick on a
+dead-centre, an' blame it all on other folk's ways o' treatin' them.
+Talkin' o' Boston, Comanche told me, last night, he had a hot-box
+just beyond the Newtons, Friday.  That was why, he says, the
+Accommodation was held up.  Made out no end of a tale, Comanche did."
+
+"If I'd heard that in the shops, with my boiler out for repairs, I'd
+know 't was one o' Comanche's lies," the New Jersey commuter snapped.
+"Hot-box!  Him!  What happened was they'd put an extra car on, and
+he just lay down on the grade and squealed.  They had to send 127 to
+help him through.  Made it out a hotbox, did he?  Time before that
+he said he was ditched!  Looked me square in the headlight and told
+me that as cool as - as a water-tank in a cold wave.  Hot-box!  You
+ask 127 about Comanche's hot-box.  Why, Comanche he was side-tracked,
+and 127 (he was just about as mad as they make 'em on account o'
+being called out at ten o'clock at night) took hold and snapped her
+into Boston in seventeen minutes.  Hot-box!  Hot fraud! that's what
+Comanche is."
+
+Then .007 put both drivers and his pilot into it, as the saying is,
+for he asked what sort of thing a hot-box might be?
+
+"Paint my bell sky-blue!" said Poney, the switcher.  "Make me a
+surface-railroad loco with a hard-wood skirtin'-board round my wheels.
+Break me up and cast me into five-cent sidewalk-fakirs' mechanical
+toys!  Here's an eight-wheel coupled 'American' don't know what a
+hot-box is!  Never heard of an emergency-stop either, did ye?  Don't
+know what ye carry jack-screws for?  You're too innocent to be left
+alone with your own tender.  Oh, you - you flatcar!"
+
+There was a roar of escaping steam before any one could answer, and
+.007 nearly blistered his paint off with pure mortification.
+
+"A hot-box," began the Compound, picking and choosing her words as
+though they were coal, "a hotbox is the penalty exacted from
+inexperience by haste.  Ahem!"
+
+"Hot-box!" said the Jersey Suburban.  "It's the price you pay for
+going on the tear.  It's years since I've had one.  It's a disease
+that don't attack shorthaulers, as a rule."
+
+"We never have hot-boxes on the Pennsylvania," said the Consolidation.
+"They get 'em in New York - same as nervous prostration."
+
+"Ah, go home on a ferry-boat," said the Mogul.  "You think because
+you use worse grades than our road 'u'd allow, you're a kind of
+Alleghany angel.  Now, I'll tell you what you ...  Here's my folk.
+Well, I can't stop.  See you later, perhaps."
+
+He rolled forward majestically to the turn-table, and swung like
+a man-of-war in a tideway, till he picked up his track.  "But as
+for you, you pea-green swiveling' coffee-pot (this to .007'), you
+go out and learn something before you associate with those who've
+made more mileage in a week than you'll roll up in a year.
+Costly-perishable-fragile-immediate-that's me!  S' long."
+
+"Split my tubes if that's actin' polite to a new member o' the
+Brotherhood," said Poney.  "There wasn't any call to trample on ye
+like that.  But manners was left out when Moguls was made.  Keep
+up your fire, kid, an' burn your own smoke.  'Guess we'll all be
+wanted in a minute."
+
+Men were talking rather excitedly in the roundhouse.  One man, in
+a dingy jersey, said that he hadn't any locomotives to waste on the
+yard.  Another man, with a piece of crumpled paper in his hand, said
+that the yard-master said that he was to say that if the other man
+said anything, he (the other man) was to shut his head.  Then the
+other man waved his arms, and wanted to know if he was expected to
+keep locomotives in his hip-pocket.  Then a man in a black Prince
+Albert, without a collar, came up dripping, for it was a hot August
+night, and said that what he said went; and between the three of
+them the locomotives began to go, too - first the Compound; then
+the Consolidation; then .007.
+
+Now, deep down in his fire-box, .007 had cherished a hope that as
+soon as his trial was done, he would be led forth with songs and
+shoutings, and attached to a green-and-chocolate vestibuled flyer,
+under charge of a bold and noble engineer, who would pat him on his
+back, and weep over him, and call him his Arab steed.  (The boys in
+the shops where he was built used to read wonderful stories of
+railroad life, and .007 expected things to happen as he had heard.)
+But there did not seem to be many vestibuled fliers in the roaring,
+rumbling, electric-lighted yards, and his engineer only said:
+
+"Now, what sort of a fool-sort of an injector has Eustis loaded on
+to this rig this time?"  And he put the lever over with an angry
+snap, crying: "Am I supposed to switch with this thing, hey?"
+
+The collarless man mopped his head, and replied that, in the present
+state of the yard and freight and a few other things, the engineer
+would switch and keep on switching till the cows came home.  .007
+pushed out gingerly, his heart in his headlight, so nervous that the
+clang of his own bell almost made him jump the track.  Lanterns
+waved, or danced up and down, before and behind him; and on every
+side, six tracks deep, sliding backward and forward, with clashings
+of couplers and squeals of hand-brakes, were cars - more cars than
+.007 had dreamed of.  There were oil-cars, and hay-cars, and
+stock-cars full of lowing beasts, and ore-cars, and potato-cars with
+stovepipe-ends sticking out in the middle; cold-storage and
+refrigerator cars dripping ice water on the tracks; ventilated
+fruit- and milk-cars; flatcars with truck-wagons full of market-stuff;
+flat-cars loaded with reapers and binders, all red and green and
+gilt under the sizzling electric lights; flat-cars piled high with
+strong-scented hides, pleasant hemlock-plank, or bundles of shingles;
+flat-cars creaking to the weight of thirty-ton castings, angle-irons,
+and rivet-boxes for some new bridge; and hundreds and hundreds and
+hundreds of box-cars loaded, locked, and chalked.  Men - hot and
+angry - crawled among and between and under the thousand wheels; men
+took flying jumps through his cab, when he halted for a moment; men
+sat on his pilot as he went forward, and on his tender as he
+returned; and regiments of men ran along the tops of the box-cars
+beside him, screwing down brakes, waving their arms, and crying
+curious things.
+
+He was pushed forward a foot at a time; whirled backward, his rear
+drivers clinking and clanking, a quarter of a mile; jerked into a
+switch (yard-switches are very stubby and unaccommodating), bunted
+into a Red D, or Merchant's Transport car, and, with no hint or
+knowledge of the weight behind him, started up anew.  When his load
+was fairly on the move, three or four cars would be cut off, and
+.007 would bound forward, only to be held hiccupping on the brake.
+Then he would wait a few minutes, watching the whirled lanterns,
+deafened with the clang of the bells, giddy with the vision of the
+sliding cars, his brake-pump panting forty to the minute, his front
+coupler lying sideways on his cow-catcher, like a tired dog's tongue
+in his mouth, and the whole of him covered with half-burnt coal-dust.
+
+"'Tisn't so easy switching with a straight-backed tender," said his
+little friend of the round-house, bustling by at a trot.  "But
+you're comin' on pretty fair.  'Ever seen a flyin' switch?  No?
+Then watch me."
+
+Poney was in charge of a dozen heavy flat-cars.  Suddenly he shot
+away from them with a sharp "Whutt !"  A switch opened in the shadows
+ahead; he turned up it like a rabbit as it snapped behind him, and
+the long line of twelve-foot-high lumber jolted on into the arms of
+a full-sized road-loco, who acknowledged receipt with a dry howl.
+
+"My man's reckoned the smartest in the yard at that trick," he said,
+returning.  "Gives me cold shivers when another fool tries it,
+though.  That's where my short wheel-base comes in.  Like as not
+you'd have your tender scraped off if you tried it."
+
+.007 had no ambitions that way, and said so.
+
+"No?  Of course this ain't your regular business, but say, don't you
+think it's interestin'?  Have you seen the yard-master?  Well, he's
+the greatest man on earth, an' don't you forget it.  When are we
+through?  Why, kid, it's always like this, day an' night - Sundays
+an' week-days.  See that thirty-car freight slidin' in four, no,
+five tracks off?  She's all mixed freight, sent here to be sorted out
+into straight trains.  That's why we're cuttin' out the cars one by
+one."  He gave a vigorous push to a west-bound car as he spoke, and
+started back with a little snort of surprise, for the car was an old
+friend - an M. T. K. box-car.
+
+"Jack my drivers, but it's Homeless Kate!  Why, Kate, ain't there
+no gettin' you back to your friends?  There's forty chasers out for
+you from your road, if there's one.  Who's holdin' you now?"
+
+"Wish I knew," whimpered Homeless Kate.  "I belong in Topeka, but
+I've bin to Cedar Rapids; I've bin to Winnipeg; I've bin to Newport
+News; I've bin all down the old Atlanta and West Point; an' I've bin
+to Buffalo.  Maybe I'll fetch up at Haverstraw.  I've only bin out
+ten months, but I'm homesick - I'm just achin' homesick."
+
+"Try Chicago, Katie," said the switching-loco; and the battered old
+car lumbered down the track, jolting: "I want to be in Kansas when
+the sunflowers bloom."
+
+"'Yard's full o' Homeless Kates an' Wanderin' Willies," he explained
+to .007.  "I knew an old Fitchburg flat-car out seventeen months; an'
+one of ours was gone fifteen 'fore ever we got track of her.  Dunno
+quite how our men fix it.  'Swap around, I guess.  Anyway, I've done
+my duty.  She's on her way to Kansas, via Chicago; but I'll lay my
+next boilerful she'll be held there to wait consignee's convenience,
+and sent back to us with wheat in the fall."
+
+Just then the Pittsburgh Consolidation passed, at the head of a
+dozen cars.
+
+"I'm goin' home," he said proudly.
+
+"Can't get all them twelve on to the flat.  Break 'em in half,
+Dutchy!" cried Poney.  But it was .007 who was backed down to the
+last six cars, and he nearly blew up with surprise when he found
+himself pushing them on to a huge ferry-boat.  He had never seen
+deep water before, and shivered as the flat drew away and left his
+bogies within six inches of the black, shiny tide.
+
+After this he was hurried to the freight-house, where he saw the
+yard-master, a smallish, white-faced man in shirt, trousers, and
+slippers, looking down upon a sea of trucks, a mob of bawling
+truckmen, and squadrons of backing, turning, sweating,
+spark-striking horses.
+
+"That's shippers' carts loadin' on to the receivin' trucks," said
+the small engine, reverently.  "But he don't care.  He lets 'em cuss.
+He's the Czar-King-Boss!  He says 'Please,' and then they kneel down
+an' pray.  There's three or four strings o' today's freight to be
+pulled before he can attend to them.  When he waves his hand that
+way, things happen."
+
+A string of loaded cars slid out down the track, and a string of
+empties took their place.  Bales, crates, boxes, jars, carboys,
+frails, cases, and packages flew into them from the freight-house
+as though the cars had been magnets and they iron filings.
+
+"Ki-yah!" shrieked little Poney.  "Ain't it great?"
+
+A purple-faced truckman shouldered his way to the yard-master, and
+shook his fist under his nose.  The yard-master never looked up
+from his bundle of freight receipts.  He crooked his forefinger
+slightly, and a tall young man in a red shirt, lounging carelessly
+beside him, hit the truckman under the left ear, so that he dropped,
+quivering and clucking, on a hay-bale.
+
+"Eleven, seven, ninety-seven, L. Y. S.; fourteen ought ought three;
+nineteen thirteen; one one four; seventeen ought twenty-one M. B.;
+and the ten westbound.  All straight except the two last.  Cut 'em
+off at the junction.  An' that's all right.  Pull that string."
+The yard-master, with mild blue eyes, looked out over the howling
+truckmen at the waters in the moonlight beyond, and hummed:
+
+                 "All things bright and beautiful,
+                  All creatures great and small,
+                  All things wise and wonderful,
+                  The Lawd Gawd He made all!"
+
+.007 moved out the cars and delivered them to the regular
+road-engine.  He had never felt quite so limp in his life before.
+
+"Curious, ain't it?" said Poney, puffing, on the next track.  "You
+an' me, if we got that man under our bumpers, we'd work him into
+red waste an' not know what we'd done; but-up there - with the steam
+hummin' in his boiler that awful quiet way ... "
+
+"I know," said .007.  "Makes me feel as if I'd dropped my Fire an'
+was getting cold.  He is the greatest man on earth."
+
+They were at the far north end of the yard now, under a switchtower,
+looking down on the four-track way of the main traffic.  The Boston
+Compound was to haul .007's string to some far-away northern
+junction over an indifferent road-bed, and she mourned aloud for the
+ninety-six pound rails of the B. & A.
+
+"You're young; you're young," she coughed.  "You don't realise your
+responsibilities."
+
+"Yes, he does," said Poney, sharply; "but he don't lie down under
+'em."  Then, with aside-spurt of steam, exactly like a tough
+spitting: "There ain't more than fifteen thousand dollars' worth o'
+freight behind her anyway, and she goes on as if 't were a hundred
+thousand - same as the Mogul's.  Excuse me, madam, but you've the
+track ....  She's stuck on a dead-centre again - bein' specially
+designed not to."
+
+The Compound crawled across the tracks on a long slant, groaning
+horribly at each switch, and moving like a cow in a snow-drift.
+There was a little pause along the yard after her tail-lights had
+disappeared; switches locked crisply, and every one seemed to be
+waiting.
+
+"Now I'll show you something worth," said Poney.  "When the Purple
+Emperor ain't on time, it's about time to amend the Constitution.
+The first stroke of twelve is - "
+
+"Boom!" went the clock in the big yard-tower, and far away .007 heard
+a full, vibrating " Yah!  Yah!  Yah!"  A headlight twinkled on the
+horizon like a star, grew an overpowering blaze, and whooped up the
+humming track to the roaring music of a happy giant's song:
+
+  "With a michnai - ghignai - shtingal!  Yah!  Yah!  Yah!
+   Ein - zwei - drei - Mutter!  Yah!  Yah!  Yah!
+        She climb upon der shteeple,
+        Und she frighten all der people.
+   Singin' michnai - ghignai - shtingal!  Yah!  Yah!"
+
+The last defiant "yah! yah!" was delivered a mile and a half beyond
+the passenger-depot; but .007 had caught one glimpse of the superb
+six-wheel-coupled racing-locomotive, who hauled the pride and glory
+of the road - the gilt-edged Purple Emperor, the millionaires'
+south-bound express, laying the miles over his shoulder as a man
+peels a shaving from a soft board.  The rest was a blur of maroon
+enamel, a bar of white light from the electrics in the cars, and
+a flicker of nickel-plated hand-rail on the rear platform.
+
+"Ooh!" said .007.
+
+"Seventy-five miles an hour these five miles.  Baths, I've heard;
+barber's shop; ticker; and a library and the, rest to match.  Yes,
+sir; seventy-five an hour!  But he'll talk to you in the round-house
+just as democratic as I would.  And I - cuss my wheel-base! - I'd
+kick clean off the track at half his gait.  He's the Master of our
+Lodge.  Cleans up at our house.  I'll introdooce you some day.  He's
+worth knowin'!  There ain't many can sing that song, either."
+
+.007 was too full of emotions to answer.  He did not hear a raging
+of telephone-bells in the switch-tower, nor the man, as he leaned
+out and called to .007's engineer: "Got any steam?"
+
+"'Nough to run her a hundred mile out o' this, if I could," said
+the engineer, who belonged to the open road and hated switching.
+
+"Then get.  The Flying Freight's ditched forty mile out, with fifty
+rod o' track ploughed up.  No; no one's hurt, but both tracks are
+blocked.  Lucky the wreckin'-car an' derrick are this end of the
+yard.  Crew 'll be along in a minute.  Hurry! You've the track."
+
+" Well, I could jest kick my little sawed-off self," said Poney, as
+.007 was backed, with a bang, on to a grim and grimy car like a
+caboose, but full of tools - a flatcar and a derrick behind it.
+"Some folks are one thing, and some are another; but you're in luck,
+kid.  They push a wrecking-car.  Now, don't get rattled.  Your
+wheel-base will keep you on the track, and there ain't any curves
+worth mentionin'.  Oh, say!  Comanche told me there's one section
+o' sawedged track that's liable to jounce ye a little.  Fifteen an'
+a half out, after the grade at Jackson's crossin'.  You'll know it
+by a farmhouse an' a windmill an' five maples in the dooryard.
+Windmill's west o' the maples.  An' there's an eighty-foot iron
+bridge in the middle o' that section with no guard-rails.  See you
+later.  Luck! "
+
+Before he knew well what had happened, .007 was flying up the track
+into the dumb, dark world.  Then fears of the night beset him.  He
+ remembered all he had ever heard of landslides, rain-piled boulders,
+blown trees, and strayed cattle, all that the Boston Compound had
+ever said of responsibility, and a great deal more that came out of
+his own head.  With a very quavering voice he whistled for his first
+grade-crossing (an event in the life of a locomotive), and his
+nerves were in no way restored by the sight of a frantic horse and
+a white-faced man in a buggy less than a yard from his right
+shoulder.  Then he was sure he would jump the track; felt his
+flanges mounting the rail at every curve; knew that his first grade
+would make him lie down even as Comanche had done at the Newtons.
+He whirled down the grade to Jackson's crossing, saw the windmill
+west of the maples, felt the badly laid rails spring under him, and
+sweated big drops all over his boiler.  At each jarring bump he
+believed an axle had smashed, and he took the eighty-foot bridge
+without the guard-rail like a hunted cat on the top of a fence.
+Then a wet leaf stuck against the glass of his headlight and threw
+a flying shadow on the track, so that he thought it was some little
+dancing animal that would feel soft if he ran over it; and anything
+soft underfoot frightens a locomotive as it does an elephant.  But
+the men behind seemed quite calm.  The wrecking-crew were climbing
+carelessly from the caboose to the tender - even jesting with the
+engineer, for he heard a shuffling of feet among the coal, and the
+snatch of a song, something like this:
+
+   "Oh, the Empire State must learn to wait,
+    And the Cannon-ball go hang!
+    When the West-bound's ditched, and the tool-car's hitched,
+    And it's 'way for the Breakdown Gang (Tare-ra!)
+    'Way for the Breakdown Gang!"
+
+"Say!  Eustis knew what he was doin' when he designed this rig.
+She's a hummer.  New, too."
+
+"Snff!  Phew!  She is new.  That ain't paint.  that's - "
+
+A burning pain shot through .007's right rear driver - a crippling,
+stinging pain.
+
+"This," said .007, as he flew, "is a hot-box.  Now I know what it
+means.  I shall go to pieces, I guess.  My first road-run, too!"
+
+"Het a bit, ain't she?" the fireman ventured to suggest to the
+engineer.
+
+"She'll hold for all we want of her.  We're 'most there.  Guess you
+chaps back had better climb into your car," said the engineer, his
+hand on the brake lever.  "I've seen men snapped off -"
+
+But the crew fled back with laughter.  They had no wish to be jerked
+on to the track.  The engineer half turned his wrist, and .007 found
+his drivers pinned firm.
+
+"Now it's come!" said .007, as he yelled aloud, and slid like a
+sleigh.  For the moment he fancied that he would jerk bodily from
+off his underpinning.
+
+"That must be the emergency-stop that Poney guyed me about," he
+gasped, as soon as he could think.  "Hot-box-emergency-stop.  They
+both hurt; but now I can talk back in the round-house."
+
+He was halted, all hissing hot, a few feet in the rear of what
+doctors would call a compound-comminuted car.  His engineer was
+kneeling down among his drivers, but he did not call .007 his "Arab
+steed," nor cry over him, as the engineers did in the newspapers.
+He just bad worded .007, and pulled yards of charred cotton-waste
+from about the axles, and hoped he might some day catch the idiot
+who had packed it.  Nobody else attended to him, for Evans, the
+Mogul's engineer, a little cut about the head, but very angry, was
+exhibiting, by lantern-light, the mangled corpse of a slim blue pig.
+
+"T were n't even a decent-sized hog," he said.  "'T were a shote."
+
+"Dangerousest beasts they are," said one of the crew.  "Get under
+the pilot an' sort o' twiddle ye off the track, don't they?  "
+
+"Don't they?" roared Evans, who was a red-headed Welshman.  "You
+talk as if I was ditched by a hog every fool-day o' the week.  I
+ain't friends with all the cussed half-fed shotes in the State o'
+New York.  No, indeed!  Yes, this is him - an' look what he's done!"
+
+It was not a bad night's work for one stray piglet.  The Flying
+Freight seemed to have flown in every direction, for the Mogul had
+mounted the rails and run diagonally a few hundred feet from right
+to left, taking with him such cars as cared to follow.  Some did
+not.  They broke their couplers and lay down, while rear cars
+frolicked over them.  In that game, they had ploughed up and removed
+and twisted a good deal of the left-hand track.  The Mogul himself
+had waddled into a corn-field, and there he knelt - fantastic wreaths
+of green twisted round his crankpins; his pilot covered with solid
+clods of field, on which corn nodded drunkenly; his fire put out
+with dirt (Evans had done that as soon as he recovered his senses);
+and his broken headlight half full of half-burnt moths.  His tender
+had thrown coal all over him, and he looked like a disreputable
+buffalo who had tried to wallow in a general store.  For there lay
+scattered over the landscape, from the burst cars, type-writers,
+sewing-machines, bicycles in crates, a consignment of silver-plated
+imported harness, French dresses and gloves, a dozen finely moulded
+hard-wood mantels, a fifteen-foot naphtha-launch, with a solid brass
+bedstead crumpled around her bows, a case of telescopes and
+microscopes, two coffins, a case of very best candies, some
+gilt-edged dairy produce, butter and eggs in an omelette, a broken
+box of expensive toys, and a few hundred other luxuries.  A camp of
+tramps hurried up from nowhere, and generously volunteered to help
+the crew.  So the brakemen, armed with coupler-pins, walked up and
+down on one side, and the freight-conductor and the fireman patrolled
+the other with their hands in their hip-pockets.  A long-bearded man
+came out of a house beyond the corn-field, and told Evans that if
+the accident had happened a little later in the year, all his corn
+would have been burned, and accused Evans of carelessness.  Then he
+ran away, for Evans was at his heels shrieking: "'T was his hog done
+it - his hog done it!  Let me kill him!  Let me kill him!"  Then
+the wrecking-crew laughed; and the farmer put his head out of a
+window and said that Evans was no gentleman.
+
+But .007 was very sober.  He had never seen a wreck before, and it
+frightened him.  The crew still laughed, but they worked at the same
+time; and .007 forgot horror in amazement at the way they handled
+the Mogul freight.  They dug round him with spades; they put ties
+in front of his wheels, and jack-screws under him; they embraced
+him with the derrick-chain and tickled him with crowbars; while
+.007 was hitched on to wrecked cars and backed away till the knot
+broke or the cars rolled clear of the track.  By dawn thirty or
+forty men were at work, replacing and ramming down the ties,
+gauging the rails and spiking them.  By daylight all cars who could
+move had gone on in charge of another loco; the track was freed for
+traffic; and .007 had hauled the old Mogul over a small pavement of
+ties, inch by inch, till his flanges bit the rail once more, and he
+settled down with a clank.  But his spirit was broken, and his nerve
+was gone.
+
+"'T weren't even a hog," he repeated dolefully; "'t were a shote;
+and you - you of all of 'em - had to help me on."
+
+"But how in the whole long road did it happen?" asked .007, sizzling
+with curiosity.
+
+"Happen! It didn't happen!  It just come!  I sailed right on top of
+him around that last curve - thought he was a skunk.  Yes; he was
+all as little as that.  He hadn't more 'n squealed once 'fore I felt
+my bogies lift (he'd rolled right under the pilot), and I couldn't
+catch the track again to save me.  Swivelled clean off, I was.  Then
+I felt him sling himself along, all greasy, under my left leadin'
+driver, and, oh, Boilers! that mounted the rail.  I heard my flanges
+zippin' along the ties, an' the next I knew I was playin' 'Sally,
+Sally Waters' in the corn, my tender shuckin' coal through my cab,
+an' old man Evans lyin' still an' bleedin' in front o' me.  Shook?
+There ain't a stay or a bolt or a rivet in me that ain't sprung to
+glory somewhere,"
+
+"Umm!" said .007.  "What d' you reckon you weigh?"
+
+"Without these lumps o' dirt I'm all of a hundred thousand pound."
+
+"And the shote?"
+
+"Eighty.  Call him a hundred pound at the outside.  He's worth about
+four 'n' a half dollars.  Ain't it awful?  Ain't it enough to give
+you nervous prostration?  Ain't it paralysin'?  Why, I come just
+around that curve - " and the Mogul told the tale again, for he was
+very badly shaken.
+
+"Well, it's all in the day's run, I guess," said .007, soothingly;
+"an' - an' a corn-field's pretty soft fallin'."
+
+"If it had bin a sixty-foot bridge, an' I could ha' slid off into
+deep water an' blown up an' killed both men, same as others have
+done, I wouldn't ha' cared; but to be ditched by a shote - an' you
+to help me out - in a corn-field - an' an old hayseed in his
+nightgown cussin' me like as if I was a sick truck-horse! ... Oh,
+it's awful!  Don't call me Mogul!  I'm a sewin'-machine.  they'll
+guy my sand-box off in the yard."
+
+And .007, his hot-box cooled and his experience vastly enlarged,
+hauled the Mogul freight slowly to the roundhouse.
+
+"Hello, old man!  Bin out all night, hain't ye?" said the
+irrepressible Poney, who had just come off duty.  "Well, I must say
+you look it.  Costly-perishable-fragile-immediate - that's you!  Go
+to the shops, take them vine-leaves out o' your hair, an' git 'em
+to play the hose on you."
+
+"Leave him alone, Poney, " said .007 severely, as he was swung on
+the turn-table, "or I'll - "
+
+"'Didn't know the old granger was any special friend o' yours, kid.
+He wasn't over-civil to you last time I saw him."
+
+"I know it; but I've seen a wreck since then, and it has about scared
+the paint off me.  I'm not going to guy anyone as long as I steam -
+not when they're new to the business an' anxious to learn.  And I'm
+not goin' to guy the old Mogul either, though I did find him wreathed
+around with roastin'-ears.  'T was a little bit of a shote - not a
+hog - just a shote, Poney - no bigger'n a lump of anthracite - I saw
+it - that made all the mess.  Anybody can be ditched, I guess."
+
+"Found that out already, have you?  Well, that's a good beginnin'."
+It was the Purple Emperor, with his high, tight, plate-glass cab and
+green velvet cushion, waiting to be cleaned for his next day's fly.
+
+"Let me make you two gen'lemen acquainted," said Poney.  "This is
+our Purple Emperor, kid, whom you were admirin' and, I may say,
+envyin' last night.  This is a new brother, worshipful sir, with
+most of his mileage ahead of him, but, so far as a serving-brother
+can, I'll answer for him.'
+
+"'Happy to meet you," said the Purple Emperor, with a glance round
+the crowded round-house.  "I guess there are enough of us here to
+form a full meetin'.  Ahem!  By virtue of the authority vested in
+me as Head of the Road, I hereby declare and pronounce No. .007 a
+full and accepted Brother of the Amalgamated Brotherhood of
+Locomotives, and as such entitled to all shop, switch, track, tank,
+and round-house privileges throughout my jurisdiction, in the Degree
+of Superior Flier, it bein' well known and credibly reported to me
+that our Brother has covered forty-one miles in thirty-nine minutes
+and a half on an errand of mercy to the afflicted.  At a convenient
+time, I myself will communicate to you the Song and Signal of this
+Degree whereby you may be recognised in the darkest night.  Take
+your stall, newly entered Brother among Locomotives! "
+
+    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
+
+Now, in the darkest night, even as the Purple Emperor said, if you
+will stand on the bridge across the freightyard, looking down upon
+the four-track way, at 2:30 A. M., neither before nor after, when
+the White Moth, that takes the overflow from the Purple Emperor,
+tears south with her seven vestibuled cream-white cars, you will
+hear, as the yard-clock makes the half-hour, a far-away sound like
+the bass of a violoncello, and then, a hundred feet to each word
+
+    "With a michnai - ghignai - shtingal!  Yah!  Yah!  Yah!
+     Ein - zwei - drei - Mutter!  Yah!  Yah!  Yah!
+           She climb upon der shteeple,
+           Und she frighten all der people,
+     Singin' michnai - ghignai - shtingal!  Yah!  Yah!"
+
+That is .007 covering his one hundred and fifty-six miles in two
+hundred and twenty-one minutes.
+
+
+
+
+THE MALTESE CAT
+
+They had good reason to be proud, and better reason to be afraid,
+all twelve of them; for though they had fought their way, game by
+game, up the teams entered for the polo tournament, they were
+meeting theArchangels that afternoon in the final match; and the
+Archangels men were playing with half a dozen ponies apiece.  As
+the game was divided into six quarters of eight minutes each, that
+meant a fresh pony after every halt.  The Skidars' team, even
+supposing there were no accidents, could only supply one pony for
+every other change; and two to one is heavy odds.  Again, as Shiraz,
+the grey Syrian, pointed out, they were meeting the pink and pick
+of the polo-ponies of Upper India, ponies that had cost from a
+thousand rupees each, while they themselves were a cheap lot
+gathered, often from country-carts, by their masters, who belonged
+to a poor but honest native infantry regiment.
+
+"Money means pace and weight," said Shiraz, rubbing his black-silk
+nose dolefully along his neat-fitting boot, "and by the maxims of
+the game as I know it - "
+
+"Ah, but we aren't playing the maxims," said The Maltese Cat.  "We're
+playing the game; and we've the great advantage of knowing the game.
+Just think a stride, Shiraz!  We've pulled up from bottom to second
+place in two weeks against all those fellows on the ground here.
+That's because we play with our heads as well as our feet."
+
+"It makes me feel undersized and unhappy all the same," said Kittiwynk,
+a mouse-coloured mare with a red brow-band and the cleanest pair of
+legs that ever an aged pony owned.  "They've twice our style, these
+others."
