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Traffics and Discoveries

by Rudyard Kipling · English · Gutenberg #9790 · 544,169 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Traffics and Discoveries

Author: Rudyard Kipling


        
Release date: January 1, 2006 [eBook #9790]
                Most recently updated: January 15, 2022

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9790

Credits: Juliet Sutherland, Keith M. Eckrich and PG Distributed Proofreaders


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAFFICS AND DISCOVERIES ***




TRAFFICS AND DISCOVERIES

by Rudyard Kipling


Contents

 _from the Masjid-al-Aqsa of Sayyid Ahmed (Wahabi)_
 THE CAPTIVE
 _Poseidon’s Law_
 THE BONDS OF DISCIPLINE
 _The Runners_
 A SAHIBS’ WAR
 _The Wet Litany_
 “THEIR LAWFUL OCCASIONS”—PART I.
 “THEIR LAWFUL OCCASIONS”—PART II.
 _The King’s Task_
 THE COMPREHENSION OF PRIVATE COPPER
 _The Necessitarian_
 STEAM TACTICS
 _Kaspar’s Song in “Varda”_
 “WIRELESS”
 _Song of the Old Guard_
 THE ARMY OF A DREAM—PART I.
 THE ARMY OF A DREAM—PART II.
 _The Return of the Children_
 “THEY”
 _From Lyden’s “Irenius_”
 MRS. BATHURST
 “_Our Fathers Also_”
 BELOW THE MILL DAM




THE CAPTIVE




FROM THE MASJID-AL-AQSA OF SAYYID AHMED (WAHABI)


Not with an outcry to Allah nor any complaining
He answered his name at the muster and stood to the chaining.
When the twin anklets were nipped on the leg-bars that held them,
He brotherly greeted the armourers stooping to weld them.
Ere the sad dust of the marshalled feet of the chain-gang swallowed him,
Observing him nobly at ease, I alighted and followed him.
Thus we had speech by the way, but not touching his sorrow
Rather his red Yesterday and his regal To-morrow,
Wherein he statelily moved to the clink of his chains unregarded,
Nowise abashed but contented to drink of the potion awarded.
Saluting aloofly his Fate, he made swift with his story;
And the words of his mouth were as slaves spreading carpets of glory
Embroidered with names of the Djinns—a miraculous weaving—
But the cool and perspicuous eye overbore unbelieving.
So I submitted myself to the limits of rapture—
Bound by this man we had bound, amid captives his capture—
Till he returned me to earth and the visions departed;
But on him be the Peace and the Blessing: for he was great-hearted!




THE CAPTIVE


“He that believeth shall not make haste.”—_Isaiah_.


The guard-boat lay across the mouth of the bathing-pool, her crew idly
spanking the water with the flat of their oars. A red-coated
militia-man, rifle in hand, sat at the bows, and a petty officer at the
stern. Between the snow-white cutter and the flat-topped,
honey-coloured rocks on the beach the green water was troubled with
shrimp-pink prisoners-of-war bathing. Behind their orderly tin camp and
the electric-light poles rose those stone-dotted spurs that throw heat
on Simonstown. Beneath them the little _Barracouta_ nodded to the big
_Gibraltar_, and the old _Penelope_, that in ten years has been
bachelors’ club, natural history museum, kindergarten, and prison,
rooted and dug at her fixed moorings. Far out, a three-funnelled
Atlantic transport with turtle bow and stern waddled in from the deep
sea.

Said the sentry, assured of the visitor’s good faith, “Talk to ’em? You
can, to any that speak English. You’ll find a lot that do.”

Here and there earnest groups gathered round ministers of the Dutch
Reformed Church, who doubtless preached conciliation, but the majority
preferred their bath. The God who Looks after Small Things had caused
the visitor that day to receive two weeks’ delayed mails in one from a
casual postman, and the whole heavy bundle of newspapers, tied with a
strap, he dangled as bait. At the edge of the beach, cross-legged,
undressed to his sky-blue army shirt, sat a lean, ginger-haired man, on
guard over a dozen heaps of clothing. His eyes followed the incoming
Atlantic boat.

“Excuse me, Mister,” he said, without turning (and the speech betrayed
his nationality), “would you mind keeping away from these garments?
I’ve been elected janitor—on the Dutch vote.”

The visitor moved over against the barbed-wire fence and sat down to
his mail. At the rustle of the newspaper-wrappers the ginger-coloured
man turned quickly, the hunger of a press-ridden people in his
close-set iron-grey eyes.

“Have you any use for papers?” said the visitor.

“Have I any use?” A quick, curved forefinger was already snicking off
the outer covers. “Why, that’s the New York postmark! Give me the ads.
at the back of _Harper’s_ and _M’Clure’s_ and I’m in touch with God’s
Country again! Did you know how I was aching for papers?”

The visitor told the tale of the casual postman.

“Providential!” said the ginger-coloured man, keen as a terrier on his
task; “both in time and matter. Yes! … The _Scientific American_ yet
once more! Oh, it’s good! it’s good!” His voice broke as he pressed his
hawk-like nose against the heavily-inked patent-specifications at the
end. “Can I keep it? I thank you—I thank you! Why—why—well—well! The
_American Tyler_ of all things created! Do you subscribe to that?”

“I’m on the free list,” said the visitor, nodding.

He extended his blue-tanned hand with that air of Oriental spaciousness
which distinguishes the native-born American, and met the visitor’s
grasp expertly. “I can only say that you have treated me like a Brother
(yes, I’ll take every last one you can spare), and if ever—” He plucked
at the bosom of his shirt. “Psha! I forgot I’d no card on me; but my
name’s Zigler—Laughton G. Zigler. An American? If Ohio’s still in the
Union, I am, Sir. But I’m no extreme States’-rights man. I’ve used all
of my native country and a few others as I have found occasion, and now
I am the captive of your bow and spear. I’m not kicking at that. I am
not a coerced alien, nor a naturalised Texas mule-tender, nor an
adventurer on the instalment plan. _I_ don’t tag after our consul when
he comes around, expecting the American Eagle to lift me out o’ this by
the slack of my pants. No, sir! If a Britisher went into Indian
Territory and shot up his surroundings with a Colt automatic (not that
_she’s_ any sort of weapon, but I take her for an illustration), he’d
be strung up quicker’n a snowflake ’ud melt in hell. No ambassador of
yours ’ud save him. I’m my neck ahead on this game, anyway. That’s how
I regard the proposition.

“Have I gone gunning against the British? To a certain extent, I
presume you never heard tell of the Laughton-Zigler automatic two-inch
field-gun, with self-feeding hopper, single oil-cylinder recoil, and
ballbearing gear throughout? Or Laughtite, the new explosive?
Absolutely uniform in effect, and one-ninth the bulk of any present
effete charge—flake, cannonite, cordite, troisdorf, cellulose, cocoa,
cord, or prism—I don’t care what it is. Laughtite’s immense; so’s the
Zigler automatic. It’s me. It’s fifteen years of me. You are not a
gun-sharp? I am sorry. I could have surprised you. Apart from my gun,
my tale don’t amount to much of anything. I thank you, but I don’t use
any tobacco you’d be likely to carry… Bull Durham? _Bull Durham!_ I
take it all back—every last word. Bull Durham—here! If ever you strike
Akron, Ohio, when this fool-war’s over, remember you’ve Laughton O.
Zigler in your vest pocket. Including the city of Akron. We’ve a little
club there…. Hell! What’s the sense of talking Akron with no pants?

“My gun? … For two cents I’d have shipped her to our Filipeens. ‘Came
mighty near it too; but from what I’d read in the papers, you can’t
trust Aguinaldo’s crowd on scientific matters. Why don’t I offer it to
our army? Well, you’ve an effete aristocracy running yours, and we’ve a
crowd of politicians. The results are practically identical. I am not
taking any U.S. Army in mine.

“I went to Amsterdam with her—to this Dutch junta that supposes it’s
bossing the war. I wasn’t brought up to love the British for one thing,
and for another I knew that if she got in her fine work (my gun) I’d
stand more chance of receiving an unbiassed report from a crowd of
dam-fool British officers than from a hatful of politicians’ nephews
doing duty as commissaries and ordnance sharps. As I said, I put the
brown man out of the question. That’s the way _I_ regarded the
proposition.

“The Dutch in Holland don’t amount to a row of pins. Maybe I misjudge
’em. Maybe they’ve been swindled too often by self-seeking adventurers
to know a enthusiast when they see him. Anyway, they’re slower than the
Wrath o’ God. But on delusions—as to their winning out next Thursday
week at 9 A.M.—they are—if I may say so—quite British.

“I’ll tell you a curious thing, too. I fought ’em for ten days before I
could get the financial side of my game fixed to my liking. I knew they
didn’t believe in the Zigler, but they’d no call to be crazy-mean. I
fixed it—free passage and freight for me and the gun to Delagoa Bay,
and beyond by steam and rail. Then I went aboard to see her crated, and
there I struck my fellow-passengers—all deadheads, same as me. Well,
Sir, I turned in my tracks where I stood and besieged the
ticket-office, and I said, ‘Look at here, Van Dunk. I’m paying for my
passage and her room in the hold—every square and cubic foot.’ ‘Guess
he knocked down the fare to himself; but I paid. I paid. I wasn’t going
to deadhead along o’ _that_ crowd of Pentecostal sweepings. ’Twould
have hoodooed my gun for all time. That was the way I regarded the
proposition. No, Sir, they were not pretty company.

“When we struck Pretoria I had a hell-and-a-half of a time trying to
interest the Dutch vote in my gun an’ her potentialities. The bottom
was out of things rather much just about that time. Kruger was praying
some and stealing some, and the Hollander lot was singing, ‘If you
haven’t any money you needn’t come round,’ Nobody was spending his
dough on anything except tickets to Europe. We were both grossly
neglected. When I think how I used to give performances in the public
streets with dummy cartridges, filling the hopper and turning the
handle till the sweat dropped off me, I blush, Sir. I’ve made her to do
her stunts before Kaffirs—naked sons of Ham—in Commissioner Street,
trying to get a holt somewhere.

“Did I talk? I despise exaggeration—’tain’t American or scientific—but
as true as I’m sitting here like a blue-ended baboon in a kloof, Teddy
Roosevelt’s Western tour was a maiden’s sigh compared to my advertising
work.

“’Long in the spring I was rescued by a commandant called Van Zyl—a
big, fleshy man with a lame leg. Take away his hair and his gun and
he’d make a first-class Schenectady bar-keep. He found me and the
Zigler on the veldt (Pretoria wasn’t wholesome at that time), and he
annexed me in a somnambulistic sort o’ way. He was dead against the war
from the start, but, being a Dutchman, he fought a sight better than
the rest of that ‘God and the Mauser’ outfit. Adrian Van Zyl. Slept a
heap in the daytime—and didn’t love niggers. I liked him. I was the
only foreigner in his commando. The rest was Georgia Crackers and
Pennsylvania Dutch—with a dash o’ Philadelphia lawyer. I could tell you
things about them would surprise you. Religion for one thing; women for
another; but I don’t know as their notions o’ geography weren’t the
craziest. ‘Guess that must be some sort of automatic compensation.
There wasn’t one blamed ant-hill in their district they didn’t know
_and_ use; but the world was flat, they said, and England was a day’s
trek from Cape Town.

“They could fight in their own way, and don’t you forget it. But I
guess you will not. They fought to kill, and, by what I could make out,
the British fought to be killed. So both parties were accommodated.

“I am the captive of your bow and spear, Sir. The position has its
obligations—on both sides. You could not be offensive or partisan to
me. I cannot, for the same reason, be offensive to you. Therefore I
will not give you my opinions on the conduct of your war.

“Anyway, I didn’t take the field as an offensive partisan, but as an
inventor. It was a condition and not a theory that confronted me. (Yes,
Sir, I’m a Democrat by conviction, and that was one of the best things
Grover Cleveland ever got off.)

“After three months’ trek, old man Van Zyl had his commando in good
shape and refitted off the British, and he reckoned he’d wait on a
British General of his acquaintance that did business on a circuit
between Stompiesneuk, Jackhalputs, Vrelegen, and Odendaalstroom, year
in and year out. He was a fixture in that section.

“‘He’s a dam’ good man,’ says Van Zyl. ‘He’s a friend of mine. He sent
in a fine doctor when I was wounded and our Hollander doc. wanted to
cut my leg off. Ya, I’ll guess we’ll stay with him.’ Up to date, me and
my Zigler had lived in innocuous desuetude owing to little odds and
ends riding out of gear. How in thunder was I to know there wasn’t the
ghost of any road in the country? But raw hide’s cheap and lastin’. I
guess I’ll make my next gun a thousand pounds heavier, though.

“Well, Sir, we struck the General on his beat—Vrelegen it was—and our
crowd opened with the usual compliments at two thousand yards. Van Zyl
shook himself into his greasy old saddle and says, ‘Now we shall be
quite happy, Mr. Zigler. No more trekking. Joost twelve miles a day
till the apricots are ripe.’

“Then we hitched on to his outposts, and vedettes, and
cossack-picquets, or whatever they was called, and we wandered around
the veldt arm in arm like brothers.

“The way we worked lodge was this way. The General, he had his
breakfast at 8:45 A.M. to the tick. He might have been a Long Island
commuter. At 8:42 A.M. I’d go down to the Thirty-fourth Street ferry to
meet him—I mean I’d see the Zigler into position at two thousand (I
began at three thousand, but that was cold and distant)—and blow him
off to two full hoppers—eighteen rounds—just as they were bringing in
his coffee. If his crowd was busy celebrating the anniversary of
Waterloo or the last royal kid’s birthday, they’d open on me with two
guns (I’ll tell you about them later on), but if they were disengaged
they’d all stand to their horses and pile on the ironmongery, and
washers, and typewriters, and five weeks’ grub, and in half an hour
they’d sail out after me and the rest of Van Zyl’s boys; lying down and
firing till 11:45 A.M. or maybe high noon. Then we’d go from labour to
refreshment, resooming at 2 P.M. and battling till tea-time. Tuesday
and Friday was the General’s moving days. He’d trek ahead ten or twelve
miles, and we’d loaf around his flankers and exercise the ponies a
piece. Sometimes he’d get hung up in a drift—stalled crossin’ a
crick—and we’d make playful snatches at his wagons. First time that
happened I turned the Zigler loose with high hopes, Sir; but the old
man was well posted on rearguards with a gun to ’em, and I had to haul
her out with three mules instead of six. I was pretty mad. I wasn’t
looking for any experts back of the Royal British Artillery. Otherwise,
the game was mostly even. He’d lay out three or four of our commando,
and we’d gather in four or five of his once a week or thereon. One
time, I remember, long towards dusk we saw ’em burying five of their
boys. They stood pretty thick around the graves. We wasn’t more than
fifteen hundred yards off, but old Van Zyl wouldn’t fire. He just took
off his hat at the proper time. He said if you stretched a man at his
prayers you’d have to hump his bad luck before the Throne as well as
your own. I am inclined to agree with him. So we browsed along week in
and week out. A war-sharp might have judged it sort of docile, but for
an inventor needing practice one day and peace the next for checking
his theories, it suited Laughton O. Zigler.

“And friendly? Friendly was no word for it. We was brothers in arms.

“Why, I knew those two guns of the Royal British Artillery as well as I
used to know the old Fifth Avenoo stages. _They_ might have been
brothers too.

“They’d jolt into action, and wiggle around and skid and spit and cough
and prize ’emselves back again during our hours of bloody battle till I
could have wept, Sir, at the spectacle of modern white men chained up
to these old hand-power, back-number, flint-and-steel reaping machines.
One of ’em—I called her Baldy—she’d a long white scar all along her
barrel—I’d made sure of twenty times. I knew her crew by sight, but
she’d come switching and teturing out of the dust of my shells
like—like a hen from under a buggy—and she’d dip into a gully, and next
thing I’d know ’ud be her old nose peeking over the ridge sniffin’ for
us. Her runnin’ mate had two grey mules in the lead, and a natural wood
wheel repainted, and a whole raft of rope-ends trailin’ around. ‘Jever
see Tom Reed with his vest off, steerin’ Congress through a heat-wave?
I’ve been to Washington often—too often—filin’ my patents. I called her
Tom Reed. We three ’ud play pussy-wants-a-corner all round the outposts
on off-days—cross-lots through the sage and along the mezas till we was
short-circuited by canons. O, it was great for me and Baldy and Tom
Reed! I don’t know as we didn’t neglect the legitimate interests of our
respective commanders sometimes for this ball-play. I know _I_ did.

“’Long towards the fall the Royal British Artillery grew shy—hung back
in their breeching sort of—and their shooting was way—way off. I
observed they wasn’t taking any chances, not though I acted kitten
almost underneath ’em.

“I mentioned it to Van Zyl, because it struck me I had about knocked
their Royal British moral endways.

“‘No,’ says he, rocking as usual on his pony. ‘My Captain Mankeltow he
is sick. That is all.’

“‘So’s your Captain Mankeltow’s guns,’ I said. ‘But I’m going to make
’em a heap sicker before he gets well.’

“‘No,’ says Van Zyl. ‘He has had the enteric a little. Now he is
better, and he was let out from hospital at Jackhalputs. Ah, that
Mankeltow! He always makes me laugh so. I told him—long back—at
Colesberg, I had a little home for him at Nooitgedacht. But he would
not come—no! He has been sick, and I am sorry.’

“‘How d’you know that?’ I says.

“‘Why, only to-day he sends back his love by Johanna Van der Merwe,
that goes to their doctor for her sick baby’s eyes. He sends his love,
that Mankeltow, and he tells her tell me he has a little garden of
roses all ready for me in the Dutch Indies—Umballa. He is very funny,
my Captain Mankeltow.’

“The Dutch and the English ought to fraternise, Sir. They’ve the same
notions of humour, to my thinking.’

“‘When he gets well,’ says Van Zyl, ‘you look out, Mr. Americaan. He
comes back to his guns next Tuesday. Then they shoot better.’

“I wasn’t so well acquainted with the Royal British Artillery as old
man Van Zyl. I knew this Captain Mankeltow by sight, of course, and,
considering what sort of a man with the hoe he was, I thought he’d done
right well against my Zigler. But nothing epoch-making.

“Next morning at the usual hour I waited on the General, and old Van
Zyl come along with some of the boys. Van Zyl didn’t hang round the
Zigler much as a rule, but this was his luck that day.

“He was peeking through his glasses at the camp, and I was helping
pepper, the General’s sow-belly—just as usual—when he turns to me quick
and says, ‘Almighty! How all these Englishmen are liars! You cannot
trust one,’ he says. ‘Captain Mankeltow tells our Johanna he comes not
back till Tuesday, and to-day is Friday, and there he is! Almighty! The
English are all Chamberlains!’

“If the old man hadn’t stopped to make political speeches he’d have had
his supper in laager that night, I guess. I was busy attending to Tom
Reed at two thousand when Baldy got in her fine work on me. I saw one
sheet of white flame wrapped round the hopper, and in the middle of it
there was one o’ my mules straight on end. Nothing out of the way in a
mule on end, but this mule hadn’t any head. I remember it struck me as
incongruous at the time, and when I’d ciphered it out I was doing the
Santos-Dumont act without any balloon and my motor out of gear. Then I
got to thinking about Santos-Dumont and how much better my new way was.
Then I thought about Professor Langley and the Smithsonian, and wishing
I hadn’t lied so extravagantly in some of my specifications at
Washington. Then I quit thinking for quite a while, and when I resumed
my train of thought I was nude, Sir, in a very stale stretcher, and my
mouth was full of fine dirt all flavoured with Laughtite.

“I coughed up that dirt.

“‘Hullo!’ says a man walking beside me. ‘You’ve spoke almost in time.
Have a drink?’

“I don’t use rum as a rule, but I did then, because I needed it.

“‘What hit us?’ I said.

“‘Me,’ he said. ‘I got you fair on the hopper as you pulled out of that
donga; but I’m sorry to say every last round in the hopper’s exploded
and your gun’s in a shocking state. I’m real sorry,’ he says. ‘I admire
your gun, Sir.’

“‘Are you Captain Mankeltow?’ I says.

“‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I presoom you’re Mister Zigler. Your commanding
officer told me about you.’

“‘Have you gathered in old man Van Zyl?’ I said.

“‘Commandant Van Zyl,’ he says very stiff, ‘was most unfortunately
wounded, but I am glad to say it’s not serious. We hope he’ll be able
to dine with us to-night; and I feel sure,’ he says, ‘the General would
be delighted to see you too, though he didn’t expect,’ he says, ‘and no
one else either, by Jove!’ he says, and blushed like the British do
when they’re embarrassed.

“I saw him slide an Episcopalian Prayer-book up his sleeve, and when I
looked over the edge of the stretcher there was half-a-dozen enlisted
men—privates—had just quit digging and was standing to attention by
their spades. I guess he was right on the General not expecting me to
dinner; but it was all of a piece with their sloppy British way of
doing business. Any God’s quantity of fuss and flubdub to bury a man,
and not an ounce of forehandedness in the whole outfit to find out
whether he was rightly dead. And I am a Congregationalist anyway!

“Well, Sir, that was my introduction to the British Army. I’d write a
book about it if anyone would believe me. This Captain Mankeltow, Royal
British Artillery, turned the doctor on me (I could write another book
about _him_) and fixed me up with a suit of his own clothes, and fed me
canned beef and biscuits, and give me a cigar—a Henry Clay and a
whisky-and-sparklet. He was a white man.

“‘Ye-es, by Jove,’ he said, dragging out his words like a twist of
molasses, ‘we’ve all admired your gun and the way you’ve worked it.
Some of us betted you was a British deserter. I won a sovereign on that
from a yeoman. And, by the way,’ he says, ‘you’ve disappointed me groom
pretty bad.’

“‘Where does your groom come in?’ I said.

“‘Oh, he was the yeoman. He’s a dam poor groom,’ says my captain, ‘but
he’s a way-up barrister when he’s at home. He’s been running around the
camp with his tongue out, waiting for the chance of defending you at
the court-martial.’

“‘What court-martial?’ I says.

“‘On you as a deserter from the Artillery. You’d have had a good run
for your money. Anyway, you’d never have been hung after the way you
worked your gun. Deserter ten times over,’ he says, ‘I’d have stuck out
for shooting you like a gentleman.’

“Well, Sir, right there it struck me at the pit of my stomach—sort of
sickish, sweetish feeling—that my position needed regularising pretty
bad. I ought to have been a naturalised burgher of a year’s standing;
but Ohio’s my State, and I wouldn’t have gone back on her for a
desertful of Dutchmen. That and my enthoosiasm as an inventor had led
me to the existing crisis; but I couldn’t expect this Captain Mankeltow
to regard the proposition that way. There I sat, the rankest breed of
unreconstructed American citizen, caught red-handed squirting hell at
the British Army for months on end. I tell _you_, Sir, I wished I was
in Cincinnatah that summer evening. I’d have compromised on Brooklyn.

“‘What d’you do about aliens?’ I said, and the dirt I’d coughed up
seemed all back of my tongue again.

“‘Oh,’ says he, ‘we don’t do much of anything. They’re about all the
society we get. I’m a bit of a pro-Boer myself,’ he says, ‘but between
you and me the average Boer ain’t over and above intellectual. You’re
the first American we’ve met up with, but of course you’re a burgher.’

“It was what I ought to have been if I’d had the sense of a common
tick, but the way he drawled it out made me mad.

“‘Of course I am not,’ I says. ‘Would _you_ be a naturalised Boer?’

“‘I’m fighting against ’em,’ he says, lighting a cigarette, ‘but it’s
all a matter of opinion.’

“‘Well,’ I says, ‘you can hold any blame opinion you choose, but I’m a
white man, and my present intention is to die in that colour.’

“He laughed one of those big, thick-ended, British laughs that don’t
lead anywhere, and whacked up some sort of compliment about America
that made me mad all through.

“I am the captive of your bow and spear, Sir, but I do not understand
the alleged British joke. It is depressing.

