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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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