Indian Tales
by
Rudyard Kipling
Part 1 out of 9
E-text prepared by S.R.Ellison, Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team
INDIAN TALES
BY RUDYARD KIPLING
CONTENTS
"The Finest Story in the World"
With the Main Guard
Wee Willie Winkie
The Rout of the White Hussars
At Twenty-two
The Courting of Dinah Shadd
The Story of Muhammad Din
In Flood Time
My Own True Ghost Story
The Big Drunk Draf'
By Word of Mouth
The Drums of the Fore and Aft
The Sending of Dana Da
On the City Wall
The Broken-link Handicap
On Greenhow Hill
To Be Filed for Reference
The Man Who Would Be King
The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows
The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney
His Majesty the King
The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes
In the House of Suddhoo
Black Jack
The Taking of Lungtungpen
The Phantom Rickshaw
On the Strength of a Likeness
Private Learoyd's Story
Wressley of the Foreign Office
The Solid Muldoon
The Three Musketeers
Beyond the Pale
The God from the Machine
The Daughter of the Regiment
The Madness of Private Ortheris
L'Envoi
"THE FINEST STORY IN THE WORLD"
"Or ever the knightly years were gone
With the old world to the grave,
I was a king in Babylon
And you were a Christian slave,"
--_W.E. Henley_.
His name was Charlie Mears; he was the only son of his mother who was a
widow, and he lived in the north of London, coming into the City every day
to work in a bank. He was twenty years old and suffered from aspirations.
I met him in a public billiard-saloon where the marker called him by his
given name, and he called the marker "Bullseyes." Charlie explained, a
little nervously, that he had only come to the place to look on, and since
looking on at games of skill is not a cheap amusement for the young, I
suggested that Charlie should go back to his mother.
That was our first step toward better acquaintance. He would call on me
sometimes in the evenings instead of running about London with his
fellow-clerks; and before long, speaking of himself as a young man must,
he told me of his aspirations, which were all literary. He desired to make
himself an undying name chiefly through verse, though he was not above
sending stories of love and death to the drop-a-penny-in-the-slot
journals. It was my fate to sit still while Charlie read me poems of many
hundred lines, and bulky fragments of plays that would surely shake the
world. My reward was his unreserved confidence, and the self-revelations
and troubles of a young man are almost as holy as those of a maiden.
Charlie had never fallen in love, but was anxious to do so on the first
opportunity; he believed in all things good and all things honorable, but,
at the same time, was curiously careful to let me see that he knew his way
about the world as befitted a bank clerk on twenty-five shillings a week.
He rhymed "dove" with "love" and "moon" with "June," and devoutly believed
that they had never so been rhymed before. The long lame gaps in his plays
he filled up with hasty words of apology and description and swept on,
seeing all that he intended to do so clearly that he esteemed it already
done, and turned to me for applause.
I fancy that his mother did not encourage his aspirations, and I know that
his writing-table at home was the edge of his washstand. This he told me
almost at the outset of our acquaintance; when he was ravaging my
bookshelves, and a little before I was implored to speak the truth as to
his chances of "writing something really great, you know." Maybe I
encouraged him too much, for, one night, he called on me, his eyes flaming
with excitement, and said breathlessly:
"Do you mind--can you let me stay here and write all this evening? I won't
interrupt you, I won't really. There's no place for me to write in at my
mother's."
"What's the trouble?" I said, knowing well what that trouble was.
"I've a notion in my head that would make the most splendid story that was
ever written. Do let me write it out here. It's _such_ a notion!"
There was no resisting the appeal. I set him a table; he hardly thanked
me, but plunged into the work at once. For half an hour the pen scratched
without stopping. Then Charlie sighed and tugged his hair. The scratching
grew slower, there were more erasures, and at last ceased. The finest
story in the world would not come forth.
"It looks such awful rot now," he said, mournfully. "And yet it seemed so
good when I was thinking about it. What's wrong?"
I could not dishearten him by saying the truth. So I answered: "Perhaps
you don't feel in the mood for writing."
"Yes I do--except when I look at this stuff. Ugh!"
"Read me what you've done," I said.