“I was introdooced to five or six officers that evening, and every
blame one of ’em grinned and asked me why I wasn’t in the Filipeens
suppressing our war! And that was British humour! They all had to get
it off their chests before they’d talk sense. But they was sound on the
Zigler. They had all admired her. I made out a fairy-story of me being
wearied of the war, and having pushed the gun at them these last three
months in the hope they’d capture it and let me go home. That tickled
’em to death. They made me say it three times over, and laughed like
kids each time. But half the British _are_ kids; specially the older
men. My Captain Mankeltow was less of it than the others. He talked
about the Zigler like a lover, Sir, and I drew him diagrams of the
hopper-feed and recoil-cylinder in his note-book. He asked the one
British question I was waiting for, ‘Hadn’t I made my working-parts too
light?’ The British think weight’s strength.

“At last—I’d been shy of opening the subject before—at last I said,
‘Gentlemen, you are the unprejudiced tribunal I’ve been hunting after.
I guess you ain’t interested in any other gun-factory, and politics
don’t weigh with you. How did it feel your end of the game? What’s my
gun done, anyway?’

“‘I hate to disappoint you,’ says Captain Mankeltow, ‘because I know
you feel as an inventor.’ I wasn’t feeling like an inventor just then.
I felt friendly, but the British haven’t more tact than you can pick up
with a knife out of a plate of soup.

“‘The honest truth,’ he says, ‘is that you’ve wounded about ten of us
one way and another, killed two battery horses and four mules, and—oh,
yes,’ he said, ‘you’ve bagged five Kaffirs. But, buck up,’ he said,
‘we’ve all had mighty close calls’—shaves, he called ’em, I remember.
‘Look at my pants.’

“They was repaired right across the seat with Minneapolis
flour-bagging. I could see the stencil.

“‘I ain’t bluffing,’ he says. ‘Get the hospital returns, Doc.’

“The doctor gets ’em and reads ’em out under the proper dates. That
doctor alone was worth the price of admission.

“I was right pleased right through that I hadn’t killed any of these
cheerful kids; but none the less I couldn’t help thinking that a few
more Kaffirs would have served me just as well for advertising purposes
as white men. No, sir. Anywhichway you regard the proposition,
twenty-one casualties after months of close friendship like ours
was—paltry.

“They gave me taffy about the gun—the British use taffy where we use
sugar. It’s cheaper, and gets there just the same. They sat around and
proved to me that my gun was too good, too uniform—shot as close as a
Mannlicher rifle.

“Says one kid chewing a bit of grass: ‘I counted eight of your shells,
Sir, burst in a radius of ten feet. All of ’em would have gone through
one waggon-tilt. It was beautiful,’ he says. ‘It was too good.’

“I shouldn’t wonder if the boys were right. My Laughtite is too
mathematically uniform in propelling power. Yes; she was too good for
this refractory fool of a country. The training gear was broke, too,
and we had to swivel her around by the trail. But I’ll build my next
Zigler fifteen hundred pounds heavier. Might work in a gasoline motor
under the axles. I must think that up.

“‘Well, gentlemen,’ I said, ‘I’d hate to have been the death of any of
you; and if a prisoner can deed away his property, I’d love to present
the Captain here with what he’s seen fit to leave of my Zigler.’

“‘Thanks awf’ly,’ says my Captain. ‘I’d like her very much. She’d look
fine in the mess at Woolwich. That is, if you don’t mind, Mr. Zigler.’

“‘Go right ahead,’ I says. ‘I’ve come out of all the mess I’ve any use
for; but she’ll do to spread the light among the Royal British
Artillery.’

“I tell you, Sir, there’s not much of anything the matter with the
Royal British Artillery. They’re brainy men languishing under an effete
system which, when you take good holt of it, is England—just all
England. ‘Times I’d feel I was talking with real live citizens, and
times I’d feel I’d struck the Beef Eaters in the Tower.

“How? Well, this way. I was telling my Captain Mankeltow what Van Zyl
had said about the British being all Chamberlains when the old man saw
him back from hospital four days ahead of time.

“‘Oh, damn it all!’ he says, as serious as the Supreme Court. ‘It’s too
bad,’ he says. ‘Johanna must have misunderstood me, or else I’ve got
the wrong Dutch word for these blarsted days of the week. I told
Johanna I’d be out on Friday. The woman’s a fool. Oah, da-am it all!’
he says. ‘I wouldn’t have sold old Van Zyl a pup like that,’ he says.
‘I’ll hunt him up and apologise.’

“He must have fixed it all right, for when we sailed over to the
General’s dinner my Captain had Van Zyl about half-full of sherry and
bitters, as happy as a clam. The boys all called him Adrian, and
treated him like their prodigal father. He’d been hit on the collarbone
by a wad of shrapnel, and his arm was tied up.

“But the General was the peach. I presume you’re acquainted with the
average run of British generals, but this was my first. I sat on his
left hand, and he talked like—like the _Ladies’ Home Journal_. J’ever
read that paper? It’s refined, Sir—and innocuous, and full of
nickel-plated sentiments guaranteed to improve the mind. He was it. He
began by a Lydia Pinkham heart-to-heart talk about my health, and hoped
the boys had done me well, and that I was enjoying my stay in their
midst. Then he thanked me for the interesting and valuable lessons that
I’d given his crowd—specially in the matter of placing artillery and
rearguard attacks. He’d wipe his long thin moustache between
drinks—lime-juice and water he used—and blat off into a long ‘a-aah,’
and ladle out more taffy for me or old man Van Zyl on his right. I told
him how I’d had my first Pisgah-sight of the principles of the Zigler
when I was a fourth-class postmaster on a star-route in Arkansas. I
told him how I’d worked it up by instalments when I was machinist in
Waterbury, where the dollar-watches come from. He had one on his wrist
then. I told him how I’d met Zalinski (he’d never heard of Zalinski!)
when I was an extra clerk in the Naval Construction Bureau at
Washington. I told him how my uncle, who was a truck-farmer in Noo
Jersey (he loaned money on mortgage too, for ten acres ain’t enough now
in Noo Jersey), how he’d willed me a quarter of a million dollars,
because I was the only one of our kin that called him down when he used
to come home with a hard-cider jag on him and heave ox-bows at his
nieces. I told him how I’d turned in every red cent on the Zigler, and
I told him the whole circus of my coming out with her, and so on, and
so following; and every forty seconds he’d wipe his moustache and blat,
‘How interesting. Really, now? How interesting.’

“It was like being in an old English book, Sir. Like _Bracebridge
Hall_. But an American wrote _that!_ I kept peeking around for the
Boar’s Head and the Rosemary and Magna Charta and the Cricket on the
Hearth, and the rest of the outfit. Then Van Zyl whirled in. He was no
ways jagged, but thawed—thawed, Sir, and among friends. They began
discussing previous scraps all along the old man’s beat—about sixty of
’em—as well as side-shows with other generals and columns. Van Zyl told
’im of a big beat he’d worked on a column a week or so before I’d
joined him. He demonstrated his strategy with forks on the table.

“‘There!’ said the General, when he’d finished. ‘That proves my
contention to the hilt. Maybe I’m a bit of a pro-Boer, but I stick to
it,’ he says, ‘that under proper officers, with due regard to his race
prejudices, the Boer’ud make the finest mounted infantry in the Empire.
Adrian,’ he says, ‘you’re simply squandered on a cattle-run. You ought
to be at the Staff College with De Wet.’

“‘You catch De Wet and I come to your Staff College—eh,’ says Adrian,
laughing. ‘But you are so slow, Generaal. Why are you so slow? For a
month,’ he says, ‘you do so well and strong that we say we shall
hands-up and come back to our farms. Then you send to England and make
us a present of two—three—six hundred young men, with rifles and wagons
and rum and tobacco, and such a great lot of cartridges, that our young
men put up their tails and start all over again. If you hold an ox by
the horn and hit him by the bottom he runs round and round. He never
goes anywhere. So, too, this war goes round and round. You know that,
Generaal!’

“‘Quite right, Adrian,’ says the General; ‘but you must believe your
Bible.’

“‘Hooh!’ says Adrian, and reaches for the whisky. ‘I’ve never known a
Dutchman a professing Atheist, but some few have been rather active
Agnostics since the British sat down in Pretoria. Old man Van Zyl—he
told me—had soured on religion after Bloemfontein surrendered. He was a
Free Stater for one thing.’

“‘He that believeth,’ says the General, ‘shall not make haste. That’s
in Isaiah. We believe we’re going to win, and so we don’t make haste.
As far as I’m concerned I’d like this war to last another five years.
We’d have an army then. It’s just this way, Mr. Zigler,’ he says, ‘our
people are brimfull of patriotism, but they’ve been born and brought up
between houses, and England ain’t big enough to train ’em—not if you
expect to preserve.’

“‘Preserve what?’ I says. ‘England?’

“‘No. The game,’ he says; ‘and that reminds me, gentlemen, we haven’t
drunk the King and Fox-hunting.’

“So they drank the King and Fox-hunting. I drank the King because
there’s something about Edward that tickles me (he’s so blame British);
but I rather stood out on the Fox-hunting. I’ve ridden wolves in the
cattle-country, and needed a drink pretty bad afterwards, but it never
struck me as I ought to drink about it—he-red-it-arily.

“‘No, as I was saying, Mr. Zigler,’ he goes on, ‘we have to train our
men in the field to shoot and ride. I allow six months for it; but many
column-commanders—not that I ought to say a word against ’em, for
they’re the best fellows that ever stepped, and most of ’em are my
dearest friends—seem to think that if they have men and horses and guns
they can take tea with the Boers. It’s generally the other way about,
ain’t it, Mr. Zigler?’

“‘To some extent, Sir,’ I said.

“‘I’m _so_ glad you agree with me,’ he says. ‘My command here I regard
as a training depot, and you, if I may say so, have been one of my most
efficient instructors. I mature my men slowly but thoroughly. First I
put ’em in a town which is liable to be attacked by night, where they
can attend riding-school in the day. Then I use ’em with a convoy, and
last I put ’em into a column. It takes time,’ he says, ‘but I flatter
myself that any men who have worked under me are at least grounded in
the rudiments of their profession. Adrian,’ he says, ‘was there
anything wrong with the men who upset Van Bester’s applecart last month
when he was trying to cross the line to join Piper with those horses
he’d stole from Gabbitas?’

“‘No, Generaal,’ says Van Zyl. ‘Your men got the horses back and eleven
dead; and Van Besters, he ran to Delarey in his shirt. They was very
good, those men. They shoot hard.’

“_‘So_ pleased to hear you say so. I laid ’em down at the beginning of
this century—a 1900 vintage. _You_ remember ’em, Mankeltow?’ he says.
‘The Central Middlesex Buncho Busters—clerks and floorwalkers mostly,’
and he wiped his moustache. ‘It was just the same with the Liverpool
Buckjumpers, but they were stevedores. Let’s see—they were a
last-century draft, weren’t they? They did well after nine months.
_You_ know ’em, Van Zyl? You didn’t get much change out of ’em at
Pootfontein?’

“‘No,’ says Van Zyl. ‘At Pootfontein I lost my son Andries.’

“‘I beg your pardon, Commandant,’ says the General; and the rest of the
crowd sort of cooed over Adrian.

“‘Excoose,’ says Adrian. ‘It was all right. They were good men those,
but it is just what I say. Some are so dam good we want to hands-up,
and some are so dam bad, we say, “Take the Vierkleur into Cape Town.”
It is not upright of you, Generaal. It is not upright of you at all. I
do not think you ever wish this war to finish.’

“‘It’s a first-class dress-parade for Armageddon,’ says the General.
‘With luck, we ought to run half a million men through the mill. Why,
we might even be able to give our Native Army a look in. Oh, not here,
of course, Adrian, but down in the Colony—say a camp-of-exercise at
Worcester. You mustn’t be prejudiced, Adrian. I’ve commanded a district
in India, and I give you my word the native troops are splendid men.’

“‘Oh, I should not mind them at Worcester,’ says Adrian. ‘I would sell
you forage for them at Worcester—yes, and Paarl and Stellenbosch; but
Almighty!’ he says, ‘must I stay with Cronje till you have taught half
a million of these stupid boys to ride? I shall be an old man.’

“Well, Sir, then and there they began arguing whether St. Helena would
suit Adrian’s health as well as some other places they knew about, and
fixing up letters of introduction to Dukes and Lords of their
acquaintance, so’s Van Zyl should be well looked after. We own a
fair-sized block of real estate—America does—but it made me sickish to
hear this crowd fluttering round the Atlas (oh yes, they had an Atlas),
and choosing stray continents for Adrian to drink his coffee in. The
old man allowed he didn’t want to roost with Cronje, because one of
Cronje’s kin had jumped one of his farms after Paardeberg. I forget the
rights of the case, but it was interesting. They decided on a place
called Umballa in India, because there was a first-class doctor there.

“So Adrian was fixed to drink the King and Foxhunting, and study up the
Native Army in India (I’d like to see ’em myself), till the British
General had taught the male white citizens of Great Britain how to
ride. Don’t misunderstand me, Sir. I loved that General. After ten
minutes I loved him, and I wanted to laugh at him; but at the same
time, sitting there and hearing him talk about the centuries, I tell
you, Sir, it scared me. It scared me cold! He admitted everything—he
acknowledged the corn before you spoke—he was more pleased to hear that
his men had been used to wipe the geldt with than I was when I knocked
out Tom Reed’s two lead-horses—and he sat back and blew smoke through
his nose and matured his men like cigars and—he talked of the
everlastin’ centuries!

“I went to bed nearer nervous prostration than I’d come in a long time.
Next morning me and Captain Mankeltow fixed up what his shrapnel had
left of my Zigler for transport to the railroad. She went in on her own
wheels, and I stencilled her ‘Royal Artillery Mess, Woolwich,’ on the
muzzle, and he said he’d be grateful if I’d take charge of her to Cape
Town, and hand her over to a man in the Ordnance there. ‘How are you
fixed financially? You’ll need some money on the way home,’ he says at
last.

“‘For one thing, Cap,’ I said, ‘I’m not a poor man, and for another I’m
not going home. I am the captive of your bow and spear. I decline to
resign office.’

“‘Skittles!’ he says (that was a great word of his), ‘you’ll take
parole, and go back to America and invent another Zigler, a trifle
heavier in the working parts—I would. We’ve got more prisoners than we
know what to do with as it is,’ he says. ‘You’ll only be an additional
expense to me as a taxpayer. Think of Schedule D,’ he says, ‘and take
parole.’

“‘I don’t know anything about your tariffs,’ I said, ‘but when I get to
Cape Town I write home for money, and I turn in every cent my board’ll
cost your country to any ten-century-old department that’s been
ordained to take it since William the Conqueror came along.’

“‘But, confound you for a thick-headed mule,’ he says, ‘this war ain’t
any more than just started! Do you mean to tell me you’re going to play
prisoner till it’s over?’

“‘That’s about the size of it,’ I says, ‘if an Englishman and an
American could ever understand each other.’

“‘But, in Heaven’s Holy Name, why?’ he says, sitting down of a heap on
an anthill.

“‘Well, Cap,’ I says, ‘I don’t pretend to follow your ways of thought,
and I can’t see why you abuse your position to persecute a poor
prisoner o’ war on _his!_’

“‘My dear fellow,’ he began, throwing up his hands and blushing, ‘I’ll
apologise.’

“‘But if you insist,’ I says, ‘there are just one and a half things in
this world I can’t do. The odd half don’t matter here; but taking
parole, and going home, and being interviewed by the boys, and giving
lectures on my single-handed campaign against the hereditary enemies of
my beloved country happens to be the one. We’ll let it go at that,
Cap.’

“‘But it’ll bore you to death,’ he says. The British are a heap more
afraid of what they call being bored than of dying, I’ve noticed.

“‘I’ll survive,’ I says, ‘I ain’t British. I can think,’ I says.

“‘By God,’ he says, coming up to me, and extending the right hand of
fellowship, ‘you ought to be English, Zigler!’

“It’s no good getting mad at a compliment like that. The English all do
it. They’re a crazy breed. When they don’t know you they freeze up
tighter’n the St. Lawrence. When they _do_, they go out like an ice-jam
in April. Up till we prisoners left—four days—my Captain Mankeltow told
me pretty much all about himself there was; his mother and sisters, and
his bad brother that was a trooper in some Colonial corps, and how his
father didn’t get on with him, and—well, everything, as I’ve said.
They’re undomesticated, the British, compared with us. They talk about
their own family affairs as if they belonged to someone else. ’Taint as
if they hadn’t any shame, but it sounds like it. I guess they talk out
loud what we think, and we talk out loud what they think.

“I liked my Captain Mankeltow. I liked him as well as any man I’d ever
struck. He was white. He gave me his silver drinking-flask, and I gave
him the formula of my Laughtite. That’s a hundred and fifty thousand
dollars in his vest-pocket, on the lowest count, if he has the
knowledge to use it. No, I didn’t tell him the money-value. He was
English. He’d send his valet to find out.

“Well, me and Adrian and a crowd of dam Dutchmen was sent down the road
to Cape Town in first-class carriages under escort. (What did I think
of your enlisted men? They are largely different from ours, Sir: very
largely.) As I was saying, we slid down south, with Adrian looking out
of the car-window and crying. Dutchmen cry mighty easy for a breed that
fights as they do; but I never understood how a Dutchman could curse
till we crossed into the Orange Free State Colony, and he lifted up his
hand and cursed Steyn for a solid ten minutes. Then we got into the
Colony, and the rebs—ministers mostly and schoolmasters—came round the
cars with fruit and sympathy and texts. Van Zyl talked to ’em in Dutch,
and one man, a big red-bearded minister, at Beaufort West, I remember,
he jest wilted on the platform.

“‘Keep your prayers for yourself,’ says Van Zyl, throwing back a bunch
of grapes. ‘You’ll need ’em, and you’ll need the fruit too, when the
war comes down here. _You_ done it,’ he says. ‘You and your picayune
Church that’s deader than Cronje’s dead horses! What sort of a God have
you been unloading on us, you black _aas vogels_? The British came, and
we beat ’em,’ he says, ‘and you sat still and prayed. The British beat
us, and you sat still,’ he says. ‘You told us to hang on, and we hung
on, and our farms was burned, and you sat still—you and your God. See
here,’ he says, ‘I shot my Bible full of bullets after Bloemfontein
went, and you and God didn’t say anything. Take it and pray over it
before we Federals help the British to knock hell out of you rebels.’

“Then I hauled him back into the car. I judged he’d had a fit. But
life’s curious—and sudden—and mixed. I hadn’t any more use for a reb
than Van Zyl, and I knew something of the lies they’d fed us up with
from the Colony for a year and more. I told the minister to pull his
freight out of that, and went on with my lunch, when another man come
along and shook hands with Van Zyl. He’d known him at close range in
the Kimberley seige and before. Van Zyl was well seen by his
neighbours, I judge. As soon as this other man opened his mouth I said,
‘You’re Kentucky, ain’t you?’ ‘I am,’ he says; ‘and what may you be?’ I
told him right off, for I was pleased to hear good United States in any
man’s mouth; but he whipped his hands behind him and said, ‘I’m not
knowing any man that fights for a Tammany Dutchman. But I presoom
you’ve been well paid, you dam gun-runnin’ Yank.’

“Well, Sir, I wasn’t looking for that, and it near knocked me over,
while old man Van Zyl started in to explain.

“‘Don’t you waste your breath, Mister Van Zyl,’ the man says. ‘I know
this breed. The South’s full of ’em.’ Then he whirls round on me and
says, ‘Look at here, you Yank. A little thing like a King’s neither
here nor there, but what _you’ve_ done,’ he says, ‘is to go back on the
White Man in six places at once—two hemispheres and four
continents—America, England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South
Africa. Don’t open your head,’ he says. ‘You know well if you’d been
caught at this game in our country you’d have been jiggling in the
bight of a lariat before you could reach for your naturalisation
papers. Go on and prosper,’ he says, ‘and you’ll fetch up by fighting
for niggers, as the North did.’ And he threw me half-a-crown—English
money.

“Sir, I do not regard the proposition in that light, but I guess I must
have been somewhat shook by the explosion. They told me at Cape Town
one rib was driven in on to my lungs. I am not adducing this as an
excuse, but the cold God’s truth of the matter is—the money on the
floor did it…. I give up and cried. Put my head down and cried.

“I dream about this still sometimes. He didn’t know the circumstances,
but I dream about it. And it’s Hell!

“How do you regard the proposition—as a Brother? If you’d invented your
own gun, and spent fifty-seven thousand dollars on her—and had paid
your own expenses from the word ‘go’? An American citizen has a right
to choose his own side in an unpleasantness, and Van Zyl wasn’t any
Krugerite … and I’d risked my hide at my own expense. I got that man’s
address from Van Zyl; he was a mining man at Kimberley, and I wrote him
the facts. But he never answered. Guess he thought I lied…. Damned
Southern rebel!

“Oh, say. Did I tell you my Captain gave me a letter to an English Lord
in Cape Town, and he fixed things so’s I could lie up a piece in his
house? I was pretty sick, and threw up some blood from where the rib
had gouged into the lung—here. This Lord was a crank on guns, and he
took charge of the Zigler. He had his knife into the British system as
much as any American. He said he wanted revolution, and not reform, in
your army. He said the British soldier had failed in every point except
courage. He said England needed a Monroe Doctrine worse than America—a
new doctrine, barring out all the Continent, and strictly devoting
herself to developing her own Colonies. He said he’d abolish half the
Foreign Office, and take all the old hereditary families clean out of
it, because, he said, they was expressly trained to fool around with
continental diplomats, and to despise the Colonies. His own family
wasn’t more than six hundred years old. He was a very brainy man, and a
good citizen. We talked politics and inventions together when my lung
let up on me.

“Did he know my General? Yes. He knew ’em all. Called ’em Teddie and
Gussie and Willie. They was all of the very best, and all his dearest
friends; but he told me confidentially they was none of ’em fit to
command a column in the field. He said they were too fond of
advertising. Generals don’t seem very different from actors or doctors
or—yes, Sir—inventors.

“He fixed things for me lovelily at Simons-Town. Had the biggest sort
of pull—even for a Lord. At first they treated me as a harmless
lunatic; but after a while I got ’em to let me keep some of their
books. If I was left alone in the world with the British system of
bookkeeping, I’d reconstruct the whole British Empire—beginning with
the Army. Yes, I’m one of their most trusted accountants, and I’m paid
for it. As much as a dollar a day. I keep that. I’ve earned it, and I
deduct it from the cost of my board. When the war’s over I’m going to
pay up the balance to the British Government. Yes, Sir, that’s how I
regard the proposition.

“Adrian? Oh, he left for Umballa four months back. He told me he was
going to apply to join the National Scouts if the war didn’t end in a
year. ’Tisn’t in nature for one Dutchman to shoot another, but if
Adrian ever meets up with Steyn there’ll be an exception to the rule.
Ye—es, when the war’s over it’ll take some of the British Army to
protect Steyn from his fellow-patriots. But the war won’t be over yet
awhile. He that believeth don’t hurry, as Isaiah says. The ministers
and the school-teachers and the rebs’ll have a war all to themselves
long after the north is quiet.

“I’m pleased with this country—it’s big. Not so many folk on the ground
as in America. There’s a boom coming sure. I’ve talked it over with
Adrian, and I guess I shall buy a farm somewhere near Bloemfontein and
start in cattle-raising. It’s big and peaceful—a ten-thousand-acre
farm. I could go on inventing there, too. I’ll sell my Zigler, I guess.
I’ll offer the patent rights to the British Government; and if they do
the ‘reelly-now-how-interesting’ act over her, I’ll turn her over to
Captain Mankeltow and his friend the Lord. They’ll pretty quick find
some Gussie, or Teddie, or Algie who can get her accepted in the proper
quarters. I’m beginning to know my English.

“And now I’ll go in swimming, and read the papers after lunch. I
haven’t had such a good time since Willie died.” He pulled the blue
shirt over his head as the bathers returned to their piles of clothing,
and, speaking through the folds, added:

“But if you want to realise your assets, you should lease the whole
proposition to America for ninety-nine years.”




THE BONDS OF DISCIPLINE




POSEIDON’S LAW


When the robust and brass-bound man commissioned first for sea
His fragile raft, Poseidon laughed, and, “Mariner,” said he,
“Behold, a Law immutable I lay on thee and thine,
That never shall ye act or tell a falsehood at my shrine.

