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If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Land and Sea Tales for Boys and Girls - -Author: Rudyard Kipling - -Release Date: November 3, 2020 [EBook #63619] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAND, SEA TALES FOR BOYS, GIRLS *** - - - - -Produced by Richard Tonsing, MFR, and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - -[Illustration] - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - LAND AND SEA TALES - FOR BOYS AND GIRLS - - - BOOKS BY RUDYARD KIPLING - - - ACTIONS AND REACTIONS - BRUSHWOOD BOY, THE - CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS - COLLECTED VERSE - DAY’S WORK, THE - DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES AND BALLADS AND BARRACK-ROOM BALLADS - DIVERSITY OF CREATURES, A - EYES OF ASIA, THE - FEET OF THE YOUNG MEN, THE - FIVE NATIONS, THE - FRANCE AT WAR - FRINGES OF THE FLEET - FROM SEA TO SEA - HISTORY OF ENGLAND, A - IRISH GUARDS IN THE GREAT WAR, THE - JUNGLE BOOK, THE - JUNGLE BOOK, SECOND - JUST SO SONG BOOK - JUST SO STORIES - KIM - KIPLING ANTHOLOGY PROSE AND VERSE - KIPLING STORIES AND POEMS EVERY CHILD SHOULD KNOW - KIPLING BIRTHDAY BOOK, THE - LETTERS OF TRAVEL - LIFE’S HANDICAP: BEING STORIES OF MINE OWN PEOPLE - LIGHT THAT FAILED, THE - MANY INVENTIONS - NAULAHKA, THE (With Wolcott Balestier) - PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS - PUCK OF POOK’S HILL - REWARDS AND FAIRIES - RUDYARD KIPLING’S VERSE: Inclusive Edition, 1885–1918 - SEA WARFARE - SEVEN SEAS, THE - SOLDIER STORIES - SOLDIERS THREE, THE STORY OF THE GADSBYS, AND IN BLACK AND WHITE - SONG OF THE ENGLISH, A - SONGS FROM BOOKS - STALKY & CO. - THEY - TRAFFICS AND DISCOVERIES - UNDER THE DEODARS, THE PHANTOM RICKSHAW, AND WEE WILLIE WINKIE - WITH THE NIGHT MAIL - YEARS BETWEEN, THE - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - Land and Sea Tales for Boys and Girls - - - By Rudyard Kipling - -[Illustration] - - GARDEN CITY NEW YORK - DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY - 1923 - - - - -[Illustration] - - COPYRIGHT, 1893, 1895, 1897, 1898, 1900, 1918, 1920, 1922, 1923, BY - RUDYARD KIPLING - - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION - INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN - - PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES - AT - THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. - - _First Edition_ - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - PREFACE - - - To all to whom this little book may come— - Health for yourselves and those you hold most dear; - Content abroad, and happiness at home, - And—one grand secret in your private ear:— - _Nations have passed away and left no traces, - And History gives the naked cause of it— - One single, simple reason in all cases; - They fell because their people were not fit._ - - Now, though your Body be mis-shapen, blind, - Lame, feverish, lacking substance, power or skill, - Certain it is that men can school the Mind - To school the sickliest Body to her will— - As many have done, whose glory blazes still - Like mighty fires in meanest lanterns lit: - Wherefore, we pray the crippled, weak and ill— - Be fit—be fit! In mind at first be fit! - - And, though your Spirit seem uncouth or small, - Stubborn as clay or shifting as the sand, - Strengthen the Body, and the Body shall - Strengthen the Spirit till she take command; - As a bold rider brings his horse in hand - At the tall fence, with voice and heel and bit, - And leaps while all the field are at a stand. - Be fit—be fit! In body next be fit! - - _Nothing on earth—no arts, no gifts, nor graces— - No fame, no wealth—outweighs the want of it. - This is the Law which every law embraces— - Be fit—be fit! In mind and body be fit!_ - - The even heart that seldom slurs its beat— - The cool head weighing what that heart desires— - The measuring eye that guides the hands and feet— - The Soul unbroken when the Body tires— - These are the things our weary world requires - Far more than superfluities of wit; - Wherefore we pray you, sons of generous sires, - Be fit—be fit! For Honour’s sake be fit. - - _There is one lesson at all Times and Places— - One changeless Truth on all things changing writ, - For boys and girls, men, women, nations, races— - Be fit—be fit! And once again, be fit!_ - - - - - CONTENTS - - - PAGE - Winning the Victoria Cross 1 - - The Way That He Took 27 - - An Unqualified Pilot 65 - - _The Junk and the Dhow_ 84 - - His Gift 91 - - _The Master-Cook_ 118 - - A Flight of Fact 123 - - “Stalky” 149 - - _The Hour of the Angel_ 182 - - The Burning of the _Sarah Sands_ 185 - - _The Last Lap_ 199 - - The Parable of Boy Jones 203 - - _A Departure_ 222 - - The Bold ’Prentice 227 - - _The Nurses_ 246 - - The Son of His Father 251 - - An English School 291 - - _A Counting-Out Song_ 319 - - - - - Land and Sea Tales - For Boys and Girls - - - - - WINNING THE VICTORIA CROSS - - -The history of the Victoria Cross has been told so often that it is only -necessary to say that the Order was created by Queen Victoria on January -29th, 1856, in the year of the peace with Russia, when the new racing -Cunard paddle-steamer _Persia_ of three thousand tons was making -thirteen knots an hour between England and America, and all the world -wondered at the advance of civilization and progress. - -Any officer of the English Army, Navy, Reserve or Volunteer forces, from -a duke to a negro, can wear on his left breast the little ugly bronze -Maltese cross with the crowned lion atop and the inscription “For -Valour” below, if he has only “performed some signal act of valour” or -devotion to his country “in the presence of the enemy.” Nothing else -makes any difference; for it is explicitly laid down in the warrant that -“neither rank, nor long service, nor wounds, nor any other circumstance -whatsoever, save the merit of conspicuous bravery, shall be held to -establish a sufficient claim to this Order.” - -There are many kinds of bravery, and if one looks through the records of -the four hundred and eleven men, living and dead, that have held the -Victoria Cross before the Great War, one finds instances of every -imaginable variety of heroism. - -There is bravery in the early morning, when it takes great courage even -to leave warm blankets, let alone walk into dirt, cold and death; on -foot and on horse; empty or fed; sick or well; coolness of brain, that -thinks out a plan at dawn and holds to it all through the long, -murderous day; bravery of the mind that makes the jerking nerves hold -still and do nothing except show a good example; sheer reckless strength -that hacks through a crowd of amazed men and comes out grinning on the -other side; enduring spirit that wears through a long siege, never -losing heart or manners or temper; quick, flashing bravery that heaves a -lighted shell overboard or rushes the stockade while others are gaping -at it, and the calculated craftsmanship that camps alone before the -angry rifle-pit or shell-hole, and cleanly and methodically wipes out -every soul in it. - -Before the Great War, England dealt with many different peoples, and, -generally speaking, all of them, Zulu, Malay, Maori, Burman, Boer, the -little hillsman of the Northeast Indian Frontier, Afreedi, Pathan, -Biluch, the Arab of East Africa and the Sudanese of the North of Africa -and the rest, played a thoroughly good game. For this we owe them many -thanks; since they showed us every variety of climate and almost every -variety of attack, from long-range fire to hand-to-hand scrimmage; -except, of course, the ordered movements of Continental armies and the -scientific ruin of towns.... That came later and on the largest scale. - -It is rather the fashion to look down on these little wars and to call -them “military promenades” and so forth, but in reality no enemy can do -much more than poison your wells, rush your camp, ambuscade you, kill -you with his climate, fight you body to body, make you build your own -means of communication under his fire, and horribly cut up your wounded. -He may do this on a large or small scale, but the value of the teaching -is the same. - -It is in these rough-and-tumble affairs that many of the first Crosses -were won; and some of the records for the far-away Crimea and the Indian -Mutiny are well worth remembering, if only to show that valour never -varies. - -The Crimea was clean fighting as far as the enemy were concerned,—for -the very old men say that no one could wish for better troops than the -Russians of Inkerman and Alma,—but our own War Office then, as two -generations later, helped the enemy with ignorant mismanagement and -neglect. In the Mutiny of 1857 all India, Bengal and the North West -Provinces, seemed to be crumbling like sand-bag walls in flood, and -wherever there were three or four Englishmen left, they had to kill or -be killed till help came. Hundreds of Crosses must have been won then, -had anybody had time to notice; for the average of work allowing for the -improvements in man-killing machinery was as high as in the Great War. - -For instance—this is a rather extensive and varied record—one man shut -up in the Residency at Lucknow stole out three times at the risk of his -life to get cattle for the besieged to eat. Later, he extinguished a -fire near a powder-magazine and a month afterwards put out another fire. -Then he led twelve men to capture two guns which were wrecking the -Residency at close range. Next day he captured an out-lying position -full of mutineers; three days later he captured another gun, and -finished up by capturing a fourth. So he got his Cross. - -Another young man was a lieutenant in the Southern Mahratta Horse, and a -full regiment of mutineers broke into his part of the world, upsetting -the minds of the people. He collected some loyal troopers, chased the -regiment eighty miles, stormed the fort they had taken refuge in, and -killed, captured or wounded every soul there. - -Then there was a lance corporal who afterwards rose to be -Lieutenant-Colonel. He was the enduring type of man, for he won his -Cross merely for taking a hand in every fight that came along through -nearly seventy consecutive days. - -There were also two brothers who earned the Cross about six times -between them for leading forlorn hopes and such-like. Likewise there was -a private of “persuasive powers and cheerful disposition,” so the record -says, who was cut off with nine companions in a burning house while the -mutineers were firing in at the windows. He, however, cheerfully -persuaded the enemy to retire and in the end all his party were saved -through his practical “cheerfulness.” He must have been a man worth -knowing. - -And there was a little man in the Sutherland Highlanders—a private who -eventually became a Major-General. In one attack near Lucknow he killed -eleven men with his claymore, which is a heating sort of weapon to -handle. - -Even he was not more thorough than two troopers who rode to the rescue -of their Colonel, cut off and knocked down by mutineers. They helped him -to rise, and they must have been annoyed, for the three of them killed -all the mutineers—about fifty. - -Then there was a negro captain of the foretop, William Hall, R. N., who -with two other negroes, Samuel Hodge and W. J. Gordon of the 4th and 1st -West Indian Infantry, came up the river with the Naval Brigade from -Calcutta to work big guns. They worked them so thoroughly that each got -a Cross. They must have done a good deal, for no one is quite so crazy -reckless as a West Indian negro when he is really excited. - -There was a man in the Mounted Police who with sixty horsemen charged -one thousand mutineers and broke them up. And so the tale runs on. - -Three Bengal Civilian Government officers were, I believe, the only -strict non-combatants who ever received the Cross. As a matter of fact -they had to fight with the rest, but the story of “Lucknow” Kavanagh’s -adventures in disguise, of Ross Mangle’s heroism after the first attempt -to relieve the Little House at Arrah had failed (Arrah was a place where -ten white men and fifty-six loyal natives barricaded themselves in a -billiard-room in a garden and stood the siege of three regiments of -mutineers for three weeks), and of McDonnel’s cool-headedness in the -retreat down the river, are things that ought to be told by themselves. -Almost any one can fight well on the winning side, but those men who can -patch up a thoroughly bad business and pull it off in some sort of -shape, are most to be respected. - -Army chaplains and doctors are officially supposed to be -non-combatants—they are not really so—but about twenty years after the -Mutiny a chaplain was decorated under circumstances that made it -impossible to overlook his bravery. Still, I do not think he quite cared -for the publicity. He was a regimental chaplain—in action a chaplain is -generally supposed to stay with or near the doctor—and he seems to have -drifted up close to a cavalry charge, for he helped a wounded officer of -the Ninth Lancers into an ambulance. He was then going about his -business when he found two troopers who had tumbled into a water-course -all mixed with their horses, and a knot of Afghans were hurrying to -attend to them. The record says that he rescued both men, but the tale, -as I heard it unofficially, declares that he found a revolver somewhere -with which he did excellent work while the troopers were struggling out -of the ditch. This seems very possible, for the Afghans do not leave -disabled men without the strongest hint, and I know that in nine cases -out of ten if you want a coherent account of what happened in an action -you had better ask the chaplain or the Roman Catholic priest of a -battalion. - -But it is difficult to get details. I have met perhaps a dozen or so of -V. C.’s, and in every case they explained that they did the first thing -that came to their hand without worrying about alternatives. One man -headed a charge into a mass of Afghans, who are very good fighters so -long as they stay interested in their work, and cut down five of them. -All he said was: “Well, they were there, and they couldn’t go away. What -was a man to do? Write ’em a note and ask ’em to shift?” - -Another man I questioned was a doctor. Army doctors, by the way, have -special opportunities for getting Crosses. Their duty compels them to -stay somewhere within touch of the firing line, and most of them run -right up and lie down, keeping an eye on the wounded. - -It is a heart-breaking thing for a doctor who has pulled a likely young -private of twenty-three through typhoid fever and set him on his feet -and watched him develop, to see the youngster wasted with a casual -bullet. It must have been this feeling that made my friend do the old, -splendid thing that never grows stale—rescue a wounded man under fire. -He won this Cross, but all he said was: “_I_ didn’t want any -unauthorized consultations—or amputations—while I was Medical Officer in -charge. ’Tisn’t etiquette.” - -His own head was very nearly blown off as he was tying up an artery—for -it was blind, bad bushfighting, with puffs of smoke popping in and out -among the high grass and never a man visible—but he only grunted when -his helmet was cracked across by a bullet, and went on tightening the -tourniquet. - -As I have hinted, in most of our little affairs before the war, the -enemy knew nothing about the Geneva Convention or the treatment of -wounded, but fired at a doctor on his face value as a white man. One -cannot blame them—it was their custom, but it was exceedingly awkward -when our doctors took care of their wounded who did not understand these -things and tried to go on fighting in hospital. - -There is an interesting tale of a wounded Sudanese—what our soldiers -used to call a “fuzzy”—who was carefully attended to in a hospital after -a fight. As soon as he had any strength again, he proposed to a native -orderly that they two should massacre all the infidel wounded in the -other beds. The orderly did not see it; so, when the doctor came in he -found the “Fuzzy” was trying to work out his plan single-handed. The -doctor had a very unpleasant scuffle with that simple-minded man, but, -at last, he slipped the chloroform-bag over his nose. The man understood -bullets and was not afraid of them; but this magic smelly stuff that -sent him to sleep, cowed him altogether, and he gave no more trouble in -the ward. - -So a doctor’s life is always a little hazardous and, besides his -professional duties, he may find himself senior officer in charge of -what is left of the command, if the others have been shot down. As -doctors are always full of theories, I believe they rather like this -chance of testing them. Sometimes doctors have run out to help a -mortally wounded man of their battalion, because they know that he may -have last messages to give, and it eases him to die with some human -being holding his hand. This is a most noble thing to do under fire, -because it means sitting still among bullets. Chaplains have done it -also, but it is part of what they reckon as their regular duty. - -Another V. C. of my acquaintance—he was anything but a doctor or a -chaplain—once saved a trooper whose horse had been killed. His method -was rather original. The man was on foot and the enemy—Zulus this -time—was coming down at a run, and the trooper said, very decently, that -he did not see his way to perilling his officer’s life by -double-weighting the only available horse. - -To this his officer replied: “If you don’t get up behind me, I’ll get -off and give you such a licking as you’ve never had in your life.” The -man was more afraid of fists than of assagais, and the good horse pulled -them both out of the scrape. Now by our Regulations an officer who -insults or “threatens with violence” a subordinate in the Service is -liable to lose his commission and to be declared “incapable of serving -the King in any capacity,” but for some reason or other the trooper -never reported his superior. - -The humour and the honour of fighting are by no means all on one side. A -good many years ago there was a war in New Zealand against the Maoris, -who, though they tortured prisoners and occasionally ate a man, liked -fighting for its own sake. One of their chiefs cut off a detachment of -our men in a stockade where he might have starved them out, and eaten -them at leisure later. But word reached him that they were short of -provisions, and so he sent in a canoeful of pig and potatoes with the -message that it was no fun to play that game with weak men, and he would -be happy to meet them after rest and a full meal. There are many cases -in which men, very young as a rule, have forced their way through a -stockade of thorns that hook or bamboos that cut and held on in the face -of heavy fire or just so long as served to bring up their comrades. -Those who have done this say that getting in is exciting enough, but the -bad time, when the minutes drag like hours, lies between the first -scuffle with the angry faces in the smoke, and the “Hi, get out o’ -this!” that shows that the others of our side are tumbling up behind. -They say it is as bad as foot-ball when you get off the ball just as -slowly as you dare, so that your own side may have time to come up. - -Most men, after they have been shot over a little, only want a lead to -do good work; so the result of a young man’s daring is often out of all -proportion to his actual performances. - -Here is a case which never won notice because very few people talked -about it—a case of the courage of Ulysses, one might say. - -A column of troops, heavily weighted with sick and wounded, had drifted -into a bad place—a pass where an enemy, hidden behind rocks, were -picking them off at known ranges, as they retreated. Half a battalion -was acting as rear-guard—company after company facing about on the -narrow road and trying to keep down the wicked, flickering fire from the -hillsides. And it was twilight; and it was cold and raining; and it was -altogether horrible for everyone. - -Presently, the rear-guard began to fire a little too quickly and to -hurry back to the main body a little too soon, and the bearers put down -the ambulances a little too often, and looked on each side of the road -for possible cover. Altogether, there were the makings of a nasty little -breakdown—and after that would come primitive slaughter. - -A boy whom I knew was acting command of one company that was specially -bored and sulky, and there were shouts from the column of “Hurry up! -Hurry there!” neither necessary nor soothing. He kept his men in hand as -well as he could, hitting down rifles when they fired wild, till someone -along the line shouted: “What on earth are you fellows waiting so long -for?” - -Then my friend—I am rather proud that he was my friend—hunted for his -pipe and tobacco, filled the bowl _in_ his pocket because, he said -afterwards, he didn’t want any one to see how his hand shook, lit a -fuzee, and shouted back between very short puffs: “Hold on a minute. I’m -lighting my pipe.” - -There was a roar of rather crackly laughter and the company joker said: -“Since you _are_ so pressin’, I think I’ll ’ave a draw meself.” - -I don’t believe either pipe was smoked out, but—and this is a very big -but—the little bit of acting steadied the company, and the news of it -ran down the line, and even the wounded in the doolies laughed, and -everyone felt better. Whether the enemy heard the laughing, or was -impressed by the even “one-two-three-four” firing that followed it, will -never be known, but the column came to camp at the regulation step and -not at a run, with very few casualties. That is what one may call the -courage of the much-enduring Ulysses, but the only comment that I ever -heard on the affair was the boy’s own, and all _he_ said was: “It was -transpontine (which means theatrical), but necessary.” - -Of course he must have been a good boy from the beginning, for little -bits of pure inspiration seldom come to or are acted upon by slovens, -self-indulgent or undisciplined people. I have not yet met one V. C. who -had not strict notions about washing and shaving and keeping himself -decent on his way through the civilized world, whatever he may have done -outside it. - -Indeed, it is very curious, after one has known hundreds of young men -and young officers, to sit still at a distance and watch them come -forward to success in their profession. Somehow, the clean and -considerate man mostly seems to take hold of circumstances at the right -end. - -One of the youngest of the V. C.’s of his time I used to know distantly -as a beautiful being whom they called Aide-de-Camp to a big official in -India. So far as strangers could judge, his duties consisted in wearing -a uniform faced with blue satin, and in seeing that everyone was looked -after at the dances and dinners. He would wander about smiling, with -eyes at the back of his head, introducing men who were strangers and a -little uncomfortable, to girls whose dance-cards were rather empty; -taking old and uninteresting women into supper, and tucking them into -their carriages afterwards; or pleasantly steering white-whiskered -native officers all covered with medals and half-blind with confusion -through the maze of a big levee into the presence of the Viceroy or -Commander-in-Chief, or whoever it was they were being presented to. - -After a few years of this work, his chance came, and he made the most of -it. We were then smoking out a nest of caravan-raiders, slave-dealers, -and general thieves who lived somewhere under the Karakoram Mountains -among glaciers about sixteen thousand feet above sea level. The mere -road to the place was too much for many mules, for it ran by precipices -and round rock-curves and over roaring, snow-fed rivers. - -The enemy—they were called Kanjuts—had fortified themselves in a place -nearly as impregnable as nature and man could make it. One position was -on the top of a cliff about twelve hundred feet high, whence they could -roll stones directly on the head of any attacking force. Our men -objected to the stones much more than to the rifle-fire. They were -camped in a river-bed at the bottom of an icy pass with some three tiers -of these cliff-like defences above them, and the Kanjuts on each tier -were very well armed. To make all specially pleasant, it was December. - -This ex-aide-de-camp happened to be a good mountaineer, and he was told -off with a hundred native troops, Goorkhas and Dogra Sikhs, to climb up -into the top tier of the fortifications. The only way of arriving was to -follow a sort of shoot in the cliff-face which the enemy had worn smooth -by throwing rocks down. Even in daylight, in peace, and with good -guides, it would have been fair mountaineering. - -He went up in the dark, by eye and guess, against some two thousand -Kanjuts very much at war with him. When he had climbed eight hundred -feet almost perpendicular he found he had to come back, because even he -and his Goorkha cragsmen could find no way. - -He returned to the river-bed and tried again in a new place, working his -men up between avalanches of stones that slid along and knocked people -over. When he struggled to the top he had to take his men into the forts -with the bayonet and the _kukri_, the little Goorkha knife. The attack -was so utterly bold and unexpected that it broke the hearts of the enemy -and practically ended the campaign; and if you could see the photograph -of the place you would understand why. - -It was hard toenail and fingernail crag-climbing under fire, and the men -behind him were not regulars, but what are called Imperial Service -troops—men raised by the semi-independent kings and used to defend the -frontier. They enjoyed themselves immensely, and the little aide-de-camp -got a deserved Victoria Cross. The courage of Ulysses again; for he had -to think as he climbed, and until he was directly underneath the -fortifications, one chance-hopping boulder might just have planed his -men off all along the line. - -But there is a heroism beyond all, for which no Victoria Cross is ever -given, because there is no official enemy nor any sort of firing, except -one volley in the early morning at some spot where the noise does not -echo into the newspapers. - -It is necessary from time to time to send unarmed men into No Man’s Land -and the Back of Beyond across the Khudajantakhan (The Lord-knows-where) -Mountains, just to find out what is going on there among people who some -day or other may become dangerous enemies. - -The understanding is that if the men return with their reports so much -the better for them. They may then receive some sort of decoration, -given, so far as the public can make out, for no real reason. If they do -not come back, and people disappear very mysteriously at the Back of -Beyond, that is their own concern and no questions will be asked, and no -enquiries made. - -They tell a tale of one man who, some years ago, strayed into No Man’s -Land to see how things were, and met a very amiable set of people, who -asked him to a round of dinners and lunches and dances. And all that -time he knew, and they knew that he knew, that his hosts were debating -between themselves whether they should suffer him to live till next -morning, and if they decided not to let him live, in what way they -should wipe him out most quietly. - -The only consideration that made them hesitate was that they could not -tell from his manner whether there were five hundred Englishmen within a -few miles of him or no Englishmen at all within five hundred miles of -him; and, as matters stood at that moment, they could not very well go -out to look and make sure. - -So he danced and dined with those pleasant, merry folk,—all good -friends,—and talked about hunting and shooting and so forth, never -knowing when the polite servants behind his chair would turn into the -firing-party. At last his hosts decided, without rude words said, to let -him go; and when they made up their minds they did it very handsomely; -for, you must remember, there is no malice borne on either side of that -game. - -They gave him a farewell banquet and drank his health, and he thanked -them for his delightful visit, and they said: “_So_ glad you’re glad—_au -revoir_,” and he came away looking a little bored. - -Later on, so the tale runs, his hosts discovered that their guest had -been given up for lost by his friends in England where no one ever -expected to see him again. Then they were sorry that they had not put -him against a wall and shot him. - -That is a case of the cold-blooded courage worked up to after years of -training—courage of mind forcing the body through an unpleasant -situation for the sake of the game. - -When all is said and done, courage of mind is the finest thing any one -can hope to attain to. A weak or undisciplined soul is apt to become -reckless under strain (which is only being afraid the wrong way about), -or to act for its own immediate advantage. For this reason the Victoria -Cross is jealously guarded, and if there be suspicion that the man is -playing to the gallery or out pot-hunting for medals, as they call it, -he is often left to head his charges and rescue his wounded all over -again as a guarantee of good faith. - -In the Great War there was very little suspicion, or chance, of -gallery-play for the V. C., because there was ample opportunity and, -very often, strong necessity, for a man to repeat his performances -several times over. Moreover, he was generally facing much deadlier -weapons than mere single rifles or edged tools, and the rescue of -wounded under fire was, by so much, a more serious business. But one or -two War V. C.’s of my acquaintance have told me that if you can manage -the little matter of keeping your head, it is not as difficult as it -sounds to get on the blind side of a machine gun, or to lie out under -its lowest line of fire where, they say, you are “quite comfortable if -you don’t fuss.” Also, every V. C. of the Great War I have spoken to has -been rather careful to explain that he won his Cross because what he did -happened to be done when and where someone could notice it. Thousands of -men they said did just the same, but in places where there were no -observers. And that is true; for the real spirit of the Army changes -very little through the years. - -Men are taught to volunteer for anything and everything; going out -quietly after, not before, the authorities have filled their place. They -are also instructed that it is cowardly, it is childish, and it is -cheating to neglect or scamp the plain work immediately in front of -them, the duties they are trusted to do, for the sake of stepping aside -to snatch at what to an outsider may resemble fame or distinction. Above -all, their own hard equals, whose opinion is the sole opinion worth -having, are always sitting unofficially in judgment on them. - -The Order itself is a personal decoration, and the honour and glory of -it belongs to the wearer; but he can only win it by forgetting himself, -his own honour and glory, and by working for something beyond and -outside and apart from his own self. And there seems to be no other way -in which you get anything in this world worth the keeping. - - - - - THE WAY THAT HE TOOK - -_Almost every word of this story is based on fact. The Boer War of -1899–1902 was a very small one as wars were reckoned, and was fought -without any particular malice, but it taught our men the practical value -of scouting in the field. They were slow to learn at the outset, and it -cost them many unnecessary losses, as is always the case when men think -they can do their work without taking trouble beforehand._ - - -The guns of the Field-Battery were ambushed behind white-thorned -mimosas, scarcely taller than their wheels, that marked the line of a -dry nullah; and the camp pretended to find shade under a clump of gums -planted as an experiment by some Minister of Agriculture. One small hut, -reddish stone with a tin roof, stood where the single track of the -railway split into a siding. A rolling plain of red earth, speckled with -loose stones and sugar-bush, ran northward to the scarps and spurs of a -range of little hills—all barren and exaggerated in the heat-haze. -Southward, the level lost itself in a tangle of scrub-furred hillocks, -upheaved without purpose or order, seared and blackened by the strokes -of the careless lightning, seamed down their sides with spent -watercourses, and peppered from base to summit with stones—riven, piled, -scattered stones. Far away, to the eastward, a line of blue-grey -mountains, peaked and horned, lifted itself over the huddle of the -tortured earth. It was the only thing that held steady through the -liquid mirage. The nearer hills detached themselves from the plain, and -swam forward like islands in a milky ocean. While the Major stared -through puckered eyelids, Leviathan himself waded through the far -shallows of it—a black and formless beast. - -“That,” said the Major, “must be the guns coming back.” He had sent out -two guns, nominally for exercise—actually to show the loyal Dutch that -there was artillery near the railway if any patriot thought fit to -tamper with it. Chocolate smears, looking as though they had been swept -with a besom through the raffle of stones, wandered across the -earth—unbridged, ungraded, unmetalled. They were the roads to the brown -mud huts, one in each valley, that were officially styled farm-houses. -At very long intervals a dusty Cape-cart or a tilted wagon would move -along them, and men, dirtier than the dirt, would come to sell fruit or -scraggy sheep. At night the farm-houses were lighted up in a style out -of all keeping with Dutch economy; the scrub would light itself on some -far headland, and the house-lights twinkled in reply. Three or four days -later the Major would read bad news in the Capetown papers thrown to him -from the passing troop trains. - -The guns and their escort changed from Leviathan to the likeness of -wrecked boats, their crews struggling beside them. Presently they took -on their true shape, and lurched into camp amid clouds of dust. - -The Mounted Infantry escort set about its evening meal; the hot air -filled with the scent of burning wood; sweating men, rough-dried -sweating horses with wisps of precious forage; the sun dipped behind the -hills, and they heard the whistle of a train from the south. - -“What’s that?” said the Major, slipping into his coat. The decencies had -not yet left him. - -“Ambulance train,” said the Captain of Mounted Infantry, raising his -glasses. “I’d like to talk to a woman again, but it won’t stop here.... -It _is_ stopping, though, and making a beastly noise. Let’s look.” - -The engine had sprung a leaky tube, and ran lamely into the siding. It -would be two or three hours at least before she could be patched up. - -Two doctors and a couple of Nursing Sisters stood on the rear platform -of a carriage. The Major explained the situation, and invited them to -tea. - -“We were just going to ask _you_,” said the medical Major of the -ambulance train. - -“No, come to our camp. Let the men see a woman again!” he pleaded. - -Sister Dorothy, old in the needs of war, for all her twenty-four years, -gathered up a tin of biscuits and some bread and butter new cut by the -orderlies. Sister Margaret picked up the tea-pot, the spirit-lamp, and a -water-bottle. - -“Capetown water,” she said with a nod. “Filtered too. _I_ know Karroo -water.” She jumped down lightly on to the ballast. - -“What do you know about the Karroo, Sister?” said the Captain of Mounted -Infantry, indulgently, as a veteran of a month’s standing. He understood -that all that desert as it seemed to him was called by that name. - -She laughed. “This is my home. I was born out they-ah—just behind that -big range of hills—out Oudtshorn way. It’s only sixty miles from here. -Oh, how good it is!” - -She slipped the Nurses’ cap from her head, tossed it through the open -car-window, and drew a breath of deep content. With the sinking of the -sun the dry hills had taken life and glowed against the green of the -horizon. They rose up like jewels in the utterly clear air, while the -valleys between flooded with purple shadow. A mile away, stark-clear, -withered rocks showed as though one could touch them with the hand, and -the voice of a native herdboy in charge of a flock of sheep came in -clear and sharp over twice that distance. Sister Margaret devoured the -huge spaces with eyes unused to shorter ranges, snuffed again the air -that has no equal under God’s skies, and turning to her companion, -said:—“What do _you_ think of it?” - -“I am afraid I’m rather singular,” he replied. “Most of us hate the -Karroo. I used to, but it grows on one somehow. I suppose it’s the lack -of fences and roads that’s so fascinating. And when one gets back from -the railway——” - -“You’re quite right,” she said, with an emphatic stamp of her foot. -“People come to Matjesfontein—ugh!