"He read, and it was wondrous bad, and he paused at all the specially
turgid sentences, expecting a little approval; for he was proud of those
sentences, as I knew he would be.
"It needs compression," I suggested, cautiously.
"I hate cutting my things down. I don't think you could alter a word here
without spoiling the sense. It reads better aloud than when I was writing
it."
"Charlie, you're suffering from an alarming disease afflicting a numerous
class. Put the thing by, and tackle it again in a week."
"I want to do it at once. What do you think of it?"
"How can I judge from a half-written tale? Tell me the story as it lies in
your head."
Charlie told, and in the telling there was everything that his ignorance
had so carefully prevented from escaping into the written word. I looked
at him, and wondering whether it were possible that he did not know the
originality, the power of the notion that had come in his way? It was
distinctly a Notion among notions. Men had been puffed up with pride by
notions not a tithe as excellent and practicable. But Charlie babbled on
serenely, interrupting the current of pure fancy with samples of horrible
sentences that he purposed to use. I heard him out to the end. It would be
folly to allow his idea to remain in his own inept hands, when I could do
so much with it. Not all that could be done indeed; but, oh so much!
"What do you think?" he said, at last. "I fancy I shall call it 'The Story
of a Ship.'"
"I think the idea's pretty good; but you won't be able to handle it for
ever so long. Now I"----
"Would it be of any use to you? Would you care to take it? I should be
proud," said Charlie, promptly.
There are few things sweeter in this world than the guileless, hot-headed,
intemperate, open admiration of a junior. Even a woman in her blindest
devotion does not fall into the gait of the man she adores, tilt her
bonnet to the angle at which he wears his hat, or interlard her speech
with his pet oaths. And Charlie did all these things. Still it was
necessary to salve my conscience before I possessed myself of Charlie's
thoughts.
"Let's make a bargain. I'll give you a fiver for the notion," I said.
Charlie became a bank-clerk at once.
"Oh, that's impossible. Between two pals, you know, if I may call you so,
and speaking as a man of the world, I couldn't. Take the notion if it's
any use to you. I've heaps more."
He had--none knew this better than I--but they were the notions of other
men.
"Look at it as a matter of business--between men of the world," I
returned. "Five pounds will buy you any number of poetry-books. Business
is business, and you may be sure I shouldn't give that price unless"----
"Oh, if you put it _that_ way," said Charlie, visibly moved by the thought
of the books. The bargain was clinched with an agreement that he should at
unstated intervals come to me with all the notions that he possessed,
should have a table of his own to write at, and unquestioned right to
inflict upon me all his poems and fragments of poems. Then I said, "Now
tell me how you came by this idea."
"It came by itself," Charlie's eyes opened a little.
"Yes, but you told me a great deal about the hero that you must have read
before somewhere."
"I haven't any time for reading, except when you let me sit here, and on
Sundays I'm on my bicycle or down the river all day. There's nothing wrong
about the hero, is there?"
"Tell me again and I shall understand clearly. You say that your hero went
pirating. How did he live?"
"He was on the lower deck of this ship-thing that I was telling you
about."
"What sort of ship?"
"It was the kind rowed with oars, and the sea spurts through the oar-holes
and the men row sitting up to their knees in water. Then there's a bench
running down between the two lines of oars and an overseer with a whip
walks up and down the bench to make the men work."
"How do you know that?"
"It's in the tale. There's a rope running overhead, looped to the upper
deck, for the overseer to catch hold of when the ship rolls. When the
overseer misses the rope once and falls among the rowers, remember the
hero laughs at him and gets licked for it. He's chained to his oar of
course--the hero."
"How is he chained?"
"With an iron band round his waist fixed to the bench he sits on, and a
sort of handcuff on his left wrist chaining him to the oar. He's on the
lower deck where the worst men are sent, and the only light comes from the
hatchways and through the oar-holes. Can't you imagine the sunlight just
squeezing through between the handle and the hole and wobbling about as
the ship moves?"
"I can, but I can't imagine your imagining it."
"How could it be any other way? Now you listen to me. The long oars on the
upper deck are managed by four men to each bench, the lower ones by three,
and the lowest of all by two. Remember, it's quite dark on the lowest deck
and all the men there go mad. When a man dies at his oar on that deck he
isn't thrown overboard, but cut up in his chains and stuffed through the
oar-hole in little pieces."