“Let Zeus adjudge your landward kin, whose votive meal and salt
At easy-cheated altars win oblivion for the fault,
But ye the unhoodwinked waves shall test—the immediate gulfs condemn—
Unless ye owe the Fates a jest, be slow to jest with them.

“Ye shall not clear by Greekly speech, nor cozen from your path
The twinkling shoal, the leeward beach, and Hadria’s white-lipped wrath;
Nor tempt with painted cloth for wood my fraud-avenging hosts;
Nor make at all or all make good your bulwarks and your boasts.

“Now and henceforward serve unshod through wet and wakeful shifts,
A present and oppressive God, but take, to aid, my gifts—
The wide and windward-opened eye, the large and lavish hand,
The soul that cannot tell a lie—except upon the land!”

In dromond and in catafract—wet, wakeful, windward-eyed—
He kept Poseidon’s Law intact (his ship and freight beside),
But, once discharged the dromond’s hold, the bireme beached once more,
Splendaciously mendacious rolled the brass-bound man ashore.


The thranite now and thalamite are pressures low and high,
And where three hundred blades bit white the twin-propellers ply:
The God that hailed, the keel that sailed, are changed beyond recall,
But the robust and brass-bound man he is not changed at all!

From Punt returned, from Phormio’s Fleet, from Javan and Gadire,
He strongly occupies the seat about the tavern fire,
And, moist with much Falernian or smoked Massilian juice,
Revenges there the brass-bound man his long-enforced truce!




THE BONDS OF DISCIPLINE


As literature, it is beneath contempt. It concerns the endurance,
armament, turning-circle, and inner gear of every ship in the British
Navy—the whole embellished with profile plates. The Teuton approaches
the matter with pagan thoroughness; the Muscovite runs him close; but
the Gaul, ever an artist, breaks enclosure to study the morale, at the
present day, of the British sailorman.

In this, I conceive, he is from time to time aided by the zealous
amateur, though I find very little in his dispositions to show that he
relies on that amateur’s hard-won information. There exists—unlike some
other publication, it is not bound in lead boards—a work by one “M. de
C.,” based on the absolutely unadorned performances of one of our
well-known _Acolyte_ type of cruisers. It contains nothing that did not
happen. It covers a period of two days; runs to twenty-seven pages of
large type exclusive of appendices; and carries as many exclamation
points as the average Dumas novel.

I read it with care, from the adorably finished prologue—it is the
disgrace of our Navy that we cannot produce a commissioned officer
capable of writing one page of lyric prose—to the eloquent, the joyful,
the impassioned end; and my first notion was that I had been cheated.
In this sort of book-collecting you will see how entirely the
bibliophile lies at the mercy of his agent.

“M. de C.,” I read, opened his campaign by stowing away in one of her
boats what time H.M.S. _Archimandrite_ lay off Funchal. “M. de C.” was,
always on behalf of his country, a Madeira Portuguese fleeing from the
conscription. They discovered him eighty miles at sea and bade him
assist the cook. So far this seemed fairly reasonable. Next day, thanks
to his histrionic powers and his ingratiating address, he was promoted
to the rank of “supernumerary captain’s servant”—a “post which,” I give
his words, “I flatter myself, was created for me alone, and furnished
me with opportunities unequalled for a task in which one word
malapropos would have been my destruction.”

From this point onward, earth and water between them held no marvels
like to those “M. de C.” had “envisaged”—if I translate him correctly.
It became clear to me that “M. de C.” was either a pyramidal liar, or…

I was not acquainted with any officer, seaman, or marine in the
_Archimandrite_; but instinct told me I could not go far wrong if I
took a third-class ticket to Plymouth.

I gathered information on the way from a leading stoker, two
seaman-gunners, and an odd hand in a torpedo factory. They courteously
set my feet on the right path, and that led me through the alleys of
Devonport to a public-house not fifty yards from the water. We drank
with the proprietor, a huge, yellowish man called Tom Wessels; and when
my guides had departed, I asked if he could produce any warrant or
petty officer of the _Archimandrite_.

“The _Bedlamite_, d’you mean—’er last commission, when they all went
crazy?”

“Shouldn’t wonder,” I replied. “Fetch me a sample and I’ll see.”

“You’ll excuse me, o’ course, but—what d’you want ’im _for?_”

“I want to make him drunk. I want to make you drunk—if you like. I want
to make him drunk here.”

“Spoke very ’andsome. I’ll do what I can.” He went out towards the
water that lapped at the foot of the street. I gathered from the
pot-boy that he was a person of influence beyond Admirals.

In a few minutes I heard the noise of an advancing crowd, and the voice
of Mr. Wessels.

“’E only wants to make you drunk at ’is expense. Dessay ’e’ll stand you
all a drink. Come up an’ look at ’im. ’E don’t bite.”

A square man, with remarkable eyes, entered at the head of six large
bluejackets. Behind them gathered a contingent of hopeful
free-drinkers.

“’E’s the only one I could get. Transferred to the _Postulant_ six
months back. I found ’im quite accidental.” Mr. Wessels beamed.

“I’m in charge o’ the cutter. Our wardroom is dinin’ on the beach _en
masse_. They won’t be home till mornin’,” said the square man with the
remarkable eyes. “Are you an _Archimandrite?_” I demanded.

“That’s me. I was, as you might say.”

“Hold on. I’m a _Archimandrite._” A Red Marine with moist eyes tried to
climb on the table. “Was you lookin’ for a _Bedlamite?_ I’ve—I’ve been
invalided, an’ what with that, an’ visitin’ my family ’ome at Lewes,
per’aps I’ve come late. ’Ave I?”

“You’ve ’ad all that’s good for you,” said Tom Wessels, as the Red
Marine sat cross-legged on the floor.

“There are those ’oo haven’t ’ad a thing yet!” cried a voice by the
door.

“I will take this _Archimandrite_,” I said, “and this Marine. Will you
please give the boat’s crew a drink now, and another in half an hour
if—if Mr.——”

“Pyecroft,” said the square man. “Emanuel Pyecroft, second-class
petty-officer.”

“—Mr. Pyecroft doesn’t object?”

“He don’t. Clear out. Goldin’, you picket the hill by yourself,
throwin’ out a skirmishin’-line in ample time to let me know when
Number One’s comin’ down from his vittles.”

The crowd dissolved. We passed into the quiet of the inner bar, the Red
Marine zealously leading the way.

“And what do you drink, Mr. Pyecroft?” I said.

“Only water. Warm water, with a little whisky an’ sugar an’ per’aps a
lemon.”

“Mine’s beer,” said the Marine. “It always was.”

“Look ’ere, Glass. You take an’ go to sleep. The picket’ll be comin’
for you in a little time, an’ per’aps you’ll ’ave slep’ it off by then.
What’s your ship, now?” said Mr. Wessels.

“The Ship o’ State—most important?” said the Red Marine magnificently,
and shut his eyes.

“That’s right,” said Mr. Pyecroft. “He’s safest where he is. An’
now—here’s santy to us all!—what d’you want o’ me?”

“I want to read you something.”

“Tracts, again!” said the Marine, never opening his eyes. “Well. I’m
game…. A little more ’ead to it, miss, please.”

“He thinks ’e’s drinkin’—lucky beggar!” said Mr. Pyecroft. “I’m
agreeable to be read to. ’Twon’t alter my convictions. I may as well
tell you beforehand I’m a Plymouth Brother.”

He composed his face with the air of one in the dentist’s chair, and I
began at the third page of “M. de C.”

“‘_At the moment of asphyxiation, for I had hidden myself under the
boat’s cover, I heard footsteps upon the superstructure and coughed
with empress_’—coughed loudly, Mr. Pyecroft. ‘_By this time I judged
the vessel to be sufficiently far from land. A number of sailors
extricated me amid language appropriate to their national brutality. I
responded that I named myself Antonio, and that I sought to save myself
from the Portuguese conscription_.’

“Ho!” said Mr. Pyecroft, and the fashion of his countenance changed.
Then pensively: “Ther beggar! What might you have in your hand there?”

“It’s the story of Antonio—a stowaway in the _Archimandrite’s_ cutter.
A French spy when he’s at home, I fancy. What do _you_ know about it?”

“An’ I thought it was tracts! An’ yet some’ow I didn’t.” Mr. Pyecroft
nodded his head wonderingly. “Our old man was quite right—so was ’Op—so
was I. ’Ere, Glass!” He kicked the Marine. “Here’s our Antonio ’as
written a impromptu book! He _was_ a spy all right.”

The Red Marine turned slightly, speaking with the awful precision of
the half-drunk. “’As ’e got any-thin’ in about my ’orrible death an’
execution? Ex_cuse_ me, but if I open my eyes, I shan’t be well. That’s
where I’m different from _all_ other men. Ahem!”

“What about Glass’s execution?” demanded Pyecroft.

“The book’s in French,” I replied.

“Then it’s no good to me.”

“Precisely. Now I want you to tell your story just as it happened. I’ll
check it by this book. Take a cigar. I know about his being dragged out
of the cutter. What I want to know is what was the meaning of all the
other things, because they’re unusual.”

“They were,” said Mr. Pyecroft with emphasis. “Lookin’ back on it as I
set here more an’ more I see what an ’ighly unusual affair it was. But
it happened. It transpired in the _Archimandrite_—the ship you can
trust… Antonio! Ther beggar!”

“Take your time, Mr. Pyecroft.”

In a few moments we came to it thus—

“The old man was displeased. I don’t deny he was quite a little
displeased. With the mail-boats trottin’ into Madeira every twenty
minutes, he didn’t see why a lop-eared Portugee had to take liberties
with a man-o’-war’s first cutter. Any’ow, we couldn’t turn ship round
for him. We drew him out and took him out to Number One. ‘Drown ’im,’
’e says. ‘Drown ’im before ’e dirties my fine new decks.’ But our owner
was tenderhearted. ‘Take him to the galley,’ ’e says. ‘Boil ’im! Skin
’im! Cook ’im! Cut ’is bloomin’ hair? Take ’is bloomin’ number! We’ll
have him executed at Ascension.’

“Retallick, our chief cook, an’ a Carth’lic, was the on’y one any way
near grateful; bein’ short-’anded in the galley. He annexes the
blighter by the left ear an’ right foot an’ sets him to work peelin’
potatoes. So then, this Antonio that was avoidin’ the conscription—”

“_Sub_scription, you pink-eyed matlow!” said the Marine, with the face
of a stone Buddha, and whimpered sadly: “Pye don’t see any fun in it at
all.”

“_Con_scription—come to his illegitimate sphere in Her Majesty’s Navy,
an’ it was just then that Old ’Op, our Yeoman of Signals, an’ a
fastidious joker, made remarks to me about ’is hands.

“‘Those ’ands,’ says ’Op, ‘properly considered, never done a day’s
honest labour in their life. Tell me those hands belong to a blighted
Portugee manual labourist and I won’t call you a liar, but I’ll say you
an’ the Admiralty are pretty much unique in your statements.’ ’Op was
always a fastidious joker—in his language as much as anything else. He
pursued ’is investigations with the eye of an ’awk outside the galley.
He knew better than to advance line-head against Retallick, so he
attacked _ong eshlong_, speakin’ his remarks as much as possible into
the breech of the starboard four point seven, an’ ’ummin’ to ’imself.
Our chief cook ’ated ’ummin’. ‘What’s the matter of your bowels?’ he
says at last, fistin’ out the mess-pork agitated like. “‘Don’t mind
me,’ says ’Op. ‘I’m only a mildewed buntin’-tosser,’ ’e says: ‘but
speakin’ for my mess, I do hope,’ ’e says, ‘you ain’t goin’ to boil
your Portugee friend’s boots along o’ that pork you’re smellin’ so
gay!’

“‘Boots! Boots! Boots!’ says Retallick, an’ he run round like a earwig
in a alder-stalk. ‘Boots in the galley,’ ’e says. ‘Cook’s mate, cast
out an’ abolish this cutter-cuddlin’ abori_gine’s_ boots!’”

“They was hove overboard in quick time, an’ that was what ’Op was lyin’
to for. As subsequently transpired.

“‘Fine Arab arch to that cutter-cuddler’s hinstep,’ he says to me. ‘Run
your eye over it, Pye,’ ’e says. ‘Nails all present an’ correct,’ ’e
says. ‘Bunion on the little toe, too,’ ’e says; ‘which comes from
wearin’ a tight boot. What do _you_ think?’

“‘Dook in trouble, per’aps,’ I says. ‘He ain’t got the hang of
spud-skinnin’.’ No more he ’ad. ’E was simply cannibalisin’ ’em.

“‘I want to know what ’e ’as got the ’ang of,’ says ’Op,
obstructed-like. ‘Watch ’im,’ ’e says. ‘These shoulders were
foreign-drilled somewhere.’

‘“When it comes to “Down ’ammicks!” which is our naval way o’ goin’ to
bye-bye, I took particular trouble over Antonio, ’oo had ’is ’ammick
’ove at ’im with general instructions to sling it an’ be sugared. In
the ensuin’ melly I pioneered him to the after-’atch, which is a
orifice communicatin’ with the after-flat an’ similar suites of
apartments. He havin’ navigated at three fifths power immejit ahead o’
me, _I_ wasn’t goin’ to volunteer any assistance, nor he didn’t need
it.’

“‘Mong Jew!’ says ’e, sniffin’ round. An’ twice more ‘Mong Jew!’—which
is pure French. Then he slings ’is ’ammick, nips in, an’ coils down.
‘Not bad for a Portugee conscript,’ I says to myself, casts off the
tow, abandons him, and reports to ’Op.

“About three minutes later I’m over’auled by our sub-lootenant,
navigatin’ under forced draught, with his bearin’s ’eated. ’E had the
temerity to say I’d instructed our Antonio to sling his carcass in the
alleyway, an’ ’e was peevish about it. O’ course, I prevaricated like
’ell. You get to do that in the service. Nevertheless, to oblige Mr.
Ducane, I went an’ readjusted Antonio. You may not ’ave ascertained
that there are two ways o’ comin’ out of an ’ammick when it’s cut down.
Antonio came out t’other way—slidin’ ’andsome to his feet. That showed
me two things. First, ’e had been in an ’ammick before, an’ next, he
hadn’t been asleep. Then I reproached ’im for goin’ to bed where ’e’d
been told to go, instead o’ standin’ by till some one gave him entirely
contradictory orders. Which is the essence o’ naval discipline.

“In the middle o’ this argument the gunner protrudes his ram-bow from
’is cabin, an’ brings it all to an ’urried conclusion with some remarks
suitable to ’is piebald warrant-rank. Navigatin’ thence under easy
steam, an’ leavin’ Antonio to re-sling his little foreign self, my
large flat foot comes in detonatin’ contact with a small objec’ on the
deck. Not ’altin’ for the obstacle, nor changin’ step, I shuffles it
along under the ball of the big toe to the foot o’ the hatchway, when,
lightly stoopin’, I catch it in my right hand and continue my
evolutions in rapid time till I eventuates under ’Op’s lee.

“It was a small moroccer-bound pocket-book, full of indelible
pencil-writin’—in French, for I could plainly discern the
_doodeladays_, which is about as far as my education runs.

“’Op fists it open and peruses. ’E’d known an ’arf-caste Frenchwoman
pretty intricate before he was married; when he was trained man in a
stinkin’ gunboat up the Saigon River. He understood a lot o’
French—domestic brands chiefly—the kind that isn’t in print.

“‘Pye,’ he says to me, ‘you’re a tattician o’ no mean value. I am a
trifle shady about the precise bearin’ an’ import’ o’ this beggar’s
private log here,’ ’e says, ‘but it’s evidently a case for the owner.
You’ll ’ave your share o’ the credit,’ ’e says.

“‘Nay, nay, Pauline,’ I says, ‘You don’t catch Emanuel Pyecroft
mine-droppin’ under any post-captain’s bows,’ I says, ‘in search of
honour,’ I says. ‘I’ve been there oft.’

“‘Well, if you must, you must,’ ’e says, takin’ me up quick. ‘But I’ll
speak a good word for you, Pye.’

“‘You’ll shut your mouth, ’Op,’ I says, ‘or you an’ me’ll part
brass-rags. The owner has his duties, an’ I have mine. We will keep
station,’ I says, ‘nor seek to deviate.’

“‘Deviate to blazes!’ says ’Op. ‘I’m goin’ to deviate to the owner’s
comfortable cabin direct.’ So he deviated.”

Mr. Pyecroft leaned forward and dealt the Marine a large pattern Navy
kick. “’Ere, Glass! You was sentry when ’Op went to the old man—the
first time, with Antonio’s washin’-book. Tell us what transpired.
You’re sober. You don’t know how sober you are!”

The Marine cautiously raised his head a few inches. As Mr. Pyecroft
said, he was sober—after some R.M.L.I. fashion of his own devising.
“’Op bounds in like a startled anteloper, carryin’ ’is signal-slate at
the ready. The old man was settin’ down to ’is bountiful platter—not
like you an’ me, without anythin’ more in sight for an ’ole night an’
’arf a day. Talkin’ about food—”

“No! No! No!” cried Pyecroft, kicking again. “What about ’Op?” I
thought the Marine’s ribs would have snapped, but he merely hiccuped.

“Oh, ’im! ’E ’ad it written all down on ’is little slate—I think—an’ ’e
shoves it under the old man’s nose. ‘Shut the door,’ says ’Op. ‘For
’Eavin’s sake shut the cabin door!’ Then the old man must ha’ said
somethin’ ’bout irons. ‘I’ll put ’em on, Sir, in your very presence,’
says ’Op, ‘only ’ear my prayer,’ or—words to that ’fect…. It was jus’
the same with me when I called our Sergeant a bladder-bellied,
lard-’eaded, perspirin’ pension-cheater. They on’y put on the
charge-sheet ‘words to that effect.’ Spoiled the ’ole ’fect.”

“’Op! ’Op! ’Op! What about ’Op?” thundered Pyecroft.

“’Op? Oh, shame thing. Words t’ that ’fect. Door shut. Nushin’ more
transphired till ’Op comes out—nose exshtreme angle plungin’ fire or—or
words ‘that effect. Proud’s parrot. ‘Oh, you prou’ old parrot,’ I
says.”

Mr. Glass seemed to slumber again.

“Lord! How a little moisture disintegrates, don’t it? When we had
ship’s theatricals off Vigo, Glass ’ere played Dick Deadeye to the
moral, though of course the lower deck wasn’t pleased to see a
leatherneck interpretin’ a strictly maritime part, as you might say.
It’s only his repartees, which ’e can’t contain, that conquers him.
Shall I resume my narrative?”

Another drink was brought on this hint, and Mr. Pyecroft resumed.

“The essence o’ strategy bein’ forethought, the essence o’ tattics is
surprise. Per’aps you didn’t know that? My forethought ’avin’ secured
the initial advantage in attack, it remained for the old man to ladle
out the surprise-packets. ’Eavens! What surprises! That night he dines
with the wardroom, bein’ of the kind—I’ve told you as we were a ’appy
ship?—that likes it, and the wardroom liked it too. This ain’t common
in the service. They had up the new Madeira—awful undisciplined stuff
which gives you a cordite mouth next morning. They told the mess-men to
navigate towards the extreme an’ remote ’orizon, an’ they abrogated the
sentry about fifteen paces out of earshot. Then they had in the Gunner,
the Bo’sun, an’ the Carpenter, an’ stood them large round drinks. It
all come out later—wardroom joints bein’ lower-deck hash, as the sayin’
is—that our Number One stuck to it that ’e couldn’t trust the ship for
the job. The old man swore ’e could, ’avin’ commanded ’er over two
years. He was right. There wasn’t a ship, I don’t care in what fleet,
could come near the _Archimandrites_ when we give our mind to a thing.
We held the cruiser big-gun records, the sailing-cutter (fancy-rig)
championship, an’ the challenge-cup row round the fleet. We ’ad the
best nigger-minstrels, the best football an’ cricket teams, an’ the
best squee-jee band of anything that ever pushed in front of a brace o’
screws. An’ _yet_ our Number One mistrusted us! ’E said we’d be a
floatin’ hell in a week, an’ it ’ud take the rest o’ the commission to
stop our way. They was arguin’ it in the wardroom when the bridge
reports a light three points off the port bow. We overtakes her,
switches on our search-light, an’ she discloses herself as a collier o’
no mean reputation, makin’ about seven knots on ’er lawful occasions—to
the Cape most like.

“Then the owner—so we ’eard in good time—broke the boom, springin’ all
mines together at close interval.

“‘Look ’ere, my jokers,’ ’e says (I’m givin’ the grist of ’is
arguments, remember), ‘Number One says we can’t enlighten this
cutter-cuddlin’ Gaulish lootenant on the manners an’ customs o’ the
Navy without makin’ the ship a market-garden. There’s a lot in that,’
’e says, ‘specially if we kept it up lavish, till we reached Ascension.
But,’ ’e says, ‘the appearance o’ this strange sail has put a totally
new aspect on the game. We can run to just one day’s amusement for our
friend, or else what’s the good o’ discipline? An’ then we can turn ’im
over to our presumably short-’anded fellow-subject in the small-coal
line out yonder. He’ll be pleased,’ says the old man, ‘an’ so will
Antonio. M’rover,’ he says to Number One, ‘I’ll lay you a dozen o’
liquorice an’ ink’—it must ha’ been that new tawny port—‘that I’ve got
a ship I can trust—for one day,’ ’e says. ‘Wherefore,’ he says, ‘will
you have the extreme goodness to reduce speed as requisite for keepin’
a proper distance behind this providential tramp till further orders?’
Now, that’s what I call tattics.

“The other manœuvres developed next day, strictly in accordance with
the plans as laid down in the wardroom, where they sat long an’ steady.
’Op whispers to me that Antonio was a Number One spy when ’e was in
commission, and a French lootenant when ’e was paid off, so I navigated
at three ’undred and ninety six revolutions to the galley, never ’avin’
kicked a lootenant up to date. I may as well say that I did not
manœuvre against ’im as a Frenchman, because I like Frenchmen, but
stric’ly on ’is rank an’ ratin’ in ’is own navy. I inquired after ’is
health from Retallick.

“‘Don’t ask me,’ ’e says, sneerin’ be’ind his silver spectacles. ‘’E’s
promoted to be captain’s second supernumerary servant, to be dressed
and addressed as such. If ’e does ’is dooties same as he skinned the
spuds, _I_ ain’t for changin’ with the old man.’

“In the balmy dawnin’ it was given out, all among the ’olystones, by
our sub-lootenant, who was a three-way-discharge devil, that all orders
after eight bells was to be executed in inverse ration to the cube o’
the velocity. ‘The reg’lar routine,’ he says, ‘was arrogated for
reasons o’ state an’ policy, an’ any flat-foot who presumed to exhibit
surprise, annoyance, or amusement, would be slightly but firmly
reproached.’ Then the Gunner mops up a heathenish large detail for some
hanky-panky in the magazines, an’ led ’em off along with our Gunnery
Jack, which is to say, our Gunnery Lootenant.

“That put us on the _viva voce_—particularly when we understood how the
owner was navigatin’ abroad in his sword-belt trustin’ us like
brothers. We shifts into the dress o’ the day, an’ we musters _an’_ we
prays _ong reggle_, an’ we carries on anticipatory to bafflin’ Antonio.

“Then our Sergeant of Marines come to me wringin’ his ’ands an’
weepin’. ’E’d been talkin’ to the sub-lootenant, an’ it looked like as
if his upper-works were collapsin’.

“‘I want a guarantee,’ ’e says, wringin’ ’is ’ands like this. ‘_I_
’aven’t ’ad sunstroke slave-dhowin’ in Tajurrah Bay, an’ been compelled
to live on quinine an’ chlorodyne ever since. _I_ don’t get the horrors
off glasses o’ brown sherry.’

“‘What ’ave you got now?’ I says.

“‘_I_ ain’t an officer,’ ’e says. ‘_My_ sword won’t be handed back to
me at the end o’ the court-martial on account o’ my little weaknesses,
an’ no stain on my character. I’m only a pore beggar of a Red Marine
with eighteen years’ service, an’ why for,’ says he, wringin’ ’is hands
like this all the time, ‘must I chuck away my pension, sub-lootenant or
no sub-lootenant? Look at ’em,’ he says, ‘only look at ’em. Marines
fallin’ in for small-arm drill!’

