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Indian Tales

by Rudyard Kipling · English · Gutenberg #8649 · 941,183 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Indian Tales

Author: Rudyard Kipling


        
Release date: August 1, 2005 [eBook #8649]
                Most recently updated: January 29, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8649


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INDIAN TALES ***




INDIAN TALES

BY RUDYARD KIPLING




CONTENTS


"The Finest Story in the World"

With the Main Guard

Wee Willie Winkie

The Rout of the White Hussars

At Twenty-two

The Courting of Dinah Shadd

The Story of Muhammad Din

In Flood Time

My Own True Ghost Story

The Big Drunk Draf'

By Word of Mouth

The Drums of the Fore and Aft

The Sending of Dana Da

On the City Wall

The Broken-link Handicap

On Greenhow Hill

To Be Filed for Reference

The Man Who Would Be King

The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows

The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney

His Majesty the King

The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes

In the House of Suddhoo

Black Jack

The Taking of Lungtungpen

The Phantom Rickshaw

On the Strength of a Likeness

Private Learoyd's Story

Wressley of the Foreign Office

The Solid Muldoon

The Three Musketeers

Beyond the Pale

The God from the Machine

The Daughter of the Regiment

The Madness of Private Ortheris

L'Envoi




"THE FINEST STORY IN THE WORLD"

  "Or ever the knightly years were gone
      With the old world to the grave,
    I was a king in Babylon
      And you were a Christian slave,"
     --_W.E. Henley_.


His name was Charlie Mears; he was the only son of his mother who was a
widow, and he lived in the north of London, coming into the City every day
to work in a bank. He was twenty years old and suffered from aspirations.
I met him in a public billiard-saloon where the marker called him by his
given name, and he called the marker "Bullseyes." Charlie explained, a
little nervously, that he had only come to the place to look on, and since
looking on at games of skill is not a cheap amusement for the young, I
suggested that Charlie should go back to his mother.

That was our first step toward better acquaintance. He would call on me
sometimes in the evenings instead of running about London with his
fellow-clerks; and before long, speaking of himself as a young man must,
he told me of his aspirations, which were all literary. He desired to make
himself an undying name chiefly through verse, though he was not above
sending stories of love and death to the drop-a-penny-in-the-slot
journals. It was my fate to sit still while Charlie read me poems of many
hundred lines, and bulky fragments of plays that would surely shake the
world. My reward was his unreserved confidence, and the self-revelations
and troubles of a young man are almost as holy as those of a maiden.
Charlie had never fallen in love, but was anxious to do so on the first
opportunity; he believed in all things good and all things honorable, but,
at the same time, was curiously careful to let me see that he knew his way
about the world as befitted a bank clerk on twenty-five shillings a week.
He rhymed "dove" with "love" and "moon" with "June," and devoutly believed
that they had never so been rhymed before. The long lame gaps in his plays
he filled up with hasty words of apology and description and swept on,
seeing all that he intended to do so clearly that he esteemed it already
done, and turned to me for applause.

I fancy that his mother did not encourage his aspirations, and I know that
his writing-table at home was the edge of his washstand. This he told me
almost at the outset of our acquaintance; when he was ravaging my
bookshelves, and a little before I was implored to speak the truth as to
his chances of "writing something really great, you know." Maybe I
encouraged him too much, for, one night, he called on me, his eyes flaming
with excitement, and said breathlessly:

"Do you mind--can you let me stay here and write all this evening? I won't
interrupt you, I won't really. There's no place for me to write in at my
mother's."

"What's the trouble?" I said, knowing well what that trouble was.

"I've a notion in my head that would make the most splendid story that was
ever written. Do let me write it out here. It's _such_ a notion!"

There was no resisting the appeal. I set him a table; he hardly thanked
me, but plunged into the work at once. For half an hour the pen scratched
without stopping. Then Charlie sighed and tugged his hair. The scratching
grew slower, there were more erasures, and at last ceased. The finest
story in the world would not come forth.

"It looks such awful rot now," he said, mournfully. "And yet it seemed so
good when I was thinking about it. What's wrong?"

I could not dishearten him by saying the truth. So I answered: "Perhaps
you don't feel in the mood for writing."

"Yes I do--except when I look at this stuff. Ugh!"

"Read me what you've done," I said.

He read, and it was wondrous bad, and he paused at all the specially
turgid sentences, expecting a little approval; for he was proud of those
sentences, as I knew he would be.

"It needs compression," I suggested, cautiously.

"I hate cutting my things down. I don't think you could alter a word here
without spoiling the sense. It reads better aloud than when I was writing
it."

"Charlie, you're suffering from an alarming disease afflicting a numerous
class. Put the thing by, and tackle it again in a week."

"I want to do it at once. What do you think of it?"

"How can I judge from a half-written tale? Tell me the story as it lies in
your head."

Charlie told, and in the telling there was everything that his ignorance
had so carefully prevented from escaping into the written word. I looked
at him, and wondering whether it were possible that he did not know the
originality, the power of the notion that had come in his way? It was
distinctly a Notion among notions. Men had been puffed up with pride by
notions not a tithe as excellent and practicable. But Charlie babbled on
serenely, interrupting the current of pure fancy with samples of horrible
sentences that he purposed to use. I heard him out to the end. It would be
folly to allow his idea to remain in his own inept hands, when I could do
so much with it. Not all that could be done indeed; but, oh so much!

"What do you think?" he said, at last. "I fancy I shall call it 'The Story
of a Ship.'"

"I think the idea's pretty good; but you won't be able to handle it for
ever so long. Now I"----

"Would it be of any use to you? Would you care to take it? I should be
proud," said Charlie, promptly.

There are few things sweeter in this world than the guileless, hot-headed,
intemperate, open admiration of a junior. Even a woman in her blindest
devotion does not fall into the gait of the man she adores, tilt her
bonnet to the angle at which he wears his hat, or interlard her speech
with his pet oaths. And Charlie did all these things. Still it was
necessary to salve my conscience before I possessed myself of Charlie's
thoughts.

"Let's make a bargain. I'll give you a fiver for the notion," I said.

Charlie became a bank-clerk at once.

"Oh, that's impossible. Between two pals, you know, if I may call you so,
and speaking as a man of the world, I couldn't. Take the notion if it's
any use to you. I've heaps more."

He had--none knew this better than I--but they were the notions of other
men.

"Look at it as a matter of business--between men of the world," I
returned. "Five pounds will buy you any number of poetry-books. Business
is business, and you may be sure I shouldn't give that price unless"----

"Oh, if you put it _that_ way," said Charlie, visibly moved by the thought
of the books. The bargain was clinched with an agreement that he should at
unstated intervals come to me with all the notions that he possessed,
should have a table of his own to write at, and unquestioned right to
inflict upon me all his poems and fragments of poems. Then I said, "Now
tell me how you came by this idea."

"It came by itself," Charlie's eyes opened a little.

"Yes, but you told me a great deal about the hero that you must have read
before somewhere."

"I haven't any time for reading, except when you let me sit here, and on
Sundays I'm on my bicycle or down the river all day. There's nothing wrong
about the hero, is there?"

"Tell me again and I shall understand clearly. You say that your hero went
pirating. How did he live?"

"He was on the lower deck of this ship-thing that I was telling you
about."

"What sort of ship?"

"It was the kind rowed with oars, and the sea spurts through the oar-holes
and the men row sitting up to their knees in water. Then there's a bench
running down between the two lines of oars and an overseer with a whip
walks up and down the bench to make the men work."

"How do you know that?"

"It's in the tale. There's a rope running overhead, looped to the upper
deck, for the overseer to catch hold of when the ship rolls. When the
overseer misses the rope once and falls among the rowers, remember the
hero laughs at him and gets licked for it. He's chained to his oar of
course--the hero."

"How is he chained?"

"With an iron band round his waist fixed to the bench he sits on, and a
sort of handcuff on his left wrist chaining him to the oar. He's on the
lower deck where the worst men are sent, and the only light comes from the
hatchways and through the oar-holes. Can't you imagine the sunlight just
squeezing through between the handle and the hole and wobbling about as
the ship moves?"

"I can, but I can't imagine your imagining it."

"How could it be any other way? Now you listen to me. The long oars on the
upper deck are managed by four men to each bench, the lower ones by three,
and the lowest of all by two. Remember, it's quite dark on the lowest deck
and all the men there go mad. When a man dies at his oar on that deck he
isn't thrown overboard, but cut up in his chains and stuffed through the
oar-hole in little pieces."

"Why?" I demanded, amazed, not so much at the information as the tone of
command in which it was flung out.

"To save trouble and to frighten the others. It needs two overseers to
drag a man's body up to the top deck; and if the men at the lower deck
oars were left alone, of course they'd stop rowing and try to pull up the
benches by all standing up together in their chains."

"You've a most provident imagination. Where have you been reading about
galleys and galley-slaves?"

"Nowhere that I remember. I row a little when I get the chance. But,
perhaps, if you say so, I may have read something."

He went away shortly afterward to deal with booksellers, and I wondered
how a bank clerk aged twenty could put into my hands with a profligate
abundance of detail, all given with absolute assurance, the story of
extravagant and bloodthirsty adventure, riot, piracy, and death in unnamed
seas. He had led his hero a desperate dance through revolt against the
overseers, to command of a ship of his own, and ultimate establishment of
a kingdom on an island "somewhere in the sea, you know"; and, delighted
with my paltry five pounds, had gone out to buy the notions of other men,
that these might teach him how to write. I had the consolation of knowing
that this notion was mine by right of purchase, and I thought that I could
make something of it.

When next he came to me he was drunk--royally drunk on many poets for the
first time revealed to him. His pupils were dilated, his words tumbled
over each other, and he wrapped himself in quotations. Most of all was he
drunk with Longfellow.

"Isn't it splendid? Isn't it superb?" he cried, after hasty greetings.
"Listen to this--

  "'Wouldst thou,'--so the helmsman answered,
     'Know the secret of the sea?
   Only those who brave its dangers
     Comprehend its mystery.'"

By gum!

  "'Only those who brave its dangers
     Comprehend its mystery,'"

he repeated twenty times, walking up and down the room and forgetting me.
"But _I_ can understand it too," he said to himself. "I don't know how to
thank you for that fiver, And this; listen--

  "'I remember the black wharves and the ships
     And the sea-tides tossing free,
   And the Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
   And the beauty and mystery of the ships,
     And the magic of the sea.'"

I haven't braved any dangers, but I feel as if I knew all about it."

"You certainly seem to have a grip of the sea. Have you ever seen it?"

"When I was a little chap I went to Brighton once; we used to live in
Coventry, though, before we came to London. I never saw it,

  "'When descends on the Atlantic
   The gigantic
   Storm-wind of the Equinox.'"

He shook me by the shoulder to make me understand the passion that was
shaking himself.

"When that storm comes," he continued, "I think that all the oars in the
ship that I was talking about get broken, and the rowers have their chests
smashed in by the bucking oar-heads. By the way, have you done anything
with that notion of mine yet?"

"No. I was waiting to hear more of it from you. Tell me how in the world
you're so certain about the fittings of the ship. You know nothing of
ships."

"I don't know. It's as real as anything to me until I try to write it
down. I was thinking about it only last night in bed, after you had loaned
me 'Treasure Island'; and I made up a whole lot of new things to go into
the story."

"What sort of things?"

"About the food the men ate; rotten figs and black beans and wine in a
skin bag, passed from bench to bench."

"Was the ship built so long ago as _that_?"

"As what? I don't know whether it was long ago or not. It's only a notion,
but sometimes it seems just as real as if it was true. Do I bother you
with talking about it?"

"Not in the least. Did you make up anything else?"

"Yes, but it's nonsense." Charlie flushed a little.

"Never mind; let's hear about it."

"Well, I was thinking over the story, and after awhile I got out of bed
and wrote down on a piece of paper the sort of stuff the men might be
supposed to scratch on their oars with the edges of their handcuffs. It
seemed to make the thing more lifelike. It _is_ so real to me, y'know."

"Have you the paper on you?"

"Ye-es, but what's the use of showing it? It's only a lot of scratches.
All the same, we might have 'em reproduced in the book on the front page."

"I'll attend to those details. Show me what your men wrote."

He pulled out of his pocket a sheet of note-paper, with a single line of
scratches upon it, and I put this carefully away.

"What is it supposed to mean in English?" I said.

"Oh, I don't know. Perhaps it means 'I'm beastly tired.' It's great
nonsense," he repeated, "but all those men in the ship seem as real as
people to me. Do do something to the notion soon; I should like to see it
written and printed."

"But all you've told me would make a long book."

"Make it then. You've only to sit down and write it out."

"Give me a little time. Have you any more notions?"

"Not just now. I'm reading all the books I've bought. They're splendid."

When he had left I looked at the sheet of note-paper with the inscription
upon it. Then I took my head tenderly between both hands, to make certain
that it was not coming off or turning round. Then ... but there seemed to
be no interval between quitting my rooms and finding myself arguing with a
policeman outside a door marked _Private_ in a corridor of the British
Museum. All I demanded, as politely as possible, was "the Greek antiquity
man." The policeman knew nothing except the rules of the Museum, and it
became necessary to forage through all the houses and offices inside the
gates. An elderly gentleman called away from his lunch put an end to my
search by holding the note-paper between finger and thumb and sniffing at
it scornfully.

"What does this mean? H'mm," said he. "So far as I can ascertain it is an
attempt to write extremely corrupt Greek on the part"--here he glared at
me with intention--"of an extremely illiterate--ah--person." He read
slowly from the paper, "_Pollock, Erckmann, Tauchnitz, Henniker_"--four
names familiar to me.

"Can you tell me what the corruption is supposed to mean--the gist of the
thing?" I asked.

"I have been--many times--overcome with weariness in this particular
employment. That is the meaning." He returned me the paper, and I fled
without a word of thanks, explanation, or apology.

I might have been excused for forgetting much. To me of all men had been
given the chance to write the most marvelous tale in the world, nothing
less than the story of a Greek galley-slave, as told by himself. Small
wonder that his dreaming had seemed real to Charlie. The Fates that are so
careful to shut the doors of each successive life behind us had, in this
case, been neglectful, and Charlie was looking, though that he did not
know, where never man had been permitted to look with full knowledge since
Time began. Above all, he was absolutely ignorant of the knowledge sold to
me for five pounds; and he would retain that ignorance, for bank-clerks do
not understand metempsychosis, and a sound commercial education does not
include Greek. He would supply me--here I capered among the dumb gods of
Egypt and laughed in their battered faces--with material to make my tale
sure--so sure that the world would hail it as an impudent and vamped
fiction. And I--I alone would know that it was absolutely and literally
true. I--I alone held this jewel to my hand for the cutting and polishing.
Therefore I danced again among the gods till a policeman saw me and took
steps in my direction.

It remained now only to encourage Charlie to talk, and here there was no
difficulty. But I had forgotten those accursed books of poetry. He came to
me time after time, as useless as a surcharged phonograph--drunk on Byron,
Shelley, or Keats. Knowing now what the boy had been in his past lives,
and desperately anxious not to lose one word of his babble, I could not
hide from him my respect and interest. He misconstrued both into respect
for the present soul of Charlie Mears, to whom life was as new as it was
to Adam, and interest in his readings; and stretched my patience to
breaking point by reciting poetry--not his own now, but that of others. I
wished every English poet blotted out of the memory of mankind. I
blasphemed the mightiest names of song because they had drawn Charlie from
the path of direct narrative, and would, later, spur him to imitate them;
but I choked down my impatience until the first flood of enthusiasm should
have spent itself and the boy returned to his dreams.

"What's the use of my telling you what _I_ think, when these chaps wrote
things for the angels to read?" he growled, one evening. "Why don't you
write something like theirs?"

"I don't think you're treating me quite fairly," I said, speaking under
strong restraint.

"I've given you the story," he said, shortly, replunging into "Lara."

"But I want the details."

"The things I make up about that damned ship that you call a galley?
They're quite easy. You can just make 'em up yourself. Turn up the gas a
little, I want to go on reading."

I could have broken the gas globe over his head for his amazing stupidity.
I could indeed make up things for myself did I only know what Charlie did
not know that he knew. But since the doors were shut behind me I could
only wait his youthful pleasure and strive to keep him in good temper. One
minute's want of guard might spoil a priceless revelation; now and again
he would toss his books aside--he kept them in my rooms, for his mother
would have been shocked at the waste of good money had she seen them--and
launched into his sea dreams. Again I cursed all the poets of England. The
plastic mind of the bank-clerk had been overlaid, colored and distorted by
that which he had read, and the result as delivered was a confused tangle
of other voices most like the muttered song through a City telephone in
the busiest part of the day.

He talked of the galley--his own galley had he but known it--with
illustrations borrowed from the "Bride of Abydos." He pointed the
experiences of his hero with quotations from "The Corsair," and threw in
deep and desperate moral reflections from "Cain" and "Manfred," expecting
me to use them all. Only when the talk turned on Longfellow were the
jarring cross-currents dumb, and I knew that Charlie was speaking the
truth as he remembered it.

"What do you think of this?" I said one evening, as soon as I understood
the medium in which his memory worked best, and, before he could
expostulate, read him the whole of "The Saga of King Olaf!"

He listened open-mouthed, flushed, his hands drumming on the back of the
sofa where he lay, till I came to the Song of Einar Tamberskelver and the
verse:

  "Einar then, the arrow taking
     From the loosened string,
   Answered: 'That was Norway breaking
     'Neath thy hand, O King.'"

He gasped with pure delight of sound.

"That's better than Byron, a little," I ventured.

"Better? Why it's _true!_ How could he have known?"

I went back and repeated:

  "What was that?' said Olaf, standing
     On the quarter-deck,
   'Something heard I like the stranding
     Of a shattered wreck?'"

"How could he have known how the ships crash and the oars rip out and go
_z-zzp_ all along the line? Why only the other night.... But go back
please and read 'The Skerry of Shrieks' again."

"No, I'm tired. Let's talk. What happened the other night?"

"I had an awful nightmare about that galley of ours. I dreamed I was
drowned in a fight. You see we ran alongside another ship in harbor. The
water was dead still except where our oars whipped it up. You know where I
always sit in the galley?" He spoke haltingly at first, under a fine
English fear of being laughed at.

"No. That's news to me," I answered, meekly, my heart beginning to beat.

"On the fourth oar from the bow on the right side on the upper deck. There
were four of us at that oar, all chained. I remember watching the water
and trying to get my handcuffs off before the row began. Then we closed up
on the other ship, and all their fighting men jumped over our bulwarks,
and my bench broke and I was pinned down with the three other fellows on
top of me, and the big oar jammed across our backs."

"Well?" Charlie's eyes were alive and alight. He was looking at the wall
behind my chair.

"I don't know how we fought. The men were trampling all over my back, and
I lay low. Then our rowers on the left side--tied to their oars, you
know--began to yell and back water. I could hear the water sizzle, and we
spun round like a cockchafer and I knew, lying where I was, that there was
a galley coming up bow-on, to ram us on the left side. I could just lift
up my head and see her sail over the bulwarks. We wanted to meet her bow
to bow, but it was too late. We could only turn a little bit because the
galley on our right had hooked herself on to us and stopped our moving.
Then, by gum! there was a crash! Our left oars began to break as the other
galley, the moving one y'know, stuck her nose into them. Then the
lower-deck oars shot up through the deck planking, butt first, and one of
them jumped clean up into the air and came down again close to my head."

"How was that managed?"

"The moving galley's bow was plunking them back through their own
oar-holes, and I could hear the devil of a shindy in the decks below. Then
her nose caught us nearly in the middle, and we tilted sideways, and the
fellows in the right-hand galley unhitched their hooks and ropes, and
threw things on to our upper deck--arrows, and hot pitch or something that
stung, and we went up and up and up on the left side, and the right side
dipped, and I twisted my head round and saw the water stand still as it
topped the right bulwarks, and then it curled over and crashed down on the
whole lot of us on the right side, and I felt it hit my back, and I woke."

"One minute, Charlie. When the sea topped the bulwarks, what did it look
like?" I had my reasons for asking. A man of my acquaintance had once gone
down with a leaking ship in a still sea, and had seen the water-level
pause for an instant ere it fell on the deck.

"It looked just like a banjo-string drawn tight, and it seemed to stay
there for years," said Charlie.

Exactly! The other man had said: "It looked like a silver wire laid down
along the bulwarks, and I thought it was never going to break." He had
paid everything except the bare life for this little valueless piece of
knowledge, and I had traveled ten thousand weary miles to meet him and
take his knowledge at second hand. But Charlie, the bank-clerk on
twenty-five shillings a week, he who had never been out of sight of a
London omnibus, knew it all. It was no consolation to me that once in his
lives he had been forced to die for his gains. I also must have died
scores of times, but behind me, because I could have used my knowledge,
the doors were shut.

"And then?" I said, trying to put away the devil of envy.

"The funny thing was, though, in all the mess I didn't feel a bit
astonished or frightened. It seemed as if I'd been in a good many fights,
because I told my next man so when the row began. But that cad of an
overseer on my deck wouldn't unloose our chains and give us a chance. He
always said that we'd all be set free after a battle, but we never were;
we never were." Charlie shook his head mournfully.

"What a scoundrel!"

"I should say he was. He never gave us enough to eat, and sometimes we
were so thirsty that we used to drink salt-water. I can taste that
salt-water still."

"Now tell me something about the harbor where the fight was fought."

"I didn't dream about that. I know it was a harbor, though; because we
were tied up to a ring on a white wall and all the face of the stone under
water was covered with wood to prevent our ram getting chipped when the
tide made us rock."

"That's curious. Our hero commanded the galley, didn't he?"

"Didn't he just! He stood by the bows and shouted like a good 'un. He was
the man who killed the overseer."

"But you were all drowned together, Charlie, weren't you?"

"I can't make that fit quite," he said, with a puzzled look. "The galley
must have gone down with all hands, and yet I fancy that the hero went on
living afterward. Perhaps he climbed into the attacking ship. I wouldn't
see that, of course. I was dead, you know." He shivered slightly and
protested that he could remember no more.

I did not press him further, but to satisfy myself that he lay in
ignorance of the workings of his own mind, deliberately introduced him to
Mortimer Collins's "Transmigration," and gave him a sketch of the plot
before he opened the pages.

"What rot it all is!" he said, frankly, at the end of an hour. "I don't
understand his nonsense about the Red Planet Mars and the King, and the
rest of it. Chuck me the Longfellow again."

I handed him the book and wrote out as much as I could remember of his
description of the sea-fight, appealing to him from time to time for
confirmation of fact or detail. He would answer without raising his eyes
from the book, as assuredly as though all his knowledge lay before him on
the printed page. I spoke under the normal key of my voice that the
current might not be broken, and I know that he was not aware of what he
was saying, for his thoughts were out on the sea with Longfellow.