"Why?" I demanded, amazed, not so much at the information as the tone of
command in which it was flung out.
"To save trouble and to frighten the others. It needs two overseers to
drag a man's body up to the top deck; and if the men at the lower deck
oars were left alone, of course they'd stop rowing and try to pull up the
benches by all standing up together in their chains."
"You've a most provident imagination. Where have you been reading about
galleys and galley-slaves?"
"Nowhere that I remember. I row a little when I get the chance. But,
perhaps, if you say so, I may have read something."
He went away shortly afterward to deal with booksellers, and I wondered
how a bank clerk aged twenty could put into my hands with a profligate
abundance of detail, all given with absolute assurance, the story of
extravagant and bloodthirsty adventure, riot, piracy, and death in unnamed
seas. He had led his hero a desperate dance through revolt against the
overseers, to command of a ship of his own, and ultimate establishment of
a kingdom on an island "somewhere in the sea, you know"; and, delighted
with my paltry five pounds, had gone out to buy the notions of other men,
that these might teach him how to write. I had the consolation of knowing
that this notion was mine by right of purchase, and I thought that I could
make something of it.
When next he came to me he was drunk--royally drunk on many poets for the
first time revealed to him. His pupils were dilated, his words tumbled
over each other, and he wrapped himself in quotations. Most of all was he
drunk with Longfellow.
"Isn't it splendid? Isn't it superb?" he cried, after hasty greetings.
"Listen to this--
"'Wouldst thou,'--so the helmsman answered,
'Know the secret of the sea?
Only those who brave its dangers
Comprehend its mystery.'"
By gum!
"'Only those who brave its dangers
Comprehend its mystery,'"
he repeated twenty times, walking up and down the room and forgetting me.
"But _I_ can understand it too," he said to himself. "I don't know how to
thank you for that fiver, And this; listen--
"'I remember the black wharves and the ships
And the sea-tides tossing free,
And the Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
And the beauty and mystery of the ships,
And the magic of the sea.'"
I haven't braved any dangers, but I feel as if I knew all about it."
"You certainly seem to have a grip of the sea. Have you ever seen it?"
"When I was a little chap I went to Brighton once; we used to live in
Coventry, though, before we came to London. I never saw it,
"'When descends on the Atlantic
The gigantic
Storm-wind of the Equinox.'"
He shook me by the shoulder to make me understand the passion that was
shaking himself.
"When that storm comes," he continued, "I think that all the oars in the
ship that I was talking about get broken, and the rowers have their chests
smashed in by the bucking oar-heads. By the way, have you done anything
with that notion of mine yet?"
"No. I was waiting to hear more of it from you. Tell me how in the world
you're so certain about the fittings of the ship. You know nothing of
ships."
"I don't know. It's as real as anything to me until I try to write it
down. I was thinking about it only last night in bed, after you had loaned
me 'Treasure Island'; and I made up a whole lot of new things to go into
the story."
"What sort of things?"
"About the food the men ate; rotten figs and black beans and wine in a
skin bag, passed from bench to bench."
"Was the ship built so long ago as _that_?"
"As what? I don't know whether it was long ago or not. It's only a notion,
but sometimes it seems just as real as if it was true. Do I bother you
with talking about it?"
"Not in the least. Did you make up anything else?"
"Yes, but it's nonsense." Charlie flushed a little.
"Never mind; let's hear about it."
"Well, I was thinking over the story, and after awhile I got out of bed
and wrote down on a piece of paper the sort of stuff the men might be
supposed to scratch on their oars with the edges of their handcuffs. It
seemed to make the thing more lifelike. It _is_ so real to me, y'know."
"Have you the paper on you?"
"Ye-es, but what's the use of showing it? It's only a lot of scratches.
All the same, we might have 'em reproduced in the book on the front page."
"I'll attend to those details. Show me what your men wrote."
He pulled out of his pocket a sheet of note-paper, with a single line of
scratches upon it, and I put this carefully away.
"What is it supposed to mean in English?" I said.