—with their lungs, and they live -opposite the railway station and that new hotel, and they think _that’s_ -the Karroo. They say there isn’t anything in it. It’s _full_ of life -when you really get into it. You see that? I’m so glad. D’you know, -you’re the first English officer I’ve heard who has spoken a good word -for my country?” - -“I’m glad I pleased you,” said the Captain, looking into Sister -Margaret’s black-lashed grey eyes under the heavy brown hair shot with -grey where it rolled back from the tanned forehead. This kind of nurse -was new in his experience. The average Sister did not lightly stride -over rolling stones, and—was it possible that her easy pace uphill was -beginning to pump him? As she walked, she hummed joyously to herself, a -queer catchy tune of one line several times repeated:— - - Vat jou goet en trek, Ferriera, - Vat jou goet en trek. - -It ran off with a little trill that sounded like, - - Zwaar draa, alle en de ein kant; - Jannie met de hoepel bein![1] - -“Listen!” she said, suddenly. “What was that?” - -“It must be a wagon on the road. I heard the whip, I think.” - -“Yes, but you didn’t hear the wheels, did you? It’s a little bird that -makes just that noise. ‘Whe-ew’!” she duplicated it perfectly. “We call -it”—she gave the Dutch name, which did not, of course, abide with the -Captain. “We must have given him a scare! You hear him in the early -mornings when you are sleeping in the wagons. It’s just like the noise -of a whiplash, isn’t it?” - -They entered the Major’s tent a little behind the others, who were -discussing the scanty news of the Campaign. - -“Oh, no,” said Sister Margaret coolly, bending over the spirit-lamp, -“the Transvaalers will stay round Kimberley and try to put Rhodes in a -cage. But, of course, if a commando gets through to De Aar they will all -rise——” - -“You think so, Sister?” said the medical Major, deferentially. - -“I know so. They will rise anywhere in the Colony if a commando comes -actually to them. Presently they will rise in Prieska—if it is only to -steal the forage at Van Wyk’s Vlei. Why not?” - -“We get most of our opinions of the war from Sister Margaret,” said the -civilian doctor of the train. “It’s all new to me, but, so far, all her -prophecies have come true.” - -A few months ago that doctor had retired from practice to a country -house in rainy England, his fortune made and, as he tried to believe, -his life-work done. Then the bugles blew, and, rejoicing at the change, -he found himself, his experience, and his fine bedside manner, buttoned -up in a black-tabbed khaki coat, on a hospital train that covered eleven -hundred miles a week, carried a hundred wounded each trip and dealt him -more experience in a month than he had ever gained in a year of home -practice. - -Sister Margaret and the Captain of Mounted Infantry took their cups -outside the tent. The Captain wished to know something more about her. -Till that day he had believed South Africa to be populated by sullen -Dutchmen and slack-waisted women; and in some clumsy fashion betrayed -the belief. - -“Of course, you don’t see any others where you are,” said Sister -Margaret, leniently, from her camp-chair. “They are all at the war. I -have two brothers, and a nephew, my sister’s son, and—oh, I can’t count -my cousins.” She flung her hands outward with a curiously un-English -gesture. “And then, too, you have never been off the railway. You have -only seen Capetown? All the schel—all the useless people are there. You -should see _our_ country beyond the ranges—out Oudtshorn way. We grow -fruit and vines. It is much prettier, _I_ think, than Paarl.” - -“I’d like to very much. I may be stationed in Africa after the war is -over.” - -“Ah, but we know the English officers. They say that this is a ‘beastly -country,’ and they do not know how to—to be nice to people. Shall I tell -you? There was an aide-de-camp at Government House three years ago. He -sent out invitations to dinner to Piet—to Mr. Van der Hooven’s wife. And -she had been dead eight years, and Van der Hooven—he has the big farms -round Craddock—just then was thinking of changing his politics, you -see—he was against the Government,—and taking a house in Capetown, -because of the Army meat contracts. That was why, you see?” - -“I see,” said the Captain, to whom this was all Greek. - -“Piet was a little angry—not much—but he went to Capetown, and that -aide-de-camp had made a joke about it—about inviting the dead woman—in -the Civil Service Club. You see? So of _course_ the opposition there -told Van der Hooven that the aide-de-camp had said he could not remember -all the old Dutch vrows that had died, and so Piet Van der Hooven went -away angry, and now he is more hot than ever against the Government. If -you stay with us you must not be like _that_. You see?” - -“I won’t,” said the Captain, seriously. “What a night it is, Sister!” He -dwelt lovingly on the last word, as men did in South Africa. - -The soft darkness had shut upon them unawares and the world had -vanished. There was not so much breeze as a slow motion of the whole dry -air under the vault of the immeasurably deep heavens. “Look up,” said -the Captain; “doesn’t it make you feel as if we were tumbling down into -the stars—all upside down?” - -“Yes,” said Sister Margaret, tilting her head back. “It is always like -that. I know. And those are _our_ stars.” - -They burned with a great glory, large as the eyes of cattle by -lamp-light; planet after planet of the mild Southern sky. As the Captain -said, one seemed to be falling from out the hidden earth sheer through -space, between them. - -“Now, when I was little,” Sister Margaret began very softly, “there was -one day in the week at home that was all our own. We could get up as -soon as we liked after midnight, and there was the basket in the -kitchen—our food. We used to go out at three o’clock sometimes, my two -brothers, my sisters, and the two little ones—out into the Karroo for -all the day. All—the—long—day. First we built a fire, and then we made a -kraal for the two little ones—a kraal of thorn bushes so that they -should not be bitten by anything. You see? Often we made the kraal -before morning—when those”—she jerked her firm chin at the stars—“were -just going out. Then we old ones went hunting lizards—and snakes and -birds and centipedes, and all that sort of nice thing. Our father -collected them. He gave us half-a-crown for a spuugh-slange—a kind of -snake. You see?” - -“How old were you?” Snake-hunting did not strike the Captain as a safe -amusement for the young. - -“I was eleven then—or ten, perhaps, and the little ones were two and -three. Why? Then we came back to eat, and we sat under a rock all -afternoon. It was hot, you see, and we played—we played with the stones -and the flowers. You should see our Karroo in spring! All flowers! All -our flowers! Then we came home, carrying the little ones on our backs -asleep—came home through the dark—just like this night. That was our own -day! Oh, the good days! We used to watch the meer-cats playing, too, and -the little buck. When I was at Guy’s, learning to nurse how home-sick -that made me!” - -“But what a splendid open-air life!” said the Captain. - -“Where else _is_ there to live except the open air?” said Sister -Margaret, looking off into twenty thousand square miles of it with eyes -that burned. - -“You’re quite right.” - -“I’m sorry to interrupt you two,” said Sister Dorothy, who had been -talking to the gunner Major; “but the guard says we shall be ready to go -in a few minutes. Major Devine and Dr. Johnson have gone down already.” - -“Very good, Sister. We’ll follow.” The Captain rose unwillingly and made -for the worn path from the camp to the rail. - -“Isn’t there another way?” said Sister Margaret. Her grey nursing gown -glimmered like some big moth’s wing. - -“No. I’ll bring a lantern. It’s quite safe.” - -“I did not think of _that_,” she said with a laugh; “only _we_ never -come home by the way we left it when we live in the Karroo. If any -one—suppose you had dismissed a Kaffir, or got him sjamboked,[2] and he -saw you go out? He would wait for you to come back on a tired horse, and -then.... You see? But, of course, in England where the road is all -walled, it is different. How funny! Even when we were little we learned -never to come home the way we went out.” - -“Very good,” said the Captain, obediently. It made the walk longer, and -he approved of that. - -“That’s a curious sort of woman,” said the Captain to the Major, as they -smoked a lonely pipe together when the train had gone. - -“_You_ seemed to think so.” - -“Well—I couldn’t monopolize Sister Dorothy in the presence of my senior -officer. What was she like?” - -“Oh, it came out that she knew a lot of my people in London. She’s the -daughter of a chap in the next county to us, too.” - - * * * * * - -The General’s flag still flew before his unstruck tent to amuse Boer -binoculars, and loyal lying correspondents still telegraphed accounts of -his daily work. But the General himself had gone to join an army a -hundred miles away; drawing off from time to time every squadron, gun -and company that he dared. His last words to the few troops he left -behind covered the entire situation. - -“If you can bluff ’em till we get round up north to tread on their -tails, it’s all right. If you can’t, they’ll probably eat you up. Hold -’em as long as you can.” - -So the skeleton remnant of the brigade lay close among the kopjes till -the Boers, not seeing them in force on the sky-line, feared that they -might have learned the rudiments of war. They rarely disclosed a gun, -for the reason that they had so few; they scouted by fours and fives -instead of clattering troops and chattering companies, and where they -saw a too obvious way opened to attack they, lacking force to drive it -home, looked elsewhere. Great was the anger in the Boer commando across -the river—the anger and unease. - -“The reason is they have so few men,” the loyal farmers reported, all -fresh from selling melons to the camp, and drinking Queen Victoria’s -health in good whisky. “They have no horses—only what they call Mounted -Infantry. They are afraid of us. They try to make us friends by giving -us brandy. Come on and shoot them. Then you will see us rise and cut the -line.” - -“Yes, we know how you rise, you Colonials,” said the Boer commandant -above his pipe. “We know what has come to all your promises from -Beaufort West, and even from De Aar. _We_ do the work—all the work,—and -you kneel down with your parsons and pray for our success. What good is -that? The President has told you a hundred times God is on our side. Why -do you worry Him? We did not send you Mausers and ammunition for that.” - -“We kept our commando-horses ready for six months—and forage is very -dear. We sent all our young men,” said an honoured member of local -society. - -“A few here and a few servants there. What is that? You should have -risen down to the sea all together.” - -“But you were so quick. Why did not you wait the year? We were not -ready, Jan.” - -“That is a lie. All you Cape people lie. You want to save your cattle -and your farms. Wait till _our_ flag flies from here to Port Elizabeth -and you shall see what you will save when the President learns how you -have risen—you clever Cape people.” - -The saddle-coloured sons of the soil looked down their noses. “Yes—it is -true. Some of our farms are close to the line. They say at Worcester and -in the Paarl that many soldiers are always coming in from the sea. One -must think of that—at least till they are shot. But we know there are -very few in front of you here. Give them what you gave the fools at -Stormberg, and you will see how we can shoot rooineks.”[3] - -“Yes. I know that cow. She is always going to calve. Get away. I am -answerable to the President—not to the Cape.” - -But the information stayed in his mind, and, not being a student of -military works, he made a plan to suit. The tall kopje on which the -English had planted their helio-station commanded the more or less open -plain to the northward, but did not command the five-mile belt of broken -country between that and the outmost English pickets, some three miles -from camp. The Boers had established themselves very comfortably among -these rock-ridges and scrub-patches, and the “great war” drizzled down -to long shots and longer stalking. The young bloods wanted rooineks to -shoot, and said so. - -“See here,” quoth the experienced Jan van Staden that evening to as many -of his commando as cared to listen. “You youngsters from the Colony talk -a lot. Go and turn the rooineks out of their kopjes to-night. Eh? Go and -take their bayonets from them and stick them into them. Eh? You don’t -go!” He laughed at the silence round the fire. - -“Jan—Jan,” said one young man appealingly, “don’t make mock of us.” - -“I thought that was what you wanted so badly. No? Then listen to me. -Behind us the grazing is bad. We have too many cattle here.” (They had -been stolen from farmers who had been heard to express fears of defeat.) -“To-morrow, by the sky’s look, it will blow a good wind. So, to-morrow -early I shall send all our cattle north to the new grazing. That will -make a great dust for the English to see from their helio yonder.” He -pointed to a winking night-lamp stabbing the darkness with orders to an -out-lying picket. “With the cattle we will send all our women. Yes, all -the women and the wagons we can spare, and the lame ponies and the -broken carts we took from Andersen’s farm. That will make a big dust—the -dust of our retreat. Do you see?” - -They saw and approved, and said so. - -“Good. There are many men here who want to go home to their wives. I -shall let thirty of them away for a week. Men who wish to do this will -speak to me to-night.” (This meant that Jan needed money, and furlough -would be granted on strictly business lines.) “These men will look after -the cattle and see that they make a great dust for a long way. They will -run about behind the cattle showing their guns, too. So _that_, if the -wind blows well, will be our retreat. The cattle will feed beyond -Koopman’s Kop.” - -“No good water there,” growled a farmer who knew that section. “Better -go on to Zwartpan. It is always sweet at Zwartpan.” - -The commando discussed the point for twenty minutes. It was much more -serious than shooting rooineks. Then Jan went on: - -“When the rooineks see our retreat they may all come into our kopjes -together. If so, good. But it is tempting God to expect such a favour. -_I_ think they will first send some men to scout.” He grinned broadly, -using the English word. “Almighty! To scoot! They have none of that new -sort of rooinek that they used at Sunnyside.” (Jan meant an -incomprehensible animal from a place called Australia across the -Southern seas who played what they knew of the war-game to kill.) “They -have only some Mounted Infantry,”—again he used the English words. “They -were once a Red-jacket regiment, so their scoots will stand up bravely -to be shot at.” - -“Good—good, we will shoot them,” said a youngster from Stellenbosch, who -had come up on free pass as a Capetown excursionist just before the war -to a farm on the border, where his aunt was taking care of his horse and -rifle. - -“But if you shoot their scoots I will sjambok you myself,” said Jan, -amid roars of laughter. “We must let them _all_ come into the kopjes to -look for us; and I pray God will not allow any of us to be tempted to -shoot them. They will cross the ford in front of their camp. They will -come along the road—so!” He imitated with ponderous arms the Army style -of riding. “They will trot up the road this way and that way”—here he -snaked his hard finger in the dust—“between kopjes, till they come here, -where they can see the plain and all our cattle going away. Then they -will _all_ come in close together. Perhaps they will even fix their -bayonets. _We_ shall be up here behind the rock—there and there.” He -pointed to two flat-topped kopjes, one on either side of the road, some -eight hundred yards away. “That is our place. We will go there before -sunrise. Remember we must be careful to let the very last of the -rooineks pass before we begin shooting. They will come along a little -careful at first. But we do not shoot. Then they will see our fires and -the fresh horse-dung, so they will know we have gone on. They will run -together and talk and point and shout in this nice open place. Then we -begin shooting them from above.” - -“Yes, uncle, but if the scouts see nothing and there are no shots and we -let them go back quite quiet, they will think it was a trick. Perhaps -the main body may never come here at all. Even rooineks learn in -time—and so we may lose even the scouts.” - -“I have thought of that too,” said Jan, with slow contempt, as the -Stellenbosch boy delivered his shot. “If you had been _my_ son I should -have sjamboked you more when you were a youngster. I shall put _you_ and -four or five more on the Nek [the pass], where the road comes from their -camp into these kopjes. You go there before it is light. Let the scoots -pass in or I will sjambok you myself. When the scoots come back after -seeing nothing here, then you may shoot them, but not till they have -passed the Nek and are on the straight road to their camp again. Do you -understand? Repeat what I have said, so that I shall know.” - -The youth obediently repeated his orders. - -“Kill their officers if you can. If not, no great matter, because the -scoots will run to camp with the news that our kopjes are empty. Their -helio-station will see your party trying to hold the Nek so hard—and all -that time they will see our dust out yonder, and they will think you are -the rear-guard, and they will think _we_ are escaping. They will be -angry.” - -“Yes—yes, uncle, we see,” from a dozen elderly voices. - -“But this calf does not. Be silent! They will shoot at you, Niclaus, on -the Nek, because they will think you are to cover our getting away. They -will shell the Nek. They will miss. You will then ride away. All the -rooineks will come after you, hot and in a hurry—perhaps, even, with -their cannon. They will pass our fires and our fresh horse-dung. They -will come here as their scoots came. They will see the plain so full of -our dust. They will say, ‘The scoots spoke truth. It is a full retreat.’ -_Then_ we up there on the rocks will shoot, and it will be like the -fight at Stormberg in daytime. Do you understand _now_?” - -Those of the commando directly interested lit new pipes and discussed -the matter in detail till midnight. - -Next morning the operations began with, if one may borrow the language -of some official despatches—“the precision of well-oiled machinery.” - -The helio-station reported the dust of the wagons and the movements of -armed men in full flight across the plain beyond the kopjes. A Colonel, -newly appointed from England, by reason of his seniority, sent forth a -dozen Mounted Infantry under command of a Captain. Till a month ago they -had been drilled by a cavalry instructor, who taught them “shock” -tactics to the music of trumpets. They knew how to advance in echelon of -squadrons, by cat’s cradle of troops, in quarter column of -stable-litter, how to trot, to gallop, and above all to charge. They -knew how to sit their horses unremittingly, so that at the day’s end -they might boast how many hours they had been in the saddle without -relief, and they learned to rejoice in the clatter and stamp of a troop -moving as such, and therefore audible five miles away. - -They trotted out two and two along the farm road, that trailed lazily -through the wind-driven dust; across the half-dried ford to a nek -between low stony hills leading into the debatable land. (Vrooman of -Emmaus from his neatly bushed hole noted that one man carried a sporting -Lee-Enfield rifle with a short fore-end. Vrooman of Emmaus argued that -the owner of it was the officer to be killed on his return, and went to -sleep.) They saw nothing except a small flock of sheep and a Kaffir -herdsman who spoke broken English with curious fluency. He had heard -that the Boers had decided to retreat on account of their sick and -wounded. The Captain in charge of the detachment turned to look at the -helio-station four miles away. “Hurry up,” said the dazzling flash. -“Retreat apparently continues, but suggest you make sure. Quick.” - -“Ye-es,” said the Captain, a shade bitterly, as he wiped the sweat from -a sun-skinned nose. “You want me to come back and report all clear. If -anything happens it will be my fault. If they get away it will be my -fault for disregarding the signal. I love officers who suggest and -advise, and want to make their reputations in twenty minutes.” - -“’Don’t see much ’ere, sir,” said the sergeant, scanning the bare cup of -the hollow where a dust-devil danced alone. - -“No? We’ll go on.” - -“If we get among these steep ’ills we lose touch of the ’elio.” - -“Very likely. Trot.” - -The rounded mounds grew to spiked kopjes, heart-breaking to climb under -a hot sun at four thousand feet above sea level. This is where the -scouts found their spurs peculiarly useful. - -Jan van Staden had thoughtfully allowed the invading force a front of -two rifle-shots or four thousand yards, and they kept a thousand yards -within his estimate. Ten men strung over two miles feel that they have -explored all the round earth. - -They saw stony slopes combing over in scrub, narrow valleys clothed with -stone, low ridges of splintered stone, and tufts of brittle-stemmed -bush. An irritating wind, split up by many rocky barriers, cuffed them -over the ears and slapped them in the face at every turn. They came upon -an abandoned camp fire, a little fresh horse-dung, and an empty -ammunition-box splintered up for fire-wood, an old boot, and a stale -bandage. - -A few hundred yards farther along the road a battered Mauser had been -thrown into a bush. The glimmer of its barrel drew the scouts from the -hillside, and here the road after passing between two flat-topped kopjes -entered a valley nearly half a mile wide, rose slightly, and over the -nek of a ridge gave clear view across the windy plain northward. - -“They’re on the dead run, for sure,” said a trooper. “Here’s their fire -and their litter and their guns, and that’s where they’re bolting to.” -He pointed over the ridge to the bellying dust cloud a mile long. A -vulture high overhead flickered down, steadied herself, and hung -motionless. - -“See!” said Jan van Staden from the rocks above the road, to his waiting -commando. “It turns like a well-oiled wheel. They look where they need -not look, but _here_, where they should look on both sides, they look at -our retreat—straight before them. It is tempting our people too much. I -pray God no one will shoot them.” - -“That’s about the size of it,” said the Captain, rubbing the dust from -his binoculars. “Boers on the run. I expect they find their main line of -retreat to the north is threatened. We’ll get back and tell the camp.” -He wheeled his pony and his eye traversed the flat-topped kopje -commanding the road. The stones at its edge seemed to be piled with less -than Nature’s carelessness. - -“That ’ud be a dashed ugly place if it were occupied—and that other one, -too. Those rocks aren’t five hundred yards from the road, either of ’em. -Hold on, sergeant, I’ll light a pipe.” He bent over the bowl, and above -his lighted match squinted at the kopje. A stone, a small roundish brown -boulder on the lip of another one, seemed to move very slightly. The -short hairs of his neck grated his collar. “I’ll have another squint at -their retreat,” he cried to the sergeant, astonished at the steadiness -of his own voice. He swept the plain, and, wheeling, let the glass rest -for a moment on the kopje’s top. One cranny between the rocks was -pinkish, where blue sky should have shown. His men, dotted down the -valley, sat heavily on their horses—it never occurred to them to -dismount. He could hear the squeak of the leathers as a man shifted. An -impatient gust blew through the valley and rattled the bushes. On all -sides the expectant hills stood still under the pale blue. - -“And we passed within a quarter of a mile of ’em! We’re done!” The -thumping heart slowed down, and the Captain began to think clearly—so -clearly that the thoughts seemed solid things. “It’s Pretoria gaol for -us all. Perhaps that man’s only a look-out, though. We’ll have to bolt! -And I led ’em into it!... You fool,” said his other self, above the beat -of the blood in his eardrums. “If they could snipe you all from up -there, why haven’t they begun already? Because you’re the bait for the -rest of the attack. They don’t want you _now_. You’re to go back and -bring up the others to be killed. Go back! Don’t detach a man or they’ll -suspect. Go back all together. Tell the sergeant you’re going. Some of -them up there will understand English. Tell it aloud! Then back you go -with the news—the real news.” - -“The country’s all clear, sergeant,” he shouted. “We’ll go back and tell -the Colonel.” With an idiotic giggle he added, “It’s a good road for -guns, don’t you think?” - -“Hear you that?” said Jan van Staden, gripping a burgher’s arm. “God is -on our side to-day. They _will_ bring their little cannons after all!” - -“Go easy. No good bucketing the horses to pieces. We’ll need ’em for the -pursuit later,” said the Captain. “Hullo, there’s a vulture! How far -would you make him?” - -“Can’t tell, sir, in this dry air.” - -The bird swooped towards the second flat-topped kopje, but suddenly -shivered sideways, and wheeled off again, followed intently by the -Captain’s glance. - -“And that kopje’s simply full of ’em, too,” he said, flushing. -“Perfectly confident they are, that we’d take this road—and then they’ll -scupper the whole boiling of us! They’ll let us through to fetch up the -others. But I mustn’t let ’em know we know. By Jove, they do _not_ think -much of us! ’Don’t blame ’em.” - -The cunning of the trap did not impress him until later. - -Down the track jolted a dozen well-equipped men, laughing and talking—a -mark to make a pious burgher’s mouth water. Thrice had their Captain -explicitly said that they were to march easy, so a trooper began to hum -a tune that he had picked up in Capetown streets:— - - Vat jou goet en trek, Ferriera, - Vat jou goet en trek; - Jannie met de hoepel bein, Ferriera, - Jannie met de hoepel bein! - -Then with a whistle:— - - Zwaar draa—alle en de ein kant— - -The Captain, thinking furiously, found his mind turn to a camp in the -Karroo, months before; an engine that had halted in that waste, and a -woman with brown hair, early grizzled—an extraordinary woman.... Yes, -but as soon as they had dropped the flat-topped kopje behind its -neighbour he must hurry back and report.... A woman with grey eyes and -black eyelashes.... The Boers would probably be massed on those two -kopjes. How soon dare he break into a canter?... A woman with a queer -cadence in her speech.... It was not more than five miles home by the -straight road— - -“_Even when we were children we learned not to go back by the way we had -come._” - -The sentence came back to him, self-shouted, so clearly that he almost -turned to see if the scouts had heard. The two flat-topped kopjes behind -him were covered by a long ridge. The camp lay due south. He had only to -follow the road to the Nek—a notch, unscouted as he recalled now, -between the two hills. - -He wheeled his men up a long valley. - -“Excuse me, sir, that ain’t our road!” said the sergeant. “Once we get -over this rise, straight on, we come into direct touch with the ’elio, -on that flat bit o’ road there they ’elioed us goin’ out.” - -“But we aren’t going to get in touch with them just now. Come along, and -come quick.” - -“What’s the meaning of this?” said a private in the rear. “What’s ’e -doin’ this detour for? We shan’t get in for hours an’ hours.” - -“Come on, men. Flog a canter out of your brutes, somehow,” the Captain -called back. - -For two throat-parched hours he held west by south, away from the Nek, -puzzling over a compass already demented by the ironstone in the hills, -and then turned southeast through an eruption of low hills that ran far -into the re-entering bend of the river that circled the left bank of the -camp. - -Eight miles to eastward that student from Stellenbosch had wriggled out -on the rocks above the Nek to have a word with Vrooman of Emmaus. The -bottom seemed to have dropped out of at least one portion of their -programme; for the scouting party were not to be seen. - -“Jan is a clever man,” he said to his companion, “but he does not think -that even rooineks may learn. Perhaps those scouts will have seen Jan’s -commando, and perhaps they will come back to warn the rooineks. That is -why I think he should have shot them _before_ they came to the Nek, and -made quite sure that only one or two got away. It would have made the -English angry, and they would have come out across the open in hundreds -to be shot. Then when we ran away they would have come after us without -thinking. If you can make the English hurry, they never think. Jan is -wrong this time.” - -“Lie down, and pray you have not shown yourself to their helio-station,” -growled Vrooman of Emmaus. “You throw with your arms and kick with your -legs like a rooinek. When we get back I will tell Jan and he will -sjambok you. All will yet come right. They will go and warn the rest, -and the rest will hurry out by this very nek. Then we can shoot. Now you -lie still and wait.” - -“’Ere’s a rummy picnic. We left camp, as it were, by the front door. ’E -_’as_ given us a giddy-go-round, an’ no mistake,” said a dripping -private as he dismounted behind the infantry lines. - -“Did you see our helio?” This was the Colonel, hot from racing down from -the helio-station. “There were a lot of Boers waiting for you on the -Nek. We saw ’em. We tried to get at you with the helio, and tell you we -were coming out to help you. Then we saw you didn’t come over that flat -bit of road where we had signalled you going out, and we wondered why. -We didn’t hear any shots.” - -“I turned off, sir, and came in by another road,” said the Captain. - -“By another road!” The Colonel lifted his eyebrows. “Perhaps you’re not -aware, sir, that the Boers have been in full retreat for the last three -hours, and that those men on the Nek were simply a rear-guard put out to -delay us for a little. We could see that much from here. Your duty, sir, -was to have taken them in the rear, and then we could have brushed them -aside. The Boer retreat has been going on all morning, sir—all morning. -You were despatched to see the front clear and to return at once. The -whole camp has been under arms for three hours; and instead of doing -your work you wander all about Africa with your scouts to avoid a -handful of skulking Boers! You should have sent a man back at once—you -should have——” - -The Captain got off his horse stiffly. - -“As a matter of fact,” said he, “I didn’t know for sure that there were -any Boers on the Nek, but I went round it in case it was so. But I _do_ -know that the kopjes beyond the Nek are simply crawling with Boers.” - -“Nonsense. We can see the whole lot of ’em retreating out yonder.” - -“Of course you can. That’s part of their game, sir. I saw ’em lying on -the top of a couple of kopjes commanding the road, where it goes into -the plain on the far side. They let us come in to see, and they let us -go out to report the country clear and bring you up. Now they are -waiting for _you_. The whole thing is a trap.” - -“D’you expect any officer of my experience to believe that?” - -“As you please, sir,” said the Captain hopelessly. “My responsibility -ends with my report.” - - - - - AN UNQUALIFIED PILOT - -_This tale is founded on something that happened a good many years ago -in the Port of Calcutta, before wireless telegraphy was used on ships, -and men and boys were less easy to catch when once they were in a ship. -It is not meant to show that anybody who thinks he would like to become -eminent in his business can do so at a moment’s notice; but it proves -the old saying that if you want anything badly enough and are willing to -pay the price for it, you generally get it. If you don’t get what you -want it is a sign either that you did not seriously want it, or that you -tried to bargain over the price._ - - -Almost any pilot will tell you that his work is much more difficult than -you imagine; but the Pilots of the Hugli know that they have one hundred -miles of the most dangerous river on earth running through their -hands—the Hugli between Calcutta and the Bay of Bengal—and they say -nothing. Their service is picked and sifted as carefully as the bench of -the Supreme Court, for a judge can only hang the wrong man, or pass a -bad law; but a careless pilot can lose a ten-thousand-ton ship with crew -and cargo in less time than it takes to reverse her engines. - -There is very little chance of anything getting off again when once she -touches in the furious Hugli current, loaded with all the fat silt of -the fields of Bengal, where the soundings change two feet between tides, -and new channels make and unmake themselves in one rainy season. Men -have fought the Hugli for two hundred years, till now the river owns a -huge building, with drawing, survey, and telegraph departments, devoted -to its private service, as well as a body of wardens, who are called the -Port Commissioners. - -They and their officers govern everything that floats from the Hugli -Bridge to the last buoy at Pilots Ridge, one hundred and forty miles -away, far out in the Bay of Bengal, where the steamers first pick up the -pilots from the pilot brig. - -A Hugli pilot does not kindly bring papers aboard for the passengers, or -scramble up the ship’s side by wet, swaying rope-ladders. He arrives in -his best clothes, with a native servant or an assistant pilot to wait on -him, and he behaves as a man should who can earn two or three thousand -pounds a year after twenty years’ apprenticeship. He has beautiful rooms -in the Port Office at Calcutta, and generally keeps himself to the -society of his own profession, for though the telegraph reports the more -important soundings of the river daily, there is much to be learned from -brother pilots between each trip. - -Some million tons of shipping must find their way to and from Calcutta -each twelvemonth, and unless the Hugli were watched as closely as his -keeper watches an elephant, there is a fear that it might silt up, as it -has silted up round the old Dutch and Portuguese ports twenty and thirty -miles behind Calcutta. - -So the Port Office sounds and scours and dredges the river, and builds -spurs and devices for coaxing currents, and labels all the buoys with -their proper letters, and attends to the semaphores and the lights and -the drum, ball and cone storm signals; and the pilots of the Hugli do -the rest; but, in spite of all care and the very best attention, the -Hugli swallows her ship or two every year. Even the coming of wireless -telegraphy does not spoil her appetite. - -When Martin Trevor had waited on the river from his boyhood; when he had -risen to be a Senior Pilot, entitled to bring up to Calcutta the very -biggest ships; when he had thought and talked of nothing but Hugli -pilotage all his life to nobody except Hugli pilots, he was exceedingly -surprised and indignant that his only son should decide to follow his -father’s profession. Mrs. Trevor had died when the boy was a child, and -as he grew older, Trevor, in the intervals of his business, noticed that -the lad was very often by the river-side—no place, he said, for a nice -boy. But, as he was not often at home, and as the aunt who looked after -Jim naturally could not follow him to his chosen haunts, and as Jim had -not the faintest intention of giving up old friends there, nothing but -ineffectual growls came of the remark. Later, when Trevor once asked him -if he could make anything out of the shipping on the water, Jim replied -by reeling off the list of all the house-flags in sight at the moorings, -together with supplementary information about their tonnage and -captains. - -“You’ll come to a bad end, Jim,” said Trevor. “Boys of your age haven’t -any business to waste their time on these things.” - -“Oh, Pedro at the Sailors’ Home says you can’t begin too early.” - -“At what, please?” - -“Piloting. I’m nearly fourteen now, and—and I know where most of the -shipping in the river is, and I know what there was yesterday over the -Mayapur Bar, and I’ve been down to Diamond Harbour—oh, a hundred times -already, and I’ve——” - -“You’ll go to school, son, and learn what they teach you, and you’ll -turn out something better than a pilot,” said his father, who wanted Jim -to enter the Subordinate Civil Service, but he might just as well have -told a shovel-nosed porpoise of the river to come ashore and begin life -as a hen. Jim held his tongue; he noticed that all the best pilots in -the Port Office did that; and devoted his young attention and all his -spare time to the river he loved. He had seen the nice young gentlemen -in the Subordinate Civil Service, and he called them a rude native name -for “clerks.” - -He became as well known as the Bankshall itself; and the Port Police let -him inspect their launches, and the tug-boat captains had always a place -for him at their tables, and the mates of the big steam dredgers used to -show him how the machinery worked, and there were certain native -row-boats which Jim practically owned; and he extended his patronage to -the railway that runs to Diamond Harbour, forty miles down the river. In -the old days nearly all the East India Company’s ships used to discharge -at Diamond Harbour, on account of the shoals above, but now ships go -straight up to Calcutta, and they have only some moorings for vessels in -distress there, and a telegraph service, and a harbour-master, who was -one of Jim’s most intimate friends. - -He would sit in the Office listening to the soundings of the shoals as -they were reported every day, and attending to the movements of the -steamers up and down (Jim always felt he had lost something -irretrievable if a boat got in or out of the river without his knowing -of it), and when the big liners with their rows of blazing portholes -tied up in Diamond Harbour for the night, Jim would row from one ship to -the other through the sticky hot air and the buzzing mosquitoes and -listen respectfully as the pilots conferred together about the habits of -steamers. - -Once, for a treat, his father took him down clear out to the Sandheads -and the pilot brig there, and Jim was happily sea-sick as she tossed and -pitched in the Bay. The cream of life, though, was coming up in a tug or -a police boat from Diamond Harbour to Calcutta, over the “James and -Mary,” those terrible sands christened after a royal ship that they sunk -two hundred years before. They are made by two rivers that enter the -Hugli six miles apart and throw their own silt across the silt of the -main stream, so that with each turn of weather and tide the sands shift -and change under water like clouds in the sky. It was here (the tales -sound much worse when they are told in the rush and growl of the muddy -waters) that the _Countess of Stirling_, fifteen hundred tons, touched -and capsized in ten minutes, and a two-thousand-ton steamer in two, and -a pilgrim ship in five, and another steamer literally in one instant, -holding down her men with the masts and shrouds as she lashed over. When -a ship touches on the “James and Mary,” the river knocks her down and -buries her, and the sands quiver all around her and reach out under -water and take new shapes over the corpse. - -Young Jim would lie up in the bows of the tug and watch the straining -buoys kick and choke in the coffee-coloured current, while the -semaphores and flags signalled from the bank how much water there was in -the channel, till he learned that men who deal with men can afford to be -careless, on the chance of their fellows being like them; but men who -deal with things dare not relax for an instant. “And that’s the very -reason,” old McEwan said to him once, “that the ‘James and Mary’ is the -safest part of the river,” and he shoved the big black _Bandoorah_, that -draws twenty-five feet, through the Eastern Gat, with a turban of white -foam wrapped round her forefoot and her screw beating as steadily as his -own heart. - -If Jim could not get away to the river there was always the big, cool -Port Office, where the soundings were worked out and the maps drawn; or -the Pilots’ room, where he could lie in a long chair and listen quietly -to the talk about the Hugli; and there was the library, where if you had -money you could buy charts and books of directions against the time that -you would actually have to steam over the places themselves. It was -exceedingly hard for Jim to hold the list of Jewish Kings in his head, -and he was more than uncertain as to the end of the verb _audio_ if you -followed it far enough down the page, but he could keep the soundings of -three channels distinct in his head, and, what is more confusing, the -changes in the buoys from “Garden Reach” down to Saugor, as well as the -greater part of the _Calcutta Telegraph_, the only paper he ever read. - -Unluckily, you cannot peruse about the Hugli without money, even though -you are the son of the best-known pilot on the river, and as soon as -Trevor understood how his son was spending his time, he cut down his -pocket money, of which Jim had a very generous allowance. In his -extremity he took counsel with Pedro, the plum-coloured mulatto at the -Sailors’ Home, and Pedro was a bad, designing man. He introduced Jim to -a Chinaman in Muchuatollah, an unpleasing place in itself, and the -Chinaman, who answered to the name of Erh-Tze, when he was not smoking -opium, talked business in pigeon-English to Jim for an hour. Every bit -of that business from first to last was flying in the face of every law -on the river, but it interested Jim. - -“S’pose you takee. Can do?” Erh-Tze said at last. - -Jim considered his chances. A junk, he knew, would draw about eleven -feet and the regular fee for a qualified pilot, outward to the -Sandheads, would be two hundred rupees. On the one hand he was