"Charlie," I asked, "when the rowers on the gallies mutinied how did they
kill their overseers?"

"Tore up the benches and brained 'em. That happened when a heavy sea was
running. An overseer on the lower deck slipped from the centre plank and
fell among the rowers. They choked him to death against the side of the
ship with their chained hands quite quietly, and it was too dark for the
other overseer to see what had happened. When he asked, he was pulled down
too and choked, and the lower deck fought their way up deck by deck, with
the pieces of the broken benches banging behind 'em. How they howled!"

"And what happened after that?"

"I don't know. The hero went away--red hair and red beard and all. That
was after he had captured our galley, I think."

The sound of my voice irritated him, and he motioned slightly with his
left hand as a man does when interruption jars.

"You never told me he was red-headed before, or that he captured your
galley," I said, after a discreet interval.

Charlie did not raise his eyes.

"He was as red as a red bear," said he, abstractedly. "He came from the
north; they said so in the galley when he looked for rowers--not slaves,
but free men. Afterward--years and years afterward--news came from another
ship, or else he came back"--

His lips moved in silence. He was rapturously retasting some poem before
him.

"Where had he been, then?" I was almost whispering that the sentence might
come gentle to whichever section of Charlie's brain was working on my
behalf.

"To the Beaches--the Long and Wonderful Beaches!" was the reply, after a
minute of silence.

"To Furdurstrandi?" I asked, tingling from head to foot.

"Yes, to Furdurstrandi," he pronounced the word in a new fashion. "And I
too saw"----The voice failed.

"Do you know what you have said?" I shouted, incautiously.

He lifted his eyes, fully roused now, "No!" he snapped. "I wish you'd let
a chap go on reading. Hark to this:

  "'But Othere, the old sea captain,
   He neither paused nor stirred
     Till the king listened, and then
     Once more took up his pen
   And wrote down every word,

  "'And to the King of the Saxons
   In witness of the truth,
     Raising his noble head,
     He stretched his brown hand and said,
   "Behold this walrus tooth."'

By Jove, what chaps those must have been, to go sailing all over the shop
never knowing where they'd fetch the land! Hah!"

"Charlie," I pleaded, "if you'll only be sensible for a minute or two I'll
make our hero in our tale every inch as good as Othere."

"Umph! Longfellow wrote that poem. I don't care about writing things any
more. I want to read." He was thoroughly out of tune now, and raging over
my own ill-luck, I left him.

Conceive yourself at the door of the world's treasure-house guarded by a
child--an idle irresponsible child playing knuckle-bones--on whose favor
depends the gift of the key, and you will imagine one half my torment.
Till that evening Charlie had spoken nothing that might not lie within the
experiences of a Greek galley-slave. But now, or there was no virtue in
books, he had talked of some desperate adventure of the Vikings, of
Thorfin Karlsefne's sailing to Wineland, which is America, in the ninth or
tenth century. The battle in the harbor he had seen; and his own death he
had described. But this was a much more startling plunge into the past.
Was it possible that he had skipped half a dozen lives and was then dimly
remembering some episode of a thousand years later? It was a maddening
jumble, and the worst of it was that Charlie Mears in his normal condition
was the last person in the world to clear it up. I could only wait and
watch, but I went to bed that night full of the wildest imaginings. There
was nothing that was not possible if Charlie's detestable memory only held
good.

I might rewrite the Saga of Thorfin Karlsefne as it had never been written
before, might tell the story of the first discovery of America, myself the
discoverer. But I was entirely at Charlie's mercy, and so long as there
was a three-and-six-penny Bohn volume within his reach Charlie would not
tell. I dared not curse him openly; I hardly dared jog his memory, for I
was dealing with the experiences of a thousand years ago, told through the
mouth of a boy of to-day; and a boy of to-day is affected by every change
of tone and gust of opinion, so that he lies even when he desires to speak
the truth.

I saw no more of him for nearly a week. When next I met him it was in
Gracechurch Street with a billhook chained to his waist. Business took him
over London Bridge and I accompanied him. He was very full of the
importance of that book and magnified it. As we passed over the Thames we
paused to look at a steamer unloading great slabs of white and brown
marble. A barge drifted under the steamer's stern and a lonely cow in that
barge bellowed. Charlie's face changed from the face of the bank-clerk to
that of an unknown and--though he would not have believed this--a much
shrewder man. He flung out his arm across the parapet of the bridge and
laughing very loudly, said:

"When they heard _our_ bulls bellow the Skroelings ran away!"

I waited only for an instant, but the barge and the cow had disappeared
under the bows of the steamer before I answered.

"Charlie, what do you suppose are Skroelings?"

"Never heard of 'em before. They sound like a new kind of seagull. What a
chap you are for asking questions!" he replied. "I have to go to the
cashier of the Omnibus Company yonder. Will you wait for me and we can
lunch somewhere together? I've a notion for a poem."

"No, thanks. I'm off. You're sure you know nothing about Skroelings?"

"Not unless he's been entered for the Liverpool Handicap." He nodded and
disappeared in the crowd.

Now it is written in the Saga of Eric the Red or that of Thorfin
Karlsefne, that nine hundred years ago when Karlsefne's galleys came to
Leif's booths, which Leif had erected in the unknown land called Markland,
which may or may not have been Rhode Island, the Skroelings--and the Lord
He knows who these may or may not have been--came to trade with the
Vikings, and ran away because they were frightened at the bellowing of the
cattle which Thorfin had brought with him in the ships. But what in the
world could a Greek slave know of that affair? I wandered up and down
among the streets trying to unravel the mystery, and the more I considered
it, the more baffling it grew. One thing only seemed certain, and that
certainty took away my breath for the moment. If I came to full knowledge
of anything at all it would not be one life of the soul in Charlie Mears's
body, but half a dozen--half a dozen several and separate existences spent
on blue water in the morning of the world!

Then I walked round the situation.

Obviously if I used my knowledge I should stand alone and unapproachable
until all men were as wise as myself. That would be something, but manlike
I was ungrateful. It seemed bitterly unfair that Charlie's memory should
fail me when I needed it most. Great Powers above--I looked up at them
through the fog smoke--did the Lords of Life and Death know what this
meant to me? Nothing less than eternal fame of the best kind, that comes
from One, and is shared by one alone. I would be content--remembering
Clive, I stood astounded at my own moderation,--with the mere right to
tell one story, to work out one little contribution to the light
literature of the day. If Charlie were permitted full recollection for one
hour--for sixty short minutes--of existences that had extended over a
thousand years--I would forego all profit and honor from all that I should
make of his speech. I would take no share in the commotion that would
follow throughout the particular corner of the earth that calls itself
"the world." The thing should be put forth anonymously. Nay, I would make
other men believe that they had written it. They would hire bull-hided
self-advertising Englishmen to bellow it abroad. Preachers would found a
fresh conduct of life upon it, swearing that it was new and that they had
lifted the fear of death from all mankind. Every Orientalist in Europe
would patronize it discursively with Sanskrit and Pali texts. Terrible
women would invent unclean variants of the men's belief for the elevation
of their sisters. Churches and religions would war over it. Between the
hailing and re-starting of an omnibus I foresaw the scuffles that would
arise among half a dozen denominations all professing "the doctrine of the
True Metempsychosis as applied to the world and the New Era"; and saw,
too, the respectable English newspapers shying, like frightened kine, over
the beautiful simplicity of the tale. The mind leaped forward a
hundred--two hundred--a thousand years. I saw with sorrow that men would
mutilate and garble the story; that rival creeds would turn it upside down
till, at last, the western world which clings to the dread of death more
closely than the hope of life, would set it aside as an interesting
superstition and stampede after some faith so long forgotten that it
seemed altogether new. Upon this I changed the terms of the bargain that I
would make with the Lords of Life and Death. Only let me know, let me
write, the story with sure knowledge that I wrote the truth, and I would
burn the manuscript as a solemn sacrifice. Five minutes after the last
line was written I would destroy it all. But I must be allowed to write it
with absolute certainty.

There was no answer. The flaming colors of an Aquarium poster caught my
eye and I wondered whether it would be wise or prudent to lure Charlie
into the hands of the professional mesmerist, and whether, if he were
under his power, he would speak of his past lives. If he did, and if
people believed him ... but Charlie would be frightened and flustered, or
made conceited by the interviews. In either case he would begin to lie,
through fear or vanity. He was safest in my own hands.

"They are very funny fools, your English," said a voice at my elbow, and
turning round I recognized a casual acquaintance, a young Bengali law
student, called Grish Chunder, whose father had sent him to England to
become civilized. The old man was a retired native official, and on an
income of five pounds a month contrived to allow his son two hundred
pounds a year, and the run of his teeth in a city where he could pretend
to be the cadet of a royal house, and tell stories of the brutal Indian
bureaucrats who ground the faces of the poor.

Grish Chunder was a young, fat, full-bodied Bengali dressed with
scrupulous care in frock coat, tall hat, light trousers and tan gloves.
But I had known him in the days when the brutal Indian Government paid for
his university education, and he contributed cheap sedition to _Sachi
Durpan_, and intrigued with the wives of his schoolmates.

"That is very funny and very foolish," he said, nodding at the poster. "I
am going down to the Northbrook Club. Will you come too?"

I walked with him for some time. "You are not well," he said. "What is
there in your mind? You do not talk."

"Grish Chunder, you've been too well educated to believe in a God, haven't
you?"

"Oah, yes, _here!_ But when I go home I must conciliate popular
superstition, and make ceremonies of purification, and my women will
anoint idols."

"And hang up _tulsi_ and feast the _purohit_, and take you back into caste
again and make a good _khuttri_ of you again, you advanced social
Free-thinker. And you'll eat _desi_ food, and like it all, from the smell
in the courtyard to the mustard oil over you."

"I shall very much like it," said Grish Chunder, unguardedly. "Once a
Hindu--always a Hindu. But I like to know what the English think they
know."

"I'll tell you something that one Englishman knows. It's an old tale to
you."

I began to tell the story of Charlie in English, but Grish Chunder put a
question in the vernacular, and the history went forward naturally in the
tongue best suited for its telling. After all it could never have been
told in English. Grish Chunder heard me, nodding from time to time, and
then came up to my rooms where I finished the tale.

"_Beshak_," he said, philosophically. "_Lekin darwaza band hai_. (Without
doubt, but the door is shut.) I have heard of this remembering of previous
existences among my people. It is of course an old tale with us, but, to
happen to an Englishman--a cow-fed _Malechh_--an outcast. By Jove, that is
most peculiar!"

"Outcast yourself, Grish Chunder! You eat cow-beef every day. Let's think
the thing over. The boy remembers his incarnations."

"Does he know that?" said Grish Chunder, quietly, swinging his legs as he
sat on my table. He was speaking in English now.

"He does not know anything. Would I speak to you if he did? Go on!"

"There is no going on at all. If you tell that to your friends they will
say you are mad and put it in the papers. Suppose, now, you prosecute for
libel."

"Let's leave that out of the question entirely. Is there any chance of his
being made to speak?"

"There is a chance. Oah, yess! But _if_ he spoke it would mean that all
this world would end now--_instanto_--fall down on your head. These things
are not allowed, you know. As I said, the door is shut."

"Not a ghost of a chance?"

"How can there be? You are a Christian, and it is forbidden to eat, in
your books, of the Tree of Life, or else you would never die. How shall
you all fear death if you all know what your friend does not know that he
knows? I am afraid to be kicked, but I am not afraid to die, because I
know what I know. You are not afraid to be kicked, but you are afraid to
die. If you were not, by God! you English would be all over the shop in an
hour, upsetting the balances of power, and making commotions. It would not
be good. But no fear. He will remember a little and a little less, and he
will call it dreams. Then he will forget altogether. When I passed my
First Arts Examination in Calcutta that was all in the cram-book on
Wordsworth. Trailing clouds of glory, you know."

"This seems to be an exception to the rule."

"There are no exceptions to rules. Some are not so hard-looking as others,
but they are all the same when you touch. If this friend of yours said
so-and-so and so-and-so, indicating that he remembered all his lost lives,
or one piece of a lost life, he would not be in the bank another hour. He
would be what you called sack because he was mad, and they would send him
to an asylum for lunatics. You can see that, my friend."

"Of course I can, but I wasn't thinking of him. His name need never appear
in the story."

"Ah! I see. That story will never be written. You can try."

"I am going to."

"For your own credit and for the sake of money, _of_ course?"

"No. For the sake of writing the story. On my honor that will be all."

"Even then there is no chance. You cannot play with the Gods. It is a very
pretty story now. As they say, Let it go on that--I mean at that. Be
quick; he will not last long."

"How do you mean?"

"What I say. He has never, so far, thought about a woman."

"Hasn't he, though!" I remembered some of Charlie's confidences.

"I mean no woman has thought about him. When that comes;
_bus_--_hogya_--all up! I know. There are millions of women here.
Housemaids, for instance."

I winced at the thought of my story being ruined by a housemaid. And yet
nothing was more probable.

Grish Chunder grinned.

"Yes--also pretty girls--cousins of his house, and perhaps _not_ of his
house. One kiss that he gives back again and remembers will cure all this
nonsense, or else"--

"Or else what? Remember he does not know that he knows."

"I know that. Or else, if nothing happens he will become immersed in the
trade and the financial speculations like the rest. It must be so. You can
see that it must be so. But the woman will come first, _I_ think."

There was a rap at the door, and Charlie charged in impetuously. He had
been released from office, and by the look in his eyes I could see that he
had come over for a long talk; most probably with poems in his pockets.
Charlie's poems were very wearying, but sometimes they led him to talk
about the galley.

Grish Chunder looked at him keenly for a minute.

"I beg your pardon," Charlie said, uneasily; "I didn't know you had any
one with you."

"I am going," said Grish Chunder.

He drew me into the lobby as he departed.

"That is your man," he said, quickly. "I tell you he will never speak all
you wish. That is rot--bosh. But he would be most good to make to see
things. Suppose now we pretend that it was only play"--I had never seen
Grish Chunder so excited--"and pour the ink-pool into his hand. Eh, what
do you think? I tell you that he could see _anything_ that a man could
see. Let me get the ink and the camphor. He is a seer and he will tell us
very many things."

"He may be all you say, but I'm not going to trust him to your gods and
devils."

"It will not hurt him. He will only feel a little stupid and dull when he
wakes up. You have seen boys look into the ink-pool before."

"That is the reason why I am not going to see it any more. You'd better
go, Grish Chunder."

He went, declaring far down the staircase that it was throwing away my
only chance of looking into the future.

This left me unmoved, for I was concerned for the past, and no peering of
hypnotized boys into mirrors and ink-pools would help me to that. But I
recognized Grish Chunder's point of view and sympathized with it.

"What a big black brute that was!" said Charlie, when I returned to him.
"Well, look here, I've just done a poem; did it instead of playing
dominoes after lunch. May I read it?"

"Let me read it to myself."

"Then you miss the proper expression. Besides, you always make my things
sound as if the rhymes were all wrong."

"Read it aloud, then. You're like the rest of 'em."

Charlie mouthed me his poem, and it was not much worse than the average of
his verses. He had been reading his books faithfully, but he was not
pleased when I told him that I preferred my Longfellow undiluted with
Charlie.

Then we began to go through the MS. line by line; Charlie parrying every
objection and correction with:

"Yes, that may be better, but you don't catch what I'm driving at."

Charles was, in one way at least, very like one kind of poet.

There was a pencil scrawl at the back of the paper and "What's that?" I
said.

"Oh that's not poetry at all. It's some rot I wrote last night before I
went to bed and it was too much bother to hunt for rhymes; so I made it a
sort of blank verse instead."

Here is Charlie's "blank verse":

   "We pulled for you when the wind was against us and the sails were low.
  _Will you never let us go?_

   We ate bread and onions when you took towns or ran aboard quickly when
you were beaten back by the foe,
   The captains walked up and down the deck in fair weather singing songs,
but we were below,
   We fainted with our chins on the oars and you did not see that we were
idle for we still swung to and fro.
  _Will you never let us go?_

  The salt made the oar bandies like sharkskin; our knees were cut to the
bone with salt cracks; our hair was stuck to our foreheads; and our lips
were cut to our gums and you whipped us because we could not row,
  _Will you never let us go?_

  But in a little time we shall run out of the portholes as the water runs
along the oarblade, and though you tell the others to row after us you
will never catch us till you catch the oar-thresh and tie up the winds in
the belly of the sail. Aho!
  _Will you never let us go?_"

"H'm. What's oar-thresh, Charlie?"

"The water washed up by the oars. That's the sort of song they might sing
in the galley, y'know. Aren't you ever going to finish that story and give
me some of the profits?"

"It depends on yourself. If you had only told me more about your hero in
the first instance it might have been finished by now. You're so hazy in
your notions."

"I only want to give you the general notion of it--the knocking about from
place to place and the fighting and all that. Can't you fill in the rest
yourself? Make the hero save a girl on a pirate-galley and marry her or do
something."

"You're a really helpful collaborator. I suppose the hero went through
some few adventures before he married."

"Well then, make him a very artful card--a low sort of man--a sort of
political man who went about making treaties and breaking them--a
black-haired chap who hid behind the mast when the fighting began."

"But you said the other day that he was red-haired."

"I couldn't have. Make him black-haired of course. You've no imagination."

Seeing that I had just discovered the entire principles upon which the
half-memory falsely called imagination is based, I felt entitled to laugh,
but forbore, for the sake of the tale.

"You're right. _You're_ the man with imagination. A black-haired chap in a
decked ship," I said.

"No, an open ship--like a big boat."

This was maddening.

"Your ship has been built and designed, closed and decked in; you said so
yourself," I protested.

"No, no, not that ship. That was open, or half decked because--By Jove
you're right. You made me think of the hero as a red-haired chap. Of course
if he were red, the ship would be an open one with painted sails."

Surely, I thought, he would remember now that he had served in two galleys
at least--in a three-decked Greek one under the black-haired "political
man," and again in a Viking's open sea-serpent under the man "red as a red
bear" who went to Markland. The devil prompted me to speak.

"Why, 'of course,' Charlie?" said I.

"I don't know. Are you making fun of me?"

The current was broken for the time being. I took up a notebook and
pretended to make many entries in it.

"It's a pleasure to work with an imaginative chap like yourself," I said,
after a pause. "The way that you've brought out the character of the hero
is simply wonderful."

"Do you think so?" he answered, with a pleased flush. "I often tell myself
that there's more in me than my mo--than people think."

"There's an enormous amount in you."

"Then, won't you let me send an essay on The Ways of Bank Clerks to
_Tit-Bits_, and get the guinea prize?"

"That wasn't exactly what I meant, old fellow; perhaps it would be better
to wait a little and go ahead with the galley-story."

"Ah, but I sha'n't get the credit of that. _Tit-Bits_ would publish my
name and address if I win. What are you grinning at? They _would_."

"I know it. Suppose you go for a walk. I want to look through my notes
about our story."

Now this reprehensible youth who left me, a little hurt and put back,
might for aught he or I knew have been one of the crew of the _Argo_--had
been certainly slave or comrade to Thorfin Karlsefne. Therefore he was
deeply interested in guinea competitions. Remembering what Grish Chunder
had said I laughed aloud. The Lords of Life and Death would never allow
Charlie Mears to speak with full knowledge of his pasts, and I must even
piece out what he had told me with my own poor inventions while Charlie
wrote of the ways of bank clerks.

I got together and placed on one file all my notes; and the net result was
not cheering. I read them a second time. There was nothing that might not
have been compiled at secondhand from other people's books--except,
perhaps, the story of the fight in the harbor. The adventures of a Viking
had been written many times before; the history of a Greek galley-slave
was no new thing, and though I wrote both, who could challenge or confirm
the accuracy of my details? I might as well tell a tale of two thousand
years hence. The Lords of Life and Death were as cunning as Grish Chunder
had hinted. They would allow nothing to escape that might trouble or make
easy the minds of men. Though I was convinced of this, yet I could not
leave the tale alone. Exaltation followed reaction, not once, but twenty
times in the next few weeks. My moods varied with the March sunlight and
flying clouds. By night or in the beauty of a spring morning I perceived
that I could write that tale and shift continents thereby. In the wet,
windy afternoons, I saw that the tale might indeed be written, but would
be nothing more than a faked, false-varnished, sham-rusted piece of
Wardour Street work at the end. Then I blessed Charlie in many
ways--though it was no fault of his. He seemed to be busy with prize
competitions, and I saw less and less of him as the weeks went by and the
earth cracked and grew ripe to spring, and the buds swelled in their
sheaths. He did not care to read or talk of what he had read, and there
was a new ring of self-assertion in his voice. I hardly cared to remind
him of the galley when we met; but Charlie alluded to it on every
occasion, always as a story from which money was to be made.

"I think I deserve twenty-five per cent., don't I, at least," he said,
with beautiful frankness. "I supplied all the ideas, didn't I?"

This greediness for silver was a new side in his nature. I assumed that it
had been developed in the City, where Charlie was picking up the curious
nasal drawl of the underbred City man.

"When the thing's done we'll talk about it. I can't make anything of it at
present. Red-haired or black-haired hero are equally difficult."

He was sitting by the fire staring at the red coals. "I can't understand
what you find so difficult. It's all as clear as mud to me," he replied. A
jet of gas puffed out between the bars, took light and whistled softly.
"Suppose we take the red-haired hero's adventures first, from the time
that he came south to my galley and captured it and sailed to the
Beaches."

I knew better now than to interrupt Charlie. I was out of reach of pen and
paper, and dared not move to get them lest I should break the current. The
gas-jet puffed and whinnied, Charlie's voice dropped almost to a whisper,
and he told a tale of the sailing of an open galley to Furdurstrandi, of
sunsets on the open sea, seen under the curve of the one sail evening
after evening when the galley's beak was notched into the centre of the
sinking disc, and "we sailed by that for we had no other guide," quoth
Charlie. He spoke of a landing on an island and explorations in its woods,
where the crew killed three men whom they found asleep under the pines.
Their ghosts, Charlie said, followed the galley, swimming and choking in
the water, and the crew cast lots and threw one of their number overboard
as a sacrifice to the strange gods whom they had offended. Then they ate
sea-weed when their provisions failed, and their legs swelled, and their
leader, the red-haired man, killed two rowers who mutinied, and after a
year spent among the woods they set sail for their own country, and a wind
that never failed carried them back so safely that they all slept at
night. This, and much more Charlie told. Sometimes the voice fell so low
that I could not catch the words, though every nerve was on the strain. He
spoke of their leader, the red-haired man, as a pagan speaks of his God;
for it was he who cheered them and slew them impartially as he thought
best for their needs; and it was he who steered them for three days among
floating ice, each floe crowded with strange beasts that "tried to sail
with us," said Charlie, "and we beat them back with the handles of the
oars."