"Oh, I don't know. Perhaps it means 'I'm beastly tired.' It's great
nonsense," he repeated, "but all those men in the ship seem as real as
people to me. Do do something to the notion soon; I should like to see it
written and printed."
"But all you've told me would make a long book."
"Make it then. You've only to sit down and write it out."
"Give me a little time. Have you any more notions?"
"Not just now. I'm reading all the books I've bought. They're splendid."
When he had left I looked at the sheet of note-paper with the inscription
upon it. Then I took my head tenderly between both hands, to make certain
that it was not coming off or turning round. Then ... but there seemed to
be no interval between quitting my rooms and finding myself arguing with a
policeman outside a door marked _Private_ in a corridor of the British
Museum. All I demanded, as politely as possible, was "the Greek antiquity
man." The policeman knew nothing except the rules of the Museum, and it
became necessary to forage through all the houses and offices inside the
gates. An elderly gentleman called away from his lunch put an end to my
search by holding the note-paper between finger and thumb and sniffing at
it scornfully.
"What does this mean? H'mm," said he. "So far as I can ascertain it is an
attempt to write extremely corrupt Greek on the part"--here he glared at
me with intention--"of an extremely illiterate--ah--person." He read
slowly from the paper, "_Pollock, Erckmann, Tauchnitz, Henniker_"-four
names familiar to me.
"Can you tell me what the corruption is supposed to mean--the gist of the
thing?" I asked.
"I have been--many times--overcome with weariness in this particular
employment. That is the meaning." He returned me the paper, and I fled
without a word of thanks, explanation, or apology.
I might have been excused for forgetting much. To me of all men had been
given the chance to write the most marvelous tale in the world, nothing
less than the story of a Greek galley-slave, as told by himself. Small
wonder that his dreaming had seemed real to Charlie. The Fates that are so
careful to shut the doors of each successive life behind us had, in this
case, been neglectful, and Charlie was looking, though that he did not
know, where never man had been permitted to look with full knowledge since
Time began. Above all, he was absolutely ignorant of the knowledge sold to
me for five pounds; and he would retain that ignorance, for bank-clerks do
not understand metempsychosis, and a sound commercial education does not
include Greek. He would supply me--here I capered among the dumb gods of
Egypt and laughed in their battered faces--with material to make my tale
sure--so sure that the world would hail it as an impudent and vamped
fiction. And I--I alone would know that it was absolutely and literally
true. I--I alone held this jewel to my hand for the cutting and polishing.
Therefore I danced again among the gods till a policeman saw me and took
steps in my direction.
It remained now only to encourage Charlie to talk, and here there was no
difficulty. But I had forgotten those accursed books of poetry. He came to
me time after time, as useless as a surcharged phonograph--drunk on Byron,
Shelley, or Keats. Knowing now what the boy had been in his past lives,
and desperately anxious not to lose one word of his babble, I could not
hide from him my respect and interest. He misconstrued both into respect
for the present soul of Charlie Mears, to whom life was as new as it was
to Adam, and interest in his readings; and stretched my patience to
breaking point by reciting poetry--not his own now, but that of others. I
wished every English poet blotted out of the memory of mankind. I
blasphemed the mightiest names of song because they had drawn Charlie from
the path of direct narrative, and would, later, spur him to imitate them;
but I choked down my impatience until the first flood of enthusiasm should
have spent itself and the boy returned to his dreams.
"What's the use of my telling you what _I_ think, when these chaps wrote
things for the angels to read?" he growled, one evening. "Why don't you
write something like theirs?"
"I don't think you're treating me quite fairly," I said, speaking under
strong restraint.
"I've given you the story," he said, shortly, replunging into "Lara."
"But I want the details."
"The things I make up about that damned ship that you call a galley?
They're quite easy. You can just make 'em up yourself. Turn up the gas a
little, I want to go on reading."
I could have broken the gas globe over his head for his amazing stupidity.
I could indeed make up things for myself did I only know what Charlie did
not know that he knew. But since the doors were shut behind me I could
only wait his youthful pleasure and strive to keep him in good temper. One
minute's want of guard might spoil a priceless revelation; now and again
he would toss his books aside--he kept them in my rooms, for his mother
would have been shocked at the waste of good money had she seen them--and
launched into his sea dreams, Again I cursed all the poets of England. The
plastic mind of the bank-clerk had been overlaid, colored and distorted by
that which he had read, and the result as delivered was a confused tangle
of other voices most like the muttered song through a City telephone in
the busiest part of the day.