“The leathernecks was layin’ aft at the double, an’ a more insanitary
set of accidents I never wish to behold. Most of ’em was in their
shirts. They had their trousers on, of course—rolled up nearly to the
knee, but what I mean is belts over shirts. Three or four ’ad _our_
caps, an’ them that had drawn helmets wore their chin-straps like
Portugee earrings. Oh, yes; an’ three of ’em ’ad only one boot! I knew
what our bafflin’ tattics was goin’ to be, but even I was mildly
surprised when this gay fantasia of Brazee drummers halted under the
poop, because of an ’ammick in charge of our Navigator, an’ a small but
’ighly efficient landin’-party.

“‘’Ard astern both screws!’ says the Navigator. ‘Room for the captain’s
’ammick!’ The captain’s servant—Cockburn ’is name was—had one end, an’
our newly promoted Antonio, in a blue slop rig, ’ad the other. They
slung it from the muzzle of the port poop quick-firer thort-ships to a
stanchion. Then the old man flickered up, smokin’ a cigarette, an’
brought ’is stern to an anchor slow an’ oriental.

“‘What a blessin’ it is, Mr. Ducane,’ ’e says to our sub-lootenant, ‘to
be out o’ sight o’ the ’ole pack o’ blighted admirals! What’s an
admiral after all?’ ’e says. ‘Why, ’e’s only a post-captain with the
pip, Mr. Ducane. The drill will now proceed. What O! Antonio,
_descendez_ an’ get me a split.’

“When Antonio came back with the whisky-an’-soda, he was told off to
swing the ’ammick in slow time, an’ that massacritin’ small-arm party
went on with their oratorio. The Sergeant had been kindly excused from
participating an’ he was jumpin’ round on the poop-ladder, stretchin’
’is leather neck to see the disgustin’ exhibition an’ cluckin’ like a
ash-hoist. A lot of us went on the fore an’ aft bridge an’ watched ’em
like ‘Listen to the Band in the Park.’ All these evolutions, I may as
well tell you, are highly unusual in the Navy. After ten minutes o’
muckin’ about, Glass ’ere—pity ’e’s so drunk!—says that ’e’d had enough
exercise for ’is simple needs an’ he wants to go ’ome. Mr. Ducane
catches him a sanakatowzer of a smite over the ’ead with the flat of
his sword. Down comes Glass’s rifle with language to correspond, and he
fiddles with the bolt. Up jumps Maclean—’oo was a Gosport
’ighlander—an’ lands on Glass’s neck, thus bringin’ him to the deck,
fully extended.

“The old man makes a great show o’ wakin’ up from sweet slumbers.
‘Mistah Ducane,’ he says, ‘what is this painful interregnum?’ or words
to that effect. Ducane takes one step to the front, an’ salutes: ‘Only
’nother case of attempted assassination, Sir,’ he says.

“‘Is that all?’ says the old man, while Maclean sits on Glass’s collar
button. ‘Take him away,’ ’e says, ‘he knows the penalty.’”

“Ah! I suppose that is the ‘invincible _morgue_ Britannic in the
presence of brutally provoked mutiny,’” I muttered, as I turned over
the pages of M. de C.

“So, Glass, ’e was led off kickin’ an’ squealin’, an’ hove down the
ladder into ’is Sergeant’s volupshus arms. ’E run Glass forward, an’
was all for puttin’ ’im in irons as a maniac.

“‘You refill your waterjacket and cool off!’ says Glass, sittin’ down
rather winded. ‘The trouble with you is you haven’t any imagination.’

“‘Haven’t I? I’ve got the remnants of a little poor authority though,’
’e says, lookin’ pretty vicious.

“‘You ’ave?’ says Glass. ‘Then for pity’s sake ’ave some proper feelin’
too. I’m goin’ to be shot this evenin’. You’ll take charge o’ the
firin’-party.’

“Some’ow or other, that made the Sergeant froth at the mouth. ’E ’ad no
more play to his intellects than a spit-kid. ’E just took everything as
it come. Well, that was about all, I think…. Unless you’d care to have
me resume my narrative.”

We resumed on the old terms, but with rather less hot water. The marine
on the floor breathed evenly, and Mr. Pyecroft nodded.

“I may have omitted to inform you that our Number One took a general
row round the situation while the small-arm party was at work, an’ o’
course he supplied the outlines; but the details we coloured in by
ourselves. These were our tattics to baffle Antonio. It occurs to the
Carpenter to ’ave the steam-cutter down for repairs. ’E gets ’is
cheero-party together, an’ down she comes. You’ve never seen a
steam-cutter let down on the deck, ’ave you? It’s not usual, an’ she
takes a lot o’ humourin’. Thus we ’ave the starboard side completely
blocked an’ the general traffic tricklin’ over’ead along the
fore-an’-aft bridge. Then Chips gets into her an’ begins balin’ out a
mess o’ small reckonin’s on the deck. Simultaneous there come up three
o’ those dirty engine-room objects which we call ‘tiffies,’ an’ a
stoker or two with orders to repair her steamin’-gadgets. _They_ get
into her an’ bale out another young Christmas-treeful of small
reckonin’s—brass mostly. Simultaneous it hits the Pusser that ’e’d
better serve out mess pork for the poor matlow. These things half
shifted Retallick, our chief cook, off ’is bed-plate. Yes, you might
say they broke ’im wide open. ’E wasn’t at all used to ’em.

“Number One tells off five or six prime, able-bodied seamen-gunners to
the pork barrels. You never see pork fisted out of its receptacle, ’ave
you? Simultaneous, it hits the Gunner that now’s the day an’ now’s the
hour for a non-continuous class in Maxim instruction. So they all give
way together, and the general effect was _non plus ultra_. There was
the cutter’s innards spread out like a Fratton pawnbroker’s shop; there
was the ‘tiffies’ hammerin’ in the stern of ’er, an’ _they_ ain’t
antiseptic; there was the Maxim class in light skirmishin’ order among
the pork, an’ forrard the blacksmith had ’is forge in full blast,
makin’ ’orse-shoes, I suppose. Well, that accounts for the starboard
side. The on’y warrant officer ’oo hadn’t a look in so far was the
Bosun. So ’e stated, all out of ’is own ’ead, that Chips’s reserve o’
wood an’ timber, which Chips ’ad stole at our last refit, needed
restowin’. It was on the port booms—a young an’ healthy forest of it,
for Charley Peace wasn’t to be named ’longside o’ Chips for burglary.

“‘All right,’ says our Number One. ‘You can ’ave the whole port watch
if you like. Hell’s Hell,’ ’e says, ’an when there study to improve.’

“Jarvis was our Bosun’s name. He hunted up the ’ole of the port watch
by hand, as you might say, callin’ ’em by name loud an’ lovin’, which
is not precisely Navy makee-pigeon. They ‘ad that timber-loft off the
booms, an’ they dragged it up and down like so many sweatin’ little
beavers. But Jarvis was jealous o’ Chips an’ went round the starboard
side to envy at him.

“’Tain’t enough,’ ’e says, when he had climbed back. ‘Chips ’as got his
bazaar lookin’ like a coal-hulk in a cyclone. We must adop’ more
drastic measures.’ Off ’e goes to Number One and communicates with ’im.
Number One got the old man’s leave, on account of our goin’ so slow (we
were keepin’ be’ind the tramp), to fit the ship with a full set of
patent supernumerary sails. Four trysails—yes, you might call ’em
trysails—was our Admiralty allowance in the un’eard of event of a
cruiser breakin’ down, but we had our awnin’s as well. They was all
extricated from the various flats an’ ’oles where they was stored, an’
at the end o’ two hours’ hard work Number One ’e made out eleven sails
o’ different sorts and sizes. I don’t know what exact nature of sail
you’d call ’em—pyjama-stun’sles with a touch of Sarah’s shimmy,
per’aps—but the riggin’ of ’em an’ all the supernumerary details, as
you might say, bein’ carried on through an’ over an’ between the cutter
an’ the forge an’ the pork an’ cleanin’ guns, an’ the Maxim class an’
the Bosun’s calaboose _and_ the paintwork, was sublime. There’s no
other word for it. Sub-lime!

“The old man keeps swimmin’ up an’ down through it all with the
faithful Antonio at ’is side, fetchin’ him numerous splits. ’E had
eight that mornin’, an’ when Antonio was detached to get ’is spy-glass,
or his gloves, or his lily-white ’andkerchief, the old man would waste
’em down a ventilator. Antonio must ha’ learned a lot about our Navy
thirst.”

“He did.”

“Ah! Would you kindly mind turnin’ to the precise page indicated an’
givin’ me a _résumé_ of ’is tattics?” said Mr. Pyecroft, drinking
deeply. “I’d like to know ’ow it looked from ’is side o’ the deck.”

“How will this do?” I said. “‘_Once clear of the land, like Voltaire’s
Habakkuk_———”’

“One o’ their new commerce-destroyers, I suppose,” Mr. Pyecroft
interjected.

“‘—_each man seemed veritably capable of all—to do according to his
will. The boats, dismantled and forlorn, are lowered upon the planking.
One cries “Aid me!” flourishing at the same time the weapons of his
business. A dozen launch themselves upon him in the orgasm of zeal
misdirected. He beats them off with the howlings of dogs. He has lost a
hammer. This ferocious outcry signifies that only. Eight men seek the
utensil, colliding on the way with some many others which, seated in
the stern of the boat, tear up and scatter upon the planking the
ironwork which impedes their brutal efforts. Elsewhere, one detaches
from on high wood, canvas, iron bolts, coal-dust—what do I know_?’”

“That’s where ’e’s comin’ the bloomin’ _onjenew_. ’E knows a lot,
reely.”

“‘_They descend thundering upon the planking, and the spectacle cannot
reproduce itself. In my capacity of valet to the captain, whom I have
well and beautifully plied with drink since the rising of the sun
(behold me also, Ganymede!) I pass throughout observing, it may be not
a little. They ask orders. There is none to give them. One sits upon
the edge of the vessel and chants interminably the lugubrious “Roule
Britannia”—to endure how lomg_?’”

“That was me! On’y ’twas ‘A Life on the Ocean Wave’—which I hate more
than any stinkin’ tune I know, havin’ dragged too many nasty little
guns to it. Yes, Number One told me off to that for ten minutes; an’ I
ain’t musical, you might say.”

“_‘Then come marines, half-dressed, seeking vainly through this
“tohu-bohu_”’ (that’s one of his names for the _Archimandrite_, Mr.
Pyecroft), ‘_for a place whence they shall not be dislodged. The
captain, heavy with drink, rolls himself from his hammock. He would
have his people fire the Maxims. They demand which Maxim. That to him
is equal. The breech-lock indispensable is not there. They demand it of
one who opens a barrel of pork, for this Navy feeds at all hours. He
refers them to the cook, yesterday my master_—’”

“Yes, an’ Retallick nearly had a fit. What a truthful an’ observin’
little Antonio we ’ave!”

“‘_It is discovered in the hands of a boy who says, and they do not
rebuke him, that he has found it by hazard_.’ I’m afraid I haven’t
translated quite correctly, Mr. Pyecroft, but I’ve done my best.”

“Why, it’s beautiful—you ought to be a Frenchman—you ought. You don’t
want anything o’ _me_. You’ve got it all there.”

“Yes, but I like your side of it. For instance. Here’s a little thing I
can’t quite see the end of. Listen! ‘_Of the domain which Britannia
rules by sufferance, my gross captain, knew nothing, and his Navigator,
if possible, less. From the bestial recriminations and the
indeterminate chaos of the grand deck, I ascended—always with a
whisky-and-soda in my hands—to a scene truly grotesque. Behold my
captain in plain sea, at issue with his Navigator! A crisis of nerves
due to the enormous quantity of alcohol which he had swallowed up to
then, has filled for him the ocean with dangers, imaginary and
fantastic. Incapable of judgment, menaced by the phantasms of his brain
inflamed, he envisages islands perhaps of the Hesperides beneath his
keel—vigias innumerable.’_ I don’t know what a vigia is, Mr. Pyecroft.
_‘He creates shoals sad and far-reaching of the mid-Atlantic!’_ What
was that, now?”

“Oh, I see! That come after dinner, when our Navigator threw ’is cap
down an’ danced on it. Danby was quartermaster. They ’ad a tea-party on
the bridge. It was the old man’s contribution. Does he say anything
about the leadsmen?”

“Is this it? _‘Overborne by his superior’s causeless suspicion, the
Navigator took off the badges of his rank and cast them at the feet of
my captain and sobbed. A disgusting and maudlin reconciliation
followed. The argument renewed itself, each grasping the wheel,
crapulous’_ (that means drunk, I think, Mr. Pyecroft), _‘shouting. It
appeared that my captain would chenaler’_ (I don’t know what that
means, Mr. Pyecroft) _‘to the Cape. At the end, he placed a sailor with
the sound’_ (that’s the lead, I think) _‘in his hand, garnished with
suet.’_ Was it garnished with suet?”

“He put two leadsmen in the chains, o’ course! He didn’t know that
there mightn’t be shoals there, ’e said. Morgan went an’ armed his
lead, to enter into the spirit o’ the thing. They ’eaved it for twenty
minutes, but there wasn’t any suet—only tallow, o’ course.”

“‘_Garnished with suet at two thousand metres of profundity. Decidedly
the Britannic Navy is well guarded_.’ Well, that’s all right, Mr.
Pyecroft. Would you mind telling me anything else of interest that
happened?”

“There was a good deal, one way an’ another. I’d like to know what this
Antonio thought of our sails.”

“He merely says that ‘_the engines having broken down, an officer
extemporised a mournful and useless parody of sails_.’ Oh, yes! he says
that some of them looked like ‘_bonnets in a needlecase_,’ I think.”

“Bonnets in a needlecase! They were stun’sles. That shows the beggar’s
no sailor. That trick was really the one thing we did. Pho! I thought
he was a sailorman, an’ ’e hasn’t sense enough to see what
extemporisin’ eleven good an’ drawin’ sails out o’ four trys’les an’ a
few awnin’s means. ’E must have been drunk!”

“Never mind, Mr. Pyecroft. I want to hear about your target-practice,
and the execution.”

“Oh! We had a special target-practice that afternoon all for Antonio.
As I told my crew—me bein’ captain of the port-bow quick-firer, though
I’m a torpedo man now—it just showed how you can work your gun under
any discomforts. A shell—twenty six-inch shells—burstin’ inboard
couldn’t ’ave begun to make the varicose collection o’ tit-bits which
we had spilled on our deck. It was a lather—a rich, creamy lather!

“We took it very easy—that gun-practice. We did it in a complimentary
‘Jenny-’ave-another-cup-o’ tea’ style, an’ the crew was strictly
ordered not to rupture ’emselves with unnecessary exertion. This isn’t
our custom in the Navy when we’re _in puris naturalibus_, as you might
say. But we wasn’t so then. We was impromptu. An’ Antonio was busy
fetchin’ splits for the old man, and the old man was wastin’ ’em down
the ventilators. There must ’ave been four inches in the bilges, I
should think—wardroom whisky-an’-soda.

“Then I thought I might as well bear a hand as look pretty. So I let my
_bundoop_ go at fifteen ’undred—sightin’ very particular. There was a
sort of ’appy little belch like—no more, I give you my word—an’ the
shell trundled out maybe fifty feet an’ dropped into the deep Atlantic.

“‘Government powder, Sir!’ sings out our Gunnery Jack to the bridge,
laughin’ horrid sarcastic; an’ then, of course, we all laughs, which we
are not encouraged to do _in puris naturalibus_. Then, of course, I saw
what our Gunnery Jack ’ad been after with his subcutaneous details in
the magazines all the mornin’ watch. He had redooced the charges to a
minimum, as you might say. But it made me feel a trifle faint an’
sickish notwithstanding this spit-in-the-eye business. Every time such
transpired, our Gunnery Lootenant would say somethin’ sarcastic about
Government stores, an’ the old man fair howled. ’Op was on the bridge
with ’im, an’ ’e told me—’cause ’e’s a free-knowledgeist an’ reads
character—that Antonio’s face was sweatin’ with pure joy. ’Op wanted to
kick him. Does Antonio say anything about that?”

“Not about the kicking, but he is great on the gun-practice, Mr.
Pyecroft. He has put all the results into a sort of appendix—a table of
shots. He says that the figures will speak more eloquently than words.”

“What? Nothin’ about the way the crews flinched an’ hopped? Nothin’
about the little shells rumblin’ out o’ the guns so casual?”

“There are a few pages of notes, but they only bear out what you say.
He says that these things always happen as soon as one of our ships is
out of sight of land. Oh, yes! I’ve forgotten. He says, _‘From the
conversation of my captain with his inferiors I gathered that no small
proportion of the expense of these nominally efficient cartridges finds
itself in his pockets. So much, indeed, was signified by an officer on
the deck below, who cried in a high voice: “I hope, Sir, you are making
something out of it. It is rather monotonous.” This insult, so
flagrant, albeit well-merited, was received with a smile of drunken
bonhommy’_—that’s cheerfulness, Mr. Pyecroft. Your glass is empty.”

“Resumin’ afresh,” said Mr. Pyecroft, after a well-watered interval, “I
may as well say that the target-practice occupied us two hours, and
then we had to dig out after the tramp. Then we half an’ three-quarters
cleaned up the decks an’ mucked about as requisite, haulin’ down the
patent awnin’ stun’sles which Number One ’ad made. The old man was a
shade doubtful of his course, ’cause I ’eard him say to Number One,
‘You were right. A week o’ this would turn the ship into a Hayti
bean-feast. But,’ he says pathetic, ‘haven’t they backed the band
noble?’

“‘Oh! it’s a picnic for them,’ says Number One.

“‘But when do we get rid o’ this whisky-peddlin’ blighter o’ yours,
Sir?’

“‘That’s a cheerful way to speak of a Viscount,’ says the old man. “E’s
the bluest blood o’ France when he’s at home,’

“‘Which is the precise landfall I wish ’im to make,’ says Number One.’
It’ll take all ’ands and the Captain of the Head to clean up after
’im.’

“‘They won’t grudge it,’ says the old man. ‘Just as soon as it’s dusk
we’ll overhaul our tramp friend an’ waft him over.’

“Then a sno—midshipman—Moorshed was is name—come up an’ says somethin’
in a low voice. It fetches the old man.

“‘You’ll oblige me,’ ’e says, ‘by takin’ the wardroom poultry for
_that_. I’ve ear-marked every fowl we’ve shipped at Madeira, so there
can’t be any possible mistake. M’rover,’ ’e says, ‘tell ’em if they
spill one drop of blood on the deck,’ he says, ‘they’ll not be
extenuated, but hung.’

“Mr. Moorshed goes forward, lookin’ unusual ’appy, even for him. The
Marines was enjoyin’ a committee-meetin’ in their own flat.

“After that, it fell dark, with just a little streaky, oily light on
the sea—an’ anythin’ more chronic than the _Archimandrite_ I’d trouble
you to behold. She looked like a fancy bazaar and a auction-room—yes,
she almost looked like a passenger-steamer. We’d picked up our tramp,
an’ was about four mile be’ind ’er. I noticed the wardroom as a class,
you might say, was manoeuvrin’ _en masse_, an’ then come the order to
cockbill the yards. We hadn’t any yards except a couple o’ signallin’
sticks, but we cock-billed ’em. I hadn’t seen that sight, not since
thirteen years in the West Indies, when a post-captain died o’ yellow
jack. It means a sign o’ mourning the yards bein’ canted opposite ways,
to look drunk an’ disorderly. They do.

“‘An’ what might our last giddy-go-round signify?’ I asks of ’Op.

“‘Good ’Evins!’ ’e says, ‘Are you in the habit o’ permittin’
leathernecks to assassinate lootenants every morning at drill without
immejitly ’avin’ ’em shot on the foc’sle in the horrid crawly-crawly
twilight?’”

“‘Yes,’ I murmured over my dear book, ‘_the infinitely lugubrious
crepuscule. A spectacle of barbarity unparalleled—hideous—cold-blooded,
and yet touched with appalling grandeur_.’”

“Ho! Was that the way Antonio looked at it? That shows he ’ad feelin’s.
To resoom. Without anyone givin’ us orders to that effect, we began to
creep about an’ whisper. Things got stiller and stiller, till they was
as still as—mushrooms! Then the bugler let off the ‘Dead March’ from
the upper bridge. He done it to cover the remarks of a cock-bird bein’
killed forrard, but it came out paralysin’ in its _tout ensemble_. You
never heard the ‘Dead March’ on a bugle? Then the pipes went twitterin’
for both watches to attend public execution, an’ we came up like so
many ghosts, the ’ole ship’s company. Why, Mucky ’Arcourt, one o’ our
boys, was that took in he give tongue like a beagle-pup, an’ was
properly kicked down the ladder for so doin’. Well, there we
lay—engines stopped, rollin’ to the swell, all dark, yards cock-billed,
an’ that merry tune yowlin’ from the upper bridge. We fell in on the
foc’sle, leavin’ a large open space by the capstan, where our
sail-maker was sittin’ sewin’ broken firebars into the foot of an old
’ammick. ’E looked like a corpse, an’ Mucky had another fit o’
hysterics, an’ you could ’ear us breathin’ ’ard. It beat anythin’ in
the theatrical line that even us _Archimandrites_ had done—an’ we was
the ship you could trust. Then come the doctor an’ lit a red lamp which
he used for his photographic muckin’s, an’ chocked it on the capstan.
That was finally gashly!

“Then come twelve Marines guardin’ Glass ’ere. You wouldn’t think to
see ’im what a gratooitous an’ aboundin’ terror he was that evenin’. ’E
was in a white shirt ’e’d stole from Cockburn, an’ his regulation
trousers, barefooted. ’E’d pipe-clayed ’is ’ands an’ face an’ feet an’
as much of his chest as the openin’ of his shirt showed. ’E marched
under escort with a firm an’ undeviatin’ step to the capstan, an’ came
to attention. The old man reinforced by an extra strong split—his
seventeenth, an’ ’e didn’t throw _that_ down the ventilator—come up on
the bridge an’ stood like a image. ’Op, ’oo was with ’im, says that ’e
heard Antonio’s teeth singin’, not chatterin’—singin’ like funnel-stays
in a typhoon. Yes, a moanin’ æolian harp, ’Op said.

“‘When you are ready, Sir, drop your ’andkerchief,’ Number One
whispers.

“‘Good Lord!’ says the old man, with a jump. ‘Eh! What? What a sight!
What a sight!’ an’ he stood drinkin’ it in, I suppose, for quite two
minutes.

“Glass never says a word. ’E shoved aside an ’andkerchief which the
sub-lootenant proffered ’im to bind ’is eyes with—quiet an’ collected;
an’ if we ’adn’t been feelin’ so very much as we did feel, his gestures
would ’ave brought down the ’ouse.”

“I can’t open my eyes, or I’ll be sick,” said the Marine with appalling
clearness. “I’m pretty far gone—I know it—but there wasn’t anyone could
’ave beaten Edwardo Glass, R.M.L.I., that time. Why, I scared myself
nearly into the ’orrors. Go on, Pye. Glass is in support—as ever.”

“Then the old man drops ’is ’andkerchief, an’ the firin’-party fires
like one man. Glass drops forward, twitchin’ an’ ’eavin’ horrid
natural, into the shotted ’ammick all spread out before him, and the
firin’ party closes in to guard the remains of the deceased while Sails
is stitchin’ it up. An’ when they lifted that ’ammick it was one
wringin’ mess of blood! They on’y expended one wardroom cock-bird, too.
Did you know poultry bled that extravagant? _I_ never did.

“The old man—so ’Op told me—stayed on the bridge, brought up on a dead
centre. Number One was similarly, though lesser, impressed, but o’
course ’is duty was to think of ’is fine white decks an’ the blood.
’Arf a mo’, Sir,’ he says, when the old man was for leavin’. ‘We have
to wait for the burial, which I am informed takes place immejit.’