The gas-jet went out, a burned coal gave way, and the fire settled down
with a tiny crash to the bottom of the grate. Charlie ceased speaking, and
I said no word.

"By Jove!" he said, at last, shaking his head. "I've been staring at the
fire till I'm dizzy. What was I going to say?"

"Something about the galley."

"I remember now. It's 25 per cent. of the profits, isn't it?"

"It's anything you like when I've done the tale."

"I wanted to be sure of that. I must go now. I've--I've an appointment."
And he left me.

Had my eyes not been held I might have known that that broken muttering
over the fire was the swan-song of Charlie Mears. But I thought it the
prelude to fuller revelation. At last and at last I should cheat the Lords
of Life and Death!

When next Charlie came to me I received him with rapture. He was nervous
and embarrassed, but his eyes were very full of light, and his lips a
little parted.

"I've done a poem," he said; and then, quickly: "it's the best I've ever
done. Read it." He thrust it into my hand and retreated to the window.

I groaned inwardly. It would be the work of half an hour to
criticise--that is to say praise--the poem sufficiently to please Charlie.
Then I had good reason to groan, for Charlie, discarding his favorite
centipede metres, had launched into shorter and choppier verse, and verse
with a motive at the back of it. This is what I read:

  "The day is most fair, the cheery wind
     Halloos behind the hill,
   Where he bends the wood as seemeth good,
     And the sapling to his will!
   Riot O wind; there is that in my blood
     That would not have thee still!

  "She gave me herself, O Earth, O Sky;
     Grey sea, she is mine alone!
   Let the sullen boulders hear my cry,
     And rejoice tho' they be but stone!

  "Mine! I have won her O good brown earth,
     Make merry! 'Tis hard on Spring;
   Make merry; my love is doubly worth
     All worship your fields can bring!
   Let the hind that tills you feel my mirth
     At the early harrowing."

"Yes, it's the early harrowing, past a doubt," I said, with a dread at my
heart, Charlie smiled, but did not answer.

  "Red cloud of the sunset, tell it abroad;
     I am victor. Greet me O Sun,
   Dominant master and absolute lord
     Over the soul of one!"

"Well?" said Charlie, looking over my shoulder.

I thought it far from well, and very evil indeed, when he silently laid a
photograph on the paper--the photograph of a girl with a curly head, and a
foolish slack mouth.

"Isn't it--isn't it wonderful?" he whispered, pink to the tips of his
ears, wrapped in the rosy mystery of first love. "I didn't know; I didn't
think--it came like a thunderclap."

"Yes. It comes like a thunderclap. Are you very happy, Charlie?"

"My God--she--she loves me!" He sat down repeating the last words to
himself. I looked at the hairless face, the narrow shoulders already bowed
by desk-work, and wondered when, where, and how he had loved in his past
lives.

"What will your mother say?" I asked, cheerfully.

"I don't care a damn what she says."

At twenty the things for which one does not care a damn should, properly,
be many, but one must not include mothers in the list. I told him this
gently; and he described Her, even as Adam must have described to the
newly named beasts the glory and tenderness and beauty of Eve.
Incidentally I learned that She was a tobacconist's assistant with a
weakness for pretty dress, and had told him four or five times already
that She had never been kissed by a man before.

Charlie spoke on and on, and on; while I, separated from him by thousands
of years, was considering the beginnings of things. Now I understood why
the Lords of Life and Death shut the doors so carefully behind us. It is
that we may not remember our first wooings. Were it not so, our world
would be without inhabitants in a hundred years.

"Now, about that galley-story," I said, still more cheerfully, in a pause
in the rush of the speech.

Charlie looked up as though he had been hit. "The galley--what galley?
Good heavens, don't joke, man! This is serious! You don't know how serious
it is!"

Grish Chunder was right, Charlie had tasted the love of woman that kills
remembrance, and the finest story in the world would never be written.




WITH THE MAIN GUARD

   Der jungere Uhlanen
   Sit round mit open mouth
   While Breitmann tell dem stories
   Of fightin' in the South;
   Und gif dem moral lessons,
   How before der battle pops,
   Take a little prayer to Himmel
   Und a goot long drink of Schnapps.

      _Hans Breitmann's Ballads_.


"Mary, Mother av Mercy, fwhat the divil possist us to take an' kepe this
melancolius counthry? Answer me that, sorr."

It was Mulvaney who was speaking. The time was one o'clock of a stifling
June night, and the place was the main gate of Fort Amara, most desolate
and least desirable of all fortresses in India. What I was doing there at
that hour is a question which only concerns M'Grath the Sergeant of the
Guard, and the men on the gate.

"Slape," said Mulvaney, "is a shuparfluous necessity. This gyard'll shtay
lively till relieved." He himself was stripped to the waist; Learoyd on
the next bedstead was dripping from the skinful of water which Ortheris,
clad only in white trousers, had just sluiced over his shoulders; and a
fourth private was muttering uneasily as he dozed open-mouthed in the
glare of the great guard-lantern. The heat under the bricked archway was
terrifying.

"The worrst night that iver I remimber. Eyah! Is all Hell loose this
tide?" said Mulvaney. A puff of burning wind lashed through the
wicket-gate like a wave of the sea, and Ortheris swore.

"Are ye more heasy, Jock?" he said to Learoyd. "Put yer 'ead between your
legs. It'll go orf in a minute."

"Ah don't care. Ah would not care, but ma heart is plaayin' tivvy-tivvy on
ma ribs. Let me die! Oh, leave me die!" groaned the huge Yorkshireman, who
was feeling the heat acutely, being of fleshly build.

The sleeper under the lantern roused for a moment and raised himself on
his elbow,--"Die and be damned then!" he said. "_I_'m damned and I can't
die!"

"Who's that?" I whispered, for the voice was new to me.

"Gentleman born," said Mulvaney; "Corp'ril wan year, Sargint nex'. Red-hot
on his C'mission, but dhrinks like a fish. He'll be gone before the cowld
weather's here. So!"

He slipped his boot, and with the naked toe just touched the trigger of
his Martini. Ortheris misunderstood the movement, and the next instant the
Irishman's rifle was dashed aside, while Ortheris stood before him, his
eyes blazing with reproof.

"You!" said Ortheris. "My Gawd, _you!_ If it was you, wot would _we_ do?"

"Kape quiet, little man," said Mulvaney, putting him aside, but very
gently; "'tis not me, nor will ut be me whoile Dina Shadd's here. I was
but showin' something."

Learoyd, bowed on his bedstead, groaned, and the gentleman-ranker sighed
in his sleep. Ortheris took Mulvaney's tendered pouch, and we three smoked
gravely for a space while the dust-devils danced on the glacis and scoured
the red-hot plain.

"Pop?" said Ortheris, wiping his forehead.

"Don't tantalize wid talkin' av dhrink, or I'll shtuff you into your own
breech-block an'--fire you off!" grunted Mulvaney.

Ortheris chuckled, and from a niche in the veranda produced six bottles of
ginger ale.

"Where did ye get ut, ye Machiavel?" said Mulvaney. "'Tis no bazar pop."

"'Ow do _Hi_ know wot the Orf'cers drink?" answered Ortheris. "Arst the
mess-man."

"Ye'll have a Disthrict Coort-martial settin' on ye yet, me son," said
Mulvaney, "but"--he opened a bottle--"I will not report ye this time.
Fwhat's in the mess-kid is mint for the belly, as they say, 'specially
whin that mate is dhrink, Here's luck! A bloody war or a--no, we've got
the sickly season. War, thin!"--he waved the innocent "pop" to the four
quarters of Heaven. "Bloody war! North, East, South, an' West! Jock, ye
quakin' hayrick, come an' dhrink."

But Learoyd, half mad with the fear of death presaged in the swelling
veins of his neck, was pegging his Maker to strike him dead, and fighting
for more air between his prayers. A second time Ortheris drenched the
quivering body with water, and the giant revived.

"An' Ah divn't see thot a mon is i' fettle for gooin' on to live; an' Ah
divn't see thot there is owt for t' livin' for. Hear now, lads! Ah'm
tired--tired. There's nobbut watter i' ma bones. Let me die!"

The hollow of the arch gave back Learoyd's broken whisper in a bass boom.
Mulvaney looked at me hopelessly, but I remembered how the madness of
despair had once fallen upon Ortheris, that weary, weary afternoon in the
banks of the Khemi River, and how it had been exorcised by the skilful
magician Mulvaney.

"Talk, Terence!" I said, "or we shall have Learoyd slinging loose, and
he'll be worse than Ortheris was. Talk! He'll answer to your voice."

Almost before Ortheris had deftly thrown all the rifles of the Guard on
Mulvaney's bedstead, the Irishman's voice was uplifted as that of one in
the middle of a story, and, turning to me, he said--

"In barricks or out of it, as _you_ say, sorr, an Oirish rig'mint is the
divil an' more. 'Tis only fit for a young man wid eddicated fistesses. Oh
the crame av disruption is an Oirish rig'mint, an' rippin', tearin',
ragin' scattherers in the field av war! My first rig'mint was
Oirish--Faynians an' rebils to the heart av their marrow was they, an'
_so_ they fought for the Widdy betther than most, bein' contrairy--Oirish.
They was the Black Tyrone. You've heard av thim, sorr?"

Heard of them! I knew the Black Tyrone for the choicest collection of
unmitigated blackguards, dog-stealers, robbers of hen-roosts, assaulters
of innocent citizens, and recklessly daring heroes in the Army List. Half
Europe and half Asia has had cause to know the Black Tyrone--good luck be
with their tattered Colors as Glory has ever been!

"They _was_ hot pickils an' ginger! I cut a man's head tu deep wid my belt
in the days av my youth, an', afther some circumstances which I will
oblitherate, I came to the Ould Rig'mint, bearin' the character av a man
wid hands an' feet. But, as I was goin' to tell you, I fell acrost the
Black Tyrone agin wan day whin we wanted thim powerful bad, Orth'ris, me
son, fwhat was the name av that place where they sint wan comp'ny av us
an' wan av the Tyrone roun' a hill an' down again, all for to tache the
Paythans something they'd niver learned before? Afther Ghuzni 'twas."

"Don't know what the bloomin' Paythans called it. We call it Silver's
Theayter. You know that, sure!"

"Silver's Theatre--so 'twas, A gut betune two hills, as black as a bucket,
an' as thin as a girl's waist. There was over-many Paythans for our
convaynience in the gut, an' begad they called thimselves a Reserve--bein'
impident by natur! Our Scotchies an' lashins av Gurkys was poundin' into
some Paythan rig'mints, I think 'twas. Scotchies an' Gurkys are twins
bekaze they're so onlike, an' they get dhrunk together whin God plazes. As
I was sayin', they sint wan comp'ny av the Ould an wan av the Tyrone to
double up the hill an' clane out the Paythan Reserve. Orf'cers was scarce
in thim days, fwhat with dysintry an' not takin' care av thimselves, an'
we was sint out wid only wan orf'cer for the comp'ny; but he was a Man
that had his feet beneath him, an' all his teeth in their sockuts."

"Who was he?" I asked,

"Captain O'Neil--Old Crook--Cruikna-bulleen--him that I tould ye that tale
av whin he was in Burma.[1] Hah! He was a Man. The Tyrone tuk a little
orf'cer bhoy, but divil a bit was he in command, as I'll dimonstrate
presintly. We an' they came over the brow av the hill, wan on each side av
the gut, an' there was that ondacint Reserve waitin' down below like rats
in a pit.


[Footnote 1:
   Now first of the foemen of Boh Da Thone
   Was Captain O'Neil of the Black Tyrone.
      _The Ballad of Boh Da Thone. _]

"'Howld on, men,' sez Crook, who tuk a mother's care av us always. 'Rowl
some rocks on thim by way av visitin'-kyards.' We hadn't rowled more than
twinty bowlders, an' the Paythans was beginnin' to swear tremenjus, whin
the little orf'cer bhoy av the Tyrone shqueaks out acrost the
valley:--'Fwhat the devil an' all are you doin', shpoilin' the fun for my
men? Do ye not see they'll stand?'

"'Faith, that's a rare pluckt wan!' sez Crook. 'Niver mind the rocks, men.
Come along down an' take tay wid thim!'

"'There's damned little sugar in ut!' sez my rear-rank man; but Crook
heard.

"'Have ye not all got spoons?' he sez, laughin', an' down we wint as fast
as we cud. Learoyd bein' sick at the Base, he, av coorse, was not there."

"Thot's a lie!" said Learoyd, dragging his bedstead nearer. "Ah gotten
_thot_ theer, an' you knaw it, Mulvaney." He threw up his arms, and from
the right arm-pit ran, diagonally through the fell of his chest, a thin
white line terminating near the fourth left rib.

"My mind's goin'," said Mulvaney, the unabashed. "Ye were there. Fwhat I
was thinkin' of! 'Twas another man, av coorse. Well, you'll remimber thin,
Jock, how we an' the Tyrone met wid a bang at the bottom an' got jammed
past all movin' among the Paythans."

"Ow! It _was_ a tight 'ole. I was squeezed till I thought I'd bloomin'
well bust," said Ortheris, rubbing his stomach meditatively,

"'Twas no place for a little man, but _wan_ little man"--Mulvaney put his
hand on Ortheris's shoulder--"saved the life av me. There we shtuck, for
divil a bit did the Paythans flinch, an' divil a bit dare we: our business
bein' to clear 'em out. An' the most exthryordinar' thing av all was that
we an' they just rushed into each other's arrums, an' there was no firing
for a long time. Nothin' but knife an' bay'nit when we cud get our hands
free: an' that was not often. We was breast-on to thim, an' the Tyrone was
yelpin' behind av us in a way I didn't see the lean av at first. But I knew
later, an' so did the Paythans.

"'Knee to knee!' sings out Crook, wid a laugh whin the rush av our comin'
into the gut shtopped, an' he was huggin' a hairy great Paythan, neither
bein' able to do anything to the other, tho' both was wishful.

"'Breast to breast!' he sez, as the Tyrone was pushin' us forward closer
an' closer.

"'An' hand over back!' sez a Sargint that was behin'. I saw a sword lick
out past Crook's ear, an' the Paythan was tuk in the apple av his throat
like a pig at Dromeen fair.

"'Thank ye, Brother Inner Guard,' sez Crook, cool as a cucumber widout
salt. 'I wanted that room.' An' he wint forward by the thickness av a
man's body, havin' turned the Paythan undher him. The man bit the heel off
Crook's boot in his death-bite.

"'Push, men!' sez Crook. 'Push, ye paper-backed beggars!' he sez. 'Am I to
pull ye through?' So we pushed, an' we kicked, an' we swung, an' we swore,
an' the grass bein' slippery, our heels wouldn't bite, an' God help the
front-rank man that wint down that day!"

"'Ave you ever bin in the Pit hentrance o' the Vic. on a thick night?"
interrupted Ortheris. "It was worse nor that, for they was goin' one way
an' we wouldn't 'ave it. Leastaways, I 'adn't much to say."

"Faith, me son, ye said ut, thin. I kep' the little man betune my knees as
long as I cud, but he was pokin' roun' wid his bay'nit, blindin' an'
stiffin' feroshus. The devil of a man is Orth'ris in a ruction--aren't
ye?" said Mulvaney.

"Don't make game!" said the Cockney. "I knowed I wasn't no good then, but
I gev 'em compot from the lef' flank when we opened out. No!" he said,
bringing down his hand with a thump on the bedstead, "a bay'nit ain't no
good to a little man--might as well 'ave a bloomin' fishin'-rod! I 'ate a
clawin', maulin' mess, but gimme a breech that's wore out a bit, an'
hamminition one year in store, to let the powder kiss the bullet, an' put
me somewheres where I ain't trod on by 'ulkin swine like you, an' s'elp me
Gawd, I could bowl you over five times outer seven at height 'undred.
Would yer try, you lumberin' Hirishman."

"No, ye wasp, I've seen ye do ut. I say there's nothin' better than the
bay'nit, wid a long reach, a double twist av ye can, an' a slow recover."

"Dom the bay'nit," said Learoyd, who had been listening intently. "Look
a-here!" He picked up a rifle an inch below the foresight with an
underhand action, and used it exactly as a man would use a dagger.

"Sitha," said he, softly, "thot's better than owt, for a mon can bash t'
faace wi' thot, an', if he divn't, he can breeak t' forearm o' t' gaard,
'Tis not i' t' books, though. Gie me t' butt."

"Each does ut his own way, like makin' love," said Mulvaney, quietly; "the
butt or the bay'nit or the bullet accordin' to the natur' av the man.
Well, as I was sayin', we shtuck there breathin' in each other's faces and
swearin' powerful; Orth'ris cursin' the mother that bore him bekaze he was
not three inches taller.

"Prisintly he sez:--'Duck, ye lump, an' I can get at a man over your
shouldher!'

"'You'll blow me head off,' I sez, throwin' my arm clear; 'go through
under my arm-pit, ye bloodthirsty little scutt,' sez I, 'but don't shtick
me or I'll wring your ears round.'

"Fwhat was ut ye gave the Paythan man for-ninst me, him that cut at me
whin I cudn't move hand or foot? Hot or cowld was ut?"

"Cold," said Ortheris, "up an' under the rib-jint. 'E come down flat. Best
for you 'e did."

"Thrue, my son! This jam thing that I'm talkin' about lasted for five
minutes good, an' thin we got our arms clear an' wint in. I misremimber
exactly fwhat I did, but I didn't want Dinah to be a widdy at the Depôt.
Thin, after some promishkuous hackin' we shtuck again, an' the Tyrone
behin' was callin' us dogs an' cowards an' all manner av names; we barrin'
their way.

"'Fwhat ails the Tyrone?' thinks I; 'they've the makin's av a most
convanient fight here.'

"A man behind me sez beseechful an' in a whisper:--'Let me get at thim!
For the Love av Mary give me room beside ye, ye tall man!"

"'An' who are you that's so anxious to be kilt?' sez I, widout turnin' my
head, for the long knives was dancin' in front like the sun on Donegal Bay
whin ut's rough.

"'We've seen our dead,' he sez, squeezin' into me; 'our dead that was men
two days gone! An' me that was his cousin by blood could not bring Tim
Coulan off! Let me get on,' he sez, 'let me get to thim or I'll run ye
through the back!'

"'My troth,' thinks I, 'if the Tyrone have seen their dead, God help the
Paythans this day!' An' thin I knew why the Oirish was ragin' behind us as
they was.

"I gave room to the man, an' he ran forward wid the Haymaker's Lift on his
bay'nit an' swung a Paythan clear off his feet by the belly-band av the
brute, an' the iron bruk at the lockin'-ring.

"'Tim Coulan 'll slape easy to-night,' sez he, wid a grin; an' the next
minut his head was in two halves and he wint down grinnin' by sections.

"The Tyrone was pushin' an' pushin' in, an' our men was swearin' at thim,
an' Crook was workin' away in front av us all, his sword-arm swingin' like
a pump-handle an' his revolver spittin' like a cat. But the strange thing
av ut was the quiet that lay upon. 'Twas like a fight in a drame--except
for thim that was dead.

"Whin I gave room to the Oirishman I was expinded an' forlorn in my
inside. 'Tis a way I have, savin' your presince, sorr, in action. 'Let me
out, bhoys,' sez I, backin' in among thim. 'I'm goin' to be onwell!' Faith
they gave me room at the wurrud, though they would not ha' given room for
all Hell wid the chill off. When I got clear, I was, savin' your presince,
sorr, outragis sick bekaze I had dhrunk heavy that day.

"Well an' far out av harm was a Sargint av the Tyrone sittin' on the
little orf'cer bhoy who had stopped Crook from rowlin' the rocks. Oh, he
was a beautiful bhoy, an' the long black curses was slidin' out av his
innocint mouth like mornin'-jew from a rose!

"'Fwhat have you got there?' sez I to the Sargint.

"'Wan av Her Majesty's bantams wid his spurs up,' sez he. 'He's goin' to
Coort-martial me.'

"'Let me go!' sez the little orf'cer bhoy. 'Let me go and command my men!'
manin' thereby the Black Tyrone which was beyond any command--ay, even av
they had made the Divil a Field orf'cer.

"'His father howlds my mother's cow-feed in Clonmel,' sez the man that was
sittin' on him. 'Will I go back to _his_ mother an' tell her that I've let
him throw himself away? Lie still, ye little pinch av dynamite, an'
Coort-martial me aftherward.'

"'Good,' sez I; ''tis the likes av him makes the likes av the
Commandher-in-Chief, but we must presarve thim. Fwhat d'you want to do,
sorr?' sez I, very politeful.

"'Kill the beggars--kill the beggars!' he shqueaks; his big blue eyes
brimmin' wid tears.

"'An' how'll ye do that?' sez I. 'You've shquibbed off your revolver like
a child wid a cracker; you can make no play wid that fine large sword av
yours; an' your hand's shakin' like an asp on a leaf. Lie still an' grow,'
sez I.

"'Get back to your comp'ny,' sez he; 'you're insolint!'

"'All in good time,' sez I, 'but I'll have a dhrink first.'

"Just thin Crook comes up, blue an' white all over where he wasn't red.

"'Wather!' sez he; 'I'm dead wid drouth! Oh, but it's a gran' day!'

"He dhrank half a skinful, and the rest he tilts into his chest, an' it
fair hissed on the hairy hide av him. He sees the little orf'cer bhoy
undher the Sargint.

"'Fwhat's yonder?' sez he.

"'Mutiny, sorr,' sez the Sargint, an' the orf'cer bhoy begins pleadin'
pitiful to Crook to be let go: but divil a bit wud Crook budge.

"'Kape him there,' he sez, ''tis no child's work this day. By the same
token,' sez he, 'I'll confishcate that iligant nickel-plated
scent-sprinkler av yours, for my own has been vomitin' dishgraceful!'

"The fork av his hand was black wid the backspit av the machine. So he tuk
the orf'cer bhoy's revolver. Ye may look, sorr, but, by my faith, _there's
a dale more done in the field than iver gets into Field Ordhers!_

"'Come on, Mulvaney,' sez Crook; 'is this a Coort-martial?' The two av us
wint back together into the mess an' the Paythans were still standin' up.
They was not _too_ impart'nint though, for the Tyrone was callin' wan to
another to remimber Tim Coulan.

"Crook stopped outside av the strife an' looked anxious, his eyes rowlin'
roun'.

"'Fwhat is ut, sorr?' sez I; 'can I get ye anything?'

"'Where's a bugler?' sez he.