He talked of the galley--his own galley had he but known it--with
illustrations borrowed from the "Bride of Abydos." He pointed the
experiences of his hero with quotations from "The Corsair," and threw in
deep and desperate moral reflections from "Cain" and "Manfred," expecting
me to use them all. Only when the talk turned on Longfellow were the
jarring cross-currents dumb, and I knew that Charlie was speaking the
truth as he remembered it.
"What do you think of this?" I said one evening, as soon as I understood
the medium in which his memory worked best, and, before he could
expostulate, read him the whole of "The Saga of King Olaf!"
He listened open-mouthed, flushed, his hands drumming on the back of the
sofa where he lay, till I came to the Song of Einar Tamberskelver and the
verse:
"Einar then, the arrow taking
From the loosened string,
Answered: 'That was Norway breaking
'Neath thy hand, O King.'"
He gasped with pure delight of sound.
"That's better than Byron, a little," I ventured.
"Better? Why it's _true!_ How could he have known?"
I went back and repeated:
"What was that?' said Olaf, standing
On the quarter-deck,
'Something heard I like the stranding
Of a shattered wreck?'"
"How could he have known how the ships crash and the oars rip out and go
_z-zzp_ all along the line? Why only the other night.... But go back
please and read 'The Skerry of Shrieks' again."
"No, I'm tired. Let's talk. What happened the other night?"
"I had an awful nightmare about that galley of ours. I dreamed I was
drowned in a fight. You see we ran alongside another ship in harbor. The
water was dead still except where our oars whipped it up. You know where I
always sit in the galley?" He spoke haltingly at first, under a fine
English fear of being laughed at,
"No. That's news to me," I answered, meekly, my heart beginning to beat.
"On the fourth oar from the bow on the right side on the upper deck. There
were four of us at that oar, all chained. I remember watching the water
and trying to get my handcuffs off before the row began. Then we closed up
on the other ship, and all their fighting men jumped over our bulwarks,
and my bench broke and I was pinned down with the three other fellows on
top of me, and the big oar jammed across our backs."
"Well?" Charlie's eyes were alive and alight. He was looking at the wall
behind my chair.
"I don't know how we fought. The men were trampling all over my back, and
I lay low. Then our rowers on the left side--tied to their oars, you
know--began to yell and back water. I could hear the water sizzle, and we
spun round like a cockchafer and I knew, lying where I was, that there was
a galley coming up bow-on, to ram us on the left side. I could just lift
up my head and see her sail over the bulwarks. We wanted to meet her bow
to bow, but it was too late. We could only turn a little bit because the
galley on our right had hooked herself on to us and stopped our moving.
Then, by gum! there was a crash! Our left oars began to break as the other
galley, the moving one y'know, stuck her nose into them. Then the
lower-deck oars shot up through the deck planking, butt first, and one of
them jumped clean up into the air and came down again close to my head."
"How was that managed?"
"The moving galley's bow was plunking them back through their own
oar-holes, and I could hear the devil of a shindy in the decks below. Then
her nose caught us nearly in the middle, and we tilted sideways, and the
fellows in the right-hand galley unhitched their hooks and ropes, and
threw things on to our upper deck--arrows, and hot pitch or something that
stung, and we went up and up and up on the left side, and the right side
dipped, and I twisted my head round and saw the water stand still as it
topped the right bulwarks, and then it curled over and crashed down on the
whole lot of us on the right side, and I felt it hit my back, and I woke."
"One minute, Charlie. When the sea topped the bulwarks, what did it look
like?" I had my reasons for asking. A man of my acquaintance had once gone
down with a leaking ship in a still sea, and had seen the water-level
pause for an instant ere it fell on the deck.
"It looked just like a banjo-string drawn tight, and it seemed to stay
there for years," said Charlie.