“‘It’s beyond me,’ says the owner. ‘There was general instructions for
an execution, but I never knew I had such a dependable push of
mountebanks aboard,’ he says. ‘I’m all cold up my back, still.’

“The Marines carried the corpse below. Then the bugle give us some more
‘Dead March,’ Then we ’eard a splash from a bow six-pounder port, an’
the bugle struck up a cheerful tune. The whole lower deck was
complimentin’ Glass, ’oo took it very meek. ’E _is_ a good actor, for
all ’e’s a leatherneck.

“‘Now,’ said the old man, ‘we must turn over Antonio. He’s in what I
have ’eard called one perspirin’ funk.’

“Of course, I’m tellin’ it slow, but it all ’appened much quicker. We
run down our trampo—without o’ course informin’ Antonio of ’is ’appy
destiny—an’ inquired of ’er if she had any use for a free and gratis
stowaway. Oh, yes? she said she’d be highly grateful, but she seemed a
shade puzzled at our generosity, as you might put it, an’ we lay by
till she lowered a boat. Then Antonio—who was un’appy, distinctly
un’appy—was politely requested to navigate elsewhere, which I don’t
think he looked for. ’Op was deputed to convey the information, an’ ’Op
got in one sixteen-inch kick which ’oisted ’im all up the ladder. ’Op
ain’t really vindictive, an’ ’e’s fond of the French, especially the
women, but his chances o’ kicking lootenants was like the
cartridge—reduced to a minimum.

“The boat ’adn’t more than shoved off before a change, as you might
say, came o’er the spirit of our dream. The old man says, like
Elphinstone an’ Bruce in the Portsmouth election when I was a boy:
‘Gentlemen,’ he says, ‘for gentlemen you have shown yourselves to
be—from the bottom of my heart I thank you. The status an’ position of
our late lamented shipmate made it obligato,’ ’e says, ‘to take certain
steps not strictly included in the regulations. An’ nobly,’ says ’e,
‘have you assisted me. Now,’ ’e says, ‘you hold the false and felonious
reputation of bein’ the smartest ship in the Service. Pigsties,’ ’e
says, ‘is plane trigonometry alongside our present disgustin’ state.
Efface the effects of this indecent orgy,’ he says. ‘Jump, you
lop-eared, flat-footed, butter-backed Amalekites! Dig out, you
briny-eyed beggars!’”

“Do captains talk like that in the Navy, Mr. Pyecroft?” I asked.

“I’ve told you once I only give the grist of his arguments. The Bosun’s
mate translates it to the lower deck, as you may put it, and the lower
deck springs smartly to attention. It took us half the night ’fore we
got ’er anyway ship-shape; but by sunrise she was beautiful as ever,
and we resoomed. I’ve thought it over a lot since; yes, an’ I’ve
thought a lot of Antonio trimmin’ coal in that tramp’s bunkers. ’E must
’ave been highly surprised. Wasn’t he?”

“He was, Mr. Pyecroft,” I responded. “But now we’re talking of it,
weren’t you all a little surprised?”

“It come as a pleasant relief to the regular routine,” said Mr.
Pyecroft. “We appreciated it as an easy way o’ workin’ for your
country. But—the old man was right—a week o’ similar manœuvres would
’ave knocked our moral double-bottoms bung out. Now, couldn’t you
oblige with Antonio’s account of Glass’s execution?”

I obliged for nearly ten minutes. It was at best but a feeble rendering
of M. de C.’s magnificent prose, through which the soul of the poet,
the eye of the mariner, and the heart of the patriot bore magnificent
accord. His account of his descent from the side of the “_infamous
vessel consecrated to blood_” in the “_vast and gathering dusk of the
trembling ocean_” could only be matched by his description of the
dishonoured hammock sinking unnoticed through the depths, while, above,
the bugler played music “_of an indefinable brutality_”

“By the way, what did the bugler play after Glass’s funeral?” I asked.

“Him? Oh! ’e played ‘The Strict Q.T.’ It’s a very old song. We ’ad it
in Fratton nearly fifteen years back,” said Mr. Pyecroft sleepily.

I stirred the sugar dregs in my glass. Suddenly entered armed men, wet
and discourteous, Tom Wessels smiling nervously in the background.

“Where is that—minutely particularised person—Glass?” said the sergeant
of the picket.

“’Ere!” The marine rose to the strictest of attentions. “An’ it’s no
good smelling of my breath, because I’m strictly an’ ruinously sober.”

“Oh! An’ what may you have been doin’ with yourself?”

“Listenin’ to tracts. You can look! I’ve had the evenin’ of my little
life. Lead on to the _Cornucopia’s_ midmost dunjing cell. There’s a
crowd of brass-’atted blighters there which will say I’ve been absent
without leaf. Never mind. I forgive them before’and. _The_ evenin’ of
my life, an’ please don’t forget it.” Then in a tone of most
ingratiating apology to me: “I soaked it all in be’ind my shut eyes.
‘I’m”—he jerked a contemptuous thumb towards Mr. Pyecroft—“’e’s a
flatfoot, a indigo-blue matlow. ’E never saw the fun from first to
last. A mournful beggar—most depressin’.” Private Glass departed,
leaning heavily on the escort’s arm.

Mr. Pyecroft wrinkled his brows in thought—the profound and
far-reaching meditation that follows five glasses of hot
whisky-and-water.

“Well, I don’t see anything comical—greatly—except here an’ there.
Specially about those redooced charges in the guns. Do _you_ see
anything funny in it?”

There was that in his eye which warned me the night was too wet for
argument.

“No, Mr. Pyecroft, I don’t,” I replied. “It was a beautiful tale, and I
thank you very much.”




A SAHIBS’ WAR




THE RUNNERS


                                   _News!_
  What is the word that they tell now—now—now!
  The little drums beating in the bazaars?
      _They_ beat (among the buyers and sellers)
          _“Nimrud—ah Nimrud!
          God sends a gnat against Nimrud_!”
      Watchers, O Watchers a thousand!

                                   _News!_
  At the edge of the crops—now—now—where the well-wheels are halted,
  One prepares to loose the bullocks and one scrapes his hoe,
      _They_ beat (among the sowers and the reapers)
          _“Nimrud—ah Nimrud!
          God prepares an ill day for Nimrud_!”
      Watchers, O Watchers ten thousand.

                                   _News!_
  By the fires of the camps—now—now—where the travellers meet
  Where the camels come in and the horses: their men conferring,
      _They_ beat (among the packmen and the drivers)
          _“Nimrud—ah Nimrud!
          Thus it befell last noon to Nimrud_!”
      Watchers, O Watchers an hundred thousand!

                                   _News!_
  Under the shadow of the border-peels—now—now—now!
  In the rocks of the passes where the expectant shoe their horses,
      _They_ beat (among the rifles and the riders)
          _“Nimrud—ah Nimrud!
          Shall we go up against Nimrud_?”
      Watchers, O Watchers a thousand thousand?

                                   _News!_
  Bring out the heaps of grain—open the account-books again!
  Drive forward the well-bullocks against the taxable harvest!
  Eat and lie under the trees—pitch the police-guarded fair-grounds,
      O dancers!
  Hide away the rifles and let down the ladders from the watch-towers!
      _They_ beat (among all the peoples)
          _“Now—now—now!
          God has reserved the Sword for Nimrud!
          God has given Victory to Nimrud!”
          Let us abide under Nimrud_!”
      O Well-disposed and Heedful, an hundred thousand thousand!




A SAHIBS’ WAR


Pass? Pass? Pass? I have one pass already, allowing me to go by the
_rêl_ from Kroonstadt to Eshtellenbosch, where the horses are, where I
am to be paid off, and whence I return to India. I am a—trooper of the
Gurgaon Rissala (cavalry regiment), the One Hundred and Forty-first
Punjab Cavalry, Do not herd me with these black Kaffirs. I am a Sikh—a
trooper of the State. The Lieutenant-Sahib does not understand my talk?
Is there _any_ Sahib on the train who will interpret for a trooper of
the Gurgaon Rissala going about his business in this devil’s devising
of a country, where there is no flour, no oil, no spice, no red pepper,
and no respect paid to a Sikh? Is there no help?… God be thanked, here
is such a Sahib! Protector of the Poor! Heaven-born! Tell the young
Lieutenant-Sahib that my name is Umr Singh; I am—I was servant to
Kurban Sahib, now dead; and I have a pass to go to Eshtellenbosch,
where the horses are. Do not let him herd me with these black Kaffirs!…
Yes, I will sit by this truck till the Heaven-born has explained the
matter to the young Lieutenant-Sahib who does not understand our
tongue.


What orders? The young Lieutenant-Sahib will not detain me? Good! I go
down to Eshtellenbosch by the next _terain_? Good! I go with the
Heaven-born? Good! Then for this day I am the Heaven-born’s servant.
Will the Heaven-born bring the honour of his presence to a seat? Here
is an empty truck; I will spread my blanket over one corner thus—for
the sun is hot, though not so hot as our Punjab in May. I will prop it
up thus, and I will arrange this hay thus, so the Presence can sit at
ease till God sends us a _terain_ for Eshtellenbosch….

The Presence knows the Punjab? Lahore? Amritzar? Attaree, belike? My
village is north over the fields three miles from Attaree, near the big
white house which was copied from a certain place of the Great Queen’s
by—by—I have forgotten the name. Can the Presence recall it? Sirdar
Dyal Singh Attareewalla! Yes, that is the very man; but how does the
Presence know? Born and bred in Hind, was he? O-o-oh! This is quite a
different matter. The Sahib’s nurse was a Surtee woman from the Bombay
side? That was a pity. She should have been an up-country wench; for
those make stout nurses. There is no land like the Punjab. There are no
people like the Sikhs. Umr Singh is my name, yes. An old man? Yes. A
trooper only after all these years? Ye-es. Look at my uniform, if the
Sahib doubts. Nay—nay; the Sahib looks too closely. All marks of rank
were picked off it long ago, but—but it is true—mine is not a common
cloth such as troopers use for their coats, and—the Sahib has sharp
eyes—that black mark is such a mark as a silver chain leaves when long
worn on the breast. The Sahib says that troopers do not wear silver
chains? No-o. Troopers do not wear the Arder of Beritish India? No. The
Sahib should have been in the Police of the Punjab. I am not a trooper,
but I have been a Sahib’s servant for nearly a year—bearer, butler,
sweeper, any and all three. The Sahib says that Sikhs do not take
menial service? True; but it was for Kurban Sahib—my Kurban Sahib—dead
these three months!


Young—of a reddish face—with blue eyes, and he lilted a little on his
feet when he was pleased, and cracked his finger-joints. So did his
father before him, who was Deputy-Commissioner of Jullundur in my
father’s time when I rode with the Gurgaon Rissala. _My_ father? Jwala
Singh. A Sikh of Sikhs—he fought against the English at Sobraon and
carried the mark to his death. So we were knit as it were by a
blood-tie, I and my Kurban Sahib. Yes, I was a trooper first—nay, I had
risen to a Lance-Duffadar, I remember—and my father gave me a dun
stallion of his own breeding on that day; and _he_ was a little baba,
sitting upon a wall by the parade-ground with his ayah—all in white,
Sahib—laughing at the end of our drill. And his father and mine talked
together, and mine beckoned to me, and I dismounted, and the baba put
his hand into mine—eighteen—twenty-five—twenty-seven years gone
now—Kurban Sahib—my Kurban Sahib! Oh, we were great friends after that!
He cut his teeth on my sword-hilt, as the saying is. He called me Big
Umr Singh—Buwwa Umwa Singh, for he could not speak plain. He stood only
this high, Sahib, from the bottom of this truck, but he knew all our
troopers by name—every one…. And he went to England, and he became a
young man, and back he came, lilting a little in his walk, and cracking
his finger-joints—back to his own regiment and to me. He had not
forgotten either our speech or our customs. He was a Sikh at heart,
Sahib. He was rich, open-handed, just, a friend of poor troopers,
keen-eyed, jestful, and careless. _I_ could tell tales about him in his
first years. There was very little he hid from _me_. I was his Umr
Singh, and when we were alone he called me Father, and I called him
Son. Yes, that was how we spoke. We spoke freely together on
everything—about war, and women, and money, and advancement, and such
all.

We spoke about this war, too, long before it came. There were many
box-wallas, pedlars, with Pathans a few, in this country, notably at
the city of Yunasbagh (Johannesburg), and they sent news in every week
how the Sahibs lay without weapons under the heel of the Boer-log; and
how big guns were hauled up and down the streets to keep Sahibs in
order; and how a Sahib called Eger Sahib (Edgar?) was killed for a jest
by the Boer-log. The Sahib knows how we of Hind hear all that passes
over the earth? There was not a gun cocked in Yunasbagh that the echo
did not come into Hind in a month. The Sahibs are very clever, but they
forget their own cleverness has created the _dak_ (the post), and that
for an anna or two all things become known. We of Hind listened and
heard and wondered; and when it was a sure thing, as reported by the
pedlars and the vegetable-sellers, that the Sahibs of Yunasbagh lay in
bondage to the Boer-log, certain among us asked questions and waited
for signs. Others of us mistook the meaning of those signs. _Wherefore,
Sahib, came the long war in the Tirah_! This Kurban Sahib knew, and we
talked together. He said, “There is no haste. Presently we shall fight,
and we shall fight for all Hind in that country round Yunasbagh. Here
he spoke truth. Does the Sahib not agree? Quite so. It is for Hind that
the Sahibs are fighting this war. Ye cannot in one place rule and in
another bear service. Either ye must everywhere rule or everywhere
obey. God does not make the nations ringstraked. True—true—true!”

So did matters ripen—a step at a time. It was nothing to me, except I
think—and the Sahib sees this, too?—that it is foolish to make an army
and break their hearts in idleness. Why have they not sent for men of
the Tochi—the men of the Tirah—the men of Buner? Folly, a thousand
times. _We_ could have done it all so gently—so gently.

Then, upon a day, Kurban Sahib sent for me and said, “Ho, Dada, I am
sick, and the doctor gives me a certificate for many months.” And he
winked, and I said, “I will get leave and nurse thee, Child. Shall I
bring my uniform?” He said, “Yes, and a sword for a sick man to lean
on. We go to Bombay, and thence by sea to the country of the Hubshis”
(niggers). Mark his cleverness! He was first of all our men among the
native regiments to get leave for sickness and to come here. Now they
will not let our officers go away, sick or well, except they sign a
bond not to take part in this war-game upon the road. But _he_ was
clever. There was no whisper of war when he took his sick-leave. I came
also? Assuredly. I went to my Colonel, and sitting in the chair (I am—I
was—of that rank for which a chair is placed when we speak with the
Colonel) I said, “My child goes sick. Give me leave, for I am old and
sick also.”

And the Colonel, making the word double between English and our tongue,
said, “Yes, thou art truly _Sikh_”; and he called me an old
devil—jestingly, as one soldier may jest with another; and he said my
Kurban Sahib was a liar as to his health (that was true, too), and at
long last he stood up and shook my hand, and bade me go and bring my
Sahib safe again. My Sahib back again—aie me!

So I went to Bombay with Kurban Sahib, but there, at sight of the Black
Water, Wajib Ali, his bearer checked, and said that his mother was
dead. Then I said to Kurban Sahib, “What is one Mussulman pig more or
less? Give me the keys of the trunks, and I will lay out the white
shirts for dinner.” Then I beat Wajib Ali at the back of Watson’s
Hotel, and that night I prepared Kurban Sahib’s razors. I say, Sahib,
that I, a Sikh of the Khalsa, an unshorn man, prepared the razors. But
I did not put on my uniform while I did it. On the other hand, Kurban
Sahib took for me, upon the steamer, a room in all respects like to his
own, and would have given me a servant. We spoke of many things on the
way to this country; and Kurban Sahib told me what he perceived would
be the conduct of the war. He said, “They have taken men afoot to fight
men ahorse, and they will foolishly show mercy to these Boer-log
because it is believed that they are white.” He said, “There is but one
fault in this war, and that is that the Government have not employed
_us_, but have made it altogether a Sahibs’ war. Very many men will
thus be killed, and no vengeance will be taken.” True talk—true talk!
It fell as Kurban Sahib foretold.

And we came to this country, even to Cape Town over yonder, and Kurban
Sahib said, “Bear the baggage to the big dak-bungalow, and I will look
for employment fit for a sick man.” I put on the uniform of my rank and
went to the big dak-bungalow, called Maun Nihâl Seyn,[1] and I caused
the heavy baggage to be bestowed in that dark lower place—is it known
to the Sahib?—which was already full of the swords and baggage of
officers. It is fuller now—dead men’s kit all! I was careful to secure
a receipt for all three pieces. I have it in my belt. They must go back
to the Punjab.

 [1] Mount Nelson?


Anon came Kurban Sahib, lilting a little in his step, which sign I
knew, and he said, “We are born in a fortunate hour. We go to
Eshtellenbosch to oversee the despatch of horses.” Remember, Kurban
Sahib was squadron-leader of the Gurgaon Rissala, and _I_ was Umr
Singh. So I said, speaking as we do—we did—when none was near, “Thou
art a groom and I am a grass-cutter, but is this any promotion, Child?”
At this he laughed, saying, “It is the way to better things. Have
patience, Father.” (Aye, he called me father when none were by.) “This
war ends not to-morrow nor the next day. I have seen the new Sahibs,”
he said, “and they are fathers of owls—all—all—all!”

So we went to Eshtellenbosch, where the horses are; Kurban Sahib doing
the service of servants in that business. And the whole business was
managed without forethought by new Sahibs from God knows where, who had
never seen a tent pitched or a peg driven. They were full of zeal, but
empty of all knowledge. Then came, little by little from Hind, those
Pathans—they are just like those vultures up there, Sahib—they always
follow slaughter. And there came to Eshtellenbosch some Sikhs—Muzbees,
though—and some Madras monkey-men. They came with horses. Puttiala sent
horses. Jhind and Nabha sent horses. All the nations of the Khalsa sent
horses.

All the ends of the earth sent horses. God knows what the army did with
them, unless they ate them raw. They used horses as a courtesan uses
oil: with both hands. These needed many men. Kurban Sahib appointed me
to the command (what a command for me!) of certain woolly
ones—_Hubshis_—whose touch and shadow are pollution. They were enormous
eaters; sleeping on their bellies; laughing without cause; wholly like
animals. Some were called Fingoes, and some, I think, Red Kaffirs, but
they were all Kaffirs—filth unspeakable. I taught them to water and
feed, and sweep and rub down. Yes, I oversaw the work of sweepers—a
_jemadar_ of _mehtars_ (headman of a refuse-gang) was I, and Kurban
Sahib little better, for five months. Evil months! The war went as
Kurban Sahib had said. Our new men were slain and no vengeance was
taken. It was a war of fools armed with the weapons of magicians. Guns
that slew at half a day’s march, and men who, being new, walked blind
into high grass and were driven off like cattle by the Boer-log! As to
the city of Eshtellenbosch, I am not a Sahib—only a Sikh. I would have
quartered one troop only of the Gurgaon Rissala in that city—one little
troop—and I would have schooled that city till its men learned to kiss
the shadow of a Government horse upon the ground. There are many
_mullahs_ (priests) in Eshtellenbosch. They preached the Jehad against
us. This is true—all the camp knew it. And most of the houses were
thatched! A war of fools indeed!

At the end of five months my Kurban Sahib, who had grown lean, said,
“The reward has come. We go up towards the front with horses to-morrow,
and, once away, I shall be too sick to return. Make ready the baggage.”
Thus we got away, with some Kaffirs in charge of new horses for a
certain new regiment that had come in a ship. The second day by
_terain_, when we were watering at a desolate place without any sort of
a bazaar to it, slipped out from the horse-boxes one Sikander Khan,
that had been a _jemadar_ of _saises_ (head-groom) at Eshtellenbosch,
and was by service a trooper in a Border regiment. Kurban Sahib gave
him big abuse for his desertion; but the Pathan put up his hands as
excusing himself, and Kurban Sahib relented and added him to our
service. So there were three of us—Kurban Sahib, I, and Sikander
Khan—Sahib, Sikh, and _Sag_ (dog). But the man said truly, “We be far
from our homes and both servants of the Raj. Make truce till we see the
Indus again.” I have eaten from the same dish as Sikander Khan—beef,
too, for aught I know! He said, on the night he stole some swine’s
flesh in a tin from a mess-tent, that in his Book, the Koran, it is
written that whoso engages in a holy war is freed from ceremonial
obligations. Wah! He had no more religion than the sword-point picks up
of sugar and water at baptism. He stole himself a horse at a place
where there lay a new and very raw regiment. I also procured myself a
grey gelding there. They let their horses stray too much, those new
regiments.

Some shameless regiments would indeed have made away with _our_ horses
on the road! They exhibited indents and requisitions for horses, and
once or twice would have uncoupled the trucks; but Kurban Sahib was
wise, and I am not altogether a fool. There is not much honesty at the
front. Notably, there was one congregation of hard-bitten
horse-thieves; tall, light Sahibs, who spoke through their noses for
the most part, and upon all occasions they said, “Oah Hell!” which, in
our tongue, signifies _Jehannum ko jao_. They bore each man a vine-leaf
upon their uniforms, and they rode like Rajputs. Nay, they rode like
Sikhs. They rode like the Ustrelyahs! The Ustrelyahs, whom we met
later, also spoke through their noses not little, and they were tall,
dark men, with grey, clear eyes, heavily eyelashed like camel’s
eyes—very proper men—a new brand of Sahib to me. They said on all
occasions, “No fee-ah,” which in our tongue means _Durro mut_ (“Do not
be afraid”), so we called them the _Durro Muts_. Dark, tall men, most
excellent horsemen, hot and angry, waging war _as_ war, and drinking
tea as a sandhill drinks water. Thieves? A little, Sahib. Sikander Khan
swore to me; and he comes of a horse-stealing clan for ten generations;
he swore a Pathan was a babe beside a _Durro Mut_ in regard to
horse-lifting. The _Durro Muts_ cannot walk on their feet at all. They
are like hens on the high road. Therefore they must have horses. Very
proper men, with a just lust for the war. Aah—“No fee-ah,” say the
_Durro Muts_. _They_ saw the worth of Kurban Sahib. _They_ did not ask
him to sweep stables. They would by no means let him go. He did
substitute for one of their troop-leaders who had a fever, one long day
in a country full of little hills—like the mouth of the Khaibar; and
when they returned in the evening, the _Durro Muts_ said, “Wallah! This
is a man. Steal him!” So they stole my Kurban Sahib as they would have
stolen anything else that they needed, and they sent a sick officer
back to Eshtellenbosch in his place.

Thus Kurban Sahib came to his own again, and I was his bearer, and
Sikander Khan was his cook. The law was strict that this was a Sahibs’
war, but there was no order that a bearer and a cook should not ride
with their Sahib—and we had naught to wear but our uniforms. We rode up
and down this accursed country, where there is no bazaar, no pulse, no
flour, no oil, no spice, no red pepper, no firewood; nothing but raw
corn and a little cattle. There were no great battles as I saw it, but
a plenty of gun-firing. When we were many, the Boer-log came out with
coffee to greet us, and to show us _purwanas_ (permits) from foolish
English Generals who had gone that way before, certifying they were
peaceful and well-disposed. When we were few, they hid behind stones
and shot us. Now the order was that they were Sahibs, and this was a
Sahibs’ war. Good! But, as I understand it, when a Sahib goes to war,
he puts on the cloth of war, and only those who wear that cloth may
take part in the war. Good! That also I understand. But these people
were as they were in Burma, or as the Afridis are. They shot at their
pleasure, and when pressed hid the gun and exhibited _purwanas_, or lay
in a house and said they were farmers. Even such farmers as cut up the
Madras troops at Hlinedatalone in Burma! Even such farmers as slew
Cavagnari Sahib and the Guides at Kabul! We schooled _those_ men, to be
sure—fifteen, aye, twenty of a morning pushed off the verandah in front
of the Bala Hissar. I looked that the Jung-i-lat Sahib (the
Commander-in-Chief) would have remembered the old days; but—no. All the
people shot at us everywhere, and he issued proclamations saying that
he did not fight the people, but a certain army, which army, in truth,
was all the Boer-log, who, between them, did not wear enough of uniform
to make a loincloth. A fool’s war from first to last; for it is
manifest that he who fights should be hung if he fights with a gun in
one hand and a _purwana_ in the other, as did all these people. Yet we,
when they had had their bellyful for the time, received them with
honour, and gave them permits, and refreshed them and fed their wives
and their babes, and severely punished our soldiers who took their
fowls. So the work was to be done not once with a few dead, but thrice
and four times over. I talked much with Kurban Sahib on this, and he
said, “It is a Sahibs’ war. That is the order;” and one night, when
Sikander Khan would have lain out beyond the pickets with his knife and
shown them how it is worked on the Border, he hit Sikander Khan between
the eyes and came near to breaking in his head. Then Sikander Khan, a
bandage over his eyes, so that he looked like a sick camel, talked to
him half one march, and he was more bewildered than I, and vowed he
would return to Eshtellenbosch. But privately to me Kurban Sahib said
we should have loosed the Sikhs and the Gurkhas on these people till
they came in with their foreheads in the dust. For the war was not of
that sort which they comprehended.