"I wint into the crowd--our men was dhrawin' breath behin' the Tyrone who
was fightin' like sowls in tormint--an' prisintly I came acrost little
Frehan, our bugler bhoy, pokin' roun' among the best wid a rifle an'
bay'nit.

"'Is amusin' yoursilf fwhat you're paid for, ye limb?' sez I, catchin' him
by the scruff. 'Come out av that an' attind to your duty.' I sez; but the
bhoy was not pleased.

"'I've got wan,' sez he, grinnin', 'big as you, Mulvaney, an' fair half as
ugly. Let me go get another.'

"I was dishpleased at the personability av that remark, so I tucks him
under my arm an' carries him to Crook who was watchin' how the fight wint.
Crook cuffs him till the bhoy cries, an' thin sez nothin' for a whoile.

"The Paythans began to flicker onaisy, an' our men roared. 'Opin ordher!
Double!' sez Crook. 'Blow, child, blow for the honor av the British
Arrmy!'

"That bhoy blew like a typhoon, an' the Tyrone an' we opined out as the
Paythans broke, an' I saw that fwhat had gone before wud be kissin' an'
huggin' to fwhat was to come. We'd dhruv thim into a broad part av the gut
whin they gave, an' thin we opined out an' fair danced down the valley,
dhrivin' thim before us. Oh, 'twas lovely, an' stiddy, too! There was the
Sargints on the flanks av what was left av us, kapin' touch, an' the fire
was runnin' from flank to flank, an' the Paythans was dhroppin'. We opined
out wid the widenin' av the valley, an' whin the valley narrowed we closed
again like the shticks on a lady's fan, an' at the far ind av the gut
where they thried to stand, we fair blew them off their feet, for we had
expinded very little ammunition by reason av the knife work."

"Hi used thirty rounds goin' down that valley," said Ortheris, "an' it was
gentleman's work. Might 'a' done it in a white 'andkerchief an' pink silk
stockin's, that part. Hi was on in that piece."

"You could ha' heard the Tyrone yellin' a mile away," said Mulvaney, "an'
'twas all their Sargints cud do to get thim off. They was mad--mad--mad!
Crook sits down in the quiet that fell whin we had gone down the valley,
an' covers his face wid his hands. Prisintly we all came back again
accordin' to our natures and disposishins, for they, mark you, show
through the hide av a man in that hour.

"'Bhoys! bhoys!' sez Crook to himself. 'I misdoubt we could ha' engaged at
long range an' saved betther men than me.' He looked at our dead an' said
no more.

"'Captain dear,' sez a man av the Tyrone, comin' up wid his mouth bigger
than iver his mother kissed ut, spittin' blood like a whale; 'Captain
dear,' sez he, 'if wan or two in the shtalls have been discommoded, the
gallery have enjoyed the performinces av a Roshus.'

"Thin I knew that man for the Dublin dockrat he was--wan av the bhoys that
made the lessee av Silver's Theatre grey before his time wid tearin' out
the bowils av the benches an' t'rowin' thim into the pit. So I passed the
wurrud that I knew when I was in the Tyrone an' we lay in Dublin. 'I don't
know who 'twas,' I whispers, 'an' I don't care, but anyways I'll knock the
face av you, Tim Kelly.'

"'Eyah!' sez the man, 'was you there too? We'll call ut Silver's Theatre.'
Half the Tyrone, knowin' the ould place, tuk ut up: so we called ut
Silver's Theatre.

"The little orf'cer bhoy av the Tyrone was thremblin' an' cryin', He had
no heart for the Coort-martials that he talked so big upon. 'Ye'll do well
later,' sez Crook, very quiet, 'for not bein' allowed to kill yourself for
amusemint.'

"'I'm a dishgraced man!' sez the little orf'cer bhoy.

"Put me undher arrest, sorr, if you will, but by my sowl, I'd do ut again
sooner than face your mother wid you dead,' sez the Sargint that had sat
on his head, standin' to attention an' salutin'. But the young wan only
cried as tho' his little heart was breakin'.

"Thin another man av the Tyrone came up, wid the fog av fightin' on him."

"The what, Mulvaney?"

"Fog av fightin'. You know, sorr, that, like makin' love, ut takes each
man diff'rint. Now I can't help bein' powerful sick whin I'm in action.
Orth'ris, here, niver stops swearin' from ind to ind, an' the only time
that Learoyd opins his mouth to sing is whin he is messin' wid other
people's heads; for he's a dhirty fighter is Jock. Recruities sometime
cry, an' sometime they don't know fwhat they do, an' sometime they are all
for cuttin' throats an' such like dirtiness; but some men get
heavy-dead-dhrunk on the fightin'. This man was. He was staggerin', an'
his eyes were half shut, an' we cud hear him dhraw breath twinty yards
away. He sees the little orf'cer bhoy, an' comes up, talkin' thick an'
drowsy to himsilf. 'Blood the young whelp!' he sez; 'blood the young
whelp;' an' wid that he threw up his arms, shpun roun', an' dropped at our
feet, dead as a Paythan, an' there was niver sign or scratch on him. They
said 'twas his heart was rotten, but oh, 'twas a quare thing to see!

"Thin we wint to bury our dead, for we wud not lave thim to the Paythans,
an' in movin' among the haythen we nearly lost that little orf'cer bhoy.
He was for givin' wan divil wather and layin' him aisy against a rock. 'Be
careful, sorr,' sez I; 'a wounded Paythan's worse than a live wan.' My
troth, before the words was out of my mouth, the man on the ground fires
at the orf'cer bhoy lanin' over him, an' I saw the helmit fly. I dropped
the butt on the face av the man an' tuk his pistol. The little orf'cer
bhoy turned very white, for the hair av half his head was singed away.

"'I tould you so, sorr!' sez I; an', afther that, whin he wanted to help a
Paythan I stud wid the muzzle contagious to the ear. They dare not do
anythin' but curse. The Tyrone was growlin' like dogs over a bone that had
been taken away too soon, for they had seen their dead an' they wanted to
kill ivry sowl on the ground. Crook tould thim that he'd blow the hide off
any man that misconducted himself; but, seeing that ut was the first time
the Tyrone had iver seen their dead, I do not wondher they were on the
sharp. 'Tis a shameful sight! Whin I first saw ut I wud niver ha' given
quarter to any man north of the Khaibar--no, nor woman either, for the
women used to come out afther dhark--Auggrh!

"Well, evenshually we buried our dead an' tuk away our wounded, an' come
over the brow av the hills to see the Scotchies an' the Gurkys taking tay
with the Paythans in bucketsfuls. We were a gang av dissolute ruffians,
for the blood had caked the dust, an' the sweat had cut the cake, an' our
bay'nits was hangin' like butchers' steels betune ur legs, an' most av us
were marked one way or another.

"A Staff Orf'cer man, clean as a new rifle, rides up an' sez: 'What damned
scarecrows are you?'

"'A comp'ny av Her Majesty's Black Tyrone an' wan av the Ould Rig'mint,'
sez Crook very quiet, givin' our visitors the flure as 'twas.

"'Oh!' sez the Staff Orf'cer; 'did you dislodge that Reserve?'

"'No!' sez Crook, an' the Tyrone laughed.

"'Thin fwhat the divil have ye done?'

"'Disthroyed ut,' sez Crook, an' he took us on, but not before Toomey that
was in the Tyrone sez aloud, his voice somewhere in his stummick: 'Fwhat
in the name av misfortune does this parrit widout a tail mane by shtoppin'
the road av his betthers?'

"The Staff Orf'cer wint blue, an' Toomey makes him pink by changin' to the
voice av a minowderin' woman an' sayin': 'Come an' kiss me, Major dear,
for me husband's at the wars an' I'm all alone at the Depot.'

"The Staff Orf'cer wint away, an' I cud see Crook's shoulthers shakin'.

"His Corp'ril checks Toomey. 'Lave me alone,' sez Toomey, widout a wink.
'I was his batman before he was married an' he knows fwhat I mane, av you
don't. There's nothin' like livin' in the hoight av society.' D'you
remimber that, Orth'ris!"

"Hi do. Toomey, 'e died in 'orspital, next week it was, 'cause I bought
'arf his kit; an' I remember after that"--

"GUARRD, TURN OUT!"

The Relief had come; it was four o'clock. "I'll catch a kyart for you,
sorr," said Mulvaney, diving hastily into his accoutrements. "Come up to
the top av the Fort an' we'll pershue our invistigations into M'Grath's
shtable." The relieved Guard strolled round the main bastion on its way to
the swimming-bath, and Learoyd grew almost talkative. Ortheris looked into
the Fort ditch and across the plain. "Ho! it's weary waitin' for Ma-ary!"
he hummed; "but I'd like to kill some more bloomin' Paythans before my
time's up. War! Bloody war! North, East, South, and West."

"Amen," said Learoyd, slowly.

"Fwhat's here?" said Mulvaney, checking at a blurr of white by the foot of
the old sentry-box. He stooped and touched it. "It's Norah--Norah
M'Taggart! Why, Nonie, darlin', fwhat are ye doin' out av your mother's
bed at this time?"

The two-year-old child of Sergeant M'Taggart must have wandered for a
breath of cool air to the very verge of the parapet of the Fort ditch, Her
tiny night-shift was gathered into a wisp round her neck and she moaned in
her sleep. "See there!" said Mulvaney; "poor lamb! Look at the heat-rash
on the innocint skin av her. 'Tis hard--crool hard even for us. Fwhat must
it be for these? Wake up, Nonie, your mother will be woild about you.
Begad, the child might ha' fallen into the ditch!"

He picked her up in the growing light, and set her on his shoulder, and
her fair curls touched the grizzled stubble of his temples. Ortheris and
Learoyd followed snapping their fingers, while Norah smiled at them a
sleepy smile. Then carolled Mulvaney, clear as a lark, dancing the baby on
his arm--

  "If any young man should marry you,
     Say nothin' about the joke;
   That iver ye slep' in a sinthry-box,
     Wrapped up in a soldier's cloak."

"Though, on my sowl, Nonie," he said, gravely, "there was not much cloak
about you. Niver mind, you won't dhress like this ten years to come. Kiss
your friends an' run along to your mother."

Nonie, set down close to the Married Quarters, nodded with the quiet
obedience of the soldier's child, but, ere she pattered off over the
flagged path, held up her lips to be kissed by the Three Musketeers.
Ortheris wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and swore
sentimentally; Learoyd turned pink; and the two walked away together. The
Yorkshireman lifted up his voice and gave in thunder the chorus of _The
Sentry-Box_, while Ortheris piped at his side.

"'Bin to a bloomin' sing-song, you two?" said the Artilleryman, who was
taking his cartridge down to the Morning Gun, "You're over merry for these
dashed days."

   "I bid ye take care o' the brat," said he,
   "For it comes of a noble race"

Learoyd bellowed. The voices died out in the swimming-bath.

"Oh, Terence!" I said, dropping into Mulvaney's speech, when we were
alone, "it's you that have the Tongue!"

He looked at me wearily; his eyes were sunk in his head, and his face was
drawn and white, "Eyah!" said he; "I've blandandhered thim through the
night somehow, but can thim that helps others help thimselves? Answer me
that, sorr!"

And over the bastions of Fort Amara broke the pitiless day.




WEE WILLIE WINKIE


"An officer and a gentleman."

His full name was Percival William Williams, but he picked up the other
name in a nursery-book, and that was the end of the christened titles. His
mother's _ayah_ called him Willie-_Baba_, but as he never paid the
faintest attention to anything that the _ayah_ said, her wisdom did not
help matters.

His father was the Colonel of the 195th, and as soon as Wee Willie Winkie
was old enough to understand what Military Discipline meant, Colonel
Williams put him under it. There was no other way of managing the child.
When he was good for a week, he drew good-conduct pay; and when he was
bad, he was deprived of his good-conduct stripe. Generally he was bad, for
India offers so many chances to little six-year-olds of going wrong.

Children resent familiarity from strangers, and Wee Willie Winkie was a
very particular child. Once he accepted an acquaintance, he was graciously
pleased to thaw. He accepted Brandis, a subaltern of the 195th, on sight.
Brandis was having tea at the Colonel's, and Wee Willie Winkie entered
strong in the possession of a good-conduct badge won for not chasing the
hens round the compound. He regarded Brandis with gravity for at least ten
minutes, and then delivered himself of his opinion.

"I like you," said he, slowly, getting off his chair and coming over to
Brandis. "I like you. I shall call you Coppy, because of your hair. Do you
_mind_ being called Coppy? it is because of ve hair, you know."

Here was one of the most embarrassing of Wee Willie Winkie's
peculiarities. He would look at a stranger for some time, and then,
without warning or explanation, would give him a name. And the name stuck.
No regimental penalties could break Wee Willie Winkie of this habit. He
lost his good-conduct badge for christening the Commissioner's wife
"Pobs"; but nothing that the Colonel could do made the Station forego the
nickname, and Mrs. Collen remained Mrs. "Pobs" till the end of her stay.
So Brandis was christened "Coppy," and rose, therefore, in the estimation
of the regiment.

If Wee Willie Winkie took an interest in any one, the fortunate man was
envied alike by the mess and the rank and file. And in their envy lay no
suspicion of self-interest. "The Colonel's son" was idolized on his own
merits entirely. Yet Wee Willie Winkie was not lovely. His face was
permanently freckled, as his legs were permanently scratched, and in spite
of his mother's almost tearful remonstrances he had insisted upon having
his long yellow locks cut short in the military fashion. "I want my hair
like Sergeant Tummil's," said Wee Willie Winkie, and, his father abetting,
the sacrifice was accomplished.

Three weeks after the bestowal of his youthful affections on Lieutenant
Brandis--henceforward to be called "Coppy" for the sake of brevity--Wee
Willie Winkie was destined to behold strange things and far beyond his
comprehension.

Coppy returned his liking with interest. Coppy had let him wear for five
rapturous minutes his own big sword--just as tall as Wee Willie Winkie.
Coppy had promised him a terrier puppy; and Coppy had permitted him to
witness the miraculous operation of shaving. Nay, more--Coppy had said
that even he, Wee Willie Winkie, would rise in time to the ownership of a
box of shiny knives, a silver soap-box and a silver-handled
"sputter-brush," as Wee Willie Winkie called it. Decidedly, there was no
one except his father, who could give or take away good-conduct badges at
pleasure, half so wise, strong, and valiant as Coppy with the Afghan and
Egyptian medals on his breast. Why, then, should Coppy be guilty of the
unmanly weakness of kissing--vehemently kissing--a "big girl," Miss
Allardyce to wit? In the course of a morning ride, Wee Willie Winkie had
seen Coppy so doing, and, like the gentleman he was, had promptly wheeled
round and cantered back to his groom, lest the groom should also see.

Under ordinary circumstances he would have spoken to his father, but he
felt instinctively that this was a matter on which Coppy ought first to be
consulted.

"Coppy," shouted Wee Willie Winkie, reining up outside that subaltern's
bungalow early one morning--"I want to see you, Coppy!"

"Come in, young 'un," returned Coppy, who was at early breakfast in the
midst of his dogs. "What mischief have you been getting into now?"

Wee Willie Winkie had done nothing notoriously bad for three days, and so
stood on a pinnacle of virtue.

"I've been doing nothing bad," said he, curling himself into a long chair
with a studious affectation of the Colonel's languor after a hot parade.
He buried his freckled nose in a tea-cup and, with eyes staring roundly
over the rim, asked:--"I say, Coppy, is it pwoper to kiss big girls?"

"By Jove! You're beginning early. Who do you want to kiss?"

"No one. My muvver's always kissing me if I don't stop her. If it isn't
pwoper, how was you kissing Major Allardyce's big girl last morning, by ve
canal?"

Coppy's brow wrinkled. He and Miss Allardyce had with great craft managed
to keep their engagement secret for a fortnight. There were urgent and
imperative reasons why Major Allardyce should not know how matters stood
for at least another month, and this small marplot had discovered a great
deal too much.

"I saw you," said Wee Willie Winkie, calmly. "But ve groom didn't see. I
said, '_Hut jao_.'"

"Oh, you had that much sense, you young Rip," groaned poor Coppy, half
amused and half angry. "And how many people may you have told about it?"

"Only me myself. You didn't tell when I twied to wide ve buffalo ven my
pony was lame; and I fought you wouldn't like."

"Winkie," said Coppy, enthusiastically, shaking the small hand, "you're
the best of good fellows. Look here, you can't understand all these
things. One of these days--hang it, how can I make you see it!--I'm going
to marry Miss Allardyce, and then she'll be Mrs. Coppy, as you say. If
your young mind is so scandalized at the idea of kissing big girls, go and
tell your father."

"What will happen?" said Wee Willie Winkie, who firmly believed that his
father was omnipotent.

"I shall get into trouble." said Coppy, playing his trump card with an
appealing look at the holder of the ace.

"Ven I won't," said Wee Willie Winkie, briefly. "But my faver says it's
un-man-ly to be always kissing, and I didn't fink _you'd_ do vat, Coppy."

"I'm not always kissing, old chap. It's only now and then, and when you're
bigger you'll do it too. Your father meant it's not good for little boys."

"Ah!" said Wee Willie Winkie, now fully enlightened. "It's like ve
sputter-brush?"

"Exactly," said Coppy, gravely.

"But I don't fink I'll ever want to kiss big girls, nor no one, 'cept my
muvver. And I _must_ vat, you know."

There was a long pause, broken by Wee Willie Winkie,

"Are you fond of vis big girl, Coppy?"

"Awfully!" said Coppy.

"Fonder van you are of Bell or ve Butcha--or me?"

"It's in a different way," said Coppy. "You see, one of these days Miss
Allardyce will belong to me, but you'll grow up and command the Regiment
and--all sorts of things. It's quite different, you see."

"Very well," said Wee Willie Winkie, rising. "If you're fond of ve big
girl, I won't tell any one. I must go now."

Coppy rose and escorted his small guest to the door, adding: "You're the
best of little fellows, Winkie. I tell you what. In thirty days from now
you can tell if you like--tell any one you like."

Thus the secret of the Brandis-Allardyce engagement was dependent on a
little child's word. Coppy, who knew Wee Willie Winkie's idea of truth,
was at ease, for he felt that he would not break promises. Wee Willie
Winkie betrayed a special and unusual interest in Miss Allardyce, and,
slowly revolving round that embarrassed young lady, was used to regard her
gravely with unwinking eye. He was trying to discover why Coppy should
have kissed her. She was not half so nice as his own mother. On the other
hand, she was Coppy's property, and would in time belong to him. Therefore
it behooved him to treat her with as much respect as Coppy's big sword or
shiny pistol.

The idea that he shared a great secret in common with Coppy kept Wee
Willie Winkie unusually virtuous for three weeks. Then the Old Adam broke
out, and he made what he called a "camp-fire" at the bottom of the garden.
How could he have foreseen that the flying sparks would have lighted the
Colonel's little hayrick and consumed a week's store for the horses?
Sudden and swift was the punishment--deprivation of the good-conduct badge
and, most sorrowful of all, two days confinement to barracks--the house
and veranda--coupled with the withdrawal of the light of his father's
countenance.

He took the sentence like the man he strove to be, drew himself up with a
quivering under-lip, saluted, and, once clear of the room, ran to weep
bitterly in his nursery--called by him "my quarters," Coppy came in the
afternoon and attempted to console the culprit.

"I'm under awwest," said Wee Willie Winkie, mournfully, "and I didn't
ought to speak to you."

Very early the next morning he climbed on to the roof of the house--that
was not forbidden--and beheld Miss Allardyce going for a ride.

"Where are you going?" cried Wee Willie Winkie.

"Across the river," she answered, and trotted forward.

Now the cantonment in which the 195th lay was bounded on the north by a
river--dry in the winter. From his earliest years, Wee Willie Winkie had
been forbidden to go across the river, and had noted that even Coppy--the
almost almighty Coppy--had never set foot beyond it. Wee Willie Winkie had
once been read to, out of a big blue book, the history of the Princess and
the Goblins--a most wonderful tale of a land where the Goblins were always
warring with the children of men until they were defeated by one Curdie.
Ever since that date it seemed to him that the bare black and purple hills
across the river were inhabited by Goblins, and, in truth, every one had
said that there lived the Bad Men. Even in his own house the lower halves
of the windows were covered with green paper on account of the Bad Men who
might, if allowed clear view, fire into peaceful drawing-rooms and
comfortable bedrooms. Certainly, beyond the river, which was the end of
all the Earth, lived the Bad Men. And here was Major Allardyce's big girl,
Coppy's property, preparing to venture into their borders! What would
Coppy say if anything happened to her? If the Goblins ran off with her as
they did with Curdie's Princess? She must at all hazards be turned back.

The house was still. Wee Willie Winkie reflected for a moment on the very
terrible wrath of his father; and then--broke his arrest! It was a crime
unspeakable. The low sun threw his shadow, very large and very black, on
the trim garden-paths, as he went down to the stables and ordered his
pony. It seemed to him in the hush of the dawn that all the big world had
been bidden to stand still and look at Wee Willie Winkie guilty of mutiny.
The drowsy groom handed him his mount, and, since the one great sin made
all others insignificant, Wee Willie Winkie said that he was going to ride
over to Coppy Sahib, and went out at a foot-pace, stepping on the soft
mould of the flower-borders.

The devastating track of the pony's feet was the last misdeed that cut him
off from all sympathy of Humanity, He turned into the road, leaned
forward; and rode as fast as the pony could put foot to the ground in the
direction of the river.

But the liveliest of twelve-two ponies can do little against the long
canter of a Waler. Miss Allardyce was far ahead, had passed through the
crops, beyond the Police-post when all the guards were asleep, and her
mount was scattering the pebbles of the river bed as Wee Willie Winkie
left the cantonment and British India behind him. Bowed forward and still
flogging, Wee Willie Winkie shot into Afghan territory, and could just see
Miss Allardyce a black speck, flickering across the stony plain. The
reason of her wandering was simple enough. Coppy, in a tone of
too-hastily-assumed authority, had told her over night, that she must not
ride out by the river. And she had gone to prove her own spirit and teach
Coppy a lesson.

Almost at the foot of the inhospitable hills, Wee Willie Winkie saw the
Waler blunder and come down heavily. Miss Allardyce struggled clear, but
her ankle had been severely twisted, and she could not stand. Having thus
demonstrated her spirit, she wept copiously, and was surprised by the
apparition of a white, wide-eyed child in khaki, on a nearly spent pony.

"Are you badly, badly hurted?" shouted Wee Willie Winkie, as soon as he
was within range. "You didn't ought to be here."

"I don't know," said Miss Allardyce, ruefully, ignoring the reproof. "Good
gracious, child, what are _you_ doing here?"