not -qualified, so he dared not ask more than half. _But_, on the other hand, -he was fully certain of the thrashing of his life from his father for -piloting without license, let alone what the Port Authorities might do -to him. So he asked one hundred and seventy-five rupees, and Erh-Tze -beat him down to a hundred and twenty. The cargo of his junk was worth -anything from seventy to a hundred and fifty thousand rupees, some of -which he was getting as enormous freight on the coffins of thirty or -forty dead Chinamen, whom he was taking to be buried in their native -country. - -Rich Chinamen will pay fancy prices for this service, and they have a -superstition that the iron of steamships is bad for the spiritual health -of their dead. Erh-Tze’s junk had crept up from Singapore, _via_ Penang -and Rangoon, to Calcutta, where Erh-Tze had been staggered by the Pilot -dues. This time he was going out at a reduction with Jim, who, as Pedro -kept telling him, was just as good as a pilot, and a heap cheaper. - -Jim knew something of the manners of junks, but he was not prepared, -when he went down that night with his charts, for the confusion of cargo -and coolies and coffins and clay-cooking places, and other things that -littered her decks. He had sense enough to haul the rudder up a few -feet, for he knew that a junk’s rudder goes far below the bottom, and he -allowed a foot extra to Erh-Tze’s estimate of the junk’s depth. Then -they staggered out into midstream very early, and never had the city of -his birth looked so beautiful as when he feared he would not come back -to see it. Going down “Garden Reach” he discovered that the junk would -answer to her helm if you put it over far enough, and that she had a -fair, though Chinese, notion of sailing. He took charge of the tiller by -stationing three Chinese on each side of it, and standing a little -forward, gathered their pigtails into his hands, three right and three -left, as though they had been the yoke lines of a row-boat. Erh-Tze -almost smiled at this; he felt he was getting good care for his money -and took a neat little polished bamboo to keep the men attentive, for he -said this was no time to teach the crew pigeon-English. The more way -they could get on the junk the better would she steer, and as soon as he -felt a little confidence in her, Jim ordered the stiff, rustling sails -to be hauled up tighter and tighter. He did not know their names—at -least any name that would be likely to interest a Chinaman—but Erh-Tze -had not banged about the waters of the Malay Archipelago all his life -for nothing. He rolled forward with his bamboo, and the things rose like -Eastern incantations. - -Early as they were on the river, a big American oil (but they called it -kerosene in those days) ship was ahead of them in tow, and when Jim saw -her through the lifted mist he was thankful. She would draw all of -seventeen feet, and if he could steer by her they would be safe. It is -easier to scurry up and down the “James and Mary” in a police boat that -someone else is handling than to cram a hard-mouthed old junk across the -same sands alone, with the certainty of a thrashing if you come out -alive. - -Jim glued his eyes to the American, and saw that at Fultah she dropped -her tug and stood down the river under sail. He all but whooped aloud, -for he knew that the number of pilots who preferred to work a ship -through the “James and Mary” was strictly limited. “If it isn’t Father, -it’s Dearsley,” said Jim, “and Dearsley went down yesterday with the -_Bancoora_, so it’s Father. If I’d gone home last night instead of going -to Pedro, I’d have met him. He must have got his ship quick, but—Father -_is_ a very quick man.” Then Jim reflected that they kept a piece of -knotted rope on the pilot brig that stung like a wasp; but this thought -he dismissed as beneath the dignity of an officiating pilot, who needed -only to nod his head to set Erh-Tze’s bamboo to work. - -As the American came round, just before the Fultah Sands, Jim raked her -with his spy-glass, and saw his father on the poop, an unlighted cigar -between his teeth. That cigar, Jim knew, would be smoked on the other -side of the “James and Mary,” and Jim felt so entirely safe and happy -that he lit a cigar on his own account. This kind of piloting was -child’s play. His father could not make a mistake if he tried; and Jim, -with his six obedient pigtails in his two hands, had leisure to admire -the perfect style in which the American was handled—how she would point -her bowsprit jeeringly at a hidden bank, as much as to say, “Not to-day, -thank you, dear,” and bow down lovingly to a buoy as much as to say, -“_You_’re a gentleman, at any rate,” and come round sharp on her heel -with a flutter and a rustle, and a slow, steady swing something like a -well-dressed woman staring all round the theatre through opera-glasses. - -It was hard work to keep the junk near her, though Erh-Tze set -everything that was by any means settable, and used his bamboo most -generously. When they were nearly under her counter, and a little to her -left, Jim, hidden behind a sail, would feel warm and happy all over, -thinking of the thousand nautical and piloting things that he knew. When -they fell more than half a mile behind, he was cold and miserable -thinking of all the million things he did not know or was not quite sure -of. And so they went down, Jim steering by his father, turn for turn, -over the Mayapur Bar, with the semaphores on each bank duly signalling -the depth of water, through the Western Gat, and round Makoaputti Lumps, -and in and out of twenty places, each more exciting than the last, and -Jim nearly pulled the six pigtails out for pure joy when the last of the -“James and Mary” had gone astern, and they were walking through Diamond -Harbour. - -From there to the mouth of the Hugli things are not so bad—at least, -that was what Jim thought, and held on till the swell from the Bay of -Bengal made the old junk heave and snort, and the river broadened into -the inland sea, with islands only a foot or two high scattered about it. -The American walked away from the junk as soon as they were beyond -Kedgeree, and the night came on and the river looked very big and -desolate, so Jim promptly anchored somewhere in grey water, with the -Saugor Light away off toward the east. He had a great respect for the -Hugli to the last yard of her, and had no desire whatever to find -himself on the Gasper Sand or any other little shoal. Erh-Tze and the -crew highly approved of this piece of seamanship. They set no watch, lit -no lights, and at once went to sleep. - -Jim lay down between a red-and-black lacquer coffin and a little live -pig in a basket. As soon as it was light he began studying his chart of -the Hugli mouth, and trying to find out where in the river he might be. -He decided to be on the safe side and wait for another sailing-ship and -follow her out. So he made an enormous breakfast of rice and boiled -fish, while Erh-Tze lit firecrackers and burned gilt paper to the Joss -who had saved them so far. Then they heaved up their rough-and-tumble -anchor, and made after a big, fat, iron four-masted sailing-ship, heavy -as a hay-wain. - -The junk, which was really a very weatherly boat, and might have begun -life as a private pirate in Annam forty years before, followed under -easy sail; for the four-master would run no risks. She was in old -McEwan’s hands, and she waddled about like a broody hen, giving each -shoal wide allowances. All this happened near the outer Floating Light, -some hundred and twenty miles from Calcutta, and apparently in the open -sea. - -Jim knew old McEwan’s appetite, and often heard him pride himself on -getting his ship to the pilot brig close upon meal hours, so he argued -that if the pilot brig was get-at-able (and Jim himself had not the -ghost of a notion where she would lie), McEwan would find her before one -o’clock. - -It was a blazing hot day, and McEwan fidgeted the four-master down to -“Pilots Ridge” with what little wind remained, and sure enough there lay -the pilot brig, and Jim felt shivers up his back as Erh-Tze paid him his -hundred and twenty rupees and he went over-side in the junk’s one crazy -dinghy. McEwan was leaving the four-master in a long, slashing -whale-boat that looked very spruce and pretty, and Jim could see that -there was a certain amount of excitement among the pilots on the brig. -There was his father too. The ragged Chinese boatmen gave way in a most -ragged fashion, and Jim felt very unwashen and disreputable when he -heard the click of McEwan’s oars alongside, and McEwan saying, “James -Trevor, I’ll trouble you to lay alongside me.” - -Jim obeyed, and from the corner of one eye watched McEwan’s angry -whiskers stand up all round his face, which turned purple. - -“An’ how is it you break the regulations o’ the Porrt o’ Calcutta? Are -ye aware o’ the penalties and impreesonments ye’ve laid yourself open -to?” McEwan began. - -Jim said nothing. There was not very much to say just then; and McEwan -roared aloud: “Man, ye’ve perrsonated a Hugli pilot, an’ that’s as much -as to say ye’ve perrsonated _ME_! What did yon heathen give ye for -honorarium?” - -“’Hundred and twenty,” said Jim. - -“’An’ by what manner o’ means did ye get through the ‘James and Mary’?” - -“Father,” was the answer. “He went down the same tide and I—we—steered -by him.” - -McEwan whistled and choked, perhaps it was with anger. “Ye’ve made a -stalkin’-horse o’ your father, then? Jim, laddie, he’ll make an example -o’ you.” - -The boat hooked on to the brig’s chains, and McEwan said, as he set foot -on deck before Jim could speak, “Yon’s an enterprising cub o’ yours, -Trevor. Ye’d better enter him in the regular business, or one o’ these -fine days he’ll be acting as pilot before he’s qualified, and sinkin’ -junks in the Fairway. He fetched yon junk down last night. If ye’ve no -other designs I’m thinkin’ I’ll take him as my cub, for there’s no -denying he’s a resourceful lad—for all he’s an unlicked whelp.” - -“That,” said Trevor, reaching for Jim’s left ear, “is something we can -remedy,” and he led him below. - -The little knotted rope that they keep for general purposes on the pilot -brig did its duty, but when it was all over Jim was unlicked no longer. -He was McEwan’s property to be registered under the laws of the Port of -Calcutta, and a week later, when the _Ellora_ came along, he bundled -over the pilot brig’s side with McEwan’s enamelled leather hand-bag and -a roll of charts and a little bag of his own, and he dropped into the -sternsheets of the pilot gig with a very creditable imitation of -McEwan’s slow, swaying sit-down and hump of the shoulders. - - - - - THE JUNK AND DHOW - - - Once a pair of savages found a stranded tree. - (_One-piecee stick-pidgin—two-piecee man. - Straddle-um—paddle-um—push-um off to sea. - That way Foleign Devil-boat began._[4]) - But before and before, and ever so long before - Any shape of sailing-craft was known, - The Junk and Dhow had a stern and a bow, - And a mast and a sail of their own—alone, alone! - As they crashed across the Oceans on their own! - - Once there was a pirate-ship, being blown ashore— - (_Plitty soon pilum up, s’posee no can tack. - Seven-piecee stlong man pullum sta’boa’d oar. - That way bling her head alound and sailo back._) - But before, and before, and ever so long before - Grand Commander Noah took the wheel, - The Junk and the Dhow, though they look like anyhow, - Had rudders reaching deep below their keel—akeel—akeel! - As they laid the Eastern Seas beneath their keel! - - Once there was a galliot yawing in a tide. - (_Too much foolee side-slip. How can stop? - Man catchee tea-box lid—lasha longaside. - That way make her plenty glip and sail first-chop._) - But before, and before, and ever so long before - Any such contrivances were used, - The whole Confucian sea-board had standardized the lee-board, - And hauled it up or dropped it as they choosed—or chose—or choosed! - According to the weather, when they cruised! - - Once there was a caravel in beam-sea roll— - (_Cargo shiftee—alla dliftee—no can livee long. - S’posum’ nailo boa’d acloss—makee ploper hol’? - That way, cargo sittum still, an’ ship mo’ stlong._) - But before, and before, and ever so long before - Any square-rigged vessel hove in sight - The Canton deep-sea craft carried bulkheads fore and aft, - And took good care to keep ’em water-tight—atite—atite! - From Amboyna to the Great Australian Bight! - - Once there was a sailor-man singing just this way— - (_Too muchee yowl-o, sickum best flend! - Singee all-same pullee lope—haul and belay. - Hully up and coilum down an’—bite off end!_) - But before, and before, and ever so long before - Any sort of chanty crossed our lips, - The Junk and the Dhow, though they look like anyhow, - Were the Mother and the Father of all Ships—ahoy!—aships! - And of half the new inventions in our Ships! - From Tarifa to Formosa of our Ships! - From Socotra to Sel_ank_hor of the windlass and the anchor, - And the Navigators’ Compass on our Ships—ahoy!—our Ships - (_O, hully up and coilum down and bite off end!_) - - - - - HIS GIFT - - -His Scoutmaster and his comrades, who disagreed on several points, were -united in one conviction—that William Glasse Sawyer was, without -exception, the most unprofitable person, not merely in the Pelican -Troop, who lived in the wilderness of the 47th Postal District, London -S. E., but in the whole body of Boy Scouts throughout the world. - -No one, except a ferocious uncle who was also a French-polisher, seemed -responsible for his beginnings. There was a legend that he had been -entered as a Wolf-Cub at the age of eight, under Miss Doughty, whom the -uncle had either bribed or terrorized to accept him; and that after six -months Miss Doughty confessed that she could make nothing of him and -retired to teach school in the Yorkshire moors. There is also a -red-headed ex-cub of that troop (he is now in a shipping-office) who -asserts proudly that he used to bite William Glasse Sawyer on the leg in -the hope of waking him up, and takes most of the credit for William’s -present success. But when William moved into the larger life of the -Pelicans, who were gay birds, he was not what you might call alert. In -shape he resembled the ace of diamonds; in colour he was an oily sallow. - -He could accomplish nothing that required one glimmer of reason, thought -or commonsense. He cleaned himself only under bitter compulsion; he lost -his bearings equally in town or country after a five-minutes’ stroll. He -could track nothing smaller than a tram-car on a single line, and that -only if there were no traffic. He could neither hammer a nail, carry an -order, tie a knot, light a fire, notice any natural object, except food, -or use any edged tool except a table knife. To crown all, his -innumerable errors and omissions were not even funny. - -But it is an old law of human nature that if you hold to one known -course of conduct—good or evil—you end by becoming an institution; and -when he was fifteen or thereabouts William achieved that position. The -Pelicans gradually took pride in the notorious fact that they possessed -the only Sealed Pattern, Mark A, Ass—an unique jewel, so to speak, of -Absolute, Unalterable Incapacity. The poet of a neighbouring troop used -to write verses about him, and recite them from public places, such as -the tops of passing trams. William made no comment, but wrapped himself -up in long silences that he seldom broke till the juniors of the Troop -(the elders had given it up long before) tried to do him good turns with -their scout-staves. - -In private life he assisted his uncle at the mystery of -French-polishing, which, he said, was “boiling up things in pots and -rubbing down bits of wood.” The boiling-up, he said, he did not mind so -much. The rubbing down he hated. Once, too, he volunteered that his -uncle and only relative had been in the Navy, and “did not like to be -played with”; and the vision of William playing with any human being -upset even his Scoutmaster. - -Now it happened, upon a certain summer that was really a summer with -heat to it, the Pelicans had been lent a dream of a summer camp in a -dream of a park, which offered opportunities for every form of -diversion, including bridging muddy-banked streams, and unlimited -cutting into young alders and undergrowth at large. A convenient village -lay just outside the Park wall, and the ferny slopes round the camp were -rich in rabbits, not to mention hedgehogs and other fascinating vermin. -It was reached—Mr. Hale their Scoutmaster saw to that—after two days’ -hard labour, with the Troop push-cart, along sunny roads. - -William’s share in the affair was—what it had always been. First he lost -most of his kit; next his uncle talked to him after the fashion of the -Navy of ’96 before refitting him; thirdly he went lame behind the -push-cart by reason of a stone in his shoe, and on arrival in camp -dropped—not for the first, second or third time—into his unhonoured -office as Camp Orderly, and was placed at the disposal of The Prawn, -whose light blue eyes stuck out from his freckled face, and whose long -narrow chest was covered with badges. From that point on, the procedure -was as usual. Once again did The Prawn assure his Scoutmaster that he -would take enormous care of William and give him work suited to his -capacity and intelligence. Once again did William grunt and wriggle at -the news, and once again in the silence of the deserted camp next -morning, while the rest of the Pelicans were joyously mucking themselves -up to their young bills at bridging brooks, did he bow his neck to The -Prawn’s many orders. For The Prawn was a born organizer. He set William -to unpack the push-cart and then to neatly and exactly replace all -parcels, bags, tins, and boxes. He despatched him thrice in the forenoon -across the hot Park to fetch water from a distant well equipped with a -stiff-necked windlass and a split handle that pinched William’s fat -palms. He bade him collect sticks, thorny for choice, out of the flanks -of a hedge full of ripe nettles against which Scout uniforms offer small -protection. He then made him lay them in the camp cooking-place, -carefully rejecting the green ones, for most sticks were alike to -William; and when everything else failed, he set him to pick up stray -papers and rubbish the length and breadth of the camp. All that while, -he not only chased him with comments but expected that William would -show gratitude to him for forming his young mind. - -“’Tisn’t everyone ’ud take this amount o’ trouble with you, Mug,” said -The Prawn virtuously, when even his energetic soul could make no further -work for his vassal. “Now you open that bully-beef tin and we’ll have -something to eat, and then you’re off duty—for a bit. I shall try my -hand at a little camp-cooking.” - -William found the tin—at the very bottom, of course, of the push-cart; -cut himself generously over the knuckles in opening it (till The Prawn -showed him how this should be done), and in due course, being full of -bread and bully, withdrew towards a grateful clump of high fern that he -had had his eye on for some time, wriggled deep into it, and on a little -rabbit-browsed clearing of turf, stretched out and slept the sleep of -the weary who have been up and under strict orders since six A.M. Till -that hour of that day, be it remembered, William had given no proof -either of intelligence or initiative in any direction. - -He waked, slowly as was his habit, and noticed that the shadows were -stretching a little, even as he stretched himself. Then he heard The -Prawn clanking pot-lids, between soft bursts of song. William sniffed. -The Prawn was cooking—was probably qualifying for something or other; -The Prawn did nothing but qualify for badges. On reflection William -discovered that he loved The Prawn even less this camp than the last, or -the one before that. Then he heard the voice of a stranger. - -“Yes,” was The Prawn’s reply. “I’m in charge of the camp. Would you like -to look at it, sir?” - -“Seen ’em—seen heaps of ’em,” said the unknown. “My son was in ’em -once—Buffaloes, out Hendon-way. What are _you_?” - -“Well, just now I’m a sort of temporary Cook,” said The Prawn, whose -manners were far better than William’s. - -“Temp’ry! Temp’ry!” the stranger puffed. “Can’t be a temp’ry cook any -more’n you can be a temp’ry Parson. Not so much. Cookin’s cookin’. Let’s -see _your_ notions of cookin’.” - -William had never heard any one address The Prawn in these tones, and -somehow it cheered him. In the silence that followed he turned on his -face and wriggled unostentatiously through the fern, as a Scout should, -till he could see that bold man without attracting The Prawn’s notice. -And this, too, was the first time that William had ever profited by the -instruction of his Scoutmaster or the example of his comrades. - -Heavenly sights rewarded him. The Prawn, visibly ill at ease, was -shifting from one sinewy leg to the other, while an enormously fat -little man with a pointed grey beard and arms like the fins of a fish -investigated a couple of pots that hung on properly crutched sticks over -the small fire that William had lighted in the cooking-place. He did not -seem to approve of what he saw or smelt. And yet it was the impeccable -Prawn’s own cookery! - -“Lor!” said he at last after more sniffs of contempt, as he replaced the -lid. “If you hot up things in tins, _that_ ain’t cookery. That’s -vittles—mere vittles! And the way you’ve set that pot on, you’re drawing -all the nesty wood-smoke into the water. The spuds won’t take much harm -of it, but you’ve ruined the meat. That _is_ meat, ain’t it? Get me a -fork.” - -William hugged himself. The Prawn, looking exactly like his namesake -well-boiled, fetched a big fork. The little man prodded into the pot. - -“It’s stew!” The Prawn explained, but his voice shook. - -“Lor!” said the man again. “It’s boilin’! It’s boilin’! You don’t boil -when you stew, my son; an’ as for _this_”—up came a grey slab of -mutton—“there’s no odds between this and motor-tyres. Well! Well! As I -was sayin’——” He joined his hands behind his globular back and shook his -head in silence. After a while, The Prawn tried to assert himself. - -“Cookin’ isn’t my strong point,” began The Prawn, “but——” - -“Pore boys! Pore boys!” the stranger soliloquized, looking straight in -front of him. “_Pore_ little boys! Wicked, _I_ call it. They don’t ever -let you make bread, do they, my son?” - -The Prawn said they generally bought their bread at a shop. - -“Ah! I’m a shopkeeper meself. Marsh, the Baker here, is me. _Pore_ boys! -Well! Well!... Though it’s against me own interest to say so, _I_ think -shops are wicked. They sell people things out o’ tins which save ’em -trouble, an’ fill the ’ospitals with stummick-cases afterwards. An’ the -muck that’s sold for flour....” His voice faded away and he meditated -again. “Well—well! _As_ I was sayin’—— Pore boys! _Pore_ boys! I’m glad -you ain’t askin’ me to dinner. Good bye.” - -He rolled away across the fern, leaving The Prawn dumb behind him. - -It seemed to William best to wriggle back in his cover as far as he -could, ere The Prawn should call him to work again. He was not a Scout -by instinct, but his uncle had shown him that when things went wrong in -the world, someone generally passed it onto someone else. Very soon he -heard his name called, acidly, several times. He crawled out from the -far end of the fern-patch, rubbing his eyes, and The Prawn re-enslaved -him on the spot. For once in his life William was alert and intelligent, -but The Prawn paid him no compliments, nor when the very muddy Pelicans -came back from the bridging did The Prawn refer in any way to the visit -of Mr. E. M. Marsh & Son, Bakers and Confectioners in the village street -just outside the Park wall. Nor, for that matter, did he serve the -Pelicans much besides tinned meats for their evening meal. - -To say that William did not sleep a wink that night would be what has -been called “nature-faking”; which is a sin. His system demanded at -least nine hours’ rest, but he lay awake for quite twenty minutes, -during which he thought intensely, rapidly and joyously. Had he been -asked he would have said that his thoughts dealt solely with The Prawn -and the judgment that had fallen upon him; but William was no -psychologist. He did not know that hate—raging hate against a -too-badged, too virtuous senior—had shot him into a new world, exactly -as the large blunt shell is heaved through space and dropped into a -factory, a garden or a barracks by the charge behind it. And, as the -shell, which is but metal and mixed chemicals, needs only a graze on the -fuse to spread itself all over the landscape, so did his mind need but -the touch of that hate to flare up and illuminate not only all his -world, but his own way through it. - -Next morning something sang in his ear that it was long since he had -done good turns to any one except his uncle, who was slow to appreciate -them. He would amend that error; and the more safely since The Prawn -would be off all that day with the Troop on a tramp in the natural -history line, and his place as Camp Warden and Provost Marshal would be -filled by the placid and easy-going Walrus, whose proper name was -Carpenter, who never tried for badges, but who could not see a rabbit -without going after him. And the owner of the Park had given full leave -to the Pelicans to slay by any means, except a gun, any rabbits they -could. So William ingratiated himself with his Superior Officer as soon -as the Pelicans had left.... - -No, the excellent Carpenter did not see that he needed William by his -side all day. He might take himself and his bruised foot pretty much -where he chose. He went, and this new and active mind of his that he did -not realize, accompanied him—straight up the path of duty which, poetry -tells us, is so often the road to glory. - -He began by cleaning himself and his kit at seven o’clock in the -morning, long before the village shops were open. This he did near a -postern gate with a crack in it, in the Park wall, commanding a limited -but quite sufficient view of the establishment of E. M. Marsh & Son -across the street. It was perfect weather, and about eight o’clock Mr. -Marsh himself in his shirt-sleeves rolled out to enjoy it before he took -down the shutters. Hardly had he shifted the first of them when a -fattish Boy Scout with a flat face and a slight limp laid hold of the -second and began to slide it towards him. - -“Well, well!” said Mr. Marsh. “Ah! Your good turn, eh?” - -“Yes,” said William briefly. - -“That’s right! Handsomely now, handsomely,” for the shutter was jamming -in its groove. William knew from his uncle that “handsomely” meant -slowly and with care. The shutter responded to the coaxing. The others -followed. - -“Belay!” said Mr. Marsh, wiping his forehead, for, like William, he -perspired easily. When he turned round William had gone. The Movies had -taught him, though he knew it not, the value of dramatic effect. He -continued to watch Mr. Marsh through the crack in the postern—it was the -little wooden door at the end of the right of way through the Park—and -when, an hour or so later, Mr. Marsh came out of his shop and headed -towards it, William retired backwards into the high fern and brambles. -The manœuvre would have rejoiced Mr. Hale’s heart, for generally William -moved like an elephant with its young. He turned up, quite casually, -when Mr. Marsh had puffed his way again into the empty camp. Carpenter -was off in pursuit of rabbits, with a pocket full of fine picture-wire. -It was the first time William had ever done the honours of any -establishment. He came to attention and smiled. - -“Well! Well!” Mr. Marsh nodded friendlily. “What are _you_?” - -“Camp-guard,” said William, improvising for the first time in his life. -“Can I show you anything, sir?” - -“No, thank’ee. My son was a Scout once. I’ve just come to look round at -things. ’No one tryin’ any cookin’ to-day?” - -“No, sir.” - -“’Bout’s well. _Pore_ boys! What you goin’ to have for dinner? Tinned -stuff?” - -“I expect so, sir.” - -“D’you like it?” - -“’Used to it.” William rather approved of this round person who wasted -no time on abstract ideas. - -“_Pore_ boys! Well! Well! It saves trouble—for the present. Knots and -splices in your stummick afterwards—in ’ospital.” Mr. Marsh looked at -the cold camp cooking-place and its three big stones, and sniffed. - -“Would you like it lit?” said William, suddenly. - -“What for?” - -“To cook with.” - -“What d’ _you_ know about cookin’?” Mr. Marsh’s little eyes opened wide. - -“Nothing, sir.” - -“What makes you think _I_’m a cook?” - -“By the way you looked at our cooking-place,” the mendacious William -answered. The Prawn had always urged him to cultivate habits of -observation. They seemed easy—after you had observed the things. - -“Well! Well! Quite a young Sherlock, you are. ’Don’t think much o’ -_this_, though.” Mr. Marsh began to stoop to rearrange the open-air -hearth to his liking. - -“Show me how and I’ll do it,” said William. - -“Shove that stone a little more to the left then. Steady—So! That’ll do! -Got any wood? No? You slip across to the shop and ask them to give you -some small brush-stuff from the oven. Stop! _And_ my apron, too. Marsh -is the name.” - -William left him chuckling wheezily. When he returned Mr. Marsh clad -himself in a long white apron of office which showed so clearly that -Carpenter from far off returned at once. - -“H’sh! H’sh!” said Mr. Marsh before he could speak. “You carry on with -what you’re doing. Marsh is my name. My son was a Scout once. -Buffaloes—Hendon-way. It’s all right. Don’t you grudge an old man -enjoying himself.” - -The Walrus looked amazedly at William moving in three directions at once -with his face on fire. - -“It’s all right,” said William. “He’s giving us cooking-lessons.” -Then—the words came into his mouth by themselves—“I’ll take the -responsibility.” - -“Yes, yes! He knew I could cook. Quite a young Sherlock he is! _You_ -carry on.” Mr. Marsh turned his back on the Walrus and despatched -William again with some orders to his shop across the road. “And you’d -better tell ’em to put ’em all in a basket,” he cried after him. - -William returned with a fair assortment of mixed material, including -eggs, two rashers of bacon, and a packet of patent flour concerning -which last Mr. Marsh said things no baker should say about his own -goods. The frying-pan came out of the push-cart, with some other -oddments, and it was not till after it was greased that Mr. Marsh -demanded William’s name. He got it in full, and it produced strange -effects on the little fat man. - -“An’ ’ow do you spell your middle name?” he asked. - -“G-l-a-double-s-e,” said William. - -“Might that be your mother’s?” William nodded. “Well! Well! I wonder -now! I _do_ wonder. It’s a great name. There was a Sawyer in the cooking -line once, but ’e was a Frenchman and spelt it different. Glasse is -serious though. And you say it was your ma’s.” He fell into an -abstraction, frying-pan in hand. Anon, as he cracked an egg miraculously -on its edge—“Whether you’re a descendant or not, it’s worth livin’ up -to, a name like that.” - -“Why?” said William, as the egg slid into the pan and spread as evenly -as paint under an expert’s hand. - -“I’ll tell you some day. She was a very great cook—but she’d have come -expensive at to-day’s prices. Now, you take the pan an’ I’ll draw me own -conclusions.” - -The boy worked the pan over the level red fire with a motion that he had -learned somehow or other while “boiling up” things for his uncle. It -seemed to him natural and easy. Mr. Marsh watched in unbroken silence -for at least two minutes. - -“It’s early to say—yet,” was his verdict. “But I ’ave ’opes. You ’ave -good ’ands, an’ your knowin’ I was a cook shows you ’ave the instinck. -_If_ you ’ave got the Touch—mark you, I only say if—but _if_ you ’ave -anything like the Genuine Touch, you’re provided for for life. _An’_ -further—don’t tilt her that way!—you ’old your neighbours, friends and -employers in the ’ollow of your ’and.” - -“How do you mean?” said William, intent on his egg. - -“Everything which a man _is_ depends on what ’e puts inside ’im,” was -the reply. “A good cook’s a King of men—besides being thunderin’ well -off if ’e don’t drink. It’s the only sure business in the whole round -world; and _I_’ve been round it eight times, in the Mercantile Marine, -before I married the second Mrs. M.” - -William, more interested in the pan than Mr. Marsh’s marriages, made no -reply. “Yes, a good cook,” Mr. Marsh went on reminiscently, “even on -Board o’ Trade allowance, ’as brought many a ship to port that ’ud -otherwise ’ave mut’nied on the ’igh seas.” - -The eggs and bacon mellowed together. Mr. Marsh supplied some wonderful -last touches and the result was eaten, with the Walrus’s help, sizzling -out of the pan and washed down with some stone ginger-beer from the -convenient establishment of Mr. E. M. Marsh outside the Park wall. - -“I’ve ruined me dinner,” Mr. Marsh confided to the boys, “but I ’aven’t -enjoyed myself like this, not since Noah was an able seaman. You wash -up, young Sherlock, an’ I’ll tell you something.” - -He filled an ancient pipe with eloquent tobacco, and while William -scoured the pan, he held forth on the art and science and mystery of -cooking as inspiredly as Mr. Jorrocks, Master of Foxhounds, had lectured -upon the Chase. The burden of his song was Power—power which, striking -directly at the stomach of man, makes the rudest polite, not to say -sycophantic, towards a good cook, whether at sea, in camp, in the face -of war, or (here he embellished his text with personal experiences) the -crowded competitive cities where a good meal was as rare, he declared, -as silk pyjamas in a pig-sty. “An’ mark you,” he concluded, “three times -a day the ’aughtiest and most overbearin’ of ’em all ’ave to come -crawling to you for a round belly-full. Put _that_ in your pipe and -smoke it out, young Sherlock!” - -He unloosed his sacrificial apron and rolled away. - -The Boy Scout is used to strangers who give him good advice on the -smallest provocation; but strangers who fill you up with bacon and eggs -and ginger-beer are few. - -“What started it all?” the Walrus demanded. - -“Well, I can’t exactly say,” William answered, and as he had never been -known to give a coherent account of anything, the Walrus returned to his -wires, and William lay out and dreamed in the fern among the -cattle-flies. He had dismissed The Prawn altogether from his -miraculously enlarging mind. Very soon he was on the High Seas, a -locality which till that instant had never appealed to him, in a gale, -issuing bacon and eggs to crews on the edge of mutiny. Next, he was at -war, turning the tides of it to victory for his own land by meals of -bacon and eggs that brought bemedalled Generals in troops like Pelicans, -to his fire-place. Then he was sustaining his uncle, at the door of an -enormous restaurant, with plates of bacon and eggs sent out by gilded -commissionaires such as guard the cinemas, while his uncle wept with -gratitude and remorse, and The Prawn, badges and all, begged for scraps. - -His chin struck his chest and half waked him to fresh flights of glory. -He might have the Genuine Touch, Mr. Marsh had said it. Moreover, he, -the Mug, had a middle name which filled that great man with respect. All -the 47th Postal District should ring with that name, even to the -exclusion of the racing-news, in its evening papers. And on his return -from camp, or perhaps a day or two later, he would defy his very uncle -and escape for ever from the foul business of French-polishing. - -Here he slept generously and dreamlessly till evening, when the Pelicans -returned, their pouches full of samples of uncookable vegetables and -insects, and the Walrus made his report of the day’s Camp doings to the -Scoutmaster. - -“Wait a minute, Walrus. You say the Mug actually _did_ the cooking?” - -“Mr. Marsh had him under instruction, sir. But the Mug did a lot of -it—he held the pan over the fire. I saw him, sir. And he washed up -afterwards.” - -“Did he?” said the Scoutmaster lightly. “Well, that’s something.” But -when the Walrus had gone Mr. Hale smote thrice upon his bare knees and -laughed, as a Scout should, without noise. - -He thanked Mr. Marsh next morning for the interest he had shown in the -camp, and suggested (this was while he was buying many very solid buns -for a route-march) that nothing would delight the Pelicans more than a -few words from Mr. Marsh on the subject of cookery, if he could see his -way to it. - -“Quite so,” said Mr. Marsh, “_I_’m worth listenin’ to. Well! Well! I’ll -be along this evening, and, maybe, I’ll bring some odds and ends with -me. Send over young Sherlock-Glasse to ’elp me fetch ’em. _That’s_ a boy -with ’is stummick in the proper place. ’Know anything about ’im?” - -Mr. Hale knew a good deal, but he did not tell it all. He suggested that -William himself should be approached, and would excuse him from the -route-march for that purpose. - -“Route-march!” said Mr. Marsh in horror. “Lor! The very worst use you -can make of your feet is walkin’ on ’em. ’Gives you bunions. Besides, ’e -ain’t got the figure for marches. ’E’s a cook by build as well as -instinck. ’Eavy in the run, oily in the skin, broad in the beam, short -in the arm, _but_, mark you, light on the feet. That’s the way cooks -ought to be issued. You never ’eard of a really good _thin_ cook yet, -did you? No. Nor me. An’ I’ve known millions that called ’emselves -cooks.” - -Mr. Hare regretted that he had not studied the natural history of cooks, -and sent William over early in the day. - -Mr. Marsh spoke to the Pelicans for an hour that evening beside an open -wood fire, from the ashes of which he drew forth (talking all the while) -wonderful hot cakes called “dampers”; while from its top he drew off -pans full of “lobscouse,” which he said was not to be confounded with -“salmagundi,” and a hair-raising compound of bacon, cheese and onions -all melted together. And while the Pelicans ate, he convulsed them with -mirth or held them breathless with anecdotes of the High Seas and the -World, so that the vote of thanks they passed him at the end waked the -cows in the Park. But William sat wrapped in visions, his hands -twitching sympathetically to Mr. Marsh’s wizardry among the pots and -pans. He knew now what the name of Glasse signified; for he had spent an -hour at the back of the baker’s shop reading, in a brown-leather book -dated 1767 A.D. and called “The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by a -Lady,” and that lady’s name, as it appeared in facsimile at the head of -Chap. I, was “H. Glasse.” Torture would not have persuaded him, or Mr. -Marsh, by that time, that she was not his direct ancestress; but, as a -matter of form, he intended to ask his uncle. - -When The Prawn, very grateful that Mr. Marsh had made no reference to -his notions of cookery, asked William what he thought of the lecture and -exhibition, William came out of his dreams with a start, and “Oh, all -right, I suppose, but I wasn’t listening much.” Then The Prawn, who -always improved an occasion, lectured him on lack of attention; and -William missed all that too. The question in his mind was whether his -uncle would let him stay with Mr. Marsh for a couple of days after Camp -broke up, or whether he would use the reply-paid telegram, which Mr. -Marsh had sent him, for his own French-polishing concerns. When The -Prawn’s voice ceased, he not only promised to do better next time, but -added, out of a vast and inexplicable pity that suddenly rose up inside -him, “And I’m grateful to you, Prawn. I am really.” - -On his return to town from that wonder-revealing visit, he found the -Pelicans treating him with a new respect. For one thing, the Walrus had -talked about the bacon and eggs; for another, The Prawn, who when he let -himself go, could be really funny, had given some artistic imitations of -Mr. Marsh’s comments on his cookery. Lastly, Mr. Hale had laid down that -William’s future employ would be to cook for the Pelicans when they -camped abroad. “And look out that you don’t poison us too much,” he -added. - -There were occasional mistakes and some very flat failures, but the -Pelicans swallowed them all loyally; no one had even a stomachache, and -the office of Cook’s mate to William was in great demand. The Prawn -himself sought it next Spring when the Troop stole a couple of fair May -days on the outskirts of a brick-field, and were very happy. But William -set him aside in favour of a new and specially hopeless recruit; -oily-skinned, fat, short-armed, but light on his feet, and with some -notion of lifting pot-lids without wrecking or flooding the whole -fire-place. - -“You see, Prawn,” he explained, “cookin’ isn’t a thing one can just pick -up.” - -“Yes, I could—watchin’ you,” The Prawn insisted. - -“No. Mr. Marsh says it’s a Gift—same as a Talent.” - -“D’you mean to tell me Rickworth’s got it, then?” - -“Dunno. It’s _my_ job to find that out—Mr. Marsh says. Anyway, Rickworth -told me he liked cleaning out a fryin’ pan because it made him think of -what it might be cookin’ next time.” - -“Well, if that isn’t silliness, it’s just greediness,” said The Prawn. -“What about those dampers you were talking of when I bought the -fire-lighters for you this morning?” - -William drew one out of the ashes, tapped it lightly with his small -hazel-wand of office, and slid it over, puffed and perfect, towards The -Prawn. - -Once again the wave of pity—the Master’s pity for the mere consuming -Public—swept over him as he watched The Prawn wolf it down. - -“I’m grateful to you. I reely _am_, Prawn,” said William Glasse Sawyer. - -After all, as he was used to say in later years, if it hadn’t been for -The Prawn, where would he have been? - - - - - PROLOGUE TO THE MASTER-COOK’S TALE - -_This is what might be called a parody or imitation of the verses of -Geoffrey Chaucer, one of the earliest and the greatest of our English -poets. It looks difficult to read, but you will find it comes quite -easily if you say it aloud, remembering that where there is an accent -over the end of a word, that word is pronounced as two syllables—not -one. “Snailés,” for instance, would be spoken as “snai-les” and so on._ - - - With us there rade a Maister-Cook that came - From the Rochelle which is neere Angoulême. - Littel hee was, but rounder than a topp, - And his small berd hadde dipped in manie a soppe. - His honde was smoother than beseemeth mann’s, - And his discoorse was all of marzipans,[5] - Of tripes of Caen, or Burdeux snailés swote,[6] - And Seinte Menhoulde wher cooken piggés-foote.