+
+Kittiwynk looked at the gathering and sighed.  The hard, dusty
+polo-ground was lined with thousands of soldiers, black and white,
+not counting hundreds and hundreds of carriages and drags and
+dogcarts, and ladies with brilliant-coloured parasols, and officers
+in uniform and out of it, and crowds of natives behind them; and
+orderlies on camels, who had halted to watch the game, instead of
+carrying letters up and down the station; and native horse-dealers
+running about on thin-eared Biluchi mares, looking for a chance to
+sell a few first-class polo-ponies.  Then there were the ponies of
+thirty teams that had entered for the Upper India Free-for-All Cup
+ - nearly every pony of worth and dignity, from Mhow to Peshawar,
+from Allahabad to Multan; prize ponies, Arabs, Syrian, Barb,
+country-bred, Deccanee, Waziri, and Kabul ponies of every colour
+and shape and temper that you could imagine.  Some of them were in
+mat-roofed stables, close to the polo-ground, but most were under
+saddle, while their masters, who had been defeated in the earlier
+games, trotted in and out and told the world exactly how the game
+should be played.
+
+It was a glorious sight, and the come and go of the little, quick
+hooves, and the incessant salutations of ponies that had met before
+on other polo-grounds or race-courses were enough to drive a
+four-footed thing wild.
+
+But the Skidars' team were careful not to know their neighbours,
+though half the ponies on the ground were anxious to scrape
+acquaintance with the little fellows that had come from the North,
+and, so far, had swept the board.
+
+"Let's see," said a soft gold-coloured Arab, who had been playing
+very badly the day before, to The Maltese Cat; "didn't we meet in
+Abdul Rahman's stable in Bombay, four seasons ago?  I won the
+Paikpattan Cup next season, you may remember?"
+
+"Not me," said The Maltese Cat, politely.  "I was at Malta then,
+pulling a vegetable-cart.  I don't race.  I play the game."
+
+"Oh! " said the Arab, cocking his tail and swaggering off.
+
+"Keep yourselves to yourselves," said The Maltese Cat to his
+companions.  "We don't want to rub noses with all those goose-rumped
+half-breeds of Upper India.  When we've won this Cup they'll give
+their shoes to know us."
+
+"We sha'n't win the Cup," said Shiraz.  "How do you feel?"
+
+"Stale as last night's feed when a muskrat has run over it," said
+Polaris, a rather heavy-shouldered grey; and the rest of the team
+agreed with him.
+
+"The sooner you forget that the better," said The Maltese Cat,
+cheerfully.  "They've finished tiffin in the big tent.  We shall be
+wanted now.  If your saddles are not comfy, kick.  If your bits
+aren't easy, rear, and let the saises know whether your boots are
+tight."
+
+Each pony had his sais, his groom, who lived and ate and slept with
+the animal, and had betted a good deal more than he could afford on
+the result of the game.  There was no chance of anything going wrong,
+but to make sure, each sais was shampooing the legs of his pony to
+the last minute.  Behind the saises sat as many of the Skidars'
+regiment as had leave to attend the match - about half the native
+officers, and a hundred or two dark, black-bearded men with the
+regimental pipers nervously fingering the big, beribboned bagpipes.
+The Skidars were what they call a Pioneer regiment, and the bagpipes
+made the national music of half their men.  The native officers held
+bundles of polo-sticks, long cane-handled mallets, and as the grand
+stand filled after lunch they arranged themselves by ones and twos
+at different points round the ground, so that if a stick were broken
+the player would not have far to ride for a new one.  An impatient
+British Cavalry Band struck up "If you want to know the time, ask a
+p'leeceman!" and the two umpires in light dust-coats danced out on
+two little excited ponies.  The four players of the Archangels' team
+followed, and the sight of their beautiful mounts made Shiraz groan
+again.
+
+"Wait till we know," said The Maltese Cat.  "Two of 'em are playing
+in blinkers, and that means they can't see to get out of the way
+of their own side, or they may shy at the umpires' ponies.  They've
+all got white web-reins that are sure to stretch or slip!"
+
+"And," said Kittiwynk, dancing to take the stiffness out of her,
+"they carry their whips in their hands instead of on their wrists.
+Hah!"
+
+"True enough.  No man can manage his stick and his reins and his
+whip that way," said The Maltese Cat.  "I've fallen over every
+square yard of the Malta ground, and I ought to know."
+
+He quivered his little, flea-bitten withers just to show how
+satisfied he felt; but his heart was not so light.  Ever since he
+had drifted into India on a troop-ship, taken, with an old rifle,
+as part payment for a racing debt, The Maltese Cat had played and
+preached polo to the Skidars' team on the Skidars' stony pologround.
+Now a polo-pony is like a poet.  If he is born with a love for the
+game, he can be made.  The Maltese Cat knew that bamboos grew
+solely in order that poloballs might be turned from their roots,
+that grain was given to ponies to keep them in hard condition, and
+that ponies were shod to prevent them slipping on a turn.  But,
+besides all these things, he knew every trick and device of the
+finest game in the world, and for two seasons had been teaching
+the others all he knew or guessed.
+
+"Remember," he said for the hundredth time, as the riders came up,
+"you must play together, and you must play with your heads.  Whatever
+happens, follow the ball.  Who goes out first?"
+
+Kittiwynk, Shiraz, Polaris, and a short high little bay fellow with
+tremendous hocks and no withers worth speaking of (he was called
+Corks) were being girthed up, and the soldiers in the background
+stared with all their eyes.
+
+"I want you men to keep quiet," said Lutyens, the captain of the
+team, "and especially not to blow your pipes."
+
+"Not if we win, Captain Sahib?" asked the piper.
+
+"If we win you can do what you please," said Lutyens, with a smile,
+as he slipped the loop of his stick over his wrist, and wheeled to
+canter to his place.  The Archangels' ponies were a little bit above
+themselves on account of the many-coloured crowd so close to the
+ground.  Their riders were excellent players, but they were a team
+of crack players instead of a crack team; and that made all the
+difference in the world.  They honestly meant to play together, but
+it is very hard for four men, each the best of the team he is picked
+from, to remember that in polo no brilliancy in hitting or riding
+makes up for playing alone.  Their captain shouted his orders to
+them by name, and it is a curious thing that if you call his name
+aloud in public after an Englishman you make him hot and fretty.
+Lutyens said nothing to his men, because it had all been said before.
+He pulled up Shiraz, for he was playing "back," to guard the goal.
+Powell on Polaris was half-back, and Macnamara and Hughes on Corks
+and Kittiwynk were forwards.  The tough, bamboo ball was set in the
+middle of the ground, one hundred and fifty yards from the ends,
+and Hughes crossed sticks, heads up, with the Captain of the
+Archangels, who saw fit to play forward; that is a place from which
+you cannot easily control your team.  The little click as the
+cane-shafts met was heard all over the ground, and then Hughes made
+some sort of quick wrist-stroke that just dribbled the ball a
+few yards.  Kittiwynk knew that stroke of old, and followed as a
+cat follows a mouse.  While the Captain of the Archangels was
+wrenching his pony round, Hughes struck with all his strength, and
+next instant Kittiwynk was away, Corks following close behind her,
+their little feet pattering like raindrops on glass.
+
+" Pull out to the left," said Kittiwynk between her teeth; "it's
+coming your way, Corks!"
+
+The back and half-back of the Archangels were tearing down on her
+just as she was within reach of the ball.  Hughes leaned forward
+with a loose rein, and cut it away to the left almost under
+Kittiwynk's foot, and it hopped and skipped off to Corks, who saw
+that, if he was not quick it would run beyond the boundaries.  That
+long bouncing drive gave the Archangels time to wheel and send
+three men across the ground to head off Corks.  Kittiwynk stayed
+where she was; for she knew the game.  Corks was on the ball half
+a fraction of a second before the others came up, and Macnamara,
+with a backhanded stroke, sent it back across the ground to Hughes,
+who saw the way clear to the Archangels' goal, and smacked the
+ball in before any one quite knew what had happened.
+
+"That's luck," said Corks, as they changed ends.  "A goal in three
+minutes for three hits, and no riding to speak of."
+
+"'Don't know," said Polaris.  "We've made 'em angry too soon.
+Shouldn't wonder if they tried to rush us off our feet next time."
+
+"Keep the ball hanging, then," said Shiraz.  "That wears out every
+pony that is not used to it."
+
+Next time there was no easy galloping across the ground.  All the
+Archangels closed up as one man, but there they stayed, for Corks,
+Kittiwynk, and Polaris were somewhere on the top of the ball,
+marking time among the rattling sticks, while Shiraz circled about
+outside, waiting for a chance.
+
+"We can do this all day," said Polaris, ramming his quarters into
+the side of another pony.  "Where do you think you're shoving to?"
+
+"I'll - I'll be driven in an ekka if I know," was the gasping reply,
+"and I'd give a week's feed to get my blinkers off.  I can't see
+anything."
+
+"The dust is rather bad.  Whew!  That was one for my off-hock.
+Where's the ball, Corks?"
+
+"Under my tail.  At least, the man's looking for it there!  This is
+beautiful.  They can't use their sticks, and it's driving 'em wild.
+Give old Blinkers a push and then he'll go over."
+
+"Here, don't touch me!  I can't see.  I'll - I'll back out, I think,"
+said the pony in blinkers, who knew that if you can't see all round
+your head, you cannot prop yourself against the shock.
+
+Corks was watching the ball where it lay in the dust, close to his
+near fore-leg, with Macnamara's shortened stick tap-tapping it from
+time to time.  Kittiwynk was edging her way out of the scrimmage,
+whisking her stump of a tail with nervous excitement.
+
+"Ho!  They've got it," she snorted.  "Let me out!" and she galloped
+like a rifle-bullet just behind a tall lanky pony of the Archangels,
+whose rider was swinging up his stick for a stroke.
+
+"Not to-day, thank you," said Hughes, as the blow slid off his
+raised stick, and Kittiwynk laid her shoulder to the tall pony's
+quarters, and shoved him aside just as Lutyens on Shiraz sent the
+ball where it had come from, and the tall pony went skating and
+slipping away to the left.  Kittiwynk, seeing that Polaris had
+joined Corks in the chase for the ball up the ground, dropped into
+Polaris' place, and then "time" was called.
+
+The Skidars' ponies wasted no time in kicking or fuming.  They knew
+that each minute's rest meant so much gain, and trotted off to the
+rails, and their saises began to scrape and blanket and rub them at
+once.
+
+"Whew!" said Corks, stiffening up to get all the tickle of the big
+vulcanite scraper.  "If we were playing pony for pony, we would bend
+those Archangels double in half an hour.  But they'll bring up fresh
+ones and fresh ones and fresh ones after that - you see."
+
+"Who cares?" said Polaris.  "We've drawn first blood.  Is my hock
+swelling?"
+
+"Looks puffy," said Corks.  "You must have had rather a wipe.  Don't
+let it stiffen.  You 'll be wanted again in half an hour."
+
+What's the game like?" said The Maltese Cat.
+
+"'Ground's like your shoe, except where they put too much water on
+it," said Kittiwynk.  "Then it's slippery.  Don't play in the centre.
+There's a bog there.  I don't know how their next four are going to
+behave, but we kept the ball hanging, and made 'em lather for
+nothing.  Who goes out?  Two Arabs and a couple of country-breds!
+That's bad.  What a comfort it is to wash your mouth out!"
+
+Kitty was talking with a neck of a lather-covered soda-water bottle
+between her teeth, and trying to look over her withers at the same
+time.  This gave her a very coquettish air.
+
+"What's bad?" said Grey Dawn, giving to the girth and admiring his
+well-set shoulders.
+
+"You Arabs can't gallop fast enough to keep yourselves warm - that's
+what Kitty means," said Polaris, limping to show that his hock
+needed attention.  "Are you playing back, Grey Dawn?"
+
+"'Looks like it," said Grey Dawn, as Lutyens swung himself up.
+Powell mounted The Rabbit, a plain bay country-bred much like Corks,
+but with mulish ears.  Macnamara took Faiz-Ullah, a handy,
+short-backed little red Arab with a long tail, and Hughes mounted
+Benami, an old and sullen brown beast, who stood over in front more
+than a polo-pony should.
+
+"Benami looks like business," said Shiraz.  "How's your temper, Ben?"
+The old campaigner hobbled off without answering, and The Maltese
+Cat looked at the new Archangel ponies prancing about on the ground.
+They were four beautiful blacks, and they saddled big enough and
+strong enough to eat the Skidars' team and gallop away with the meal
+inside them.
+
+"Blinkers again," said The Maltese Cat.  "Good enough!"
+
+"They're chargers-cavalry chargers!" said Kittiwynk, indignantly.
+"They'll never see thirteen-three again."
+
+"They've all been fairly measured, and they've all got their
+certificates," said The Maltese Cat, " or they wouldn't be here.
+We must take things as they come along, and keep your eyes on the
+ball."
+
+The game began, but this time the Skidars were penned to their own
+end of the ground, and the watching ponies did not approve of that.
+
+"Faiz-Ullah is shirking - as usual," said Polaris, with a scornful
+grunt.
+
+"Faiz-Ullah is eating whip," said Corks.  They could hear the
+leather-thonged polo-quirt lacing the little fellow's well-rounded
+barrel.  Then The Rabbit's shrill neigh came across the ground.
+
+"I can't do all the work," he cried, desperately.
+
+"Play the game - don't talk," The Maltese Cat whickered; and all
+the ponies wriggled with excitement, and the soldiers and the grooms
+gripped the railings and shouted.  A black pony with blinkers had
+singled out old Benami, and was interfering with him in every
+possible way.  They could see Benami shaking his head up and down,
+and flapping his under lip.
+
+"There'll be a fall in a minute, " said Polaris.  "Benami is getting
+stuffy."
+
+The game flickered up and down between goal-post and goal-post, and
+the black ponies were getting more confident as they felt they had
+the legs of the others.  The ball was hit out of a little scrimmage,
+and Benami and The Rabbit followed it, Faiz-Ullah only too glad to
+be quiet for an instant.
+
+The blinkered black pony came up like a hawk, with two of his own
+side behind him, and Benami's eye glittered as he raced.  The
+question was which pony should make way for the other, for each
+rider was perfectly willing to risk a fall in a good cause.  The
+black, who had been driven nearly crazy by his blinkers, trusted
+to his weight and his temper; but Benami knew how to apply his
+weight and how to keep his temper.  They met, and there was a cloud
+of dust.  The black was lying on his side, all the breath knocked
+out of his body.  The Rabbit was a hundred yards up the ground with
+the ball, and Benami was sitting down.  He had slid nearly ten yards
+on his tail, but he had had his revenge, and sat cracking his
+nostrils till the black pony rose.
+
+"That's what you get for interfering.  Do you want any more?" said
+Benami, and he plunged into the game.  Nothing was done that quarter,
+because Faiz-Ullah would not gallop, though Macnamara beat him
+whenever he could spare a second.  The fall of the black pony had
+impressed his companions tremendously, and so the Archangels could
+not profit by Faiz-Ullah's bad behaviour.
+
+But as The Maltese Cat said when "time" was called, and the four
+came back blowing and dripping, Faiz-Ullah ought to have been kicked
+all round Umballa.  If he did not behave better next time The
+Maltese Cat promised to pull out his Arab tail by the roots and
+ - eat it.
+
+There was no time to talk, for the third four were ordered out.
+
+The third quarter of a game is generally the hottest, for each side
+thinks that the others must be pumped; and most of the winning play
+in a game is made about that time.
+
+Lutyens took over The Maltese Cat with a pat and a hug, for Lutyens
+valued him more than anything else in the world; Powell had Shikast,
+a little grey rat with no pedigree and no manners outside polo;
+Macnamara mounted Bamboo, the largest of the team; and Hughes
+Who's Who, alias The Animal.  He was supposed to have Australian
+blood in his veins, but he looked like a clothes-horse, and you
+could whack his legs with an iron crow-bar without hurting him.
+
+They went out to meet the very flower of the Archangels' team; and
+when Who's Who saw their elegantly booted legs and their beautiful
+satin skins, he grinned a grin through his light, well-worn bridle.
+
+"My word!" said Who's Who.  "We must give 'em a little football.
+These gentlemen need a rubbing down."
+
+"No biting," said The Maltese Cat, warningly; for once or twice in
+his career Who's Who had been known to forget himself in that way.
+
+"Who said anything about biting?  I'm not playing tiddly-winks.
+I'm playing the game."
+
+The Archangels came down like a wolf on the fold, for they were
+tired of football, and they wanted polo.  They got it more and more.
+Just after the game began, Lutyens hit a ball that was coming towards
+him rapidly, and it rolled in the air, as a ball sometimes will, with
+the whirl of a frightened partridge.  Shikast heard, but could not
+see it for the minute, though he looked everywhere and up into the
+air as The Maltese Cat had taught him.  When he saw it ahead and
+overhead he went forward with Powell as fast as he could put foot to
+ground.  It was then that Powell, a quiet and level-headed man, as
+a rule, became inspired, and played a stroke that sometimes comes
+off successfully after long practice.  He took his stick in both
+hands, and, standing up in his stirrups, swiped at the ball in the
+air, Munipore fashion.  There was one second of paralysed
+astonishment, and then all four sides of the ground went up in a
+yell of applause and delight as the ball flew true (you could see
+the amazed Archangels ducking in their saddles to dodge the line of
+flight, and looking at it with open mouths), and the regimental pipes
+of the Skidars squealed from the railings as long as the pipers had
+breath.  Shikast heard the stroke; but he heard the head of the
+stick fly off at the same time.  Nine hundred and ninety-nine ponies
+out of a thousand would have gone tearing on after the ball with a
+useless player pulling at their heads; but Powell knew him, and he
+knew Powell; and the instant he felt Powell's right leg shift a
+trifle on the saddle-flap, he headed to the boundary, where a
+native officer was frantically waving a new stick.  Before the
+shouts had ended, Powell was armed again.
+
+Once before in his life The Maltese Cat had heard that very same
+stroke played off his own back, and had profited by the confusion
+it wrought.  This time he acted on experience, and leaving Bamboo
+to guard the goal in case of accidents, came through the others like
+a flash, head and tail low - Lutyens standing up to ease him - swept
+on and on before the other side knew what was the matter, and nearly
+pitched on his head between the Archangels' goal-post as Lutyens
+kicked the ball in after a straight scurry of a hundred and fifty
+yards.  If there was one thing more than another upon which The
+Maltese Cat prided himself, it was on this quick, streaking kind of
+run half across the ground.  He did not believe in taking balls
+round the field unless you were clearly overmatched.  After this
+they gave the Archangels five-minuted football; and an expensive
+fast pony hates football because it rumples his temper.  Who's Who
+showed himself even better than Polaris in this game.  He did not
+permit any wriggling away, but bored joyfully into the scrimmage as
+if he had his nose in a feed-box and was looking for something nice.
+Little Shikast jumped on the ball the minute it got clear, and
+every time an Archangel pony followed it, he found Shikast standing
+over it, asking what was the matter.
+
+"If we can live through this quarter," said The Maltese Cat, "I
+sha'n't care.  Don't take it out of yourselves.  Let them do the
+lathering."
+
+So the ponies, as their riders explained afterwards, "shut-up."
+The Archangels kept them tied fast in front of their goal, but it
+cost the Archangels' ponies all that was left of their tempers; and
+ponies began to kick, and men began to repeat compliments, and they
+chopped at the legs of Who's Who, and he set his teeth and stayed
+where he was, and the dust stood up like a tree over the scrimmage
+until that hot quarter ended.
+
+They found the ponies very excited and confident when they went to
+their saises; and The Maltese Cat had to warn them that the worst
+of the game was coming.
+
+"Now we are all going in for the second time," said he, "and they
+are trotting out fresh ponies.  You think you can gallop, but you'll
+find you can't; and then you'll be sorry."
+
+"But two goals to nothing is a halter-long lead," said Kittiwynk,
+prancing.
+
+"How long does it take to get a goal?" The Maltese Cat answered.
+"For pity's sake, don't run away with a notion that the game is
+half-won just because we happen to be in luck now!  They'll ride
+you into the grand stand, if they can; you must not give 'em a
+chance.  Follow the ball."
+
+"Football, as usual?" said Polaris.  "My hock's half as big as a
+nose-bag."
+
+"Don't let them have a look at the ball, if you can help it.  Now
+leave me alone.  I must get all the rest I can before the last
+quarter."
+
+He hung down his head and let all his muscles go slack, Shikast,
+Bamboo, and Who's Who copying his example.
+
+"Better not watch the game," he said.  "We aren't playing, and we
+shall only take it out of ourselves if we grow anxious.  Look at
+the ground and pretend it's fly-time."
+
+They did their best, but it was hard advice to follow.  The hooves
+were drumming and the sticks were rattling all up and down the
+ground, and yells of applause from the English troops told that
+the Archangels were pressing the Skidars hard.  The native soldiers
+behind the ponies groaned and grunted, and said things in undertones,
+and presently they heard a long-drawn shout and a clatter of hurrahs!
+
+"One to the Archangels," said Shikast, without raising his head.
+"Time's nearly up.  Oh, my sire and dam!"
+
+"Faiz-Ullah," said The Maltese Cat, "if you don't play to the last
+nail in your shoes this time, I'll kick you on the ground before all
+the other ponies."
+
+"I'll do my best when my time comes," said the little Arab, sturdily.
+
+The saises looked at each other gravely as they rubbed their ponies'
+legs.  This was the time when long purses began to tell, and
+everybody knew it.  Kittiwynk and the others came back, the sweat
+dripping over their hooves and their tails telling sad stories.
+
+"They're better than we are," said Shiraz.  "I knew how it would be."
+
+"Shut your big head," said The Maltese Cat; "we've one goal to the
+good yet."
+
+"Yes; but it's two Arabs and two country-breds to play now," said
+Corks.  "Faiz-Ullah, remember!"  He spoke in a biting voice.
+
+As Lutyens mounted Grey Dawn he looked at his men, and they did not
+look pretty.  They were covered with dust and sweat in streaks.
+Their yellow boots were almost black, their wrists were red and
+lumpy, and their eyes seemed two inches deep in their heads; but
+the expression in the eyes was satisfactory.
+
+"Did you take anything at tiffin?" said Lutyens; and the team shook
+their heads.  They were too dry to talk.
+
+"All right.  The Archangels did.  They are worse pumped than we are."
+
+"They've got the better ponies," said Powell.  "I sha'n't be sorry
+when this business is over."
+
+That fifth quarter was a painful one in every way.  Faiz-Ullah
+played like a little red demon, and The Rabbit seemed to be
+everywhere at once, and Benami rode straight at anything and
+everything that came in his way; while the umpires on their ponies
+wheeled like gulls outside the shifting game.  But the Archangels
+had the better mounts, - they had kept their racers till late in
+the game, - and never allowed the Skidars to play football.  They
+hit the ball up and down the width of the ground till Benami and
+the rest were outpaced.  Then they went forward, and time and again
+Lutyens and Grey Dawn were just, and only just, able to send the
+ball away with a long, spitting backhander.  Grey Dawn forgot that
+he was an Arab; and turned from grey to blue as he galloped.  Indeed,
+he forgot too well, for he did not keep his eyes on the ground as
+an Arab should, but stuck out his nose and scuttled for the dear
+honour of the game.  They had watered the ground once or twice
+between the quarters, and a careless waterman had emptied the last
+of his skinful all in one place near the Skidars' goal.  It was
+close to the end of the play, and for the tenth time Grey Dawn was
+bolting after the ball, when his near hind-foot slipped on the
+greasy mud, and he rolled over and over, pitching Lutyens just clear
+of the goal-post; and the triumphant Archangels made their goal.
+Then "time" was called-two goals all; but Lutyens had to be helped
+up, and Grey Dawn rose with his near hind-leg strained somewhere.
+
+"What's the damage?" said Powell, his arm around Lutyens.
+
+"Collar-bone, of course," said Lutyens, between his teeth.  It was
+the third time he had broken it in two years, and it hurt him.
+
+Powell and the others whistled.
+
+"Game's up," said Hughes.
+
+"Hold on.  We've five good minutes yet, and it isn't my right hand.
+We 'll stick it out."
+
+"I say," said the Captain of the Archangels, trotting up, "are you
+hurt, Lutyens?  We'll wait if you care to put in a substitute.  I
+wish - I mean - the fact is, you fellows deserve this game if any
+team does.  'Wish we could give you a man, or some of our ponies -
+or something."
+
+"You 're awfully good, but we'll play it to a finish, I think."
+
+The Captain of the Archangels stared for a little.  "That's not half
+bad," he said, and went back to his own side, while Lutyens borrowed
+a scarf from one of his native officers and made a sling of it.  Then
+an Archangel galloped up with a big bath-sponge, and advised Lutyens
+to put it under his armpit to ease his shoulder, and between them
+they tied up his left arm scientifically; and one of the native
+officers leaped forward with four long glasses that fizzed and bubbled.
+
+The team looked at Lutyens piteously, and he nodded.  It was the
+last quarter, and nothing would matter after that.  They drank out the
+dark golden drink, and wiped their moustaches, and things looked more
+hopeful.
+
+The Maltese Cat had put his nose into the front of Lutyens' shirt
+and was trying to say how sorry he was.
+
+"He knows," said Lutyens, proudly.  "The beggar knows.  I've played
+him without a bridle before now - for fun."
+
+"It's no fun now," said Powell.  "But we haven't a decent substitute."
+
+"No," said Lutyens.  "It's the last quarter, and we've got to make
+our goal and win.  I'll trust The Cat."
+
+"If you fall this time, you'll suffer a little," said Macnamara.
+
+"I'll trust The Cat," said Lutyens.
+
+"You hear that?" said The Maltese Cat, proudly, to the others.
+"It's worth while playing polo for ten years to have that said of
+you.  Now then, my sons, come along.  We'll kick up a little bit,
+just to show the Archangels this team haven't suffered."
+
+And, sure enough, as they went on to the ground, The Maltese Cat,
+after satisfying himself that Lutyens was home in the saddle,
+kicked out three or four times, and Lutyens laughed.  The reins
+were caught up anyhow in the tips of his strapped left hand, and
+he never pretended to rely on them.  He knew The Cat would answer
+to the least pressure of the leg, and by way of showing off - for
+his shoulder hurt him very much - he bent the little fellow in a
+close figure-of-eight in and out between the goal-posts.  There
+was a roar from the native officers and men, who dearly loved a
+piece of dugabashi (horse-trick work), as they called it, and the
+pipes very quietly and scornfully droned out the first bars of a
+common bazaar tune called "Freshly Fresh and Newly New," just as
+a warning to the other regiments that the Skidars were fit.  All
+the natives laughed.
+
+"And now," said The Maltese Cat, as they took their place, "remember
+that this is the last quarter, and follow the ball!"
+
+"Don't need to be told," said Who's Who.
+
+"Let me go on.  All those people on all four sides will begin to
+crowd in - just as they did at Malta.  You'll hear people calling
+out, and moving forward and being pushed back; and that is going to
+make the Archangel ponies very unhappy.  But if a ball is struck
+to the boundary, you go after it, and let the people get out of
+your way.  I went over the pole of a four-in-hand once, and picked
+a game out of the dust by it.  Back me up when I run, and follow
+the ball."
+
+There was a sort of an all-round sound of sympathy and wonder as
+the last quarter opened, and then there began exactly what The
+Maltese Cat had foreseen.  People crowded in close to the boundaries,
+and the Archangels' ponies kept looking sideways at the narrowing
+space.  If you know how a man feels to be cramped at tennis - not
+because he wants to run out of the court, but because he likes to
+know that he can at a pinch - you will guess how ponies must feel
+when they are playing in a box of human beings.
+
+"I'll bend some of those men if I can get away," said Who's Who, as
+he rocketed behind the ball; and Bamboo nodded without speaking.
+They were playing the last ounce in them, and The Maltese Cat had
+left the goal undefended to join them.  Lutyens gave him every order
+that he could to bring him back, but this was the first time in his
+career that the little wise grey had ever played polo on his own
+responsibility, and he was going to make the most of it.
+
+"What are you doing here?" said Hughes, as The Cat crossed in front
+of him and rode off an Archangel.
+
+"The Cat's in charge - mind the goal!" shouted Lutyens, and bowing
+forward hit the ball full, and followed on, forcing the Archangels
+towards their own goal.
+
+"No football," said The Maltese Cat.  "Keep the ball by the
+boundaries and cramp 'em.  Play open order, and drive 'em to the
+boundaries."
+
+Across and across the ground in big diagonals flew the ball, and
+whenever it came to a flying rush and a stroke close to the
+boundaries the Archangel ponies moved stiffly.  They did not
+care to go headlong at a wall of men and carriages, though if
+the ground had been open they could have turned on a sixpence.
+
+"Wriggle her up the sides," said The Cat.  "Keep her close to the
+crowd.  They hate the carriages.  Shikast, keep her up this side."
+
+Shikast and Powell lay left and right behind the uneasy scuffle of
+an open scrimmage, and every time the ball was hit away Shikast
+galloped on it at such an angle that Powell was forced to hit it
+towards the boundary; and when the crowd had been driven away from
+that side, Lutyens would send the ball over to the other, and
+Shikast would slide desperately after it till his friends came
+down to help.  It was billiards, and no football, this time -
+billiards in a corner pocket; and the cues were not well chalked.
+
+"If they get us out in the middle of the ground they'll walk away
+from us.  Dribble her along the sides," cried The Maltese Cat.
+
+So they dribbled all along the boundary, where a pony could not come
+on their right-hand side; and the Archangels were furious, and the
+umpires had to neglect the game to shout at the people to get back,
+and several blundering mounted policemen tried to restore order,
+all close to the scrimmage, and the nerves of the Archangels'
+ponies stretched and broke like cob-webs.
+
+Five or six times an Archangel hit the ball up into the middle of
+the ground, and each time the watchful Shikast gave Powell his
+chance to send it back, and after each return, when the dust had
+settled, men could see that the Skidars had gained a few yards.