"You said you was going acwoss ve wiver," panted Wee Willie Winkie,
throwing himself off his pony. "And nobody--not even Coppy--must go acwoss
ve wiver, and I came after you ever so hard, but you wouldn't stop, and
now you've hurted yourself, and Coppy will be angwy wiv me, and--I've
bwoken my awwest! I've bwoken my awwest!"

The future Colonel of the 195th sat down and sobbed. In spite of the pain
in her ankle the girl was moved.

"Have you ridden all the way from cantonments, little man? What for?"

"You belonged to Coppy. Coppy told me so!" wailed Wee Willie Winkie,
disconsolately. "I saw him kissing you, and he said he was fonder of you
van Bell or ve Butcha or me. And so I came. You must get up and come back.
You didn't ought to be here. Vis is a bad place, and I've bwoken my
awwest."

"I can't move, Winkie," said Miss Allardyce, with a groan. "I've hurt my
foot. What shall I do?"

She showed a readiness to weep afresh, which steadied Wee Willie Winkie,
who had been brought up to believe that tears were the depth of
unmanliness. Still, when one is as great a sinner as Wee Willie Winkie,
even a man may be permitted to break down,

"Winkie," said Miss Allardyce, "when you've rested a little, ride back and
tell them to send out something to carry me back in. It hurts fearfully."

The child sat still for a little time and Miss Allardyce closed her eyes;
the pain was nearly making her faint. She was roused by Wee Willie Winkie
tying up the reins on his pony's neck and setting it free with a vicious
cut of his whip that made it whicker. The little animal headed toward the
cantonments.

"Oh, Winkie! What are you doing?"

"Hush!" said Wee Willie Winkie. "Vere's a man coming--one of ve Bad Men. I
must stay wiv you. My faver says a man must _always_ look after a girl.
Jack will go home, and ven vey'll come and look for us. Vat's why I let
him go."

Not one man but two or three had appeared from behind the rocks of the
hills, and the heart of Wee Willie Winkie sank within him, for just in
this manner were the Goblins wont to steal out and vex Curdie's soul. Thus
had they played in Curdie's garden, he had seen the picture, and thus had
they frightened the Princess's nurse. He heard them talking to each other,
and recognized with joy the bastard Pushto that he had picked up from one
of his father's grooms lately dismissed. People who spoke that tongue
could not be the Bad Men. They were only natives after all.

They came up to the bowlders on which Miss Allardyce's horse had
blundered.

Then rose from the rock Wee Willie Winkie, child of the Dominant Race,
aged six and three-quarters, and said briefly and emphatically "_Jao!_"
The pony had crossed the river-bed.

The men laughed, and laughter from natives was the one thing Wee Willie
Winkie could not tolerate. He asked them what they wanted and why they did
not depart. Other men with most evil faces and crooked-stocked guns crept
out of the shadows of the hills, till, soon, Wee Willie Winkie was face to
face with an audience some twenty strong, Miss Allardyce screamed.

"Who are you?" said one of the men.

"I am the Colonel Sahib's son, and my order is that you go at once. You
black men are frightening the Miss Sahib. One of you must run into
cantonments and take the news that Miss Sahib has hurt herself, and that
the Colonel's son is here with her."

"Put our feet into the trap?" was the laughing reply. "Hear this boy's
speech!"

"Say that I sent you--I, the Colonel's son. They will give you money."

"What is the use of this talk? Take up the child and the girl, and we can
at least ask for the ransom. Ours are the villages on the heights," said a
voice in the background.

These _were_ the Bad Men--worse than Goblins--and it needed all Wee Willie
Winkie's training to prevent him from bursting into tears. But he felt
that to cry before a native, excepting only his mother's _ayah_, would be
an infamy greater than any mutiny. Moreover, he, as future Colonel of the
195th, had that grim regiment at his back.

"Are you going to carry us away?" said Wee Willie Winkie, very blanched
and uncomfortable.

"Yes, my little _Sahib Bahadur_," said the tallest of the men, "and eat
you afterward."

"That is child's talk," said Wee Willie Winkie. "Men do not eat men."

A yell of laughter interrupted him, but he went on firmly,--"And if you do
carry us away, I tell you that all my regiment will come up in a day and
kill you all without leaving one. Who will take my message to the Colonel
Sahib?"

Speech in any vernacular--and Wee Willie Winkie had a colloquial
acquaintance with three--was easy to the boy who could not yet manage his
"r's" and "th's" aright.

Another man joined the conference, crying:--"O foolish men! What this babe
says is true. He is the heart's heart of those white troops. For the sake
of peace let them go both, for if he be taken, the regiment will break
loose and gut the valley. _Our_ villages are in the valley, and we shall
not escape. That regiment are devils. They broke Khoda Yar's breast-bone
with kicks when he tried to take the rifles; and if we touch this child
they will fire and rape and plunder for a month, till nothing remains.
Better to send a man back to take the message and get a reward. I say that
this child is their God, and that they will spare none of us, nor our
women, if we harm him."

It was Din Mahommed, the dismissed groom of the Colonel, who made the
diversion, and an angry and heated discussion followed. Wee Willie Winkie,
standing over Miss Allardyce, waited the upshot. Surely his "wegiment,"
his own "wegiment," would not desert him if they knew of his extremity.


       *
       *
       *
       *
       *

The riderless pony brought the news to the 195th, though there had been
consternation in the Colonel's household for an hour before. The little
beast came in through the parade ground in front of the main barracks,
where the men were settling down to play Spoil-five till the afternoon.
Devlin, the Color Sergeant of E Company, glanced at the empty saddle and
tumbled through the barrack-rooms, kicking up each Room Corporal as he
passed. "Up, ye beggars! There's something happened to the Colonel's son,"
he shouted.

"He couldn't fall off! S'elp me, 'e _couldn't_ fall off," blubbered a
drummer-boy, "Go an' hunt acrost the river. He's over there if he's
anywhere, an' maybe those Pathans have got 'im. For the love o' Gawd don't
look for 'im in the nullahs! Let's go over the river."

"There's sense in Mott yet," said Devlin. "E Company, double out to the
river--sharp!"

So E Company, in its shirt-sleeves mainly, doubled for the dear life, and
in the rear toiled the perspiring Sergeant, adjuring it to double yet
faster. The cantonment was alive with the men of the 195th hunting for Wee
Willie Winkie, and the Colonel finally overtook E Company, far too
exhausted to swear, struggling in the pebbles of the river-bed.

Up the hill under which Wee Willie Winkie's Bad Men were discussing the
wisdom of carrying off the child and the girl, a look-out fired two shots.

"What have I said?" shouted Din Mahommed. "There is the warning! The
_pulton_ are out already and are coming across the plain! Get away! Let us
not be seen with the boy!"

The men waited for an instant, and then, as another shot was fired,
withdrew into the hills, silently as they had appeared.

"The wegiment is coming," said Wee Willie Winkie, confidently, to Miss
Allardyce, "and it's all wight. Don't cwy!"

He needed the advice himself, for ten minutes later, when his father came
up, he was weeping bitterly with his head in Miss Allardyce's lap.

And the men of the 195th carried him home with shouts and rejoicings; and
Coppy, who had ridden a horse into a lather, met him, and, to his intense
disgust, kissed him openly in the presence of the men.

But there was balm for his dignity. His father assured him that not only
would the breaking of arrest be condoned, but that the good-conduct badge
would be restored as soon as his mother could sew it on his blouse-sleeve.
Miss Allardyce had told the Colonel a story that made him proud of his
son.

"She belonged to you, Coppy," said Wee Willie Winkie, indicating Miss
Allardyce with a grimy forefinger. "I _knew_ she didn't ought to go acwoss
ve wiver, and I knew ve wegiment would come to me if I sent Jack home."

"You're a hero, Winkie," said Coppy--"a _pukka_ hero!"

"I don't know what vat means," said Wee Willie Winkie, "but you mustn't
call me Winkie any no more, I'm Percival Will'am Will'ams."

And in this manner did Wee Willie Winkie enter into his manhood.



THE ROUT OF THE WHITE HUSSARS

  It was not in the open fight
     We threw away the sword,
   But in the lonely watching
     In the darkness by the ford.
   The waters lapped, the night-wind blew,
   Full-armed the Fear was born and grew.
   And we were flying ere we knew
     From panic in the night.
        --_Beoni Bar_.

Some people hold that an English Cavalry regiment cannot run. This is a
mistake. I have seen four hundred and thirty-seven sabres flying over the
face of the country in abject terror--have seen the best Regiment that
ever drew bridle wiped off the Army List for the space of two hours. If
you repeat this tale to the White Hussars they will, in all probability,
treat you severely. They are not proud of the incident.

You may know the White Hussars by their "side," which is greater than that
of all the Cavalry Regiments on the roster. If this is not a sufficient
mark, you may know them by their old brandy. It has been sixty years in
the Mess and is worth going far to taste. Ask for the "McGaire" old
brandy, and see that you get it. If the Mess Sergeant thinks that you are
uneducated, and that the genuine article will be lost on you, he will
treat you accordingly. He is a good man. But, when you are at Mess, you
must never talk to your hosts about forced marches or long-distance rides.
The Mess are very sensitive; and, if they think that you are laughing at
them, will tell you so.

As the White Hussars say, it was all the Colonel's fault. He was a new
man, and he ought never to have taken the Command. He said that the
Regiment was not smart enough. This to the White Hussars, who knew that
they could walk round any Horse and through any Guns, and over any Foot on
the face of the earth! That insult was the first cause of offence.

Then the Colonel cast the Drum-Horse--the Drum-Horse of the White Hussars!
Perhaps you do not see what an unspeakable crime he had committed. I will
try to make it clear. The soul of the Regiment lives in the Drum-Horse who
carries the silver kettle-drums. He is nearly always a big piebald Waler.
That is a point of honor; and a Regiment will spend anything you please on
a piebald. He is beyond the ordinary laws of casting. His work is very
light, and he only manoeuvres at a foot-pace. Wherefore, so long as he can
step out and look handsome, his well-being is assured. He knows more about
the Regiment than the Adjutant, and could not make a mistake if he tried.

The Drum-Horse of the White Hussars was only eighteen years old, and
perfectly equal to his duties. He had at least six years' more work in
him, and carried himself with all the pomp and dignity of a Drum-Major of
the Guards. The Regiment had paid Rs.1200 for him.

But the Colonel said that he must go, and he was cast in due form and
replaced by a washy, bay beast, as ugly as a mule, with a ewe-neck,
rat-tail, and cow-hocks. The Drummer detested that animal, and the best of
the Band-horses put back their ears and showed the whites of their eyes at
the very sight of him. They knew him for an upstart and no gentleman. I
fancy that the Colonel's ideas of smartness extended to the Band, and that
he wanted to make it take part in the regular parade movements. A Cavalry
Band is a sacred thing. It only turns out for Commanding Officers'
parades, and the Band Master is one degree more important than the
Colonel. He is a High Priest and the "Keel Row" is his holy song. The
"Keel Row" is the Cavalry Trot; and the man who has never heard that tune
rising, high and shrill, above the rattle of the Regiment going past the
saluting-base, has something yet to hear and understand.

When the Colonel cast the Drum-Horse of the White Hussars, there was
nearly a mutiny.

The officers were angry, the Regiment were furious, and the Bandsmen
swore--like troopers. The Drum-Horse was going to be put up to
auction--public auction--to be bought, perhaps, by a Parsee and put into a
cart! It was worse than exposing the Inner life of the Regiment to the
whole world, or selling the Mess Plate to a Jew--a Black Jew.

The Colonel was a mean man and a bully. He knew what the Regiment thought
about his action; and, when the troopers offered to buy the Drum-Horse, he
said that their offer was mutinous and forbidden by the Regulations.

But one of the Subalterns--Hogan-Yale, an Irishman--bought the Drum-Horse
for Rs. 160 at the sale, and the Colonel was wroth. Yale professed
repentance--he was unnaturally submissive--and said that, as he had only
made the purchase to save the horse from possible ill-treatment and
starvation, he would now shoot him and end the business. This appeared to
soothe the Colonel, for he wanted the Drum-Horse disposed of. He felt that
he had made a mistake, and could not of course acknowledge it. Meantime,
the presence of the Drum-Horse was an annoyance to him.

Yale took to himself a glass of the old brandy, three cheroots, and his
friend Martyn; and they all left the Mess together. Yale and Martyn
conferred for two hours in Yale's quarters; but only the bull-terrier who
keeps watch over Yale's boot-trees knows what they said. A horse, hooded
and sheeted to his ears, left Yale's stables and was taken, very
unwillingly, into the Civil Lines. Yale's groom went with him. Two men
broke into the Regimental Theatre and took several paint-pots and some
large scenery-brushes. Then night fell over the Cantonments, and there was
a noise as of a horse kicking his loose-box to pieces in Yale's stables.
Yale had a big, old, white Waler trap-horse.

The next day was a Thursday, and the men, hearing that Yale was going to
shoot the Drum-Horse in the evening, determined to give the beast a
regular regimental funeral--a finer one than they would have given the
Colonel had he died just then. They got a bullock-cart and some sacking,
and mounds and mounds of roses, and the body, under sacking, was carried
out to the place where the anthrax cases were cremated; two-thirds of the
Regiment following. There was no Band, but they all sang "The Place where
the old Horse died" as something respectful and appropriate to the
occasion. When the corpse was dumped into the grave and the men began
throwing down armfuls of roses to cover it, the Farrier-Sergeant ripped
out an oath and said aloud, "Why, it ain't the Drum-Horse any more than
it's me!" The Troop Sergeant-Majors asked him whether he had left his head
in the Canteen. The Farrier-Sergeant said that he knew the Drum-Horse's
feet as well as he knew his own; but he was silenced when he saw the
regimental number burned in on the poor stiff, upturned near-fore.

Thus was the Drum-Horse of the White Hussars buried; the Farrier-Sergeant
grumbling. The sacking that covered the corpse was smeared In places with
black paint; and the Farrier-Sergeant drew attention to this fact. But the
Troop Sergeant-Major of E Troop kicked him severely on the shin, and told
him that he was undoubtedly drunk.

On the Monday following the burial, the Colonel sought revenge on the
White Hussars. Unfortunately, being at that time temporarily in Command of
the Station, he ordered a Brigade field-day. He said that he wished to
make the Regiment "sweat for their damned insolence," and he carried out
his notion thoroughly. That Monday was one of the hardest days in the
memory of the White Hussars. They were thrown against a skeleton-enemy,
and pushed forward, and withdrawn, and dismounted, and "scientifically
handled" in every possible fashion over dusty country, till they sweated
profusely. Their only amusement came late in the day when they fell upon
the battery of Horse Artillery and chased it for two miles. This was a
personal question, and most of the troopers had money on the event; the
Gunners saying openly that they had the legs of the White Hussars. They
were wrong. A march-past concluded the campaign, and when the Regiment got
back to their Lines, the men were coated with dirt from spur to
chin-strap.

The White Hussars have one great and peculiar privilege. They won it at
Fontenoy, I think.

Many Regiments possess special rights such as wearing collars with undress
uniform, or a bow of riband between the shoulders, or red and white roses
in their helmets on certain days of the year. Some rights are connected
with regimental saints, and some with regimental successes. All are valued
highly; but none so highly as the right of the White Hussars to have the
Band playing when their horses are being watered in the Lines. Only one
tune is played, and that tune never varies. I don't know its real name,
but the White Hussars call it, "Take me to London again." It sounds very
pretty. The Regiment would sooner be struck off the roster than forego
their distinction.

After the "dismiss" was sounded, the officers rode off home to prepare for
stables; and the men filed into the lines riding easy. That is to say,
they opened their tight buttons, shifted their helmets, and began to joke
or to swear as the humor took them; the more careful slipping off and
easing girths and curbs. A good trooper values his mount exactly as much
as he values himself, and believes, or should believe, that the two
together are irresistible where women or men, girls or guns, are
concerned.

Then the Orderly-Officer gave the order, "Water horses," and the Regiment
loafed off to the squadron-troughs which were in rear of the stables and
between these and the barracks. There were four huge troughs, one for each
squadron, arranged _en échelon_, so that the whole Regiment could water in
ten minutes if it liked. But it lingered for seventeen, as a rule, while
the Band played.

The Band struck up as the squadrons filed off to the troughs, and the men
slipped their feet out of the stirrups and chaffed each other. The sun was
just setting in a big, hot bed of red cloud, and the road to the Civil
Lines seemed to run straight into the sun's eye. There was a little dot on
the road. It grew and grew till it showed as a horse, with a sort of
gridiron-thing on his back. The red cloud glared through the bars of the
gridiron. Some of the troopers shaded their eyes with their hands and
said--"What the mischief 'as that there 'orse got on 'im?"

In another minute they heard a neigh that every soul--horse and man--in
the Regiment knew, and saw, heading straight toward the Band, the dead
Drum-Horse of the White Hussars!

On his withers banged and bumped the kettledrums draped in crape, and on
his back, very stiff and soldierly, sat a bareheaded skeleton.

The Band stopped playing, and, for a moment, there was a hush.

Then some one in E Troop--men said it was the Troop-Sergeant-Major--swung
his horse round and yelled. No one can account exactly for what happened
afterward; but it seems that, at least, one man in each troop set an
example of panic, and the rest followed like sheep. The horses that had
barely put their muzzles into the troughs reared and capered; but as soon
as the Band broke, which it did when the ghost of the Drum-Horse was about
a furlong distant, all hooves followed suit, and the clatter of the
stampede--quite different from the orderly throb and roar of a movement on
parade, or the rough horse-play of watering in camp--made them only more
terrified. They felt that the men on their backs were afraid of something.
When horses once know that, all is over except the butchery.

Troop after troop turned from the troughs and ran--anywhere and
everywhere--like spilled quicksilver. It was a most extraordinary
spectacle, for men and horses were in all stages of easiness, and the
carbine-buckets flopping against their sides urged the horses on. Men were
shouting and cursing, and trying to pull clear of the Band which was being
chased by the Drum-Horse whose rider had fallen forward and seemed to be
spurring for a wager.

The Colonel had gone over to the Mess for a drink. Most of the officers
were with him, and the Subaltern of the Day was preparing to go down to
the lines, and receive the watering reports from the Troop-Sergeant-
Majors. When "Take me to London again" stopped, after twenty bars, every
one in the Mess said, "What on earth has happened?" A minute later, they
heard unmilitary noises, and saw, far across the plain, the White Hussars
scattered, and broken, and flying.

The Colonel was speechless with rage, for he thought that the Regiment had
risen against him or was unanimously drunk. The Band, a disorganized mob,
tore past, and at its heels labored the Drum-Horse--the dead and buried
Drum-Horse--with the jolting, clattering skeleton, Hogan-Yale whispered
softly to Martyn--"No wire will stand that treatment," and the Band, which
had doubled like a hare, came back again. But the rest of the Regiment was
gone, was rioting all over the Province, for the dusk had shut in and each
man was howling to his neighbor that the Drum-Horse was on his flank.
Troop-horses are far too tenderly treated as a rule. They can, on
emergencies, do a great deal, even with seventeen stone on their backs. As
the troopers found out.

How long this panic lasted I cannot say. I believe that when the moon rose
the men saw they had nothing to fear, and, by twos and threes and
half-troops, crept back into Cantonments very much ashamed of themselves.
Meantime, the Drum-Horse, disgusted at his treatment by old friends,
pulled up, wheeled round, and trotted up to the Mess veranda-steps for
bread. No one liked to run; but no one cared to go forward till the
Colonel made a movement and laid hold of the skeleton's foot. The Band had
halted some distance away, and now came back slowly. The Colonel called
it, individually and collectively, every evil name that occurred to him at
the time; for he had set his hand on the bosom of the Drum-Horse and found
flesh and blood. Then he beat the kettle-drums with his clenched fist, and
discovered that they were but made of silvered paper and bamboo. Next,
still swearing, he tried to drag the skeleton out of the saddle, but found
that it had been wired into the cantle. The sight of the Colonel, with his
arms round the skeleton's pelvis and his knee in the old Drum-Horse's
stomach, was striking. Not to say amusing. He worried the thing off in a
minute or two, and threw it down on the ground, saying to the Band--"Here,
you curs, that's what you're afraid of." The skeleton did not look pretty
in the twilight The Band-Sergeant seemed to recognize it, for he began to
chuckle and choke. "Shall I take it away, sir?" said the Band-Sergeant.
"Yes," said the Colonel, "take it to Hell, and ride there yourselves!"

The Band-Sergeant saluted, hoisted the skeleton across his saddle-bow, and
led off to the stables. Then the Colonel began to make inquiries for the
rest of the Regiment, and the language he used was wonderful, He would
disband the Regiment--he would court-martial every soul in it--he would
not command such a set of rabble, and so on, and so on. As the men dropped
in, his language grew wilder, until at last it exceeded the utmost limits
of free speech allowed even to a Colonel of Horse.

Martyn took Hogan-Yale aside and suggested compulsory retirement from the
Service as a necessity when all was discovered. Martyn was the weaker man
of the two. Hogan-Yale put up his eyebrows and remarked, firstly, that he
was the son of a Lord, and, secondly, that he was as innocent as the babe
unborn of the theatrical resurrection of the Drum-Horse.

"My instructions," said Yale, with a singularly sweet smile, "were that
the Drum-Horse should be sent back as impressively as possible. I ask you,
_am_ I responsible if a mule-headed friend sends him back in such a manner
as to disturb the peace of mind of a regiment of Her Majesty's Cavalry?"

Martyn said, "You are a great man, and will in time become a General; but
I'd give my chance of a troop to be safe out of this affair."

Providence saved Martyn and Hogan-Yale. The Second-in-Command led the
Colonel away to the little curtained alcove wherein the Subalterns of the
White Hussars were accustomed to play poker of nights; and there, after
many oaths on the Colonel's part, they talked together in low tones. I
fancy that the Second-in-Command must have represented the scare as the
work of some trooper whom it would be hopeless to detect; and I know that
he dwelt upon the sin and the shame of making a public laughing-stock of
the scare.

"They will call us," said the Second-in-Command, who had really a fine
imagination--"they will call us the 'Fly-by-Nights'; they will call us the
'Ghost Hunters'; they will nickname us from one end of the Army List to
the other. All the explanation in the world won't make outsiders
understand that the officers were away when the panic began. For the honor
of the Regiment and for your own sake keep this thing quiet."

The Colonel was so exhausted with anger that soothing him down was not so
difficult as might be imagined. He was made to see, gently and by degrees,
that it was obviously impossible to court-martial the whole Regiment and
equally impossible to proceed against any subaltern who, in his belief,
had any concern in the hoax.