Exactly! The other man had said: "It looked like a silver wire laid down
along the bulwarks, and I thought it was never going to break." He had
paid everything except the bare life for this little valueless piece of
knowledge, and I had traveled ten thousand weary miles to meet him and
take his knowledge at second hand. But Charlie, the bank-clerk on
twenty-five shillings a week, he who had never been out of sight of a
London omnibus, knew it all. It was no consolation to me that once in his
lives he had been forced to die for his gains. I also must have died
scores of times, but behind me, because I could have used my knowledge,
the doors were shut.
"And then?" I said, trying to put away the devil of envy.
"The funny thing was, though, in all the mess I didn't feel a bit
astonished or frightened. It seemed as if I'd been in a good many fights,
because I told my next man so when the row began. But that cad of an
overseer on my deck wouldn't unloose our chains and give us a chance. He
always said that we'd all be set free after a battle, but we never were;
we never were." Charlie shook his head mournfully.
"What a scoundrel!"
"I should say he was. He never gave us enough to eat, and sometimes we
were so thirsty that we used to drink salt-water. I can taste that
salt-water still."
"Now tell me something about the harbor where the fight was fought."
"I didn't dream about that. I know it was a harbor, though; because we
were tied up to a ring on a white wall and all the face of the stone under
water was covered with wood to prevent our ram getting chipped when the
tide made us rock."
"That's curious. Our hero commanded the galley, didn't he?"
"Didn't he just! He stood by the bows and shouted like a good 'un. He was
the man who killed the overseer."
"But you were all drowned together, Charlie, weren't you?"
"I can't make that fit quite," he said, with a puzzled look. "The galley
must have gone down with all hands, and yet I fancy that the hero went on
living afterward. Perhaps he climbed into the attacking ship. I wouldn't
see that, of course. I was dead, you know." He shivered slightly and
protested that he could remember no more.
I did not press him further, but to satisfy myself that he lay in
ignorance of the workings of his own mind, deliberately introduced him to
Mortimer Collins's "Transmigration," and gave him a sketch of the plot
before he opened the pages.
"What rot it all is!" he said, frankly, at the end of an hour. "I don't
understand his nonsense about the Red Planet Mars and the King, and the
rest of it. Chuck me the Longfellow again."
I handed him the book and wrote out as much as I could remember of his
description of the sea-fight, appealing to him from time to time for
confirmation of fact or detail. He would answer without raising his eyes
from the book, as assuredly as though all his knowledge lay before him on
the printed page. I spoke under the normal key of my voice that the
current might not be broken, and I know that he was not aware of what he
was saying, for his thoughts were out on the sea with Longfellow.
"Charlie," I asked, "when the rowers on the gallies mutinied how did they
kill their overseers?"
"Tore up the benches and brained 'em. That happened when a heavy sea was
running. An overseer on the lower deck slipped from the centre plank and
fell among the rowers. They choked him to death against the side of the
ship with their chained hands quite quietly, and it was too dark for the
other overseer to see what had happened. When he asked, he was pulled down
too and choked, and the lower deck fought their way up deck by deck, with
the pieces of the broken benches banging behind 'em. How they howled!"
"And what happened after that?"
"I don't know. The hero went away--red hair and red beard and all. That
was after he had captured our galley, I think."
The sound of my voice irritated him, and he motioned slightly with his
left hand as a man does when interruption jars.
"You never told me he was red-headed before, or that he captured your
galley," I said, after a discreet interval.
Charlie did not raise his eyes.
"He was as red as a red bear," said he, abstractedly. "He came from the
north; they said so in the galley when he looked for rowers--not slaves,
but free men. Afterward--years and years afterward--news came from another
ship, or else he came back"--
His lips moved in silence. He was rapturously retasting some poem before
him.
"Where had he been, then?" I was almost whispering that the sentence might
come gentle to whichever section of Charlie's brain was working on my
behalf.
"To the Beaches--the Long and Wonderful Beaches!" was the reply, after a
minute of silence.
"To Furdurstrandi?" I asked, tingling from head to foot.
"Yes, to Furdurstrandi," he pronounced the word in a new fashion. "And I
too saw"----The voice failed.
"Do you know what you have said?" I shouted, incautiously.