They shot us? Assuredly they shot us from houses adorned with a white
flag; but when they came to know our custom, their widows sent word by
Kaffir runners, and presently there was not quite so much firing. _No
fee-ah_! All the Boer-log with whom we dealt had _purwanas_ signed by
mad Generals attesting that they were well-disposed to the State.

They had also rifles not a few, and cartridges, which they hid in the
roof. The women wept very greatly when we burned such houses, but they
did not approach too near after the flames had taken good hold of the
thatch, for fear of the bursting cartridges. The women of the Boer-log
are very clever. They are more clever than the men. The Boer-log are
clever? Never, never, no! It is the Sahibs who are fools. For their own
honour’s sake the Sahibs must say that the Boer-log are clever; but it
is the Sahibs’ wonderful folly that has made the Boer-log. The Sahibs
should have sent _us_ into the game.

But the _Durro Muts_ did well. They dealt faithfully with all that
country thereabouts—not in any way as we of Hind should have dealt, but
they were not altogether fools. One night when we lay on the top of a
ridge in the cold, I saw far away a light in a house that appeared for
the sixth part of an hour and was obscured. Anon it appeared again
thrice for the twelfth part of an hour. I showed this to Kurban Sahib,
for it was a house that had been spared—the people having many permits
and swearing fidelity at our stirrup-leathers. I said to Kurban Sahib,
“Send half a troop, Child, and finish that house. They signal to their
brethren.” And he laughed where he lay and said, “If I listened to my
bearer Umr Singh, there would not be left ten houses in all this land.”
I said, “What need to leave one? This is as it was in Burma. They are
farmers to-day and fighters to-morrow. Let us deal justly with them.”
He laughed and curled himself up in his blanket, and I watched the far
light in the house till day. I have been on the border in eight wars,
not counting Burma. The first Afghan War; the second Afghan War; two
Mahsud Waziri wars (that is four); two Black Mountain wars, if I
remember right; the Malakand and Tirah. I do not count Burma, or some
small things. _I_ know when house signals to house!

I pushed Sikandar Khan with my foot, and he saw it too. He said, “One
of the Boer-log who brought pumpkins for the mess, which I fried last
night, lives in yonder house.” I said, “How dost thou know?” He said,
“Because he rode out of the camp another way, but I marked how his
horse fought with him at the turn of the road; and before the light
fell I stole out of the camp for evening prayer with Kurban Sahib’s
glasses, and from a little hill I saw the pied horse of that
pumpkin-seller hurrying to that house.” I said naught, but took Kurban
Sahib’s glasses from his greasy hands and cleaned them with a silk
handkerchief and returned them to their case. Sikander Khan told me
that he had been the first man in the Zenab valley to use
glasses—whereby he finished two blood-feuds cleanly in the course of
three months’ leave. But he was otherwise a liar.

That day Kurban Sahib, with some ten troopers, was sent on to spy the
land for our camp. The _Durro Muts_ moved slowly at that time. They
were weighted with grain and forage and carts, and they greatly wished
to leave these all in some town and go on light to other business which
pressed. So Kurban Sahib sought a short cut for them, a little off the
line of march. We were twelve miles before the main body, and we came
to a house under a high bushed hill, with a nullah, which they call a
donga, behind it, and an old sangar of piled stones, which they call a
kraal, before it. Two thorn bushes grew on either side of the door,
like babul bushes, covered with a golden coloured bloom, and the roof
was all of thatch. Before the house was a valley of stones that rose to
another bush-covered hill. There was an old man in the verandah—an old
man with a white beard and a wart upon the left side of his neck; and a
fat woman with the eyes of a swine and the jowl of a swine; and a tall
young man deprived of understanding. His head was hairless, no larger
than an orange, and the pits of his nostrils were eaten away by a
disease. He laughed and slavered and he sported sportively before
Kurban Sahib. The man brought coffee and the woman showed us _purwanas_
from three General Sahibs, certifying that they were people of peace
and goodwill. Here are the _purwanas_, Sahib. Does the Sahib know the
Generals who signed them?

They swore the land was empty of Boer-log. They held up their hands and
swore it. That was about the time of the evening meal. I stood near the
verandah with Sikander Khan, who was nosing like a jackal on a lost
scent. At last he took my arm and said, “See yonder! There is the sun
on the window of the house that signalled last night. This house can
see that house from here,” and he looked at the hill behind him all
hairy with bushes, and sucked in his breath. Then the idiot with the
shrivelled head danced by me and threw back that head, and regarded the
roof and laughed like a hyena, and the fat woman talked loudly, as it
were, to cover some noise. After this passed I to the back of the house
on pretence to get water for tea, and I saw fresh fresh horse-dung on
the ground, and that the ground was cut with the new marks of hoofs;
and there had dropped in the dirt one cartridge. Then Kurban Sahib
called to me in our tongue, saying, “Is this a good place to make tea?”
and I replied, knowing what he meant, “There are over many cooks in the
cook-house. Mount and go, Child.” Then I returned, and he said, smiling
to the woman, “Prepare food, and when we have loosened our girths we
will come in and eat;” but to his men he said in a whisper, “Ride
away!” No. He did not cover the old man or the fat woman with his
rifle. That was not his custom. Some fool of the _Durro Muts_, being
hungry, raised his voice to dispute the order to flee, and before we
were in our saddles many shots came from the roof—from rifles thrust
through the thatch. Upon this we rode across the valley of stones, and
men fired at us from the nullah behind the house, and from the hill
behind the nullah, as well as from the roof of the house—so many shots
that it sounded like a drumming in the hills. Then Sikandar Khan,
riding low, said, “This play is not for us alone, but for the rest of
the _Durro Muts_,” and I said, “Be quiet. Keep place!” for his place
was behind me, and I rode behind Kurban Sahib. But these new bullets
will pass through five men a-row! We were not hit—not one of us—and we
reached the hill of rocks and scattered among the stones, and Kurban
Sahib turned in his saddle and said, “Look at the old man!” He stood in
the verandah firing swiftly with a gun, the woman beside him and the
idiot also—both with guns. Kurban Sahib laughed, and I caught him by
the wrist, but—his fate was written at that hour. The bullet passed
under my arm-pit and struck him in the liver, and I pulled him backward
between two great rocks atilt—Kurban Sahib, my Kurban Sahib! From the
nullah behind the house and from the hills came our Boer-log in number
more than a hundred, and Sikandar Khan said, “_Now_ we see the meaning
of last night’s signal. Give me the rifle.” He took Kurban Sahib’s
rifle—in this war of fools only the doctors carry swords—and lay
belly-flat to the work, but Kurban Sahib turned where he lay and said,
“Be still. It is a Sahibs’ war,” and Kurban Sahib put up his hand—thus;
and then his eyes rolled on me, and I gave him water that he might pass
the more quickly. And at the drinking his Spirit received permission….

Thus went our fight, Sahib. We _Durro Muts_ were on a ridge working
from the north to the south, where lay our main body, and the Boer-log
lay in a valley working from east to west. There were more than a
hundred, and our men were ten, but they held the Boer-log in the valley
while they swiftly passed along the ridge to the south. I saw three
Boers drop in the open. Then they all hid again and fired heavily at
the rocks that hid our men; but our men were clever and did not show,
but moved away and away, always south; and the noise of the battle
withdrew itself southward, where we could hear the sound of big guns.
So it fell stark dark, and Sikandar Khan found a deep old jackal’s
earth amid rocks, into which we slid the body of Kurban Sahib upright.
Sikandar Khan took his glasses, and I took his handkerchief and some
letters and a certain thing which I knew hung round his neck, and
Sikandar Khan is witness that I wrapped them all in the handkerchief.
Then we took an oath together, and lay still and mourned for Kurban
Sahib. Sikandar Khan wept till daybreak—even he, a Pathan, a
Mohammedan! All that night we heard firing to the southward, and when
the dawn broke the valley was full of Boer-log in carts and on horses.
They gathered by the house, as we could see through Kurban Sahib’s
glasses, and the old man, who, I take it, was a priest, blessed them,
and preached the holy war, waving his arm; and the fat woman brought
coffee; and the idiot capered among them and kissed their horses.
Presently they went away in haste; they went over the hills and were
not; and a black slave came out and washed the door-sills with bright
water. Sikandar Khan saw through the glasses that the stain was blood,
and he laughed, saying, “Wounded men lie there. We shall yet get
vengeance.”

About noon we saw a thin, high smoke to the southward, such a smoke as
a burning house will make in sunshine, and Sikandar Khan, who knows how
to take a bearing across a hill, said, “At last we have burned the
house of the pumpkin-seller whence they signalled.” And I said: “What
need now that they have slain my child? Let me mourn.” It was a high
smoke, and the old man, as I saw, came out into the verandah to behold
it, and shook his clenched hands at it. So we lay till the twilight,
foodless and without water, for we had vowed a vow neither to eat nor
to drink till we had accomplished the matter. I had a little opium
left, of which I gave Sikandar Khan the half, because he loved Kurban
Sahib. When it was full dark we sharpened our sabres upon a certain
softish rock which, mixed with water, sharpens steel well, and we took
off our boots and we went down to the house and looked through the
windows very softly. The old man sat reading in a book, and the woman
sat by the hearth; and the idiot lay on the floor with his head against
her knee, and he counted his fingers and laughed, and she laughed
again. So I knew they were mother and son, and I laughed, too, for I
had suspected this when I claimed her life and her body from Sikandar
Khan, in our discussion of the spoil. Then we entered with bare
swords…. Indeed, these Boer-log do not understand the steel, for the
old man ran towards a rifle in the corner; but Sikandar Khan prevented
him with a blow of the flat across the hands, and he sat down and held
up his hands, and I put my fingers on my lips to signify they should be
silent. But the woman cried, and one stirred in an inner room, and a
door opened, and a man, bound about the head with rags, stood stupidly
fumbling with a gun. His whole head fell inside the door, and none
followed him. It was a very pretty stroke—for a Pathan. They then were
silent, staring at the head upon the floor, and I said to Sikandar
Khan, “Fetch ropes! Not even for Kurban Sahib’s sake will I defile my
sword.” So he went to seek and returned with three long leather ones,
and said, “Four wounded lie within, and doubtless each has a permit
from a General,” and he stretched the ropes and laughed. Then I bound
the old man’s hands behind his back, and unwillingly—for he laughed in
my face, and would have fingered my beard—the idiot’s. At this the
woman with the swine’s eyes and the jowl of a swine ran forward, and
Sikandar Khan said, “Shall I strike or bind? She was thy property on
the division.” And I said, “Refrain! I have made a chain to hold her.
Open the door.” I pushed out the two across the verandah into the
darker shade of the thorn-trees, and she followed upon her knees and
lay along the ground, and pawed at my boots and howled. Then Sikandar
Khan bore out the lamp, saying that he was a butler and would light the
table, and I looked for a branch that would bear fruit. But the woman
hindered me not a little with her screechings and plungings, and spoke
fast in her tongue, and I replied in my tongue, “I am childless
to-night because of thy perfidy, and _my_ child was praised among men
and loved among women. He would have begotten men—not animals. Thou
hast more years to live than I, but my grief is the greater.”

I stooped to make sure the noose upon the idiot’s neck, and flung the
end over the branch, and Sikandar Khan held up the lamp that she might
well see. Then appeared suddenly, a little beyond the light of the
lamp, the spirit of Kurban Sahib. One hand he held to his side, even
where the bullet had struck him, and the other he put forward thus, and
said, “No. It is a Sahibs’ war.” And I said, “Wait a while, Child, and
thou shalt sleep.” But he came nearer, riding, as it were, upon my
eyes, and said, “No. It is a Sahibs’ war.” And Sikandar Khan said, “Is
it too heavy?” and set down the lamp and came to me; and as he turned
to tally on the rope, the spirit of Kurban Sahib stood up within arm’s
reach of us, and his face was very angry, and a third time he said,
“No. It is a Sahibs’ war.” And a little wind blew out the lamp, and I
heard Sikandar Khan’s teeth chatter in his head.

So we stayed side by side, the ropes in our hand, a very long while,
for we could not shape any words. Then I heard Sikandar Khan open his
water-bottle and drink; and when his mouth was slaked he passed to me
and said, “We are absolved from our vow.” So I drank, and together we
waited for the dawn in that place where we stood—the ropes in our hand.
A little after third cockcrow we heard the feet of horses and gun
wheels very far off, and so soon as the light came a shell burst on the
threshold of the house, and the roof of the verandah that was thatched
fell in and blazed before the windows. And I said, “What of the wounded
Boer-log within?” And Sikandar Khan said, “We have heard the order. It
is a Sahibs’ war. Stand still.” Then came a second shell—good line, but
short—and scattered dust upon us where we stood; and then came ten of
the little quick shells from the gun that speaks like a stammerer—yes,
pompom the Sahibs call it—and the face of the house folded down like
the nose and the chin of an old man mumbling, and the forefront of the
house lay down. Then Sikandar Khan said, “If it be the fate of the
wounded to die in the fire, _I_ shall not prevent it.” And he passed to
the back of the house and presently came back, and four wounded
Boer-log came after him, of whom two could not walk upright. And I
said, “What hast thou done?” And he said, “I have neither spoken to
them nor laid hand on them. They follow in hope of mercy.” And I said,
“It is a Sahibs’ war. Let them wait the Sahibs’ mercy.” So they lay
still, the four men and the idiot, and the fat woman under the
thorn-tree, and the house burned furiously. Then began the known sound
of cartouches in the roof—one or two at first; then a trill, and last
of all one loud noise and the thatch blew here and there, and the
captives would have crawled aside on account of the heat that was
withering the thorn-trees, and on account of wood and bricks flying at
random. But I said, “Abide! Abide! Ye be Sahibs, and this is a Sahibs’
war, O Sahibs. There is no order that ye should depart from this war.”
They did not understand my words. Yet they abode and they lived.

Presently rode down five troopers of Kurban Sahib’s command, and one I
knew spoke my tongue, having sailed to Calcutta often with horses. So I
told him all my tale, using bazaar-talk, such as his kidney of Sahib
would understand; and at the end I said, “An order has reached us here
from the dead that this is a Sahibs’ war. I take the soul of my Kurban
Sahib to witness that I give over to the justice of the Sahibs these
Sahibs who have made me childless.” Then I gave him the ropes and fell
down senseless, my heart being very full, but my belly was empty,
except for the little opium.

They put me into a cart with one of their wounded, and after a while I
understood that they had fought against the Boer-log for two days and
two nights. It was all one big trap, Sahib, of which we, with Kurban
Sahib, saw no more than the outer edge. They were very angry, the
_Durro Muts_—very angry indeed. I have never seen Sahibs so angry. They
buried my Kurban Sahib with the rites of his faith upon the top of the
ridge overlooking the house, and I said the proper prayers of the
faith, and Sikandar Khan prayed in his fashion and stole five
signalling-candles, which have each three wicks, and lighted the grave
as if it had been the grave of a saint on a Friday. He wept very
bitterly all that night, and I wept with him, and he took hold of my
feet and besought me to give him a remembrance from Kurban Sahib. So I
divided equally with him one of Kurban Sahib’s handkerchiefs—not the
silk ones, for those were given him by a certain woman; and I also gave
him a button from a coat, and a little steel ring of no value that
Kurban Sahib used for his keys, and he kissed them and put them into
his bosom. The rest I have here in that little bundle, and I must get
the baggage from the hotel in Cape Town—some four shirts we sent to be
washed, for which we could not wait when we went up-country—and I must
give them all to my Colonel-Sahib at Sialkote in the Punjab. For my
child is dead—my baba is dead!… I would have come away before; there
was no need to stay, the child being dead; but we were far from the
rail, and the _Durro Muts_ were as brothers to me, and I had come to
look upon Sikandar Khan as in some sort a friend, and he got me a horse
and I rode up and down with them; but the life had departed. God knows
what they called me—orderly, _chaprassi_ (messenger), cook, sweeper, I
did not know nor care. But once I had pleasure. We came back in a month
after wide circles to that very valley. I knew it every stone, and I
went up to the grave, and a clever Sahib of the _Durro Muts_ (we left a
troop there for a week to school those people with _purwanas_) had cut
an inscription upon a great rock; and they interpreted it to me, and it
was a jest such as Kurban Sahib himself would have loved. Oh! I have
the inscription well copied here. Read it aloud, Sahib, and I will
explain the jests. There are two very good ones. Begin, Sahib:—

In Memory of
WALTER DECIES CORBYN
Late Captain 141st Punjab Cavalry


The Gurgaon Rissala, that is. Go on, Sahib.

Treacherously shot near this place by
The connivance of the late
HENDRIK DIRK UYS
A Minister of God
Who thrice took the oath of neutrality
And Piet his son,
This little work


Aha! This is the first jest. The Sahib should see this little work!

Was accomplished in partial
And inadequate recognition of their loss
By some men who loved him


_Si monumentum requiris circumspice_


That is the second jest. It signifies that those who would desire to
behold a proper memorial to Kurban Sahib must look out at the house.
And, Sahib, the house is not there, nor the well, nor the big tank
which they call dams, nor the little fruit-trees, nor the cattle. There
is nothing at all, Sahib, except the two trees withered by the fire.
The rest is like the desert here—or my hand—or my heart. Empty,
Sahib—all empty!




“THEIR LAWFUL OCCASIONS”




THE WET LITANY


When the water’s countenance
Blurrs ’twixt glance and second glance;
When the tattered smokes forerun
Ashen ’neath a silvered sun;
When the curtain of the haze
Shuts upon our helpless ways—
     Hear the Channel Fleet at sea;
     _Libera nos domine_!

When the engines’ bated pulse
Scarcely thrills the nosing hulls;
When the wash along the side
Sounds, a sudden, magnified
When the intolerable blast
Marks each blindfold minute passed.

When the fog-buoy’s squattering flight
Guides us through the haggard night;
When the warning bugle blows;
When the lettered doorways close;
When our brittle townships press,
Impotent, on emptiness.

When the unseen leadsmen lean
Questioning a deep unseen;
When their lessened count they tell
To a bridge invisible;
When the hid and perilous
Cliffs return our cry to us.

When the treble thickness spread
Swallows up our next-ahead;
When her siren’s frightened whine
Shows her sheering out of line;
When, her passage undiscerned,
We must turn where she has turned—
     Hear the Channel Fleet at sea;
     _Libera nos Domine_!




“THEIR LAWFUL OCCASIONS”


“… And a security for such as pass on the seas upon   their lawful
occasions.”—_Navy Prayer_.

PART I

Disregarding the inventions of the Marine Captain, whose other name is
Gubbins, let a plain statement suffice.

H.M.S. _Caryatid_ went to Portland to join Blue Fleet for manœuvres. I
travelled overland from London by way of Portsmouth, where I fell among
friends. When I reached Portland, H.M.S. _Caryatid_, whose guest I was
to have been, had, with Blue Fleet, already sailed for some secret
rendezvous off the west coast of Ireland, and Portland breakwater was
filled with Red Fleet, my official enemies and joyous acquaintances,
who received me with unstinted hospitality. For example,
Lieutenant-Commander A. L. Hignett, in charge of three destroyers,
_Wraith, Stiletto_, and _Kobbold_, due to depart at 6 P.M. that
evening, offered me a berth on his thirty-knot flagship, but I
preferred my comforts, and so accepted sleeping-room in H.M.S.
_Pedantic_ (15,000 tons), leader of the second line. After dining
aboard her I took boat to Weymouth to get my kit aboard, as the
battleships would go to war at midnight. In transferring my allegiance
from Blue to Red Fleet, whatever the Marine Captain may say, I did no
wrong. I truly intended to return to the _Pedantic_ and help to fight
Blue Fleet. All I needed was a new toothbrush, which I bought from a
chemist in a side street at 9:15 P.M. As I turned to go, one entered
seeking alleviation of a gum-boil. He was dressed in a checked ulster,
a black silk hat three sizes too small, cord-breeches, boots, and pure
brass spurs. These he managed painfully, stepping like a prisoner fresh
from leg-irons. As he adjusted the pepper-plaster to the gum the light
fell on his face, and I recognised Mr. Emanuel Pyecroft, late
second-class petty officer of H.M.S. _Archimandrite_, an unforgettable
man, met a year before under Tom Wessel’s roof in Plymouth. It occurred
to me that when a petty officer takes to spurs he may conceivably
meditate desertion. For that reason I, though a taxpayer, made no sign.
Indeed, it was Mr. Pyecroft, following me out of the shop, who said
hollowly: “What might you be doing here?”

“I’m going on manœuvres in the _Pedantic_,” I replied.

“Ho!” said Mr. Pyecroft. “An’ what manner o’ manœuvres d’you expect to
see in a blighted cathedral like the _Pedantic_? _I_ know ’er. I knew
her in Malta, when the _Vulcan_ was her permanent tender. Manoeuvres!
You won’t see more than ‘Man an’ arm watertight doors!’ in your little
woollen undervest.”

“I’m sorry for that.”

“Why?” He lurched heavily as his spurs caught and twanged like
tuning-forks. “War’s declared at midnight. _Pedantics_ be sugared! Buy
an ’am an’ see life!”

For the moment I fancied Mr. Pyecroft, a fugitive from justice,
purposed that we two should embrace a Robin Hood career in the uplands
of Dorset. The spurs troubled me, and I made bold to say as much.
“Them!” he said, coming to an intricate halt. “They’re part of the
_prima facie_ evidence. But as for me—let me carry your bag—I’m second
in command, leadin’-hand, cook, steward, an’ lavatory man, with a few
incidentals for sixpence a day extra, on No. 267 torpedo-boat.”

“They wear spurs there?”

“Well,” said Mr. Peycroft, “seein’ that Two Six Seven belongs to Blue
Fleet, which left the day before yesterday, disguises are imperative.
It transpired thus. The Right Honourable Lord Gawd Almighty Admiral
Master Frankie Frobisher, K.C.B., commandin’ Blue Fleet, can’t be
bothered with one tin-torpedo-boat more or less; and what with lyin’ in
the Reserve four years, an’ what with the new kind o’ tiffy which
cleans dynamos with brick-dust and oil (Blast these spurs! They won’t
render!), Two Six Seven’s steam-gadgets was paralytic. Our Mr. Moorshed
done his painstakin’ best—it’s his first command of a war-canoe, matoor
age nineteen (down that alleyway, please!) but be that as it may, His
Holiness Frankie is aware of us crabbin’ ourselves round the breakwater
at five knots, an’ steerin’ _pari passu_, as the French say. (Up this
alley-way, please!) If he’d given Mr. Hinchcliffe, our chief engineer,
a little time, it would never have transpired, for what Hinch can’t
drive he can coax; but the new port bein’ a trifle cloudy, an’ ’is
joints tinglin’ after a post-captain dinner, Frankie come on the upper
bridge seekin’ for a sacrifice. We, offerin’ a broadside target, got
it. He told us what ’is grandmamma, ’oo was a lady an’ went to sea in
stick- and string-batteaus, had told him about steam. He throwed in his
own prayers for the ’ealth an’ safety of all steam-packets an’ their
officers. Then he give us several distinct orders. The first few—I kept
tally—was all about going to Hell; the next many was about not
evolutin’ in his company, when there; an’ the last all was simply
repeatin’ the motions in quick time. Knowin’ Frankie’s groovin’ to be
badly eroded by age and lack of attention, I didn’t much panic; but our
Mr. Moorshed, ’e took it a little to heart. Me an’ Mr. Hinchcliffe
consoled ’im as well as service conditions permits of, an’ we had a
_résumé_-supper at the back o’ the Camber—secluded _an’_ lugubrious!
Then one thing leadin’ up to another, an’ our orders, except about
anchorin’ where he’s booked for, leavin’ us a clear ’orizon, Number Two
Six Seven is now—mind the edge of the wharf—here!”