"But the beast's alive! He's never been shot at all!" shouted the Colonel.
"It's flat flagrant disobedience! I've known a man broke for less--dam
sight less. They're mocking me, I tell you, Mutman! They're mocking me!"

Once more, the Second-in-Command set himself to soothe the Colonel, and
wrestled with him for half an hour. At the end of that time, the
Regimental Sergeant-Major reported himself. The situation was rather novel
to him; but he was not a man to be put out by circumstances. He saluted
and said, "Regiment all comeback, Sir." Then, to propitiate the
Colonel--"An' none of the 'orses any the worse, Sir,"

The Colonel only snorted and answered--"You'd better tuck the men into
their cots, then, and see that they don't wake up and cry in the night"
The Sergeant withdrew.

His little stroke of humor pleased the Colonel, and, further, he felt
slightly ashamed of the language he had been using. The Second-in-Command
worried him again, and the two sat talking far into the night.

Next day but one, there was a Commanding Officer's parade, and the Colonel
harangued the White Hussars vigorously. The pith of his speech was that,
since the Drum-Horse in his old age had proved himself capable of cutting
up the whole Regiment, he should return to his post of pride at the head
of the Band, _but_ the Regiment were a set of ruffians with bad
consciences.

The White Hussars shouted, and threw everything movable about them into
the air, and when the parade was over, they cheered the Colonel till they
couldn't speak. No cheers were put up for Lieutenant Hogan-Yale, who
smiled very sweetly in the background.

Said the Second-in-Command to the Colonel, unofficially--

"These little things ensure popularity, and do not the least affect
discipline."

"But I went back on my word," said the Colonel.

"Never mind," said the Second-in-Command. "The White Hussars will follow
you anywhere from to-day. Regiments are just like women. They will do
anything for trinketry."

A week later, Hogan-Yale received an extraordinary letter from some one
who signed himself "Secretary, _Charity and Zeal_, 3709, E. C.," and asked
for "the return of our skeleton which we have reason to believe is in your
possession."

"Who the deuce is this lunatic who trades in bones?" said Hogan-Yale.

"Beg your pardon, Sir," said the Band-Sergeant, "but the skeleton is with
me, an' I'll return it if you'll pay the carriage into the Civil Lines.
There's a coffin with it, Sir."

Hogan-Yale smiled and handed two rupees to the Band-Sergeant, saying,
"Write the date on the skull, will you?"

If you doubt this story, and know where to go, you can see the date on the
skeleton. But don't mention the matter to the White Hussars.

I happened to know something about it, because I prepared the Drum-Horse
for his resurrection. He did not take kindly to the skeleton at all.




AT TWENTY-TWO


Narrow as the womb, deep as the Pit, and dark as the heart of a
man.--_Sonthal Miner's Proverb_.

"A weaver went out to reap but stayed to unravel the corn-stalks. Ha! Ha!
Ha! Is there any sense in a weaver?"

Janki Meah glared at Kundoo, but, as Janki Meah was blind, Kundoo was not
impressed. He had come to argue with Janki Meah, and, if chance favored,
to make love to the old man's pretty young wife.

This was Kundoo's grievance, and he spoke in the name of all the five men
who, with Janki Meah, composed the gang in Number Seven gallery of
Twenty-Two. Janki Meah had been blind for the thirty years during which he
had served the Jimahari Collieries with pick and crowbar. All through
those thirty years he had regularly, every morning before going down,
drawn from the overseer his allowance of lamp-oil--just as if he had been
an eyed miner. What Kundoo's gang resented, as hundreds of gangs had
resented before, was Janki Meah's selfishness. He would not add the oil to
the common stock of his gang, but would save and sell it.

"I knew these workings before you were born," Janki Meah used to reply; "I
don't want the light to get my coal out by, and I am not going to help
you. The oil is mine, and I intend to keep it."

A strange man in many ways was Janki Meah, the white-haired, hot tempered,
sightless weaver who had turned pitman. All day long--except on Sundays
and Mondays when he was usually drunk--he worked in the Twenty-Two shaft
of the Jimahari Colliery as cleverly as a man with all the senses. At
evening he went up in the great steam-hauled cage to the pit-bank, and
there called for his pony--a rusty, coal-dusty beast, nearly as old as
Janki Meah. The pony would come to his side, and Janki Meah would clamber
on to its back and be taken at once to the plot of land which he, like the
other miners, received from the Jimahari Company. The pony knew that
place, and when, after six years, the Company changed all the allotments
to prevent the miners from acquiring proprietary rights, Janki Meah
represented, with tears in his eyes, that were his holdings shifted, he
would never be able to find his way to the new one. "My horse only knows
that place," pleaded Janki Meah, and so he was allowed to keep his land.

On the strength of this concession and his accumulated oil-savings, Janki
Meah took a second wife--a girl of the Jolaha main stock of the Meahs, and
singularly beautiful. Janki Meah could not see her beauty; wherefore he
took her on trust, and forbade her to go down the pit. He had not worked
for thirty years in the dark without knowing that the pit was no place for
pretty women. He loaded her with ornaments--not brass or pewter, but real
silver ones--and she rewarded him by flirting outrageously with Kundoo of
Number Seven gallery gang. Kundoo was really the gang-head, but Janki Meah
insisted upon all the work being entered in his own name, and chose the
men that he worked with. Custom--stronger even than the Jimahari
Company--dictated that Janki, by right of his years, should manage these
things, and should, also, work despite his blindness. In Indian mines
where they cut into the solid coal with the pick and clear it out from
floor to ceiling, he could come to no great harm. At Home, where they
undercut the coal and bring it down in crashing avalanches from the roof,
he would never have been allowed to set foot in a pit. He was not a
popular man, because of his oil-savings; but all the gangs admitted that
Janki knew all the _khads_, or workings, that had ever been sunk or worked
since the Jimahari Company first started operations on the Tarachunda
fields.

Pretty little Unda only knew that her old husband was a fool who could be
managed. She took no interest in the collieries except in so far as they
swallowed up Kundoo five days out of the seven, and covered him with
coal-dust. Kundoo was a great workman, and did his best not to get drunk,
because, when he had saved forty rupees, Unda was to steal everything that
she could find in Janki's house and run with Kundoo to a land where there
were no mines, and every one kept three fat bullocks and a milch-buffalo.
While this scheme ripened it was his custom to drop in upon Janki and
worry him about the oil savings. Unda sat in a corner and nodded approval.
On the night when Kundoo had quoted that objectionable proverb about
weavers, Janki grew angry.

"Listen, you pig," said he, "blind I am, and old I am, but, before ever
you were born, I was grey among the coal. Even in the days when the
Twenty-Two _khad_ was unsunk and there were not two thousand men here, I
was known to have all knowledge of the pits. What _khad_ is there that I
do not know, from the bottom of the shaft to the end of the last drive? Is
it the Baromba _khad_, the oldest, or the Twenty-Two where Tibu's gallery
runs up to Number Five?"

"Hear the old fool talk!" said Kundoo, nodding to Unda. "No gallery of
Twenty-Two will cut into Five before the end of the Rains. We have a
month's solid coal before us. The Babuji says so."

"Babuji! Pigji! Dogji! What do these fat slugs from Calcutta know? He
draws and draws and draws, and talks and talks and talks, and his maps are
all wrong. I, Janki, know that this is so. When a man has been shut up in
the dark for thirty years, God gives him knowledge. The old gallery that
Tibu's gang made is not six feet from Number Five."

"Without doubt God gives the blind knowledge," said Kundoo, with a look at
Unda. "Let it be as you say. I, for my part, do not know where lies the
gallery of Tibu's gang, but _I_ am not a withered monkey who needs oil to
grease his joints with."

Kundoo swung out of the hut laughing, and Unda giggled. Janki turned his
sightless eyes toward his wife and swore. "I have land, and I have sold a
great deal of lamp-oil," mused Janki; "but I was a fool to marry this
child."

A week later the Rains set in with a vengeance, and the gangs paddled
about in coal-slush at the pit-banks. Then the big mine-pumps were made
ready, and the Manager of the Colliery ploughed through the wet toward the
Tarachunda River swelling between its soppy banks. "Lord send that this
beastly beck doesn't misbehave," said the Manager, piously, and he went to
take counsel with his Assistant about the pumps.

But the Tarachunda misbehaved very much indeed. After a fall of three
inches of rain in an hour it was obliged to do something. It topped its
bank and joined the flood water that was hemmed between two low hills just
where the embankment of the Colliery main line crossed. When a large part
of a rain-fed river, and a few acres of flood-water, made a dead set for a
nine-foot culvert, the culvert may spout its finest, but the water cannot
_all_ get out. The Manager pranced upon one leg with excitement, and his
language was improper.

He had reason to swear, because he knew that one inch of water on land
meant a pressure of one hundred tons to the acre; and here were about five
feet of water forming, behind the railway embankment, over the shallower
workings of Twenty-Two. You must understand that, in a coal-mine, the coal
nearest the surface is worked first from the central shaft. That is to
say, the miners may clear out the stuff to within ten, twenty, or thirty
feet of the surface, and, when all is worked out, leave only a skin of
earth upheld by some few pillars of coal. In a deep mine where they know
that they have any amount of material at hand, men prefer to get all their
mineral out at one shaft, rather than make a number of little holes to tap
the comparatively unimportant surface-coal.

And the Manager watched the flood.

The culvert spouted a nine-foot gush; but the water still formed, and word
was sent to clear the men out of Twenty-Two. The cages came up crammed and
crammed again with the men nearest the pit-eye, as they call the place
where you can see daylight from the bottom of the main shaft. All away and
away up the long black galleries the flare-lamps were winking and dancing
like so many fireflies, and the men and the women waited for the clanking,
rattling, thundering cages to come down and fly up again. But the
outworkings were very far off, and word could not be passed quickly,
though the heads of the gangs and the Assistant shouted and swore and
tramped and stumbled. The Manager kept one eye on the great troubled pool
behind the embankment, and prayed that the culvert would give way and let
the water through in time. With the other eye he watched the cages come up
and saw the headmen counting the roll of the gangs. With all his heart and
soul he swore at the winder who controlled the iron drum that wound up the
wire rope on which hung the cages.

In a little time there was a down-draw in the water behind the
embankment--a sucking whirlpool, all yellow and yeasty. The water had
smashed through the skin of the earth and was pouring into the old shallow
workings of Twenty-Two.

Deep down below, a rush of black water caught the last gang waiting for
the cage, and as they clambered in, the whirl was about their waists. The
cage reached the pit-bank, and the Manager called the roll. The gangs were
all safe except Gang Janki, Gang Mogul, and Gang Rahim, eighteen men, with
perhaps ten basket-women who loaded the coal into the little iron
carriages that ran on the tramways of the main galleries. These gangs were
in the out-workings, three-quarters of a mile away, on the extreme fringe
of the mine. Once more the cage went down, but with only two English men
in it, and dropped into a swirling, roaring current that had almost
touched the roof of some of the lower side-galleries. One of the wooden
balks with which they had propped the old workings shot past on the
current, just missing the cage.

"If we don't want our ribs knocked out, we'd better go," said the Manager.
"We can't even save the Company's props."

The cage drew out of the water with a splash, and a few minutes later, it
was officially reported that there were at least ten feet of water in the
pit's eye. Now ten feet of water there meant that all other places in the
mine were flooded except such galleries as were more than ten feet above
the level of the bottom of the shaft. The deep workings would be full, the
main galleries would be full, but in the high workings reached by inclines
from the main roads, there would be a certain amount of air cut off, so to
speak, by the water and squeezed up by it. The little science-primers
explain how water behaves when you pour it down test-tubes. The flooding
of Twenty-Two was an illustration on a large scale.


       *
       *
       *
       *
       *

"By the Holy Grove, what has happened to the air!" It was a Sonthal
gangman of Gang Mogul in Number Nine gallery, and he was driving a
six-foot way through the coal. Then there was a rush from the other
galleries, and Gang Janki and Gang Rahim stumbled up with their
basket-women.

"Water has come in the mine," they said, "and there is no way of getting
out."

"I went down," said Janki--"down the slope of my gallery, and I felt the
water."

"There has been no water in the cutting in our time," clamored the women,
"Why cannot we go away?"

"Be silent!" said Janki, "Long ago, when my father was here, water came to
Ten--no, Eleven--cutting, and there was great trouble. Let us get away to
where the air is better."

The three gangs and the basket-women left Number Nine gallery and went
further up Number Sixteen. At one turn of the road they could see the
pitchy black water lapping on the coal. It had touched the roof of a
gallery that they knew well--a gallery where they used to smoke their
_huqas_ and manage their flirtations. Seeing this, they called aloud upon
their Gods, and the Mehas, who are thrice bastard Muhammadans, strove to
recollect the name of the Prophet. They came to a great open square whence
nearly all the coal had been extracted. It was the end of the
out-workings, and the end of the mine.

Far away down the gallery a small pumping-engine, used for keeping dry a
deep working and fed with steam from above, was throbbing faithfully. They
heard it cease.

"They have cut off the steam," said Kundoo, hopefully. "They have given
the order to use all the steam for the pit-bank pumps. They will clear out
the water."

"If the water has reached the smoking-gallery," said Janki, "all the
Company's pumps can do nothing for three days."

"It is very hot," moaned Jasoda, the Meah basket-woman. "There is a very
bad air here because of the lamps."

"Put them out," said Janki; "why do you want lamps?" The lamps were put
out and the company sat still in the utter dark. Somebody rose quietly and
began walking over the coals. It was Janki, who was touching the walls
with his hands. "Where is the ledge?" he murmured to himself.

"Sit, sit!" said Kundoo. "If we die, we die. The air is very bad."

But Janki still stumbled and crept and tapped with his pick upon the
walls. The women rose to their feet.

"Stay all where you are. Without the lamps you cannot see, and I--I am
always seeing," said Janki. Then he paused, and called out: "Oh, you who
have been in the cutting more than ten years, what is the name of this
open place? I am an old man and I have forgotten."

"Bullia's Room," answered the Sonthal, who had complained of the vileness
of the air.

"Again," said Janki.

"Bullia's Room."

"Then I have found it," said Janki. "The name only had slipped my memory.
Tibu's gang's gallery is here."

"A lie," said Kundoo. "There have been no galleries in this place since my
day."

"Three paces was the depth of the ledge," muttered Janki, without
heeding--"and--oh, my poor bones!--I have found it! It is here, up this
ledge, Come all you, one by one, to the place of my voice, and I will
count you,"

There was a rush in the dark, and Janki felt the first man's face hit his
knees as the Sonthal scrambled up the ledge.

"Who?" cried Janki.

"I, Sunua Manji."

"Sit you down," said Janki, "Who next?"

One by one the women and the men crawled up the ledge which ran along one
side of "Bullia's Room." Degraded Muhammadan, pig-eating Musahr and wild
Sonthal, Janki ran his hand over them all.

"Now follow after," said he, "catching hold of my heel, and the women
catching the men's clothes." He did not ask whether the men had brought
their picks with them. A miner, black or white, does not drop his pick.
One by one, Janki leading, they crept into the old gallery--a six-foot way
with a scant four feet from hill to roof.

"The air is better here," said Jasoda. They could hear her heart beating
in thick, sick bumps.

"Slowly, slowly," said Janki. "I am an old man, and I forget many things.
This is Tibu's gallery, but where are the four bricks where they used to
put their _huqa_ fire on when the Sahibs never saw? Slowly, slowly, O you
people behind."

They heard his hands disturbing the small coal on the floor of the gallery
and then a dull sound. "This is one unbaked brick, and this is another and
another. Kundoo is a young man--let him come forward. Put a knee upon this
brick and strike here. When Tibu's gang were at dinner on the last day
before the good coal ended, they heard the men of Five on the other side,
and Five worked _their_ gallery two Sundays later--or it may have been
one. Strike there, Kundoo, but give me room to go back."

Kundoo, doubting, drove the pick, but the first soft crush of the coal was
a call to him. He was fighting for his life and for Unda--pretty little
Unda with rings on all her toes--for Unda and the forty rupees. The women
sang the Song of the Pick--the terrible, slow, swinging melody with the
muttered chorus that repeats the sliding of the loosened coal, and, to
each cadence, Kundoo smote in the black dark. When he could do no more,
Sunua Manji took the pick, and struck for his life and his wife, and his
village beyond the blue hills over the Tarachunda River. An hour the men
worked, and then the women cleared away the coal.

"It is farther than I thought," said Janki. "The air is very bad; but
strike, Kundoo, strike hard,"

For the fifth time Kundoo took up the pick as the Sonthal crawled back.
The song had scarcely recommenced when it was broken by a yell from Kundoo
that echoed down the gallery: "_Par hua! Par hua!_ We are through, we are
through!" The imprisoned air in the mine shot through the opening, and the
women at the far end of the gallery heard the water rush through the
pillars of "Bullia's Room" and roar against the ledge. Having fulfilled
the law under which it worked, it rose no farther. The women screamed and
pressed forward, "The water has come--we shall be killed! Let us go."

Kundoo crawled through the gap and found himself in a propped gallery by
the simple process of hitting his head against a beam.

"Do I know the pits or do I not?" chuckled Janki. "This is the Number
Five; go you out slowly, giving me your names. Ho! Rahim, count your gang!
Now let us go forward, each catching hold of the other as before."

They formed a line in the darkness and Janki led them--for a pit-man in a
strange pit is only one degree less liable to err than an ordinary mortal
underground for the first time. At last they saw a flare-lamp, and Gangs
Janki, Mogul, and Rahim of Twenty-Two stumbled dazed into the glare of the
draught-furnace at the bottom of Five; Janki feeling his way and the rest
behind.

"Water has come into Twenty-Two. God knows where are the others. I have
brought these men from Tibu's gallery in our cutting; making connection
through the north side of the gallery. Take us to the cage," said Janki
Meah.


       *
       *
       *
       *
       *

At the pit-bank of Twenty-Two, some thousand people clamored and wept and
shouted. One hundred men--one thousand men--had been drowned in the
cutting. They would all go to their homes to-morrow. Where were their men?
Little Unda, her cloth drenched with the rain, stood at the pit-mouth
calling down the shaft for Kundoo. They had swung the cages clear of the
mouth, and her only answer was the murmur of the flood in the pit's eye
two hundred and sixty feet below.

"Look after that woman! She'll chuck herself down the shaft in a minute,"
shouted the Manager.

But he need not have troubled; Unda was afraid of Death. She wanted
Kundoo. The Assistant was watching the flood and seeing how far he could
wade into it. There was a lull in the water, and the whirlpool had
slackened. The mine was full, and the people at the pit-bank howled.

"My faith, we shall be lucky if we have five hundred hands on the place
to-morrow!" said the Manager. "There's some chance yet of running a
temporary dam across that water. Shove in anything--tubs and bullock-carts
if you haven't enough bricks. Make them work _now_ if they never worked
before. Hi! you gangers, make them work."

Little by little the crowd was broken into detachments, and pushed toward
the water with promises of overtime. The dam-making began, and when it was
fairly under way, the Manager thought that the hour had come for the
pumps. There was no fresh inrush into the mine. The tall, red,
iron-clamped pump-beam rose and fell, and the pumps snored and guttered
and shrieked as the first water poured out of the pipe.

"We must run her all to-night," said the Manager, wearily, "but there's no
hope for the poor devils down below. Look here, Gur Sahai, if you are
proud of your engines, show me what they can do now."

Gur Sahai grinned and nodded, with his right hand upon the lever and an
oil-can in his left. He could do no more than he was doing, but he could
keep that up till the dawn. Were the Company's pumps to be beaten by the
vagaries of that troublesome Tarachunda River? Never, never! And the pumps
sobbed and panted: "Never, never!" The Manager sat in the shelter of the
pit-bank roofing, trying to dry himself by the pump-boiler fire, and, in
the dreary dusk, he saw the crowds on the dam scatter and fly.

"That's the end," he groaned. "'Twill take us six weeks to persuade 'em
that we haven't tried to drown their mates on purpose. Oh, for a decent,
rational Geordie!"

But the flight had no panic in it. Men had run over from Five with
astounding news, and the foremen could not hold their gangs together.
Presently, surrounded by a clamorous crew, Gangs Rahim, Mogul, and Janki,
and ten basket-women, walked up to report themselves, and pretty little
Unda stole away to Janki's hut to prepare his evening meal.

"Alone I found the way," explained Janki Meah, "and now will the Company
give me pension?"

The simple pit-folk shouted and leaped and went back to the dam, reassured
in their old belief that, whatever happened, so great was the power of the
Company whose salt they ate, none of them could be killed. But Gur Sahai
only bared his white teeth and kept his hand upon the lever and proved his
pumps to the uttermost.


       *
       *
       *
       *
       *

"I say," said the Assistant to the Manager, a week later, "do you
recollect _Germinal?_"

"Yes. 'Queer thing, I thought of it In the cage when that balk went by.
Why?"

"Oh, this business seems to be _Germinal_ upside down. Janki was in my
veranda all this morning, telling me that Kundoo had eloped with his
wife--Unda or Anda, I think her name was."

"Hillo! And those were the cattle that you risked your life to clear out
of Twenty-Two!"

"No--I was thinking of the Company's props, not the Company's men."

"Sounds better to say so _now_; but I don't believe you, old fellow."



THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD

  What did the colonel's lady think?
     Nobody never knew.
   Somebody asked the sergeant's wife
     An' she told 'em true.
   When you git to a man in the case
     They're like a row o' pins,
   For the colonel's lady an' Judy O'Grady
     Are sisters under their skins.

    _Barrack Room Ballad._

All day I had followed at the heels of a pursuing army engaged on one of
the finest battles that ever camp of exercise beheld. Thirty thousand
troops had by the wisdom of the Government of India been turned loose over
a few thousand square miles of country to practice in peace what they
would never attempt in war. Consequently cavalry charged unshaken infantry
at the trot. Infantry captured artillery by frontal attacks delivered in
line of quarter columns, and mounted infantry skirmished up to the wheels
of an armored train which carried nothing more deadly than a twenty-five
pounder Armstrong, two Nordenfeldts, and a few score volunteers all cased
in three-eighths-inch boiler-plate. Yet it was a very lifelike camp.
Operations did not cease at sundown; nobody knew the country and nobody
spared man or horse. There was unending cavalry scouting and almost
unending forced work over broken ground. The Army of the South had finally
pierced the centre of the Army of the North, and was pouring through the
gap hot-foot to capture a city of strategic importance. Its front extended
fanwise, the sticks being represented by regiments strung out along the
line of route backward to the divisional transport columns and all the
lumber that trails behind an army on the move. On its right the broken
left of the Army of the North was flying in mass, chased by the Southern
horse and hammered by the Southern guns till these had been pushed far
beyond the limits of their last support. Then the flying sat down to rest,
while the elated commandant of the pursuing force telegraphed that he held
all in check and observation.