+
+Every now and again there were shouts of "Side!  Off side!" from
+the spectators; but the teams were too busy to care, and the
+umpires had all they could do to keep their maddened ponies clear
+of the scuffle.
+
+At last Lutyens missed a short easy stroke, and the Skidars had to
+fly back helter-skelter to protect their own goal, Shikast leading.
+Powell stopped the ball with a backhander when it was not fifty
+yards from the goalposts, and Shikast spun round with a wrench that
+nearly hoisted Powell out of his saddle.
+
+"Now's our last chance," said The Cat, wheeling like a cockchafer
+on a pin.  "We've got to ride it out.  Come along."
+
+Lutyens felt the little chap take a deep breath, and, as it were,
+crouch under his rider.  The ball was hopping towards the right-hand
+boundary, an Archangel riding for it with both spurs and a whip;
+but neither spur nor whip would make his pony stretch himself as
+he neared the crowd.  The Maltese Cat glided under his very nose,
+picking up his hind legs sharp, for there was not a foot to spare
+between his quarters and the other pony's bit.  It was as neat an
+exhibition as fancy figure-skating.  Lutyens hit with all the
+strength he had left, but the stick slipped a little in his hand,
+and the ball flew off to the left instead of keeping close to the
+boundary.  Who's Who was far across the ground, thinking hard as
+he galloped.  He repeated stride for stride The Cat's manoeuvres
+with another Archangel pony, nipping the ball away from under his
+bridle, and clearing his opponent by half a fraction of an inch,
+for Who's Who was clumsy behind.  Then he drove away towards the
+right as The Maltese Cat came up from the left; and Bamboo held a
+middle course exactly between them.  The three were making a sort
+of Government-broad-arrow-shaped attack; and there was only the
+Archangels' back to guard the goal; but immediately behind them
+were three Archangels racing all they knew, and mixed up with
+them was Powell sending Shikast along on what he felt was their
+last hope.  It takes a very good man to stand up to the rush of
+seven crazy ponies in the last quarters of a Cup game, when men
+are riding with their necks for sale, and the ponies are delirious.
+The Archangels' back missed his stroke and pulled aside just in
+time to let the rush go by.  Bamboo and Who's Who shortened
+stride to give The Cat room, and Lutyens got the goal with a clean,
+smooth, smacking stroke that was heard all over the field.  But
+there was no stopping the ponies.  They poured through the goalposts
+in one mixed mob, winners and losers together, for the pace had been
+terrific.  The Maltese Cat knew by experience what would happen,
+and, to save Lutyens, turned to the right with one last effort, that
+strained a back-sinew beyond hope of repair.  As he did so he heard
+the right-hand goalpost crack as a pony cannoned into it - crack,
+splinter and fall like a mast.  It had been sawed three parts
+through in case of accidents, but it upset the pony nevertheless,
+and he blundered into another, who blundered into the left-hand
+post, and then there was confusion and dust and wood.  Bamboo was
+lying on the ground, seeing stars; an Archangel pony rolled beside
+him, breathless and angry; Shikast had sat down dog-fashion to
+avoid falling over the others, and was sliding along on his little
+bobtail in a cloud of dust; and Powell was sitting on the ground,
+hammering with his stick and trying to cheer.  All the others were
+shouting at the top of what was left of their voices, and the men
+who had been spilt were shouting too.  As soon as the people saw
+no one was hurt, ten thousand native and English shouted and clapped
+and yelled, and before any one could stop them the pipers of the
+Skidars broke on to the ground, with all the native officers and
+men behind them, and marched up and down, playing a wild Northern
+tune called "Zakhme Began," and through the insolent blaring of
+the pipes and the high-pitched native yells you could hear the
+Archangels' band hammering, "For they are all jolly good fellows,"
+and then reproachfully to the losing team, "Ooh, Kafoozalum!
+Kafoozalum!  Kafoozalum!"
+
+Besides all these things and many more, there was a
+Commander-in-chief, and an Inspector-General of Cavalry, and the
+principal veterinary officer of all India standing on the top of a
+regimental coach, yelling like school-boys; and brigadiers and
+colonels and commissioners, and hundreds of pretty ladies joined
+the chorus.  But The Maltese Cat stood with his head down,
+wondering how many legs were left to him; and Lutyens watched the
+men and ponies pick themselves out of the wreck of the two
+goal-posts, and he patted The Maltese Cat very tenderly.
+
+" I say," said the Captain of the Archangels, spitting a pebble out
+of his mouth, "will you take three thousand for that pony - as he
+stands?"
+
+"No thank you.  I've an idea he's saved my life," said Lutyens,
+getting off and lying down at full length.  Both teams were on the
+ground too, waving their boots in the air, and coughing and drawing
+deep breaths, as the saises ran up to take away the ponies, and an
+officious water-carrier sprinkled the players with dirty water till
+they sat up.
+
+"My aunt!" said Powell, rubbing his back, and looking at the stumps
+of the goal-posts, "That was a game!"
+
+They played it over again, every stroke of it, that night at the
+big dinner, when the Free-for-All Cup was filled and passed down
+the table, and emptied and filled again, and everybody made most
+eloquent speeches.  About two in the morning, when there might have
+been some singing, a wise little, plain little, grey little head
+looked in through the open door.
+
+"Hurrah!  Bring him in," said the Archangels; and his sais, who was
+very happy indeed, patted The Maltese Cat on the flank, and he limped
+in to the blaze of light and the glittering uniforms, looking for
+Lutyens.  He was used to messes, and men's bedrooms, and places
+where ponies are not usually encouraged, and in his youth had jumped
+on and off a mess-table for a bet.  So he behaved himself very
+politely, and ate bread dipped in salt, and was petted all round the
+table, moving gingerly; and they drank his health, because he had
+done more to win the Cup than any man or horse on the ground.
+
+That was glory and honour enough for the rest of his days, and The
+Maltese Cat did not complain much when the veterinary surgeon said
+that he would be no good for polo any more.  When Lutyens married,
+his wife did not allow him to play, so he was forced to be an
+umpire; and his pony on these occasions was a flea-bitten grey with
+a neat polo-tail, lame all round, but desperately quick on his feet,
+and, as everybody knew, Past Pluperfect Prestissimo Player of the
+Game.
+
+"BREAD UPON THE WATERS"
+
+
+If you remember my improper friend Brugglesmith, you will also bear
+in mind his friend McPhee, Chief Engineer of the Breslau, whose
+dingey Brugglesmith tried to steal.  His apologies for the
+performances of Brugglesmith may one day be told in their proper
+place: the tale before us concerns McPhee.  He was never a racing
+engineer, and took special pride in saying as much before the
+Liverpool men; but he had a thirty-two years' knowledge of machinery
+and the humours of ships.  One side of his face had been wrecked
+through the bursting of a pressure-gauge in the days when men knew
+less than they do now, and his nose rose grandly out of the wreck,
+like a club in a public riot.  There were cuts and lumps on his
+head, and he would guide your forefinger through his short
+iron-grey hair and tell you how he had come by his trade-marks.  He
+owned all sorts of certificates of extra-competency, and at the
+bottom of his cabin chest of drawers, where he kept the photograph
+of his wife, were two or three Royal Humane Society medals for
+saving lives at sea.  Professionally - it was different when crazy
+steerage-passengers jumped overboard - professionally, McPhee does
+not approve of saving life at sea, and he has often told me that a
+new Hell awaits stokers and trimmers who sign for a strong man's
+pay and fall sick the second day out.  He believes in throwing boots
+at fourth and fifth engineers when they wake him up at night with
+word that a bearing is redhot, all because a lamp's glare is
+reflected red from the twirling metal.  He believes that there are
+only two poets in the world; one being Robert Burns, of course,
+and the other Gerald Massey.  When he has time for novels he reads
+Wilkie Collins and Charles Reade chiefly the latter - and knows
+whole pages of "Very Hard Cash" by heart.  In the saloon his table
+is next to the captain's, and he drinks only water while his
+engines work.
+
+He was good to me when we first met, because I did not ask questions,
+and believed in Charles Reade as a most shamefully neglected author.
+Later he approved of my writings to the extent of one pamphlet of
+twenty-four pages that I wrote for Holdock, Steiner & Chase, owners
+of the line, when they bought some ventilating patent and fitted it
+to the cabins of the Breslau, Spandau, and Koltzau.  The purser of
+the Breslau recommended me to Holdock's secretary for the job; and
+Holdock, who is a Wesleyan Methodist, invited me to his house, and
+gave me dinner with the governess when the others had finished, and
+placed the plans and specifications in my hand, and I wrote the
+pamphlet that same afternoon.  It was called "Comfort in the Cabin,"
+and brought me seven pound ten, cash down - an important sum of
+money in those days; and the governess, who was teaching Master
+John Holdock his scales, told me that Mrs. Holdock had told her to
+keep an eye on me, in case I went away with coats from the hat-rack.
+McPhee liked that pamphlet enormously, for it was composed in the
+Bouverie-Byzantine style, with baroque and rococo embellishments;
+and afterwards he introduced me to Mrs. McPhee, who succeeded Dinah
+in my heart; for Dinah was half a world away, and it is wholesome
+and antiseptic to love such a woman as Janet McPhee.  They lived in
+a little twelve-pound house, close to the shipping.  When McPhee
+was away Mrs. McPhee read the Lloyds column in the papers, and
+called on the wives of senior engineers of equal social standing.
+Once or twice, too, Mrs. Holdock visited Mrs. McPhee in a brougham
+with celluloid fittings, and I have reason to believe that, after
+she had played owner's wife long enough, they talked scandal.  The
+Holdocks lived in an old-fashioned house with a big brick garden
+not a mile from the McPhees, for they stayed by their money as their
+money stayed by them; and in summer you met their brougham solemnly
+junketing by Theydon Bois or Loughton.  But I was Mrs. McPhee's
+friend, for she allowed me to convoy her westward, sometimes, to
+theatres where she sobbed or laughed or shivered with a simple
+heart; and she introduced me to a new world of doctors' wives,
+captains' wives, and engineers' wives, whose whole talk and thought
+centred in and about ships and lines of ships you have never heard
+of.  There were sailing-ships, with stewards and mahogany and maple
+saloons, trading to Australia, taking cargoes of consumptives and
+hopeless drunkards for whom a sea-voyage was recommended; there were
+frowzy little West African boats, full of rats and cockroaches,
+where men died anywhere but in their bunks; there were Brazilian
+boats whose cabins could be hired for merchandise, that went out
+loaded nearly awash; there were Zanzibar and Mauritius steamers and
+wonderful reconstructed boats that plied to the other tide of Borneo.
+These were loved and known, for they earned our bread and a little
+butter, and we despised the big Atlantic boats, and made fun of the
+P. & O. and Orient liners, and swore by our respective owners -
+Wesleyan, Baptist, or Presbyterian, as the case might be.
+
+I had only just come back to England when Mrs. McPhee invited me to
+dinner at three o'clock in the afternoon, and the notepaper was
+almost bridal in its scented creaminess.  When I reached the house
+I saw that there were new curtains in the window that must have cost
+forty-five shillings a pair; and as Mrs. McPhee drew me into the
+little marble-papered hall, she looked at me keenly, and cried:
+
+"Have ye not heard?   What d' ye think o' the hatrack?"
+
+Now, that hat-rack was oak-thirty shillings, at least.  McPhee came
+down-stairs with a sober foot - he steps as lightly as a cat, for
+all his weight, when he is at sea - and shook hands in a new and
+awful manner - a parody of old Holdock's style when he says good-bye
+to his skippers.  I perceived at once that a legacy had come to him,
+but I held my peace, though Mrs. McPhee begged me every thirty
+seconds to eat a great deal and say nothing.  It was rather a mad
+sort of meal, because McPhee and his wife took hold of hands like
+little children (they always do after voyages), and nodded and
+winked and choked and gurgled, and hardly ate a mouthful.
+
+A female servant came in and waited; though Mrs. McPhee had told me
+time and again that she would thank no one to do her housework
+while she had her health.  But this was a servant with a cap, and
+I saw Mrs. McPhee swell and swell under her garance-coloured gown.
+There is no small free-board to Janet McPhee, nor is garance any
+subdued tint; and with all this unexplained pride and glory in the
+air I felt like watching fireworks without knowing the festival.
+When the maid had removed the cloth she brought a pineapple that
+would have cost half a guinea at that season (only McPhee has his
+own way of getting such things, and a Canton china bowl of dried
+lichis, and a glass plate of preserved ginger, and a small jar of
+sacred and Imperial chow-chow that perfumed the room.  McPhee gets
+it from a Dutchman in Java, and I think he doctors it with
+liqueurs.  But the crown of the feast was some Madeira of the kind
+you can only come by if you know the wine and the man.  A little
+maize-wrapped fig of clotted Madeira cigars went with the wine, and
+the rest was a pale blue smoky silence; Janet, in her splendour,
+smiling on us two, and patting McPhee's hand.
+
+"We'll drink," said McPhee, slowly, rubbing his chin, "to the eternal
+damnation o' Holdock, Steiner & Chase."
+
+Of course I answered "Amen," though I had made seven pound ten
+shillings out of the firm.  McPhee's enemies were mine, and I was
+drinking his Madeira.
+
+"Ye've heard nothing?" said Janet.  "Not a word, not a whisper?"
+
+"Not a word, nor a whisper.  On my word, I have not."
+
+"Tell him, Mac," said she; and that is another proof of Janet's
+goodness and wifely love.  A smaller woman would have babbled first,
+but Janet is five feet nine in her stockings.
+
+"We're rich," said McPhee.  I shook hands all round.
+
+"We're damned rich," he added.  I shook hands all round a second
+time.
+
+"I'll go to sea no more - unless - there's no sayin' - a private
+yacht, maybe - wi' a small an' handy auxiliary."
+
+"It's not enough for that," said Janet.  "We're fair rich -
+well-to-do, but no more.  A new gown for church, and one for the
+theatre.  We'll have it made west."
+
+"How much is it?  " I asked.
+
+"Twenty-five thousand pounds."  I drew a long breath.  "An' I've
+been earnin' twenty-five an' twenty pound a month!"
+
+The last words came away with a roar, as though the wide world was
+conspiring to beat him down.
+
+"All this time I'm waiting," I said.  "I know nothing since last
+September.  Was it left you?"
+
+They laughed aloud together.  "It was left," said McPhee, choking.
+" Ou, ay, it was left.  That's vara good.  Of course it was left.
+Janet, d' ye note that?   It was left.  Now if you'd put that in your
+pamphlet it would have been vara jocose.  It was left."  He slapped
+his thigh and roared till the wine quivered in the decanter.
+
+The Scotch are a great people, but they are apt to hang over a joke
+too long, particularly when no one can see the point but themselves.
+
+"When I rewrite my pamphlet I'll put it in, McPhee.  Only I must
+know something more first."
+
+McPhee thought for the length of half a cigar, while Janet caught
+my eye and led it round the room to one new thing after another -
+the new vine-pattern carpet, the new chiming rustic clock between
+the models of the Colombo outrigger-boats, the new inlaid sideboard
+with a purple cut-glass flower-stand, the fender of gilt and brass,
+and last, the new black-and-gold piano.
+
+"In October o' last year the Board sacked me," began McPhee.  "In
+October o' last year the Breslau came in for winter overhaul.  She'd
+been runnin' eight months - two hunder an' forty days - an' I was
+three days makin' up my indents, when she went to dry-dock.  All
+told, mark you, it was this side o' three hunder pound - to be
+preceese, two hunder an' eighty-six pound four shillings.  There's
+not another man could ha' nursed the Breslau for eight months to
+that tune.  Never again - never again!  They may send their boats to
+the bottom, for aught I care."
+
+"There's no need," said Janet, softly.  "We're done wi' Holdock,
+Steiner & Chase."
+
+"It's irritatin', Janet, it's just irritatin'.  I ha' been justified
+from first to last, as the world knows, but - but I canna forgie 'em.
+Ay, wisdom is justified o' her children; an' any other man than me
+wad ha' made the indent eight hunder.  Hay was our skipper - ye'll
+have met him.  They shifted him to the Torgau, an' bade me wait for
+the Breslau under young Bannister.  Ye'll obsairve there'd been a
+new election on the Board.  I heard the shares were sellin' hither
+an' yon, an' the major part of the Board was new to me.  The old
+Board would ne'er ha' done it.  They trusted me.  But the new Board
+were all for reorganisation.  Young Steiner - Steiner's son - the
+Jew, was at the bottom of it, an' they did not think it worth their
+while to send me word.  The first I knew - an' I was Chief Engineer
+ - was the notice of the line's winter sailin's, and the Breslau
+timed for sixteen days between port an' port!  Sixteen days, man!
+She's a good boat, but eighteen is her summer time, mark you.
+Sixteen was sheer flytin', kitin' nonsense, an' so I told young
+Bannister.
+
+"We've got to make it,' he said.  'Ye should not ha' sent in a three
+hunder pound indent.'
+
+"Do they look for their boats to be run on air?' I said.  'The
+Board's daft.'
+
+"'E'en tell 'em so,' he says.  'I'm a married man, an' my fourth's
+on the ways now, she says.'"
+
+"A boy - wi' red hair," Janet put in.  Her own hair is the splendid
+red-gold that goes with a creamy complexion.
+
+"My word, I was an angry man that day!  Forbye I was fond o' the old
+Breslau, I looked for a little consideration from the Board after
+twenty years' service.  There was Board-meetin' on Wednesday, an' I
+slept overnight in the engine-room, takin' figures to support my
+case.  Well, I put it fair and square before them all.  'Gentlemen,'
+I said, 'I've run the Breslau eight seasons, an' I believe there's
+no fault to find wi' my wark.  But if ye haud to this' - I waggled
+the advertisement at 'em -'this that I've never heard of it till I
+read it at breakfast, I do assure you on my professional reputation,
+she can never do it.  That is to say, she can for a while, but at
+a risk no thinkin' man would run.'
+
+"'What the deil d' ye suppose we pass your indents for?' says old
+Holdock.  'Man, we're spendin' money like watter.'
+
+"'I'll leave it in the Board's hands,' I said, 'if two hunder an'
+eighty-seven pound is anything beyond right and reason for eight
+months.'  I might ha' saved my breath, for the Board was new since
+the last election, an' there they sat, the damned deevidend-huntin'
+ship-chandlers, deaf as the adders o' Scripture.
+
+"'We must keep faith wi' the public,' said young Steiner.
+
+"'Keep faith wi' the Breslau, then,' I said.  'She's served you well,
+an' your father before you.  She'll need her bottom restiffenin',
+an' new bed-plates, an' turnin' out the forward boilers, an'
+re-turnin' all three cylinders, an' refacin' all guides, to begin
+with.  It's a three months' job.'
+
+"'Because one employee is afraid?  'says young Steiner.  'Maybe a
+piano in the Chief Engineer's cabin would be more to the point.'
+
+"I crushed my cap in my hands, an' thanked God we'd no bairns an'
+a bit put by.
+
+"'Understand, gentlemen,' I said.  'If the Breslau is made a
+sixteen-day boat, ye'll find another engineer.'
+
+"'Bannister makes no objection,' said Holdock.
+
+"'I'm speakin' for myself,' I said.  'Bannister has bairns.  'An'
+then I lost my temper.  'Ye can run her into Hell an' out again if
+ye pay pilotage,' I said, 'but ye run without me.'
+
+"'That's insolence,' said young Steiner.
+
+"'At your pleasure,' I said, turnin' to go.
+
+"'Ye can consider yourself dismissed.  We must preserve discipline
+among our employees,' said old Holdock, an' he looked round to see
+that the Board was with him.  They knew nothin' - God forgie 'em -
+an' they nodded me out o' the line after twenty years - after twenty
+years.
+
+"I went out an' sat down by the hall porter to get my wits again.
+I'm thinkin' I swore at the Board.  Then auld McRimmon - o'
+McNaughten & McRimmon - came, oot o' his office, that's on the same
+floor, an' looked at me, proppin' up one eyelid wi' his forefinger.
+Ye know they call him the Blind Deevil, forbye he onythin' but blind,
+an' no deevil in his dealin's wi' me - McRimmon o' the Black Bird Line.
+
+"'What's here, Mister McPhee?  ' said he.
+
+"I was past prayin' for by then.  'A Chief Engineer sacked after
+twenty years' service because he'll not risk the Breslau on the new
+timin', an' be damned to ye, McRimmon,' I said.
+
+"The auld man sucked in his lips an' whistled.  'AH,' said he, 'the
+new timin'.  I see!'  He doddered into the Board-room I'd just left,
+an' the Dandie-dog that is just his blind man's leader stayed wi'
+me.  That was providential.  In a minute he was back again.  'Ye've
+cast your bread on the watter, McPhee, an' be damned to you,' he
+says.  'Whaur's my dog?  My word, is he on your knee?  There's more
+discernment in a dog than a Jew.  What garred ye curse your Board,
+McPhee?  It's expensive.'
+
+"'They'll pay more for the Breslau,' I said.  'Get off my knee, ye
+smotherin' beast.'
+
+"'Bearin's hot, eh?' said McRimmon.  'It's thirty year since a man
+daur curse me to my face.  Time was I'd ha' cast ye doon the
+stairway for that.'
+
+"'Forgie's all!' I said.  He was wearin' to eighty, as I knew.  'I
+was wrong, McRimmon; but when a man's shown the door for doin' his
+plain duty he's not always ceevil.'
+
+"'So I hear,' says McRimmon.  'Ha' ye ony objection to a tramp
+freighter?  It's only fifteen a month, but they say the Blind Deevil
+feeds a man better than others.  She's my Kite.  Come ben.  Ye can
+thank Dandie, here.  I'm no used to thanks.  An' noo,' says he, 'what
+possessed ye to throw up your berth wi' Holdock?'
+
+"'The new timin',' said I.  'The Breslau will not stand it.'
+
+"'Hoot, oot,' said he.  'Ye might ha' crammed her a little - enough
+to show ye were drivin' her - an' brought her in twa days behind.
+What's easier than to say ye slowed for bearin's, eh?  All my men
+do it, and - I believe 'em.'
+
+"'McRimmon,' says I, 'what's her virginity to a lassie?'
+
+"He puckered his dry face an' twisted in his chair.  'The warld an'
+a',' says he.  'My God, the vara warld an' a' (But what ha' you or
+me to do wi' virginity, this late along?'
+
+"'This,' I said.  'There's just one thing that each one of us in his
+trade or profession will not do for ony consideration whatever.  If
+I run to time I run to time barrio' always the risks o' the high
+seas.  Less than that, under God, I have not done.  More than that,
+by God, I will not do!  There's no trick o' the trade I'm not
+acquaint wi' -'
+
+"'So I've heard,' says McRimmon, dry as a biscuit.
+
+"'But yon matter o' fair rennin"s just my Shekinah, ye'll understand.
+I daurna tamper wi' that.  Nursing weak engines is fair craftsmanship;
+but what the Board ask is cheatin', wi' the risk o' manslaughter
+addeetional.' Ye'll note I know my business.
+
+"There was some more talk, an' next week I went aboard the Kite,
+twenty-five hunder ton, simple compound, a Black Bird tramp.  The
+deeper she rode, the better she'd steam.  I've snapped as much as
+eleven out of her, but eight point three was her fair normal.  Good
+food forward an' better aft, all indents passed wi'out marginal
+remarks, the best coal, new donkeys, and good crews.  There was
+nothin' the old man would not do, except paint.  That was his
+deeficulty.  Ye could no more draw paint than his last teeth from
+him.  He'd come down to dock, an' his boats a scandal all along the
+watter, an' he'd whine an' cry an' say they looked all he could
+desire.  Every owner has his non plus ultra, I've obsairved.  Paint
+was McRimmon's.  But you could get round his engines without riskin'
+your life, an', for all his blindness, I've seen him reject five
+flawed intermediates, one after the other, on a nod from me; an'
+his cattle-fittin's were guaranteed for North Atlantic winter
+weather.  Ye ken what that means?  McRimmon an' the Black Bird Line,
+God bless him!
+
+"Oh, I forgot to say she would lie down an' fill her forward deck
+green, an' snore away into a twenty-knot gale forty-five to the
+minute, three an' a half knots an hour, the engines runnin' sweet
+an' true as a bairn breathin' in its sleep.  Bell was skipper; an'
+forbye there's no love lost between crews an' owners, we were fond
+o' the auld Blind Deevil an' his dog, an' I'm thinkin' he liked us.
+He was worth the windy side o' twa million sterlin', an' no friend
+to his own blood-kin.  Money's an awfu' thing - overmuch - for a
+lonely man.
+
+I'd taken her out twice, there an' back again, when word came o'
+the Breslau's breakdown, just as I prophesied.  Calder was her
+engineer - he's not fit to run a tug down the Solent - and he
+fairly lifted the engines off the bed-plates, an' they fell down
+in heaps, by what I heard.  So she filled from the after
+stuffin'-box to the after bulkhead, an' lay star-gazing, with
+seventy-nine squealin' passengers in the saloon, till the
+Camaralzaman o' Ramsey & Gold's Cartagena line gave her a tow to
+the tune o' five thousand seven hunder an' forty pound, wi' costs
+in the Admiralty Court.  She was helpless, ye'll understand, an' in
+no case to meet ony weather.  Five thousand seven hunder an' forty
+pounds, with costs, an' exclusive o' new engines!  They'd ha' done
+better to ha' kept me on the old timin'.
+
+"But, even so, the new Board were all for retrenchment.  Young
+Steiner, the Jew, was at the bottom of it.  They sacked men right
+an' left, that would not eat the dirt the Board gave 'em.  They cut
+down repairs; they fed crews wi' leavin's an' scrapin's; and,
+reversin', McRimmon's practice, they hid their defeeciencies wi'
+paint an' cheap gildin'.  Quem Deus vult perrdere prrius dementat,
+ye remember.
+
+"In January we went to dry-dock, an' in the next dock lay the Grotkau,
+their big freighter that was the Dolabella o' Piegan, Piegan & Walsh's
+line in '84 - a Clyde-built iron boat, a flat-bottomed,
+pigeon-breasted, under-engined, bull-nosed bitch of a five thousand
+ton freighter, that would neither steer, nor steam, nor stop when ye
+asked her.  Whiles she'd attend to her helm, whiles she'd take charge,
+whiles she'd wait to scratch herself, an' whiles she'd buttock into
+a dockhead.  But Holdock and Steiner had bought her cheap, and
+painted her all over like the Hoor o' Babylon, an' we called her the
+Hoor for short."  (By the way, McPhee kept to that name throughout
+the rest of his tale; so you must read accordingly.)  "I went to
+see young Bannister - he had to take what the Board gave him, an'
+he an' Calder were shifted together from the Breslau to this
+abortion - an' talkin' to him I went into the dock under her.  Her
+plates were pitted till the men that were paint, paint, paintin'
+her laughed at it.  But the warst was at the last.  She'd a great
+clumsy iron twelve-foot Thresher propeller - Aitcheson designed the
+Kites' - and just on the tail o' the shaft, behind the boss, was a
+red weepin' crack ye could ha' put a penknife to.  Man, it was an
+awful crack!
+
+"'When d' ye ship a new tail-shaft?' I said to Bannister.
+
+"He knew what I meant.  'Oh, yon's a superfeecial flaw,' says he,
+not lookin' at me.
+
+"'Superfeecial Gehenna!' I said.  'Ye'll not take her oot wi' a
+solution o' continuity that like.'
+
+"'They'll putty it up this evening,' he said.  'I'm a married man,
+an' - ye used to know the Board.'
+
+"I e'en said what was gied me in that hour.  Ye know how a drydock
+echoes.  I saw young Steiner standin' listenin' above me, an', man,
+he used language provocative of a breach o' the peace.  I was a spy
+and a disgraced employ, an' a corrupter o' young Bannister's morals,
+an' he'd prosecute me for libel.  He went away when I ran up the
+steps - I'd ha' thrown him into the dock if I'd caught him - an'
+there I met McRimmon, wi' Dandie pullin' on the chain, guidin' the
+auld man among the railway lines.
+
+"'McPhee,' said he, 'ye're no paid to fight Holdock, Steiner, Chase
+& Company, Limited, when ye meet.  What's wrong between you?'
+
+"'No more than a tail-shaft rotten as a kail-stump.  For ony sakes
+go an' look, McRimmon.  It's a comedietta.'
+
+"'I'm feared o' yon conversational Hebrew,' said he.  'Whaur's the
+flaw, an' what like?'
+
+"'A seven-inch crack just behind the boss.  There's no power on earth
+will fend it just jarrin' off.'
+
+"'When?'
+
+"'That's beyon' my knowledge,' I said.
+
+"'So it is; so it is,' said McRimmon.  'We've all oor leemitations.
+Ye're certain it was a crack?'
+
+"'Man, it's a crevasse,' I said, for there were no words to describe
+the magnitude of it.  'An' young Bannister's sayin' it's no more
+than a superfeecial flaw!'
+
+"'Weell, I tak' it oor business is to mind oor business.  If ye've
+ony friends aboard her, McPhee, why not bid them to a bit dinner at
+Radley's?'
+
+"'I was thinkin' o' tea in the cuddy,' I said.  'Engineers o' tramp
+freighters cannot afford hotel prices.'
+
+"'Na!  na!' says the auld man, whimperin'.  'Not the cuddy.  They'll
+laugh at my Kite, for she's no plastered with paint like the Hoor.
+Bid them to Radley's, McPhee, an' send me the bill.  Thank Dandie,
+here, man.  I'm no used to thanks.'  Then he turned him round.  (I
+was just thinkin' the vara same thing.)  'Mister McPhee,' said he,
+'this is not senile dementia.'
+
+"'Preserve 's!' I said, clean jumped oot o' mysel'.  'I was but
+thinkin' you're fey, McRimmon.'
+
+"Dod, the auld deevil laughed till he nigh sat down on Dandie.
+'Send me the bill,' says he.  'I'm long past champagne, but tell me
+how it tastes the morn.'
+
+"Bell and I bid young Bannister and Calder to dinner at Radley's.