[7] - To Thoulouse and to Bress and Carcasson - For pyes and fowles and chesnottes hadde hee wonne;[8] - Of hammés of Thuringie[9] colde hee prate, - And well hee knew what Princes hadde on plate - At Christmas-tide, from Artois to Gascogne. - - Lordinges, quod hee, manne liveth nat alone - By bred, but meatés rost and seethed, and broth, - And purchasable[10] deinties, on mine othe. - Honey and hote gingere well liketh hee, - And whalés-flesch mortred[11] with spicerie. - For, lat be all how man denie or carpe,[12] - Him thries a daie his honger maketh sharpe, - And setteth him at boorde[13] with hawkés eyne, - Snuffing what dish is set beforne to deyne, - Nor, till with meate he all-to fill to brim, - None other matter nowher mooveth him. - Lat holie Seintés sterve[14] as bookés boast, - Most mannés soule is in his bellie most. - For, as man thinketh in his hearte is hee, - But, as hee eateth so his thought shall bee. - And Holie Fader’s self[15] (with reveraunce) - Oweth to Cooke his port and his presaunce. - Wherbye it cometh past disputison[16] - Cookes over alle men have dominion, - Which follow them as schippe her gouvernail[17] - Enoff of wordes—beginneth heere my tale:— - - - - - A FLIGHT OF FACT - -_Most of this tale actually happened during the War about the year 1916 -or 1917 but it was much funnier as I heard it told by an English Naval -officer than it is as I have written it from memory. It shows, what one -always believed was true, that there is nothing that cannot happen in -the Navy._ - - -H. M. S. _Gardenia_ (we will take her name from the Herbaceous Border -which belonged to the sloops, though she was a destroyer by profession) -came quietly back to her berth some time after midnight, and disturbed -half a dozen of her sisters as she settled down. They all talked about -it next morning, especially _Phlox_ and _Stephanotis_, her left- and -right-hand neighbours in the big basin on the east coast of England, -that was crowded with destroyers. - -But the soul of the _Gardenia_—Lieutenant-in-Command H. R. Duckett—was -lifted far above insults. What he had done during his last trip had been -well done. Vastly more important—_Gardenia_ was in for a -boiler-clean—which meant four days’ leave for her commanding officer. - -“Where did you get that fender from, you dock-yard burglar?” -_Stephanotis_ clamoured over his rail, for _Gardenia_ was wearing a -large coir-matting fender, evidently fresh from store, over her rail. It -creaked with newness. “You common thief of the beach, where did you find -that new fender?” - -The only craft that a destroyer will, sometimes, not steal equipment -from is a destroyer; which accounts for the purity of her morals and the -loftiness of her conversation, and her curiosity in respect to stolen -fillings. - -Duckett, unmoved, went below, to return with a valise which he carried -on to His Majesty’s quarter-deck, and, atop of a suit of rat-catcher -clothes, crammed into it a pair of ancient pigskin gaiters. - -Here _Phlox_, assisted by her Dandy Dinmont, Dinah, who had been trained -to howl at certain notes in her master’s voice, gave a spirited and -imaginary account of _Gardenia’s_ return the night before, which was -compared to that of an ambulance with a lady-driver. Duckett retaliated -by slipping on to his head for one coquettish instant a gravy-coloured -soft cloth cap. It was the last straw. _Phlox_ and _Stephanotis_, who -had no hope of any leave for the present, pronounced it an offence, only -to be wiped out by drinks. - -“All things considered,” said Duckett. “I don’t care if I _do_. Come -along!” and, the hour being what it was, he gave the necessary orders -through the wardroom’s tiny skylight. The captains came. -_Phlox_—Lieutenant Commander Jerry Marlett, a large and weather-beaten -person, docked himself in the arm-chair by the wardroom stove with his -cherished Dinah in his arms. Great possessions and much land, inherited -from an uncle, had removed him from the Navy on the eve of war. Three -days after the declaration of it he was back again, and had been very -busy ever since. _Stephanotis_—Lieutenant-in-Command Augustus Holwell -Rayne, _alias_ “The Damper,” because of his pessimism, spread himself -out on the settee. He was small and agile, but of gloomy outlook, which -a D. S. O. earned, he said, quite by mistake, could not lighten. “Horse” -Duckett, _Gardenia’s_ skipper, was a reversion to the primitive Marryat -type—a predatory, astute, resourceful pirate, too well known to all His -Majesty’s dockyards, a man of easily injured innocence who could always -prove an alibi, and in whose ship, if his torpedo-coxswain had ever -allowed any one to look there, several sorts of missing Government -property might have been found. His ambition was to raise pigs (animals -he only knew as bacon) in Shropshire (a county he had never seen) after -the war, so he waged his war with zeal to bring that happy day nearer. -He sat in the arm-chair by the door, whence he controlled the operations -of “Crippen,” the wardroom steward, late of Bolitho’s Travelling Circus -and Swings, who had taken to the high seas to avoid the attentions of -the Police ashore. - -As usual, Duckett’s character had been blackened by My Lords of the -Admiralty, and he was in the midst of a hot campaign against them. An -able-seaman’s widowed mother had sent a ham to her son whose name was E. -R. Davids. Unfortunately, Engineroom-Artificer E. Davies, who swore that -he had both a mother and expectations of hams from her, came across the -ham first, and, misreading its address, had had it boiled for, and at -once eaten by, the Engineers’ mess. E. R. Davids, a vindictive soul, -wrote to his mother, who, it seems, wrote to the Admiralty, who, -according to Duckett, wrote to him daily every day for a month to know -what had become of E. R. Davids’ ham. In the meantime the guilty -Engineroom-Artificer E. Davies had been transferred to a sloop off the -Irish coast. - -“An’ what the dooce _am_ I to do?” Duckett asked his guests plaintively. - -“Apply for leave to go to Ireland with a stomach-pump and heave the ham -out of Davies,” Jerry suggested promptly. - -“That’s rather a wheeze,” said Duckett. “I _had_ thought of marrying -Davids’ mother to settle the case. Anyhow, it was all Crippen’s fault -for not steering the ham into the wardroom when it came aboard. Don’t -let it occur again, Crippen. Hams are going to be very scarce.” - -“Well, now you’ve got all that off your chest”—Jerry Marlett lowered his -voice—“suppose you tell us about what happened—the night before last.” - -The talk became professional. Duckett produced certain evidence—still -damp—in support of the claims that he had sent in concerning the fate of -a German submarine, and gave a chain of facts and figures and bearings -that the others duly noted. - -“And how did your Acting Sub do?” asked Jerry at last. - -“Oh, very fair, but I didn’t tell him so, of course. They’re hard enough -to hold at the best of times, these makee-do officers. Have you noticed -that they are always above their job—always thinkin’ round the corner -when they’re thinkin’ at all. On our way back, this young merchant o’ -mine—when I’d almost made up my mind to tell him he wasn’t as big tripes -as he looked—told me his one dream in life was to fly. Fly! He flew -alright by the time I’d done with him, but—imagine a Sub _tellin’_ one a -thing like that! ‘It must be _so_ interestin’ to fly,’ he said. The -whole North Sea one blooming burgoo of what-come-nexts, an’ this pup -complainin’ of lack of interest in it! Fly! Fly! When _I_ was a -Sub-Lootenant——” - -He turned pathetically towards The Damper, who had known him in that -rank in the Mediterranean. - -“There wasn’t much flyin’ in our day,” said The Damper mournfully. “But -I can’t remember anything else we didn’t do.” - -“Quite so; but we had some decency knocked into us. The new breed -wouldn’t know decency if they met it on a dungfork. _That’s_ what I -mean.” - -“When _I_ was Actin’ Sub,” Jerry opened thoughtfully, “in the -_Polycarp_—the pious _Polycarp_—Nineteen-O-Seven, I got nine cuts of the -best from the Senior Sub for occupyin’ the bathroom ten seconds too -long. Twenty minutes later, just when the welts were beginnin’ to come -up, y’ know, I was sent off in the gig with a Corporal o’ Marines an’ a -private to fetch the Headman of All the Pelungas aboard. He was wanted -for slavery, or barratry, or bigamy or something.” - -“All the Pelungas?” Duckett repeated with interest. “’Odd you should -mention that part of the world. What are the Pelungas like?” - -“Very nice. Hundreds of islands and millions of coral reefs with atolls -an’ lagoons an’ palm-trees, an’ all the population scullin’ round in -outrigger canoes between ’em like a permanent regatta. Filthy -navigation, though. _Polycarp_ had to lie five miles out on account of -the reefs (even then our navigator was tearin’ his hair) an’ I had an -hour’s steerin’ on hot hard thwarts. Talk o’ tortures! _You_ know. We -landed in a white lather at the boat-steps of the Headman’s island. The -Headman wasn’t takin’ any at first. He’d drawn up his whole army—three -hundred strong, with old Martini rifles an’ a couple of ancestral -seven-pounders in front of his fort. _We_ didn’t know anything about his -domestic arrangements. We just dropped in among ’em so to say. Then my -Corporal of Marines—the fattest man in the Service bar one—fell down the -landin’ steps. The Headman had a Prime Minister—about as fat as my -Corporal—and he helped him up. Well, _that_ broke the ice a bit. The -Prime Minister was a statesman. He poured oil on the crisis, while the -Headman cursed me and the Navy and the British Government, and I kept -wrigglin’ in my white ducks to keep ’em from drawin’ tight on me. _You_ -know how it feels! I remember I told the Headman the _Polycarp_ ’ud blow -him an’ his island out of the water if he didn’t come along quick. She -could have done it—in a week or two; but we were scrubbin’ hammocks at -the time. I forgot that little fact for the minute. I was a bit hot—all -over. The Prime Minister soothed us down again, an’ by and by the -Headman said he’d pay us a state call—as a favour. I didn’t care what he -called it s’long as he came. So I lay about a quarter of a mile -off-shore in the gig, in case the seven-pounders pooped off—I knew the -Martinis couldn’t hit us at that range—and I waited for him till he -shoved off in his State barge—forty rowers a side. Would you believe it, -he wanted to take precedence of the White Ensign on the way to the ship? -I had to fall him in behind the gig and bring him alongside properly. I -was so sore I could hardly get aboard at the finish.” - -“What happened to the Headman?” said The Damper. - -“Nothing. He was acquitted or condemned—I forget which—but he was a -perfect gentleman. We used to go sailing with him and his people—dancing -with ’em on the beach and all that sort of thing. _I_ don’t want to meet -a nicer community than the Pelungaloos. They aren’t used to white -men—but they’re first-class learners.” - -“Yes, they _do_ seem a cheery crowd,” Duckett commented. - -“Where have _you_ come across them?” said Jerry. - -“Nowhere; but this Acting Sub of mine has got a cousin who’s been flying -down there.” - -“Flying in All the Pelungas?” Jerry cried. “That’s impossible!” - -“In these days? Where’s your bright lexicon of youth? Nothing’s -impossible anywhere now,” Duckett replied. “All the best people fly.” - -“Count me out,” Jerry grunted. “We went up once, Dinah, little dog, and -it made us both very sick, didn’t it? When did it all happen, Horse?” - -“Some time last year. This chap, my Sub’s cousin—a man called -Baxter—went adrift among All the Pelungas in his machine and failed to -connect with his ship. He was reported missing for months. Then he -turned up again. That’s all.” - -“He was called Baxter?” said The Damper. “Hold on a shake! I wonder if -he’s ‘Beloo’ Baxter, by any chance. There was a chap of that name about -five years ago on the China Station. He had himself tattooed all over, -regardless, in Rangoon. Then he got as good as engaged to a woman in -Hongkong—rich woman too. But the Pusser of his ship gave him away. He -had a regular cinema of frogs and dragonflies up his legs. And that was -only the beginnin’ of the show. So she broke off the engagement, and he -half-killed the Pusser, and then he became a Buddhist, or something.” - -“That couldn’t have been this Baxter, or my Sub would have told me,” -said Duckett. “My Sub’s a morbid-minded young animal.” - -“_Maskee_[18] your Sub’s mind!” said Jerry. “What was this Baxter -man—plain _or_ coloured—doin’ in All _my_ Pelungas?” - -“As far as I can make out,” said Duckett, “Lootenant Baxter was flyin’ -in those parts—with an observer—out of a ship.” - -“Yes, but what _for_?” Jerry insisted. “And what ship?” - -“He was flyin’ for exercise, I suppose, an’ his ship was the -_Cormorang_. D’you feel wiser? An’ he flew, an’ he flew, an’ he flew -till, between him an’ his observer and the low visibility and Providence -and all that sort of thing, he lost his ship—just like some other people -I know. Then he flapped about huntin’ for her till dusk among the -Pelungas, an’ then he effected a landin’ on the water.” - -“A nasty wet business—landin’ that way, Dinah. We know,” said Jerry into -the keen little cocked ear in his lap. - -“Then he taxied about in the dark till he taxied on to a coral reef and -couldn’t get the machine off. Coral ain’t like mud, is it?” The question -was to Jerry, but the insult was addressed to The Damper, who had lately -spent eighteen hours on a soft and tenacious shoal off the East Coast. -The Damper launched a kick at his host from where he lay along the -settee. - -“Then,” Duckett went on, “this Baxter-man got busy with his wireless and -S O S’ed like winkie till the tide came and floated the old bus off the -reef, and they taxied over to another island in the dark.” - -“Thousands of Islands in All the Pelungas,” Jerry murmured. “Likewise -reefs—hairy ones. What about the reefs?” - -“Oh, they kept on hittin’ reefs in the dark, till it occurred to them to -fire their signal lights to see ’em by. So they went blazin’ an’ -stinkin’ and taxyin’ up and down the reefs till they found a gap in one -of ’em and they taxied bung on to an uninhabited island.” - -“That must have been good for the machine,” was Jerry’s comment. - -“I don’t deny it. I’m only tellin’ you what my Sub told me. Baxter wrote -it all home to his people, and the letters have been passed round the -family. Well, then o’ course, it rained. It rained all the rest of the -night, up to the afternoon of the next day. (It always does when you’re -in a hole.) They tried to start their engine in the intervals of -climbin’ palm-trees for coco-nuts. They’d only a few buscuits and some -water with ’em.” - -“’Don’t like climbin’ palm-trees. It scrapes you raw,” The Damper -moaned. - -“An’ when they weren’t climbin’ or crankin’ their engine, they tried to -get into touch with the natives on the next nearest island. But the -natives weren’t havin’ any. They took to the bush.” - -“Ah!” said Jerry sympathetically. “That aeroplane was too much for ’em. -Otherwise, they’re the most cosy, confidential lot _I_ ever met. Well, -what happened?” - -“Baxter sweated away at his engine till she started up again. Then he -flew round lookin’ for his ship some more till his petrol ran out. Then -he landed close to _another_ uninhabited island and tried to taxi up to -it.” - -“Why was he so keen on _un_inhabited islands? I wish I’d been there. -_I’d_ ha’ shown him round the town,” said Jerry. - -“I don’t know his reasons, but that was what he wrote home to his -people,” Duckett went on. “Not havin’ any power by that time, his -machine blew on to another reef and there they were! No grub, no petrol, -and plenty of sharks! So they snugged her down. I don’t know how one -snugs down an aeroplane,” Duckett admitted, “but Baxter took the -necessary steps to reduce the sail-area, and cut the spanker-boom out of -the tail-tassels or whatever it is they do on an aeroplane when they -want her to be quiet. Anyhow, they more or less secured the bus to that -reef so they thought she wouldn’t fetch adrift; and they tried to coax a -canoe over that happened to be passing. Nothin’ doin’ _there_! ’Canoe -made one bunk of it.” - -“He tickled ’em the wrong way,” Jerry sighed. “There’s a song they sing -when they’re fishing.” He began to hum dolefully. - -“I expect Baxter didn’t know that tune,” Duckett interrupted. “He an’ -his observer cursed the canoe a good deal, an’ then they went in for -swimmin’ stunts all among the sharks, until they fetched up on the -_next_ island when they came to it—it took ’em an hour to swim there—but -the minute they landed the natives all left. ’Seems to me,” said Duckett -thoughtfully, “Baxter and his observer must have spread a pretty healthy -panic scullin’ about All the Pelungas in their shirts.” - -“But why shirts?” said Jerry. “Those waters are perfectly warm.” - -“If you come to that, why _not_ shirts?” Duckett retorted. “A shirt’s a -badge of civilization——” - -“Never mind your shirts. What happened after that?” said The Damper. - -“They went to sleep. They were tired by that time—oddly enough. The -natives on _that_ island had left everything standing when they -bunked—fires lighted, chickens runnin’ about, and so forth. Baxter slept -in one of the huts. About midnight some of the bold boys stole back -again. Baxter heard ’em talkin’ just outside, and as he didn’t want his -face trod on, he said ‘Salaam.’ That cleared the island for the second -time. The natives jumped three foot into the air and shoved off.” - -“Good Lord!” said Jerry impatiently. “_I’d_ have had ’em eating out of -my hand in ten seconds. ‘Salaam’ isn’t the word to use at all. What he -ought to have said——” - -“Well, anyhow, he didn’t,” Duckett replied. “He and his observer had -their sleep out an’ they woke in the mornin’ with ragin’ appetites and a -strong sense of decency. The first thing they annexed was some native -loin-cloths off a bush. Baxter wrote all this home to his people, you -know. I expect he was well brought up.” - -“If he was ‘Beloo’ Baxter no one would notice——” The Damper began. - -“He wasn’t. He was just a simple, virtuous Naval Officer—like me. He an’ -his observer navigated the island in full dress in search of the -natives, but they’d gone and taken the canoe with ’em. Baxter was so -depressed at their lack of confidence that he killed a chicken an’ -plucked it and drew it (I bet neither of you know how to draw fowls) an’ -boiled it and ate it all at once.” - -“Didn’t he feed his observer?” The Damper asked. “I’ve a little brother -what’s an observer up in the air. I’d hate to think he——” - -“The observer was kept busy wavin’ his shirt on the beach in order to -attract the attention of local fishin’ craft. That was what _he_ was -for. After breakfast Baxter joined him an’ the two of ’em waved shirts -for two hours on the beach. An’ that’s the sort of thing my Sub prefers -to servin’ with me!—_Me!_ After a bit, the Pelungaloos decided that they -must be harmless lunatics, and one canoe stood pretty close in, an’ they -swam out to her. But here’s a curious thing! Baxter wrote his people -that, when the canoe came, his observer hadn’t any shirt at all. ’Expect -he’d expended it wavin’ for succour. But Baxter’s shirt was all right. -He went out of his way to tell his people so. An’ my Sub couldn’t see -the humour of it one little bit. How does it strike you?” - -“Perfectly simple,” said Jerry. “Lootenant Baxter as executive officer -in charge took his subordinate’s shirt owin’ to the exigencies of the -Service. I’d ha’ done the same. Pro-ceed.” - -“There’s worse to follow. As soon as they got aboard the canoe and the -natives found they didn’t bite, they cottoned to ’em no end. ’Gave ’em -grub and dry loin-cloths and betel-nut to chew. What’s betel-nut like, -Jerry?” - -“Grateful an’ comfortin’. Warms you all through and makes you spit pink. -It’s non-intoxicating.” - -“Oh! I’ve never tried it. Well then, there was Baxter spittin’ pink in a -loin-cloth an’ a canoeful of Pelungaloo fishermen, with his shirt dryin’ -in the breeze. ’Got that? Well, then his aeroplane, which he thought he -had secured to the reef of the next island, began to drift out to sea. -That boy had to keep his eyes open, I tell you. He wanted the natives to -go in and makee-catchee the machine, and there was a big palaver about -it. They naturally didn’t care to compromise themselves with strange -idols, but after a bit they lined up a dozen canoes—no, eleven, to be -precise—Baxter was awfully precise in his letters to his people—an’ -tailed on to the aeroplane an’ towed it to an island.” - -“Excellent,” said Jerry Marlett, the complete Lieutenant Commander. “I -was gettin’ worried about His Majesty’s property. Baxter must have had a -way with him. A loin-cloth ain’t uniform, but it’s dashed comfortable. -An’ how did All my Pelungaloos treat ’em?” - -“We-ell!” said Duckett, “Baxter was writin’ home to his people, so I -expect he toned things down a bit, but, readin’ between the lines, it -looks as if—an’ _that’s_ why my Sub wants to take up flyin’ of course—it -looks as if, from then on, they had what you might call Garden-of-Eden -picnics for weeks an’ weeks. The natives put ’em under a guard o’ sorts -just for the look of the thing, while the news was sent to the Headman, -but as far as I can make out from my Sub’s reminiscences of Baxter’s -letters, their guard consisted of the entire male and female population -goin’ in swimmin’ with ’em twice a day. At night they had -concerts—native songs _versus_ music-hall—in alternate what d’you call -’em? Anti-somethings. ’Phone, ain’t it?” - -“They _are_ a musical race! I’m glad he struck that side of their -nature,” Jerry murmured. - -“I’m envious,” Duckett protested. “Why should the Flyin’ Corps get all -the plums? But Baxter didn’t forget His Majesty’s aeroplane. He got ’em -to tow it to his island o’ delights, and in the evenings he an’ his -observer, between the musical turns, used to give the women electric -shocks off the wireless. And, one time, he told his observer to show ’em -his false teeth, and when he took ’em out the people all bolted.” - -“But that’s in Rider Haggard. It’s in ‘King Solomon’s Mines’,” The -Damper remarked. - -“P’raps that’s what put it into Baxter’s head then,” said Duckett. “Or -else,” he suggested warily, “Baxter wanted to crab his observer’s -chances with some lady.” - -“Then he was a fool,” The Damper snarled. “It might have worked the -other way. It generally does.” - -“Well, one can’t foresee everything,” said Duckett. “Anyhow, Baxter -didn’t complain. They lived there for weeks and weeks, singin’ songs -together and bathin’ an’—oh, yes!—gamblin’. Baxter made a set of dice -too. He doesn’t seem to have neglected much. He said it was just to pass -the time away, but I wonder what he threw for. I wish I knew him. His -letters to his people are too colourless. What a life he must have led! -Women, dice and song, an’ your pay rollin’ up behind you in perfect -safety with no exertion on your part.” - -“There’s a dance they dance on moonlight nights,” said Jerry, “with just -a few banana leaves—Never mind. Go ahead!” - -“All things bright and beautiful—fineesh,” Duckett mourned. “Presently -the Headman of All the Pelungas came along——” - -“’My friend? I hope it was. A first-class sportsman,” said Jerry. - -“Baxter didn’t say. Anyhow, he turned up and they were taken over to the -capital island till they could be sent back to their own ship. The -Headman did ’em up to the nines in every respect while they were with -him (Baxter’s quite enthusiastic over it, even in writin’ to his own -people), but, o’ course, there’s nothing like first love, is there? They -must have felt partin’ with their first loves. _I_ always do. And then -they were put into the full uniform of All the Pelungaloo Army. What’s -that like, Jerry? You’ve seen it.” - -“It’s a cross between a macaw an’ a rainbow-ended mandrill. Very tasty.” - -“Just as they were gettin’ used to that, and they’d taught the Headman -and his Court to sing: ‘Hello! Hello! Who’s your lady friend?’ they were -embarked on a dirty common sailin’ craft an’ taken over the ocean and -returned to the _Cormorang_, which, o’ course, had reported ’em missing -and dead months before. They had one final kick-up before returnin’ to -duty. You see, they’d both grown torpedo-beards in the Pelungas, and -they were both in Pelungaloo uniform. Consequently, when they went -aboard the _Cormorang_ they weren’t recognized till they were half-way -down to their cabins.” - -“And then?” both Captains asked at once. - -“That’s where Baxter breaks off—even though he’s writin’ to his own -people. He’s so apologetic to ’em for havin’ gone missin’ and worried -’em, an’ he’s so sinful proud of havin’ taught the Headman music-hall -songs, that he only said that they had ‘some reception aboard the -_Cormorang_.’ It lasted till midnight.” - -“It is possible. What about their machine?” said Jerry. - -“The _Cormorang_ ran down to the Pelungas and retrieved it all right. -But _I_ should have liked to have seen that reception. There is nothing -I’d ha’ liked better than to have seen that reception. And it isn’t as -if I hadn’t seen a reception or two either.” - -“The leaf-signal is made, sir,” said the Quartermaster at the door. - -“Twelve-twenty-four train,” Duckett muttered. “Can do.” He rose, adding, -“I’m going to scratch the backs of swine for the next three days. -G’wout!” - -The well-trained servant was already fleeting along the edge of the -basin with his valise. _Stephanotis_ and _Phlox_ returned to their own -ships, loudly expressing envy and hatred. Duckett paused for a moment at -his gang-way rail to beckon to his torpedo-coxswain, a Mr. Wilkins, a -peacetime sailor of mild and mildewed aspect who had followed Duckett’s -shady fortunes for some years. - -“Wilkins,” he whispered, “where _did_ we get that new starboard fender -of ours from?” - -“Orf the dredger, sir. She was asleep when we came in,” said Wilkins -through lips that scarcely seemed to move. “But our port one come orf -the water-boat. We ’ad to over’aul our moorin’s in the skiff last night, -sir, and we—er—found it on ’er.” - -“Well, well, Wilkins. Keep the home fires burning,” and -Lieutenant-in-Command H. R. Duckett sped after his servant in the -direction of the railway station. But not so fast that he could outrun a -melody played aboard the _Phlox_ on a concertina to which manly voices -bore the burden: - - When the enterprisin’ burglar ain’t aburglin’—ain’t aburglin’, - When the cut-throat is not occupied with crime—’pied with crime. - He loves to hear the little brook agurglin’—— - -Moved, Heaven knows, whether by conscience or kindliness, Lieutenant -Duckett smiled at the policeman on the Dockyard gates. - - - - - “STALKY” - -_This happens to be the first story that was written concerning the -adventures and performances of three schoolboys—“Stalky,” McTurk and -“Beetle.” For some reason or other, it was never put into the book, -called “Stalky & Co.,” that was made out of the stories. A certain -amount of it, I am sorry to say, is founded on fact, though that is no -recommendation; and the only moral that I can see in it is, that when -for any reason you happen to get into a tight place, you have a better -chance of coming out of it comfortably if you keep your head than if you -get excited and don’t stop to think._ - - -“And then,” it was a boy’s voice, curiously level and even, “De Vitré -said we were beastly funks not to help, and _I_ said there were too many -chaps in it to suit us. Besides, there’s bound to be a mess somewhere or -other, with old De Vitré in charge. Wasn’t I right, Beetle?” - -“And, anyhow, it’s a silly biznai, bung through. What’ll they _do_ with -the beastly cows when they’ve got ’em? You can milk a cow—if she’ll -stand still. That’s all right, but drivin’ ’em about——” - -“You’re a pig, Beetle.” - -“No, I ain’t. What _is_ the sense of drivin’ a lot of cows up from the -Burrows to—to—where is it?” - -“They’re tryin’ to drive ’em up to Toowey’s farmyard at the top of the -hill—the empty one, where we smoked last Tuesday. It’s a revenge. Old -Vidley chivied De Vitré twice last week for ridin’ his ponies on the -Burrows; and De Vitré’s goin’ to lift as many of old Vidley’s cattle as -he can and plant ’em up the hill. He’ll muck it, though—with Parsons, -Orrin and Howlett helpin’ him. They’ll only yell, an’ shout, an’ bunk if -they see Vidley.” - -“_We_ might have managed it,” said McTurk slowly, turning up his -coat-collar against the rain that swept over the Burrows. His hair was -of the dark mahogany red that goes with a certain temperament. - -“We should,” Corkran replied with equal confidence. “But they’ve gone -into it as if it was a sort of spadger-hunt. I’ve never done any -cattle-liftin’, but it seems to me-e-e that one might just as well be -stalky about a thing as not.” - -The smoking vapours of the Atlantic drove in wreaths above the boys’ -heads. Out of the mist to windward, beyond the grey bar of the -Pebble-Ridge, came the unceasing roar of mile-long Atlantic rollers. To -leeward, a few stray ponies and cattle, the property of the Northam -potwallopers, and the unwilling playthings of the boys in their leisure -hours, showed through the haze. The three boys had halted by the -Cattle-gate which marks the limit of cultivation, where the fields come -down to the Burrows from Northam Hill. Beetle, shock-headed and -spectacled, drew his nose to and fro along the wet top-bar; McTurk -shifted from one foot to the other, watching the water drain into either -print; while Corkran whistled through his teeth as he leaned against a -sod-bank, peering into the mist. - -A grown or sane person might have called the weather vile; but the boys -at that School had not yet learned the national interest in climate. It -was a little damp, to be sure; but it was always damp in the Easter -term, and sea-wet, they held, could not give one a cold under any -circumstances. Mackintoshes were things to go to church in, but -crippling if one had to run at short notice across heavy country. So -they waited serenely in the downpour, clad as their mothers would not -have cared to see. - -“I say, Corky,” said Beetle, wiping his spectacles for the twentieth -time, “if we aren’t going to help De Vitré, what are we here for?” - -“We’re goin’ to watch,” was the answer. “Keep your eye on your Uncle and -he’ll pull you through.” - -“It’s an awful biznai, driving cattle—in open country,” said McTurk, -who, as the son of an Irish baronet, knew something of these operations. -“They’ll have to run half over the Burrows after ’em. ’S’pose they’re -ridin’ Vidley’s ponies?” - -“De Vitré’s sure to be. He’s a dab on a horse. Listen! What a filthy row -they’re making. They’ll be heard for miles.” - -The air filled with whoops and shouts, cries, words of command, the -rattle of broken golf-clubs, and a clatter of hooves. Three cows with -their calves came up to the Cattle-gate at a milch-canter, followed by -four wild-eyed bullocks and two rough-coated ponies. A fat and freckled -youth of fifteen trotted behind them, riding bareback and brandishing a -hedge-stake. De Vitré, up to a certain point, was an inventive youth, -with a passion for horse-exercise that the Northam farmers did not -encourage. Farmer Vidley, who could not understand that a grazing pony -likes being galloped about, had once called him a thief, and the insult -rankled. Hence the raid. - -“Come on,” he cried over his shoulder. “Open the gate, Corkran, or -they’ll all cut back again. We’ve had no end of bother to get ’em. Oh, -won’t old Vidley be wild!” - -Three boys on foot ran up, “shooing” the cattle in excited and amateur -fashion, till they headed them into the narrow, high-banked Devonshire -lane that ran uphill. - -“Come on, Corkran. It’s no end of a lark,” pleaded De Vitré; but Corkran -shook his head. The affair had been presented to him after dinner that -day as a completed scheme, in which he might, by favour, play a minor -part. And Arthur Lionel Corkran, No. 104, did not care for -lieutenancies. - -“You’ll only be collared,” he cried, as he shut the gate. “Parsons and -Orrin are no good in a row. You’ll be collared sure as a gun, De Vitré.” - -“Oh, you’re a beastly funk!” The speaker was already hidden by the fog. - -“Hang it all,” said McTurk. “It’s about the first time we’ve ever tried -a cattle-lift at the Coll. Let’s——” - -“Not much,” said Corkran firmly; “keep your eye on your Uncle.” His word -was law in these matters, for experience had taught them that if they -manœuvred without Corkran they fell into trouble. - -“You’re wrathy because you didn’t think of it first,” said Beetle. -Corkran kicked him thrice calmly, neither he nor Beetle changing a -muscle the while. - -“No, I ain’t; but it isn’t stalky enough for me.” - -“Stalky,” in their school vocabulary, meant clever, well-considered and -wily, as applied to plans of action; and “stalkiness” was the one virtue -Corkran toiled after. - -“’Same thing,” said McTurk. “You think you’re the only stalky chap in -the Coll.” - -Corkran kicked him as he had kicked Beetle; and even as Beetle, McTurk -took not the faintest notice. By the etiquette of their friendship, this -was no more than a formal notice of dissent from a proposition. - -“They haven’t thrown out any pickets,” Corkran went on (That school -prepared boys for the Army). “You ought to do that—even for apples. -Toowey’s farmyard may be full of farm-chaps.” - -“’Twasn’t last week,” said Beetle, “when we smoked in that cartshed -place. It’s a mile from any house, too.” - -Up went one of Corkran’s light eyebrows. “Oh, Beetle, I _am_ so tired o’ -kickin’ you! Does that mean it’s empty _now_? They ought to have sent a -fellow ahead to look. They’re simply bound to be collared. An’ where’ll -they bunk to if they have to run for it? Parsons has only been here two -terms. _He_ don’t know the lie of the country. Orrin’s a fat ass, an’ -Howlett bunks from a guv’nor” [vernacular for any native of Devon -engaged in agricultural pursuits] “as far as he can see any. De Vitré’s -the only decent chap in the lot, an’—an’ _I_ put him up to usin’ -Toowey’s farmyard.” - -“Well, keep your hair on,” said Beetle. “What are we going to do? It’s -hefty damp here.” - -“Let’s think a bit.” Corkran whistled between his teeth and presently -broke into a swift, short double-shuffle. “We’ll go straight up the hill -and see what happens to ’em. Cut across the fields; an’ we’ll lie up in -the hedge where the lane comes in by the barn—where we found that dead -hedgehog last term. Come on!” - -He scrambled over the earth bank and dropped onto the rain-soaked -plough. It was a steep slope to the brow of the hill where Toowey’s -barns stood. The boys took no account of stiles or foot-paths, crossing -field after field diagonally, and where they found a hedge, bursting -through it like beagles. The lane lay on their right flank, and they -heard much lowing and shouting in that direction. - -“Well, if De Vitré isn’t collared,” said McTurk, kicking off a few -pounds of loam against a gate-post, “he jolly well ought to be.” - -“We’ll get collared, too, if you go on with your nose up like that. -Duck, you ass, and stalk along under the hedge. We can get quite close -up to the barn,” said Corkran. “There’s no sense in not doin’ a thing -stalkily while you’re about it.” - -They wriggled into the top of an old hollow double hedge less than -thirty yards from the big black timbered barn with its square -outbuildings. Their ten-minutes’ climb had lifted them a couple of -hundred feet above the Burrows. As the mists parted here and there, they -could see its great triangle of sodden green, tipped with yellow -sand-dunes and fringed with white foam, laid out like a blurred map -below. The surge along the Pebble Ridge made a background to the wild -noises in the lane. - -“What did I tell you?” said Corkran, peering through the stems of the -quickset which commanded a view of the farmyard. “Three -farm-chaps—getting out dung—with pitchforks. It’s too late to head off -De Vitré. We’d be collared if we showed up. Besides, they’ve heard ’em. -They couldn’t help hearing. What asses!” - -The natives, brandishing their weapons, talked together, using many -times the word “Colleger.” As the tumult swelled, they disappeared into -various pens and byres. The first of the cattle trotted up to the -yard-gate, and De Vitré felicitated his band. - -“That’s all