Unluckily he did not observe that three miles to his right flank a flying
column of Northern horse with a detachment of Ghoorkhas and British troops
had been pushed round, as fast as the failing light allowed, to cut across
the entire rear of the Southern Army, to break, as it were, all the ribs
of the fan where they converged by striking at the transport, reserve
ammunition, and artillery supplies. Their instructions were to go in,
avoiding the few scouts who might not have been drawn off by the pursuit,
and create sufficient excitement to impress the Southern Army with the
wisdom of guarding their own flank and rear before they captured cities.
It was a pretty manoeuvre, neatly carried out.

Speaking for the second division of the Southern Army, our first
intimation of the attack was at twilight, when the artillery were laboring
in deep sand, most of the escort were trying to help them out, and the
main body of the infantry had gone on. A Noah's Ark of elephants, camels,
and the mixed menagerie of an Indian transport-train bubbled and squealed
behind the guns, when there appeared from nowhere in particular British
infantry to the extent of three companies, who sprang to the heads of the
gun-horses and brought all to a standstill amid oaths and cheers.

"How's that, umpire?" said the major commanding the attack, and with one
voice the drivers and limber gunners answered "Hout!" while the colonel of
artillery sputtered.

"All your scouts are charging our main body," said the major. "Your flanks
are unprotected for two miles. I think we've broken the back of this
division. And listen,--there go the Ghoorkhas!"

A weak fire broke from the rear-guard more than a mile away, and was
answered by cheerful howlings. The Ghoorkhas, who should have swung clear
of the second division, had stepped on its tail in the dark, but drawing
off hastened to reach the next line of attack, which lay almost parallel
to us five or six miles away.

Our column swayed and surged irresolutely,--three batteries, the
divisional ammunition reserve, the baggage, and a section of the hospital
and bearer corps. The commandant ruefully promised to report himself "cut
up" to the nearest umpires and commending his cavalry and all other
cavalry to the special care of Eblis, toiled on to resume touch with the
rest of the division.

"We'll bivouac here to-night," said the major, "I have a notion that the
Ghoorkhas will get caught. They may want us to re-form on. Stand easy till
the transport gets away,"

A hand caught my beast's bridle and led him out of the choking dust; a
larger hand deftly canted me out of the saddle; and two of the hugest
hands in the world received me sliding. Pleasant is the lot of the special
correspondent who falls into such hands as those of Privates Mulvaney,
Ortheris, and Learoyd.

"An' that's all right," said the Irishman, calmly. "We thought we'd find
you somewheres here by. Is there anything av yours in the transport?
Orth'ris 'll fetch ut out."

Ortheris did "fetch ut out," from under the trunk of an elephant, in the
shape of a servant and an animal both laden with medical comforts. The
little man's eyes sparkled.

"If the brutil an' licentious soldiery av these parts gets sight av the
thruck," said Mulvaney, making practiced investigation, "they'll loot
ev'rything. They're bein' fed on iron-filin's an' dog-biscuit these days,
but glory's no compensation for a belly-ache. Praise be, we're here to
protect you, sorr. Beer, sausage, bread (soft an' that's a cur'osity),
soup in a tin, whisky by the smell av ut, an' fowls! Mother av Moses, but
ye take the field like a confectioner! 'Tis scand'lus."

"'Ere's a orficer," said Ortheris, significantly. "When the sergent's done
lushin' the privit may clean the pot."

I bundled several things into Mulvaney's haversack before the major's hand
fell on my shoulder and he said, tenderly, "Requisitioned for the Queen's
service. Wolseley was quite wrong about special correspondents: they are
the soldier's best friends. Come and take pot-luck with us to-night."

And so it happened amid laughter and shoutings that my well-considered
commissariat melted away to reappear later at the mess-table, which was a
waterproof sheet spread on the ground. The flying column had taken three
days' rations with it, and there be few things nastier than government
rations--especially when government is experimenting with German toys.
Erbsenwurst, tinned beef of surpassing tinniness, compressed vegetables,
and meat-biscuits may be nourishing, but what Thomas Atkins needs is bulk
in his inside. The major, assisted by his brother officers, purchased
goats for the camp and so made the experiment of no effect. Long before
the fatigue-party sent to collect brushwood had returned, the men were
settled down by their valises, kettles and pots had appeared from the
surrounding country and were dangling over fires as the kid and the
compressed vegetable bubbled together; there rose a cheerful clinking of
mess-tins; outrageous demands for "a little more stuffin' with that there
liver-wing;" and gust on gust of chaff as pointed as a bayonet and as
delicate as a gun-butt.

"The boys are in a good temper," said the major. "They'll be singing
presently. Well, a night like this is enough to keep them happy."

Over our heads burned the wonderful Indian stars, which are not all
pricked in on one plane, but, preserving an orderly perspective, draw the
eye through the velvet darkness of the void up to the barred doors of
heaven itself. The earth was a grey shadow more unreal than the sky. We
could hear her breathing lightly in the pauses between the howling of the
jackals, the movement of the wind in the tamarisks, and the fitful mutter
of musketry-fire leagues away to the left. A native woman from some unseen
hut began to sing, the mail-train thundered past on its way to Delhi, and
a roosting crow cawed drowsily. Then there was a belt-loosening silence
about the fires, and the even breathing of the crowded earth took up the
story.

The men, full fed, turned to tobacco and song,--their officers with them.
The subaltern is happy who can win the approval of the musical critics in
his regiment, and is honored among the more intricate step-dancers. By
him, as by him who plays cricket cleverly, Thomas Atkins will stand in
time of need, when he will let a better officer go on alone. The ruined
tombs of forgotten Mussulman saints heard the ballad of _Agra Town, The
Buffalo Battery, Marching to Kabul, The long, long Indian Day, The Place
where the Punkah-coolie died_, and that crashing chorus which announces,

  Youth's daring spirit, manhood's fire,
     Firm hand and eagle eye,
   Must he acquire who would aspire
     To see the grey boar die.

To-day, of all those jovial thieves who appropriated my commissariat and
lay and laughed round that waterproof sheet, not one remains. They went to
camps that were not of exercise and battles without umpires. Burmah, the
Soudan, and the frontier,--fever and fight,--took them in their time.

I drifted across to the men's fires in search of Mulvaney, whom I found
strategically greasing his feet by the blaze. There is nothing
particularly lovely in the sight of a private thus engaged after a long
day's march, but when you reflect on the exact proportion of the "might,
majesty, dominion, and power" of the British Empire which stands on those
feet you take an interest in the proceedings.

"There's a blister, bad luck to ut, on the heel," said Mulvaney. "I can't
touch ut. Prick ut out, little man,"

Ortheris took out his house-wife, eased the trouble with a needle, stabbed
Mulvaney in the calf with the same weapon, and was swiftly kicked into the
fire.

"I've bruk the best av my toes over you, ye grinnin' child av disruption,"
said Mulvaney, sitting cross-legged and nursing his feet; then seeing me,
"Oh, ut's you, sorr! Be welkim, an' take that maraudin' scutt's place,
Jock, hold him down on the cindhers for a bit."

But Ortheris escaped and went elsewhere, as I took possession of the
hollow he had scraped for himself and lined with his greatcoat. Learoyd on
the other side of the fire grinned affably and in a minute fell fast
asleep.

"There's the height av politeness for you," said Mulvaney, lighting his
pipe with a flaming branch. "But Jock's eaten half a box av your sardines
at wan gulp, an' I think the tin too. What's the best wid you, sorr, an'
how did you happen to be on the losin' side this day whin we captured
you?"

"The Army of the South is winning all along the line," I said.

"Then that line's the hangman's rope, savin' your presence. You'll learn
to-morrow how we rethreated to dhraw thim on before we made thim trouble,
an' that's what a woman does. By the same tokin, we'll be attacked before
the dawnin' an' ut would be betther not to slip your boots. How do I know
that? By the light av pure reason. Here are three companies av us ever so
far inside av the enemy's flank an' a crowd av roarin', tarin', squealin'
cavalry gone on just to turn out the whole hornet's nest av them. Av
course the enemy will pursue, by brigades like as not, an' thin we'll have
to run for ut. Mark my words. I am av the opinion av Polonius whin he
said, 'Don't fight wid ivry scutt for the pure joy av fightin', but if you
do, knock the nose av him first an' frequint.'. We ought to ha' gone on
an' helped the Ghoorkhas."

"But what do you know about Polonius?" I demanded. This was a new side of
Mulvaney's character.

"All that Shakespeare iver wrote an' a dale more that the gallery
shouted," said the man of war, carefully lacing his boots. "Did I not tell
you av Silver's theatre in Dublin, whin I was younger than I am now an' a
patron av the drama? Ould Silver wud never pay actor-man or woman their
just dues, an' by consequince his comp'nies was collapsible at the last
minut. Thin the bhoys wud clamor to take a part, an' oft as not ould
Silver made them pay for the fun. Faith, I've seen Hamlut played wid a new
black eye an' the queen as full as a cornucopia. I remimber wanst Hogin
that 'listed in the Black Tyrone an' was shot in South Africa, he sejuced
ould Silver into givin' him Hamlut's part instid av me that had a fine
fancy for rhetoric in those days. Av course I wint into the gallery an'
began to fill the pit wid other people's hats, an' I passed the time av
day to Hogin walkin' through Denmark like a hamstrung mule wid a pall on
his back, 'Hamlut,' sez I, 'there's a hole in your heel. Pull up your
shtockin's, Hamlut,' sez I, 'Hamlut, Hamlut, for the love av decincy dhrop
that skull an' pull up your shtockin's.' The whole house begun to tell him
that. He stopped his soliloquishms mid-between. 'My shtockin's may be
comin' down or they may not,' sez he, screwin' his eye into the gallery,
for well he knew who I was. 'But afther this performince is over me an'
the Ghost 'll trample the tripes out av you, Terence, wid your ass's
bray!' An' that's how I come to know about Hamlut. Eyah! Those days, those
days! Did you iver have onendin' devilmint an' nothin' to pay for it in
your life, sorr?"

"Never, without having to pay," I said.

"That's thrue! 'Tis mane whin you considher on ut; but ut's the same wid
horse or fut. A headache if you dhrink, an' a belly-ache if you eat too
much, an' a heart-ache to kape all down. Faith, the beast only gets the
colic, an' he's the lucky man."

He dropped his head and stared into the fire, fingering his moustache the
while. From the far side of the bivouac the voice of Corbet-Nolan, senior
subaltern of B Company, uplifted itself in an ancient and much appreciated
song of sentiment, the men moaning melodiously behind him.

   The north wind blew coldly, she dropped from that hour,
   My own little Kathleen, my sweet little Kathleen,
   Kathleen, my Kathleen, Kathleen O'Moore!

With forty-five O's in the last word: even at that distance you might have
cut the soft South Irish accent with a shovel.

"For all we take we must pay, but the price is cruel high," murmured
Mulvaney when the chorus had ceased.

"What's the trouble?" I said gently, for I knew that he was a man of an
inextinguishable sorrow.

"Hear now," said he. "Ye know what I am now. _I_ know what I mint to be at
the beginnin' av my service. I've tould you time an' again, an' what I
have not Dinah Shadd has. An' what am I? Oh, Mary Mother av Hiven, an ould
dhrunken, untrustable baste av a privit that has seen the reg'ment change
out from colonel to drummer-boy, not wanst or twice, but scores av times!
Ay, scores! An' me not so near gettin' promotion as in the first! An' me
livin' on an' kapin' clear av clink, not by my own good conduck, but the
kindness av some orf'cer-bhoy young enough to be son to me! Do I not know
ut? Can I not tell whin I'm passed over at p'rade, tho' I'm rockin' full
av liquor an' ready to fall all in wan piece, such as even a suckin' child
might see, bekaze, 'Oh, 'tis only ould Mulvaney!' An' whin I'm let off in
ord'ly-room through some thrick of the tongue an' a ready answer an' the
ould man's mercy, is ut smilin' I feel whin I fall away an' go back to
Dinah Shadd, thryin' to carry ut all off as a joke? Not I! 'Tis hell to
me, dumb hell through ut all; an' next time whin the fit comes I will be
as bad again. Good cause the reg'ment has to know me for the best soldier
in ut. Better cause have I to know mesilf for the worst man. I'm only fit
to tache the new drafts what I'll niver learn mesilf; an' I am sure, as
tho' I heard ut, that the minut wan av these pink-eyed recruities gets
away from my 'Mind ye now,' an' 'Listen to this, Jim, bhoy,'--sure I am
that the sergint houlds me up to him for a warnin'. So I tache, as they
say at musketry-instruction, by direct and ricochet fire. Lord be good to
me, for I have stud some throuble!"

"Lie down and go to sleep," said I, not being able to comfort or advise.
"You're the best man in the regiment, and, next to Ortheris, the biggest
fool. Lie down and wait till we're attacked. What force will they turn
out? Guns, think you?"

"Try that wid your lorrds an' ladies, twistin' an' turnin' the talk, tho'
you mint ut well. Ye cud say nothin' to help me, an' yet ye niver knew
what cause I had to be what I am."

"Begin at the beginning and go on to the end," I said, royally. "But rake
up the fire a bit first."

I passed Ortheris's bayonet for a poker.

"That shows how little we know what we do," said Mulvaney, putting it
aside. "Fire takes all the heart out av the steel, an' the next time, may
be, that our little man is fighting for his life his bradawl 'll break,
an' so you'll ha' killed him, manin' no more than to kape yourself warm.
'Tis a recruity's thrick that. Pass the clanin'-rod, sorr."

I snuggled down abased; and after an interval the voice of Mulvaney began.

"Did I iver tell you how Dinah Shadd came to be wife av mine?"

I dissembled a burning anxiety that I had felt for some months--ever since
Dinah Shadd, the strong, the patient, and the infinitely tender, had of
her own good love and free will washed a shirt for me, moving in a barren
land where washing was not.

"I can't remember," I said, casually. "Was it before or after you made
love to Annie Bragin, and got no satisfaction?"

The story of Annie Bragin is written in another place. It is one of the
many less respectable episodes in Mulvaney's checkered career.

"Before--before--long before, was that business av Annie Bragin an' the
corp'ril's ghost. Niver woman was the worse for me whin I had married
Dinah. There's a time for all things, an' I know how to kape all things in
place--barrin' the dhrink, that kapes me in my place wid no hope av comin'
to be aught else."

"Begin at the beginning," I insisted. "Mrs. Mulvaney told me that you
married her when you were quartered in Krab Bokhar barracks."

"An' the same is a cess-pit," said Mulvaney, piously. "She spoke thrue,
did Dinah. 'Twas this way. Talkin' av that, have ye iver fallen in love,
sorr?"

I preserved the silence of the damned. Mulvaney continued--

"Thin I will assume that ye have not. _I_ did. In the days av my youth, as
I have more than wanst tould you, I was a man that filled the eye an'
delighted the sowl av women. Niver man was hated as I have bin. Niver man
was loved as I--no, not within half a day's march av ut! For the first
five years av my service, whin I was what I wud give my sowl to be now, I
tuk whatever was within my reach an' digested ut--an' that's more than
most men can say. Dhrink I tuk, an' ut did me no harm. By the Hollow av
Hiven, I cud play wid four women at wanst, an' kape them from findin' out
anythin' about the other three, an' smile like a fullblown marigold
through ut all. Dick Coulhan, av the battery we'll have down on us
to-night, could drive his team no better than I mine, an' I hild the
worser cattle! An' so I lived, an' so I was happy till afther that
business wid Annie Bragin--she that turned me off as cool as a meat-safe,
an' taught me where I stud in the mind av an honest woman. 'Twas no sweet
dose to swallow.

"Afther that I sickened awhile an' tuk thought to my reg'mental work;
conceiting mesilf I wud study an' be a sargint, an' a major-gineral twinty
minutes afther that. But on top av my ambitiousness there was an empty
place in my sowl, an' me own opinion av mesilf cud not fill ut. Sez I to
mesilf, 'Terence, you're a great man an' the best set-up in the reg'mint.
Go on an' get promotion.' Sez mesilf to me, 'What for?' Sez I to mesilf,
'For the glory av ut!' Sez mesilf to me, 'Will that fill these two strong
arrums av yours, Terence?' 'Go to the devil,' sez I to mesilf, 'Go to the
married lines,' sez mesilf to me. 'Tis the same thing,' sez I to mesilf.
'Av you're the same man, ut is,' said mesilf to me; an' wid that I
considhered on ut a long while. Did you iver feel that way, sorr?"

I snored gently, knowing that if Mulvaney were uninterrupted he would go
on. The clamor from the bivouac fires beat up to the stars, as the rival
singers of the companies were pitted against each other.

"So I felt that way an' a bad time ut was. Wanst, bein' a fool, I wint
into the married lines more for the sake av spakin' to our ould
color-sergint Shadd than for any thruck wid womenfolk. I was a corp'ril
then--rejuced aftherward, but a corp'ril then. I've got a photograft av
mesilf to prove ut. 'You'll take a cup av tay wid us?' sez Shadd. 'I will
that,' I sez, 'tho' tay is not my divarsion.'

"''Twud be better for you if ut were,' sez ould Mother Shadd, an' she had
ought to know, for Shadd, in the ind av his service, dhrank bung-full each
night.

"Wid that I tuk off my gloves--there was pipe-clay in thim, so that they
stud alone--an' pulled up my chair, lookin' round at the china ornaments
an' bits av things in the Shadds' quarters. They were things that belonged
to a man, an' no camp-kit, here to-day an' dishipated next. 'You're
comfortable in this place, sergint,' sez I. ''Tis the wife that did ut,
boy,' sez he, pointin' the stem av his pipe to ould Mother Shadd, an' she
smacked the top av his bald head apon the compliment. 'That manes you want
money,' sez she.

"An' thin--an' thin whin the kettle was to be filled, Dinah came in--my
Dinah--her sleeves rowled up to the elbow an' her hair in a winkin' glory
over her forehead, the big blue eyes beneath twinklin' like stars on a
frosty night, an' the tread av her two feet lighter than wastepaper from
the colonel's basket in ord'ly-room whin ut's emptied. Bein' but a shlip
av a girl she went pink at seein' me, an' I twisted me moustache an'
looked at a picture forninst the wall. Niver show a woman that ye care the
snap av a finger for her, an' begad she'll come bleatin' to your
boot-heels!"

"I suppose that's why you followed Annie Bragin till everybody in the
married quarters laughed at you," said I, remembering that unhallowed
wooing and casting off the disguise of drowsiness.

"I'm layin' down the gin'ral theory av the attack," said Mulvaney, driving
his boot into the dying fire. "If you read the _Soldier's Pocket Book_,
which niver any soldier reads, you'll see that there are exceptions. Whin
Dinah was out av the door (an' 'twas as tho' the sunlight had shut
too)--'Mother av Hiven, sergint,' sez I, 'but is that your
daughter?'--'I've believed that way these eighteen years,' sez ould Shadd,
his eyes twinklin'; 'but Mrs. Shadd has her own opinion, like iv'ry
woman,'--'Tis wid yours this time, for a mericle,' sez Mother Shadd. 'Thin
why in the name av fortune did I niver see her before?' sez I. 'Bekaze
you've been thrapesin' round wid the married women these three years past.
She was a bit av a child till last year, an' she shot up wid the spring,'
sez ould Mother Shadd, 'I'll thrapese no more,' sez I. 'D'you mane that?'
sez ould Mother Shadd, lookin' at me side-ways like a hen looks at a hawk
whin the chickens are runnin' free. 'Try me, an' tell,' sez I. Wid that I
pulled on my gloves, dhrank off the tay, an' went out av the house as
stiff as at gin'ral p'rade, for well I knew that Dinah Shadd's eyes were
in the small av my back out av the scullery window. Faith! that was the
only time I mourned I was not a cav'lry man for the pride av the spurs to
jingle.

"I wint out to think, an' I did a powerful lot av thinkin', but ut all
came round to that shlip av a girl in the dotted blue dhress, wid the blue
eyes an' the sparkil in them. Thin I kept off canteen, an' I kept to the
married quarthers, or near by, on the chanst av meetin' Dinah. Did I meet
her? Oh, my time past, did I not; wid a lump in my throat as big as my
valise an' my heart goin' like a farrier's forge on a Saturday morning?
'Twas 'Good day to ye, Miss Dinah,' an' 'Good day t'you, corp'ril,' for a
week or two, and divil a bit further could I get bekaze av the respect I
had to that girl that I cud ha' broken betune finger an' thumb."

Here I giggled as I recalled the gigantic figure of Dinah Shadd when she
handed me my shirt.

"Ye may laugh," grunted Mulvaney. "But I'm speakin' the trut', an' 'tis
you that are in fault. Dinah was a girl that wud ha' taken the
imperiousness out av the Duchess av Clonmel in those days. Flower hand,
foot av shod air, an' the eyes av the livin' mornin' she had that is my
wife to-day--ould Dinah, and niver aught else than Dinah Shadd to me.

"'Twas after three weeks standin' off an' on, an' niver makin' headway
excipt through the eyes, that a little drummer boy grinned in me face whin
I had admonished him wid the buckle av my belt for riotin' all over the
place, 'An' I'm not the only wan that doesn't kape to barricks,' sez he. I
tuk him by the scruff av his neck,--my heart was hung on a hair-thrigger
those days, you will onderstand--an' 'Out wid ut,' sez I, 'or I'll lave no
bone av you unbreakable,'--'Speak to Dempsey,' sez he howlin'. 'Dempsey
which?' sez I, 'ye unwashed limb av Satan.'--'Av the Bob-tailed
Dhragoons,' sez he, 'He's seen her home from her aunt's house in the civil
lines four times this fortnight,'--'Child!' sez I, dhroppin' him, 'your
tongue's stronger than your body. Go to your quarters. I'm sorry I
dhressed you down.'

"At that I went four ways to wanst huntin' Dempsey. I was mad to think
that wid all my airs among women I shud ha' been chated by a basin-faced
fool av a cav'lryman not fit to trust on a trunk. Presintly I found him in
our lines--the Bobtails was quartered next us--an' a tallowy, topheavy son
av a she-mule he was wid his big brass spurs an' his plastrons on his
epigastrons an' all. But he niver flinched a hair.

"'A word wid you, Dempsey,' sez I. 'You've walked wid Dinah Shadd four
times this fortnight gone.'

"'What's that to you?' sez he. 'I'll walk forty times more, an' forty on
top av that, ye shovel-futted clod-breakin' infantry lance-corp'ril.'