By mysterious doublings he had brought me out on to the edge of a
narrow strip of water crowded with coastwise shipping that runs far up
into Weymouth town. A large foreign timber-brig lay at my feet, and
under the round of her stern cowered, close to the wharf-edge, a
slate-coloured, unkempt, two-funnelled craft of a type—but I am no
expert—between the first-class torpedo-boat and the full-blooded
destroyer. From her archaic torpedo-tubes at the stern, and
quick-firers forward and amidship, she must have dated from the early
nineties. Hammerings and clinkings, with spurts of steam and fumes of
hot oil, arose from her inside, and a figure in a striped jersey
squatted on the engine-room gratings.

“She ain’t much of a war-canoe, but you’ll see more life in ’er than on
an whole squadron of bleedin’ _Pedantics.”_

“But she’s laid up here—and Blue Fleet have gone,” I protested.
“Precisely. Only, in his comprehensive orders Frankie didn’t put us out
of action. Thus we’re a non-neglectable fightin’ factor which you
mightn’t think from this elevation; _an’_ m’rover, Red Fleet don’t know
we’re ’ere. Most of us”—he glanced proudly at his boots—“didn’t run to
spurs, but we’re disguised pretty devious, as you might say. Morgan,
our signaliser, when last seen, was a Dawlish bathing-machine
proprietor. Hinchcliffe was naturally a German waiter, and me you
behold as a squire of low degree; while yonder Levantine dragoman on
the hatch is our Mr. Moorshed. He was the second cutter’s snotty—_my_
snotty—on the _Archimandrite_—two years—Cape Station. Likewise on the
West Coast, mangrove swampin’, an’ gettin’ the cutter stove in on small
an’ unlikely bars, an’ manufacturin’ lies to correspond. What I don’t
know about Mr. Moorshed is precisely the same gauge as what Mr.
Moorshed don’t know about me—half a millimetre, as you might say. He
comes into awful opulence of his own when ’e’s of age; an’ judgin’ from
what passed between us when Frankie cursed ’im, I don’t think ’e cares
whether he’s broke to-morrow or—the day after. Are you beginnin’ to
follow our tattics? They’ll be worth followin’. Or _are_ you goin’ back
to your nice little cabin on the _Pedantic_—which I lay they’ve just
dismounted the third engineer out of—to eat four fat meals per diem,
an’ smoke in the casement?”

The figure in the jersey lifted its head and mumbled.

“Yes, Sir,” was Mr. Pyecroft’s answer. “I ’ave ascertained that
_Stiletto, Wraith_, and _Kobbold_ left at 6 P.M. with the first
division o’ Red Fleet’s cruisers except _Devolotion_ and _Cryptic_,
which are delayed by engine-room defects.” Then to me: “Won’t you go
aboard? Mr. Moorshed ’ud like some one to talk to. You buy an ’am an’
see life.”

At this he vanished; and the Demon of Pure Irresponsibility bade me
lower myself from the edge of the wharf to the tea-tray plates of No.
267.

“What d’you want?” said the striped jersey.

“I want to join Blue Fleet if I can,” I replied. “I’ve been left behind
by—an accident.”

“Well?”

“Mr. Pyecroft told me to buy a ham and see life. About how big a ham do
you need?”

“I don’t want any ham, thank you. That’s the way up the wharf.
_Good_-night.”

“Good-night!” I retraced my steps, wandered in the dark till I found a
shop, and there purchased, of sardines, canned tongue, lobster, and
salmon, not less than half a hundredweight. A belated sausage-shop
supplied me with a partially cut ham of pantomime tonnage. These things
I, sweating, bore out to the edge of the wharf and set down in the
shadow of a crane. It was a clear, dark summer night, and from time to
time I laughed happily to myself. The adventure was preordained on the
face of it. Pyecroft alone, spurred or barefoot, would have drawn me
very far from the paths of circumspection. His advice to buy a ham and
see life clinched it. Presently Mr. Pyecroft—I heard spurs clink—passed
me. Then the jersey voice said: “What the mischief’s that?”

“’Asn’t the visitor come aboard, Sir? ’E told me he’d purposely
abandoned the _Pedantic_ for the pleasure of the trip with us. Told me
he was official correspondent for the _Times_; an’ I know he’s littery
by the way ’e tries to talk Navy-talk. Haven’t you seen ’im, Sir?”

Slowly and dispassionately the answer drawled long on the night; “Pye,
you are without exception the biggest liar in the Service!”

“Then what am I to do with the bag, Sir? It’s marked with his name.”
There was a pause till Mr. Moorshed said “Oh!” in a tone which the
listener might construe precisely as he pleased.

“_He_ was the maniac who wanted to buy a ham and see life—was he? If he
goes back to the _Pedantic_—”

“Pre-cisely, Sir. Gives us all away, Sir.”

“Then what possessed _you_ to give it away to him, you owl?”

“I’ve got his bag. If ’e gives anything away, he’ll have to go naked.”

At this point I thought it best to rattle my tins and step out of the
shadow of the crane.

“I’ve bought the ham,” I called sweetly. “Have you still any objection
to my seeing life, Mr. Moorshed?”

“All right, if you’re insured. Won’t you come down?”

I descended; Pyecroft, by a silent flank movement, possessing himself
of all the provisions, which he bore to some hole forward.

“Have you known Mr. Pyecroft long?” said my host.

“Met him once, a year ago, at Devonport. What do you think of him?”

“What do _you_ think of him?”

“I’ve left the _Pedantic_—her boat will be waiting for me at ten
o’clock, too—simply because I happened to meet him,” I replied.

“That’s all right. If you’ll come down below, we may get some grub.”

We descended a naked steel ladder to a steel-beamed tunnel, perhaps
twelve feet long by six high. Leather-topped lockers ran along either
side; a swinging table, with tray and lamp above, occupied the centre.
Other furniture there was none.

“You can’t shave here, of course. We don’t wash, and, as a rule, we eat
with our fingers when we’re at sea. D’you mind?”

Mr. Moorshed, black-haired, black-browed, sallow-complexioned, looked
me over from head to foot and grinned. He was not handsome in any way,
but his smile drew the heart. “You didn’t happen to hear what Frankie
told me from the flagship, did you? His last instructions, and I’ve
logged them here in shorthand, were”—he opened a neat
pocket-book—”_‘Get out of this and conduct your own damned manœuvres in
your own damned tinker fashion! You’re a disgrace to the Service, and
your boat’s offal.’”_

“Awful?” I said.

“No—offal—tripes—swipes—ullage.” Mr. Pyecroft entered, in the costume
of his calling, with the ham and an assortment of tin dishes, which he
dealt out like cards.

“I shall take these as my orders,” said Mr. Moorshed. “I’m chucking the
Service at the end of the year, so it doesn’t matter.”

We cut into the ham under the ill-trimmed lamp, washed it down with
whisky, and then smoked. From the foreside of the bulkhead came an
uninterrupted hammering and clinking, and now and then a hiss of steam.

“That’s Mr. Hinchcliffe,” said Pyecroft. “He’s what is called a
first-class engine-room artificer. If you hand ’im a drum of oil an’
leave ’im alone, he can coax a stolen bicycle to do typewritin’.”

Very leisurely, at the end of his first pipe, Mr. Moorshed drew out a
folded map, cut from a newspaper, of the area of manœuvres, with the
rules that regulate these wonderful things, below.

“Well, I suppose I know as much as an average stick-and-string
admiral,” he said, yawning. “Is our petticoat ready yet, Mr. Pyecroft?”

As a preparation for naval manœuvres these councils seemed inadequate.
I followed up the ladder into the gloom cast by the wharf edge and the
big lumber-ship’s side. As my eyes stretched to the darkness I saw that
No. 267 had miraculously sprouted an extra pair of funnels—soft, for
they gave as I touched them.

“More _prima facie_ evidence. You runs a rope fore an’ aft, an’ you
erects perpendick-u-arly two canvas tubes, which you distends with cane
hoops, thus ’avin’ as many funnels as a destroyer. At the word o’
command, up they go like a pair of concertinas, an’ consequently
collapses equally ’andy when requisite. Comin’ aft we shall doubtless
overtake the Dawlish bathin’-machine proprietor fittin’ on her bustle.”

Mr. Pyecroft whispered this in my ear as Moorshed moved toward a group
at the stern.

“None of us who ain’t built that way can be destroyers, but we can look
as near it as we can. Let me explain to you, Sir, that the stern of a
Thorneycroft boat, which we are _not_, comes out in a pretty bulge,
totally different from the Yarrow mark, which again we are not. But, on
the other ’and, _Dirk, Stiletto, Goblin, Ghoul, Djinn_, and
_A-frite_—Red Fleet dee-stroyers, with ’oom we hope to consort later on
terms o’ perfect equality—_are_ Thorneycrofts, an’ carry that Grecian
bend which we are now adjustin’ to our _arriere-pensée_—as the French
would put it—by means of painted canvas an’ iron rods bent as
requisite. Between you an’ me an’ Frankie, we are the _Gnome_, now in
the Fleet Reserve at Pompey—Portsmouth, I should say.”

“The first sea will carry it all away,” said Moorshed, leaning gloomily
outboard, “but it will do for the present.”

“We’ve a lot of _prima facie_ evidence about us,” Mr. Pyecroft went on.
“A first-class torpedo boat sits lower in the water than a destroyer.
Hence we artificially raise our sides with a black canvas wash-streak
to represent extra freeboard; _at_ the same time paddin’ out the cover
of the forward three-pounder like as if it was a twelve-pounder, an’
variously fakin’ up the bows of ’er. As you might say, we’ve took
thought an’ added a cubic to our stature. It’s our len’th that sugars
us. A ’undred an’ forty feet, which is our len’th into two ’undred and
ten, which is about the _Gnome’s,_ leaves seventy feet over, which we
haven’t got.”

“Is this all your own notion, Mr. Pyecroft?” I asked.

“In spots, you might say—yes; though we all contributed to make up
deficiencies. But Mr. Moorshed, not much carin’ for further Navy after
what Frankie said, certainly threw himself into the part with avidity.”

“What the dickens are we going to do?”

“Speaking as a seaman gunner, I should say we’d wait till the sights
came on, an’ then fire. Speakin’ as a torpedo-coxswain, L.T.O., T.I.,
M.D., etc., I presume we fall in—Number One in rear of the tube, etc.,
secure tube to ball or diaphragm, clear away securin’-bar, release
safety-pin from lockin-levers, an’ pray Heaven to look down on us. As
second in command o’ 267, I say wait an’ see!”

“What’s happened? We’re off,” I said. The timber ship had slid away
from us.

“We are. Stern first, an’ broadside on! If we don’t hit anything too
hard, we’ll do.”

“Come on the bridge,” said Mr. Moorshed. I saw no bridge, but fell over
some sort of conning-tower forward, near which was a wheel. For the
next few minutes I was more occupied with cursing my own folly than
with the science of navigation. Therefore I cannot say how we got out
of Weymouth Harbour, nor why it was necessary to turn sharp to the left
and wallow in what appeared to be surf.

“Excuse me,” said Mr. Pyecroft behind us, “_I_ don’t mind rammin’ a
bathin’-machine; but if only _one_ of them week-end Weymouth blighters
has thrown his empty baccy-tin into the sea here, we’ll rip our plates
open on it; 267 isn’t the _Archimandrite’s_ old cutter.”

“I am hugging the shore,” was the answer.

“There’s no actual ’arm in huggin’, but it can come expensive if
pursooed.”

“Right-O!” said Moorshed, putting down the wheel, and as we left those
scant waters I felt 267 move more freely.

A thin cough ran up the speaking-tube.

“Well, what is it, Mr. Hinchcliffe?” said Moorshed.

“I merely wished to report that she is still continuin’ to go, Sir.”

“Right-O! Can we whack her up to fifteen, d’you think?”

“I’ll try, Sir; but we’d prefer to have the engine-room hatch open—at
first, Sir.”

Whacked up then she was, and for half an hour was careered largely
through the night, turning at last with a suddenness that slung us
across the narrow deck.

“This,” said Mr. Pyecroft, who received me on his chest as a large rock
receives a shadow, “represents the _Gnome_ arrivin’ cautious from the
direction o’ Portsmouth, with Admiralty orders.”

He pointed through the darkness ahead, and after much staring my eyes
opened to a dozen destroyers, in two lines, some few hundred yards
away.

“Those are the Red Fleet destroyer flotilla, which is too frail to
panic about among the full-blooded cruisers inside Portland breakwater,
and several millimetres too excited over the approachin’ war to keep a
look-out inshore. Hence our tattics!”

We wailed through our siren—a long, malignant, hyena-like howl—and a
voice hailed us as we went astern tumultuously.

“The _Gnome_—Carteret-Jones—from Portsmouth, with
orders—mm—mm—_Stiletto_,” Moorshed answered through the megaphone in a
high, whining voice, rather like a chaplain’s.

“_Who_?” was the answer.

“Carter—et—Jones.”

“Oh, Lord!”

There was a pause; a voice cried to some friend, “It’s Podgie, adrift
on the high seas in charge of a whole dee-stroyer!”

Another voice echoed, “Podgie!” and from its note I gathered that Mr.
Carteret-Jones had a reputation, but not for independent command.

“Who’s your sub?” said the first speaker, a shadow on the bridge of the
_Dirk_.

“A gunner, at present, Sir. The _Stiletto_—broken down—turns over to
us.”

“When did the _Stiletto_ break down?”

“Off the Start, Sir; two hours after—after she left here this evening,
I believe. My orders are to report to you for the manœuvre
signal-codes, and join Commander Hignett’s flotilla, which is in
attendance on _Stiletto_.”

A smothered chuckle greeted this last. Moorshed’s voice was high and
uneasy. Said Pyecroft, with a sigh: “The amount o’ trouble me an’ my
bright spurs ’ad fishin’ out that information from torpedo coxswains
and similar blighters in pubs all this afternoon, you would never
believe.”

“But has the _Stiletto_ broken down?” I asked weakly.

“How else are we to get Red Fleet’s private signal-code? Any way, if
she ’asn’t now, she will before manœuvres are ended. It’s only
executin’ in anticipation.”

“Go astern and send your coxswain aboard for orders, Mr. Jones.” Water
carries sound well, but I do not know whether we were intended to hear
the next sentence: “They must have given him _one_ intelligent keeper.”

“That’s me,” said Mr. Pyecroft, as a black and coal-stained dinghy—I
did not foresee how well I should come to know her—was flung overside
by three men.

“Havin’ bought an ’am, we will now see life.” He stepped into the boat
and was away.

“I say, Podgie!”—the speaker was in the last of the line of destroyers,
as we thumped astern—“aren’t you lonely out there?”

“Oh, don’t rag me!” said Moorshed. “Do you suppose I’ll have to
manœuvre with your flo-tilla?”

“No, Podgie! I’m pretty sure our commander will see you sifting cinders
in Tophet before you come with our flo-tilla.”

“Thank you! She steers rather wild at high speeds.”

Two men laughed together.

“By the way, who is Mr. Carteret-Jones when he’s at home?” I whispered.

“I was with him in the _Britannia_. I didn’t like him much, but I’m
grateful to him now. I must tell him so some day.”

“They seemed to know him hereabouts.”

“He rammed the _Caryatid_ twice with her own steam-pinnace.”

Presently, moved by long strokes, Mr. Pyecroft returned, skimming
across the dark. The dinghy swung up behind him, even as his heel
spurned it.

“Commander Fasset’s compliments to Mr. L. Carteret-Jones, and the
sooner he digs out in pursuance of Admiralty orders as received at
Portsmouth, the better pleased Commander Fasset will be. But there’s a
lot more——”

“Whack her up, Mr. Hinchcliffe! Come on to the bridge. We can settle it
as we go. Well?”

Mr. Pyecroft drew an important breath, and slid off his cap.

“Day an’ night private signals of Red Fleet _com_plete, Sir!” He handed
a little paper to Moorshed. “You see, Sir, the trouble was, that Mr.
Carteret-Jones bein’, so to say, a little new to his duties, ’ad forgot
to give ’is gunner his Admiralty orders in writin’, but, as I told
Commander Fasset, Mr. Jones had been repeatin’ ’em to me, nervous-like,
most of the way from Portsmouth, so I knew ’em by heart—an’ better. The
Commander, recognisin’ in me a man of agility, cautioned me to be a
father an’ mother to Mr. Carteret-Jones.”

“Didn’t he know you?” I asked, thinking for the moment that there could
be no duplicates of Emanuel Pyecroft in the Navy.

“What’s a torpedo-gunner more or less to a full lootenant commanding
six thirty-knot destroyers for the first time? ’E seemed to cherish the
’ope that ’e might use the _Gnome_ for ’is own ’orrible purposes; but
what I told him about Mr. Jones’s sad lack o’ nerve comin’ from Pompey,
an’ going dead slow on account of the dark, short-circuited _that_
connection. ‘M’rover,’ I says to him, ‘our orders is explicit;
_Stiletto’s_ reported broke down somewhere off the Start, an’ we’ve
been tryin’ to coil down a new stiff wire hawser all the evenin’, so it
looks like towin’ ’er back, don’t it?’ I says. That more than ever jams
his turrets, an’ makes him keen to get rid of us. ’E even hinted that
Mr. Carteret-Jones passin’ hawsers an’ assistin’ the impotent in a
sea-way might come pretty expensive on the tax-payer. I agreed in a
disciplined way. I ain’t proud. Gawd knows I ain’t proud! But when I’m
really diggin’ out in the fancy line, I sometimes think that me in a
copper punt, single-’anded, ’ud beat a cutter-full of De Rougemongs in
a row round the fleet.”

At this point I reclined without shame on Mr. Pyecroft’s bosom,
supported by his quivering arm.

“Well?” said Moorshed, scowling into the darkness, as 267’s bows
snapped at the shore seas of the broader Channel, and we swayed
together.

“‘You’d better go on,’ says Commander Fassett, ‘an’ do what you’re told
to do. I don’t envy Hignett if he has to dry-nurse the _Gnome’s_
commander. But what d’you want with signals?’ ’e says. ‘It’s criminal
lunacy to trust Mr. Jones with anything that steams.’

“‘May I make an observation, Sir?’ I says. ‘Suppose,’ I says, ‘you was
torpedo-gunner on the _Gnome_, an’ Mr. Carteret-Jones was your
commandin’ officer, an’ you had your reputation _as_ a second in
command for the first time,’ I says, well knowin’ it was his first
command of a flotilla, ‘what ’ud you do, Sir?’ That gouged ’is
unprotected ends open—clear back to the citadel.”

“What did he say?” Moorshed jerked over his shoulder.

“If you were Mr. Carteret-Jones, it might be disrespect for me to
repeat it, Sir.”

“Go ahead,” I heard the boy chuckle.

“‘Do?’ ’e says. ‘I’d rub the young blighter’s nose into it till I made
a perishin’ man of him, or a perspirin’ pillow-case,’ ’e says, ‘which,’
he adds, ‘is forty per cent, more than he is at present.’

“Whilst he’s gettin’ the private signals—they’re rather particular
ones—I went forrard to see the _Dirk’s_ gunner about borrowin’ a
holdin’-down bolt for our twelve-pounder. My open ears, while I was
rovin’ over his packet, got the followin’ authentic particulars.” I
heard his voice change, and his feet shifted. “There’s been a last
council o’ war of destroyer-captains at the flagship, an’ a lot of
things ’as come out. To begin with _Cryptic_ and _Devolution_, Captain
Panke and Captain Malan—”

“_Cryptic_ and _Devolution_, first-class cruisers,” said Mr. Moorshed
dreamily. “Go on, Pyecroft.”

“—bein’ delayed by minor defects in engine-room, did _not_, as we know,
accompany Red Fleet’s first division of scouting cruisers, whose
rendezvous is unknown, but presumed to be somewhere off the Lizard.
_Cryptic_ an’ _Devolution_ left at 9:30 P.M. still reportin’ copious
minor defects in engine-room. Admiral’s final instructions was they was
to put into Torbay, an’ mend themselves there. If they can do it in
twenty-four hours, they’re to come on and join the battle squadron at
the first rendezvous, down Channel somewhere. (I couldn’t get that,
Sir.) If they can’t, he’ll think about sendin’ them some destroyers for
escort. But his present intention is to go ’ammer and tongs down
Channel, usin’ ’is destroyers for all they’re worth, an’ thus keepin’
Blue Fleet too busy off the Irish coast to sniff into any eshtuaries.”

“But if those cruisers are crocks, why does the Admiral let ’em out of
Weymouth at all?” I asked.

“The tax-payer,” said Mr. Moorshed.

“An’ newspapers,” added Mr. Pyecroft. “In Torbay they’ll look as they
was muckin’ about for strategical purposes—hammerin’ like blazes in the
engine room all the weary day, an’ the skipper droppin’ questions down
the engine-room hatch every two or three minutes. _I’ve_ been there.
Now, Sir?” I saw the white of his eye turn broad on Mr. Moorshed.

The boy dropped his chin over the speaking-tube.

“Mr. Hinchcliffe, what’s her extreme economical radius?”

“Three hundred and forty knots, down to swept bunkers.”

“Can do,” said Moorshed. “By the way, have her revolutions any bearing
on her speed, Mr. Hinchcliffe?”

“None that I can make out yet, Sir.”

“Then slow to eight knots. We’ll jog down to forty-nine, forty-five, or
four about, and three east. That puts us say forty miles from Torbay by
nine o’clock to-morrow morning. We’ll have to muck about till dusk
before we run in and try our luck with the cruisers.”

“Yes, Sir. Their picket boats will be panickin’ round them all night.
It’s considered good for the young gentlemen.”

“Hallo! War’s declared! They’re off!” said Moorshed.

He swung 267’s head round to get a better view. A few miles to our
right the low horizon was spangled with small balls of fire, while
nearer ran a procession of tiny cigar ends.

“Red hot! Set ’em alight,” said Mr. Pyecroft. “That’s the second
destroyer flotilla diggin’ out for Commander Fassett’s reputation.”

The smaller lights disappeared; the glare of the destroyers’ funnels
dwindled even as we watched.

“They’re going down Channel with lights out, thus showin’ their zeal
an’ drivin’ all watch-officers crazy. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think
I’ll get you your pyjamas, an’ you’ll turn in,” said Pyecroft.

He piloted me to the steel tunnel, where the ham still swung
majestically over the swaying table, and dragged out trousers and a
coat with a monk’s hood, all hewn from one hairy inch-thick board.

“If you fall over in these you’ll be drowned. They’re lammies. I’ll
chock you off with a pillow; but sleepin’ in a torpedo-boat’s what you
might call an acquired habit.”

I coiled down on an iron-hard horse-hair pillow next the quivering
steel wall to acquire that habit. The sea, sliding over 267’s skin,
worried me with importunate, half-caught confidences. It drummed
tackily to gather my attention, coughed, spat, cleared its throat, and,
on the eve of that portentous communication, retired up stage as a
multitude whispering. Anon, I caught the tramp of armies afoot, the hum
of crowded cities awaiting the event, the single sob of a woman, and
dry roaring of wild beasts. A dropped shovel clanging on the stokehold
floor was, naturally enough, the unbarring of arena gates; our sucking
uplift across the crest of some little swell, nothing less than the
haling forth of new worlds; our half-turning descent into the hollow of
its mate, the abysmal plunge of God-forgotten planets. Through all
these phenomena and more—though I ran with wild horses over illimitable
plains of rustling grass; though I crouched belly-flat under appalling
fires of musketry; though I was Livingstone, painless, and incurious in
the grip of his lion—my shut eyes saw the lamp swinging in its gimbals,
the irregularly gliding patch of light on the steel ladder, and every
elastic shadow in the corners of the frail angle-irons; while my body
strove to accommodate itself to the infernal vibration of the machine.
At the last I rolled limply on the floor, and woke to real life with a
bruised nose and a great call to go on deck at once.