right,” he shouted. “Oh, won’t old Vidley be wild! Open the -gate, Orrin, an’ whack ’em through. They’re pretty warm.” - -“So’ll you be in a minute,” muttered McTurk as the raiders hurried into -the yard behind the cattle. They heard a shout of triumph, shrill yells -of despair; saw one Devonian guarding the gate with a pitchfork, while -the others, alas! captured all four boys. - -“Of all the infernal, idiotic, lower-second asses!” said Corkran. “They -haven’t even taken off their house-caps.” These dainty confections of -primary colours were not issued, as some believe, to encourage -House-pride or esprit-de-corps, but for purposes of identification from -afar, should the wearer break bounds or laws. That is why, in time of -war, any one but an idiot wore his inside out. - -“Aie! Yeou young rascals. We’ve got ’e! Whutt be doin’ to Muster -Vidley’s bullocks?” - -“Oh, we found ’em,” said De Vitré, who bore himself gallantly in defeat. -“Would you like ’em?” - -“Found ’em! They bullocks drove like that—all heavin’ an’ penkin’ an’ -hotted! Oh! Shameful. Yeou’ve nigh to killed the cows—lat alone stealin’ -’em. They sends pore boys to jail for half o’ this.” - -“That’s a lie,” said Beetle to McTurk, turning on the wet grass. - -“I know; but they always say it. ’Member when they collared us at the -Monkey Farm that Sunday, with the apples in your topper?” - -“My Aunt! They’re goin’ to lock ’em up an’ send for Vidley,” Corkran -whispered, as one of the captors hurried downhill in the direction of -Appledore, and the prisoners were led into the barn. - -“But they haven’t taken their names and numbers, anyhow,” said Corkran, -who had fallen into the hands of the enemy more than once. - -“But they’re bottled! Rather sickly for De Vitré,” said Beetle. “It’s -one lickin’ anyhow, even if Vidley don’t hammer him. The Head’s rather -hot about gate-liftin’, and poachin’, an’ all that sort of thing. He -won’t care for cattle-liftin’ much.” - -“It’s awfully bad for cows, too, to run ’em about in milk,” said McTurk, -lifting one knee from a sodden primrose-tuft. “What’s the next move, -Corky?” - -“We’ll get into the old cartshed where we smoked. It’s next to the barn. -We can cut across over while they’re inside and climb in through the -window.” - -“S’pose we’re collared?” said Beetle, cramming his house-cap into his -pocket. Caps may tumble off, so one goes into action bare-headed. - -“That’s just it. They’d never dream of any more chaps walkin’ bung into -the trap. Besides, we can get out through the roof if they spot us. Keep -your eye on your Uncle. Come on,” said Corkran. - -A swift dash carried them to a huge clump of nettles, beneath the -unglazed back window of the cartshed. Its open front, of course, gave on -to the barnyard. - -They scrambled through, dropped among the carts, and climbed up into the -rudely boarded upper floor that they had discovered a week before when -in search of retirement. It covered a half of the building and ended in -darkness at the barn wall. The roof-tiles were broken and displaced. -Through the chinks they commanded a clear view of the barnyard, half -filled with disconsolate cattle, steaming sadly in the rain. - -“You see,” said Corkran, always careful to secure his line of retreat, -“if they bottle us up here, we can squeeze out between these rafters, -slide down the roof, an’ bunk. They couldn’t even get out through the -window. They’d have to run right round the barn. Now are you satisfied, -you burbler?” - -“Huh! You only said that to make quite sure yourself,” Beetle retorted. - -“If the boards weren’t all loose, I’d kick you,” growled Corkran. “’No -sense gettin’ into a place you can’t get out of. Shut up and listen.” - -A murmur of voices reached them from the end of the attic. McTurk -tiptoed thither with caution. - -“Hi! It leads through into the barn. You can get through. Come along!” -He fingered the boarded wall. - -“What’s the other side?” said Corkran the cautious. - -“Hay, you idiot.” They heard his boot-heels click on wood, and he had -gone. - -At some time or other sheep must have been folded in the cartshed, and -an inventive farm-hand, sooner than take the hay round, had displaced a -board in the barn-side to thrust fodder through. It was in no sense a -lawful path, but twelve inches in the square is all that any boy needs. - -“Look here!” said Beetle, as they waited for McTurk’s return. “The -cattle are coming in out of the wet.” - -A brown, hairy back showed some three feet below the half-floor, as one -by one the cattle shouldered in for shelter among the carts below, -filling the shed with their sweet breath. - -“That blocks our way out, unless we get out by the roof, an’ that’s -rather too much of a drop, unless we have to,” said Corkran. “They’re -all bung in front of the window, too. What a day we’re havin’!” - -“Corkran! Beetle!” McTurk’s whisper shook with delight. “You can see -’em; I’ve seen ’em. They’re in a blue funk in the barn, an’ the two -clods are makin’ fun of ’em—horrid. Orrin’s tryin’ to bribe ’em an’ -Parsons is nearly blubbin’. Come an’ look! I’m in the hayloft. Get -through the hole. Don’t make a row, Beetle.” - -Lithely they wriggled between the displaced boards into the hay and -crawled to the edge of the loft. Three years’ skirmishing against a hard -and unsympathetic peasantry had taught them the elements of strategy. -For tactics they looked to Corkran; but even Beetle, notoriously -absent-minded, held a lock of hay before his head as he crawled. There -was no haste, no betraying giggle, no squeak of excitement. They had -learned, by stripes, the unwisdom of these things. But the conference by -a root-cutter on the barn floor was deep in its own affairs; De Vitré’s -party promising, entreating, and cajoling, while the natives laughed -like Inquisitors. - -“Wait till Muster Vidley an’ Muster Toowey—yis, an’ the policemen come,” -was their only answer. “’Tis about time to go to milkin’. What’ull us -do?” - -“Yeou go milk, Tom, an’ I’ll stay long o’ the young gentlemen,” said the -bigger of the two, who answered to the name of Abraham. “Muster Toowey, -he’m laike to charge yeou for usin’ his yard so free. Iss fai! Yeou’ll -be wopped proper. ’Rackon yeou’ll be askin’ for junkets to set in this -week o’ Sundays to come. But Muster Vidley, he’ll give ’ee the best -leatherin’ of all. He’m passionful, I tal ’ee.” - -Tom stumped out to milk. The barn doors closed behind him, and in the -fading light a great gloom fell on all but Abraham, who discoursed -eloquently on Mr. Vidley, his temper and strong arm. - -Corkran turned in the hay and retreated to the attic, followed by his -army. - -“No good,” was his verdict. “I’m afraid it’s all up with ’em. We’d -better get out.” - -“Yes, but look at these beastly cows,” said McTurk, spitting on to a -heifer’s back. “It’ll take us a week to shove ’em away from the window, -and that brute Tom’ll hear us. He’s just across the yard, milkin’.” - -“Tweak ’em, then,” said Corkran. “Hang it, I’m sorry to have to go, -though. If we could get that other beast out of the barn for a minute we -might make a rescue. Well, it’s no good. Tweakons!” - -He drew forth a slim, well-worn homemade catapult—the “tweaker” of those -days—slipped a buckshot into its supple chamois leather pouch, and -pulled to the full stretch of the elastic. The others followed his -example. They only wished to get the cattle out of their way, but seeing -the backs so near, they deemed it their duty each to choose his bird and -to let fly with all their strength. - -They were not prepared in the least for what followed. Three bullocks, -trying to wheel amid six close-pressed companions, not to mention three -calves, several carts, and all the lumber of a general-utility shed, do -not turn end-for-end without confusion. It was lucky for the boys that -they stood a little back on the floor, because one horned head, tossed -in pain, flung up a loose board at the edge, and it came down lancewise -on an amazed back. Another victim floundered bodily across the shafts of -a decrepit gig, smashing these and oversetting the wheels. That was more -than enough for the nerves of the assembly. With wild bellowings and a -good deal of left-and-right butting, they dashed into the barnyard, -tails on end, and began a fine free fight on the midden. The last cow -out hooked down an old set of harness; it flapped over one eye and -trailed behind her. When a companion trod on it, which happened every -few seconds, she naturally fell on her knees; and, being a Burrows cow, -with the interests of her calf at heart, attacked the first passer-by. -Half-awed, but wholly delighted, the boys watched the outburst. It was -in full flower before they even dreamed of a second shot. Tom came out -from a byre with a pitchfork, to be chased in again by the harnessed -cow. A bullock floundered on the muck-heap, fell, rose and bedded -himself to the belly, helpless and bellowing. The others took great -interest in him. - -Corkran, through the roof, scientifically “tweaked” a frisky heifer on -the nose, and it is no exaggeration to say that she danced on her hind -legs for half a minute. - -“Abram! Oh, Abram! They’m bewitched. They’m ragin’. ’Tes the milk fever. -They’ve been drove mad. Oh, Abram! They’ll horn the bullock! They’ll -horn _me_! Abram!” - -“Bide till I lock the door,” quoth Abraham, faithful to his trust. They -heard him padlock the barn door; saw him come out with yet another -pitchfork. A bullock lowered his head, Abraham ran to the nearest -pig-pen, where loud squeakings told that he had disturbed the peace of a -large family. - -“Beetle,” snapped Corkran. “Go in an’ get those asses out. Quick! We’ll -keep the cows happy.” - -A people sitting in darkness and the shadow of monumental lickings, too -depressed to be angry with De Vitré, heard a voice from on high saying, -“Come up here! Come on! Come up! There’s a way out.” - -They shinned up the loft-stanchions without a word; found a boot-heel -which they were bidden to take for guide, and squeezed desperately -through a hole in darkness, to be hauled out by Corkran. - -“Have you got your caps? Did you give ’em your names and numbers?” - -“Yes. No.” - -“That’s all right. Drop down here. Don’t stop to jaw. Over the -cart—through that window, and bunk! Get _out_!” - -De Vitré needed no more. They heard him squeak as he dropped among the -nettles, and through the roof-chinks they watched four slight figures -disappear into the rain. Tom and Abraham, from byre and pig-pen, -exhorted the cattle to keep quiet. - -“By gum!” said Beetle; “that _was_ stalky. How did you think of it?” - -“It was the only thing to do. Anybody could have seen that.” - -“Hadn’t we better bunk, too, now?” said McTurk uneasily. - -“Why? _We_’re all right. _We_ haven’t done anything. I want to hear what -old Vidley will say. Stop tweakin’, Turkey. Let ’em cool off. Golly! how -that heifer danced! I swear I didn’t know cows could be so lively. We’re -only just in time.” - -“My Hat! Here’s Vidley—and Toowey,” said Beetle, as the two farmers -strode into the yard. - -“Gloats! oh, gloats! Fids! oh, fids! Hefty fids and gloats to us!” said -Corkran. - -These words, in their vocabulary, expressed the supreme of delight. -“Gloats” implied more or less of personal triumph, “fids” was felicity -in the abstract, and the boys were tasting both that day. Last joy of -all, they had had the pleasure of Mr. Vidley’s acquaintance, albeit he -did not love them. Toowey was more of a stranger, his orchards lying -over-near to the public road. - -Tom and Abraham together told a tale of stolen cattle maddened by -overdriving; of cows sure to die in calving, and of milk that would -never return; that made Mr. Vidley swear for three consecutive minutes -in the speech of north Devon. - -“’Tes tu bad. ’Tes tu bad,” said Toowey, consolingly; “let’s ’ope they -’aven’t took no great ’arm. They be wonderful wild, though.” - -“’Tes all well for yeou, Toowey, that sells them dom Collegers seventy -quart a week.” - -“Eighty,” Toowey replied, with the meek triumph of one who has -under-bidden his neighbour on public tender; “but that’s no odds to me. -Yeou’m free to leather ’em saame as if they was yeour own sons. On my -barn floor shall ’ee leather ’em.” - -“Generous old pig!” said Beetle. “De Vitré ought to have stayed for -this.” - -“They’m all safe an’ to rights,” said the officious Abraham, producing -the key. “Rackon us’ll come in an’ hold ’em for yeou. Hey! The cows are -fair ragin’ still. Us’ll have to run for it.” - -The barn being next to the shed, the boys could not see that stately -entry. But they heard. - -“Gone an’ hided in the hay. Aie! They’m proper afraid,” cried Abraham. - -“Rout un out! Rout un out!” roared Vidley, rattling a stick impatiently -on the root-cutter. - -“Oh, my Aunt!” said Corkran, standing on one foot. - -“Shut the door. Shut the door, I tal ’ee. Rackon us can find un in the -dark. Us don’t want un boltin’ like rabbits under our elbows.” The big -barn door closed with a clang. - -“My Gum!” said Corkran, which was always his War oath in time of action. -He dropped down and was gone for perhaps twenty seconds. - -“And _that’s_ all right,” he said, returning at a gentle saunter. - -“Hwatt?” McTurk almost shrieked, for Corkran, in the shed below, waved a -large key. - -“Stalks! Frabjous Stalks! Bottled ’em! all four!” was the reply, and -Beetle fell on his bosom. “Yiss. They’m so’s to say, like, locked up. If -you’re goin’ to laugh, Beetle, I shall have to kick you again.” - -“But I must!” Beetle was blackening with suppressed mirth. - -“You won’t do it here, then.” He thrust the already limp Beetle through -the cartshed window. It sobered him; one cannot laugh on a bed of -nettles. Then Corkran stepped on his prostrate carcass, and McTurk -followed, just as Beetle would have risen; so he was upset, and the -nettles painted on his cheek a likeness of hideous eruptions. - -“’Thought that ’ud cure you,” said Corkran, with a sniff. - -Beetle rubbed his face desperately with dock-leaves, and said nothing. -All desire to laugh had gone from him. They entered the lane. - -Then a clamour broke from the barn—a compound noise of horse-like kicks, -shaking of door-panels, and fivefold yells. - -“They’ve found it out,” said Corkran. “How strange!” He sniffed again. - -“Let ’em,” said Beetle. “No one can hear ’em. Come on up to Coll.” - -“What a brute you are, Beetle! You only think of your beastly self. -Those cows want milkin’. Poor dears! Hear ’em low,” said McTurk. - -“Go back and milk ’em yourself, then.” Beetle danced with pain. “We -shall miss call-over, hangin’ about like this; an’ I’ve got two black -marks this week already.” - -“Then you’ll have fatigue-drill on Monday,” said Corkran. “Come to think -of it, I’ve got two black marks _aussi_. Hm! This is serious. This is -hefty serious.” - -“I told you,” said Beetle, with vindictive triumph. “An’ we want to go -out after that hawk’s nest on Monday. We shall be swottin’ dum-bells, -though. _All_ your fault. If we’d bunked with De Vitré at first——” - -Corkran paused between the hedgerows. “Hold on a shake an’ don’t burble. -Keep your eye on Uncle. Do you know, _I_ believe someone’s shut up in -that barn. I think we ought to go and see.” - -“Don’t be a giddy idiot. Come on up to Coll.” But Corkran took no notice -of Beetle. - -He retraced his steps to the head of the lane, and, lifting up his -voice, cried as in bewilderment, “Hullo? Who’s there? What’s that row -about? Who are you?” - -“Oh, Peter!” said Beetle, skipping, and forgetting his anguish in this -new development. - -“Hoi! Hoi! ’Ere! Let us out!” The answers came muffled and hollow from -the black bulk of the barn, with renewed thunders on the door. - -“Now play up,” said Corkran. “Turkey, you keep the cows busy. ’Member -that we’ve just discovered ’em. _We_ don’t know anything. Be polite, -Beetle.” - -They picked their way over the muck and held speech through a crack by -the door-hinge. Three more genuinely surprised boys the steady rain -never fell upon. And they were so difficult to enlighten. They had to be -told again and again by the captives within. - -“We’ve been ’ere for hours an’ hours.” That was Toowey. “An’ the cows to -milk, an’ all.” That was Vidley. “The door she blewed against us an’ -jammed herself.” That was Abraham. - -“Yes, we can see that. It’s jammed on this side,” said Corkran. “How -careless you chaps are!” - -“Oppen un. Oppen un. Bash her oppen with a rock, young gen’elmen! The -cows are milk-heated an’ ragin’. Haven’t you boys no sense?” - -Seeing that McTurk from time to time tweaked the cattle into renewed -caperings, it was quite possible that the boys had some knowledge of a -sort. But Mr. Vidley was rude. They told him so through the door, -professing only now to recognize his voice. - -“Humour un if ’e can. I paid seven-an’-six for the padlock,” said -Toowey. “Niver mind _him_. ’Tes only old Vidley.” - -“Be yeou gwaine to stay a prisoneer an’ captive for the sake of a lock, -Toowey? I’m shaamed of ’ee. Rowt un oppen, young gen’elmen! ’Twas a -God’s own mercy yeou heard us. Toowey, yeou’m a borned miser.” - -“It’ll be a long job,” said Corkran. “Look here. It’s near our -call-over. If we stay to help you we’ll miss it. We’ve come miles out of -our way already—after you.” - -“Tell yeour master, then, what keeped ’ee—an arrand o’ mercy, laike. -I’ll tal un tu when I bring the milk to-morrow,” said Toowey. - -“That’s no good,” said Corkran; “we may be licked twice over by then. -You’ll have to give us a letter.” McTurk, backed against the barn wall, -was firing steadily and accurately into the brown of the herd. - -“Yiss, yiss. Come down to my house. My missus shall write ’ee a beauty, -young gen’elmen. She makes out the bills. I’ll give ’ee just such a -letter o’ racommendation as I’d give to my own son, if only yeou can -humour the lock!” - -“Niver mind the lock,” Vidley wailed. “Let me get to me pore cows, ’fore -they’m dead.” - -They went to work with ostentatious rattlings and wrenchings, and a good -deal of the by-play that Corkran always loved. At last—the noise of -unlocking was covered by some fancy hammering with a young boulder—the -door swung open and the captives marched out. - -“Hurry up, Mister Toowey,” said Corkran; “we ought to be getting back. -Will you give us that note, please?” - -“Some of yeou young gentlemen was drivin’ my cattle off the Burrowses,” -said Vidley. “I give ’ee fair warnin’, I’ll tell yeour masters. I know -_yeou_!” He glared at Corkran with malignant recognition. - -McTurk looked him over from head to foot. “Oh, it’s only old Vidley. -Drunk again, I suppose. Well, we can’t help that. Come on, _Mister_ -Toowey. We’ll go to your house.” - -“Drunk, am I? I’ll drunk ’ee! How do I know yeou bain’t the same lot? -Abram, did ’ee take their names an’ numbers?” - -“What _is_ he ravin’ about?” said Beetle. “Can’t you see that if we’d -taken your beastly cattle we shouldn’t be hanging round your beastly -barn. ’Pon my Sam, you Burrows guv’nors haven’t any sense——” - -“Let alone gratitude,” said Corkran. “I suppose he _was_ drunk, Mister -Toowey; an’ you locked him in the barn to get sober. Shockin’! Oh, -shockin’!” - -Vidley denied the charge in language that the boys’ mothers would have -wept to hear. - -“Well, go and look after your cows, then,” said McTurk. “Don’t stand -there cursin’ us because we’ve been kind enough to help you out of a -scrape. Why on earth weren’t your cows milked before? _You_’re no -farmer. It’s long past milkin’. No wonder they’re half crazy. -Disreputable old bog-trotter, you are. Brush your hair, sir.... I _beg_ -your pardon, Mister Toowey. ’Hope we’re not keeping you.” - -They left Vidley dancing on the muck-heap, amid the cows, and devoted -themselves to propitiating Mr. Toowey on their way to his house. -Exercise had made them hungry; hunger is the mother of good manners; and -they won golden opinions from Mrs. Toowey. - - * * * * * - -“Three-quarters of an hour late for Call-over, and fifteen minutes late -for Lock-up,” said Foxy, the school Sergeant, crisply. He was waiting -for them at the head of the corridor. “Report to your housemaster, -please—an’ a nice mess you’re in, young gentlemen.” - -“Quite right, Foxy. Strict attention to dooty does it,” said Corkran. -“Now where, if we asked you, would you say that his honour Mister Prout -might, at this moment of time, be found prouting—eh?” - -“In ’is study—as usual, Mister Corkran. He took Call-over.” - -“Hurrah! Luck’s with us all the way. Don’t blub, Foxy. I’m afraid you -don’t catch us this time.” - - * * * * * - -“We went up to change, sir, before comin’ to you. That made us a little -late, sir. We weren’t really very late. We were detained—by a——” - -“An errand of mercy,” said Beetle, and they laid Mrs. Toowey’s -laboriously written note before him. “We thought you’d prefer a letter, -sir. Toowey got himself locked into a barn, and we heard him -shouting—it’s Toowey who brings the Coll. milk, sir—and we went to let -him out.” - -“There were ever so many cows waiting to be milked,” said McTurk; “and -of course, he couldn’t get at them, sir. They said the door had jammed. -There’s his note, sir.” - -Mr. Prout read it over thrice. It was perfectly unimpeachable; but it -said nothing of a large tea supplied by Mrs. Toowey. - -“Well, I don’t like your getting mixed up with farmers and potwallopers. -Of course you will not pay any more—er—visits to the Tooweys,” said he. - -“Of course not, sir. It was really on account of the cows, sir,” replied -McTurk, glowing with philanthropy. - -“And you came straight back?” - -“We ran nearly all the way from the Cattle-gate,” said Corkran, -carefully developing the unessential. “That’s one mile, sir. Of course, -we had to get the note from Toowey first.” - -“But it was because we went to change—we were rather wet, sir—that we -were _really_ late. After we’d reported ourselves to the Sergeant, sir, -and he knew we were in Coll., we didn’t like to come to your study all -dirty.” Sweeter than honey was the voice of Beetle. - -“Very good. Don’t let it happen again.” Their housemaster learned to -know them better in later years. - -They entered—not to say swaggered—into Number Nine form-room, where De -Vitré, Orrin, Parsons, and Howlett, before the fire, were still telling -their adventures to admiring associates. The four rose as one boy. - -“What happened to _you_? We just saved Call-over. Did you stay on? Tell -us! Tell us!” - -The three smiled pensively. They were not distinguished for telling more -than was necessary. - -“Oh, we stayed on a bit and then we came away,” said McTurk. “That’s -all.” - -“You scab! You might tell a chap anyhow.” - -“’Think so? Well, that’s awfully good of you, De Vitré. ’Pon my sainted -Sam, that’s awfully good of you,” said Corkran, shouldering into the -centre of the warmth and toasting one slippered foot before the blaze. -“So you really think we might tell you?” - -They stared at the coals and shook with deep, delicious chuckles. - -“My Hat! We _were_ stalky,” said McTurk. “I swear we were about as -stalky as they make ’em. Weren’t we?” - -“It was a frabjous Stalk,” said Beetle. “’Much too good to tell you -brutes, though.” - -The form wriggled under the insult, but made no motion to avenge it. -After all, on De Vitré’s showing, the three had saved the raiders from -at least a public licking. - -“It wasn’t half bad,” said Corkran. “Stalky _is_ the word.” - -“_You_ were the really stalky one,” said McTurk, one contemptuous -shoulder turned to a listening world. “By Gum! you _were_ stalky.” - -Corkran accepted the compliment and the name together. “Yes,” said he; -“keep your eye on your Uncle Stalky an’ he’ll pull you through.” - -“Well, you needn’t gloat so,” said De Vitré, viciously; “you look like a -stuffed cat.” - -Corkran, henceforth known as Stalky, took not the slightest notice, but -smiled dreamily. - -“My Hat! Yes. Of course,” he murmured. “Your Uncle Stalky—a doocid good -name. Your Uncle Stalky is no end of a stalker. He’s a Great Man. I -swear he is. De Vitré, you’re an ass—a putrid ass.” - -De Vitré would have denied this but for the assenting murmurs from -Parsons and Orrin. - -“You needn’t rub it in, then.” - -“But I do. I does. You are such a woppin’ ass. D’you know it? Think over -it a bit at prep. Think it up in bed. Oblige me by thinkin’ of it every -half hour till further notice. Gummy! _What_ an ass you are! But your -Uncle Stalky”—he picked up the form-room poker and beat it against the -mantelpiece—“is a Great Man!” - -“Hear, hear,” said Beetle and McTurk, who had fought under that general. - -“Isn’t your Uncle Stalky a great man, De Vitré? Speak the truth, you -fat-headed old impostor.” - -“Yes,” said De Vitré, deserted by all his band. “I—I suppose he is.” - -“’Mustn’t suppose. _Is_ he?” - -“Well, he is.” - -“A Great Man?” - -“A Great Man. _Now_ won’t you tell us?” said De Vitré pleadingly. - -“Not by a heap,” said “Stalky” Corkran. - -Therefore the tale has stayed untold till to-day. - - - - - THE HOUR OF THE ANGEL[19] - - - Sooner or late—in earnest or in jest— - (But the stakes are no jest) Ithuriel’s Hour - Will spring on us, for the first time, the test - Of our sole unbacked competence and power - Up to the limit of our years and dower - Of judgment—or beyond. But here we have - Prepared long since our garland or our grave. - For, at that hour, the sum of all our past, - Act, habit, thought, and passion, shall be cast - In one addition, be it more or less, - And as that reading runs so shall we do; - Meeting, astounded, victory at the last, - Or, first and last, our own unworthiness. - And none can change us though they die to save! - -“SARAH SANDS” - - - - - THE BURNING OF THE “SARAH SANDS” - -_Men have sailed the seas for so many years, and have there done such -amazing things in the face of danger, difficulty and death, that no one -tale of heroism exists which cannot be equalled by at least scores of -others. But since the behaviour of bodies of untried men under trying -circumstances is always interesting, and since I have been put in -possession of some facts not very generally known, I am trying to tell -again the old story of the_ Sarah Sands, _as an example of -long-drawn-out and undefeatable courage and cool-headedness._ - - -She was a small four-masted, iron-built screw-steamer of eleven hundred -tons, chartered to take out troops to India. That was in 1857, the year -of the Indian Mutiny, when anything that could sail or steer was in -great demand; for troops were being thrown into the country as fast as -circumstances allowed—which was not very fast. - -Among the regiments sent out was the 54th of the Line, now the Second -Battalion of the Dorset Regiment—a good corps, about a hundred years -old, with a very fair record of service, but in no special way -differing, so far as one could see, from many other regiments. It was -despatched in three ships. The Head-quarters—that is to say, the -Lieutenant-Colonel, the Regimental books, pay-chest, Band and Colours, -which last represent the very soul of a Battalion—and some fourteen -officers, three hundred and fifty-four rank and file, and perhaps a -dozen women, left Portsmouth on the 15th of August all packed tight in -the _Sarah Sands_. - -Her crew, with the exception of the engineers and firemen, seem to have -been foreigners and pier-head jumpers picked up at the last minute. They -turned out bad, lazy and insubordinate. - -The accommodation for the troops was generously described as “inferior,” -and what men called “inferior” in 1857 would now be called unspeakable. -Nor, in spite of the urgent need, was there any great hurry about the -_Sarah Sands_. She took two long months to reach Capetown, and she -stayed there five days to coal, leaving on the 20th of October. By this -time, the crew were all but openly mutinous, and the troops, who must -have picked up a little seamanship, had to work the ship out of harbour. - -On the 7th of November, nearly three weeks later, a squall struck her -and carried away her foremast; and it is to be presumed that the troops -turned to and cleared away the wreckage. On the 11th of November the -real trouble began, for, in the afternoon of that day, ninety days out -from Portsmouth, a party of soldiers working in the hold saw smoke -coming up from the after-hatch. They were then, maybe, within a thousand -miles of the Island of Mauritius, in half a gale and a sea full of -sharks. - -Captain Castles, the master, promptly lowered and provisioned the boats; -got them over-side with some difficulty and put the women into them. -Some of the sailors—the engineers, the firemen and a few others behaved -well—jumped into the long-boat, lowered it and kept well away from the -ship. They knew she carried two magazines full of cartridges, and were -taking no chances. - -The troops, on the other hand, did not make any fuss, but under their -officers’ orders cleared out the starboard or right-hand magazine, -while volunteers tried to save the Regimental Colours. These stood at -the end of the saloon, probably clamped against the partition behind -the Captain’s chair, and the saloon was full of smoke. Two lieutenants -made a dash thither but were nearly suffocated. A ship’s -quartermaster—Richard Richmond was his name—put a wet cloth over his -face, managed to tear down the Colours, and then fainted. A -private—and his name was W. Wiles—dragged out both Richmond and the -Colours, and the two men dropped senseless on the deck while the -troops cheered. That, at least, was a good beginning; for, as I have -said, the Colours are the soul of every body of men who fight or work -under them. - -The saloon must have been one of the narrow, cabin-lined, old-fashioned -“cuddies,” placed above the screw, and all the fire was in the stern of -the ship, behind the engine-room. It was blazing very close to the port -or left-hand magazine, and, as an explosion there would have blown the -_Sarah Sands_ out like a squib they called for more volunteers, and one -of the lieutenants who had been choked in the saloon recovered, went -down first and passed up a barrel of ammunition, which was at once hove -overboard. After this example, work went on with regularity. - -When the men taking out the ammunition fainted, as they did fairly -often, they pulled them up with ropes. Those who did not faint, grabbed -what explosives they could feel or handle in the smother, and brought -them up, and an official and serene quartermaster-sergeant stood on the -hatch and jotted down the number of barrels so retrieved in his -notebook, as they were thrown into the sea. They pulled out all except -two barrels which slid from the arms of a fainting man—there was a fair -amount of fainting that evening—and rolled out of reach. Besides these, -there were another couple of barrels of signalling powder for the ship’s -use; but this the troops did not know, and were the more comfortable for -their ignorance. - -Then the flames broke through the after-deck, the light attracting -shoals of sharks, and the mizzen-mast—the farthest aft of all the -masts—flared up and went over-side with a crash. This would have veered -the stern of the ship-head to the wind, in which case the flames must -have swept forward; but a man with a hatchet—his name is lost—ran along -the bulwarks and cut the wreck clear, while the boat full of women -surged and rocked at a safe distance, and the sharks tried to upset it -with their tails. - -A Captain of the 54th—he was a jovial soul, and made jokes throughout -the struggle—headed a party of men to cut away the bridge, the -deck-cabins, and everything else that was inflammable—this in case of -the flames sweeping forward again—while a provident lieutenant, with -some more troops, lashed spars and things together for a raft, and other -gangs pumped water desperately on to what was left of the saloon and the -magazines. - -One record says quaintly: “It was necessary to make some deviation from -the usual military evolutions while the flames were in progress. The men -formed in sections, counter-marched round the forward part of the ship, -which may perhaps be better understood when it is stated that those with -their faces to the after part where the fire raged were on their way to -relieve their comrades who had been working below. Those proceeding -‘forward’ were going to recruit their exhausted strength and prepare for -another attack when it came to their turn.” - -No one seemed to have much hopes of saving the ship so long as the last -of the powder was unaccounted for. Indeed, Captain Castles told an -officer of the 54th that the game was up, and the officer replied, -“We’ll fight till we’re driven overboard.” It seemed he would be taken -at his word, for just then the signalling powder and the -ammunition-casks went up, and the ship seen from midships aft looked -like one floating volcano. - -The cartridges spluttered like crackers, and cabin doors and timbers -were shot up all over the deck, and two or three men were hurt. But—this -is not in any official record—just after the roar of it, when her stern -was dipping deadlily, and all believed the _Sarah Sands_ was settling -for her last lurch, some merry jester of the 54th cried, “Lights out,” -and the jovial captain shouted back, “All right! We’ll keep the old -woman afloat yet.” Not one man of the troops made any attempt to get on -to the rafts; and when they found the ship was still floating they all -went back to work double tides. - -At this point in the story we come across Mr. Frazer, the Scotch -engineer, who, like most of his countrymen, had been holding his -trump-card in reserve. He knew the _Sarah Sands_ was built with a -water-tight bulkhead behind the engine-room and the coal-bunkers; and he -proposed to cut through the bulkhead and pump on the fire. Also, he -pointed out that it would be well to remove the coal in the bunkers, as -the bulkhead behind was almost red-hot, and the coal was catching light. - -So volunteers dropped into the bunkers, each man for the minute or two -he could endure it, and shovelled away the singeing, fuming fuel, and -other volunteers were lowered into the bonfire aft, and when they could -throw no more water on it they were pulled up half roasted. - -Mr. Frazer’s plan saved the ship, though every particle of wood in the -after part of her was destroyed, and a bluish vapour hung over the -red-hot iron beams and ties, and the sea for miles about looked like -blood under the glare, as they pumped and passed water in buckets, -flooding the stern, sluicing the engine-room bulkhead and damping the -coal beyond it all through the long night. The very sides of the ship -were red-hot, so that they wondered when her plates would buckle and -wrench out the rivets and let the whole affair down to the sharks. - -The foremast had carried away on the squall of the 7th of November; the -mizzen-mast, as you know, had gone in the fire; the main-mast, though -wrapped round with wet blankets, was alight, and everything abaft the -main-mast was one red furnace. There was the constant danger of the -ship, now broadside on to the heavy seas, falling off before the heavy -wind, and leading the flames forward again. So they hailed the boats to -tow and hold her head to wind; but only the gig obeyed the order. The -others had all they could do to keep afloat; one of them had been -swamped, though all her people were saved; and as for the long-boat full -of mutinous seamen, she behaved infamously. One record says that “She -not only held aloof, but consigned the ship and all she carried to -perdition.” So the _Sarah Sands_ fought for her own life alone, with the -sharks in attendance. - -About three on the morning of the 12th of November, pumping, bucketing, -sluicing and damping, they began to hope that they had bested the fire. -By nine o’clock they saw steam coming up from her insides instead of -smoke, and at mid-day they called in the boats and took stock of the -damage. From the mizzen-mast aft there was nothing that you could call -ship except just the mere shell of her. It was all one steaming heap of -scrap-iron with twenty feet of black, greasy water flooding across the -bent and twisted rods, and in the middle of it all four huge water-tanks -rolled to and fro, thundering against the naked sides. - -Moreover,—this they could not see till things had cooled down—the powder -explosions had blown a hole right through her port quarter, and every -time she rolled the sea came in there green. Of the four masts only one -was left; and the rudder-head stuck up all bald, black and horrible -among the jam of collapsed deck-beams. A photograph of the wreck looks -exactly like that of a gutted theatre after the flames and the firemen -have done their worst. - -They spent the whole of the 12th of November pumping water out as -zealously as they had pumped it in. They lashed up the loose, charging -tanks as soon as they were cool enough to touch. They plugged the hole -at the stern with hammocks, sails, and planks, and a sail over all. Then -they rigged up a horizontal bar gripping the rudder-head. Six men sat on -planks on one side and six at the other over the empty pit beneath, -hauling on to the bar with ropes and letting go as they were told. That -made the best steering-gear that they could devise. - -On the 13th of November, still pumping, they spread one sail on their -solitary mast—it was lucky that the _Sarah Sands_ had started with four -of them—and took advantage of the trade winds to make for Mauritius. -Captain Castles, with one chart and one compass, lived in a tent where -some cabins had once been; and at the end of twelve more days he sighted -land. Their average run was about four knots an hour; and, it is no -wonder that as soon as they were off Port Louis, Mauritius, Mr. Frazer, -the Scotch engineer, wished to start his engines and enter port -professionally. The troops looked down into the black hollow of the ship -when the shaft made its first revolution, shaking the hull horribly; and -if you can realize what it means to be able to see a naked screw-shaft -at work from the upper deck of a liner, you can realize what had -happened to the _Sarah Sands_. They waited outside Port Louis for the -daylight, and were nearly dashed to pieces on a coral reef. Then the -gutted, empty steamer came in—very dirty, the men’s clothes so charred -that they hardly dared to take them off, and very hungry; but without -having lost one single life. Port Louis gave them all a public banquet -in the market place, and the French inhabitants were fascinatingly -polite as only the French can be. - -But the records say nothing of what befell the sailors who “consigned -the ship to perdition.” One account merely hints that “this was no time -for retribution”; but the troops probably administered their own justice -during the twelve days’ limp to port. The men who were berthed aft, the -officers and the women, lost everything they had; and the companies -berthed forward lent them clothes and canvas to make some sort of -raiment. - -On the 20th of December they were all re-embarked on the _Clarendon_. It -was poor accommodation for heroes. She had been condemned as a -coolie-ship, was full of centipedes and other animals picked up in the -Brazil trade; her engines broke down frequently; and her captain died of -exposure and anxiety during a hurricane. So it was the 25th of January -before she reached the mouth of the Hugli. - -By this time—many of the men probably considered this quite as serious -as the fire—the troops were out of tobacco, and when they came across -the American ship _Hamlet_, Captain Lecran, lying at Kedgeree on the way -up the river to Calcutta, the officers rowed over to ask if there was -any tobacco for sale. They told the skipper the history of their -adventures, and he said: “Well, I’m glad you’ve come to me, because I -have some tobacco. How many are you?” “Three hundred men,” said the -officers. Thereupon Captain Lecran got out four hundred pounds of best -Cavendish as well as one thousand Manilla cigars for the officers, and -refused to take payment on the grounds that Americans did not accept -anything from shipwrecked people. They were not shipwrecked at the time, -but evidently they had been shipwrecked quite enough for Captain Lecran, -because when they rowed back a second time and insisted on paying, he -only gave them grog, “which,” says the record, “caused it to be dark -when we returned to our ship.” After this “our band played -‘Yankee-Doodle,’ blue lights were burned, the signal-gun fired”—that -must have been a lively evening at Kedgeree—“and everything in our power -was had recourse to so as to convey to our American cousins our -appreciation of their kindness.” - -Last of all, the Commander-in-Chief issued a general order to be read at -the head of every regiment in the Army. He was pleased to observe that -“the behaviour of the 54th Regiment was most praiseworthy, and by its -result must render manifest to all the advantage of subordination and -strict obedience to orders under the most alarming and dangerous -circumstances in which soldiers can be placed.” - -This seems to be the moral of the tale. - - - - - THE LAST LAP - - - How do we know, by the bank-high river, - Where the mired and sulky oxen wait, - And it looks as though we might wait for ever, - How do we know that the floods abate? - There is no change in the current’s brawling— - Louder and harsher the freshet scolds; - Yet we can feel she is falling, falling, - And the more she threatens the less she holds. - Down to the drift, with no word spoken, - The wheel-chained wagons slither and slue. - Steady! The back of the worst is broken. - And—lash your leaders!