+They'll have no laughin' an' singin' there, but we took a private
+room - like yacht-owners fra' Cowes."
+
+McPhee grinned all over, and lay back to think.
+
+"And then?" said I.
+
+"We were no drunk in ony preceese sense o' the word, but Radley's
+showed me the dead men.  There were six magnums o' dry champagne an'
+maybe a bottle o' whisky."
+
+"Do you mean to tell me that you four got away with a magnum and a
+half a piece, besides whisky " I demanded.
+
+McPhee looked down upon me from between his shoulders with toleration.
+
+"Man, we were not settin' down to drink," he said.  "They no more
+than made us wutty.  To be sure, young Bannister laid his head on
+the table an' greeted like a bairn, an' Calder was all for callin'
+on Steiner at two in the morn an' painting him galley-green; but
+they'd been drinkin' the afternoon.  Lord, how they twa cursed the
+Board, an' the Grotkau, an' the tail-shaft, an' the engines, an' a'!
+They didna talk o' superfeecial flaws that night.  I mind young
+Bannister an' Calder shakin' hands on a bond to be revenged on the
+Board at ony reasonable cost this side o' losing their certificates.
+Now mark ye how false economy ruins business.  The Board fed them
+like swine (I have good reason to know it), an' I've obsairved wi'
+my ain people that if ye touch his stomach ye wauken the deil in a
+Scot.  Men will tak' a dredger across the Atlantic if they 're well
+fed, an' fetch her somewhere on the broadside o' the Americas; but
+bad food's bad service the warld over.
+
+"The bill went to McRimmon, an' he said no more to me till the
+week-end, when I was at him for more paint, for we'd heard the Kite
+was chartered Liverpool-side.  'Bide whaur ye're put,' said the
+Blind Deevil.  'Man, do ye wash in champagne?  The Kite's no leavin'
+here till I gie the order, an' - how am I to waste paint onher, wi'
+the Lammergeyer docked for who knows how long an' a'?'
+
+"She was our big freighter - McIntyre was engineer - an' I knew she'd
+come from overhaul not three months.  That morn I met McRimmon's
+head-clerk - ye'll not know him - fair bitin' his nails off wi'
+mortification.
+
+"'The auld man's gone gyte,' says he.  'He's withdrawn the Lammergeyer.'
+
+"'Maybe he has reasons,' says I.
+
+"'Reasons! He's daft!'
+
+"'He'll no be daft till he begins to paint,' I said.
+
+"'That's just what he's done - and South American freights higher
+than we'll live to see them again.  He's laid her up to paint her -
+to paint her - to paint her!' says the little clerk, dancin' like a
+hen on a hot plate.  'Five thousand ton o' potential freight rottin'
+in drydock, man; an' he dolin' the paint out in quarter-pound tins,
+for it cuts him to the heart, mad though he is.  An' the Grotkau -
+the Grotkau of all conceivable bottoms - soaking up every pound that
+should be ours at Liverpool!'
+
+"I was staggered wi' this folly - considerin' the dinner at Radley's
+in connection wi' the same.
+
+"Ye may well stare, McPhee,' says the head-clerk.  'There's engines,
+an' rollin' stock, an' iron bridgesd' ye know what freights are noo?
+an' pianos, an' millinery, an' fancy Brazil cargo o' every species
+pourin' into the Grotkau - the Grotkau o' the Jerusalem firm - and
+the Lammergeyer's bein' painted!'
+
+"Losh, I thought he'd drop dead wi' the fits.
+
+"I could say no more than 'Obey orders, if ye break owners,' but on
+the Kite we believed McRimmon was mad; an' McIntyre of the Lammergeyer
+was for lockin' him up by some patent legal process he'd found in a
+book o' maritime law.  An' a' that week South American freights rose
+an' rose.  It was sinfu'!
+
+"Syne Bell got orders to tak' the Kite round to Liverpool in
+water-ballast, and McRimmon came to bid's good-bye, yammerin' an'
+whinin' o'er the acres o' paint he'd lavished on the Lammergeyer.
+
+"'I look to you to retrieve it,' says he.  'I look to you to
+reimburse me!  'Fore God, why are ye not cast off?  Are ye dawdlin'
+in dock for a purpose?'
+
+"'What odds, McRimmon?' says Bell.  'We'll be a day behind the fair
+at Liverpool.  The Grotkau's got all the freight that might ha' been
+ours an' the Lammergeyer's.'  McRimmon laughed an' chuckled - the
+pairfect eemage o' senile dementia.  Ye ken his eyebrows wark up an'
+down like a gorilla's.
+
+"'Ye're under sealed orders,' said he, tee-heein' an' scratchin'
+himself.  'Yon's they' - to be opened seriatim.
+
+"Says Bell, shufflin' the envelopes when the auld man had gone
+ashore: 'We're to creep round a' the south coast, standin' in for
+orders  his weather, too.  There's no question o' his lunacy now.'
+
+"Well, we buttocked the auld Kite along - vara bad weather we made
+ - standin' in all alongside for telegraphic orders, which are the
+curse o' skippers.  Syne we made over to Holyhead, an' Bell opened
+the last envelope for the last instructions.  I was wi' him in the
+cuddy, an' he threw it over to me, cryin': 'Did ye ever know the
+like, Mac?'
+
+"I'll no say what McRimmon had written, but he was far from mad.
+There was a sou'wester brewin' when we made the mouth o' the Mersey,
+a bitter cold morn wi' a grey-green sea and a grey-green sky -
+Liverpool weather, as they say; an' there we lay choppin', an' the
+crew swore.  Ye canna keep secrets aboard ship.  They thought
+McRimmon was mad, too.
+
+"Syne we saw the Grotkau rollin' oot on the top o' flood, deep an'
+double deep, wi' her new-painted funnel an' her new-painted boats
+an' a'.  She looked her name, an', moreover, she coughed like it.
+Calder tauld me at Radley's what ailed his engines, but my own ear
+would ha' told me twa mile awa', by the beat o' them.  Round we
+came, plungin' an' squatterin' in her wake, an' the wind cut wi'
+good promise o' more to come.  By six it blew hard but clear, an'
+before the middle watch it was a sou'wester in airnest.
+
+"'She'll edge into Ireland, this gait,' says Bell.  I was with him
+on the bridge, watchin' the Grotkau's port light.  Ye canna see
+green so far as red, or we'd ha' kept to leeward.  We'd no
+passengers to consider, an' (all eyes being on the Grotkau) we fair
+walked into a liner rampin' home to Liverpool.  Or, to be preceese,
+Bell no more than twisted the Kite oot from under her bows, and
+there was a little damnin' betwix' the twa bridges. "Noo a
+passenger" - McPhee regarded me benignantly -"wad ha' told the
+papers that as soon as he got to the Customs.  We stuck to the
+Grotkau's tail that night an' the next twa days - she slowed down
+to five knot by my reckonin' and we lapped along the weary way to
+the Fastnet."
+
+"But you don't go by the Fastnet to get to any South American port,
+do you?" I said.
+
+"We do not.  We prefer to go as direct as may be.  But we were
+followin' the Grotkau, an' she'd no walk into that gale for ony
+consideration.  Knowin' what I did to her discredit, I couldna blame
+young Bannister.  It was warkin' up to a North Atlantic winter gale,
+snow an' sleet an' a perishin' wind.  Eh, it was like the Deil
+walkin' abroad o' the surface o' the deep, whuppin' off the top
+o' the waves before he made up his mind.  They'd bore up against
+it so far, but the minute she was clear o' the Skelligs she fair
+tucked up her skirts an' ran for it by Dunmore Head.  Wow, she
+rolled!
+
+"'She'll be makin' Smerwick,' says Bell.
+
+"She'd ha' tried for Ventry by noo if she meant that,' I said.
+
+"'They'll roll the funnel oot o' her, this gait,' says Bell.  'Why
+canna Bannister keep her head to sea?'
+
+"It's the tail-shaft.  Ony rollin''s better than pitchin' wi'
+superfeecial cracks in the tail-shaft.  Calder knows that much,' I
+said.
+
+"'It's ill wark retreevin' steamers this weather,' said Bell.  His
+beard and whiskers were frozen to his oilskin, an' the spray was
+white on the weather side of him.  Pairfect North Atlantic winter
+weather!
+
+"One by one the sea raxed away our three boats, an' the davits were
+crumpled like ram's horns.
+
+"'Yon's bad,' said Bell, at the last.  'Ye canna pass a hawser wi'oot
+a boat.'  Bell was a vara judeecious man - for an Aberdonian.
+
+"I'm not one that fashes himself for eventualities outside the
+engine-room, so I e'en slipped down betwixt waves to see how the
+Kite fared.  Man, she's the best geared boat of her class that ever
+left Clyde! Kinloch, my second, knew her as well as I did.  I found
+him dryin' his socks on the main-steam, an' combin' his whiskers wi'
+the comb Janet gied me last year, for the warld an' a' as though we
+were in port.  I tried the feed, speered into the stoke-hole,
+thumbed all bearin's, spat on the thrust for luck, gied 'em my
+blessin', an' took Kinloch's socks before I went up to the bridge
+again.
+
+"Then Bell handed me the wheel, an' went below to warm himself.
+When he came up my gloves were frozen to the spokes an' the ice
+clicked over my eyelids.  Pairfect North Atlantic winter weather,
+as I was sayin'.
+
+"The gale blew out by night, but we lay in smotherin' cross-seas
+that made the auld Kite chatter from stem to stern.  I slowed to
+thirty-four, I mind - no, thirty-seven.  There was a long swell the
+morn, an' the Grotkau was headin' into it west awa'.
+
+"'She'll win to Rio yet, tail-shaft or no tail-shaft,' says Bell.
+
+"'Last night shook her,' I said.  'She'll jar it off yet, mark my
+word.'
+
+"We were then, maybe, a hunder and fifty mile westsou'west o' Slyne
+Head, by dead reckonin'.  Next day we made a hunder an' thirty -
+ye'll note we were not racin-boats - an' the day after a hunder an'
+sixty-one, an' that made us, we'll say, Eighteen an' a bittock west,
+an' maybe Fifty-one an' a bittock north, crossin' all the North
+Atlantic liner lanes on the long slant, always in sight o' the
+Grotkau, creepin' up by night and fallin' awa' by day.  After the
+gale it was cold weather wi' dark nights.
+
+"I was in the engine-room on Friday night, just before the middle
+watch, when Bell whustled down the tube: 'She's done it'; an' up I
+came.
+
+"The Grotkau was just a fair distance south, an' one by one she ran
+up the three red lights in a vertical line - the sign of a steamer
+not under control.
+
+"'Yon's a tow for us,' said Bell, lickin' his chops.  'She'll be
+worth more than the Breslau.  We'll go down to her, McPhee!'
+
+"'Bide a while,' I said.  'The seas fair throng wi' ships here.'
+
+"'Reason why,' said Bell.  'It's a fortune gaun beggin'.  What d'
+ye think, man?'
+
+"'Gie her till daylight.  She knows we're here.  If Bannister needs
+help he'll loose a rocket.'
+
+"'Wha told ye Bannister's need?  We'll ha' some rag-an'-bone tramp
+snappin' her up under oor nose,' said he; an' he put the wheel over.
+We were goin' slow.
+
+"'Bannister wad like better to go home on a liner an' eat in the
+saloon.  Mind ye what they said o' Holdock & Steiner's food that
+night at Radley's?  Keep her awa', man - keep her awa'.  A tow's a
+tow, but a derelict's big salvage.'
+
+"'E-eh! 'said Bell.  'Yon's an inshot o' yours, Mac.  I love ye like
+a brother.  We'll bide whaur we are till daylight'; an' he kept her
+awa'.
+
+"Syne up went a rocket forward, an' twa on the bridge, an' a blue
+light aft.  Syne a tar-barrel forward again.
+
+"'She's sinkin',' said Bell.  'It's all gaun, an' I'll get no more
+than a pair o' night-glasses for pickin' up young Bannister - the
+fool!'
+
+"' Fair an' soft again,' I said.  'She's signallin' to the south
+of us.  Bannister knows as well as I that one rocket would bring
+the Breslau.  He'll no be wastin' fireworks for nothin'.  Hear her
+ca'!'
+
+"The Grotkau whustled an' whustled for five minutes, an' then there
+were more fireworks - a regular exhibeetion.
+
+"'That's no for men in the regular trade,' says Bell.  'Ye're right,
+Mac.  That's for a cuddy full o' passengers.'  He blinked through
+the night-glasses when it lay a bit thick to southward.
+
+"'What d' ye make of it?' I said.
+
+"'Liner,' he says.  'Yon's her rocket.  Ou, ay; they've waukened
+the gold-strapped skipper, an' - noo they've waukened the passengers.
+They're turnin' on the electrics, cabin by cabin.  Yon's anither
+rocket! They're comin' up to help the perishin' in deep watters.'
+
+"'Gie me the glass,' I said.  But Bell danced on the bridge, clean
+dementit.  'Mails-mails-mails!' said he.  'Under contract wi' the
+Government for the due conveyance o' the mails; an' as such, Mac,
+yell note, she may rescue life at sea, but she canna tow! - she
+canna tow!  Yon's her night-signal.  She'll be up in half an hour!'
+
+"'Gowk!' I said, 'an' we blazin' here wi' all oor lights.  Oh, Bell,
+ye're a fool!'
+
+"He tumbled off the bridge forward, an' I tumbled aft, an' before
+ye could wink our lights were oot, the engine-room hatch was covered,
+an' we lay pitch-dark, watchin' the lights o' the liner come up that
+the Grotkau'd been signallin' to.  Twenty knot an hour she came,
+every cabin lighted, an' her boats swung awa'.  It was grandly done,
+an' in the inside of an hour.  She stopped like Mrs. Holdock's
+machine; down went the gangway, down went the boats, an' in ten
+minutes we heard the passengers cheerin', an' awa' she fled.
+
+"'They'll tell o' this all the days they live,' said Bell.  'A
+rescue at sea by night, as pretty as a play.  Young Bannister an'
+Calder will be drinkin' in the saloon, an' six months hence the
+Board o' Trade 'll gie the skipper a pair o' binoculars.  It's
+vara philanthropic all round.'
+
+"We'll lay by till day - ye may think we waited for it wi' sore
+eyes an' there sat the Grotkau, her nose a bit cocked, just leerin'
+at us.  She looked paifectly ridiculous.
+
+"'She'll be fillin' aft,' says Bell; 'for why is she down by the
+stern?  The tail-shaft's punched a hole in her, an' - we 've no
+boats.  There's three hunder thousand pound sterlin', at a
+conservative estimate, droonin' before our eyes.  What's to do?'
+An' his bearin's got hot again in a minute: he was an incontinent
+man.
+
+"'Run her as near as ye daur,' I said.  'Gie me a jacket an' a
+lifeline, an' I'll swum for it.'  There was a bit lump of a sea,
+an' it was cold in the wind - vara cold; but they'd gone overside
+like passengers, young Bannister an' Calder an' a', leaving the
+gangway down on the lee-side.  It would ha' been a flyin' in the
+face o' manifest Providence to overlook the invitation.  We were
+within fifty yards o' her while Kinloch was garmin' me all over wi'
+oil behind the galley; an' as we ran past I went outboard for the
+salvage o' three hunder thousand pound.  Man, it was perishin'
+cold, but I'd done my job judgmatically, an' came scrapin' all
+along her side slap on to the lower gratin' o' the gangway.  No
+one more astonished than me, I assure ye.  Before I'd caught my
+breath I'd skinned both my knees on the gratin', an' was climbin'
+up before she rolled again.  I made my line fast to the rail, an'
+squattered aft to young Bannister's cabin, whaaur I dried me wi'
+everything in his bunk, an' put on every conceivable sort o' rig
+I found till the blood was circulatin'.  Three pair drawers, I mind
+I found - to begin upon - an' I needed them all.  It was the
+coldest cold I remember in all my experience.
+
+"Syne I went aft to the engine-room.  The Grotkau sat on her own
+tail, as they say.  She was vara shortshafted, an' her gear was all
+aft.  There was four or five foot o' water in the engine-room
+slummockin' to and fro, black an' greasy; maybe there was six foot.
+The stoke-hold doors were screwed home, an' the stoke-hold was tight
+enough, but for a minute the mess in the engine-room deceived me.
+Only for a minute, though, an' that was because I was not, in a
+manner o' speakin', as calm as ordinar'.  I looked again to mak'
+sure.  'T was just black wi' bilge: dead watter that must ha' come
+in fortuitously, ye ken."
+
+"McPhee, I'm only a passenger," I said, "but you don't persuade me
+that six foot o' water can come into an engine-room fortuitously."
+
+"Who's tryin' to persuade one way or the other?" McPhee retorted.
+"I'm statin' the facts o' the case - the simple, natural facts.  Six
+or seven foot o' dead watter in the engine-room is a vara depressin'
+sight if ye think there's like to be more comin'; but I did not
+consider that such was likely, and so, yell note, I was not
+depressed."
+
+"That's all very well, but I want to know about the water," I said.
+
+"I've told ye.  There was six feet or more there, wi' Calder's cap
+floatin' on top."
+
+"Where did it come from?"
+
+"Weel, in the confusion o' things after the propeller had dropped
+off an' the engines were racin' an' a', it's vara possible that
+Calder might ha' lost it off his head an' no troubled himself to
+pick it up again.  I remember seem' that cap on him at Southampton."
+
+"I don't want to know about the cap.  I'm asking where the water
+came from and what it was doing there, and why you were so certain
+that it wasn't a leak, McPhee?"
+
+"For good reason-for good an' sufficient reason."
+
+"Give it to me, then."
+
+"Weel, it's a reason that does not properly concern myself only.
+To be preceese, I'm of opinion that it was due, the watter, in part
+to an error o' judgment in another man.  We can a' mak' mistakes."
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon?"
+
+"I got me to the rail again, an', 'What's wrang?' said Bell, hailin'.
+
+"'She'll do,' I said.  'Send's o'er a hawser, an' a man to steer.
+I'll pull him in by the life-line.'
+
+"I could see heads bobbin' back an' forth, an' a whuff or two o'
+strong words.  Then Bell said: 'They'll not trust themselves - one
+of 'em - in this waiter - except Kinloch, an' I'll no spare him.'
+
+"'The more salvage to me, then,' I said.  'I'll make shift solo.'
+
+"Says one dock-rat, at this: 'D' ye think she's safe?'
+
+"'I'll guarantee ye nothing,' I said, 'except maybe a hammerin' for
+keepin' me this long.'
+
+"Then he sings out: 'There's no more than one lifebelt, an' they
+canna find it, or I'd come.'
+
+"'Throw him over, the Jezebel,' I said, for I was oot o' patience;
+an' they took haud o' that volunteer before he knew what was in
+store, and hove him over, in the bight of my life-line.  So I e'en
+hauled him upon the sag of it, hand over fist - a vara welcome
+recruit when I'd tilted the salt watter oot of him: for, by the
+way, he could na swim.
+
+"Syne they bent a twa-inch rope to the life-line, an' a hawser to
+that, an' I led the rope o'er the drum of a hand-winch forward, an'
+we sweated the hawser inboard an' made it fast to the Grotkau's
+bitts.
+
+"Bell brought the Kite so close I feared she'd roll in an' do the
+Grotkau's plates a mischief.  He hove anither life-line to me, an'
+went astern, an' we had all the weary winch work to do again wi' a
+second hawser.  For all that, Bell was right: we'd along tow before
+us, an' though Providence had helped us that far, there was no
+sense in leavin' too much to its keepin'.  When the second hawser
+was fast, I was wet wi' sweat, an' I cried Bell to tak' up his
+slack an' go home.  The other man was by way o' helpin' the work wi'
+askin' for drinks, but I e'en told him he must hand reef an' steer,
+beginnin' with steerin', for I was goin' to turn in.  He steered -
+oh, ay, he steered, in a manner o' speakin'.  At the least, he
+grippit the spokes an' twiddled 'em an' looked wise, but I doubt if
+the Hoor ever felt it.  I turned in there an' then, to young
+Bannister's bunk, an' slept past expression.  I waukened ragin' wi'
+hunger, a fair lump o' sea runnin', the Kite snorin' awa' four knots
+an hour; an' the Grotkau slappin' her nose under, an' yawin' an'
+standin' over at discretion.  She was a most disgracefu' tow.  But
+the shameful thing of all was the food.  I raxed me a meal fra
+galley-shelves an' pantries an' lazareetes an' cubby-holes that I
+would not ha' gied to the mate of a Cardiff collier; an' ye ken we
+say a Cardiff mate will eat clinkers to save waste.  I'm sayin' it
+was simply vile!  The crew had written what they thought of it on
+the new paint o' the fo'c'sle, but I had not a decent soul wi' me
+to complain on.  There was nothin' for me to do save watch the
+hawsers an' the Kite's tail squatterin' down in white watter when
+she lifted to a sea; so I got steam on the after donkey-pump, an'
+pumped oot the engine-room.  There's no sense in leavin' waiter
+loose in a ship.  When she was dry, I went doun the shaft-tunnel,
+an' found she was leakin' a little through the stuffin'box, but
+nothin' to make wark.  The propeller had e'en jarred off, as I knew
+it must, an' Calder had been waitin' for it to go wi' his hand on
+the gear.  He told me as much when I met him ashore.  There was
+nothin' started or strained.  It had just slipped awa' to the bed o'
+the Atlantic as easy as a man dyin' wi' due warning - a most
+providential business for all concerned.  Syne I took stock o' the
+Grotkau's upper works.  Her boats had been smashed on the davits, an'
+here an' there was the rail missin', an' a ventilator or two had
+fetched awa', an' the bridge-rails were bent by the seas; but her
+hatches were tight, and she'd taken no sort of harm.  Dod, I came
+to hate her like a human bein', for I was eight weary days aboard,
+starvin' - ay, starvin' - within a cable's length o' plenty.  All
+day I laid in the bunk reading the' Woman-Hater,' the grandest book
+Charlie Reade ever wrote, an' pickin' a toothful here an' there.
+It was weary, weary work.  Eight days, man, I was aboard the Grotkau,
+an' not one full meal did I make.  Sma' blame her crew would not
+stay by her.  The other man?  Oh I warked him wi' a vengeance to
+keep him warm.
+
+"It came on to blow when we fetched soundin's, an' that kept me
+standin' by the hawsers, lashed to the capstan, breathin' twixt
+green seas.  I near died o' cauld an' hunger, for the Grotkau towed
+like a barge, an' Bell howkit her along through or over.  It was
+vara thick up-Channel, too.  We were standin' in to make some sort
+o' light, an' we near walked over twa three fishin'-boats, an' they
+cried us we were overclose to Falmouth.  Then we were near cut down
+by a drunken foreign fruiter that was blunderin' between us an' the
+shore, and it got thicker an' thicker that night, an' I could feel
+by the tow Bell did not know whaur he was.  Losh, we knew in the
+morn, for the wind blew the fog oot like a candle, an' the sun came
+clear; and as surely as McRimmon gied me my cheque, the shadow o'
+the Eddystone lay across our tow-rope!  We were that near - ay, we
+were that near!  Bell fetched the Kite round with the jerk that
+came close to tearin' the bitts out o' the Grotkau, an' I mind I
+thanked my Maker in young Bannister's cabin when we were inside
+Plymouth breakwater.
+
+"The first to come aboard was McRimmon, wi' Dandie.  Did I tell you
+our orders were to take anything we found into Plymouth?  The auld
+deil had just come down overnight, puttin' two an' two together from
+what Calder had told him when the liner landed the Grotkau's men.
+He had preceesely hit oor time.  I'd hailed Bell for something to
+eat, an' he sent it o'er in the same boat wi' McRimmon, when the
+auld man came to me.  He grinned an' slapped his legs and worked
+his eyebrows the while I ate.
+
+"'How do Holdock, Steiner & Chase feed their men?' said he.
+
+"'Ye can see,' I said, knockin' the top off another beer-bottle.
+'I did not sign to be starved, McRimmon.'
+
+"'Nor to swum, either,' said he, for Bell had tauld him how I
+carried the line aboard.  'Well, I'm thinkin' you'll be no loser.
+What freight could we ha' put into the Lammergeyer would equal
+salvage on four hunder thousand pounds - hull an' cargo?  Eh,
+McPhee?  This cuts the liver out o' Holdock, Steiner, Chase &
+Company, Limited.  Eh, McPhee?  An' I'm sufferin' from senile
+dementia now?  Eh, MCPhee?  An' I'm not daft, am I, till I begin
+to paint the Lammergeyer?  Eh, McPhee?  Ye may weel lift your leg,
+Dandie!  I ha' the laugh o' them all.  Ye found watter in the
+engine-room?'
+
+"'To speak wi'oot prejudice,' I said, ' there was some watter.'
+
+"'They thought she was sinkin' after the propeller went.  She filled
+wi' extraordinary rapeedity.  Calder said it grieved him an'
+Bannister to abandon her.'
+
+"I thought o' the dinner at Radley's, an' what like o' food I'd
+eaten for eight days.
+
+"'It would grieve them sore,' I said.
+
+"'But the crew would not hear o' stayin' and workin' her back under
+canvas.  They're gaun up an' down sayin' they'd ha' starved first.'
+
+"'They'd ha' starved if they'd stayed,' said I.
+
+"'I tak' it, fra Calder's account, there was a mutiny a'most.'
+
+"'Ye know more than I, McRimmon' I said.  'Speakin' wi'oot prejudice,
+for we're all in the same boat, who opened the bilgecock?'
+
+"'Oh, that's it - is it?' said the auld man, an' I could see he was
+surprised.  'A bilge-cock, ye say?'
+
+"'I believe it was a bilge-cock.  They were all shut when I came
+aboard, but some one had flooded the engine-room eight feet over all,
+and shut it off with the worm-an'-wheel gear from the second gratin'
+afterwards.'
+
+"'Losh!' said McRimmon.  'The ineequity o' man's beyond belief.
+But it's awfu' discreditable to Holdock, Steiner & Chase, if that
+came oot in court.'
+
+"'It's just my own curiosity,' I said.
+
+"'Aweel, Dandie's afflicted wi' the same disease.  Dandie, strive
+against curiosity, for it brings a little dog into traps an'
+suchlike.  Whaur was the Kite when yon painted liner took off the
+Grotkau's people?'
+
+"'Just there or thereabouts,' I said.
+
+"'An' which o' you twa thought to cover your lights?' said he,
+winkin'.
+
+"'Dandle,' I said to the dog, 'we must both strive against curiosity.
+It's an unremunerative business.  What's our chance o' salvage,
+Dandie?'
+
+"He laughed till he choked.  'Tak' what I gie you, McPhee, an' be
+content,' he said.  'Lord, how a man wastes time when he gets old.
+Get aboard the Kite, mon, as soon as ye can.  I've clean forgot
+there's a Baltic charter yammerin' for you at London.  That'll be
+your last voyage, I'm thinkin', excep' by way o' pleasure.'
+
+"Steiner's men were comin' aboard to take charge an' tow her round,
+an' I passed young Steiner in a boat as I went to the Kite.  He
+looked down his nose; but McRimmon pipes up: 'Here's the man ye owe
+the Grotkau to - at a price, Steiner - at a price!  Let me introduce
+Mr. McPhee to you.  Maybe ye've met before; but ye've vara little
+luck in keepin' your men - ashore or afloat!'
+
+"Young Steiner looked angry enough to eat him as he chuckled an'
+whustled in his dry old throat.
+
+"'Ye've not got your award yet,' Steiner says.
+
+"'Na, na,' says the auld man, in a screech ye could hear to the Hoe,
+'but I've twa million sterlin', an' no bairns, ye Judeeas Apella,
+if ye mean to fight; an' I'll match ye p'und for p'und till the last
+p'und's oot.  Ye ken me, Steiner!  I'm McRimmon o' McNaughten &
+McRimmon!'
+
+"'Dod,' he said betwix' his teeth, sittin' back in the boat, 'I've
+waited fourteen year to break that Jewfirm, an' God be thankit I'll
+do it now.'
+
+"The Kite was in the Baltic while the auld man was warkin' his warks,
+but I know the assessors valued the Grotkau, all told, at over three
+hunder and sixty thousand - her manifest was a treat o' richness -
+an' McRimmon got a third for salvin' an abandoned ship.  Ye see,
+there's vast deeference between towin' a ship wi' men on her an'
+pickin' up a derelict - a vast deeference - in pounds sterlin'.
+Moreover, twa three o' the Grotkau's crew were burnin' to testify
+about food, an' there was a note o' Calder to the Board, in regard
+to the tail-shaft, that would ha' been vara damagin' if it had come
+into court.  They knew better than to fight.
+
+"Syne the Kite came back, an' McRimmon paid off me an' Bell
+personally, an' the rest of the crew pro rata, I believe it's ca'ed.
+My share - oor share, I should say - was just twenty-five thousand
+pound sterlin'."
+
+At this point Janet jumped up and kissed him.
+
+"Five-and-twenty thousand pound sterlin'.  Noo, I'm fra the North,
+and I'm not the like to fling money awa' rashly, but I'd gie six
+months' pay - one hunder an' twenty pounds - to know who flooded
+the engine-room of the Grotkau.  I'm fairly well acquaint wi'
+McRimmon's eediosyncrasies, and he'd no hand in it.  It was not
+Calder, for I've asked him, an' he wanted to fight me.  It would
+be in the highest degree unprofessional o' Calder - not fightin',
+but openin' bilge-cocks - but for a while I thought it was him.  Ay,
+I judged it might be him - under temptation."
+
+"What's your theory?" I demanded.
+
+"Weel, I'm inclined to think it was one o' those singular providences
+that remind us we're in the hands o' Higher Powers." .
+
+"It couldn't open and shut itself?"