“It’s all right,” said a voice in my booming ears. “Morgan and Laughton
are worse than you!”

I was gripping a rail. Mr. Pyecroft pointed with his foot to two
bundles beside a torpedo-tube, which at Weymouth had been a signaller
and a most able seaman. “She’d do better in a bigger sea,” said Mr.
Pyecroft. “This lop is what fetches it up.”

The sky behind us whitened as I laboured, and the first dawn drove down
the Channel, tipping the wave-tops with a chill glare. To me that round
wind which runs before the true day has ever been fortunate and of good
omen. It cleared the trouble from my body, and set my soul dancing to
267’s heel and toe across the northerly set of the waves—such waves as
I had often watched contemptuously from the deck of a ten-thousand-ton
liner. They shouldered our little hull sideways and passed, scalloped,
and splayed out, toward the coast, carrying our white wake in loops
along their hollow backs. In succession we looked down a lead-grey
cutting of water for half a clear mile, were flung up on its ridge,
beheld the Channel traffic—full-sailed to that fair breeze—all about
us, and swung slantwise, light as a bladder, elastic as a basket, into
the next furrow. Then the sun found us, struck the wet gray bows to
living, leaping opal, the colourless deep to hard sapphire, the many
sails to pearl, and the little steam-plume of our escape to an
inconstant rainbow.

“A fair day and a fair wind for all, thank God!” said Emanuel Pyecroft,
throwing back the cowl-like hood of his blanket coat. His face was
pitted with coal-dust and grime, pallid for lack of sleep; but his eyes
shone like a gull’s.

“I told you you’d see life. Think o’ the _Pedantic_ now. Think o’ her
Number One chasin’ the mobilised gobbies round the lower deck flats.
Think o’ the pore little snotties now bein’ washed, fed, and taught,
an’ the yeoman o’ signals with a pink eye wakin’ bright ’an brisk to
another perishin’ day of five-flag hoists. Whereas _we_ shall caulk an’
smoke cigarettes, same as the Spanish destroyers did for three weeks
after war was declared.” He dropped into the wardroom singing:—

If you’re going to marry me, marry me, Bill,
It’s no use muckin’ about!


The man at the wheel, uniformed in what had once been a Tam-o’-shanter,
a pair of very worn R.M.L.I. trousers rolled up to the knee, and a
black sweater, was smoking a cigarette. Moorshed, in a gray Balaclava
and a brown mackintosh with a flapping cape, hauled at our
supplementary funnel guys, and a thing like a waiter from a Soho
restaurant sat at the head of the engine-room ladder exhorting the
unseen below. The following wind beat down our smoke and covered all
things with an inch-thick layer of stokers, so that eyelids, teeth, and
feet gritted in their motions. I began to see that my previous
experiences among battleships and cruisers had been altogether beside
the mark.




PART II

The wind went down with the sunset—
    The fog came up with the tide,
When the Witch of the North took an Egg-shell (_bis_)
    With a little Blue Devil inside.
“Sink,” she said, “or swim,” she said,
    “It’s all you will get from me.
And that is the finish of him!” she said,
    And the Egg-shell went to sea.

The wind got up with the morning,
    And the fog blew off with the rain,
When the Witch of the North saw the Egg-shell
    And the little Blue Devil again.
“Did you swim?” she said. “Did you sink?” she said,
    And the little Blue Devil replied:
“For myself I swam, but I think,” he said,
    “There’s somebody sinking outside.”


But for the small detail that I was a passenger and a civilian, and
might not alter her course, torpedo-boat No. 267 was mine to me all
that priceless day. Moorshed, after breakfast—frizzled ham and a devil
that Pyecroft made out of sardines, anchovies, and French mustard
smashed together with a spanner—showed me his few and simple navigating
tools, and took an observation. Morgan, the signaller, let me hold the
chamois leathers while he cleaned the searchlight (we seemed to be
better equipped with electricity than most of our class), that lived
under a bulbous umbrella-cover amidship. Then Pyecroft and Morgan,
standing easy, talked together of the King’s Service as reformers and
revolutionists, so notably, that were I not engaged on this tale I
would, for its conclusion, substitute theirs.

I would speak of Hinchcliffe—Henry Salt Hinchcliffe, first-class
engine-room artificer, and genius in his line, who was prouder of
having taken part in the Hat Crusade in his youth than of all his
daring, his skill, and his nickel-steel nerve. I consorted with him for
an hour in the packed and dancing engine-room, when Moorshed suggested
“whacking her up” to eighteen knots, to see if she would stand it. The
floor was ankle-deep in a creamy batter of oil and water; each moving
part flicking more oil in zoetrope-circles, and the gauges invisible
for their dizzy chattering on the chattering steel bulkhead. Leading
stoker Grant, said to be a bigamist, an ox-eyed man smothered in hair,
took me to the stokehold and planted me between a searing white furnace
and some hell-hot iron plate for fifteen minutes, while I listened to
the drone of fans and the worry of the sea without, striving to wrench
all that palpitating firepot wide open.

Then I came on deck and watched Moorshed—revolving in his orbit from
the canvas bustle and torpedo-tubes aft, by way of engine-room,
conning-tower, and wheel, to the doll’s house of a foc’sle—learned in
experience withheld from me, moved by laws beyond my knowledge,
authoritative, entirely adequate, and yet, in heart, a child at his
play. _I_ could not take ten steps along the crowded deck but I
collided with some body or thing; but he and his satellites swung,
passed, and returned on their vocations with the freedom and
spaciousness of the well-poised stars.

Even now I can at will recall every tone and gesture, with each
dissolving picture inboard or overside—Hinchcliffe’s white arm buried
to the shoulder in a hornet’s nest of spinning machinery; Moorshed’s
halt and jerk to windward as he looked across the water; Pyecroft’s
back bent over the Berthon collapsible boat, while he drilled three men
in expanding it swiftly; the outflung white water at the foot of a
homeward-bound Chinaman not a hundred yards away, and her
shadow-slashed, rope-purfled sails bulging sideways like insolent
cheeks; the ribbed and pitted coal-dust on our decks, all iridescent
under the sun; the first filmy haze that paled the shadows of our
funnels about lunch time; the gradual die-down and dulling over of the
short, cheery seas; the sea that changed to a swell: the swell that
crumbled up and ran allwhither oilily: the triumphant, almost audible
roll inward of wandering fog-walls that had been stalking us for two
hours, and—welt upon welt, chill as the grave—the drive of the
interminable main fog of the Atlantic. We slowed to little more than
steerage-way and lay listening. Presently a hand-bellows foghorn jarred
like a corncrake, and there rattled out of the mist a big ship
literally above us. We could count the rivets in her plates as we
scrooped by, and the little drops of dew gathered below them.

“Wonder why they’re always barks—always steel—always four-masted—an’
never less than two thousand tons. But they are,” said Pyecroft. He was
out on the turtle-backed bows of her; Moorshed was at the wheel, and
another man worked the whistle.

“This fog is the best thing could ha’ happened to us,” said Moorshed.
“It gives us our chance to run in on the quiet…. Hal-lo!”

A cracked bell rang. Clean and sharp (beautifully grained, too), a
bowsprit surged over our starboard bow, the bobstay confidentially
hooking itself into our forward rail.

I saw Pyecroft’s arm fly up; heard at the same moment the severing of
the tense rope, the working of the wheel, Moorshed’s voice down the
tube saying, “Astern a little, please, Mr. Hinchcliffe!” and Pyecroft’s
cry, “Trawler with her gear down! Look out for our propeller, Sir, or
we’ll be wrapped up in the rope.”

267 surged quickly under my feet, as the pressure of the
downward-bearing bobstay was removed. Half-a-dozen men of the foc’sle
had already thrown out fenders, and stood by to bear off a just visible
bulwark.

Still going astern, we touched slowly, broadside on, to a suggestive
crunching of fenders, and I looked into the deck of a Brixham trawler,
her crew struck dumb.

“Any luck?” said Moorshed politely.

“Not till we met yeou,” was the answer. “The Lard he saved us from they
big ships to be spitted by the little wan. Where be’e gwine tu with our
fine new bobstay?”

“Yah! You’ve had time to splice it by now,” said Pyecroft with
contempt.

“Aie; but we’m all crushed to port like aigs. You was runnin’
twenty-seven knots, us reckoned it. Didn’t us, Albert?”

“Liker twenty-nine, an’ niver no whistle.”

“Yes, we always do that. Do you want a tow to Brixham?” said Moorshed.

A great silence fell upon those wet men of the sea.

We lifted a little toward their side, but our silent, quick-breathing
crew, braced and strained outboard, bore us off as though we had been a
mere picket-boat.

“What for?” said a puzzled voice.

“For love; for nothing. You’ll be abed in Brixham by midnight.”

“Yiss; but trawl’s down.”

“No hurry. I’ll pass you a line and go ahead. Sing out when you’re
ready.” A rope smacked on their deck with the word; they made it fast;
we slid forward, and in ten seconds saw nothing save a few feet of the
wire rope running into fog over our stern; but we heard the noise of
debate.

“Catch a Brixham trawler letting go of a free tow in a fog,” said
Moorshed listening.

“But what in the world do you want him for?” I asked.

“Oh, he’ll came in handy later.”

“Was that your first collision?”

“Yes.” I shook hands with him in silence, and our tow hailed us.

“Aie! yeou little man-o’-war!” The voice rose muffled and wailing.
“After us’ve upped trawl, us’ll be glad of a tow. Leave line just slack
abaout as ’tis now, and kip a good fine look-out be’ind ’ee.”

“There’s an accommodatin’ blighter for you!” said Pyecroft. “Where does
he expect we’ll be, with these currents evolutin’ like sailormen at the
Agricultural Hall?”

I left the bridge to watch the wire-rope at the stern as it drew out
and smacked down upon the water. By what instinct or guidance 267 kept
it from fouling her languidly flapping propeller, I cannot tell. The
fog now thickened and thinned in streaks that bothered the eyes like
the glare of intermittent flash-lamps; by turns granting us the vision
of a sick sun that leered and fled, or burying all a thousand fathom
deep in gulfs of vapours. At no time could we see the trawler though we
heard the click of her windlass, the jar of her trawl-beam, and the
very flap of the fish on her deck. Forward was Pyecroft with the lead;
on the bridge Moorshed pawed a Channel chart; aft sat I, listening to
the whole of the British Mercantile Marine (never a keel less)
returning to England, and watching the fog-dew run round the bight of
the tow back to its mother-fog.

“Aie! yeou little man-o’-war! We’m done with trawl. You can take us
home if you know the road.”

“Right O!” said Moorshed. “We’ll give the fishmonger a run for his
money. Whack her up, Mr. Hinchcliffe.”

The next few hours completed my education. I saw that I ought to be
afraid, but more clearly (this was when a liner hooted down the back of
my neck) that any fear which would begin to do justice to the situation
would, if yielded to, incapacitate me for the rest of my days. A shadow
of spread sails, deeper than the darkening twilight, brooding over us
like the wings of Azrael (Pyecroft said she was a Swede), and,
miraculously withdrawn, persuaded me that there was a working chance
that I should reach the beach—any beach—alive, if not dry; and (this
was when an economical tramp laved our port-rail with her condenser
water) were I so spared, I vowed I would tell my tale worthily.

Thus we floated in space as souls drift through raw time. Night added
herself to the fog, and I laid hold on my limbs jealously, lest they,
too, should melt in the general dissolution.

“Where’s that prevaricatin’ fishmonger?” said Pyecroft, turning a
lantern on a scant yard of the gleaming wire-rope that pointed like a
stick to my left. “He’s doin’ some fancy steerin’ on his own. No wonder
Mr. Hincheliffe is blasphemious. The tow’s sheered off to starboard,
Sir. He’ll fair pull the stern out of us.”

Moorshed, invisible, cursed through the megaphone into invisibility.

“Aie! yeou little man-o’-war!” The voice butted through the fog with
the monotonous insistence of a strayed sheep’s. “We don’t all like the
road you’m takin’. ’Tis no road to Brixham. You’ll be buckled up under
Prawle Point by’mbye.”

“Do you pretend to know where you are?” the megaphone roared.

“Iss, I reckon; but there’s no pretence to me!”

“O Peter!” said Pyecroft. “Let’s hang him at ’is own gaff.”

I could not see what followed, but Moorshed said: “Take another man
with you. If you lose the tow, you’re done. I’ll slow her down.”

I heard the dinghy splash overboard ere I could cry “Murder!” Heard the
rasp of a boat-hook along the wire-rope, and then, as it had been in my
ear, Pyecroft’s enormous and jubilant bellow astern: “Why, he’s here!
Right atop of us! The blighter ’as pouched half the tow, like a shark!”
A long pause filled with soft Devonian bleatings. Then Pyecroft, _solo
arpeggio_: “Rum? Rum? Rum? Is that all? Come an’ try it, uncle.”

I lifted my face to where once God’s sky had been, and besought The
Trues I might not die inarticulate, amid these half-worked miracles,
but live at least till my fellow-mortals could be made one-millionth as
happy as I was happy. I prayed and I waited, and we went slow—slow as
the processes of evolution—till the boat-hook rasped again.

“He’s not what you might call a scientific navigator,” said Pyecroft,
still in the dinghy, but rising like a fairy from a pantomime trap.
“The lead’s what ’e goes by mostly; rum is what he’s come for; an’
Brixham is ’is ’ome. Lay on, Mucduff!”

A white whiskered man in a frock-coat—as I live by bread, a
frock-coat!—sea-boots, and a comforter crawled over the torpedo-tube
into Moorshed’s grip and vanished forward.

“’E’ll probably ’old three gallon (look sharp with that dinghy!); but
’is nephew, left in charge of the _Agatha_, wants two bottles
command-allowance. You’re a tax-payer, Sir. Do you think that
excessive?”

“Lead there! Lead!” rang out from forward.

“Didn’t I say ’e wouldn’t understand compass deviations? Watch him
close. It’ll be worth it!”

As I neared the bridge I heard the stranger say: “Let me zmell un!” and
to his nose was the lead presented by a trained man of the King’s Navy.

“I’ll tell ’ee where to goo, if yeou’ll tell your donkey-man what to
du. I’m no hand wi’ steam.” On these lines we proceeded miraculously,
and, under Moorshed’s orders—I was the fisherman’s Ganymede, even as
“M. de C.” had served the captain—I found both rum and curaçoa in a
locker, and mixed them equal bulk in an enamelled iron cup.

“Now we’m just abeam o’ where we should be,” he said at last, “an’ here
we’ll lay till she lifts. I’d take ’e in for another bottle—and wan for
my nevvy; but I reckon yeou’m shart-allowanced for rum. That’s nivver
no Navy rum yeou’m give me. Knowed ’ee by the smack tu un. Anchor now!”

I was between Pyecroft and Moorshed on the bridge, and heard them
spring to vibrating attention at my side. A man with a lead a few feet
to port caught the panic through my body, and checked like a wild boar
at gaze, for not far away an unmistakable ship’s bell was ringing. It
ceased, and another began.

“Them!” said Pyecroft. “Anchored!”

“More!” said our pilot, passing me the cup, and I filled it. The
trawler astern clattered vehemently on her bell. Pyecroft with a jerk
of his arm threw loose the forward three-pounder. The bar of the
back-sight was heavily blobbed with dew; the foresight was invisible.

“No—they wouldn’t have their picket-boats out in this weather, though
they ought to.” He returned the barrel to its crotch slowly.

“Be yeou gwine to anchor?” said Macduff, smacking his lips, “or be yeou
gwine straight on to Livermead Beach?”

“Tell him what we’re driving at. Get it into his head somehow,” said
Moorshed; and Pyecroft, snatching the cup from me, enfolded the old man
with an arm and a mist of wonderful words.

“And if you pull it off,” said Moorshed at the last, “I’ll give you a
fiver.”

“Lard! What’s fivers to me, young man? My nevvy, he likes ’em; but I do
cherish more on fine drink than filthy lucre any day o’ God’s good
weeks. Leave goo my arm, yeou common sailorman! I tall ’ee, gentlemen,
I hain’t the ram-faced, ruddle-nosed old fule yeou reckon I be. Before
the mast I’ve fared in my time; fisherman I’ve been since I seed the
unsense of sea-dangerin’. Baccy and spirits—yiss, an’ cigars too, I’ve
run a plenty. I’m no blind harse or boy to be coaxed with your
forty-mile free towin’ and rum atop of all. There’s none more sober to
Brix’am this tide, I don’t care who ’tis—than me. _I_ know—_I_ know.
Yander’m two great King’s ships. Yeou’m wishful to sink, burn, and
destroy they while us kips ’em busy sellin’ fish. No need tall me so
twanty taime over. Us’ll find they ships! Us’ll find ’em, if us has to
break our fine new bowsprit so close as Crump’s bull’s horn!”

“Good egg!” quoth Moorshed, and brought his hand down on the wide
shoulders with the smack of a beaver’s tail.

“Us’ll go look for they by hand. Us’ll give they something to play
upon; an’ do ’ee deal with them faithfully, an’ may the Lard have mercy
on your sowls! Amen. Put I in dinghy again.”

The fog was as dense as ever—we moved in the very womb of night—but I
cannot recall that I took the faintest note of it as the dinghy, guided
by the tow-rope, disappeared toward the _Agatha_, Pyecroft rowing. The
bell began again on the starboard bow.

“We’re pretty near,” said Moorshed, slowing down. “Out with the
Berthon. (_We’ll_ sell ’em fish, too.) And if any one rows Navy-stroke,
I’ll break his jaw with the tiller. Mr. Hinchcliffe (this down the
tube), “you’ll stay here in charge with Gregory and Shergold and the
engine-room staff. Morgan stays, too, for signalling purposes.” A deep
groan broke from Morgan’s chest, but he said nothing. “If the fog thins
and you’re seen by any one, keep’em quiet with the signals. I can’t
think of the precise lie just now, but _you_ can, Morgan.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Suppose their torpedo-nets are down?” I whispered, shivering with
excitement.

“If they’ve been repairing minor defects all day, they won’t have any
one to spare from the engine-room, and ‘Out nets!’ is a job for the
whole ship’s company. I expect they’ve trusted to the fog—like us.
Well, Pyecroft?”

That great soul had blown up on to the bridge like a feather. “’Ad to
see the first o’ the rum into the _Agathites_, Sir. They was a bit
jealous o’ their commandin’ officer comin’ ’ome so richly lacquered,
and at first the _conversazione_ languished, as you might say. But they
sprang to attention ere I left. Six sharp strokes on the bells, if any
of ’em are sober enough to keep tally, will be the signal that our
consort ’as cast off her tow an’ is manceuvrin’ on ’er own.”

“Right O! Take Laughton with you in the dinghy. Put that Berthon over
quietly there! Are you all right, Mr. Hinchcliffe?”

I stood back to avoid the rush of half-a-dozen shadows dropping into
the Berthon boat. A hand caught me by the slack of my garments, moved
me in generous arcs through the night, and I rested on the bottom of
the dinghy.

“I want you for _prima facie_ evidence, in case the vaccination don’t
take,” said Pyecroft in my ear. “Push off, Alf!”

The last bell-ringing was high overhead. It was followed by six little
tinkles from the _Agatha_, the roar of her falling anchor, the clash of
pans, and loose shouting.

“Where be gwine tu? Port your ’ellum. Aie! you mud-dredger in the
fairway, goo astern! Out boats! She’ll sink us!”

A clear-cut Navy voice drawled from the clouds: “Quiet! you gardeners
there. This is the _Cryptic_ at anchor.”

“Thank you for the range,” said Pyecroft, and paddled gingerly. “Feel
well out in front of you, Alf. Remember your fat fist is our only
Marconi installation.” The voices resumed:

“Bournemouth steamer he says she be.”

“Then where be Brixham Harbor?”

“Damme, I’m a tax-payer tu. They’ve no right to cruise about this way.
I’ll have the laa on ’ee if anything carries away.”

Then the man-of-war:

“Short on your anchor! Heave short, you howling maniacs! You’ll get
yourselves smashed in a minute if you drift.”

The air was full of these and other voices as the dinghy, checking,
swung. I passed one hand down Laughton’s stretched arm and felt an iron
gooseneck and a foot or two of a backward-sloping torpedo-net boom. The
other hand I laid on broad, cold iron—even the flanks of H.M.S.
_Cryptic_, which is twelve thousand tons.

I heard a scrubby, raspy sound, as though Pyecroft had chosen that hour
to shave, and I smelled paint. “Drop aft a bit, Alf; we’ll put a
stencil under the stern six-inch casements.”

Boom by boom Laughlin slid the dinghy along the towering curved wall.
Once, twice, and again we stopped, and the keen scrubbing sound was
renewed.

“Umpires are ’ard-’earted blighters, but this ought to convince ’em….
Captain Panke’s stern-walk is now above our defenceless ’eads. Repeat
the evolution up the starboard side, Alf.”

I was only conscious that we moved around an iron world palpitating
with life. Though my knowledge was all by touch—as, for example, when
Pyecroft led my surrendered hand to the base of some bulging sponson,
or when my palm closed on the knife-edge of the stem and patted it
timidly—yet I felt lonely and unprotected as the enormous, helpless
ship was withdrawn, and we drifted away into the void where voices
sang:

Tom Pearce, Tom Pearce, lend me thy gray mare,
All along, out along, down along lea!
I want for to go to Widdicombe Fair
With Bill Brewer, Sam Sewer, Peter Gurney, Harry Hawke,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley an’ all!


“That’s old Sinbad an’ ’is little lot from the _Agatha_! Give way, Alf!
_You_ might sing somethin’, too.”

“I’m no burnin’ Patti. Ain’t there noise enough for you, Pye?”

“Yes, but it’s only amateurs. Give me the tones of ’earth and ’ome. Ha!
List to the blighter on the ’orizon sayin’ his prayers, Navy-fashion.
’Eaven ’elp me argue that way when I’m a warrant-officer!”

We headed with little lapping strokes toward what seemed to be a
fair-sized riot.

“An’ I’ve ’eard the _Devolution_ called a happy ship, too,” said
Pyecroft. “Just shows ’ow a man’s misled by prejudice. She’s
peevish—that’s what she is—nasty-peevish. Prob’ly all because the
_Agathites_ are scratching ’er paint. Well, rub along, Alf. I’ve got
the lymph!”

A voice, which Mr. Pyecroft assured me belonged to a chief carpenter,
was speaking through an aperture (starboard bow twelve-pounder on the
lower deck). He did not wish to purchase any fish, even at grossly
reduced rates. Nobody wished to buy any fish. This ship was the
_Devolution_ at anchor, and desired no communication with shore boats.

“Mark how the Navy ’olds it’s own. He’s sober. The _Agathites_ are not,
as you might say, an’ yet they can’t live with ’im. It’s the discipline
that does it. ’Ark to the bald an’ unconvincin’ watch-officer chimin’
in. I wonder where Mr. Moorshed has got to?”

We drifted down the _Devolution’s_ side, as we had drifted down her
sister’s; and we dealt with her in that dense gloom as we had dealt
with her sister.

“Whai! ’Tis a man-o’-war, after all! I can see the captain’s whisker
all gilt at the edges! We took ’ee for the Bournemouth steamer. Three
cheers for the real man-o’-war!”

That cry came from under the _Devolution’s_ stern. Pyecroft held
something in his teeth, for I heard him mumble, “Our Mister Moorshed!”

Said a boy’s voice above us, just as we dodged a jet of hot water from
some valve: “I don’t half like that cheer. If I’d been the old man I’d
ha’ turned loose the quick-firers at the first go-off. Aren’t they
rowing Navy-stroke, yonder?”

“True,” said Pyecroft, listening to retreating oars. “It’s time to go
’ome when snotties begin to think. The fog’s thinnin’, too.”

I felt a chill breath on my forehead, and saw a few feet of the steel
stand out darker than the darkness, disappear—it was then the dinghy
shot away from it—and emerge once more.

“Hallo! what boat’s tha

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