—we’re through—we’re through! - - How do we know, when the port-fog holds us - Moored and helpless, a mile from the pier, - And the week-long summer smother enfolds us— - How do we know it is going to clear? - There is no break in the blind-fold weather, - But, one and another, around the bay, - The unseen capstans clink together, - Getting ready to up and away. - A pennon whimpers—the breeze has found us— - A headsail jumps through the thinning haze. - The whole hull follows, till—broad around us— - The clean-swept ocean says:—“Go your ways!” - - How do we know, when the long fight rages, - On the old, stale front that we cannot shake; - And it looks as though we were locked for ages, - How do we know they are going to break? - There is no lull in the level firing, - Nothing has shifted except the sun. - Yet we can feel they are tiring, tiring. - Yet we can tell they are ripe to run. - Something wavers, and, while we wonder, - Their center trenches are emptying out, - And, before their useless flanks go under, - Our guns have pounded retreat to rout! - - - - - THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES - -_This tale was written several years before the War, as you can see for -yourselves. It is founded on fact, and it is meant to show that one -ought to try to recognize facts, even when they are unpleasant and -inconvenient._ - - -The long shed of the Village Rifle Club reeked with the oniony smell of -smokeless powder, machine-oil, and creosote from the stop-butt, as man -after man laid himself down and fired at the miniature target sixty feet -away. The Instructor’s voice echoed under the corrugated iron roof. - -“Squeeze, Matthews, squeeze! Jerking your shoulder won’t help the -bullet.... Gordon, you’re canting your gun to the left.... Hold your -breath when the sights come on.... Fenwick, was that a bull? Then it’s -only a fluke, for your last at two o’clock was an outer. You don’t know -where you’re shooting.” - -“I call this monotonous,” said Boy Jones, who had been brought by a -friend to look at the show. “Where does the fun come in?” - -“Would you like to try a shot?” the Instructor asked. - -“Oh—er—thanks,” said Jones. “I’ve shot with a shot-gun, of course, but -this”—he looked at the miniature rifle—“this isn’t like a shot-gun, is -it?” - -“Not in the least,” said the Friend. The Instructor passed Boy Jones a -cartridge. The squad ceased firing and stared. Boy Jones reddened and -fumbled. - -“Hi! The beastly thing has slipped somehow!” he cried. The tiny -twenty-two cartridge had dropped into the magazine-slot and stuck there, -caught by the rim. The muzzle travelled vaguely round the horizon. The -squad with one accord sat down on the dusty cement floor. - -“Lend him a hair-pin,” whispered the jobbing gardener. - -“Muzzle _up_, please,” said the Instructor (it was drooping towards the -men on the floor). “I’ll load for you. Now—keep her pointed towards the -target—you’re supposed to be firing at two hundred yards. Have you set -your sights? Never mind, I’ll set ’em. _Please_ don’t touch the trigger -till you shoot.” - -Boy Jones was glistening at the edges as the Instructor swung him in the -direction of the little targets fifty feet away. “Take a fine sight! The -bull’s eye should be just sitting on the top of the fore-sight,” the -Instructor cautioned. “Ah!” - -Boy Jones, with a grunt and a jerk of the shoulder, pulled the trigger. -The right-hand window of the shed, six feet above the target, starred -and cracked. - -The boy who cleans the knives at the Vicarage buried his face in his -hands; Jevons, the bricklayer’s assistant, tied up his bootlace; the -Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society looked at the roof; the village -barber whistled softly. When one is twenty-two years old, and weighs -twelve-stone-eight in hard condition, one does not approve of any game -that one cannot play very well. - -“I call this silly piffle,” said Boy Jones, wiping his face. - -“Oh, not so bad as that,” said the Instructor. “We’ve all got to begin -somehow. Try another?” But Boy Jones was not practising any more that -afternoon. He seemed to need soothing. - -“Come over to the big range,” said the Friend. “You’ll see the finished -article at work down there. This is only for boys and beginners.” - -A knot of village lads from twelve to sixteen were scuffling for places -on the shooting-mat as Boy Jones left the shed. On his way to the range, -across the windy Downs, he preserved a silence foreign to his sunny -nature. Jevons, the bricklayer’s assistant, and the F. R. G. S. trotted -past him—rifles at the carry. - -“Awkward wind,” said Jevons. “Fishtail!” - -“What’s a fishtail?” said Boy Jones. - -“Oh! It means a fishy, tricky sort of a wind,” said the Friend. A shift -in the uneasy northeast breeze brought them the far-away sob of a -service rifle. - -“For once in your young life,” the Friend went on, “you’re going to -attend a game you do not understand.” - -“If you mean I’m expected to make an ass of myself again——” Boy Jones -paused. - -“Don’t worry! By this time I fancy Jevons will have told the Sergeant -all about your performance in the shed just now. _You_ won’t be pressed -to shoot.” - -A long sweep of bare land opened before them. The thump of occasional -shots grew clearer, and Boy Jones pricked his ears. - -“What’s that unholy whine and whop?” he asked in a lull of the wind. - -“The whine is the bullet going across the valley. The whop is when it -hits the target—that white shutter thing sliding up and down against the -hillside. Those men lying down yonder are shooting at five hundred -yards. We’ll look at ’em,” said the Friend. - -“This would make a thundering good golf-links,” said Boy Jones, striding -over the short, clean turf. “Not a bad lie in miles of it.” - -“Yes, wouldn’t it?” the Friend replied. “It would be even prettier as a -croquet-lawn or a basket-ball pitch. Just the place for a picnic too. -Unluckily, it’s a rifle-range.” - -Boy Jones looked doubtful, but said nothing till they reached the -five-hundred-yard butt. The Sergeant, on his stomach, binoculars to his -eye, nodded, but not at the visitors. “Where did you sight, Walters?” he -said. - -“Nine o’clock—edge of the target,” was the reply from a fat, blue man in -a bowler hat, his trousers rucked half-way to his knees. “The wind’s -rotten bad down there!” He pointed towards the stiff-tailed wind-flags -that stuck out at all sorts of angles as the eddy round the shoulder of -the Down caught them. - -“Let me try one,” the Sergeant said, and reached behind him for a rifle. - -“Hold on!” said the F. R. G. S. “That’s Number Six. She throws high.” - -“She’s _my_ pet,” said Jevons, holding out his hand for it. “Take Number -Nine, Sergeant.” - -“Rifles are like bats, you know,” the Friend explained. “They differ a -lot.” - -The Sergeant sighted. - -“He holds it steady enough,” said Boy Jones. - -“He mostly does,” said the Friend. “If you watch that white disc come up -you’ll know it’s a bull.” - -“Not much of one,” said the Sergeant. “Too low—too far right. I gave her -all the allowance I dared, too. That wind’s funnelling badly in the -valley. Give your wind-sight another three degrees, Walters.” - -The fat man’s big fingers delicately adjusted the lateral sight. He had -been firing till then by the light of his trained judgment, but some of -the rifles were fitted with wind-gauges, and he wished to test one. - -“What’s he doing that for?” said Boy Jones. - -“You wouldn’t understand,” said the Friend. “But take a squint along -this rifle, and see what a bull looks like at five hundred yards. It -isn’t loaded, but don’t point it at the pit of my stomach.” - -“Dash it all! I didn’t _mean_ to!” said Boy Jones. - -“None of ’em mean it,” the Friend replied. “That’s how all the murders -are done. Don’t play with the bolt. Merely look along the sights. It -isn’t much of a mark, is it?” - -“No, by Jove!” said Jones, and gazed with reverence at Walters, who -announced before the marker had signalled his last shot that it was a -likely heifer. (Walters was a butcher by profession.) A well-centred -bull it proved to be. - -“Now how the deuce did he do it?” said Boy Jones. - -“By practice—first in the shed at two hundred yards. We’ve five or six -as good as him,” said the Friend. “But he’s not much of a snap-shooter -when it comes to potting at dummy heads and shoulders exposed for five -seconds. Jevons is our man then.” - -“Ah! talking of snap-shooting!” said the Sergeant, and—while Jevons -fired his seven shots—delivered Boy Jones a curious little lecture on -the advantages of the foggy English climate, the value of enclosed land -for warfare, and the possibilities of well-directed small-arm fire -wiping up—“spraying down” was his word—artillery, even in position. - -“Well, I’ve got to go on and build houses,” said Jevons. “Twenty-six is -my score-card—sign please, Sergeant.” He rose, dusted his knees, and -moved off. His place was taken by a dark, cat-footed Coastguard, firing -for the love of the game. He only ran to three cartridges, which he -placed—magpie, five o’clock; inner, three o’clock; and bull. “Cordery -don’t take anything on trust,” said the Sergeant. “He feels his way in -to the bull every time. I like it. It’s more rational.” - -While the F. R. G. S. was explaining to Boy Jones that the rotation of -the earth on her axis affected a bullet to the extent of one yard in a -thousand, a batch of six lads cantered over the hill. - -“We’re the new two-hundred-ers,” they shouted. - -“I know it,” said the Sergeant. “Pick up the cartridge-cases; take my -mackintosh and bag, and come on down to the two hundred range, quietly.” - -There was no need for the last caution. The boys picked up the things -and swung off in couples—scout fashion. - -“They are the survivors,” the Friend explained, “of the boys you saw -just now. They’ve passed their miniature rifle tests, and are supposed -to be fit to fire in the open.” - -“And are they?” said Boy Jones, edging away from the F. R. G. S., who -was talking about “jump” and “flip” in rifle-shooting. - -“We’ll see,” said the Sergeant. “This wind ought to test ’em!” - -Down in the hollow it rushed like a boulder-choked river, driving quick -clouds across the sun: so that one minute, the eight-inch Bisley bull -leaped forth like a headlight, and the next shrunk back into the -grey-green grass of the butt like an engine backing up the line. - -“Look here!” said the Sergeant, as the boys dropped into their places at -the firing-point. “I warn you it’s a three-foot wind on the target, -_and_ freshening. You’ll get no two shots alike. Any boy that thinks he -won’t do himself justice can wait for a better day.” - -Nothing moved except one grin from face to face. - -“No,” said the Sergeant, after a pause. “I don’t suppose a thunder-storm -would shift you young birds. Remember what I’ve been telling you all -this spring. Sighting shots, from the right!” - -They went on one by one, carefully imitating the well-observed actions -of their elders, even to the tapping of the cartridge on the rifle-butt. -They scowled and grunted and compared notes as they set and reset their -sights. They brought up their rifles just as shadow gave place to sun, -and, holding too long, fired when the cheating cloud returned. It was -unhappy, cold, nose-running, eye-straining work, but they enjoyed it -passionately. At the end they showed up their score-cards; one -twenty-seven, two twenty-fives, a twenty-four, and two twenty-twos. Boy -Jones, his hands on his knees, had made no remark from first to last. - -“Could I have a shot?” he began in a strangely meek voice. - -But the chilled Sergeant had already whistled the marker out of the -butt. The wind-flags were being collected by the youngsters, and, with a -tinkle of spent cartridge-cases returned to the Sergeant’s bag, shooting -ended. - -“Not so bad,” said the Sergeant. - -“One of those boys was hump-backed,” said Boy Jones, with the healthy -animal’s horror of deformity. - -“But his shots aren’t,” said the Sergeant. “He was the twenty-seven -card. Milligan’s his name.” - -“I should like to have had a shot,” Boy Jones repeated. “Just for the -fun of the thing.” - -“Well, just for the fun of the thing,” the Friend suggested, “suppose -you fill and empty a magazine. Have you got any dummies, Sergeant?” - -The Sergeant produced a handful of dummy cartridges from his -inexhaustible bag. - -“How d’you put ’em in?” said Boy Jones, picking up a cartridge by the -bullet end with his left hand, and holding the rifle with his right. - -“Here, Milligan,” the Friend called. “Fill and empty this magazine, will -you, please?” - -The cripple’s fingers flickered for an instant round the rifle-breech. -The dummies vanished clicking. He turned towards the butt, pausing -perhaps a second on each aimed shot, ripped them all out again over his -shoulder. Mechanically Boy Jones caught them as they spun in the air; -for he was a good fielder. - -“Time, fifteen seconds,” said the Friend. “You try now.” Boy Jones shook -his head. “No, thanks,” he said. “This isn’t my day out. That’s called -magazine-fire, I suppose.” - -“Yes,” said the Sergeant, “but it’s more difficult to load in the dark -or in a cramped position.” - -The boys drew off, larking among themselves. The others strolled -homewards as the wind freshened. Only the Sergeant, after a word or two -with the marker, struck off up the line of firing-butts. - -“There seems to be a lot in it,” said Boy Jones, after a while, to his -friend. “But you needn’t tell me,” he went on in the tone of one ill at -ease with himself, “don’t tell _me_ that when the hour strikes every man -in England wouldn’t—er—rally to the defence of his country like one -man.” - -“And he’d be _so_ useful while he was rallying, wouldn’t he?” said the -Friend shortly. “Imagine one hundred thousand chaps of your kidney -introduced to the rifle for the first time, all loading and firing in -your fashion! The hospitals wouldn’t hold ’em!” - -“Oh, there’d be time to get the general hang of the thing,” said Boy -Jones cheerily. - -“When that hour strikes,” the Friend replied, “it will already have -struck, if you understand. There may be a few hours—perhaps ten or -twelve—there will certainly not be more than a day and a night allowed -us to get ready in.” - -“There will be six months at least,” said Boy Jones confidently. - -“Ah, you probably read that in a paper. I shouldn’t rely on it, if I -were you. It won’t be like a county cricket match, date settled months -in advance. By the way, are you playing for your county this season?” - -Boy Jones seemed not to hear the last question. He had taken the -Friend’s rifle, and was idly clicking the bolt. - -“Beg y’ pardon, sir,” said the Marker to the Friend in an undertone, -“but the Sergeant’s tryin’ a gentleman’s new rifle at nine hundred, and -I’m waiting on for him. If you’d like to come into the trench?”—a -discreet wink closed the sentence. - -“Thanks awfully. That ’ud be quite interesting,” said Boy Jones. The -wind had dulled a little; the sun was still strong on the golden gorse; -the Sergeant’s straight back grew smaller and smaller as it moved away. - -“You go down this ladder,” said the Marker. They reached the raw line of -the trench beneath the targets, the foot deep in the flinty chalk. - -“Yes, sir,” he went on, “here’s where all the bullets ought to come. -There’s fourteen thousand of ’em this year, somewhere on the premises, -but it don’t hinder the rabbits from burrowing, just the same. _They_ -know shooting’s over as well as we do. You come here with a shot-gun, -and you won’t see a single tail; but they don’t put ’emselves out for a -rifle. Look, there’s the Parson!” He pointed at a bold, black rabbit -sitting half-way up the butt, who loped easily away as the Marker ran up -the large nine-hundred-yard bull. Boy Jones stared at the -bullet-splintered frame-work of the targets, the chewed edges of the -woodwork, and the significantly loosened earth behind them. At last he -came down, slowly it seemed, out of the sunshine, into the chill of the -trench. The marker opened an old cocoa box, where he kept his paste and -paper patches. - -“Things get mildewy down here,” he explained. “Mr. Warren, our sexton, -says it’s too like a grave to suit _him_. But as I say, it’s twice as -deep and thrice as wide as what _he_ makes.” - -“I think it’s rather jolly,” said Boy Jones, and looked up at the narrow -strip of sky. The Marker had quietly lowered the danger flag. Something -yowled like a cat with her tail trod on, and a few fragments of pure -white chalk crumbled softly into the trench. Boy Jones jumped, and -flattened himself against the inner wall of the trench. “The Sergeant is -taking a sighting-shot,” said the Marker. “He must have hit a flint in -the grass somewhere. We can’t comb ’em all out. The noise you noticed -was the nickel envelope stripping, sir.” - -“But I didn’t hear his gun go off,” said Boy Jones. - -“Not at nine hundred, with this wind, you wouldn’t,” said the Marker. -“Stand on one side, please, sir. He’s begun.” - -There was a rap overhead—a pause—down came the creaking target, up went -the marking disc at the end of a long bamboo; a paper patch was slapped -over the bullet hole, and the target slid up again, to be greeted with -another rap, another, and another. The fifth differed in tone. “Here’s a -curiosity,” said the Marker, pulling down the target. “The bullet must -have ricochetted short of the butt, and it has key-holed, as we say. -See!” He pointed to an ugly triangular rip and flap on the canvas target -face. “If that had been flesh and blood, now,” he went on genially, “it -would have been just the same as running a plough up you.... Now he’s on -again!” The sixth rap was as thrillingly emphatic as one at a -spiritualistic séance, but the seventh was followed by another yaa-ow of -a bullet hitting a stone, and a tiny twisted sliver of metal fell at Boy -Jones’s rigid feet. He touched and dropped it. “Why, it’s quite hot,” he -said. - -“That’s due to arrested motion,” said the F. R. G. S. “Isn’t it a -funking noise, though?” - -A pause of several minutes followed, during which they could hear the -wind and the sea and the creaking of the Marker’s braces. - -“He said he’d finish off with a magazine full,” the Marker volunteered. -“I expect he’s waiting for a lull in the wind. Ah! here it comes!” - -It came—eleven shots slammed in at three-second intervals; a ricochet or -two; one on the right-hand of the target’s frame-work, which rang like a -bell; a couple that hammered the old railway ties just behind the bull; -and another that kicked a clod into the trench, and key-holed up the -target. The others were various and scattering, but all on the butt. - -“Sergeant can do better than that,” said the Marker critically, -overhauling the target. “It was the wind put him off, or (he winked once -again), or ... else he wished to show somebody something.” - -“I heard ’em all hit,” said Boy Jones. “But I never heard the gun go -off. Awful, I call it!” - -“Well,” said his friend, “it’s the kind of bowling you’ll have to face -at forty-eight hours’ notice—_if_ you’re lucky.” - -“It’s the key-holing that I bar,” said Boy Jones, following his own line -of thought. The Marker put up his flag and ladder, and they climbed out -of the trench into the sunshine. - -“For pity’s sake, look!” said the Marker, and stopped. “Well, well! If I -’adn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have credited it. You poor little impident -fool. The Sergeant _will_ be vexed.” - -“What has happened?” said Boy Jones, rather shrilly. - -“He’s killed the Parson, sir!” The Marker held up the still kicking body -of a glossy black rabbit. One side of its head was not there. - -“Talk of coincidence!” the Marker went on. “I know Sergeant’ll pretend -he aimed for it. The poor little fool! Jumpin’ about after his own -businesses and thinking he was safe; and then to have his head fair -mashed off him like this. Just look at him! Well! Well!” - -It was anything but well with Boy Jones. He seemed sick. - - * * * * * - -A week later the Friend nearly stepped on him in the miniature rifle -shed. He was lying at length on the dusty coir matting, his trousers -rucked half-way to his knees, his sights set as for two hundred, -deferentially asking Milligan the cripple to stand behind him and tell -him whether he was canting. - -“No, you aren’t now,” said Milligan patronizingly, “but you were.” - - - - - A DEPARTURE - - - Since first the White Horse Banner blew free, - By Hengist’s horde unfurled, - Nothing has changed on land or sea - Of the things that steer the world. - (As it was when the long-ships scudded through the gale - So it is where the Liners go.) - Time and Tide, they are both in a tale - “Woe to the weaker—woe!” - - No charm can bridle the hard-mouthed wind - Or smooth the fretting swell. - No gift can alter the grey Sea’s mind, - But she serves the strong man well. - (As it is when her uttermost deeps are stirred - So it is where the quicksands show,) - All the waters have but one word— - “Woe to the weaker—woe!” - - The feast is ended, the tales are told, - The dawn is overdue, - And we meet at the wharf in the whistling cold - Where the galley waits her crew. - Out with the torches, they have flared too long, - And bid the harpers go. - Wind and warfare have but one song— - “Woe to the weaker—woe!” - - Hail to the great oars gathering way, - As the beach begins to slide! - Hail to the war-shields’ click and play - As they lift along our side! - Hail to the first wave over the bow— - Slow for the sea-stroke! Slow! - All the benches are grunting now— - “_Woe to the weaker—woe!_” - - - - - THE BOLD ’PRENTICE - -_This story is very much of the same sort as “An Unqualified Pilot,” and -shows that, when any one is really keen on his job, he will generally -find some older man who is even keener than he, who will give him help -and instruction that could not be found in a whole library of books. -Olaf Swanson’s book of “Road-Locos Repair or the Young Driver’s -Vademecome,” was well known in the Railway sheds in its day, and was -written in the queerest English ever printed. But it told useful facts -and, as you will see, saved a train at a pinch. It may be worth noticing -that young Ottley’s chance did not come to him till he had worked on and -among engine-repairs for some five or six years and was well-grounded in -practical knowledge of his subject._ - - -Young Ottley’s father came to Calcutta in 1857 as fireman on the first -locomotive ever run by the D. I. R., which was then the largest Indian -railway. All his life he spoke broad Yorkshire, but young Ottley, being -born in India, naturally talked the clipped sing-song that is used by -the half-castes and English-speaking natives. When he was fifteen years -old the D. I. R. took him into their service as an apprentice in the -Locomotive Repair Department of the Ajaibpore workshops, and he became -one of a gang of three or four white men and nine or ten natives. - -There were scores of such gangs, each with its hoisting and overhead -cranes, jack-screws, vises and lathes, as separate as separate shops, -and their work was to mend locomotives and make the apprentices behave. -But the apprentices threw nuts at one another, chalked caricatures of -unpopular foremen on buffer-bars and discarded boilers, and did as -little work as they possibly could. - -They were nearly all sons of old employés, living with their parents in -the white bungalows of Steam Road or Church Road or Albert Road—on the -broad avenues of pounded brick bordered by palms and crotons and -bougainvilleas and bamboos which made up the railway town of Ajaibpore. -They had never seen the sea or a steamer; half their speech was helped -out with native slang; they were all volunteers in the D. I. R.’s -Railway Corps—grey with red facings—and their talk was exclusively about -the Company and its affairs. - -They all hoped to become engine-drivers earning six or eight hundred a -year, and therefore they despised all mere sit-down clerks in the Store, -Audit and Traffic departments, and ducked them when they met at the -Company’s swimming baths. - -There were no strikes or tie-ups on the D. I. R. in those days, for the -reason that the ten or twelve thousand natives and two or three thousand -whites were doing their best to turn the Company’s employment into a -caste in which their sons and relatives would be sure of positions and -pensions. Everything in India crystallizes into a caste sooner or -later—the big jute and cotton mills, the leather harness and opium -factories, the coal-mines and the dockyards, and, in years to come, when -India begins to be heard from as one of the manufacturing countries of -the world, the labour Unions of other lands will learn something about -the beauty of caste which will greatly interest them. - -Those were the days when the D. I. R. decided that it would be cheaper -to employ native drivers as much as possible, and the “Sheds,” as they -called the Repair Department, felt the change acutely; for a native -driver could misuse his engine, they said, more curiously than any six -monkeys. The Company had not then standardized its rolling-stock, and -this was very good for apprentices anxious to learn about machines, -because there were, perhaps, twenty types of locomotives in use on the -road. They were Hawthornes; E. types; O types; outside cylinders; -Spaulding and Cushman double-enders and short-run Continental-built tank -engines, and many others. But the native drivers burned them all out -impartially, and the apprentices took to writing remarks in Bengali on -the cabs of the repaired ones where the next driver would be sure to see -them. - -Young Ottley worked at first as little as the other apprentices, but his -father, who was then a pensioned driver, taught him a great deal about -the insides of locomotives; and Olaf Swanson, the red-headed Swede who -ran the Government Mail, the big Thursday express, from Serai Rajgara to -Guldee Haut, was a great friend of The Ottley family, and dined with -them every Friday night. - -Olaf was an important person, for besides being the best of the -mail-drivers, he was Past Master of the big railway Masonic Lodge, “St. -Duncan’s in the East,” Secretary of the Drivers’ Provident Association, -a Captain in the D. I. R. Volunteer Corps, and, which he thought much -more of, an Author; for he had written a book in a language of his own -which he insisted upon calling English, and had printed it at his own -expense at the ticket-printing works. - -Some of the copies were buff and green, and some were pinkish and blue, -and some were yellow and brown; for Olaf did not believe in wasting -money on high-class white paper. Wrapping-paper was good enough for him, -and besides, he said the colours rested the eyes of the reader. It was -called “The Art of Road-Locos Repair or The Young Driver’s Vademecome,” -and was dedicated in verse to a man of the name of Swedenborg. - -It covered every conceivable accident that could happen to an engine on -the road; and gave a rough-and-ready remedy for each; but you had to -understand Olaf’s written English, as well as all the technical talk -about engines, to make head or tail of it, and you had also to know -personally every engine on the D. I. R., for the “Vademecome” was full -of what might be called “locomotive allusions,” which concerned the D. -I. R. only. Otherwise, it would, as some great locomotive designer once -said, have been a classic and a text-book. - -Olaf was immensely proud of it, and would pin young Ottley in a corner -and make him learn whole pages—it was written all in questions and -answers—by heart. - -“Never mind what she _means_,” Olaf would shout. “You learn her -word-perfect, and she will help you in the Sheds. I drive the -Mail,—_the_ mail of all India,—and what I write and say is true.” - -“But I do _not_ wish to learn the book,” said young Ottley, who thought -he saw quite enough of locomotives in business hours. - -“You _shall_ learn! I haf great friendship for your father, and so I -shall teach you whether you like it or not.” - -Young Ottley submitted, for he was really fond of old Olaf, and at the -end of six months’ teaching in Olaf’s peculiar way began to see that the -“Vademecome” was a very valuable help in the repair sheds, when -broken-down engines of a new type came in. Olaf gave him a copy bound in -cartridge paper and hedged round the margins with square-headed -manuscript notes, each line the result of years of experience and -accidents. - -“There is nothing in this book,” said Olaf, “that I have not tried in my -time, and I say that the engine is like the body of a man. So long as -there is steam—the life, you see,—so long, if you know how, you can make -her move a little,—so!” He waggled his hand slowly. “Till a man is dead, -or the engine she is at the bottom of a river, you can do something with -her. Remember that! _I_ say it and I know.” - -He repaid young Ottley’s time and attention by using his influence to -get him made a Sergeant in his Company, and young Ottley, being a keen -Volunteer and a good shot, stood well with the D. I. R. in the matter of -casual leave. When repairs were light in the Sheds and the honour of the -D. I. R. was to be upheld at some far-away station against the men of -Agra or Bandikui, the narrow-gauge railway-towns of the west, young -Ottley would contrive to get away, and help to uphold it on the glaring -dusty rifle-ranges of those parts. - -A ’prentice never dreamed of paying for his ticket on any line in India, -least of all when he was in uniform, and young Ottley was practically as -free of the Indian railway system as any member of the Supreme -Legislative Council who wore a golden General Pass on his watch-chain -and could ride where he chose. - -Late in September of his nineteenth year he went north on one of his -cup-hunting excursions, elegantly and accurately dressed, with -one-eighth of one inch of white collar showing above his grey uniform -stock, and his Martini-Henry rifle polished to match his sergeant’s -sword in the rack above him. - -The rains were out, and in Bengal that means a good deal to the -railways; for the rain falls for three months lavishly, till the whole -country is one sea, and the snakes take refuge on the embankment, and -the racing floods puff out the brick ballast from under the iron ties, -and leave the rails hanging in graceful loops. Then the trains run as -they can, and the permanent-way inspectors spend their nights -flourishing about in hand-carts pushed by coolies over the dislocated -metals, and everybody is covered with the fire-red rash of prickly heat, -and loses his temper. - -Young Ottley was used to these things from birth. All he regretted was -that his friends along the line were so draggled and dripping and sulky -that they could not appreciate his gorgeousness; for he considered -himself very consoling to behold when he cocked his helmet over one eye -and puffed the rank smoke of native-made cigars through his nostrils. -Until night fell he lay out on his bunk, in his shirt-sleeves, reading -the works of G. W. R. Reynolds, which were sold on all the railway -bookstalls, and dozing at intervals. - -Then he found they were changing engines at Guldee Haut, and old -Rustomjee, a Parsee, was the new driver, with Number Forty in hand. -Young Ottley took this opportunity to go forward and tell Rustomjee -exactly what they thought of him in the Sheds, where the ’prentices had -been repairing some of his carelessness in the way of a dropped -crown-sheet, the result of inattention and bad stoking. - -Rustomjee said he had bad luck with engines, and young Ottley went back -to his carriage and slept. He was waked by a bang, a bump, and a jar, -and saw on the opposite bunk a subaltern who was travelling north with a -detachment of some twenty English soldiers. - -“What’s that?” said the subaltern. - -“Rustomjee has blown her up, perhaps,” said young Ottley, and dropped -out into the wet, the subaltern at his heels. They found Rustomjee -sitting by the side of the line, nursing a scalded foot and crying aloud -that he was a dead man, while the gunner-guard—who is a kind of -extra-hand—looked respectfully at the roaring, hissing machine. - -“What has happened?” said young Ottley, by the light of the -gunner-guard’s lantern. - -“_Phut gya_ [she has gone smash],” said Rustomjee, still hopping. - -“Without doubt; but where?” - -“_Khuda jahnta!_ [God knows]. I am a poor man. Number Forty is broke.” - -Young Ottley jumped into the cab and turned off all the steam he could -find, for there was a good deal escaping. Then he took the lantern and -dived under the drive-wheels, where he lay face up, investigating among -spurts of hot water. - -“Doocid plucky,” said the subaltern. “_I_ shouldn’t like to do that -myself. What’s gone wrong?” - -“Cylinder-head blown off, coupler-rod twisted, and several more things. -She is very badly wrecked. Oah, yes, she is a tottal wreck,” said young -Ottley between the spokes of the right-hand driver. - -“Awkward,” said the subaltern, turning up his coat-collar in the wet. -“What’s to be done, then?” - -Young Ottley came out, a rich black all over his grey uniform with the -red facings, and drummed on his teeth with his finger nails, while the -rain fell and the native passengers shouted questions and old Rustomjee -told the gunner-guard to walk back six or seven miles and wire to -someone for help. - -“I cannot swim,” said the gunner-guard. “Go and lie down.” And that, as -you might say, settled that. Besides, as far as one could see by the -light of the gunner-guard’s lantern, all Bengal was flooded. - -“Olaf Swanson will be at Serai Rajgara with the Mail. He will be -particularly angry,” said young Ottley. Then he ducked under the engine -again with a flare-lamp and sat cross-legged, considering things and -wishing he had brought his “Vademecome” in his valise. - -Number Forty was an old reconstructed Mutiny engine, with Frenchified -cock-nosed cylinders and a profligate allowance of underpinning. She had -been through the Sheds several times, and young Ottley, though he had -never worked on her, had heard much about her, but nothing to her -credit. - -“You can lend me some men?” he said at last to the subaltern. “Then I -think we shall disconnect her this side, and perhaps, notwithstanding, -she will move. We will try—eh?” - -“Of course we will. Hi! Sergeant!” said the subaltern. “Turn out the men -here and do what this—this officer tells you.” - -“Officer!” said one of the privates, under his breath. “’Didn’t think -I’d enlisted to serve under a Sergeant o’ Volunteers. ’Ere’s a ’orrible -street accident. ’Looks like mother’s tea-kettle broke. What d’yer -expect us to do, Mister Civilian Sergeant?” - -Young Ottley explained his plan of campaign while he was ravaging -Rustomjee’s tool-chest, and then the men crawled and knelt and levered -and pushed and hauled and turned spanners under the engine, as young -Ottley told them. What he wanted was to disconnect the right cylinder -altogether, and get off a badly twisted coupler-rod. Practically Number -Forty’s right side was paralyzed, and they pulled away enough -ironmongery there to build a culvert with. - -Young Ottley remembered that the instructions for a case like this were -all in the “Vademecome,” but even he began to feel a little alarmed as -he saw what came away from the engine and was stacked by the side of the -line. After forty minutes of the hardest kind of work it seemed to him -that everything movable was cleared out, and that he might venture to -give her steam. She leaked and sweated and shook, but she moved—in a -grinding sort of way—and the soldiers cheered. - -Rustomjee flatly refused to help in anything so revolutionary as driving -an engine on one cylinder, because, he said, Heaven had decreed that he -should always be unlucky, even with sound machines. Moreover, as he -pointed out, the pressure-gauge was jumping up and down like a -bottle-imp. The stoker had long since gone away into the night; for he -was a prudent man. - -“Doocid queer thing altogether,” said the subaltern, “but look here, if -you like, I’ll chuck on the coals and you can drive the old jigamaroo, -if she’ll go.” - -“Perhaps she will blow up,” said the gunner-guard. - -“’Shouldn’t at all wonder by the sound of her. Where’s the shovel?” said -the subaltern. - -“Oah no. She’s all raight according to my book, I think,” said young -Ottley. “Now we will go to Serai Rajgara—if she moves.” - -She moved with long _ssghee! ssghee’s!_ of exhaustion and lamentation. -She moved quite seven miles an hour, and—for the floods were all over -the line—the staggering voyage began. - -The subaltern stoked four shovels to the minute, spreading them thin, -and Number Forty made noises like a dying cow, and young Ottley -discovered that it was one thing to run a healthy switching-locomotive -up and down the yards for fun when the head of the yard wasn’t looking, -and quite another to drive a very sick one over an unknown road in -absolute darkness and tropic rain. But they felt their way along with -their hearts in their mouths till they came to a distant signal, and -whistled frugally, having no steam to spare. - -“This _might_ be Serai Rajgara,” said young Ottley, hopefully. - -“’Looks more like the Suez Canal,” said the subaltern. “I say, when an -engine kicks up that sort of a noise she’s a little impatient, isn’t -she?” - -“That sort of noise” was a full-powered, furious yelling whistle half a -mile up the line. - -“That is the Down Mail,” said young Ottley. “We have delayed Olaf two -hours and forty-five minutes. She must surely be in Serai Rajgara.” - -“’Don’t wonder she wants to get out of it,” said the subaltern. “Golly, -what a country!” - -The line here dipped bodily under water, and young Ottley sent the -gunner-guard on to find the switch to let Number Forty into the siding. -Then he followed and drew up with a doleful _wop! wop! wop!