"Before I cud gyard he had his gloved fist home on my cheek an' down I
went full-sprawl. 'Will that content you?' sez he, blowin' on his knuckles
for all the world like a Scots Greys orf'cer. 'Content!' sez I. 'For your
own sake, man, take off your spurs, peel your jackut, an' onglove. 'Tis
the beginnin' av the overture; stand up!'

"He stud all he know, but he niver peeled his jacket, an' his shoulders
had no fair play. I was fightin' for Dinah Shadd an' that cut on my cheek.
What hope had he forninst me? 'Stand up,' sez I, time an' again whin he
was beginnin' to quarter the ground an' gyard high an' go large. 'This
isn't ridin'-school,' I sez. 'O man, stand up an' let me get in at ye.'
But whin I saw he wud be runnin' about, I grup his shtock in my left an'
his waist-belt in my right an' swung him clear to my right front, head
undher, he hammerin' my nose till the wind was knocked out av him on the
bare ground. 'Stand up,' sez I, 'or I'll kick your head into your chest!'
and I wud ha' done ut too, so ragin' mad I was.

"'My collar-bone's bruk,' sez he. 'Help me back to lines. I'll walk wid
her no more.' So I helped him back."

"And was his collar-bone broken?" I asked, for I fancied that only Learoyd
could neatly accomplish that terrible throw.

"He pitched on his left shoulder point. Ut was. Next day the news was in
both barricks, an' whin I met Dinah Shadd wid a cheek on me like all the
reg'mintal tailor's samples there was no 'Good mornin', corp'ril,' or
aught else. 'An' what have I done, Miss Shadd,' sez I, very bould,
plantin' mesilf forninst her, 'that ye should not pass the time of day?'

"'Ye've half-killed rough-rider Dempsey,' sez she, her dear blue eyes
fillin' up.

"'May be,' sez I. 'Was he a friend av yours that saw ye home four times in
the fortnight?'

"'Yes,' sez she, but her mouth was down at the corners, 'An'--an' what's
that to you?' she sez.

"'Ask Dempsey,' sez I, purtendin' to go away.

"'Did you fight for me then, ye silly man?' she sez, tho' she knew ut all
along.

"'Who else?' sez I, an' I tuk wan pace to the front.

"'I wasn't worth ut,' sez she, fingerin' in her apron.

"'That's for me to say,' sez I. 'Shall I say ut?'

"'Yes,' sez she, in a saint's whisper, an' at that I explained mesilf; and
she tould me what ivry man that is a man, an' many that is a woman, hears
wanst in his life.

"'But what made ye cry at startin', Dinah, darlin'?' sez I.

"'Your--your bloody cheek,' sez she, duckin' her little head down on my
sash (I was on duty for the day) an' whimperin' like a sorrowful angil.

"Now a man cud take that two ways. I tuk ut as pleased me best an' my
first kiss wid ut. Mother av Innocence! but I kissed her on the tip av the
nose and undher the eye; an' a girl that let's a kiss come tumble-ways
like that has never been kissed before. Take note av that, sorr. Thin we
wint hand in hand to ould Mother Shadd like two little childher, an' she
said 'twas no bad thing, an' ould Shadd nodded behind his pipe, an' Dinah
ran away to her own room. That day I throd on rollin' clouds. All earth
was too small to hould me. Begad, I cud ha' hiked the sun out av the sky
for a live coal to my pipe, so magnificent I was. But I tuk recruities at
squad-drill instid, an' began wid general battalion advance whin I shud
ha' been balance-steppin' them. Eyah! that day! that day!"

A very long pause. "Well?" said I.

"'Twas all wrong," said Mulvaney, with an enormous sigh. "An' I know that
ev'ry bit av ut was my own foolishness. That night I tuk maybe the half av
three pints--not enough to turn the hair of a man in his natural senses.
But I was more than half drunk wid pure joy, an' that canteen beer was so
much whisky to me, I can't tell how it came about, but _bekaze_ I had no
thought for anywan except Dinah, _bekaze_ I hadn't slipped her little
white arms from my neck five minuts, _bekaze_ the breath of her kiss was
not gone from my mouth, I must go through the married lines on my way to
quarters an' I must stay talkin' to a red-headed Mullingar heifer av a
girl, Judy Sheehy, that was daughter to Mother Sheehy, the wife of Nick
Sheehy, the canteen-sergint--the Black Curse av Shielygh be on the whole
brood that are above groun' this day!

"'An' what are ye houldin' your head that high for, corp'ril?' sez Judy.
'Come in an' thry a cup av tay,' she sez, standin' in the doorway. Bein'
an ontrustable fool, an' thinkin' av anything but tay, I wint.

"'Mother's at canteen,' sez Judy, smoothin' the hair av hers that was like
red snakes, an' lookin' at me corner-ways out av her green cats' eyes. 'Ye
will not mind, corp'ril?'

"'I can endure,' sez I; ould Mother Sheehy bein' no divarsion av mine, nor
her daughter too. Judy fetched the tea things an' put thim on the table,
leanin' over me very close to get thim square. I dhrew back, thinkin' av
Dinah.

"'Is ut afraid you are av a girl alone?' sez Judy.

"'No,' sez I. 'Why should I be?'

"'That rests wid the girl,' sez Judy, dhrawin' her chair next to mine.

"'Thin there let ut rest,' sez I; an' thinkin' I'd been a trifle onpolite,
I sez, 'The tay's not quite sweet enough for my taste. Put your little
finger in the cup, Judy. 'Twill make ut necthar.'

"'What's necthar?' sez she.

"'Somethin' very sweet,' sez I; an' for the sinful life av me I cud not
help lookin' at her out av the corner av my eye, as I was used to look at
a woman.

"'Go on wid ye, corp'ril,' sez she. 'You're a flirrt.'

"'On me sowl I'm not,' sez I.

"'Then you're a cruel handsome man, an' that's worse,' sez she, heaving
big sighs an' lookin' crossways.

"'You know your own mind,' sez I.

"''Twud be better for me if I did not,' she sez.

"'There's a dale to be said on both sides av that,' sez I, unthinkin'.

"'Say your own part av ut, then, Terence, darlin',' sez she; 'for begad
I'm thinkin' I've said too much or too little for an honest girl,' an' wid
that she put her arms round my neck an' kissed me.

"'There's no more to be said afther that,' sez I, kissin' her back
again--Oh the mane scutt that I was, my head ringin' wid Dinah Shadd! How
does ut come about, sorr, that when a man has put the comether on wan
woman, he's sure bound to put it on another? 'Tis the same thing at
musketry, Wan day ivry shot goes wide or into the bank, an' the next, lay
high lay low, sight or snap, ye can't get off the bull's-eye for ten shots
runnin'."

"That only happens to a man who has had a good deal of experience. He does
it without thinking," I replied.

"Thankin' you for the complimint, sorr, ut may be so. But I'm doubtful
whether you mint ut for a complimint. Hear now; I sat there wid Judy on my
knee tellin' me all manner av nonsinse an' only sayin' 'yes' an' 'no,'
when I'd much better ha' kept tongue betune teeth. An' that was not an
hour afther I had left Dinah! What I was thinkin' av I cannot say,
Presintly. quiet as a cat, ould Mother Sheehy came in velvet-dhrunk. She
had her daughter's red hair, but 'twas bald in patches, an' I cud see in
her wicked ould face, clear as lightnin', what Judy wud be twenty years to
come. I was for jumpin' up, but Judy niver moved.

"'Terence has promust, mother,' sez she, an' the could sweat bruk out all
over me. Ould Mother Sheehy sat down of a heap an' began playin' wid the
cups. 'Thin you're a well-matched pair,' she sez, very thick. 'For he's
the biggest rogue that iver spoiled the queen's shoe-leather,' an'--

"'I'm off, Judy,' sez I. 'Ye should not talk nonsinse to your mother. Get
her to bed, girl.'

"'Nonsinse!' sez the ould woman, prickin' up her ears like a cat an'
grippin' the table-edge. ''Twill be the most nonsinsical nonsinse for you,
ye grinnin' badger, if nonsinse 'tis. Git clear, you. I'm goin' to bed.'

"I ran out into the dhark, my head in a stew an' my heart sick, but I had
sinse enough to see that I'd brought ut all on mysilf. 'It's this to pass
the time av day to a panjandhrum av hellcats,' sez I. 'What I've said, an'
what I've not said do not matther. Judy an' her dam will hould me for a
promust man, an' Dinah will give me the go, an' I desarve ut. I will go
an' get dhrunk,' sez I, 'an' forget about ut, for 'tis plain I'm not a
marrin' man.'

"On my way to canteen I ran against Lascelles, color-sergeant that was av
E Comp'ny, a hard, hard man, wid a torment av a wife. 'You've the head av
a drowned man on your shoulders,' sez he; 'an' you're goin' where you'll
get a worse wan. 'Come back,' sez he. 'Let me go,' sez I. 'I've thrown my
luck over the wall wid my own hand!'--'Then that's not the way to get ut
back again,' sez he. 'Have out wid your throuble, ye fool-bhoy.' An' I
tould him how the matther was.

"He sucked in his lower lip. 'You've been thrapped,' sez he. 'Ju Sheehy
wud be the betther for a man's name to hers as soon as can. An' ye thought
ye'd put the comether on her,--that's the natural vanity of the baste.
Terence, you're a big born fool, but you're not bad enough to marry into
that comp'ny. If you said anythin', an' for all your protestations I'm
sure ye did--or did not, which is worse,--eat ut all--lie like the father
of all lies, but come out av ut free av Judy. Do I not know what ut is to
marry a woman that was the very spit an' image av Judy whin she was young?
I'm gettin' old an' I've larnt patience, but you, Terence, you'd raise
hand on Judy an' kill her in a year. Never mind if Dinah gives you the go,
you've desarved ut; never mind if the whole reg'mint laughs you all day.
Get shut av Judy an' her mother. They can't dhrag you to church, but if
they do, they'll dhrag you to hell. Go back to your quarters and lie
down,' sez he. Thin over his shoulder, 'You _must_ ha' done with thim,'

"Next day I wint to see Dinah, but there was no tucker in me as I walked.
I knew the throuble wud come soon enough widout any handlin' av mine, an'
I dreaded ut sore.

"I heard Judy callin' me, but I hild straight on to the Shadds' quarthers,
an' Dinah wud ha' kissed me but I put her back.

"'Whin all's said, darlin',' sez I, 'you can give ut me if ye will, tho' I
misdoubt 'twill be so easy to come by then.'

"I had scarce begun to put the explanation into shape before Judy an' her
mother came to the door. I think there was a veranda, but I'm forgettin'.

"'Will ye not step in?' sez Dinah, pretty and polite, though the Shadds
had no dealin's with the Sheehys. Old Mother Shadd looked up quick, an'
she was the fust to see the throuble; for Dinah was her daughter.

"'I'm pressed for time to-day,' sez Judy as bould as brass; 'an' I've only
come for Terence,--my promust man. Tis strange to find him here the day
afther the day.'

"Dinah looked at me as though I had hit her, an' I answered straight.

"'There was some nonsinse last night at the Sheehys' quarthers, an' Judy's
carryin' on the joke, darlin',' sez I.

"'At the Sheehys' quarthers?' sez Dinah very slow, an' Judy cut in wid:
'He was there from nine till ten, Dinah Shadd, an' the betther half av
that time I was sittin' on his knee, Dinah Shadd. Ye may look and ye may
look an' ye may look me up an' down, but ye won't look away that Terence
is my promust man, Terence, darlin', 'tis time for us to be comin' home.'

"Dinah Shadd niver said word to Judy. 'Ye left me at half-past eight,' she
sez to me, 'an' I niver thought that ye'd leave me for Judy,--promises, or
no promises. Go back wid her, you that have to be fetched by a girl! I'm
done with you,' sez she, and she ran into her own room, her mother
followin'. So I was alone wid those two women and at liberty to spake my
sentiments.

"'Judy Sheehy,' sez I, 'if you made a fool av me betune the lights you
shall not do ut in the day. I niver promised you words or lines.'

"'You lie,' sez ould Mother Sheehy, 'an' may ut choke you waere you
stand!' She was far gone in dhrink.

"'An' tho' ut choked me where I stud I'd not change,' sez I. 'Go home,
Judy. I take shame for a decent girl like you dhraggin' your mother out
bareheaded on this errand. Hear now, and have ut for an answer. I gave my
word to Dinah Shadd yesterday, an', more blame to me, I was wid you last
night talkin' nonsinse but nothin' more. You've chosen to thry to hould me
on ut. I will not be held thereby for anythin' in the world. Is that
enough?'

"Judy wint pink all over. 'An' I wish you joy av the perjury,' sez she,
duckin' a curtsey. 'You've lost a woman that would ha' wore her hand to
the bone for your pleasure; an' 'deed, Terence, ye were not thrapped....'
Lascelles must ha' spoken plain to her. 'I am such as Dinah is--'deed I
am! Ye've lost a fool av a girl that'll niver look at you again, an' ye've
lost what ye niver had,--your common honesty. If you manage your men as
you manage your love-makin', small wondher they call you the worst
corp'ril in the comp'ny. Come away, mother,' sez she.

"But divil a fut would the ould woman budge! 'D'you hould by that?' sez
she, peerin' up under her thick grey eyebrows.

"'Ay, an wud,' sez I, 'tho' Dinah give me the go twinty times. I'll have
no thruck with you or yours,' sez I. 'Take your child away, ye shameless
woman.'

"'An' am I shameless?' sez she, bringin' her hands up above her head.
'Thin what are you, ye lyin', schamin', weak-kneed, dhirty-souled son av a
sutler? Am _I_ shameless? Who put the open shame on me an' my child that
we shud go beggin' through the lines in the broad daylight for the broken
word of a man? Double portion of my shame be on you, Terence Mulvaney,
that think yourself so strong! By Mary and the saints, by blood and water
an' by ivry sorrow that came into the world since the beginnin', the black
blight fall on you and yours, so that you may niver be free from pain for
another when ut's not your own! May your heart bleed in your breast drop
by drop wid all your friends laughin' at the bleedin'! Strong you think
yourself? May your strength be a curse to you to dhrive you into the
divil's hands against your own will! Clear-eyed you are? May your eyes see
dear evry step av the dark path you take till the hot cindhers av hell put
thim out! May the ragin' dry thirst in my own ould bones go to you that
you shall niver pass bottle full nor glass empty. God preserve the light
av your onder-standin' to you, my jewel av a bhoy, that ye may niver
forget what you mint to be an' do, whin you're wallowin' in the muck! May
ye see the betther and follow the worse as long as there's breath in your
body; an' may ye die quick in a strange land; watchin' your death before
ut takes you, an' onable to stir hand or foot!'

"I heard a scufflin' in the room behind, and thin Dinah Shadd's hand
dhropped into mine like a rose-leaf into a muddy road.

"'The half av that I'll take,' sez she, 'an' more too if I can. Go home,
ye silly talkin' woman,--go home an' confess.'

"'Come away! Come away!' sez Judy, pullin' her mother by the shawl. ''Twas
none av Terence's fault. For the love av Mary stop the talkin'!'

"'An' you!' said ould Mother Sheehy, spinnin' round forninst Dinah. 'Will
ye take the half av that man's load? Stand off from him, Dinah Shadd,
before he takes you down too--you that look to be a quarther-master-
sergeant's wife in five years. You look too high, child. You shall _wash_
for the quarther-master-sergeant, whin he plases to give you the job out
av charity; but a privit's wife you shall be to the end, an' evry sorrow
of a privit's wife you shall know and nivir a joy but wan, that shall go
from you like the running tide from a rock. The pain av bearin' you shall
know but niver the pleasure av giving the breast; an' you shall put away
a man-child into the common ground wid never a priest to say a prayer over
him, an' on that man-child ye shall think ivry day av your life. Think
long, Dinah Shadd, for you'll niver have another tho' you pray till your
knees are bleedin'. The mothers av childer shall mock you behind your back
when you're wringing over the washtub. You shall know what ut is to help a
dhrunken husband home an' see him go to the gyard-room. Will that plase
you, Dinah Shadd, that won't be seen talkin' to my daughter? You shall
talk to worse than Judy before all's over. The sergints' wives shall look
down on you contemptuous, daughter av a sergint, an' you shall cover ut
all up wid a smiling face when your heart's burstin'. Stand off av him,
Dinah Shadd, for I've put the Black Curse of Shielygh upon him an' his own
mouth shall make ut good."

"She pitched forward on her head an' began foamin' at the mouth. Dinah
Shadd ran out wid water, an' Judy dhragged the ould woman into the veranda
till she sat up.

"'I'm old an' forlore,' she sez, thremblin' an' cryin', 'and 'tis like I
say a dale more than I mane.'

"'When you're able to walk,--go,' says ould Mother Shadd. 'This house has
no place for the likes av you that have cursed my daughter.'

"'Eyah!' said the ould woman. 'Hard words break no bones, an' Dinah Shadd
'll keep the love av her husband till my bones are green corn, Judy
darlin', I misremember what I came here for. Can you lend us the bottom av
a taycup av tay, Mrs. Shadd?'

"But Judy dhragged her off cryin' as tho' her heart wud break. An' Dinah
Shadd an' I, in ten minutes we had forgot ut all."

"Then why do you remember it now?" said I.

"Is ut like I'd forget? Ivry word that wicked ould woman spoke fell thrue
in my life aftherward, an' I cud ha' stud ut all--stud ut all--excipt when
my little Shadd was born. That was on the line av march three months
afther the regiment was taken with cholera. We were betune Umballa an'
Kalka thin, an' I was on picket. Whin I came off duty the women showed me
the child, an' ut turned on uts side an' died as I looked. We buried him
by the road, an' Father Victor was a day's march behind wid the heavy
baggage, so the comp'ny captain read a prayer. An' since then I've been a
childless man, an' all else that ould Mother Sheehy put upon me an' Dinah
Shadd. What do you think, sorr?"

I thought a good deal, but it seemed better then to reach out for
Mulvaney's hand. The demonstration nearly cost me the use of three
fingers. Whatever he knows of his weaknesses, Mulvaney is entirely
ignorant of his strength.

"But what do you think?" he repeated, as I was straightening out the
crushed fingers.

My reply was drowned in yells and outcries from the next fire, where ten
men were shouting for "Orth'ris," "Privit Orth'ris," "Mistah
Or--ther--ris!" "Deah boy," "Cap'n Orth'ris," "Field-Marshal Orth'ris,"
"Stanley, you pen'north o' pop, come 'ere to your own comp'ny!" And the
cockney, who had been delighting another audience with recondite and
Rabelaisian yarns, was shot down among his admirers by the major force.

"You've crumpled my dress-shirt 'orrid," said he, "an' I shan't sing no
more to this 'ere bloomin' drawin'-room."

Learoyd, roused by the confusion, uncoiled himself, crept behind Ortheris,
and slung him aloft on his shoulders.

"Sing, ye bloomin' hummin' bird!" said he, and Ortheris, beating time on
Learoyd's skull, delivered himself, in the raucous voice of the Ratcliffe
Highway, of this song:--

   My girl she give me the go onst,
     When I was a London lad,
   An' I went on the drink for a fortnight,
     An' then I went to the bad.
   The Queen she give me a shillin'
     To fight for 'er over the seas;
   But Guv'ment built me a fever-trap,
     An' Injia give me disease.

_Chorus._

   Ho! don't you 'eed what a girl says,
     An' don't you go for the beer;
   But I was an ass when I was at grass,
     An' that is why I'm here.

   I fired a shot at a Afghan,
     The beggar 'e fired again,
   An' I lay on my bed with a 'ole in my 'ed,
     An' missed the next campaign!
   I up with my gun at a Burman
     Who carried a bloomin' _dah_,
   But the cartridge stuck and the bay'nit bruk,
     An' all I got was the scar.

_Chorus._

   Ho! don't you aim at a Afghan
     When you stand on the sky-line clear;
   An' don't you go for a Burman
     If none o' your friends is near.

  I served my time for a corp'ral,
     An' wetted my stripes with pop,
   For I went on the bend with a intimate friend,
     An' finished the night in the "shop."
   I served my time for a sergeant;
     The colonel 'e sez "No!
   The most you'll see is a full C.B." [1]
     An' ... very next night 'twas so.

[Footnote 1: Confined to barracks.]

_Chorus._

   Ho! don't you go for a corp'ral
     Unless your 'ed is clear;
   But I was an ass when I was at grass,
     An' that is why I'm 'ere.

   I've tasted the luck o' the army
     In barrack an' camp an' clink,
   An' I lost my tip through the bloomin' trip
     Along o' the women an' drink.
   I'm down at the heel o' my service
     An' when I am laid on the shelf,
   My very wust friend from beginning to end
     By the blood of a mouse was myself!

_Chorus_.

   Ho! don't you 'eed what a girl says,
     An' don't you go for the beer:
   But I was an ass when I was at grass,
     An' that is why I'm 'ere,

"Ay, listen to our little man now, singin' an' shoutin' as tho' trouble
had niver touched him. D' you remember when he went mad with the
homesickness?" said Mulvaney, recalling a never-to-be-forgotten season
when Ortheris waded through the deep waters of affliction and behaved
abominably. "But he's talkin' bitter truth, though. Eyah!

  "My very worst frind from beginnin' to ind
  By the blood av a mouse was mesilf!"

       *       *       *       *       *

When I woke I saw Mulvaney, the night-dew gemming his moustache, leaning
on his rifle at picket, lonely as Prometheus on his rock, with I know not
what vultures tearing his liver.




THE STORY OF MUHAMMAD DIN


  Who is the happy man? He that sees in his own house at home, little
children crowned with dust, leaping and falling and crying.
--_Munichandra_, translated by Professor Peterson.

The polo-ball was an old one, scarred, chipped, and dinted. It stood on
the mantelpiece among the pipe-stems which Imam Din, _khitmatgar_, was
cleaning for me.

"Does the Heaven-born want this ball?" said Imam Din, deferentially.

The Heaven-born set no particular store by it; but of what use was a
polo-ball to a _khitmatgar_?

"By your Honor's favor, I have a little son. He has seen this ball, and
desires it to play with. I do not want it for myself."

No one would for an instant accuse portly old Imam Din of wanting to play
with polo-balls. He carried out the battered thing into the veranda; and
there followed a hurricane of joyful squeaks, a patter of small feet, and
the _thud-thud-thud_ of the ball rolling along the ground. Evidently the
little son had been waiting outside the door to secure his treasure. But
how had he managed to see that polo-ball?

Next day, coming back from office half an hour earlier than usual, I was
aware of a small figure in the dining-room--a tiny, plump figure in a
ridiculously inadequate shirt which came, perhaps, half-way down the tubby
stomach. It wandered round the room, thumb in mouth, crooning to itself as
it took stock of the pictures. Undoubtedly this was the "little son."

He had no busines

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