+
+"I did not mean that; but some half-starvin' oiler or, maybe, trimmer
+must ha' opened it awhile to mak' sure o' leavin' the Grotkau.  It's
+a demoralisin' thing to see an engine-room flood up after any
+accident to the gear - demoralisin' and deceptive both.  Aweel, the
+man got what he wanted, for they went aboard the liner cryin' that
+the Grotkau was sinkin'.  But it's curious to think o' the
+consequences.  In a' human probability, he's bein' damned in heaps
+at the present moment aboard another tramp freighter; an' here am
+I, wi' five-an'-twenty thousand pound invested, resolute to go to
+sea no more - providential's the preceese word - except as a
+passenger, ye'll understand, Janet."
+
+    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
+
+McPhee kept his word.  He and Janet went for a voyage as passengers
+in the first-class saloon.  They paid seventy pounds for their
+berths; and Janet found a very sick woman in the second-class
+saloon, so that for sixteen days she lived below, and chatted with
+the stewardesses at the foot of the second-saloon stairs while her
+patient slept.  McPhee was a passenger for exactly twenty-four
+hours.  Then the engineers' mess - where the oilcloth tables are -
+joyfully took him to its bosom, and for the rest of the voyage that
+company was richer by the unpaid services of a highly certificated
+engineer.
+
+
+
+
+AN ERROR IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION
+
+
+Before he was thirty, he discovered that there was no one to play
+with him.  Though the wealth of three toilsome generations stood to
+his account, though his tastes in the matter of books, bindings,
+rugs, swords, bronzes, lacquer, pictures, plate, statuary, horses,
+conservatories, and agriculture were educated and catholic, the
+public opinion of his country wanted to know why he did not go to
+office daily, as his father had before him.
+
+So he fled, and they howled behind him that he was an unpatriotic
+Anglomaniac, born to consume fruits, one totally lacking in public
+spirit.  He wore an eyeglass; he had built a wall round his country
+house, with a high gate that shut, instead of inviting America to
+sit on his flower-beds; he ordered his clothes from England; and
+the press of his abiding city cursed him, from his eye-glass to his
+trousers, for two consecutive days.
+
+When he rose to light again, it was where nothing less than the
+tents of an invading army in Piccadilly would make any difference
+to anybody.  If he had money and leisure, England stood ready to
+give him all that money and leisure could buy.  That price paid,
+she would ask no questions.  He took his cheque-book and accumulated
+things - warily at first, for he remembered that in America things
+own the man.  To his delight, he discovered that in England he
+could put his belongings under his feet; for classes, ranks, and
+denominations of people rose, as it were, from the earth, and
+silently and discreetly took charge of his possessions.  They had
+been born and bred for that sole purpose - servants of the
+cheque-book.  When that was at an end they would depart as
+mysteriously as they had come.
+
+The impenetrability of this regulated life irritated him, and he
+strove to learn something of the human side of these people.  He
+retired baffled, to be trained by his menials.  In America, the
+native demoralises the English servant.  In England, the servant
+educates the master.  Wilton Sargent strove to learn all they taught
+as ardently as his father had striven to wreck, before capture, the
+railways of his native land; and it must have been some touch of
+the old bandit railway blood that bade him buy, for a song, Holt
+Hangars, whose forty-acre lawn, as every one knows, sweeps down in
+velvet to the quadruple tracks of the Great Buchonian Railway.  Their
+trains flew by almost continuously, with a bee-like drone in the day
+and a flutter of strong wings at night.  The son of Merton Sargent
+had good right to be interested in them.  He owned controlling
+interests in several thousand miles of track, - not permanent way,
+ - built on altogether different plans, where locomotives eternally
+whistled for grade-crossings, and parlor-cars of fabulous expense
+and unrestful design skated round curves that the Great Buchonian
+would have condemned as unsafe in a construction-line.  From the
+edge of his lawn he could trace the chaired metals falling away,
+rigid as a bowstring, into the valley of the Prest, studded with the
+long perspective of the block signals, buttressed with stone, and
+carried, high above all possible risk, on a forty-foot embankment.
+
+Left to himself, he would have builded a private car, and kept it
+at the nearest railway-station, Amberley Royal, five miles away.
+But those into whose hands he had committed himself for his English
+training had little knowledge of railways and less of private cars.
+The one they knew was something that existed in the scheme of things
+for their convenience.  The other they held to be "distinctly
+American"; and, with the versatility of his race, Wilton Sargent had
+set out to be just a little more English than the English.
+
+He succeeded to admiration.  He learned not to redecorate Holt
+Hangars, though he warmed it; to leave his guests alone; to refrain
+from superfluous introductions; to abandon manners of which he had
+great store, and to hold fast by manner which can after labour be
+acquired.  He learned to let other people, hired for the purpose,
+attend to the duties for which they were paid.  He learned - this
+he got from a ditcher on the estate - that every man with whom he
+came in contact had his decreed position in the fabric of the realm,
+which position he would do well to consult.  Last mystery of all,
+he learned to golf - well: and when an American knows the innermost
+meaning of "Don't press, slow back, and keep your eye on the ball,"
+he is, for practical purposes, denationalised.
+
+His other education proceeded on the pleasantest lines.  Was he
+interested in any conceivable thing in heaven above, or the earth
+beneath, or the waters under the earth?  Forthwith appeared at his
+table, guided by those safe hands into which he had fallen, the
+very men who had best said, done, written, explored, excavated,
+built, launched, created, or studied that one thing - herders of
+books and prints in the British Museum; specialists in scarabs,
+cartouches, and dynasties Egyptian; rovers and raiders from the
+heart of unknown lands; toxicologists; orchid-hunters; monographers
+on flint implements, carpets, prehistoric man, or early Renaissance
+music.  They came, and they played with him.  They asked no
+questions; they cared not so much as a pin who or what he was.  They
+demanded only that he should be able to talk and listen courteously.
+Their work was done elsewhere and out of his sight.
+
+There were also women.
+
+"Never," said Wilton Sargent to himself, "has an American seen
+England as I'm seeing it"; and he thought, blushing beneath the
+bedclothes, of the unregenerate and blatant days when he would steam
+to office, down the Hudson, in his twelve-hundred-ton ocean-going
+steam-yacht, and arrive, by gradations, at Bleecker Street, hanging
+on to a leather strap between an Irish washerwoman and a German
+anarchist.  If any of his guests had seen him then they would have
+said: "How distinctly American!" and - Wilton did not care for that
+tone.  He had schooled himself to an English walk, and, so long as
+he did not raise it, an English voice.  He did not gesticulate with
+his hands; he sat down on most of his enthusiasms, but he could not
+rid himself of The Shibboleth.  He would ask for the Worcestershire
+sauce: even Howard, his immaculate butler, could not break him of
+this.
+
+It was decreed that he should complete his education in a wild and
+wonderful manner, and, further, that I should be in at that death.
+
+Wilton had more than once asked me to Holt Hangars, for the purpose
+of showing how well the new life fitted him, and each time I had
+declared it creaseless.  His third invitation was more informal
+than the others, and he hinted of some matter in which he was
+anxious for my sympathy or counsel, or both.  There is room for an
+infinity of mistakes when a man begins to take liberties with his
+nationality; and I went down expecting things.  A seven-foot
+dog-cart and a groom in the black Holt Hangars livery met me at
+Amberley Royal.  At Holt Hangars I was received by a person of
+elegance and true reserve, and piloted to my luxurious chamber.
+There were no other guests in the house, and this set me thinking.
+
+Wilton came into my room about half an hour before dinner, and though
+his face was masked with a drop-curtain of highly embroidered
+indifference, I could see that he was not at ease.  In time, for he
+was then almost as difficult to move as one of my own countrymen, I
+extracted the tale - simple in its extravagance, extravagant in its
+simplicity.  It seemed that Hackman of the British Museum had been
+staying with him about ten days before, boasting of scarabs.  Hackman
+has a way of carrying really priceless antiquities on his tie-ring
+and in his trouser pockets.  Apparently, he had intercepted something
+on its way to the Boulak Museum which, he said, was "a genuine
+Amen-Hotepa queen's scarab of the Fourth Dynasty."  Now Wilton had
+bought from Cassavetti, whose reputation is not above suspicion, a
+scarab of much the same scarabeousness, and had left it in his London
+chambers.  Hackman at a venture, but knowing Cassavetti, pronounced
+it an imposition.  There was long discussion - savant versus
+millionaire, one saying: " ut I know it cannot be"; and the other:
+"But I can and will prove it."  Wilton found it necessary for his
+soul's satisfaction to go up to town, then and there, - a forty-mile
+run, - and bring back the scarab before dinner.  It was at this point
+that he began to cut corners with disastrous results.  Amberley Royal
+station being five miles away, and putting in of horses a matter of
+time, Wilton had told Howard, the immaculate butler, to signal the
+next train to stop; and Howard, who was more of a man of resource
+than his master gave him credit for, had, with the red flag of the
+ninth hole of the links which crossed the bottom of the lawn,
+signalled vehemently to the first down-train; and it had stopped.
+Here Wilton's account became confused.  He attempted, it seems, to
+get into that highly indignant express, but a guard restrained him
+with more or less force - hauled him, in fact, backyards from the
+window of a locked carriage.  Wilton must have struck the gravel
+with some vehemence, for the consequences, he admitted, were a free
+fight on the line in which he lost his hat, and was at last dragged
+into the guard's van and set down breathless.
+
+He had pressed money upon the man, and very foolishly had explained
+everything but his name.  This he clung to, for he had a vision of
+tall head-lines in the New York papers, and well knew no son of
+Merton Sargent could expect mercy that side the water.  The guard,
+to Wilton's amazement, refused the money on the grounds that this
+was a matter for the Company to attend to.  Wilton insisted on his
+incognito, and, therefore, found two policemen waiting for him at
+St. Botolph terminus.  When he expressed a wish to buy a new hat
+and telegraph to his friends, both policemen with one voice warned
+him that whatever he said would be used as evidence against him;
+and this had impressed Wilton tremendously.
+
+"They were so infernally polite," he said.  "If they had clubbed me
+I wouldn't have cared; but it was, 'Step this way, sir,' and, 'Up
+those stairs, please, sir,' till they jailed me - jailed me like a
+common drunk, and I had to stay in a filthy little cubby-hole of a
+cell all night."
+
+"That comes of not giving your name and not wiring your lawyer," I
+replied.  "What did you get?"
+
+"Forty shillings, or a month," said Wilton, promptly, - "next morning
+bright and early.  They were working us off, three a minute.  A girl
+in a pink hat - she was brought in at three in the morning - got ten
+days.  I suppose I was lucky.  I must have knocked his senses out of
+the guard.  He told the old duck on the bench that I had told him I
+was a sergeant in the army, and that I was gathering beetles on the
+track.  That comes of trying to explain to an Englishman."
+
+"And you?"
+
+"Oh, I said nothing.  I wanted to get out.  I paid my fine, and
+bought a new hat, and came up here before noon next morning.  There
+were a lot of people in the house, and I told ' em I'd been
+unavoidably detained, and then they began to recollect engagements
+elsewhere.  Hackman must have seen the fight on the track and made
+a story of it.  I suppose they thought it was distinctly American
+ - confound 'em!  It's the only time in my life that I've ever
+flagged a train, and I wouldn't have done it but for that scarab.
+'T wouldn't hurt their old trains to be held up once in a while."
+
+"Well, it's all over now," I said, choking a little.  "And your name
+didn't get into the papers.  It is rather transatlantic when you
+come to think of it."
+
+"Over!" Wilton grunted savagely.  "It's only just begun.  That
+trouble with the guard was just common, ordinary assault - merely
+a little criminal business.  The flagging of the train is civil,
+infernally civil, - and means something quite different.  They're
+after me for that now."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"The Great Buchonian.  There was a man in court watching the case
+on behalf of the Company.  I gave him my name in a quiet corner
+before I bought my hat, and - come to dinner now; I'll show you the
+results afterwards."  The telling of his wrongs had worked Wilton
+Sargent into a very fine temper, and I do not think that my
+conversation soothed him.  In the course of the dinner, prompted
+by a devil of pure mischief, I dwelt with loving insistence on
+certain smells and sounds of New York which go straight to the heart
+of the native in foreign parts; and Wilton began to ask many
+questions about his associates aforetime - men of the New York Yacht
+Club, Storm King, or the Restigouche, owners of rivers, ranches,
+and shipping in their playtime, lords of railways, kerosene, wheat,
+and cattle in their offices.  When the green mint came, I gave him
+a peculiarly oily and atrocious cigar, of the brand they sell in the
+tessellated, electric-lighted, with expensive-pictures-of-the-nude
+adorned bar of the Pandemonium, and Wilton chewed the end for
+several minutes ere he lit it.  The butler left us alone, and the
+chimney of the oak-panelled diningroom began to smoke.
+
+"That's another!" said he, poking the fire savagely, and I knew
+what he meant.  One cannot put steam-heat in houses where Queen
+Elizabeth slept.  The steady beat of a night-mail, whirling down
+the valley, recalled me to business.  "What about the Great
+Buchonian?" I said.
+
+"Come into my study.  That's all - as yet."
+
+It was a pile of Seidlitz-powders-coloured correspondence, perhaps
+nine inches high, and it looked very businesslike.
+
+"You can go through it," said Wilton.  "Now I could take a chair
+and a red flag and go into Hyde Park and say the most atrocious
+things about your Queen, and preach anarchy and all that, y' know,
+till I was hoarse, and no one would take any notice.  The Police
+damn 'em! - would protect me if I got into trouble.  But for a
+little thing like flagging a dirty little sawed-off train, -
+running through my own grounds, too, - I get the whole British
+Constitution down on me as if I sold bombs.  I don't understand it."
+
+"No more does the Great Buchonian - apparently."  I was turning over
+the letters.  "Here's the traffic superintendent writing that it's
+utterly incomprehensible that any man should ...  Good heavens,
+Wilton, you have done it!" I giggled, as I read on.
+
+"What's funny now?" said my host.
+
+"It seems that you, or Howard for you, stopped the three-forty
+Northern down."
+
+"I ought to know that!  They all had their knife into me, from the
+engine-driver up."
+
+"But it's the three-forty - the Induna - surely you've heard of
+the Great Buchonian's Induna!"
+
+"How the deuce am I to know one train from another?  They come along
+about every two minutes."
+
+"Quite so.  But this happens to be the Induna - the one train of
+the whole line.  She's timed for fifty-seven miles an hour.  She was
+put on early in the Sixties, and she has never been stopped - "
+
+"I know!  Since William the Conqueror came over, or King Charles hid
+in her smoke-stack.  You're as bad as the rest of these Britishers.
+If she's been run all that while, it's time she was flagged once or
+twice."
+
+The American was beginning to ooze out all over Wilton, and his
+small-boned hands were moving restlessly.
+
+"Suppose you flagged the Empire State Express, or the Western Cyclone?"
+
+"Suppose I did.  I know Otis Harvey - or used to.  I'd send him a wire,
+and he'd understand it was a ground-hog case with me.  That's exactly
+what I told this British fossil company here."
+
+"Have you been answering their letters without legal advice, then?"
+
+"Of course I have."
+
+"Oh, my Sainted Country!  Go ahead, Wilton."
+
+"I wrote 'em that I'd be very happy to see their president and
+explain to him in three words all about it; but that wouldn't do.
+'Seems their president must be a god.  He was too busy, and - well,
+you can read for yourself - they wanted explanations.  The
+stationmaster at Amberley Royal - and he grovels before me, as a
+rule - wanted an explanation, and quick, too.  The head sachem at
+St. Botolph's wanted three or four, and the Lord High Mukkamuk that
+oils the locomotives wanted one every fine day.  I told 'em - I've
+told hem about fifty times - I stopped their holy and sacred train
+because I wanted to board her.  Did they think I wanted to feel
+her pulse?"
+
+"You didn't say that?"
+
+"Feel her pulse'?  Of course not."
+
+"No.  'Board her.'"
+
+"What else could I say?"
+
+"My dear Wilton, what is the use of Mrs. Sherborne, and the Clays,
+and all that lot working over you for four years to make an
+Englishman out of you, if the very first time you're rattled you go
+back to the vernacular?"
+
+"I'm through with Mrs. Sherborne and the rest of the crowd.  America's
+good enough for me.  What ought I to have said?  'Please,' or 'thanks
+awf'ly or how?"
+
+There was no chance now of mistaking the man's nationality.  Speech,
+gesture, and step, so carefully drilled into him, had gone away with
+the borrowed mask of indifference.  It was a lawful son of the
+Youngest People, whose predecessors were the Red Indian.  His voice
+had risen to the high, throaty crow of his breed when they labour
+under excitement.  His close-set eyes showed by turns unnecessary
+fear, annoyance beyond reason, rapid and purposeless flights of
+thought, the child's lust for immediate revenge, and the child's
+pathetic bewilderment, who knocks his head against the bad, wicked
+table.  And on the other side, I knew, stood the Company, as unable
+as Wilton to understand.
+
+"And I could buy their old road three times over," he muttered,
+playing with a paper-knife, and moving restlessly to and fro.
+
+"You didn't tell 'em that, I hope!"
+
+There was no answer; but as I went through the letters, I felt that
+Wilton must have told them many surprising things.  The Great
+Buchonian had first asked for an explanation of the stoppage of
+their Induna, and had found a certain levity in the explanation
+tendered.  It then advised " Mr. W. Sargent" to refer his
+solicitor to their solicitor, or whatever the legal phrase is.
+
+"And you didn't?" I said, looking up.
+
+"No.  They were treating me exactly as if I had been a kid playing
+on the cable-tracks.  There was not the least necessity for any
+solicitor.  Five minutes' quiet talk would have settled everything."
+
+I returned to the correspondence.  The Great Buchonian regretted
+that, owing to pressure of business, none of their directors could
+accept Mr. W. Sargent's invitation to run down and discuss the
+difficulty.  The Great Buchonian was careful to point out that no
+animus underlay their action, nor was money their object.  Their
+duty was to protect the interests of their line, and these interests
+could not be protected if a precedent were established whereby any
+of the Queen's subjects could stop a train in mid-career.  Again
+(this was another branch of the correspondence, not more than five
+heads of departments being concerned), the Company admitted that
+there was some reasonable doubt as to the duties of express-trains
+in all crises, and the matter was open to settlement by process of
+law till an authoritative ruling was obtained - from the House of
+Lords, if necessary.
+
+"That broke me all up," said Wilton, who was reading over my
+shoulder.  "I knew I'd struck the British Constitution at last.
+The House of Lords - my Lord!  And, anyway, I'm not one of the
+Queen's subjects."
+
+"Why, I had a notion that you'd got yourself naturalised."
+
+Wilton blushed hotly as he explained that very many things must
+happen to the British Constitution ere he took out his papers.
+
+"How does it all strike you?" he said.  "Isn't the Great Buchonian
+crazy?"
+
+"I don't know.  You've done something that no one ever thought of
+doing before, and the Company don't know what to make of it.  I see
+they offer to send down their solicitor and another official of the
+Company to talk things over informally.  Then here's another letter
+suggesting that you put up a fourteen-foot wall, crowned with
+bottle-glass, at the bottom of the garden."
+
+"Talk of British insolence!  The man who recommends that (he's
+another bloated functionary) says that I shall 'derive great pleasure
+from watching the wall going up day by day'!  Did you ever dream of
+such gall?  I've offered 'em money enough to buy a new set of cars
+and pension the driver for three generations; but that doesn't seem
+to be what they want.  They expect me to go to the House of Lords
+and get a ruling, and build walls between times.  Are they all stark,
+raving mad?  One 'ud think I made a profession of flagging trains.
+How in Tophet was I to know their old Induna from a waytrain?  I
+took the first that came along, and I've been jailed and fined for
+that once already."
+
+"That was for slugging the guard."
+
+"He had no right to haul me out when I was half-way through a window."
+
+"What are you going to do about it?"
+
+"Their lawyer and the other official (can't they trust their men
+unless they send 'em in pairs?) are coming hereto-night.  I told 'em
+I was busy, as a rule, till after dinner, but they might send along
+the entire directorate if it eased 'em any."
+
+Now, after-dinner visiting, for business or pleasure, is the custom
+of the smaller American town, and not that of England, where the end
+of the day is sacred to the owner, not the public.  Verily, Wilton
+Sargent had hoisted the striped flag of rebellion!
+
+"Isn't it time that the humour of the situation began to strike you,
+Wilton?" I asked.
+
+"Where's the humour of baiting an American citizen just because he
+happens to be a millionaire - poor devil."  He was silent for a
+little time, and then went on: "Of course.  Now I see!"  He spun
+round and faced me excitedly.  "It's as plain as mud.  These ducks
+are laying their pipes to skin me."
+
+"They say explicitly they don't want money!"
+
+"That's all a blind.  So's their addressing me as W. Sargent.  They
+know well enough who I am.  They know I'm the old man's son.  Why
+didn't I think of that before?"
+
+"One minute, Wilton.  If you climbed to the top of the dome of St.
+Paul's and offered a reward to any Englishman who could tell you who
+or what Merton Sargent had been, there wouldn't be twenty men in all
+London to claim it."
+
+"That's their insular provincialism, then.  I don't care a cent.
+The old man would have wrecked the Great Buchonian before breakfast
+for a pipe-opener.  My God, I'll do it in dead earnest!  I'll show
+'em that they can't bulldoze a foreigner for flagging one of their
+little tinpot trains, and - I've spent fifty thousand a year here,
+at least, for the last four years."
+
+I was glad I was not his lawyer.  I re-read the correspondence,
+notably the letter which recommended him - almost tenderly, I
+fancied - to build a fourteen-foot brick wall at the end of his
+garden, and half-way through it a thought struck me which filled
+me with pure joy.
+
+The footman ushered in two men, frock-coated, grey-trousered,
+smooth-shaven, heavy of speech and gait.  It was nearly nine o'clock,
+but they looked as newly come from a bath.  I could not understand
+why the elder and taller of the pair glanced at me as though we had
+an understanding; nor why he shook hands with an unEnglish warmth.
+
+"This simplifies the situation," he said in an undertone, and, as I
+stared, he whispered to his companion: "I fear I shall be of very
+little service at present.  Perhaps Mr. Folsom had better talk over
+the affair with Mr. Sargent."
+
+"That is what I am here for," said Wilton.
+
+The man of law smiled pleasantly, and said that he saw no reason
+why the difficulty should not be arranged in two minutes' quiet
+talk.  His air, as he sat down opposite Wilton, was soothing to the
+last degree, and his companion drew me up-stage.  The mystery was
+deepening, but I followed meekly, and heard Wilton say, with an
+uneasy laugh:
+
+"I've had insomnia over this affair, Mr. Folsom.  Let's settle it
+one way or the other, for heaven's sake!"
+
+"Ah!  Has he suffered much from this lately?" said my man, with a
+preliminary cough.
+
+"I really can't say," I replied.
+
+"Then I suppose you have only lately taken charge here?"
+
+"I came this evening.  I am not exactly in charge of anything."
+
+"I see.  Merely to observe the course of events in case - "  He
+nodded.
+
+" Exactly."  Observation, after all, is my trade.
+
+He coughed again slightly, and came to business.
+
+"Now, - I am asking solely for information's sake, - do you find
+the delusions persistent?"
+
+"Which delusions?"
+
+"They are variable, then?  That is distinctly curious, because - but
+do I understand that the type of the delusion varies?  For example,
+Mr. Sargent believes that he can buy the Great Buchonian."
+
+"Did he write you that?"
+
+"He made the offer to the Company - on a half-sheet of note-paper.
+Now, has he by chance gone to the other extreme, and believed that
+he is in danger of becoming a pauper?  The curious economy in the
+use of a half-sheet of paper shows that some idea of that kind might
+have flashed through his mind, and the two delusions can coexist,
+but it is not common.  As you must know, the delusion of vast wealth
+ - the folly of grandeurs, I believe our friends the French call it -
+is, as a rule, persistent, to the exclusion of all others."
+
+Then I heard Wilton's best English voice at the end of the study:
+
+"My dear sir, I have explained twenty times already, I wanted to get
+that scarab in time for dinner.  Suppose you had left an important
+legal document in the same way?"
+
+"That touch of cunning is very significant," my fellow-practitioner
+ - since he insisted on it - muttered.
+
+"I am very happy, of course, to meet you; but if you had only sent
+your president down to dinner here, I could have settled the thing
+in half a minute.  Why, I could have bought the Buchonian from him
+while your clerks were sending me this."  Wilton dropped his hand
+heavily on the blue-and-white correspondence, and the lawyer started.
+
+"But, speaking frankly," the lawyer replied, "it is, if I may say
+so, perfectly inconceivable, even in the case of the most important
+legal documents, that any one should stop the three-forty express
+ - the Induna - Our Induna, my dear sir."
+
+"Absolutely!" my companion echoed; then to me in a lower tone: "You
+notice, again, the persistent delusion of wealth.  I was called in
+when he wrote us that.  You can see it is utterly impossible for
+the Company to continue to run their trains through the property of
+a man who may at any moment fancy himself divinely commissioned to
+stop all traffic.  If he had only referred us to his lawyer - but,
+naturally, that he would not do, under the circumstances.  A pity
+ - a great pity.  He is so young.  By the way, it is curious, is it
+not, to note the absolute conviction in the voice of those who are
+similarly afflicted, - heart-rending, I might say, and the inability
+to follow a chain of connected thought."
+
+"I can't see what you want," Wilton was saying to the lawyer.
+
+"It need not be more than fourteen feet high - a really desirable
+structure, and it would be possible to grow pear trees on the sunny
+side."  The lawyer was speaking in an unprofessional voice.  "There
+are few things pleasanter than to watch, so to say, one's own vine
+and fig tree in full bearing.  Consider the profit and amusement you
+would derive from it.  If you could see your way to doing this, we
+could arrange all the details with your lawyer, and it is possible
+that the Company might bear some of the cost.  I have put the matter,
+I trust, in a nutshell.  If you, my dear sir, will interest yourself
+in building that wall, and will kindly give us the name of your
+lawyers, I dare assure you that you will hear no more from the Great
+Buchonian."
+
+"But why am I to disfigure my lawn with a new brick wall?"
+
+"Grey flint is extremely picturesque."
+
+"Grey flint, then, if you put it that way.  Why the dickens must I
+go building towers of Babylon just because I have held up one of
+your trains-once?"
+
+"The expression he used in his third letter was that he wished to
+'board her,'" said my companion in my ear.  "That was very curious
+ - a marine delusion impinging, as it were, upon a land one.  What
+a marvellous world he must move in - and will before the curtain
+falls.  So young, too - so very young!"
+
+"Well, if you want the plain English of it, I'm damned if I go
+wall-building to your orders.  You can fight it all along the line,
+into the House of Lords and out again, and get your rulings by the
+running foot if you like," said Wilton, hotly.  "Great heavens, man,
+I only did it once!"
+
+"We have at present no guarantee that you may not do it again; and,
+with our traffic, we must, in justice to our passengers, demand
+some form of guarantee.  It must not serve as a precedent.  All this
+might have been saved if you had only referred us to your legal
+representative."  The lawyer looked appealingly around the room.
+The dead-lock was complete.
+
+Wilton," I asked, "may I try my hand now?"
+
+"Anything you like," said Wilton.  "It seems I can't talk English.
+I won't build any wall, though."  He threw himself back in his
+chair.
+
+" Gentlemen," I said deliberately, for I perceived that the doctor's
+mind would turn slowly, "Mr. Sargent has very large interests in the
+chief railway systems of his own country."
+
+"His own country?" said the lawyer.
+
+"At that age?" said the doctor.
+
+"Certainly.  He inherited them from his father, Mr. Sargent, who
+was an American."
+
+"And proud of it," said Wilton, as though he had been a Western
+Senator let loose on the Continent for the first time.
+
+"My dear sir," said the lawyer, half rising, "why did you not
+acquaint the Company with this fact - this vital fact - early in
+our correspondence?  We should have understood.  We should have
+made allowances."
+
+"Allowances be damned.  Am I a Red Indian or a lunatic?"
+
+The two men looked guilty.
+
+"If Mr. Sargent's friend had told us as much in the beginning,"
+said the doctor, very severely, "much might have been saved."  Alas!
+I had made a life's enemy of that doctor.
+
+"I hadn't a chance," I replied.  "Now, of course, you can see that a
+man who owns several thousand miles of line, as Mr. Sargent does,
+would be apt to treat railways a shade more casually than other
+people."
+
+"Of course; of course.  He is an American; that accounts.  Still,
+it was the Induna; but I can quite understand that the customs of
+our cousins across the water differ in these particulars from ours.
+And do you always stop trains in this way in the States, Mr.
+Sargent?"
+
+"I should if occasion ever arose; but I've never had to yet.  Are
+you going to make an international complication of the business?"
+
+"You need give yourself no further concern whatever in the matter.
+We see that there is no likelihood of this action of yours
+establishing a precedent, which was the only thing we were afraid
+of.  Now that you understand that we cannot reconcile our system
+to any sudden stoppages, we feel quite sure that - "
+
+"I sha'n't be staying long enough to flag another train," Wilton
+said pensively.
+
+"You are returning, then, to our fellow-kinsmen across the-ah-big
+pond, you call it?"
+
+"No, sir.  The ocean - the North Atlantic Ocean.  It's three
+thousand miles broad, and three miles deep in places.  I wish it
+were ten thousand."
+
+"I am not so fond of sea-travel myself; but I think it is every
+Englishman's duty once in his life to study the great branch of
+our Anglo-Saxon race across the ocean," said the lawyer.
+
+"If ever you come over, and care to flag any train on my system,
+I'll - I'll see you through," said Wilton.
+
+"Thank you - ah, thank you.  You're very kind.  I'm sure I should
+enjoy myself immensely."
+
+"We have overlooked the fact," the doctor whispered to me, "that
+your friend proposed to buy the Great Buchonian."
+
+"He is worth anything from twenty to thirty million dollars - four
+to five million pounds," I answered, knowing that it would be
+hopeless to explain.
+
+"Really!  That is enormous wealth.  But the Great Buchonian is not
+in the market."
+
+"Perhaps he does not want to buy it now."
+
+"It would be impossible under any circumstances," said the doctor.