_ by the side -of the great forty-five-ton, six-wheel, coupled, eighteen-inch -inside-cylinder Number Twenty-five, all paint and lacquer, standing -roaring at the head of the Down Mail. The rest was all water—flat, level -and solid from one point of the horizon to the other. - -Olaf’s red beard flared like a danger-signal, and as soon as they were -in range some knobby pieces of Giridih coal whizzed past young Ottley’s -head. - -“’Your friend very mad?” said the subaltern, ducking. - -“Aah!” roared Olaf. “This is the fifth time you make delay. Three hours’ -delay you make _me_—Swanson—the Mail! Now I will lose more time to break -your head.” He swung on to the foot-board of Number Forty, with a shovel -in one hand. - -“Olaf!” cried young Ottley, and Olaf nearly tumbled backward. “Rustomjee -is behind.” - -“Of course. He always is. But you? How you come here?” - -“Oah, we smashed up. I have disconnected her and arrived here on one -cylinder, by your book. We are only a—a diagram of an engine, I think.” - -“My book! My very good book. My ‘Vademecome’! Ottley, you are a fine -driver. I forgive my delays. It was worth. Oh, my book, my book!” and -Olaf leapt back to Number Twenty-five, shouting things about Swedenborg -and steam. - -“Thatt is all right,” said young Ottley, “but where is Serai Rajgara? We -want assistance.” - -“There is no Serai Rajgara. The water is two feet on the embankment, and -the telegraph office is fell in. I will report at Purnool Road. -Good-night, good boy!” - -The Mail train splashed out into the dark, and Ottley made great haste -to let off his steam and draw his fire. Number Forty had done enough for -that night. - -“Odd chap, that friend of yours,” said the subaltern, when Number Forty -stood empty and disarmed in the gathering waters. “What do we do now? -Swim?” - -“Oah, no! At ten-forty-five thiss morning that is coming, an engine will -perhaps arrive from Purnool Road and take us north. Now we will lie down -and go to sleep. You see there _is_ no Serai Rajgara. You could get a -cup of tea here once on a time.” - -“Oh, my Aunt, what a country!” said the subaltern, as he followed Ottley -to the carriage and lay down on the leather bunk. - -For the next three weeks Olaf Swanson talked to everybody of nothing but -his “Vademecome” and young Ottley. What he said about his book does not -matter, but the compliments of a mail-driver are things to be repeated, -as they were, to people in high authority, the masters of many engines. -So young Ottley was sent for, and he came from the Sheds buttoning his -jacket and wondering which of his sins had been found out this time. - -It was a loop line near Ajaibpore, where he could by no possibility come -to harm. It was light but steady traffic, and a first-class -superintendent was in charge; but it was a driver’s billet, and -permanent after six months. As a new engine was on order for the loop, -the foreman of the Sheds told young Ottley he might look through the -stalls and suit himself. - -He waited, boiling with impatience, till Olaf came in, and the two went -off together, old Olaf clucking, “Look! Look! Look!” like a hen, all -down the Sheds, and they chose a nearly new Hawthorne, No. 239, which -Olaf highly recommended. Then Olaf went away, to give young Ottley his -chance to order her to the cleaning-pit, and jerk his thumb at the -cleaner and say, as he turned magnificently on his heel, “Thursday, -eight o’clock. _Mallum?_ Understand?” - -That was almost the proudest moment of his life. The very proudest was -when he pulled out of Atami Junction through the brick-field on the way -to his loop, and passed the Down Mail, with Olaf in the cab. - -They say in the Sheds that you could have heard Number Two hundred and -Thirty-nine’s whistle from Raneegunge clear to Calcutta. - - - - - THE NURSES - - - When, with a pain he desires to explain to the multitude, Baby howls - Himself black in the face, toothlessly striving to curse; - And the six-month-old Mother begins to enquire of the Gods if it may be - Tummy, or Temper, or Pins—what does the adequate Nurse? - - See! At one turn of her head the trouble is guessed; and, thereafter - She juggles (unscared by his throes) with drops of hot water and spoons, - Till the hiccoughs are broken by smiles, and the smiles pucker up into - laughter, - And he lies o’er her shoulder and crows, and she, as she nurses him, - croons! - - - When, at the head of the grade, tumultuous out of the cutting, - Pours the belated Express, roars at the night, and draws clear, - Redly obscured or displayed by her fire-door’s opening and shutting— - Symbol of strength under stress—what does her small engineer? - - Clamour and darkness encircle his way. Do they deafen or blind him? - No!—nor the pace he must keep. He, being used to these things, - Placidly follows his work, which is laying his mileage behind him, - While his passengers trustfully sleep, and he, as he handles her, sings! - - When, with the gale at her heel, the barque lies down and recovers— - Rolling through forty degrees, combing the stars with her tops, - What says the man at the wheel, holding her straight as she hovers - On the shoulders of wind-screening seas, steadying her as she drops? - - Behind him the blasts without check from the Pole to the Tropic, pursue - him, - Heaving up, heaping high, slamming home, the surges he must not regard: - - Beneath him the crazy wet deck, and all Ocean on end to undo him; - Above him one desperate sail, thrice-reefed but still buckling the yard! - - Under his hand fleet the spokes and return, to be held or set free - again; - And she bows and makes shift to obey their behest, till the master-wave - comes - And her gunnel goes under in thunder and smokes, and she chokes in the - trough of the sea again! - Ere she can lift and make way to its crest; and he, as he nurses her, - hums! - - _These have so utterly mastered their work that they work without - thinking; - Holding three-fifths of their brain in reserve for whatever betide. - So, when catastrophe threatens, of colic, collision or sinking, - They shunt the full gear into train, and take the small thing in their - stride._ - - - - - THE SON OF HIS FATHER - - -“It is a queer name,” Mrs. Strickland admitted, “and none of our family -have ever borne it; but, you see, he _is_ the first man to us.” - -So he was called Adam, and to that world about him he was the first of -men—a man-child alone. Heaven sent him no Eve for a companion, but all -earth, horse and foot, was at his feet. As soon as he was old enough to -appear in public he held a levée, and Strickland’s sixty policemen, with -their sixty clanking sabres, bowed to the dust before him. When his -fingers closed a little on Imam Din’s sword-hilt they rose and roared -till Adam roared too, and was withdrawn. - -“Now that was no cry of fear,” said Imam Din afterwards, speaking to his -companion in the Police lines. “He was angry—and so young! Brothers, he -will make a very strong Police officer.” - -“Does the Memsahib nurse him?” said a new recruit, the dye-smell not yet -out of his yellow cotton uniform. - -“Ho!” said an up-country Naik scornfully; “it has not been known for -_more_ than ten days that my woman nurses him.” He curled his moustaches -as lordly as ever an Inspector could afford to do, for he knew that the -husband of the foster-mother of the son of the District Superintendent -of Police was a man of consideration. - -“I am glad,” said Imam Din, loosening his belt. “Those who drink our -blood become of our own blood, and I have seen, in those thirty years, -that the sons of Sahibs once being born here return when they are men. -Yes, they return after they have been to Belait [Europe].” - -“And what do they in Belait?” asked the recruit respectfully. - -“Get instruction—which thou hast not,” returned the Naik. “Also they -drink of _belaitee-panee_ [soda-water] enough to give them that devil’s -restlessness which endures for all their lives. Whence we of Hind have -trouble.” - -“My father’s uncle,” said Imam Din slowly, with importance, “was -Ressaldar of the Long Coat Horse; and the Empress called him to Europe -in the year that she had accomplished fifty years of rule. _He_ said -(and there were also other witnesses) that the Sahibs there drink only -common water even as do we; and that the _belaitee-panee_ does _not_ run -in all their rivers.” - -“He said that there was a Shish Mahal—a glass palace—half a mile in -length, and that the rail-train ran under roads; and that there are -boats bigger than a village. He is a great talker.” The Naik spoke -scornfully. He had no well-born uncles. - -“_He_ is at least a man of good birth,” said Imam Din, and the Naik was -silent. - -“Ho! Ho!” Imam Din reached out to his pipe, chuckling till his fat sides -shook again. “Strickland Sahib’s foster-mother was the wife of a -gardener in the Ferozepur district. I was a young man then. This child -also will be suckled here and he will have double wisdom, and when he is -a Police officer it will be very bad for the thieves in this part of the -world. Ho! Ho!” - -“Strickland Sahib’s butler has said,” the Naik went on, “that they will -call him Adam—and no jaw-splitting English name. Udaam. The _padre_ will -name him at their church in due time.” - -“Who can tell the ways of Sahibs? Now Strickland Sahib knows more of the -Faith than ever I had time to learn—prayers, charms, names and stories -of the Blessed Ones. Yet he is not a Mussulman,” said Imam Din -thoughtfully. - -“For the reason that he knows as much of the gods of Hindustan, and so -he rides with a rein in each hand. Remember that he sat under the Baba -Atal, a _faquir_ among _faquirs_, for ten days; whereby a man came to be -hanged for the murder of a dancing girl on the night of the great -earthquake,” the Naik replied. - -“True—it is true. And yet—the Sahibs are one day so wise—and another so -foolish. But he has named the child well; Adam. Huzrut Adam. Ho! Ho! -Father Adam we must call him.” - -“And all who minister to the child,” said the Naik quietly, but with -meaning, “will come to great honour.” - -Adam throve, being prayed over before the Gods of at least three creeds, -in a garden almost as fair as Eden. There were gigantic clumps of -bamboos that talked continually, and enormous plantains, trees on whose -soft, paper skin he could scratch with his nails; green domes of -mango-trees as huge as the dome of St. Paul’s, full of parrots as big as -cassowaries and grey squirrels the size of foxes. At the end of the -garden stood a hedge of flaming poinsettias higher than anything in the -world, because, childlike, Adam’s eye could not carry to the tops of the -mango-trees. Their green went out against the blue sky, but the red -poinsettias he could just see. A nurse who talked continually about -snakes and pulled him back from the mouth of a fascinating dry well, and -a mother who believed that the sun hurt little heads, were the only -drawbacks to this loveliness. But, as his legs grew under him, he found -that by scaling an enormous rampart—three feet of broken-down mud wall -at the end of the garden—he could come into a ready-made kingdom, where -everyone was his slave. Imam Din showed him the way one evening, and the -Police troopers, cooking their supper, received him with rapture, and -gave him pieces of very indigestible, but altogether delightful, spiced -bread. - -Here he sat or sprawled in the horse-feed where the Police were picketed -in a double line, and he named them, men and beasts together, according -to his ideas and experiences, as his First Father had done before him. -In those days everything had a name, from the mud mangers to the -heel-ropes, for things were people to Adam exactly as people are things -to folk in their second childhood. Through all the conferences—one hand -twisted into Imam Din’s beard, and the other on his polished belt -buckle—there were two other people who came and went across the -talk—Death and Sickness—persons greater than Imam Din, and stronger than -the heel-roped horses. There was Mata, the small-pox, a woman in some -way connected with pigs; and Heza, the cholera, a black man, according -to Adam; and Booka, starvation; and Kismet, who settled all questions, -from the untimely choking of a pet mungoose in the kitchen-drain to the -absence of a young Policeman who once missed a parade and never came -back. It was all very wonderful to Adam, but not worth much thinking -over; for a child’s mind is bounded by his eyes exactly as a horse’s -view of the road is limited by his blinkers. Between all these -objectionable shadowy vagrants stood a ring of kind faces and strong -arms, and Mata and Heza would never touch Adam, the first of men. Kismet -might do so, because—and this was a mystery no staring into his -looking-glass would solve—Kismet was written, like Police orders for the -day, in or on Adam’s head. Imam Din could not explain how this might be, -and it was from that grey, fat Mohammedan that Adam learned through -every inflection the _Khuda jhanta_ [God knows!] that settles everything -in the mind of Asia. - -Beyond the fact that “Khuda” [God] was a very good man and kept lions, -Adam’s theology did not run far. Mrs. Strickland tried to teach him a -few facts, but he revolted at the story of Genesis as untrue. A turtle, -he said, upheld the world, and one-half the adventures of Huzrut Nu -[Father Noah] had never been told. If Mamma wanted to hear them she must -ask Imam Din. - -“It’s awful,” said Mrs. Strickland, half crying, “to think of his -growing up like a little heathen.” Mrs. Strickland had been born and -brought up in England, and did not quite understand Eastern things. - -“Let him alone,” said Strickland. “He’ll grow out of it all, or it will -only come back to him in dreams.” - -“Are you sure?” said his wife. - -“Quite. I was sent home when I was seven, and they flicked it out of me -with a wet towel at Harrow. Public schools don’t encourage anything that -isn’t quite English.” - -Mrs. Strickland shuddered, for she had been trying not to think of the -separation that follows motherhood in India, and makes life there, for -all that is written to the contrary, not quite the most desirable thing -in the world. Adam trotted out to hear about more miracles, and his -nurse must have worried him beyond bounds, for she came back weeping, -saying that Adam Baba was in danger of being eaten alive by wild horses. - -As a matter of fact he had shaken off Juma by bolting between a couple -of picketed horses, and lying down under their bellies. That they were -old personal friends of his, Juma did not understand, nor Strickland -either. Adam was settled at ease when his father arrived, breathless and -white, and the stallions put back their ears and squealed. - -“If you come here,” said Adam, “they will hit you kicks. Tell Juma I -have eaten my rice, and I wish to be alone.” - -“Come out at once,” said Strickland, for the horses were beginning to -paw. - -“Why should I obey Juma’s order? She is afraid of horses.” - -“It is not Juma’s order. It is mine. Obey!” - -“Ho!” said Adam. “Juma did not tell me that”; and he crawled out on all -fours among the shod feet. Mrs. Strickland was crying bitterly with fear -and excitement, and as a sacrifice to the home gods Adam had to be -whipped. He said with perfect justice— - -“There was no order that I should _not_ sit with the horses, and they -are _my_ horses. Why is there this _tamasha_ [fuss]?” - -Strickland’s face showed him that the whipping was coming, and the child -turned white. Motherlike, Mrs. Strickland left the room, but Juma, the -foster-mother, stayed to see. - -“Am I to be whipped here?” he gasped. - -“Of course.” - -“Before that woman? Father, I am a man—I am not afraid. It is my -_izzat_—my honour.” - -Strickland only laughed—(to this day I cannot imagine what possessed -him), and gave Adam the little tap-tap with a riding cane that was -whipping sufficient for his years. - -When it was all over, Adam said quietly, “I am little and you are big. -If I had stayed among my horse-folk I should not have been whipped. -_You_ are afraid to go there.” - -The merest chance led me to Strickland’s house that afternoon. When I -was half-way down the drive Adam passed me without recognition, at a -fast run. I caught one glimpse of his face under his big hat, and it was -the face of his father as I had once seen it in the grey of the morning -when it bent over a leper. I caught the child by the shoulder. - -“Let me go!” he screamed; though he and I were the best of friends, as a -rule. “Let me go!” - -“Where to, Father Adam?” He was quivering like a haltered colt. - -“To the well. I have been beaten. I have been beaten before a woman! Let -me go!” He tried to bite my hand. - -“That is a small matter,” I said. “Men are born to beatings.” - -“_Thou_ hast never been beaten,” he said savagely (we were talking in -the native tongue). - -“Indeed I have; times past counting.” - -“Before women?” - -“My mother and my ayah saw. _By_ women, too, for that matter. What of -it?” - -“What didst thou do?” He stared beyond my shoulder up the long drive. - -“It is long ago, and I have forgotten. I was older than thou art; but -even then I forgot, and now the thing is only a jest to be talked of.” - -Adam drew one big breath and broke down utterly in my arms. Then he -raised his head, and his eyes were Strickland’s eyes when Strickland -gave orders. - -“Ho! Imam Din!” - -The fat orderly seemed to spring out of the earth at our feet, crashing -through the bushes, and standing at attention. - -“Hast _thou_ ever been beaten?” said Adam. - -“Assuredly. By my father when I was thirty years old. He beat me with a -plough-beam before all the women of the village.” - -“Wherefore?” - -“Because I had returned to the village on leave from the Government -service, and said of the village elders that they had not seen the -world. Therefore he beat me to show that no seeing of the world changes -father and son.” - -“And thou?” - -“I stood up to the beating. He was my father.” - -“Good,” said Adam, and turned on his heel without another word. - -Imam Din looked after him. “An elephant breeds but once in a lifetime, -but he breeds elephants. Yet, I am glad I am no father of tuskers,” said -he. - -“What is it all?” I asked. - -“His father beat him with a whip no bigger than a reed. But the child -could not have done what he desired to do without leaping through me. -And I am of some few pounds weight. Look!” - -Imam Din stepped back through the bushes, and the pressed grass showed -that he had been lying curled round the mouth of the dry well. - -“When there was talk of beating, I knew that one who sat among horses -such as ours was not like to kiss his father’s hand. He might have done -away with himself. So I lay down in this place.” We stood still looking -at the well-curb. - -Adam came along the garden path to us. “I have spoken to my father,” he -said simply. “Imam Din, tell thy Naik that his woman is dismissed my -service.” - -“_Huzoor!_ [Your Highness!]” said Imam Din, stooping low. - -“For no fault of hers.” - -“Protector of the Poor!” - -“And to-day.” - -“_Khodawund!_ [Heaven-born!]” - -“It is an order. Go!” - -Again the salute, and Imam Din departed, with that same set of the back -which he wore when he had taken an order from Strickland. I thought that -it would be well to go too, but Strickland beckoned me from the -verandah. When I came up he was perfectly white, rocking to and fro in -his chair. - -“Do you know he was going to chuck himself down the well—because I -tapped him just now?” he said helplessly. - -“I ought to,” I replied. “He has just dismissed his nurse—on his own -authority, I suppose?” - -“He told me just now that he wouldn’t have her for a nurse any more. I -never supposed he meant it for an instant. I suppose she’ll have to go.” - -Now Strickland, the Police officer, was feared through the length and -breadth of the Punjab by murderers, horse-thieves, and cattle-lifters. - -Adam returned, halting outside the verandah. - -“I have sent Juma away because she saw that—that which happened. Until -she is gone I do not come into the house,” he said. - -“But to send away thy foster-mother!” said Strickland with reproach. - -“_I_ do not send her away. It is _thy_ blame,” and the small forefinger -was pointed to Strickland. “I will not obey her. I will not eat from her -hand. I will not sleep with her. Send her away!” - -Strickland stepped out and lifted the child into the verandah. - -“This folly has lasted long enough,” he said. “Come now and be wise.” - -“I am little and you are big,” said Adam between set teeth. “You can -beat me before this man or cut me to pieces. But I will _not_ have Juma -for my ayah any more. She saw me beaten. I will not eat till she goes. I -swear it by—my father’s head.” - -Strickland sent him indoors to his mother, and we could hear sounds of -weeping and Adam’s voice saying nothing more than “Send Juma away!” -Presently Juma came in and wept too, and Adam repeated, “It is no fault -of thine, but go!” - -And the end of it was that Juma went with all her belongings, and Adam -fought his own way into his little clothes until the new ayah came. His -address of welcome to her was rather amazing. In a few words it ran: “If -I do wrong, send me to my father. If you strike me, I will try to kill -you. I do not wish my ayah to play with me. Go and eat rice!” - -From that Adam foreswore the society of ayahs and small native boys as -much as a small boy can, confining himself to Imam Din and his friends -of the Police. The Naik, Juma’s husband, had been presuming not a little -on his position, and when Adam’s favour was withdrawn from his wife he -thought it best to apply for a transfer to another post. There were too -many companions anxious to report his shortcomings to Strickland. - -Towards his father Adam kept a guarded neutrality. There was not a touch -of sulkiness in it, for the child’s temper was as clear as a bell. But -the difference and the politeness worried Strickland. - -If the Policemen had loved Adam before the affair of the well, they -worshipped him now. - -“He knows what honour means,” said Imam Din. “He has justified himself -upon a point thereof. He has carried an order through his father’s -household as a child of the Blood might do. Therefore he is not -altogether a child any longer. Wah! He is a tiger’s cub.” The next time -that Adam made his little unofficial inspection of the lines, Imam Din, -and, by consequence, all the others, stood upon their feet with their -hands to their sides, instead of calling out from where they lay, -“Salaam, Babajee,” and other disrespectful things. - -But Strickland took counsel with his wife, and she with the cheque-book -and their lean bank account, and they decided that Adam must go “home” -to his aunts. But England is not home to a child who has been born in -India, and it never becomes homelike unless he spends all his youth -there. Their bank-book showed that if they economized through the summer -by going to a cheap hill-station instead of to Simla (where Mrs. -Strickland’s parents lived, and where Strickland might be noticed by the -Government) they could send Adam home in the next spring. It would be -hard pinching, but it could be done. - -Dalhousie was chosen as being the cheapest of the -hill-stations;—Dalhousie and a little five-roomed cottage full of -mildew, tucked away among the rhododendrons. - -Adam had been to Simla three or four times, and knew by name most of the -drivers on the road there, but this new place disquieted him. He came to -me for information, his hands deep in his knickerbocker pockets, walking -step for step as his father walked. - -“There will be none of my _bhai-bund_ [brotherhood] up there,” he said -disconsolately, “and they say that I must lie still in a doolie -[palanquin] for a day and a night, being carried like a sheep. I wish to -take some of my mounted men to Dalhousie.” - -I told him that there was a small boy, called Victor, at Dalhousie, who -had a calf for a pet, and was allowed to play with it on the public -roads. After that Adam could not sufficiently hurry the packing. - -“First,” said he, “I shall ask that man Victor to let me play with the -cow’s child. If he is _muggra_ [ill-conditioned], I shall tell my -Policemen to take it away.” - -“But that is unjust,” said Strickland, “and there is no order that the -Police should do injustice.” - -“When the Government pay is not sufficient, and low-caste men are -promoted, what _can_ an honest man do?” Adam replied, in the very touch -and accent of Imam Din; and Strickland’s eyebrows went up. - -“You talk too much to the Police, my son,” he said. - -“Always. About everything,” said Adam promptly. “They say that when I am -an officer I shall know as much as my father.” - -“God forbid, little one!” - -“They say, too, that you are as clever as Shaitan [the Evil One], to -know things.” - -“They say that, do they?” and Strickland looked pleased. His pay was -small, but he had his reputation, and it was dear to him. - -“They say also—not to me, but to one another when they eat rice behind -the wall—that in your own heart you esteem yourself as wise as Suleiman -[Soloman], who was cheated by Shaitan.” - -This time Strickland did not look so pleased. Adam, in all innocence, -launched into a long story about Suleiman-bin-Daoud, who once, out of -vanity, pitted his wits against Shaitan, and because God was not on his -side Shaitan sent “a little devil of low caste,” as Adam put it, who -cheated him utterly and put him to shame before “all the other Kings.” - -“By Gum!” said Strickland, when the tale was done, and went away, while -Adam took me to task for laughing at Imam Din’s stories. I did not -wonder that he was called Huzrut Adam, for he looked old as all time in -his grave childhood, sitting cross-legged, his battered little helmet -far at the back of his head, his forefinger wagging up and down, native -fashion, and the wisdom of serpents on his unconscious lips. - -That May he went up to Dalhousie with his mother, and in those days the -journey ended in fifty or sixty miles of uphill travel in a doolie or -palanquin along a road winding through the Himalayas. Adam sat in the -doolie with his mother, and Strickland rode and tied with me, a spare -doolie following. The march began after we got out of the train at -Pathankot, in a wet hot night among the rice and poppy fields. - - - II - -It was all new to Adam, and he had opinions to advance—notably about a -fish that jumped in a way-side pond. “_Now_ I know,” he shouted, “how -God puts them there! First He makes them up above and then He drops them -down. That was a new one.” Then, lifting his head to the stars, he -cried: “Oh, God, do it again, but slowly, so that I, Adam, may see.” - -But nothing happened, and the doolie-bearers lit the noisome, dripping -rag-torches, and Adam’s eyes shone big in the dancing light, and we -smelt the dry dust of the plains that we were leaving after eleven -months’ hard work. - -At stated times the men ceased their drowsy, grunting tune, and sat down -for a smoke. Between the guttering of their water-pipes we could hear -the cries of the beasts of the night, and the wind stirring in the folds -of the mountain ahead. At the changing-station the voice of Adam, the -First of Men, would be lifted to rouse the sleepers in the huts till the -fresh relay of bearers shambled from their cots and the relief pony with -them. - -Then we would re-form and go on, and by the time the moon rose Adam was -asleep, and there was no sound in the night except the grunting of the -men, the husky murmur of some river a thousand feet down in the valley, -and the squeaking of Strickland’s saddle. So we went up from date-palm -to deodar, till the dawn wind came round a corner all fresh from the -snows, and we snuffed it. I heard Strickland say, “Wife, my overcoat, -please,” and Adam, fretfully, “Where is Dalhousie and the cow’s child?” -Then I slept till Strickland turned me out of the warm doolie at seven -o’clock, and I stepped into all the splendour of a cool Hill day, the -Plains sweltering twenty miles back and four thousand feet below. Adam -waked too, and needs must ride in front of me to ask a million -questions, and shout at the monkeys and clap his hands when the painted -pheasants bolted across our road, and hail every woodcutter and drover -and pilgrim within sight, till we halted for breakfast at a rest house. -After that, being a child, he went out to play with a train of -bullock-drivers halted by the roadside, and we had to chase him out of a -native liquor shop, where he was bargaining with a native seven-year-old -for a parrot in a bamboo cage. - -Said he, wriggling on my pommel as we went on again, “There were four -men _behosh_ [insensible] at the back of that house. Wherefore do men -grow _behosh_ from drinking?” - -“It is the nature of the waters,” I said, and, calling back, “Strick, -what’s that grog-shop doing so close to the road? It’s a temptation to -any one’s servants.” - -“Dunno,” said a sleepy voice in the doolie. “This is Kennedy’s District. -’Twasn’t here in _my_ time.” - -“Truly the waters smell bad,” Adam went on. “I smelt them, but I did not -get the parrot even for six annas. The woman of the house gave me a love -gift that I found playing near the verandah.” - -“And what was the gift, Father Adam?” - -“A nose-ring for my ayah. Ohe! Ohe! Look at that camel with the muzzle -on his nose!” - -A string of loaded camels came cruising round the corner as a fleet -rounds a cape. - -“Ho, Malik! Why does not a camel salaam like an elephant? His neck is -long enough,” Adam cried. - -“The Angel Jibrail made him a fool at the beginning,” said the driver, -as he swayed on the top of the leading beast, and laughter ran all along -the line of red-bearded men. - -“That is true,” said Adam solemnly, and they laughed again. - -At last, in the late afternoon, we came to Dalhousie, the loveliest of -the hill-stations, and separated, Adam hardly able to be restrained from -setting out at once to find Victor and the “cow’s child.” I found them -both, something to my trouble, next morning. The two young sinners had a -calf on a tight rope just at a sharp turn in the Mall, and were -pretending that he was a raja’s elephant who had gone mad; and they -shouted with delight. Then we began to talk, and Adam, by way of -crushing Victor’s repeated reminders to me that he and not “that other” -was the owner of the calf, said, “It is true I have no cow’s child; but -a great _dacoity_ [robbery] has been done on my father.” - -“We came up together yesterday. There could have been nothing,” I said. - -“It was my mother’s horse. She has been _dacoited_ with beating and -blows, and now is _so_ thin.” He held his hands an inch apart. “My -father is at the telegraph-house sending telegrams. Imam Din will cut -off _all_ their heads. I desire your saddle-cloth for a howdah for my -elephant. Give it me!” - -This was exciting, but not lucid. I went to the telegraph office and -found Strickland in a black temper among many telegraph forms. A -dishevelled, one-eyed groom stood in a corner whimpering at intervals. -He was a man whom Adam invariably addressed as “_Be-shakl, be-ukl, -be-ank_” [ugly, stupid, eyeless]. It seemed that Strickland had sent his -wife’s horse up to Dalhousie by road, a fortnight’s march, in the -groom’s charge. This is the custom in Upper India. Among the foothills, -near Dhunnera or Dhar, horse and man had been violently set upon in the -night by four men, who had beaten the groom (his leg was bandaged from -knee to ankle in proof), had incidentally beaten the horse, and had -robbed the groom of the bucket and blanket, and all his money—eleven -rupees, nine annas. Last, they had left him for dead by the way-side, -where some woodcutters had found and nursed him. Then the one-eyed man -howled with anguish, thinking over his bruises. “They asked me if I was -Strickland Sahib’s servant, and I, thinking the Protection of the Name -would be sufficient, spoke the truth. Then they beat me grievously.” - -“H’m!” said Strickland. “I thought they wouldn’t dacoit as a business on -the Dalhousie road. This is meant for me personally—sheer _badmashi_ -[impudence]. All right.” - -In justice to a very hard-working class it must be said that the thieves -of Upper India have the keenest sense of humour. The last compliment -that they can pay a Police officer is to rob him, and if, as once they -did, they can loot a Deputy Inspector-General of Police, on the eve of -his retirement, of everything except the clothes on his back, their joy -is complete. They cause letters of derision and telegrams of condolence -to be sent to the victim; for of all men thieves are most compelled to -keep abreast of progress. - -Strickland was a man of few words where his business was concerned. I -had never seen a Police officer robbed before, and I expected some -excitement, but Strickland held his tongue. He took the groom’s -deposition, and then retired into himself for a time. Then he sent -Kennedy, of the Pathankot District, an official letter and an unofficial -note. Kennedy’s reply was purely unofficial, and it ran thus: “This -seems a compliment solely intended for you. My wonder is you didn’t get -it before. The men are probably back in your district by now. My -Dhunnera and foot-hill people are highly respectable cultivators, and, -seeing my Assistant is an unlicked pup, and I can’t trust my Inspector -out of my sight, I’m not going to turn their harvest upside down with -Police investigations. I’m run off my feet with vaccination Police work. -You’d better look at home. The Shubkudder gang were through here a -fortnight back. They laid up at the Amritsar Serai, and then worked -down. No cases against them in my charge; but, remember, you imprisoned -their head-man for receiving stolen goods in Prub Dyal’s burglary. They -owe you one.” - -“Exactly what I thought,” said Strickland. “I had a notion it _was_ the -Shubkudder gang from the first. We must make it pleasant for them at -Peshawur, and in my District, too. They’re just the kind that would lie -up under Imam Din’s shadow.” - -From this point onward the wires began to be worked heavily. Strickland -had a very fair knowledge of the Shubkudder gang, gathered at first -hand. - -They were the same syndicate that had once stolen a Deputy -Commissioner’s cow, put horse-shoes on her, and taken her forty miles -into the jungle before they lost interest in the joke. They added insult -to insult by writing that the Deputy Commissioner’s cows and horses were -so much alike that it took them two days to find out the difference and -they would not lift the like of such cattle any more. - -The District Superintendent at Peshawur replied to Strickland that he -was expecting the gang, and Strickland’s Assistant, in his own district, -being young and full of zeal, sent up the most amazing clues. - -“Now that’s just what I want that young fool not to do,” said -Strickland. “He’s an English boy, born and bred, and his father before -him. He has about as much tact as a bull, and he won’t work quietly -under my Inspector. I wish the Government would keep our service for -country-born men. Those first five or six years in India give a man a -pull that lasts him all his life. Adam, if only you were old enough to -be my Assistant!” He looked down at the little fellow in the verandah. -Adam was deeply interested in the dacoity, and, unlike a child, did not -lose interest after the first week. On the contrary, he would ask his -father every evening what had been done, and Strickland had drawn him a -map on the white wall of the verandah, showing the different towns in -which Policemen were on the look-out for thieves. They were Amritsar, -Jullunder, Phillour, Gurgaon, Rawal Pindi, Peshawur and Multan. Adam -looked up at it as he answered— - -“There has been great _dikh_ [trouble] in this case?” - -“Very great trouble. I wish that thou wert a young man and my Assistant -to help me.” - -“Dost thou need help, my father?” Adam asked curiously, with his head on -one side. - -“Very much.” - -“Leave it all alone. It is bad. Let loose everything.” - -“That must not be. Those beginning a business continue to the end.” - -“Thou wilt continue to the end? Dost thou not _know_ who did the -dacoity?” - -Strickland shook his head. Adam turned to me with the same question, and -I answered it in the same way. - -“What foolish people!” he said, and turned his back on us. - -He showed plainly in all our dealings afterwards how we had fallen in -his opinion. Strickland told me that he would sit at the door of his -father’s workroom and stare at him for half an hour at a time as he went -through his papers. Strickland seemed to work harder over the case than -if he had been in office in the Plains. - -“And sometimes I look up and I fancy the little chap’s laughing at me. -It’s an awful thing to have a son. You see, he’s your own and _his_ own, -and between the two you don’t quite know how to handle him,” said -Strickland. “I wonder what in the world he thinks about.” - -I asked Adam this later on, quietly. He put his head on one side for a -moment and replied: “In these days I think about great things. I do not -play with Victor and the cow’s child any more. Victor is only a baba.” - -At the end of the third week of Strickland’s leave, the result of -Strickland’s labours—labours that had made Mrs. Strickland more -indignant against the dacoits than any one else—came to hand. The Police -at Peshawur reported that half of the Shubkudder gang were held at -Peshawur to account for the possession of some blankets and a -horse-bucket. Strickland’s assistant had also four men under suspicion -in his charge; and Imam Din must have stirred up Strickland’s Inspector -to investigations on his own account, for a string of incoherent -telegrams came in from the Club Secretary in which he entreated, -exhorted, and commanded Strickland to take his “mangy Policemen” off the -Club premises. “Your men, in servants’ quarters here, examining cook. -Billiard-marker indignant. Steward threatens resignation. Members -furious. Grooms stopped on roads. Shut up, or my resignation goes to -Committee.” - -“Now I shouldn’t in the least wonder,” said Strickland thoughtfully to -his wife, “if the Club was not just _the_ place where the men would lie -up. Billy Watson isn’t at all pleased, though. I think I shall have to -cut my leave by a week and go down to take charge. If there’s anything -to be told, the men will tell me.” - -Mrs. Strickland’s eyes filled with tears. “I shall try to steal ten days -if I can in the autumn,” he said soothingly, “but I must go now. It will -never do for the gang to think that they can burgle _my_ belongings.” - -That was in the forenoon, and Strickland asked me to lunch to leave me -some instructions about his big dog, with authority to rebuke those who -did not attend to her. _Tietjens_ was growing too old and too fat to -live in the plains in the summer. When I came, Adam had climbed into his -high chair at table, and Mrs. Strickland seemed ready to weep at any -moment over the general misery of things. - -“I go down to the Plains to-morrow, my son,” said Strickland. - -“Wherefore?” said Adam, reaching out for a ripe mango and burying his -head in it. - -“Imam Din has caught the men who did the dacoity, and there are also -others at Peshawur under suspicion. I must go to see.” - -“_Bus!_ [enough],” said Adam, between sucks at his mango, as Mrs. -Strickland tucked the napkin round his neck. “Imam Din speaks lies. Do -not go.” - -“It is necessary. There has been great _dikh-dari_ [trouble-giving].” - -Adam came out of the fruit for a minute and laughed. Then, returning, he -spoke between slow and deliberate mouthfuls. - -“The dacoits live in Beshakl’s head. They will never be caught. All -people know that. The cook knows, and the scullion, and Rahim Baksh -here.” - -“Nay,” said the butler behind his chair hastily. “What should _I_ know? -Nothing at all does the Servant of the Presence know.” - -“_Accha_ [good],” said Adam, and sucked on. “Only it _is_ known.” - -“Speak, then,” said Strickland to him. “What dost thou know? Remember my -groom was beaten insensible.” - -“That was in the bad-water shop where I played when we came up here. The -boy who would not sell me the parrot for six annas told me that a -one-eyed man had come there and drunk the bad waters and gone mad. He -broke bedsteads. They hit him with a bamboo till he was senseless, and -fearing he was dead, they nursed him on milk—like a little baba. When I -was playing first with the cow’s child, I asked Beshakl if he were that -man, and he said no. But _I_ knew, because many woodcutters in Dalhousie -asked him whether his head were whole now.” - -“But why,” I interrupted, “did Beshakl tell lies?” - -“Oh! He is a low-caste man, and desired to get consideration. Now he is -a witness in a great law-case, and men will go to the jail on his -account. It was to give trouble and obtain notice that he did it.” - -“Was it all lies?” said Strickland. - -“Ask him,” said Adam, through the mango-pulp. - -Strickland passed through the door. There was a howl of despair in the -servants’ quarters up the hill, and he returned with the one-eyed groom. - -“Now,” said Strickland, “it is known. Declare!” - -“Beshakl,” said Adam, while the man gasped. “Imam Din has caught four -men, and there are some more at Peshawur. _Bus! Bus! Bus!_ [Enough.]” - -“Thou didst get drunk by the way-side, and didst make a false case to -cover it. Speak!” - -Like a good many other men, Strickland, in possession of a few facts, -was irresistible. The groom groaned. - -“I—I did not get drunk till—till—Protector of the Poor, the mare -rolled.” - -“_All_ horses roll at Dhunnera. The road is too narrow before that, and -they smell where the other horses have rolled. This the bullock-drivers -told me when we came up here,” said Adam. - -“She rolled. So her saddle was cut and the curb-chain lost.” - -“See!” said Adam, tugging a curb-chain from his pocket. “That woman in -the shop gave it to me for a love-gift. Beshakl said it was not his when -I showed it. But _I_ knew.” - -“Then they at the grog-shop, knowing that I was the Servant of the -Presence, said that unless I drank and spent money they would tell.” - -“A lie! A lie!” said Strickland. “Son of an owl, speak the truth now at -least.” - -“Then I was afraid because I had lost the curb-chain, so I cut the -saddle across and about.” - -“She did _not_ roll, then?” said Strickland, bewildered and angry. - -“It was only the curb-chain that was lost. Then I cut the saddle and -went to drink in the shop. I drank and there was a fray. The rest I have -forgotten till I recovered.” - -“And the mare the while? What of the mare?” - -The man looked at Strickland and collapsed. - -“She bore faggots for a week,” he said. - -“Oh, poor _Diamond_!” said Mrs. Strickland. - -“And Beshakl was paid four annas for her hire three days ago by the -woodcutter’s brother, who is the left-hand man of our rickshaw-men -here,” said Adam, in a loud and joyful voice. “We _all_ knew. We all -knew. I and the servants.” - -Strickland was silent. His wife stared helplessly at the child; the soul -out of Nowhere that went its own way alone. - -“Did no man help thee with the lies?” I asked of the groom. - -“None. Protector of the Poor—not one.” - -“They grew, then?” - -“As a tale grows in telling. Alas! I am a very bad man!” and he blinked -his one eye dolefully. - -“Now four men are held at my Police station on thy account, and God -knows how many more at Peshawur, besides the questions at Multan, and my -honour is lost, and my mare has been pack-pony to a woodcutter. Son of -Devils, what canst thou do to make amends?” - -There was just a little break in Strickland’s voice, and the man caught -it. Bending low, he answered, in the abject fawning whine that confounds -right and wrong more surely than most modern creeds, “Protector of the -Poor, is the Police service shut to—an honest man?” - -“Out!” cried Strickland, and swiftly as the groom departed he must have -heard our shouts of laughter behind him. - -“If you dismiss that man, Strick, I shall engage him. He’s a genius,” -said I. “It will take you months to put this mess right, and Billy -Watson won’t give you a minute’s peace.” - -“You aren’t going to tell him?” said Strickland appealingly. - -“I couldn’t keep this to myself if you were my own brother. Four men -arrested with you—four or forty at Peshawur—and what was that you said -about Multan?” - -“Oh, nothing. Only some camel-men there have been——” - -“And a tribe of camel-men at Multan! All on account of a lost -curb-chain. Oh, my Aunt!” - -“And whose memsahib [lady] was thy aunt?” said Adam, with the -mango-stone in his fist. We began to laugh again. - -“But here,” said Strickland, pulling his face together, “is a very bad -child who has caused his father to lose his honour before all the -Policemen of the Punjab.” - -“Oh, _they_ know,” said Adam. “It was only for the sake of show that -they caught people. Assuredly they all knew it was _benowti_ [make-up].” - -“And since when hast thou known?” said the first policeman in India to -his son. - -“Four days after we came here, after the woodcutter had asked Beshakl -after the health of his head. Beshakl all but slew one of them at the -bad-water place.” - -“If thou hadst spoken then, time and money and trouble to me and to -others had all been spared. Baba, thou hast done a wrong greater than -thy knowledge, and thou hast put me to shame, and set me out upon false -words, and broken my honour. Thou hast done _very_ wrong. But perhaps -thou didst not think?” - -“Nay, but I _did_ think. Father, _my_ honour was lost when that beating -of me happened in Juma’s presence. Now it is made whole again.” - -And with the most enchanting smile in the world Adam climbed up on to -his father’s lap. - - - - - AN ENGLISH SCHOOL - - -Of all things in the world there is nothing, always excepting a good -mother, so worthy of honour as a good school. Our School was created for -the sons of officers in the Army and Navy, and filled with boys who -meant to follow their father’s calling. - -It stood within two miles of Amyas Leigh’s house at Northam, overlooking -the Burroughs and the Pebble-ridge, and the mouth of the Torridge whence -the _Rose_ sailed in search of Don Guzmán. From the front dormitory -windows, across the long rollers of the Atlantic, you could see Lundy -Island and the Shutter Rock, where the _Santa Catherina_ galleon cheated -Amyas out of his vengeance by going ashore. If you have ever read -Kingsley’s “Westward Ho!” you will remember how all these things -happened. - -Inland lay the rich Devonshire lanes and the fat orchards, and to the -west the gorse and the turf ran along the tops of the cliffs in combe -after combe till you come to Clovelly and the Hobby and Gallantry Bower, -and the homes of the Devonshire people that were old when the Armada was -new. - -The Burroughs, lying between the school and the sea, was a waste of bent -rush and grass running out into hundreds of acres of fascinating -sand-hills called the Bunkers, where a few old people played golf. In -the early days of the School there was a small Club-house for golfers -close to the Pebble-ridge, but, one wild winter night, the sea got up -and drove the Pebble-ridge clean through the Club basement, and the -walls fell out, and we rejoiced, for even then golfers wore red coats -and did not like us to use the links. We played as a matter of course -and thought nothing of it. - -Now there is a new Club-house, and cars take the old, red, excited men -to and from their game and all the great bunkers are known and written -about; but we were there first, long before golf became a fashion or a -disease, and we turned out one of the earliest champion amateur golfers -of all England. - -It was a good place for a school, and that School considered itself the -finest in the world, excepting perhaps Haileybury, because it was -modelled on Haileybury lines and our caps were Haileybury colours; and -there was a legend that, in the old days when the School was new, half -the boys had been Haileyburians. - -Our Head-master had been Head of the Modern Side at Haileybury, and, -talking it over with boys from other public schools afterwards, I think -that one secret of his great hold over us was that he was not a -clergyman, as so many head-masters are. As soon as a boy begins to think -in the misty way that boys do, he is suspicious of a man who punishes -him one day and preaches at him the next. But the Head was different, -and in our different ways we loved him. - -Through all of five years I never saw him lose his temper, nor among two -hundred boys did any one at any time say or hint that he had his -favourites. If you went to him with any trouble you were heard out to -the end, and answered without being talked at or about or around, but -always _to_. So we trusted him absolutely, and when it came to the -choice of the various ways of entering the Army, what he said was so. - -He knew boys naturally better than their fathers knew them, and -considerably better than they knew themselves. When the time came to -read for the Final Army Examinations, he knew the temper and powers of -each boy, the amount of training each would stand and the stimulus or -restraint that each needed, and handled them accordingly till they had -come through the big race that led into the English Army. Looking back -on it all, one can see the perfect judgment, knowledge of boys, -patience, and above all, power, that the Head must have had. - -Some of the masters, particularly on the classical side, vowed that Army -examinations were making education no more than mark-hunting; but there -are a great many kinds of education, and I think the Head knew it, for -he taught us hosts of things that we never found out we knew till -afterwards. And surely it must be better to turn out men who do real -work than men who write about what they think about what other people -have done or ought to do. - -A scholar may, as the Latin masters said, get more pleasure out of his -life than an Army officer, but only little children believe that a man’s -life is given him to decorate with pretty little things, as though it -were a girl’s room or a picture-screen. Besides, scholars are apt, all -their lives, to judge from one point of view only, and by the time that -an Army officer has knocked about the world for a few years he comes to -look at men and things “by and large,” as the sailors say. No books in -the world will teach that knack. - -So we trusted the Head at school, and afterwards trusted him more. - -There was a boy in the Canadian Mounted Police, I think, who stumbled -into a fortune—he was the only one of us who ever did—and as he had -never drawn more than seven shillings a day he very properly wrote to -the Head from out of his North Western wilds and explained his situation -proposing that the Head should take charge of and look after all his -wealth till he could attend to it; and was a little impatient when the -Head pointed out that executors and trustees and that sort of bird -wouldn’t hand over cash in that casual way. The Head was worth -trusting—he saved a boy’s life from diphtheria once at much greater risk -than being shot at, and nobody knew anything about it till years -afterwards. - -But I come back to the School that he made and put his mark upon. The -boys said that those with whom Cheltenham could do nothing, whom -Sherbourne found too tough, and whom even Marlborough had politely asked -to leave, had been sent to the School at the beginning of things and -turned into men. They were, perhaps, a shade rough sometimes. One very -curious detail, which I have never seen or heard of in any school before -or since, was that the Army Class, which meant the Prefects, and was -generally made up of boys from seventeen and a half to nineteen or -thereabouts, was allowed to smoke pipes (cigarettes were then reckoned -the direct invention of the Evil One) in the country outside the -College. One result of this was that, though these great men talked a -good deal about the grain of their pipes, the beauty of their pouches, -and the flavour of their tobacco, they did not smoke to any ferocious -extent. The other, which concerned me more directly, was that it went -much harder with a junior whom they caught smoking than if he had been -caught by a master, because the action was flagrant invasion of their -privilege, and, therefore, rank insolence—to be punished as such. Years -later, the Head admitted that he thought something of this kind would -happen when he gave the permission. If any Head-master is anxious to put -down smoking nowadays, he might do worse than give this scheme a trial. - -The School motto was, “Fear God, Honour the King”; and so the men she -made went out to Boerland and Zululand and India and Burma and Cyprus -and Hongkong, and lived or died as gentlemen and officers. - -Even the most notorious bully, for whom an awful ending was prophesied, -went to Canada and was mixed up in Riel’s rebellion, and came out of it -with a fascinating reputation of having led a forlorn hope and behaved -like a hero. - -All these matters were noted by the older boys, and when their fathers, -the grey-whiskered colonels and generals, came down to see them, or the -directors, who were K. C. B.’s and had been officers in their time, made -a tour of inspection, it was reported that the School tone was -“healthy.” - -Sometimes an old boy who had blossomed into a Subaltern of the Queen -would come down for a last few words with the Head-master, before -sailing with the regiment for foreign parts; and the lower-school boys -were distracted with envy, and the prefects of the Sixth Form pretended -not to be proud when he walked with one of their number and talked about -“my men, you know,” till life became unendurable. - -There was an unwritten law by which an old boy, when he came back to pay -his respects to the School, was entitled to a night in his old -dormitory. The boys expected it and sat up half the night listening to -the tales of a subaltern that the boy brought with him—stories about -riots in Ireland and camps at Aldershot, and all his first steps in the -wonderful world. - -Sometimes news came in that a boy had died with his men fighting, and -the school said, “Killed in action, of course,” as though that were an -honour reserved for it alone, and wondered when its own chance would -come. - -It was a curiously quiet School in many ways. When a boy was fourteen or -fifteen he was generally taken in hand for the Army Preliminary -Examination, and when that was past he was put down to “grind” for the -entrance into Sandhurst or Woolwich; for it was our pride that we passed -direct from the School to the Army, without troubling the “crammers.” We -spoke of “the Shop,” which means Woolwich, as though we owned it. -Sandhurst was our private reserve; and the old boys came back from -foreign parts and told us that India was only Westward Ho! spread thin. - -On account of this incessant getting ready for examinations there was -hardly time for us (but we made it) to gather the beautiful Devonshire -apples, or to ferret rabbits in the sand-hills by the golf-links, and -saloon-pistols were forbidden because boys got to fighting-parties with -dust-shot, and were careless about guarding their eyes. - -Nor were we encouraged to lower each other over the cliffs with a -box-rope and take the young hawks and jackdaws from their nests above -the sea. Once a rope broke, or else the boys above grew tired of holding -it, and a boy dropped thirty feet on to the boulders below. But as he -fell on his head nothing happened, except punishment at the other end -for all concerned. - -In summer there was almost unlimited bathing from the Pebble-ridge, a -whale-backed bank four miles long of rounded grey boulders, where you -were taught to ride on the rollers as they came in, to avoid the -under-tow and to watch your time for getting back to the beach. - -There was a big sea bath, too, in which all boys had to qualify for open -bathing by swimming a quarter of a mile, at least; and it was a matter -of honour among the school-houses not to let the summer end with a -single boy who could not “do his quarter,” at any rate. - -Boating was impossible off that coast, but sometimes a fishing-boat -would be wrecked on Braunton Bar, and we could see the lifeboat and the -rocket at work; and once just after chapel there was a cry that the -herring were in. The School ran down to the beach in their Sunday -clothes and fished them out with umbrellas. They were cooked by hand -afterwards in all the studies and form-rooms till you could have smelt -us at Exeter. - -But the game of the School, setting aside golf, which everyone could -play if he had patience, was foot-ball. Both cricket and foot-ball were -compulsory. That is to say, unless a boy could show a doctor’s -certificate that he was physically unfit to stand up to the wicket or go -into the scrimmage, he had to play a certain number of afternoons at the -game of the season. If he had engagements elsewhere—we called it -“shirking”—he was reasonably sure of three cuts with a ground-ash, from -the Captain of the Games delivered cold in the evening. A good player, -of course, could get leave off on any fair excuse, but it was a -beautiful rule for fat boys and loafers. The only unfairness was that a -Master could load you with an imposition to be shown up at a certain -hour, which, of course, prevented you from playing and so secured you a -licking in addition to the imposition. But the Head always told us that -there was not much justice in the world, and that we had better accustom -ourselves to the lack of it early. - -Curiously enough, the one thing that the School did not understand was -an attempt to drill it in companies with rifles, by way of making a -volunteer cadet corps. We took our lickings for not attending that -cheerfully, because we considered it “playing at soldiers,” and boys -reading for the Army are apt to be very particular on these points. - -We were weak in cricket, but our foot-ball team (Rugby Union) at its -best devastated the country from Blundell’s—we always respected -Blundell’s because “Great John Ridd” had been educated there—to Exeter, -whose team were grown men. Yet we, who had been taught to play together, -once drove them back over the November mud, back to their own -goal-posts, till the ball was hacked through and touched down, and you -could hear the long-drawn yell of “Schoo-_ool_! Schoo-_ool_!” as far as -Appledore. - -When the enemy would not come to us our team went to the enemy, and if -victorious, would return late at night in a three-horse brake, chanting: - - It’s a way we have in the Army, - It’s a way we have in the Navy, - It’s a way we have in the Public Schools, - Which nobody can deny! - -Then the boys would flock to the dormitory windows, and wave towels and -join in the “Hip-hip-hip-hurrah!” of the chorus, and the winning team -would swagger through the dormitories and show the beautiful blue marks -on their shins, and the little boys would be allowed to get sponges and -hot water. - -Very few things that the world can offer make up for having missed -a place in the First Fifteen, with its black jersey and -white—snow-white—knickerbockers, and the velvet skull-cap with the gold -tassel—the cap that you leave out in the rain and accidentally step upon -to make it look as old as if you had been in the First Fifteen for -years. - -The other outward sign of the First Fifteen that the happy boy generally -wore through a hard season was the “jersey-mark”—a raw, red scrape on -ear and jawbone where the skin had been fretted by the rough jerseys in -either side in the steady drive of many scrimmages. We were trained to -put our heads down, pack in the shape of a wedge and shove, and it was -in that shape that the First Fifteen stood up to a team of trained men -for two and twenty counted minutes. We got the ball through in the end. - -At the close of the winter term, when there were no more foot-ball teams -to squander and the Christmas holidays were coming, the School set -itself to the regular yearly theatricals—a farce and a three-act play -all complete. Sometimes it was “The Rivals,” or sometimes an attempt at -a Shakespearean play; but the farces were the most popular. - -All ended with the School-Saga, the “_Vive la Compagnie!_” in which the -Senior boy of the School chanted the story of the School for the past -twelve months. It was very long and very difficult to make up, though -all the poets of all the forms had been at work on it for weeks; and the -School gave the chorus at the top of its voice. - -On the last Sunday of the term the last hymn in chapel was “Onward, -Christian Soldiers.” We did not know what it meant then, and we did not -care, but we stood up and sang it till the music was swamped in the -rush. The big verse, like the “tug-of-war” verse in Mrs. Ewing’s “Story -of a Short Life,” was: - - We are not divided, - All one body we, - One in faith and doctrine, - One in charity. - -Then the organ would give a hurricane of joyful roars, and try to get us -in hand before the refrain. Later on, meeting our men all the world -over, the meaning of that hymn became much too plain. - -Except for this outbreak we were not very pious. There was a boy who had -to tell stories night after night in the Dormitory, and when his stock -ran out he fell back on a book called “Eric, or Little by Little,” as -comic literature, and read it till the gas was turned off. The boys -laughed abominably, and there was some attempt to give selections from -it at the meeting of the Reading Society. That was quashed by authority -because it was against discipline. - -There were no public-houses near us except tap-rooms that sold cider; -and raw Devonshire cider can only be drunk after a long and very hot -paper-chase. We hardly ever saw, and certainly never spoke to, anything -in the nature of a woman from one year’s end to the other; for our -masters were all unmarried. Later on, a little colony of mothers came -down to live near the School, but their sons were day-boys who couldn’t -do this and mustn’t do that, and there was a great deal too much -dressing up on weekdays and going out to tea, and things of that kind, -which, whatever people say nowadays, are not helpful for boys at work. - -Our masters, luckily, were never gushing. They did not call us Dickie or -Johnnie or Tommy, but Smith or Thompson; and when we were undoubtedly -bad we were actually and painfully beaten with an indubitable cane on a -veritable back till we wept unfeigned tears. Nobody seemed to think that -it brutalized our finer feelings, but everybody was relieved when the -trouble was over. - -Canes, especially when they are brought down with a drawing stroke, -sting like hornets; but they are a sound cure for certain offences; and -a cut or two, given with no malice, but as a reminder, can correct and -keep corrected a false quantity or a wandering mind, more completely -than any amount of explanation. - -There was one boy, however, to whom every Latin quantity was an -arbitrary mystery, and he wound up his crimes by suggesting that he -could do better if Latin verse rhymed as decent verse should. He was -given an afternoon’s reflection to purge himself of his contempt; and -feeling certain that he was in for something rather warm, he turned -“_Donec gratus eram_” into pure Devonshire dialect, rhymed, and showed -it up as his contribution to the study of Horace. - -He was let off, and his master gave him the run of a big library, where -he found as much verse and prose as he wanted; but that ruined his Latin -verses and made him write verses of his own. There he found all the -English poets from Chaucer to Matthew Arnold, and a book called -“Imaginary Conversations” which he did not understand, but it seemed to -be a good thing to imitate. So he imitated and was handed up to the -Head, who said that he had better learn Russian under his own eye, so -that if ever he were sent to Siberia for lampooning the authorities he -might be able to ask for things. - -That meant the run of another library—English Dramatists this time; -hundreds of old plays; as well as thick brown books of voyages told in -language like the ringing of bells. And the Head would sometimes tell -him about the manners and customs of the Russians, and sometimes about -his own early days at college, when several people who afterwards became -great, were all young, and the Head was young with them, and they wrote -wonderful things in college magazines. - -It was beautiful and cheap—dirt cheap, at the price of a permanent load -of impositions, for neglecting mathematics and algebra. - -The School started a Natural History Society, which took the birds and -plants of North Devon under its charge, reporting first flowerings and -first arrivals and new discoveries to learned societies in London, and -naturally attracting to itself every boy in the School who had the -poaching instinct. - -Some of us made membership an excuse for stealing apples and pheasant -eggs and geese from farmers’ orchards and gentlemen’s estates, and we -were turned out with disgrace. So we spoke scornfully of the Society -ever afterwards. None the less, some of us had our first introduction to -gunpowder in the shape of a charge of salt which stings like bees, fired -at our legs by angry game-keepers. - -The institution that caused some more excitement was the School paper. -Three of the boys, who had moved up the School side by side for four -years and were allies in all things, started the notion as soon as they -came to the dignity of a study of their own with a door that would lock. -The other two told the third boy what to write, and held the staircase -against invaders. - -It was a real printed paper of eight pages, and at first the printer was -more thoroughly ignorant of type-setting, and the Editor was more -completely ignorant of proof-reading, than any printer and any Editor -that ever was. It was printed off by a gas engine; and even the engine -despised its work, for one day it fell through the floor of the shop, -and crashed—still working furiously—into the cellar. - -The paper came out at odd times and seasons, but every time it came out -there was sure to be trouble, because the Editor was learning for the -first time how sweet and good and profitable it is—and how nice it looks -on the page—to make fun of people in actual print. - -For instance, there was friction among the study-fags once, and the -Editor wrote a descriptive account of the Lower School,—the classes -whence the fags were drawn,—their manners and customs, their ways of -cooking half-plucked sparrows and imperfectly cleaned blackbirds at the -gas-jets on a rusty nib, and their fights over sloe-jam made in a -gallipot. It was an absolutely truthful article, but the Lower School -knew nothing about truth, and would not even consider it as literature. - -It is less safe to write a study of an entire class than to discuss -individuals one by one; but apart from the fact that boys throw books -and inkpots with a straighter eye, there is very little difference -between the language of grown-up people and that of children. - -In those days the Editor had not learned this; so when the study below -the Editorial study threw coal at the Editorial legs and kicked in the -panels of the door, because of personal paragraphs in the last number, -the Editorial Staff—and there never was so loyal and hard-fighting a -staff—fried fat bacon till there was half an inch of grease in the pan, -and let the greasy chunks down at the end of a string to bob against and -defile the lower study windows. - -When that lower study—and there never was a public so low and -unsympathetic as that lower study—looked out to see what was frosting -their window-panes, the Editorial Staff emptied the hot fat on their -heads, and it stayed in their hair for days and days, wearing shiny to -the very last. - -The boy who suggested this sort of warfare was then reading a sort of -magazine, called _Fors Clavigera_, which he did not in the least -understand,—it was not exactly a boy’s paper,—and when the lower study -had scraped some of the fat off their heads and were thundering with -knobby pokers on the door-lock, this boy began to chant pieces of the -_Fors_ as a war-song, and to show that his mind was free from low -distractions. He was an extraordinary person, and the only boy in the -School who had a genuine contempt for his masters. There was no -affectation in his quiet insolence. He honestly _did_ despise them; and -threats that made us all wince only caused him to put his head a little -on one side and watch the master as a sort of natural curiosity. - -The worst of this was that his allies had to take their share of his -punishments, for they lived as communists and socialists hope to live -one day, when everybody is good. They were bad, as bad as they dared to -be, but their possessions were in common, absolutely. And when “the -Study” was out of funds they took the most respectable clothes in -possession of the Syndicate, and leaving the owner one Sunday and one -week-day suit, sold the rest in Bideford town. Later, when there was -another crisis, it was _not_ the respectable one’s watch that was taken -by force for the good of the Study and pawned, and never redeemed. - -Later still, money came into the Syndicate honestly, for a London paper -that did not know with whom it was dealing, published and paid a whole -guinea for some verses that one of the boys had written and sent up -under a nom-de-plume, and the Study caroused on chocolate and condensed -milk and pilchards and Devonshire cream, and voted poetry a much sounder -business than it looks. - -So things went on very happily till the three were seriously warned that -they must work in earnest, and stop giving amateur performances of -“Aladdin” and writing librettos of comic operas which never came off, -and worrying their house-masters into grey hairs. - -Then they all grew very good, and one of them got into the Army; and -another—the Irish one—became an engineer, and the third one found -himself on a daily paper half a world away from the Pebble-ridge and the -sea-beach. The three swore eternal friendship before they parted, and -from time to time they met boys of their year in India, and magnified -the honour of the old School. - -The boys are scattered all over the world, one to each degree of land -east and west, as their fathers were before them, doing much the same -kind of work; and it is curious to notice how little the character of -the man differs from that of the boy of sixteen or seventeen. - -The general and commander-in-chief of the Study, he who suggested -selling the clothes, never lost his head even when he and his friends -were hemmed round by the enemy—the Drill Sergeant—far out of bounds and -learning to smoke under a hedge. He was sick and dizzy, but he rose to -the occasion, took command of his forces, and by strategic manœuvres -along dry ditches and crawlings through tall grass, outflanked the enemy -and got into safe ground without losing one man of the three. - -A little later, when he was a subaltern in India, he was bitten by a mad -dog, went to France to be treated by Pasteur, and came out again in the -heat of the hot weather to find himself almost alone in charge of six -hundred soldiers, and his Drill Sergeant dead and his office clerk run -away, leaving the Regimental books in the most ghastly confusion. Then -we happened to meet; and as he was telling his story there was just the -same happy look on his face as when he steered us down the lanes with -the certainty of a superior thrashing if we were caught. - -And there were others who went abroad with their men, and when they got -into tight places behaved very much as they had behaved at foot-ball. - -The boy who used to take flying jumps on to the ball and roll over and -over with it, because he was big and fat and could not run, took a -flying jump onto a Burmese dacoit whom he had surprised by night in a -stockade; but he forgot that he was much heavier than he had been at -School, and by the time he rolled off his victim the little dacoit was -stone dead. - -And there was a boy who was always being led astray by bad advice, and -begging off punishment on that account. He got into some little scrape -when he grew up, and we who knew him knew, before he was reprimanded by -his commanding officer, exactly what his excuse would be. It came out -almost word for word as he was used to whimper it at School. He was -cured, though by being sent off on a small expedition where he alone -would be responsible for any advice that was going, as well as for fifty -soldiers. - -And the best boy of all—he was really good, not book good—was shot in -the thigh as he was leading his men up the ramp of a fortress. All he -said was, “Put me up against that tree and take my men on”; and when the -men came back he was dead. - -Ages and ages ago, when Queen Victoria was shot at by a man in the -street, the School paper made some verses about it that ended like this: - - One school of many, made to make - Men who shall hold it dearest right - To battle for their ruler’s sake, - And stake their being in the fight, - - Sends greeting, humble and sincere, - Though verse be rude and poor and mean, - To you, the greatest as most dear, - Victoria, by God’s Grace, our Queen! - - Such greetings as should come from those - Whose fathers faced the Sepoy hordes, - Or served you in the Russian snows - And dying, left their sons their swords. - - For we are bred to do your will - By land and sea, wherever flies - The Flag to fight and follow still, - And work your empire’s destinies. - - Once more we greet you, though unseen - Our greetings be, and coming slow. - Trust us, if need arise, O Queen! - We shall not tarry with the blow. - -And there are one or two places in the world that can bear witness how -the School kept its word. - - - - - A COUNTING-OUT SONG - - - What is the song the children sing - When doorway lilacs bloom in Spring, - And the Schools are loosed, and the games are played - That were deadly earnest when Earth was made? - Hear them chattering, shrill and hard, - After dinner-time, out in the yard, - As the sides are chosen and all submit - To the chance of the lot that shall make them “It.” - - (Singing) “_Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo! - Catch a nigger by the toe! - If he hollers let him go - Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo! - You—are—It!_” - - Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, and Mo - Were the First Big Four of the Long Ago, - When the Pole of the Earth sloped thirty degrees, - And Central Europe began to freeze, - And they needed Ambassadors staunch and stark - To steady the Tribes in the gathering dark: - But the frost was fierce and flesh was frail, - So they launched a Magic that could not fail. - - (Singing) “_Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo! - Hear the wolves across the snow! - Someone has to kill ’em—so - Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo - Make—you—It!_” - - Slowly the Glacial Epoch passed, - Central Europe thawed out at last; - And, under the slush of the melting snows, - The first dim shapes of the Nations rose. - Rome, Britannia, Belgium, Gaul— - Flood and avalanche fathered them all; - And the First Big Four, as they watched the mess, - Pitied Man in his helplessness. - - (Singing) “_Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo! - Trouble starts when Nations grow. - Someone has to stop it—so - Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo - Make—you—It!_” - - Thus it happened, but none can tell - What was the Power behind the spell— - Fear, or Duty, or Pride, or Faith— - That sent men shuddering out to death— - To cold and watching, and, worse than these, - Work, more work, when they looked for ease— - To the day’s discomfort, the night’s despair, - In the hope of a prize that they never would share. - - (Singing) “_Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo! - Man is born to toil and woe. - One will cure the other—so - Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo - Make—you—It._” - - Once and again, as the Ice went North - The grass crept up to the Firth of Forth. - Once and again, as the Ice came South - The glaciers ground over Lossiemouth. - But, grass or glacier, cold or hot, - Men went out who would rather not, - And fought with the Tiger, the Pig and the Ape, - To hammer the world into decent shape. - - (Singing) “_Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo! - What’s the use of doing so? - Ask the Gods, for we don’t know; - But Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo - Make—us—It!_” - - Nothing is left of that terrible rune - But a tag of gibberish tacked to a tune - That ends the waiting and settles the claims - Of children arguing over their games; - For never yet has a boy been found - To shirk his turn when the turn came round; - Or even a girl has been known to say - “If you laugh at me I sha’n’t play.” - - For— “_Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo, - Don’t you let the grown-ups know! - You may hate it ever so, - But if you’re chose you’re bound to go, - When Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo - Make—you—It!_” - - - THE END - ------ - -Footnote 1: - - Pack your kit and trek, Ferriera, - Pack your kit and trek. - A long pull, all on one side, - Johnnie with the lame leg. - -Footnote 2: - - Beaten. - -Footnote 3: - - Red necks—English soldiers. - -Footnote 4: - - Remember, the Chinaman generally says “l” for “r.” - -Footnote 5: - - A kind of sticky sweatmeat. - -Footnote 6: - - Bordeaux snails are specially large and sweet. - -Footnote 7: - - They grill pigs’-feet still at St. Menehoulde, not far from Verdun, - better than anywhere else in all France. - -Footnote 8: - - Gone—to get pâtés of ducks’ liver at Toulouse; fatted poultry at Bourg - in Bresse, on the road to Geneva; and very large chestnuts in sugar at - Carcassonne about forty miles from Toulouse. - -Footnote 9: - - This would probably be some sort of wild boar ham from Germany. - -Footnote 10: - - Expensive. - -Footnote 11: - - Beaten up. - -Footnote 12: - - Sneer or despise. - -Footnote 13: - - Brings him to table. - -Footnote 14: - - Starve. - -Footnote 15: - - The Pope himself, who depends on his cook for being healthy and - well-fed. - -Footnote 16: - - Dispute or argument. - -Footnote 17: - - Men are influenced by their cooks as ships are steered by their - rudders. - -Footnote 18: - - Never mind. - -Footnote 19: - - Ithuriel was that Archangel whose spear had the magic property of - showing everyone exactly and truthfully what he was. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - -[Illustration] - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES - - - 1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. - 2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed. - 3. 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