+
+"How characteristic!" murmured the lawyer, reviewing matters in his
+mind.  "I always understood from books that your countrymen were in
+a hurry.  And so you would have gone forty miles to town and back
+ - before dinner - to get a scarab?  How intensely American!  But
+you talk exactly like an Englishman, Mr. Sargent."
+
+"That is a fault that can be remedied.  There's only one question
+I'd like to ask you.  You said it was inconceivable that any man
+should stop a train on your road?"
+
+"And so it is-absolutely inconceivable."
+
+"Any sane man, that is?"
+
+"That is what I meant, of course.  I mean, with excep - "
+
+"Thank you."
+
+The two men departed.  Wilton checked himself as he was about to
+fill a pipe, took one of my cigars instead, and was silent for
+fifteen minutes.
+
+Then said he: "Have you got a list of the Southampton sailings on
+you?"
+
+Far away from the greystone wings, the dark cedars, the faultless
+gravel drives, and the mint-sauce lawns of Holt Hangars runs a
+river called the Hudson, whose unkempt banks are covered with the
+palaces of those wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice.  Here, where
+the hoot of the Haverstraw brick-barge-tug answers the howl of the
+locomotive on either shore, you shall find, with a complete
+installation of electric light, nickel-plated binnacles, and a
+calliope attachment to her steam-whistle, the twelve-hundred-ton
+ocean-going steam-yacht Columbia, lying at her private pier, to
+take to his office, at an average speed of seventeen knots an
+hour, - and the barges can look out for themselves, - Wilton Sargent,
+American.
+
+
+
+
+MY SUNDAY AT HOME
+
+
+   If the Red Slayer think he slays,
+     Or if the slain think he is slain,
+   They know not well the subtle ways
+      I keep and pass and turn again.
+                                   EMERSON.
+
+It was the unreproducible slid r, as he said this was his "fy-ist"
+visit to England, that told me he was a New-Yorker from New York;
+and when, in the course of our long, lazy journey westward from
+Waterloo, he enlarged upon the beauties of his city, I, professing
+ignorance, said no word.  He had, amazed and delighted at the man's
+civility, given the London porter a shilling for carrying his bag
+nearly fifty yards; he had thoroughly investigated the first-class
+lavatory compartment, which the London and Southwestern sometimes
+supply without extra charge; and now, half-awed, half-contemptuous,
+but wholly interested, he looked out upon the ordered English
+landscape wrapped in its Sunday peace, while I watched the wonder
+grow upon his face.  Why were the cars so short and stilted?  Why
+had every other freight-car a tarpaulin drawn over it?  What wages
+would an engineer get now?  Where was the swarming population of
+England he had read so much about?  What was the rank of all those
+men on tricycles along the roads?  When were we due at Plymouth
+I told him all I knew, and very much that I did not.  He was going
+to Plymouth to assist in a consultation upon a fellow-countryman
+who had retired to a place called The Hoe - was that up-town or
+down-town - to recover from nervous dyspepsia.  Yes, he himself
+was a doctor by profession, and how any one in England could
+retain any nervous disorder passed his comprehension.  Never had
+he dreamed of an atmosphere so soothing.  Even the deep rumble of
+London traffic was monastical by comparison with some cities he
+could name; and the country - why, it was Paradise.  A continuance
+of it, he confessed, would drive him mad; but for a few months it
+was the most sumptuous rest-cure in his knowledge.
+
+"I'll come over every year after this," he said, in a burst of
+delight, as we ran between two ten-foot hedges of pink and white
+may.  "It's seeing all the things I've ever read about.  Of course
+it doesn't strike you that way.  I presume you belong here?  What
+a finished land it is! It's arrived.  'Must have been born this
+way.  Now, where I used to live - Hello I what's up?"
+
+The train stopped in a blaze of sunshine at Framlynghame Admiral,
+which is made up entirely of the name-board, two platforms, and an
+overhead bridge, without even the usual siding.  I had never known
+the slowest of locals stop here before; but on Sunday all things
+are possible to the London and Southwestern.  One could hear the
+drone of conversation along the carriages, and, scarcely less loud,
+the drone of the bumblebees in the wallflowers up the bank.  My
+companion thrust his head through the window and sniffed luxuriously.
+
+"Where are we now?" said he.
+
+"In Wiltshire," said I.
+
+"Ah!  A man ought to be able to write novels with his left hand in
+a country like this.  Well, well!  And so this is about Tess's
+country, ain't it?  I feel just as if I were in a book.  Say, the
+conduc -  the guard has something on his mind.  What's he getting
+at?"
+
+The splendid badged and belted guard was striding up the platform
+at the regulation official pace, and in the regulation official
+voice was saying at each door:
+
+"Has any gentleman here a bottle of medicine?  A gentleman has taken
+a bottle of poison (laudanum) by mistake."
+
+Between each five paces he looked at an official telegram in his
+hand, refreshed his memory, and said his say.  The dreamy look on
+my companion's face - he had gone far away with Tess - passed with
+the speed of a snap-shutter.  After the manner of his countrymen,
+he had risen to the situation, jerked his bag down from the overhead
+rail, opened it, and I heard the click of bottles.  "Find out where
+the man is," he said briefly.  "I've got something here that will
+fix him - if he can swallow still."
+
+Swiftly I fled up the line of carriages in the wake of the guard.
+There was clamour in a rear compartment - the voice of one bellowing
+to be let out, and the feet of one who kicked.  With the tail of my
+eye I saw the New York doctor hastening thither, bearing in his hand
+a blue and brimming glass from the lavatory compartment.  The guard
+I found scratching his head unofficially, by the engine, and
+murmuring: "Well, I put a bottle of medicine off at Andover - I'm
+sure I did."
+
+"Better say it again, any'ow',' said the driver.  "Orders is orders.
+Say it again."
+
+Once more the guard paced back, I, anxious to attract his attention,
+trotting at his heels.
+
+"In a minute - in a minute, sir," he said, waving an arm capable of
+starting all the traffic on the London and Southwestern Railway at
+a wave.  "Has any gentleman here got a bottle of medicine?  A
+gentleman has taken a bottle of poison (laudanum) by mistake."
+
+"Where's the man?" I gasped.
+
+"Woking.  'Ere's my orders."  He showed me the telegram, on which
+were the words to be said.  "'E must have left 'is bottle in the
+train, an' took another by mistake.  'E's been wirin' from Woking
+awful, an', now I come to think of, it, I'm nearly sure I put a
+bottle of medicine off at Andover."
+
+"Then the man that took the poison isn't in the train?"
+
+"Lord, no, sir.  No one didn't take poison that way.  'E took it
+away with 'im, in 'is 'ands.  'E's wirin' from Wokin'.  My orders
+was to ask everybody in the train, and I 'ave, an' we're four minutes
+late now.  Are you comin' on, sir?  No?  Right be'ind!"
+
+There is nothing, unless, perhaps, the English language, more
+terrible than the workings of an English railway-line.  An instant
+before it seemed as though we were going to spend all eternity at
+Framlynghame Admiral, and now I was watching the tail of the train
+disappear round the curve of the cutting.
+
+But I was not alone.  On the one bench of the down platform sat the
+largest navvy I have ever seen in my life, softened and made affable
+(for he smiled generously) with liquor.  In his huge hands he nursed
+an empty tumbler marked "L.S.W.R." - marked also, internally, with
+streaks of blue-grey sediment.  Before him, a hand on his shoulder,
+stood the doctor, and as I came within ear-shot, this is what I
+heard him say: "Just you hold on to your patience for a minute or
+two longer, and you'll be as right as ever you were in your life.
+I'll stay with you till you're better."
+
+"Lord!  I'm comfortable enough," said the navvy.  "Never felt better
+in my life."
+
+Turning to me, the doctor lowered his voice.  "He might have died
+while that fool conduct-guard was saying his piece.  I've fixed him,
+though.  The stuff's due in about five minutes, but there's a heap
+to him.  I don't see how we can make him take exercise."
+
+For the moment I felt as though seven pounds of crushed ice had been
+neatly applied in the form of a compress to my lower stomach.
+
+"How - how did you manage it?" I gasped.
+
+"I asked him if he'd have a drink.  He was knocking spots out of
+the car - strength of his constitution, I suppose.  He said he'd
+go 'most anywhere for a drink, so I lured onto the platform, and
+loaded him up.  'Cold-blooded people, you Britishers are.  That
+train's gone, and no one seemed to care a cent."
+
+"We've missed it," I said.
+
+He looked at me curiously.
+
+We'll get another before sundown, if that's your only trouble.  Say,
+porter, when's the next train down?"
+
+"Seven forty-five," said the one porter, and passed out through the
+wicket-gate into the landscape.  It was then three-twenty of a hot
+and sleepy afternoon.  The station was absolutely deserted.  The
+navvy had closed his eyes, and now nodded.
+
+"That's bad," said the doctor.  "The man, I mean, not the train.
+We must make him walk somehowwalk up and down."
+
+Swiftly as might be, I explained the delicacy of the situation, and
+the doctor from New York turned a full bronze-green.  Then he swore
+comprehensively at the entire fabric of our glorious Constitution,
+cursing the English language, root, branch, and paradigm, through
+its most obscure derivatives.  His coat and bag lay on the bench
+next to the sleeper.  Thither he edged cautiously, and I saw
+treachery in his eye.
+
+What devil of delay possessed him to slip on his spring overcoat, I
+cannot tell.  They say a slight noise rouses a sleeper more surely
+than a heavy one, and scarcely had the doctor settled himself in his
+sleeves than the giant waked and seized that silk-faced collar in a
+hot right hand.  There was rage in his face-rage and the realisation
+of new emotions.
+
+"I'm - I'm not so comfortable as I were," he said from the deeps of
+his interior.  "You'll wait along o' me, you will."  He breathed
+heavily through shut lips.
+
+Now, if there was one thing more than another upon which the doctor
+had dwelt in his conversation with me, it was upon the essential
+law-abidingness, not to say gentleness, of his much-misrepresented
+country.  And yet (truly, it may have been no more than a button
+that irked him) I saw his hand travel backwards to his right hip,
+clutch at something, and come away empty.
+
+"He won't kill you," I said.  "He'll probably sue you in court, if
+I know my own people.  Better give him some money from time to time."
+
+"If he keeps quiet till the stuff gets in its work," the doctor
+answered, "I'm all right.  If he doesn't ... my name is Emory -
+Julian B. Emory - 193 'Steenth Street, corner of Madison and - "
+
+"I feel worse than I've ever felt," said the navvy, with suddenness.
+"What-did-you-give-me-the-drink-for?"
+
+The matter seemed to be so purely personal that I withdrew to a
+strategic position on the overhead bridge, and, abiding in the exact
+centre, looked on from afar.
+
+I could see the white road that ran across the shoulder of Salisbury
+Plain, unshaded for mile after mile, and a dot in the middle
+distance, the back of the one porter returning to Framlynghame
+Admiral, if such a place existed, till seven forty-five.  The bell
+of a church invisible clanked softly.  There was a rustle in the
+horse-chestnuts to the left of the line, and the sound of sheep
+cropping close.
+
+The peace of Nirvana lay upon the land, and, brooding in it, my
+elbow on the warm iron girder of the footbridge (it is a
+forty-shilling fine to cross by any other means), I perceived, as
+never before, how the consequences of our acts run eternal through
+time and through space.  If we impinge never so slightly upon the
+life of a fellow-mortal, the touch of our personality, like the
+ripple of a stone cast into a pond, widens and widens in unending
+circles across the aeons, till the far-off Gods themselves cannot
+say where action ceases.  Also, it was I who had silently set
+before the doctor the tumbler of the first-class lavatory compartment
+now speeding Plymouthward.  Yet I was, in spirit at least, a million
+leagues removed from that unhappy man of another nationality, who
+had chosen to thrust an inexpert finger into the workings of an
+alien life.  The machinery was dragging him up and down the sunlit
+platform.  The two men seemed to be learning polka-mazurkas together,
+and the burden of their song, borne by one deep voice, was: "What
+did you give me the drink for?"
+
+I saw the flash of silver in the doctor's hand.  The navvy took it
+and pocketed it with his left; but never for an instant did his
+strong right leave the doctor's coat-collar, and as the crisis
+approached, louder and louder rose his bull-like roar: "What did you
+give me the drink for?"
+
+They drifted under the great twelve-inch pinned timbers of the
+foot-bridge towards the bench, and, I gathered, the time was very
+near at hand.  The stuff was getting in its work.  Blue, white, and
+blue again, rolled over the navvy's face in waves, till all settled
+to one rich clay-bank yellow and - that fell which fell.
+
+I thought of the blowing up of Hell Gate; of the geysers in the
+Yellowstone Park; of Jonah and his whale: but the lively original,
+as I watched it foreshortened from above, exceeded all these things.
+He staggered to the bench, the heavy wooden seat cramped with iron
+cramps into the enduring stone, and clung there with his left hand.
+It quivered and shook, as a breakwater-pile quivers to the rush of
+landward-racing seas; nor was there lacking when he caught his
+breath, the "scream of a maddened beach dragged down by the tide."
+His right hand was upon the doctor's collar, so that the two shook
+to one paroxysm, pendulums vibrating together, while I, apart, shook
+with them.
+
+It was colossal-immense; but of certain manifestations the English
+language stops short.  French only, the caryatid French of Victor
+Hugo, would have described it; so I mourned while I laughed, hastily
+shuffling and discarding inadequate adjectives.  The vehemence of
+the shock spent itself, and the sufferer half fell, half knelt,
+across the bench.  He was calling now upon God and his wife, huskily,
+as the wounded bull calls upon the unscathed herd to stay.  Curiously
+enough, he used no bad language: that had gone from him with the
+rest.  The doctor exhibited gold.  It was taken and retained.  So,
+too, was the grip on the coat-collar.
+
+"If I could stand," boomed the giant, despairingly, "I'd smash you
+ - you an' your drinks.  I'm dyin' - dyin' -dyin'!"
+
+"That's what you think," said the doctor.  "You'll find it will do
+you a lot of good"; and, making a virtue of a somewhat imperative
+necessity, he added: "I'll stay by you.  If you'd let go of me a
+minute I'd give you something that would settle you."
+
+"You've settled me now, you damned anarchist.  Takin' the bread out
+of the mouth of an English workin'man!  But I'll keep 'old of you
+till I'm well or dead.  I never did you no 'arm.  S'pose I were a
+little full.  They pumped me out once at Guy's with a stummick-pump.
+I could see that, but I can't see this 'ere, an' it's killin' of me
+by slow degrees."
+
+"You'll be all right in half-an-hour.  What do you suppose I'd want
+to kill you for?" said the doctor, who came of a logical breed.
+
+"'Ow do I know?  Tell 'em in court.  You'll get seven years for
+this, you body-snatcher.  That's what you are - a bloomin'
+bodysnatcher.  There's justice, I tell you, in England; and my
+Union'll prosecute, too.  We don't stand no tricks with people's
+insides 'ere.  They give a woman ten years for a sight less than
+this.  An' you'll 'ave to pay 'undreds an' 'undreds o' pounds,
+besides a pension to the missus.  You'll see, you physickin'
+furriner.  Where's your licence to do such?  You'll catch it,
+I tell you!"
+
+Then I observed what I have frequently observed before, that a man
+who is but reasonably afraid of an altercation with an alien has a
+most poignant dread of the operations of foreign law.  The doctor's
+voice was flute-like in its exquisite politeness, as he answered:
+
+"But I've given you a very great deal of money - fif-three pounds,
+I think."
+
+"An' what's three pound for poisonin' the likes o' me?  They told
+me at Guy's I'd fetch twenty-cold-on the slates.  Ouh!  It's comin'
+again."
+
+A second time he was cut down by the foot, as it were, and the
+straining bench rocked to and fro as I averted my eyes.
+
+It was the very point of perfection in the heart of an English
+May-day.  The unseen tides of the air had turned, and all nature
+was setting its face with the shadows of the horse-chestnuts
+towards the peace of the coming night.  But there were hours yet,
+I knew - long, long hours of the eternal English twilight - to
+the ending of the day.  I was well content to be alive - to
+abandon myself to the drift of Time and Fate; to absorb great peace
+through my skin, and to love my country with the devotion that three
+thousand miles of intervening sea bring to fullest flower.  And what
+a garden of Eden it was, this fatted, clipped, and washen land!  A
+man could camp in any open field with more sense of home and security
+than the stateliest buildings of foreign cities could afford.  And
+the joy was that it was all mine alienably - groomed hedgerow,
+spotless road, decent greystone cottage, serried spinney, tasselled
+copse, apple-bellied hawthorn, and well-grown tree.  A light puff
+of wind - it scattered flakes of may over the gleaming rails - gave
+me a faint whiff as it might have been of fresh cocoanut, and I
+knew that the golden gorse was in bloom somewhere out of sight.
+Linneeus had thanked God on his bended knees when he first saw a
+field of it; and, by the way, the navvy was on his knees, too.  But
+he was by no means praying.  He was purely disgustful.
+
+The doctor was compelled to bend over him, his face towards the
+back of the seat, and from what I had seen I supposed the navvy
+was now dead.  If that were the case it would be time for me to go;
+but I knew that so long as a man trusts himself to the current of
+Circumstance, reaching out for and rejecting nothing that comes his
+way, no harm can overtake him.  It is the contriver, the schemer,
+who is caught by the Law, and never the philosopher.  I knew that
+when the play was played, Destiny herself would move me on from the
+corpse; and I felt very sorry for the doctor.
+
+In the far distance, presumably upon the road that led to
+Framlynghame Admiral, there appeared a vehicle and a horse - the
+one ancient fly that almost every village can produce at need.  This
+thing was advancing, unpaid by me, towards the station; would have
+to pass along the deep-cut lane, below the railway-bridge, and come
+out on the doctor's side.  I was in the centre of things, so all
+sides were alike to me.  Here, then, was my machine from the machine.
+When it arrived; something would happen, or something else.  For the
+rest, I owned my deeply interested soul.
+
+The doctor, by the seat, turned so far as his cramped position
+allowed, his head over his left shoulder, and laid his right hand
+upon his lips.  I threw back my hat and elevated my eyebrows in the
+form of a question.  The doctor shut his eyes and nodded his head
+slowly twice or thrice, beckoning me to come.  I descended
+cautiously, and it was as the signs had told.  The navvy was asleep,
+empty to the lowest notch; yet his hand clutched still the doctor's
+collar, and at the lightest movement (the doctor was really very
+cramped) tightened mechanically, as the hand of a sick woman tightens
+on that of the watcher.  He had dropped, squatting almost upon his
+heels, and, falling lower, had dragged the doctor over to the left.
+
+The doctor thrust his right hand, which was free, into his pocket,
+drew forth some keys, and shook his head.  The navvy gurgled in his
+sleep.  Silently I dived into my pocket, took out one sovereign,
+and held it up between finger and thumb.  Again the doctor shook
+his head.  Money was not what was lacking to his peace.  His bag
+had fallen from the seat to the ground.  He looked towards it, and
+opened his mouth-O-shape.  The catch was not a difficult one, and
+when I had mastered it, the doctor's right forefinger was sawing
+the air.  With an immense caution, I extracted from the bag such a
+knife as they use for cutting collops off legs.  The doctor frowned,
+and with his first and second fingers imitated the action of
+scissors.  Again I searched, and found a most diabolical pair of
+cock-nosed shears, capable of vandyking the interiors of elephants.
+The doctor then slowly lowered his left shoulder till the navvy's
+right wrist was supported by the bench, pausing a moment as the
+spent volcano rumbled anew.  Lower and lower the doctor sank,
+kneeling now by the navvy's side, till his head was on a level
+with, and just in front of, the great hairy fist, and - there was
+no tension on the coat-collar.  Then light dawned on me.
+
+Beginning a little to the right of the spinal column, I cut a huge
+demilune out of his new spring overcoat, bringing it round as far
+under his left side (which was the right side of the navvy) as I
+dared.  Passing thence swiftly to the back of the seat, and reaching
+between the splines, I sawed through the silk-faced front on the
+left-hand side of the coat till the two cuts joined.
+
+Cautiously as the box-turtle of his native heath, the doctor drew
+away sideways and to the right, with the air of a frustrated burglar
+coming out from under a bed, and stood up free, one black diagonal
+shoulder projecting through the grey of his ruined overcoat.  I
+returned the scissors to the bag, snapped the catch, and held all
+out to him as the wheels of the fly rang hollow under the railway
+arch.
+
+It came at a footpace past the wicket-gate of the station, and the
+doctor stopped it with a whisper.  It was going some five miles
+across country to bring home from church some one, - I could not
+catch the name, - because his own carriage-horses were lame.  Its
+destination happened to be the one place in all the world that the
+doctor was most burningly anxious to visit, and he promised the
+driver untold gold to drive to some ancient flame of his - Helen
+Blazes, she was called.
+
+"Aren't you coming, too?" he said, bundling his overcoat into his
+bag.
+
+Now the fly had been so obviously sent to the doctor, and to no
+one else, that I had no concern with it.  Our roads, I saw, divided,
+and there was, further, a need upon me to laugh.
+
+"I shall stay here," I said.  "It's a very pretty country."
+
+"My God!" he murmured, as softly as he shut the door, and I felt
+that it was a prayer.
+
+Then he went out of my life, and I shaped my course for the
+railway-bridge.  It was necessary to pass by the bench once more,
+but the wicket was between us.  The departure of the fly had waked
+the navvy.  He crawled on to the seat, and with malignant eyes
+watched the driver flog down the road.
+
+"The man inside o' that," he called, "'as poisoned me.  'E's a
+body-snatcher.  'E's comin' back again when I'm cold.  'Ere's my
+evidence!"
+
+He waved his share of the overcoat, and I went my way, because I
+was hungry.  Framlynghame Admiral village is a good two miles from
+the station, and I waked the holy calm of the evening every step
+of that way with shouts and yells, casting myself down in the
+flank of the good green hedge when I was too weak to stand.  There
+was an inn, - a blessed inn with a thatched roof, and peonies in
+the garden,- and I ordered myself an upper chamber in which the
+Foresters held their courts for the laughter was not all out of
+me.  A bewildered woman brought me ham and eggs, and I leaned out
+of the mullioned window, and laughed between mouthfuls.  I sat
+long above the beer and the perfect smoke that followed, till the
+lights changed in the quiet street, and I began to think of the
+seven forty-five down, and all that world of the "Arabian Nights"
+I had quitted.
+
+Descending, I passed a giant in moleskins who filled the low-ceiled
+tap-room.  Many empty plates stood before him, and beyond them a
+fringe of the Framlynghame Admiralty, to whom he was unfolding a
+wondrous tale of anarchy, of body-snatching, of bribery, and the
+Valley of the Shadow from the which he was but newly risen.  And as
+he talked he ate, and as he ate he drank, for there was much room
+in him; and anon he paid royally, speaking of Justice and the Law,
+before whom all Englishmen are equal, and all foreigners and
+anarchists vermin and slime.
+
+On my way to the station, he passed me with great strides, his head
+high among the low-flying bats, his feet firm on the packed
+road-metal, his fists clinched, and his breath coming sharply.  There
+was a beautiful smell in the air - the smell of white dust, bruised
+nettles, and smoke, that brings tears to the throat of a man who
+sees his country but seldom - a smell like the echoes of the lost
+talk of lovers; the infinitely suggestive odour of an immemorial
+civilisation.  It was a perfect walk; and, lingering on every step,
+I came to the station just as the one porter lighted the last of
+a truckload of lamps, and set them back in the lamp-room, while he
+dealt tickets to four or five of the population who, not contented
+with their own peace, thought fit to travel.  It was no ticket that
+the navvy seemed to need.  He was sitting on a bench, wrathfully
+grinding a tumbler into fragments with his heel.  I abode in
+obscurity at the end of the platform, interested as ever, thank
+Heaven, in my surroundings.  There was a jar of wheels on the road.
+The navvy rose as they approached, strode through the wicket, and
+laid a hand upon a horse's bridle that brought the beast up on his
+hireling hind legs.  It was the providential fly coming back, and
+for a moment I wondered whether the doctor had been mad enough to
+revisit his practice.
+
+"Get away; you're drunk,"said the driver.
+
+"I'm not," said the navvy.  "I've been waitin' 'ere hours and hours.
+Come out, you beggar inside there!"
+
+"Go on, driver," said a voice I did not know - a crisp, clear,
+English voice.
+
+"All right," said the navvy.  "You wouldn't 'ear me when I was
+polite.  Now will you come?"
+
+There was a chasm in the side of the fly, for he had wrenched the
+door bodily off its hinges, and was feeling within purposefully.
+A well-booted leg rewarded him, and there came out, not with delight,
+hopping on one foot, a round and grey-haired Englishman, from whose
+armpits dropped hymn-books, but from his mouth an altogether
+different service of song.
+
+"Come on, you bloomin' body-snatcher!  You thought I was dead, did
+you?" roared the navvy.  And the respectable gentleman came
+accordingly, inarticulate with rage.
+
+"Ere's a man murderin' the Squire," the driver shouted, and fell
+from his box upon the navvy's neck.
+
+To do them justice, the people of Framlynghame Admiral, so many as
+were on the platform, rallied to the call in the best spirit of
+feudalism.  It was the one porter who beat the navvy on the nose
+with a ticket-punch, but it was the three third-class tickets who
+attached themselves to his legs and freed the captive.
+
+"Send for a constable! lock him up! " said that man, adjusting his
+collar; and unitedly they cast him into the lamp-room, and turned
+the key, while the driver mourned over the wrecked fly.
+
+Till then the navvy, whose only desire was justice, had kept his
+temper nobly.  Then he went Berserk before our amazed eyes.  The
+door of the lamp-room was generously constructed, and would not give
+an inch, but the window he tore from its fastenings and hurled
+outwards.  The one porter counted the damage in a loud voice, and
+the others, arming themselves with agricultural implements from the
+station garden, kept up a ceaseless winnowing before the window,
+themselves backed close to the wall, and bade the prisoner think of
+the gaol.  He answered little to the point, so far as they could
+understand; but seeing that his exit was impeded, he took a lamp
+and hurled it through the wrecked sash.  It fell on the metals and
+went out.  With inconceivable velocity, the others, fifteen in all,
+followed, looking like rockets in the gloom, and with the last (he
+could have had no plan) the Berserk rage left him as the doctor's
+deadly brewage waked up, under the stimulus of violent exercise and
+a very full meal, to one last cataclysmal exhibition, and - we heard
+the whistle of the seven forty-five down.
+
+They were all acutely interested in as much of the wreck as they
+could see, for the station smelt to Heaven of oil, and the engine
+skittered over broken glass like a terrier in a cucumber-frame.
+The guard had to hear of it, and the Squire had his version of the
+brutal assault, and heads were out all along the carriages as I
+found me a seat.
+
+"What is the row?" said a young man, as I entered.  "'Man drunk?"
+
+"Well, the symptoms, so far as my observation has gone, more
+resemble those of Asiatic cholera than anything else," I answered,
+slowly and judicially, that every word might carry weight in the
+appointed scheme of things.  Up till then, you will observe, I had
+taken no part in that war.
+
+He was an Englishman, but he collected his belongings as swiftly
+as had the American, ages before, and leaped upon the platform,
+crying: "Can I be of any service?  I'm a doctor."
+
+>From the lamp-room I heard a wearied voice wailing "Another bloomin'
+doctor! "
+
+And the seven forty-five carried me on, a step nearer to Eternity,
+by the road that is worn and seamed and channelled with the
+passions, and weaknesses, and warring interests of man who is
+immortal and master of his fate.
+
+
+
+
+THE BRUSHWOOD BOY
+
+   Girls and boys, come out to play
+   The moon is shining as bright as day!
+   Leave your supper and leave your sleep,
+   And come with your playfellows out in the street!
+   Up the ladder and down the wall-
+
+A CHILD of three sat up in his crib and screamed at the top of his
+voice, his fists clinched and his eyes full of terror.  At first
+no one heard, for his nursery was in the west wing, and the nurse
+was talking to a gardener among the laurels.  Then the housekeeper
+passed that way, and hurried to soothe him.  He was her special
+pet, and she disapproved of the nurse.
+
+"What was it, then?  What was it, then?  There's nothing to frighten
+him, Georgie dear."
+
+"It was - it was a policeman!  He was on the Down -I saw him!  He
+came in.  Jane said he would."
+
+"Policemen don't come into houses, dearie.  Turn over, and take my
+hand."
+
+"I saw him - on the Down.  He came here.  Where is your hand, Harper?"
+
+The housekeeper waited till the sobs changed to the regular breathing
+of sleep before she stole out.
+
+"Jane, what nonsense have you been telling Master Georgie about
+policemen?"
+
+"I haven't told him anything."
+
+"You have.  He's been dreaming about them."
+
+"We met Tisdall on Dowhead when we were in the donkey-cart this
+morning.  P'r'aps that's what put it into his head."
+
+"Oh!  Now you aren't going to frighten the child into fits with your
+silly tales, and the master know nothing about it.  If ever I catch
+you again," etc.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
+
+A child of six was telling himself stories as he lay in bed.  It was
+a new power, and he kept it a secret.  A month before it had occurred
+to him to carry on a nursery tale left unfinished by his mother, and
+he was delighted to find the tale as it came out of his own head
+just as surprising as though he were listening to it "all new from
+the beginning."  There was a prince in that tale, and he killed
+dragons, but only for one night.  Ever afterwards Georgie dubbed
+himself prince, pasha, giant-killer, and all the rest (you see, he
+could not tell any one, for fear of being laughed at), and his tales
+faded gradually into dreamland, where adventures were so many that
+he could not recall the half of them.  They all began in the same
+way, or, as Georgie explained to the shadows of the night-light,
+there was "the same starting-off place" - a pile of brushwood
+stacked somewhere near a beach; and round this pile Georgie found
+himself running races with little boys and girls.  These ended,
+ships ran high up the dry land and opened into cardboard boxes; or
+gilt-and-green iron railings that surrounded beautiful gardens turned
+all soft and could be walked through and overthrown so long as he
+remembered it was only a dream.  He could never hold that knowledge
+more than a few seconds ere things became real, and instead of
+pushing down houses full of grown-up people (a just revenge), he sat
+miserably upon gigantic door-steps trying to sing the
+multiplication-table up to four times six.
+
+The princess of his tales was a person of wonderful beauty (she came
+from the old illustrated edition of Grimm, now out of print), and
+as she always applauded Georgie's valour among the dragons and
+buffaloes, he gave her the two finest names he had ever heard in his
+life - Annie and Louise, pronounced "Annieanlouise."  When the dreams
+swamped the stories, she would change into one of the little girls
+round the brushwood-pile, still keeping her title and crown.  She
+saw Georgie drown once in a dream-sea by the beach (it was the day
+after he had been taken to bathe in a real sea by his nurse); and he
+said as he sank: "Poor Annieanlouise!  She'll be sorry for me now!"
+But "Annieanlouise," walking slowly on the beach, called, "'Ha! ha!'
+said the duck, laughing," which to a waking mind might not seem to
+bear on the situation.  It consoled Georgie at once, and must have
+been some kind of spell, for it raised the bottom of the deep, and
+he waded out with a twelve-inch flower-pot on each foot.  As he was
+strictly forbidden to meddle with flower-pots in real life, he felt
+triumphantly wicked.
+
+    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
+
+The movements of the grown-ups, whom Georgie tolerated, but did not
+pretend to understand, removed his world, when he was seven years
+old, to a place called "Oxford-on-a-visit.  "Here were huge buildings
+surrounded by vast prairies, with streets of infinite length, and,
+above all, something called the "buttery," which Georgie was dying
+to see, because he knew it must be greasy, and therefore delightful.
+He perceived how correct were his judgments when his nurse led him
+through a stone arch into the presence of an enormously fat man,
+who asked him if he would like some, bread and cheese.  Georgie was
+used to eat all round the clock, so he took what "buttery " gave him,
+and would have taken some brown liquid called "auditale" but that
+his nurse led him away to an afternoon performance of a thing called
+"Pepper's Ghost."  This was intensely thrilling.  People's heads
+came off and flew all over the stage, and skeletons danced bone by
+bone, while Mr. Pepper himself, beyond question a man of the worst,
+waved his arms and flapped a long gown, and in a deep bass voice
+(Georgie had never heard a man sing before) told of his sorrows
+unspeakable.  Some grown-up or other tried to explain that the
+illusion was made with mirrors, and that there was no need to be
+frightened.  Georgie did not know what illusions were, but he did
+know that a mirror was the looking-glass with the ivory handle on
+his mother's dressing-table.  Therefore the "grown-up" was "just
+saying things" after the distressing custom of "grown-ups," and
+Georgie cast about for amusement between scenes.  Next to him sat
+a little girl dressed all in black, her hair combed off her forehead
+exactly like the girl in the book called "Alice in Wonderland,
+"which had been given him on his last birthday.  The little girl
+looked at Georgie, and Georgie looked at her.  There seemed to be
+no need of any further introduction.
+
+"I've got a cut on my thumb," said he.  It was the first work of
+his first real knife, a savage triangular hack, and he esteemed it
+a most valuable possession.
+
+"I'm tho thorry!" she lisped.  "Let me look pleathe."
+
+"There's a di-ack-lum plaster on, but it's all raw under," Georgie
+answered, complying.
+
+"Dothent it hurt?" - her grey eyes were full of pity and interest.
+
+"Awf'ly.  Perhaps it will give me lockjaw."
+
+"It lookth very horrid.  I'm tho thorry!"  She put a forefinger to
+his hand, and held her head sidewise for a better view.
+
+Here the nurse turned, and shook him severely.  "You mustn't talk
+to strange little girls, Master Georgie."
+
+"She isn't strange.  She's very nice.  I like her, an' I've showed
+her my new cut."
+
+"The idea! You change places with me."
+
+She moved him over, and shut out the little girl from his view,
+while the grown-up behind renewed the futile explanations.
+
+"I am not afraid, truly," said the boy, wriggling in despair; "but
+why don't you go to sleep in the afternoons, same as Provost of
+Oriel?"
+
+Georgie had been introduced to a grown-up of that name, who slept
+in his presence without apology.  Georgie understood that he was
+the most important grown-up in Oxford; hence he strove to gild his
+rebuke with flatteries.  This grown-up did not seem to like it, but
+he collapsed, and Georgie lay back in his seat, silent and enraptured.
+Mr. Pepper was singing again, and the deep, ringing voice, the red
+fire, and the misty, waving gown all seemed to be mixed up with the
+little girl who had been so kind about his cut.  When the performance
+was ended she nodded to Georgie, and Georgie nodded in return.  He
+spoke no more than was necessary till bedtime, but meditated on new
+colors and sounds and lights and music and things as far as he
+understood them; the deep-mouthed agony of Mr. Pepper mingling with
+the little girl's lisp.  That night he made a new tale, from which
+he shamelessly removed the Rapunzel-Rapunzel-let-down-your-hair
+princess, gold crown, Grimm edition, and all, and put a new
+Annieanlouise in her place.  So it was perfectly right and natural
+that when he came to the brushwood-pile he should find her waiting
+for him, her hair combed off her forehead more like Alice in
+Wonderland than ever, and the races and adventures began.
+
+Ten years at an English public school do not encourage dreaming.
+Georgie won his growth and chest measurement, and a few other
+things which did not appear in the bills, under a system of cricket,
+foot-ball, and paper-chases, from four to five days a week, which
+provided for three lawful cuts of a ground-ash if any boy absented
+himself from these entertainments.  He became a rumple-collared,
+dusty-hatted fag of the Lower Third, and a light half-back at
+Little Side foot-ball; was pushed and prodded through the slack
+backwaters of the Lower Fourth, where the raffle of a school
+generally accumulates; won his "second-fifteen" cap at foot-ball,
+enjoyed the dignity of a study with two companions in it, and
+began to look forward to office as a sub-prefect.  At last he
+blossomed into full glory as head of the school, ex-officio captain
+of the games; head of his house, where he and his lieutenants
+preserved discipline and decency among seventy boys from twelve to
+seventeen; general arbiter in the quarrels that spring up among
+the touchy Sixth - and intimate friend and ally of the Head himself.
+When he stepped forth in the black jersey, white knickers, and
+black stockings of the First Fifteen, the new match-ball under his
+arm, and his old and frayed cap at the back of his head, the small
+fry of the lower forms stood apart and worshipped, and the "new caps"
+of the team talked to him ostentatiously, that the world might see.
+And so, in summer, when he came back to the pavilion after a slow
+but eminently safe game, it mattered not whether he had made nothing
+or, as once happened, a hundred and three, the school shouted just
+the same, and women-folk who had come to look at the match looked
+at Cottar - Cottar, major; "that's Cottar!"  Above all, he was
+responsible for that thing called the tone of the school, and few
+realise with what passionate devotion a certain type of boy throws
+himself into this work.  Home was a faraway country, full of ponies
+and fishing and shooting, and men-visitors who interfered with
+one's plans; but school was the real world, where things of vital
+importance happened, and crises arose that must be dealt with
+promptly and quietly.  Not for nothing was it written, "Let the
+Consuls look to it that the Republic takes no harm," and Georgie
+was glad to be back in authority when the holidays ended.  Behind
+him, but not too near, was the wise and temperate Head, now
+suggesting the wisdom of the serpent, now counselling the mildness
+of the dove; leading him on to see, more by half-hints than by any
+direct word, how boys and men are all of a piece, and how he who
+can handle the one will assuredly in time control the other.
+
+For the rest, the school was not encouraged to dwell on its emotions,
+but rather to keep in hard condition, to avoid false quantities,
+and to enter the army direct, without the help of the expensive
+London crammer, under whose roof young blood learns too much.
+Cottar, major, went the way of hundreds before him.  The Head gave
+him six months' final polish, taught him what kind of answers best
+please a certain kind of examiners, and handed him over to the
+properly constituted authorities, who passed him into Sandhurst.
+Here he had sense enough to see that he was in the Lower Third once
+more, and behaved with respect toward his seniors, till they in turn
+respected him, and he was promoted to the rank of corporal, and sat
+in authority over mixed peoples with all the vices of men and boys
+combined.  His reward was another string of athletic cups, a
+good-conduct sword, and, at last, Her Majesty's commission as a
+subaltern in a first-class line regiment.  He did not know that
+he bore with him from school and college a character worth much
+fine gold, but was pleased to find his mess so kindly.  He had
+plenty of money of his own; his training had set the public school
+mask upon his face, and had taught him how many were the "things no
+fellow can do."  By virtue of the same training he kept his pores
+open and his mouth shut.
+
+The regular working of the Empire shifted his world to India, where
+he tasted utter loneliness in subaltern's quarters, - one room and
+one bullock-trunk, - and, with his mess, learned the new life from
+the beginning.  But there were horses in the land-ponies at
+reasonable price; there was polo for such as could afford it; there
+were the disreputable remnants of a pack of hounds; and Cottar
+worried his way along without too much despair.  It dawned on him
+that a regiment in India was nearer the chance of active service
+than he had conceived, and that a man might as well study his
+profession.  A major of the new school backed this idea with
+enthusiasm, and he and Cottar accumulated a library of military
+works, and read and argued and disputed far into the nights.  But
+the adjutant said the old thing: "Get to know your men, young un,
+and they 'll follow you anywhere.  That's all you want - know your
+men."  Cottar thought he knew them fairly well at cricket and the
+regimental sports, but he never realised the true inwardness of
+them till he was sent off with a detachment of twenty to sit down
+in a mud fort near a rushing river which was spanned by a bridge
+of boats.  When the floods came they went forth and hunted strayed
+pontoons along the banks.  Otherwise there was nothing to do, and
+the men got drunk, gambled, and quarrelled.  They were a sickly
+crew, for a junior subaltern is by custom saddled with the worst
+men.  Cottar endured their rioting as long as he could, and then
+sent down-country for a dozen pairs of boxing-gloves.
+
+"I wouldn't blame you for fightin'," said he, "if you only knew how
+to use your hands; but you don't.  Take these things, and I'll show
+you."  The men appreciated his efforts.  Now, instead of blaspheming
+and swearing at a comrade, and threatening to shoot him, they could
+take him apart, and soothe themselves to exhaustion.  As one
+explained whom Cottar found with a shut eye and a diamond-shaped
+mouth spitting blood through an embrasure:  "We tried it with the
+gloves, sir, for twenty minutes, and that done us no good, sir.
+Then we took off the gloves and tried it that way for another twenty
+minutes, same as you showed us, sir, an' that done us a world o'
+good.  'T wasn't fightin', sir; there was a bet on."
+
+Cottar dared not laugh, but he invited his men to other sports, such
+as racing across country in shirt and trousers after a trail of
+torn paper, and to single-stick in the evenings, till the native
+population, who had a lust for sport in every form, wished to know
+whether the white men understood wrestling.  They sent in an
+ambassador, who took the soldiers by the neck and threw them about
+the dust; and the entire command were all for this new game.  They
+spent money on learning new falls and holds, which was better than
+buying other doubtful commodities; and the peasantry grinned five
+deep round the tournaments.
+
+That detachment, who had gone up in bullock-carts, returned to
+headquarters at an average rate of thirty miles a day, fair
+heel-and-toe; no sick, no prisoners, and no court martials pending.
+They scattered themselves among their friends, singing the praises
+of their lieutenant and looking for causes of offense.
+
+"How did you do it, young un?" the adjutant asked.
+
+"Oh, I sweated the beef off 'em, and then I sweated some muscle on
+to 'em.  It was rather a lark."
+
+"If that's your way of lookin' at it, we can give you all the larks
+you want.  Young Davies isn't feelin' quite fit, and he's next for
+detachment duty.  Care to go for him?"
+
+"'Sure he wouldn't mind?  I don't want to shove myself forward, you
+know."
+
+"You needn't bother on Davies's account.  We'll give you the
+sweepin's of the corps, and you can see what you can make of 'em."
+
+"All right," said Cottar.  "It's better fun than loafin' about
+cantonments."
+
+"Rummy thing," said the adjutant, after Cottar had returned to his
+wilderness with twenty other devils worse than the first.  "If
+Cottar only knew it, half the women in the station would give their
+eyes - confound 'em! - to have the young un in tow."
+
+"That accounts for Mrs. Elery sayin' I was workin' my nice new boy
+too hard," said a wing commander.
+
+"Oh, yes; and 'Why doesn't he come to the bandstand in the evenings?'
+and 'Can't I get him to make up a four at tennis with the Hammon
+girls?'" the adjutant snorted.  "Look at young Davies makin' an ass
+of himself over mutton-dressed-as-lamb old enough to be his mother!"
+
+"No one can accuse young Cottar of runnin' after women, white or
+black," the major replied thoughtfully.  "But, then, that's the kind
+that generally goes the worst mucker in the end."
+
+"Not Cottar.  I've only run across one of his muster before - a
+fellow called Ingles, in South Africa.  He was just the same
+hard trained, athletic-sports build of animal.  Always kept himself
+in the pink of condition.  Didn't do him much good, though.  'Shot
+at Wesselstroom the week before Majuba.  Wonder how the young un
+will lick his detachment into shape."
+
+Cottar turned up six weeks later, on foot, with his pupils.  He never
+told his experiences, but the men spoke enthusiastically, and
+fragments of it leaked back to the colonel through sergeants, batmen,
+and the like.
+
+There was great jealousy between the first and second detachments,
+but the men united in adoring Cottar, and their way of showing it
+was by sparing him all the trouble that men know how to make for an
+unloved officer.  He sought popularity as little as he had sought
+it at school, and therefore it came to him.  He favoured no one -
+not even when the company sloven pulled the company cricket-match
+out of the fire with an unexpected forty-three at the last moment.
+There was very little getting round him, for he seemed to know by
+instinct exactly when and where to head off a malingerer; but he
+did not forget that the difference between a dazed and sulky junior
+of the upper school and a bewildered, browbeaten lump of a private
+fresh from the depot was very small indeed.  The sergeants, seeing
+these things, told him secrets generally hid from young officers.
+His words were quoted as barrack authority on bets in canteen and
+at tea; and the veriest shrew of the corps, bursting with charges
+against other women who had used the cooking-ranges out of turn,
+forbore to speak when Cottar, as the regulations ordained, asked of
+a morning if there were "any complaints."
+
+"I'm full o' complaints," said Mrs. Corporal Morrison, "an' I'd kill
+O'Halloran's fat sow of a wife any day, but ye know how it is.  'E
+puts 'is head just inside the door, an' looks down 'is blessed nose
+so bashful, an' 'e whispers, 'Any complaints'  Ye can't complain after
+that.  I want to kiss him.  Some day I think I will.  Heigh-ho! she'll
+be a lucky woman that gets Young Innocence.  See 'im now, girls.  Do
+ye blame me?"
+
+Cottar was cantering across to polo, and he looked a very
+satisfactory figure of a man as he gave easily to the first excited
+bucks of his pony, and slipped over a low mud wall to the
+practice-ground.  There were more than Mrs. Corporal Morrison who
+felt as she did.  But Cottar was busy for eleven hours of the day.
+He did not care to have his tennis spoiled by petticoats in the
+court; and after one long afternoon at a garden-party, he explained
+to his major that this sort of thing was " futile priffle," and the
+major laughed.  Theirs was not a married mess, except for the
+colonel's wife, and Cottar stood in awe of the good lady.  She said
+"my regiment," and the world knows what that means.  None the less
+ when they wanted her to give away the prizes after a shooting-match,
+and she refused because one of the prize-winners was married to a
+girl who had made a jest of her behind her broad back, the mess
+ordered Cottar to "tackle her," in his best calling-kit.  This he
+did, simply and laboriously, and she gave way altogether.
+
+"She only wanted to know the facts of the case," he explained.  "I
+just told her, and she saw at once."
+
+"Ye-es," said the adjutant.  "I expect that's what she did.  Comin'
+to the Fusiliers' dance to-night, Galahad?"
+
+"No, thanks.  I've got a fight on with the major."  The virtuous
+apprentice sat up till midnight in the major's quarters, with a
+stop-watch and a pair of compasses, shifting little painted
+lead-blocks about a four-inch map.
+
+Then he turned in and slept the sleep of innocence, which is full
+of healthy dreams.  One peculiarity of his dreams he noticed at the
+beginning of his second hot weather.  Two or three times a month
+they duplicated or ran in series.  He would find himself sliding
+into dreamland by the same road - a road that ran along a beach
+near a pile of brushwood.  To the right lay the sea, sometimes at
+full tide, sometimes withdrawn to the very horizon; but he knew it
+for the same sea.  By that road he would travel over a swell of
+rising ground covered with short, withered grass, into valleys of
+wonder and unreason.  Beyond the ridge, which was crowned with some
+sort of street-lamp, anything was possible; but up to the lamp it
+seemed to him that he knew the road as well as he knew the
+parade-ground.  He learned to look forward to the place; for, once
+there, he was sure of a good night's rest, and Indian hot weather
+can be rather trying.  First, shadowy under closing eyelids, would
+come the outline of the brushwood-pile; next the white sand of the
+beach-road, almost overhanging the black, changeful sea; then the
+turn inland and uphill to the single light.  When he was unrestful
+for any reason, he would tell himself how he was sure to get there
+ - sure to get there - if he shut his eyes and surrendered to the
+drift of things.  But one night after a foolishly hard hour's polo
+(the thermometer was 94� in his quarters at ten o'clock), sleep
+stood away from him altogether, though he did his best to find the
+well-known road, the point where true sleep began.  At last he saw
+the brushwood-pile, and hurried along to the ridge, for behind him
+he felt was the wide-awake, sultry world.  He reached the lamp in
+safety, tingling with drowsiness, when a policeman - a common
+country policeman - sprang up before him and touched him on the
+shoulder ere he could dive into the dim valley below.  He was
+filled with terror, - the hopeless terror of dreams, - for the
+policeman said, in the awful, distinct voice of dream-people, "I am
+Policeman Day coming back from the City of Sleep.  You come with
+me."  Georgie knew it was true - that just beyond him in the valley
+lay the lights of the City of Sleep, where he would have been
+sheltered, and that this Policeman-Thing had full power and
+authority to head him back to miserable wakefulness.  He found
+himself looking at the moonlight on the wall, dripping with fright;
+and he never overcame that horror, though he met the Policeman
+several times that hot weather, and his coming was the forerunner
+of a bad night.
+
+But other dreams-perfectly absurd ones-filled him with an
+incommunicable delight.  All those that he remembered began by the
+brushwood-pile.  For instance, he found a small clockwork steamer
+(he had noticed it many nights before) lying by the sea-road, and
+stepped into it, whereupon it moved with surpassing swiftness over
+an absolutely level sea.  This was glorious, for he felt he was
+exploring great matters; and it stopped by a lily carved in stone,
+which, most naturally, floated on the water.  Seeing the lily was
+labelled "Hong-Kong," Georgie said:  "Of course.  This is precisely
+what I expected Hong-Kong would be like.  How magnificent!"
+Thousands of miles farther on it halted at yet another stone lily,
+labelled "Java."; and this, again, delighted him hugely, because he
+knew that now he was at the world's end.  But the little boat ran
+on and on till it lay in a deep fresh-water lock, the sides of
+which were carven marble, green with moss.  Lilypads lay on the
+water, and reeds arched above.  Some one moved among the reeds -
+some one whom Georgie knew he had travelled to this world's end to
+reach.  Therefore everything was entirely well with him.  He was
+unspeakably happy, and vaulted over the ship's side to find this
+person.  When his feet touched that still water, it changed, with
+the rustle of unrolling maps, to nothing less than a sixth quarter
+of the globe, beyond the most remote imagining of man - a place
+where islands were coloured yellow and blue, their lettering strung
+across their faces.  They gave on unknown seas, and Georgie's urgent
+desire was to return swiftly across this floating atlas to known
+bearings.  He told himself repeatedly that it was no good to hurry;
+but still he hurried desperately, and the islands slipped and slid
+under his feet; the straits yawned and widened, till he found
+himself utterly lost in the world's fourth dimension, with no hope
+of return.  Yet only a little distance away he could see the old
+world with the rivers and mountain-chains marked according to the
+Sandhurst rules of mapmaking.  Then that person for whom he had
+come to the Lily Lock (that was its name) ran up across unexplored
+territories, and showed him away.  They fled hand in hand till they
+reached a road that spanned ravines, and ran along the edge of
+precipices, and was tunnelled through mountains.  "This goes to our
+brushwood-pile," said his companion; and all his trouble was at an
+end.  He took a pony, because he understood that this was the
+Thirty-Mile Ride and he must ride swiftly, and raced through the
+clattering tunnels and round the curves, always downhill, till he
+heard the sea to his left, and saw it raging under a full moon,
+against sandy cliffs.  It was heavy going, but he recognised the
+nature of the country, the dark-purple downs inland, and the bents
+that whistled in the wind.  The road was eaten away in places, and
+the sea lashed at him-black, foamless tongues of smooth and glossy
+rollers; but he was sure that there was less danger from the sea
+than from "Them," whoever "They" were, inland to his right.  He knew,
+too, that he would be safe if he could reach the down with the lamp
+on it.  This came as he expected: he saw the one light a mile ahead
+along the beach, dismounted, turned to the right, walked quietly
+over to the brushwood-pile, found the little steamer had returned
+to the beach whence he had unmoored it, and - must have fallen
+asleep, for he could remember no more.  "I'm gettin' the hang of
+the geography of that place," he said to himself, as he shaved next
+morning.  "I must have made some sort of circle.  Let's see.  The
+Thirty-Mile Ride (now how the deuce did I know it was called the
+Thirty-Mile, Ride?) joins the sea-road beyond the first down where
+the lamp is.  And that atlas-country lies at the back of the
+Thirty-Mile Ride, somewhere out to the right beyond the hills and
+tunnels.  Rummy things, dreams.  'Wonder what makes mine fit into
+each other so?"
+
+He continued on his solid way through the recurring duties of the
+seasons.  The regiment was shifted to another station, and he
+enjoyed road-marching for two months, with a good deal of mixed
+shooting thrown in, and when they reached their new cantonments
+he became a member of the local Tent Club, and chased the mighty
+boar on horseback with a short stabbing-spear.  There he met the
+mahseer of the Poonch, beside whom the tarpon is as a herring, and
+he who lands him can say that he is a fisherman.  This was as new
+and as fascinating as the big-game shooting that fell to his portion,
+when he had himself photographed for the mother's benefit, sitting
+on the flank of his first tiger.
+
+Then the adjutant was promoted, and Cottar rejoiced with him, for
+he admired the adjutant greatly, and marvelled who might be big
+enough to fill his place; so that he nearly collapsed when the
+mantle fell on his own shoulders, and the colonel said a few sweet
+things that made him blush.  An adjutant's position does not differ
+materially from that of head of the school, and Cottar stood in the
+same relation to the colonel as he had to his old Head in England.
+Only, tempers wear out in hot weather, and things were said and done
+that tried him sorely, and he made glorious blunders, from which the
+regimental sergeant-major pulled him with a loyal soul and a shut
+mouth.  Slovens and incompetents raged against him; the weak-minded
+strove to lure him from the ways of justice; the small-minded - yea,
+men whom Cottar believed would never do "things no fellow can do"
+ - imputed motives mean and circuitous to actions that he had not
+spent a thought upon; and he tasted injustice, and it made him very
+sick.  But his consolation came on parade, when he looked down the
+full companies, and reflected how few were in hospital or cells,
+and wondered when the time would come to try the machine of his
+love and labour.
+
+But they needed and expected the whole of a man's working-day, and
+maybe three or four hours of the night.  Curiously enough, he never
+dreamed about the regiment as he was popularly supposed to.  The
+mind, set free from the day's doings, generally ceased working
+altogether, or, if it moved at all, carried him along the old
+beach-road to the downs, the lamp-post, and, once in a while, to
+terrible Policeman Day.  The second time that he returned to the
+world's lost continent (this was a dream that repeated itself again
+and again, with variations, on the same ground) he knew that if he
+only sat still the person from the Lily Lock would help him, and he
+was not disappointed.  Sometimes he was trapped in mines of vast
+depth hollowed out of the heart of the world, where men in torment
+chanted echoing songs; and he heard this person coming along through
+the galleries, and everything was made safe and delightful.  They
+met again in low-roofed Indian railway-carriages that halted in a
+garden surrounded by gilt-and-green railings, where a mob of stony
+white people, all unfriendly, sat at breakfast-tables covered with
+roses, and separated Georgie from his companion, while underground
+voices sang deep-voiced songs.  Georgie was filled with enormous
+despair till they two met again.  They foregathered in the middle
+of an endless, hot tropic night, and crept into a huge house that
+stood, he knew, somewhere north of the railway-station where the
+people ate among the roses.  It was surrounded with gardens, all
+moist and dripping; and in one room, reached through leagues of
+whitewashed passages, a Sick Thing lay in bed.  Now the least noise,
+Georgie knew, would unchain some waiting horror, and his companion
+knew it, too; but when their eyes met across the bed, Georgie was
+disgusted to see that she was a child - a little girl in strapped
+shoes, with her black hair combed back from her forehead.
+
+"What disgraceful folly!" he thought.  "Now she could do nothing
+whatever if Its head came off."
+
+Then the Thing coughed, and the ceiling shattered down in plaster
+on the mosquito-netting, and "They" rushed in from all quarters.
+He dragged the child through the stifling garden, voices chanting
+behind them, and they rode the Thirty-Mile Ride under whip and spur
+along the sandy beach by the booming sea, till they came to the
+downs, the lamp-post, and the brushwood-pile, which was safety.
+Very often dreams would break up about them in this fashion, and
+they would be separated, to endure awful adventures alone.  But the
+most amusing times were when he and she had a clear understanding
+that it was all make-believe, and walked through mile-wide roaring
+rivers without even taking off their shoes, or set light to populous
+cities to see how they would burn, and were rude as any children to
+the vague shadows met in their rambles.  Later in the night they
+were sure to suffer for this, either at the hands of the Railway
+People eating among the roses, or in the tropic uplands at the far
+end of the Thirty-Mile Ride.  Together, this did no much affright
+them; but often Georgie would hear her shrill cry of "Boy!  Boy!"
+half a world away, and hurry to her rescue before "They" maltreated
+her.
+
+He and she explored the dark-purple downs as far inland from the
+brushwood-pile as they dared, but that was always a dangerous matter.
+The interior was filled with "Them," and "They" went about singing
+in the hollows, and Georgie and she felt safer on or near the
+seaboard.  So thoroughly had he come to know the place of his dreams
+that even waking he accepted it as a real country, and made a rough
+sketch of it.  He kept his own counsel, of course; but the
+permanence of the land puzzled him.  His ordinary dreams were as
+formless and as fleeting as any healthy dreams could be, but once at
+the brushwood-pile he moved within known limits and could see where
+he was going.  There were months at a time when nothing notable
+crossed his sleep.  Then the dreams would come in a batch of five or
+six, and next morning the map that he kept in his writing case would
+be written up to date, for Georgie was a most methodical person.
+There was, indeed, a danger - his seniors said so - of his developing
+into a regular "Auntie Fuss" of an adjutant, and when an officer
+once takes to old-maidism there is more hope for the virgin of
+seventy than for him.
+
+But fate sent the change that was needed, in the shape of a little
+winter campaign on the Border, which, after the manner of little
+campaigns, flashed out into a very ugly war; and Cottar's regiment
+was chosen among the first.
+
+"Now," said a major, "this'll shake the cobwebs out of us all -
+especially you, Galahad; and we can see what your hen-with-one-chick
+attitude has done for the regiment."
+
+Cottar nearly wept with joy as the campaign went forward.  They
+were fit - physically fit beyond the other troops; they were good
+children in camp, wet or dry, fed or unfed; and they followed their
+officers with the quick suppleness and trained obedience of a
+first-class foot-ball fifteen.  They were cut off from their apology
+for a base, and cheerfully cut their way back to it again; they
+crowned and cleaned out hills full of the enemy with the precision
+of well-broken dogs of chase; and in the hour of retreat, when,
+hampered with the sick and wounded of the column, they were
+persecuted down eleven miles of waterless valley, they, serving as
+rearguard, covered themselves with a great glory in the eyes of
+fellow-professionals.  Any regiment can advance, but few know how
+to retreat with a sting in the tail.  Then they turned to made
+roads, most often under fire, and dismantled some inconvenient mud
+redoubts.  They were the last corps to be withdrawn when the
+rubbish of the campaign was all swept up; and after a month in
+standing camp, which tries morals severely, they departed to their
+own place in column of fours, singing:
+
+                "'E's goin' to do without 'em -
+                   Don't want 'em any more;
+                 'E's goin' to do without 'em,
+                    As 'e's often done before.
+                 'E's goin' to be a martyr
+                    On a 'ighly novel plan,
+                  An' all the boys and girls will say,
+                  'Ow! what a nice young man-man-man!
+                  Ow! what a nice young man!'"
+
+There came out a "Gazette" in which Cottar found that he had been
+behaving with "courage and coolness and discretion" in all his
+capacities; that he had assisted the wounded under fire, and blown
+in a gate, also under fire.  Net result, his captaincy and a
+brevet majority, coupled with the Distinguished Service Order.
+
+As to his wounded, he explained that they were both heavy men, whom
+he could lift more easily than any one else.  "Otherwise, of course,
+I should have sent out one of my men; and, of course, about that
+gate business, we were safe the minute we were well under the walls."
+But this did not prevent his men from cheering him furiously whenever
+they saw him, or the mess from giving him a dinner on the eve of his
+departure to England.  (A year's leave was among the things he had
+"snaffled out of the campaign," I to use his own words.)  The doctor,
+who had taken quite as much as was good for him, quoted poetry about
+"a good blade carving the casques of men," and so on, and everybody
+told Cottar that he was an excellent person; but when he rose to
+make his maiden speech they shouted so that he was understood to say,
+"It isn't any use tryin' to speak with you chaps rottin' me like
+this.  Let's have some pool."
+
+    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *   *
+
+It is not unpleasant to spend eight-and-twenty days in an easy-going
+steamer on warm waters, in the company of a woman who lets you see
+that you are head and shoulders superior to the rest of the world,
+even though that woman may be, and most often is, ten counted years
+your senior.  P.O. boats are not lighted with the disgustful
+particularity of Atlantic liners.  There is more phosphorescence at
+the bows, and greater silence and darkness by the hand-steering
+gear aft.
+
+Awful things might have happened to Georgie but for the little fact
+that he had never studied the first principles of the game he was
+expected to play.  So when Mrs. Zuleika, at Aden, told him how
+motherly an interest she felt in his welfare, medals, brevet, and
+all, Georgie took her at the foot of the letter, and promptly talked
+of his own mother, three hundred miles nearer each day, of his home,
+and so forth, all the way up the Red Sea.  It was much easier than
+he had supposed to converse with a woman for an hour at a time.
+Then Mrs. Zuleika, turning from parental affection, spoke of love
+in the abstract as a thing not unworthy of study, and in discreet
+twilights after dinner demanded confidences.  Georgie would have
+been delighted to supply them, but he had none, and did not know it
+was his duty to manufacture them.  Mrs. Zuleika expressed surprise
+and unbelief, and asked - those questions which deep asks of deep.
+She learned all that was necessary to conviction, and, being very
+much a woman, resumed (Georgie never knew that she had abandoned)
+the motherly attitude.
+
+"Do you know," she said, somewhere in the Mediterranean, "I think
+you're the very dearest boy I have ever met in my life, and I'd like
+you to remember me a little.  You will when you are older, but I
+want you to remember me now.  You'll make some girl very happy."
+
+"Oh!  Hope so," said Georgie, gravely; "but there's heaps of time
+for marryin' an' all that sort of thing, ain't there?"
+
+"That depends.  Here are your bean-bags for the Ladies' Competition.
+I think I'm growing too old to care for these tamashas."
+
+They were getting up sports, and Georgie was on the committee.  He
+never noticed how perfectly the bags were sewn, but another woman
+did, and smiled - once.  He liked Mrs. Zuleika greatly.  She was a
+bit old, of course, but uncommonly nice.  There was no nonsense
+about her.
+
+A few nights after they passed Gibraltar his dream returned to him.
+She who waited by the brushwood-pile was no longer a little girl,
+but a woman with black hair that grew into a "widow's peak," combed
+back from her forehead.  He knew her for the child in black, the
+companion of the last six years, and, as it had been in the time of
+the meetings on the Lost Continent, he was filled with delight
+unspeakable.  "They," for some dreamland reason, were friendly or
+had gone away that night, and the two flitted together over all
+their country, from the brushwood-pile up the Thirty-Mile Ride,
+till they saw the House of the Sick Thing, a pin-point in the
+distance to the left; stamped through the Railway Waiting-room
+where the roses lay on the spread breakfast-tables; and returned,
+by the ford and the city they had once burned for sport, to the
+great swells of the downs under the lamp-post.  Wherever they moved
+a strong singing followed them underground, but this night there
+was no panic.  All the land was empty except for themselves, and at
+the last (they were sitting by the lamp-post hand in hand) she
+turned and kissed him.  He woke with a start, staring at the waving
+curtain of the cabin door; he could almost have sworn that the kiss
+was real.
+
+Next morning the ship was rolling in a Biscay sea, and people were
+not happy; but as Georgie came to breakfast, shaven, tubbed, and
+smelling of soap, several turned to look at him because of the light
+in his eyes and the splendour of his countenance.
+
+"Well, you look beastly fit," snapped a neighbour.  "Any one left
+you a legacy in the middle of the Bay?"
+
+Georgie reached for the curry, with a seraphic grin.  "I suppose
+it's the gettin' so near home, and all that.  I do feel rather
+festive this mornin.  'Rolls a bit, doesn't she?"
+
+Mrs. Zuleika stayed in her cabin till the end of the voyage, when
+she left without bidding him farewell, and wept passionately on the
+dock-head for pure joy of meeting her children, who, she had often
+said, were so like their father.
+
+Georgie headed for his own country, wild with delight of his first
+long furlough after the lean seasons.  Nothing was changed in that
+orderly life, from the coachman who met him at the station to the
+white peacock that stormed at the carriage from the stone wall above
+the shaven lawns.  The house took toll of him with due regard to
+precedence - first the mother; then the father; then the housekeeper,
+who wept and praised God; then the butler, and so on down to the
+under-keeper, who had been dogboy in Georgie's youth, and called
+him "Master Georgie," and was reproved by the groom who had taught
+Georgie to ride.
+
+"Not a thing changed," he sighed contentedly, when the three of them
+sat down to dinner in the late sunlight, while the rabbits crept out
+upon the lawn below the cedars, and the big trout in the ponds by
+the home paddock rose for their evening meal.
+
+"Our changes are all over, dear," cooed the mother; "and now I am
+getting used to your size and your tan (you're very brown, Georgie),
+I see you haven't changed in the least.  You're exactly like the
+pater."
+
+The father beamed on this man after his own heart, - "youngest major
+in the army, and should have had the V.C., sir," - and the butler
+listened with his professional mask off when Master Georgie spoke
+of war as it is waged to-day, and his father cross-questioned.
+
+They went out on the terrace to smoke among the roses, and the shadow
+of the old house lay long across the wonderful English foliage,
+which is the only living green in the world.
+
+"Perfect!  By Jove, it's perfect!"  Georgie was looking at the
+round-bosomed woods beyond the home paddock, where the white pheasant
+boxes were ranged; and the golden air was full of a hundred sacred
+scents and sounds.  Georgie felt his father's arm tighten in his.
+
+"It's not half bad - but hodie mihi, cras tibi, isn't it?  I suppose
+you'll be turning up some fine day with a girl under your arm, if
+you haven't one now, eh?"
+
+"You can make your mind easy, sir.  I haven't one."
+
+" Not in all these years?" said the mother.
+
+"I hadn't time, mummy.  They keep a man pretty busy, these days, in
+the service, and most of our mess are unmarried, too."
+
+"But you must have met hundreds in society - at balls, and so on?"
+
+"I'm like the Tenth, mummy: I don't dance."
+
+"Don't dance!  What have you been doing with yourself, then - backing
+other men's bills?" said the father.
+
+"Oh, yes; I've done a little of that too; but you see, as things are
+now, a man has all his work cut out for him to keep abreast of his
+profession, and my days were always too full to let me lark about
+half the night."
+
+"Hmm!" - suspiciously.
+
+"It's never too late to learn.  We ought to give some kind of
+housewarming for the people about, now you've come back.  Unless you
+want to go straight up to town, dear?"
+
+"No.  I don't want anything better than this.  Let's sit still and
+enjoy ourselves.  I suppose there will be something for me to ride
+if I look for it?"
+
+"Seeing I've been kept down to the old brown pair for the last six
+weeks because all the others were being got ready for Master Georgie,
+I should say there might be," the father chuckled.  "They're
+reminding me in a hundred ways that I must take the second place now."
+
+"Brutes!"
+
+"The pater doesn't mean it, dear; but every one has been trying to
+make your home-coming a success; and you do like it, don't you?"
+
+"Perfect!  Perfect!  There's no place like England - when you 've
+done your work."
+
+"That's the proper way to look at it, my son."
+
+And so up and down the flagged walk till their shadows grew long in
+the moonlight, and the mother went indoors and played such songs as
+a small boy once clamoured for, and the squat silver candlesticks
+were brought in, and Georgie climbed to the two rooms in the west
+wing that had been his nursery and his playroom in the beginning.
+Then who should come to tuck him up for the night but the mother?
+And she sat down on the bed, and they talked for a long hour, as
+mother and son should, if there is to be any future for the Empire.
+With a simple woman's deep guile she asked questions and suggested
+answers that should have waked some sign in the face on the pillow,
+and there was neither quiver of eyelid nor quickening of breath,
+neither evasion nor delay in reply.  So she blessed him and kissed
+him on the mouth, which is not always a mother's property, and said
+something to her husband later, at which he laughed profane and
+incredulous laughs.
+
+All the establishment waited on Georgie next morning, from the
+tallest six-year-old, "with a mouth like a kid glove, Master Georgie,"
+to the under-keeper strolling carelessly along the horizon, Georgie's
+pet rod in his hand, and "There's a four-pounder risin' below the
+lasher.  You don't 'ave 'em in Injia, Mast-Major Georgie."  It was
+all beautiful beyond telling, even though the mother insisted on
+taking him out in the landau (the leather had the hot Sunday smell
+of his youth) and showing him off to her friends at all the houses
+for six miles round; and the pater bore him up to town and a lunch
+at the club, where he introduced him, quite carelessly, to not less
+than thirty ancient warriors whose sons were not the youngest majors
+in the army and had not the D.S.O.  After that it was Georgie's turn;
+and remembering his friends, he filled up the house with that kind
+of officer who live in cheap lodgings at Southsea or Montpelier
+Square, Brompton - good men all, but not well off.  The mother
+perceived that they needed girls to play with; and as there was no
+scarcity of girls, the house hummed like a dovecote in spring.  They
+tore up the place for amateur theatricals; they disappeared in the
+gardens when they ought to have been rehearsing; they swept off
+every available horse and vehicle, especially the governess-cart and
+the fat pony; they fell into the trout-ponds; they picnicked and
+they tennised; and they sat on gates in the twilight, two by two,
+and Georgie found that he was not in the least necessary to their
+entertainment.
+
+"My word!" said he, when he saw the last of their dear backs.  "They
+told me they've enjoyed 'emselves, but they haven't done half the
+things they said they would."
+
+"I know they've enjoyed themselves - immensely," said the mother.
+"You're a public benefactor, dear."
+
+"Now we can be quiet again, can't we?"
+
+"Oh, quite.  I've a very dear friend of mine that I want you to know.
+She couldn't come with the house so full, because she's an invalid,
+and she was away when you first came.  She's a Mrs. Lacy."
+
+"Lacy!  I don't remember the name about here."
+
+"No; they came after you went to India - from Oxford.  Her husband
+died there, and she lost some money, I believe.  They bought The
+Firs on the Bassett Road.  She's a very sweet woman, and we're very
+fond of them both."
+
+"She's a widow, didn't you say?"
+
+"She has a daughter.  Surely I said so, dear?"
+
+"Does she fall into trout-ponds, and gas and giggle, and 'Oh, Major
+Cottah!' and all that sort of thing?"
+
+"No, indeed.  She's a very quiet girl, and very musical.  She always
+came over here with her music-books - composing, you know; and she
+generally works all day, so you won't - "
+
+"'Talking about Miriam?" said the pater, coming up.  The mother edged
+toward him within elbow-reach.  There was no finesse about Georgie's
+father.  "Oh, Miriam's a dear girl.  Plays beautifully.  Rides
+beautifully, too.  She's a regular pet of the household.  Used to
+call me - "  The elbow went home, and ignorant but obedient always,
+the pater shut himself off.
+
+"What used she to call you, sir?"
+
+"All sorts of pet names.  I'm very fond of Miriam."
+
+"Sounds Jewish - Miriam."
+
+"Jew!  You'll be calling yourself a Jew next.  She's one of the
+Herefordshire Lacys.  When her aunt dies - "  Again the elbow.
+
+"Oh, you won't see anything of her, Georgie.  She's busy with her
+music or her mother all day.  Besides, you're going up to town
+tomorrow, aren't you?  I thought you said something about an
+Institute meeting?" The mother spoke.
+
+"Go up to town now!  What nonsense!"  Once more the pater was shut
+off.
+
+"I had some idea of it, but I'm not quite sure," said the son of
+the house.  Why did the mother try to get him away because a musical
+girl and her invalid parent were expected?  He did not approve of
+unknown females calling his father pet names.  He would observe these
+pushing persons who had been only seven years in the county.
+
+All of which the delighted mother read in his countenance, herself
+keeping an air of sweet disinterestedness.
+
+"They'll be here this evening for dinner.  I'm sending the carriage
+over for them, and they won't stay more than a week."
+
+"Perhaps I shall go up to town.  I don't quite know yet."  Georgie
+moved away irresolutely.  There was a lecture at the United Services
+Institute on the supply of ammunition in the field, and the one man
+whose theories most irritated Major Cottar would deliver it.  A
+heated discussion was sure to follow, and perhaps he might find
+himself moved to speak.  He took his rod that afternoon and went
+down to thrash it out among the trout.
+
+"Good sport, dear!" said the mother, from the terrace.
+
+"Fraid it won't be, mummy.  All those men from town, and the girls
+particularly, have put every trout off his feed for weeks.  There
+isn't one of 'em that cares for fishin' - really.  Fancy stampin'
+and shoutin' on the bank, and tellin' every fish for half a mile
+exactly what you're goin' to do, and then chuckin' a brute of a fly
+at him!  By Jove, it would scare me if I was a trout!"
+
+But things were not as bad as he had expected.  The black gnat was
+on the water, and the water was strictly preserved.  A
+three-quarter-pounder at the second cast set him for the campaign,
+and he worked down-stream, crouching behind the reed and meadowsweet;
+creeping between a hornbeam hedge and a foot-wide strip of bank,
+where he could see the trout, but where they could not distinguish
+him from the background; lying almost on his stomach to switch the
+blue-upright sidewise through the checkered shadows of a gravelly
+ripple under overarching trees.  But he had known every inch of the
+water since he was four feet high.  The aged and astute between sunk
+roots, with the large and fat that lay in the frothy scum below some
+strong rush of water, sucking as lazily as carp, came to trouble in
+their turn, at the hand that imitated so delicately the flicker and
+wimple of an egg-dropping fly.  Consequently, Georgie found himself
+five miles from home when he ought to have been dressing for dinner.
+The housekeeper had taken good care that her boy should not go empty,
+and before he changed to the white moth he sat down to excellent
+claret with sandwiches of potted egg and things that adoring women
+make and men never notice.  Then back, to surprise the otter grubbing
+for fresh-water mussels, the rabbits on the edge of the beechwoods
+foraging in the clover, and the policeman-like white owl stooping to
+the little fieldmice, till the moon was strong, and he took his rod
+apart, and went home through well-remembered gaps in the hedges.  He
+fetched a compass round the house, for, though he might have broken
+every law of the establishment every hour, the law of his boyhood
+was unbreakable: after fishing you went in by the south garden
+back-door, cleaned up in the outer scullery, and did not present
+yourself to your elders and your betters till you had washed and
+changed.
+
+"Half-past ten, by Jove!  Well, we'll make the sport an excuse.  They
+wouldn't want to see me the first evening, at any rate.  Gone to bed,
+probably."  He skirted by the open French windows of the drawing-room.
+"No, they haven't.  They look very comfy in there."
+
+He could see his father in his own particular chair, the mother in
+hers, and the back of a girl at the piano by the big potpourri-jar.
+The gardens looked half divine in the moonlight, and he turned down
+through the roses to finish his pipe.
+
+A prelude-ended, and there floated out a voice of the kind that in
+his childhood he used to call "creamy" a full, true contralto; and
+this is the song that he heard, every syllable of it:
+
+  Over the edge of the purple down,
+        Where the single lamplight gleams,
+  Know ye the road to the Merciful Town
+        That is hard by the Sea of Dreams-
+  Where the poor may lay their wrongs away,
+        And the sick may forget to weep?
+  But we - pity us!  Oh, pity us!
+        We wakeful; ah, pity us! -
+  We must go back with Policeman Day -
+        Back from the City of Sleep!
+
+  Weary they turn from the scroll and crown,
+        Fetter and prayer and plough
+  They that go up to the Merciful Town,
+        For her gates are closing now.
+  It is their right in the Baths of Night
+        Body and soul to steep
+  But we - pity us! ah, pity us!
+        We wakeful; oh, pity us! -
+  We must go back with Policeman Day -
+        Back from the City of Sleep!
+
+  Over the edge of the purple down,
+        Ere the tender dreams begin,
+  Look - we may look - at the Merciful Town,
+        But we may not enter in !
+  Outcasts all, from her guarded wall
+        Back to our watch we creep:
+  We - pity us! ah, pity us!
+        We wakeful; oh, pity us! -
+  We that go back with Policeman Day -
+        Back from the City of Sleep
+
+At the last echo he was aware that his mouth was dry and unknown
+pulses were beating in the roof of it.  The housekeeper, who would
+have it that he must have fallen in and caught a chill, was waiting
+to catch him on the stairs, and, since he neither saw nor answered
+her, carried a wild tale abroad that brought his mother knocking at
+the door.
+
+"Anything happened, dear?  Harper said she thought you weren't - "
+
+"No; it's nothing.  I'm all right, mummy.  Please don't bother."
+
+He did not recognise his own voice, but that was a small matter
+beside what he was considering.  Obviously, most obviously, the
+whole coincidence was crazy lunacy.  He proved it to the satisfaction
+of Major George Cottar, who was going up to town to-morrow to hear a
+lecture on the supply of ammunition in the field; and having so
+proved it, the soul and brain and heart and body of Georgie cried
+joyously: "That's the Lily Lock girl - the Lost Continent girl -
+the Thirty-Mile Ride girl - the Brushwood girl!  I know her!"
+
+He waked, stiff and cramped in his chair, to reconsider the situation
+by sunlight, when it did not appear normal.  But a man must eat, and
+he went to breakfast, his heart between his teeth, holding himself
+severely in hand.
+
+"Late, as usual," said the mother.  "'My boy, Miss Lacy."
+
+A tall girl in black raised her eyes to his, and Georgie's life
+training deserted him - just as soon as he realised that she did not
+know.  He stared coolly and critically.  There was the abundant black
+hair, growing in a widow's peak, turned back from the forehead, with
+that peculiar ripple over the right ear; there were the grey eyes set
+a little close together; the short upper lip, resolute chin, and the
+known poise of the head.  There was also the small well-cut mouth
+that had kissed him.
+
+"Georgie - dear!" said the mother, amazedly, for Miriam was flushing
+under the stare.
+
+"I - I beg your pardon!" he gulped.  "I don't know whether the mother
+has told you, but I'm rather an idiot at times, specially before I've
+had my breakfast.  It's - it's a family failing.'  He turned to
+explore among the hot-water dishes on the sideboard, rejoicing that
+she did not know - she did not know.
+
+His conversation for the rest of the meal was mildly insane, though
+the mother thought she had never seen her boy look half so handsome.
+How could any girl, least of all one of Miriam's discernment, forbear
+to fall down and worship?  But deeply Miriam was displeased.  She
+had never been stared at in that fashion before, and promptly retired
+into her shell when Georgie announced that he had changed his mind
+about going to town, and would stay to play with Miss Lacy if she
+had nothing better to do.
+
+"Oh, but don't let me throw you out.  I'm at work.  I've things to
+do all the morning."
+
+"What possessed Georgie to behave so oddly?" the mother sighed to
+herself.  "Miriam's a bundle of feelings - like her mother."
+
+"You compose - don't you?  Must be a fine thing to be able to do
+that.  [" Pig-oh, pig!" thought Miriam.]  I think I heard you singin'
+when I came in last night after fishin'.  All about a Sea of Dreams,
+wasn't it?  [Miriam shuddered to the core of the soul that afflicted
+her.]  Awfully pretty song.  How d' you think of such things?"
+
+"You only composed the music, dear, didn't you?"
+
+"The words too.  I'm sure of it," said Georgie, with a sparkling eye.
+No; she did not know.
+
+"Yeth; I wrote the words too."  Miriam spoke slowly, for she knew
+she lisped when she was nervous.
+
+"Now how could you tell, Georgie?" said the mother, as delighted as
+though the youngest major in the army were ten years old, showing off
+before company.
+
+"I was sure of it, somehow.  Oh, there are heaps of things about me,
+mummy, that you don't understand.  Looks as if it were goin' to be
+a hot day - for England.  Would you care for a ride this afternoon,
+Miss Lacy?  We can start out after tea, if you'd like it."
+
+Miriam could not in decency refuse, but any woman might see she was
+not filled with delight.
+
+"That will be very nice, if you take the Bassett Road.  It will save
+me sending Martin down to the village," said the mother, filling in
+gaps.
+
+Like all good managers, the mother had her one weakness - a mania for
+little strategies that should economise horses and vehicles.  Her
+men-folk complained that she turned them into common carriers, and
+there was a legend in the family that she had once said to the pater
+on the morning of a meet: "If you should kill near Bassett, dear, and
+if it isn't too late, would you mind just popping over and matching
+me this?"
+
+" I knew that was coming.  You'd never miss a chance, mother.  If
+it's a fish or a trunk I won't." Georgie laughed.
+
+"It's only a duck.  They can do it up very neatly at Mallett's,"
+said the mother, simply.  "You won't mind, will you?  We'll have a
+scratch dinner at nine, because it's so hot."
+
+The long summer day dragged itself out for centuries; but at last
+there was tea on the lawn, and Miriam appeared.
+
+She was in the saddle before he could offer to help, with the clean
+spring of the child who mounted the pony for the Thirty-Mile Ride.
+The day held mercilessly, though Georgie got down thrice to look for
+imaginary stones in Rufus's foot.  One cannot say even simple things
+in broad light, and this that Georgie meditated was not simple.  So
+he spoke seldom, and Miriam was divided between relief and scorn.
+It annoyed her that the great hulking thing should know she had
+written the words of the song overnight; for though a maiden may
+sing her most secret fancies aloud, she does not care to have them
+trampled over by the male Philistine.  They rode into the little
+red-brick street of Bassett, and Georgie made untold fuss over the
+disposition of that duck.  It must go in just such a package, and
+be fastened to the saddle in just such a manner, though eight
+o'clock had struck and they were miles from dinner.
+
+"We must be quick!" said Miriam, bored and angry.
+
+"There's no great hurry; but we can cut over Dowhead Down, and let
+'em out on the grass.  That will save us half an hour."
+
+The horses capered on the short, sweet-smelling turf, and the
+delaying shadows gathered in the valley as they cantered over the
+great dun down that overhangs Bassett and the Western coaching-road.
+Insensibly the pace quickened without thought of mole-hills; Rufus,
+gentleman that he was, waiting on Miriam's Dandy till they should
+have cleared the rise.  Then down the two-mile slope they raced
+together, the wind whistling in their ears, to the steady throb of
+eight hoofs and the light click-click of the shifting bits.
+
+"Oh, that was glorious!" Miriam cried, reining in.  "Dandy and I are
+old friends, but I don't think we've ever gone better together."
+
+"No; but you've gone quicker, once or twice."
+
+"Really?.  When?"
+
+Georgie moistened his lips.  "Don't you remember the Thirty-Mile
+Ride - with me - when 'They' were after us - on the beach-road, with
+the sea to the left - going toward the lamp-post on the downs?"
+
+The girl gasped.  "What - what do you mean?" she said hysterically.
+
+"The Thirty-Mile Ride, and - and all the rest of it."
+
+"You mean - ?  I didn't sing anything about the Thirty-Mile Ride.
+I know I didn't.  I have never told a living soul.'"
+
+"You told about Policeman Day, and the lamp at the top of the downs,
+and the City of Sleep.  It all joins on, you know - it's the same
+country - and it was easy enough to see where you had been."
+
+"Good God! - It joins on - of course it does; but - I have been -
+you have been -  Oh, let's walk, please, or I shall fall off!"
+
+Georgie ranged alongside, and laid a hand that shook below her
+bridle-hand, pulling Dandy into a walk.  Miriam was sobbing as he
+had seen a man sob under the touch of the bullet.
+
+"It's all right - it's all right," he whispered feebly.  "Only -
+only it's true, you know."
+
+"True!  Am I mad?"
+
+"Not unless I'm mad as well.  Do try to think a minute quietly.
+How could any one conceivably know anything about the Thirty-Mile
+Ride having anything to do with you, unless he had been there?"
+
+"But where?  But where?  Tell me!"
+
+"There - wherever it may be - in our country, I suppose.  Do you
+remember the first time you rode it - the Thirty-Mile Ride, I
+mean?  You must."
+
+"It was all dreams - all dreams!"
+
+"Yes, but tell, please; because I know."
+
+"Let me think.  I - we were on no account to make any noise - on no
+account to make any noise."  She was staring between Dandy's ears,
+with eyes that did not see, and a suffocating heart.
+
+"Because 'It' was dying in the big house?" Georgie went on, reining
+in again.
+
+"There was a garden with green-and-gilt railings - all hot.  Do you
+remember?"
+
+"I ought to.  I was sitting on the other side of the bed before 'It'
+coughed and 'They' came in."
+
+"You!" - the deep voice was unnaturally full and strong, and the
+girl's wide-opened eyes burned in the dusk as she stared him through
+and through.  "Then you're the Boy - my Brushwood Boy, and I've known
+you all my life!"
+
+She fell forward on Dandy's neck.  Georgie forced himself out of the
+weakness that was overmastering his limbs, and slid an arm round her
+waist.  The head dropped on his shoulder, and he found himself with
+parched lips saying things that up till then he believed existed
+only in printed works of fiction.  Mercifully the horses were quiet.
+She made no attempt to draw herself away when she recovered, but lay
+still, whispering, "Of course you're the Boy, and I didn't know -
+I didn't know."
+
+"I knew last night; and when I saw you at breakfast - "
+
+"Oh, that was why!  I wondered at the time.  You would, of course."
+
+"I couldn't speak before this.  Keep your head where it is, dear.
+It's all right now - all right now, isn't it?"
+
+"But how was it I didn't know - after all these years and years?
+I remember - oh, what lots of things I remember!"
+
+"Tell me some.  I'll look after the horses."
+
+"I remember waiting for you when the steamer came in.  Do you?"
+
+"At the Lily Lock, beyond Hong-Kong and Java?"
+
+"Do you call it that, too?"
+
+"You told me it was when I was lost in the continent.  That was you
+that showed me the way through the mountains?"
+
+"When the islands slid?  It must have been, because you're the only
+one I remember.  All the others were 'Them.'
+
+"Awful brutes they were, too."
+
+"I remember showing you the Thirty-Mile Ride the first time.  You
+ride just as you used to - then.  You are you!"
+
+"That's odd.  I thought that of you this afternoon.  Isn't it
+wonderful?"
+
+"What does it all mean?  Why should you and I of the millions of
+people in the world have this - this thing between us?  What does
+it mean?  I'm frightened."
+
+"This!" said Georgie.  The horses quickened their pace.  They thought
+they had heard an order.  "Perhaps when we die we may find out more,
+but it means this now."
+
+There was no answer.  What could she say?  As the world went, they
+had known each other rather less than eight and a half hours, but
+the matter was one that did not concern the world.  There was a very
+long silence, while the breath in their nostrils drew cold and sharp
+as it might have been a fume of ether.
+
+"That's the second," Georgie whispered.  "You remember, don't you?"
+
+"It's not!" - furiously.  "It's not!"
+
+"On the downs the other night-months ago.  You were just as you are
+now, and we went over the country for miles and miles."
+
+"It was all empty, too.  They had gone away.  Nobody frightened us.
+I wonder why, Boy?"
+
+"Oh, if you remember that, you must remember the rest.  Confess!"
+
+"I remember lots of things, but I know I didn't.  I never have -
+till just now."
+
+"You did, dear."
+
+"I know I didn't, because - oh, it's no use keeping anything back!
+because I truthfully meant to."
+
+"And truthfully did."
+
+"No; meant to; but some one else came by."
+
+"There wasn't any one else.  There never has been."
+
+"There was - there always is.  It was another woman - out there -
+on the sea.  I saw her.  It was the 26th of May.  I've got it written
+down somewhere."
+
+"Oh, you've kept a record of your dreams, too?  That's odd about
+the other woman, because I happened to be on the sea just then."
+
+"I was right.  How do I know what you've done when you were awake -
+and I thought it was only you!"
+
+"You never were more wrong in your life.  What a little temper
+you've got!  Listen to me a minute, dear."  And Georgie, though he
+knew it not, committed black perjury.  "It - it isn't the kind of
+thing one says to any one, because they'd laugh; but on my word and
+honour, darling, I've never been kissed by a living soul outside my
+own people in all my life.  Don't laugh, dear.  I wouldn't tell any
+one but you, but it's the solemn truth."
+
+"I knew!  You are you.  Oh, I knew you'd come some day; but I didn't
+know you were you in the least till you spoke."
+
+"Then give me another."
+
+"And you never cared or looked anywhere?  Why, all the round world
+must have loved you from the very minute they saw you, Boy."
+
+"They kept it to themselves if they did.  No; I never cared."
+
+"And we shall be late for dinner - horribly late.  Oh, how can I
+look at you in the light before your mother - and mine!"
+
+"We'll play you're Miss Lacy till the proper time comes.  What's
+the shortest limit for people to get engaged?  S'pose we have got
+to go through all the fuss of an engagement, haven't we?"
+
+"Oh, I don't want to talk about that.  It's so commonplace.  I've
+thought of something that you don't know.  I'm sure of it.  What's
+my name?"
+
+Miri - no, it isn't, by Jove!  Wait half a second, and it'll come
+back to me.  You aren't - you can't?  Why, those old tales - before
+I went to school!  I've never thought of 'em from that day to this.
+Are you the original, only Annieanlouise?"
+
+"It was what you always called me ever since the beginning.  Oh!
+We've turned into the avenue, and we must be an hour late."
+
+"What does it matter?  The chain goes as far back as those days?
+It must, of course - of course it must.  I've got to ride round with
+this pestilent old bird-confound him!"
+
+"'"Ha! ha!" said the duck, laughing'- do you remember that?"
+
+"Yes, I do - flower-pots on my feet, and all.  We've been together
+all this while; and I've got to say good bye to you till dinner.
+Sure I'll see you at dinner-time?  Sure you won't sneak up to your
+room, darling, and leave me all the evening?  Good-bye, dear -
+good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye, Boy, good-bye.  Mind the arch!  Don't let Rufus bolt into
+his stables.  Good-bye.  Yes, I'll come down to dinner; but - what
+shall I do when I see you in the light!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext The Day's Work [Vol. 1], by Kipling
+
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