He lifted his eyes, fully roused now, "No!" he snapped. "I wish you'd let
a chap go on reading. Hark to this:
"'But Othere, the old sea captain,
He neither paused nor stirred
Till the king listened, and then
Once more took up his pen
And wrote down every word,
"'And to the King of the Saxons
In witness of the truth,
Raising his noble head,
He stretched his brown hand and said,
"Behold this walrus tooth."'
By Jove, what chaps those must have been, to go sailing all over the shop
never knowing where they'd fetch the land! Hah!"
"Charlie," I pleaded, "if you'll only be sensible for a minute or two I'll
make our hero in our tale every inch as good as Othere."
"Umph! Longfellow wrote that poem. I don't care about writing things any
more. I want to read." He was thoroughly out of tune now, and raging over
my own ill-luck, I left him.
Conceive yourself at the door of the world's treasure-house guarded by a
child--an idle irresponsible child playing knuckle-bones--on whose favor
depends the gift of the key, and you will imagine one half my torment.
Till that evening Charlie had spoken nothing that might not lie within the
experiences of a Greek galley-slave. But now, or there was no virtue in
books, he had talked of some desperate adventure of the Vikings, of
Thorfin Karlsefne's sailing to Wineland, which is America, in the ninth or
tenth century. The battle in the harbor he had seen; and his own death he
had described. But this was a much more startling plunge into the past.
Was it possible that he had skipped half a dozen lives and was then dimly
remembering some episode of a thousand years later? It was a maddening
jumble, and the worst of it was that Charlie Mears in his normal condition
was the last person in the world to clear it up. I could only wait and
watch, but I went to bed that night full of the wildest imaginings. There
was nothing that was not possible if Charlie's detestable memory only held
good.
I might rewrite the Saga of Thorfin Karlsefne as it had never been written
before, might tell the story of the first discovery of America, myself the
discoverer. But I was entirely at Charlie's mercy, and so long as there
was a three-and-six-penny Bohn volume within his reach Charlie would not
tell. I dared not curse him openly; I hardly dared jog his memory, for I
was dealing with the experiences of a thousand years ago, told through the
mouth of a boy of to-day; and a boy of to-day is affected by every change
of tone and gust of opinion, so that he lies even when he desires to speak
the truth.
I saw no more of him for nearly a week. When next I met him it was in
Gracechurch Street with a billhook chained to his waist. Business took him
over London Bridge and I accompanied him. He was very full of the
importance of that book and magnified it. As we passed over the Thames we
paused to look at a steamer unloading great slabs of white and brown
marble. A barge drifted under the steamer's stern and a lonely cow in that
barge bellowed. Charlie's face changed from the face of the bank-clerk to
that of an unknown and--though he would not have believed this--a much
shrewder man. He flung out his arm across the parapet of the bridge and
laughing very loudly, said:
"When they heard _our_ bulls bellow the Skroelings ran away!"
I waited only for an instant, but the barge and the cow had disappeared
under the bows of the steamer before I answered.
"Charlie, what do you suppose are Skroelings?"
"Never heard of 'em before. They sound like a new kind of seagull. What a
chap you are for asking questions!" he replied. "I have to go to the
cashier of the Omnibus Company yonder. Will you wait for me and we can
lunch somewhere together? I've a notion for a poem."
"No, thanks. I'm off. You're sure you know nothing about Skroelings?"
"Not unless he's been entered for the Liverpool Handicap." He nodded and
disappeared in the crowd.
Now it is written in the Saga of Eric the Red or that of Thorfin
Karlsefne, that nine hundred years ago when Karlsefne's galleys came to
Leif's booths, which Leif had erected in the unknown land called Markland,
which may or may not have been Rhode Island, the Skroelings--and the Lord
He knows who these may or may not have been--came to trade with the
Vikings, and ran away because they were frightened at the bellowing of the
cattle which Thorfin had brought with him in the ships. But what in the
world could a Greek slave know of that affair? I wandered up and down
among the streets trying to unravel the mystery, and the more I considered
it, the more baffling it grew. One thing only seemed certain, and that
certainty took away my breath for the moment. If I came to full knowledge
of anything at all it would not be one life of the soul in Charlie Mears's
body, but half a dozen--half a dozen several and separate existences spent
on blue water in the morning of the world!
Then I walked round the situation.
Obviously if I used my knowledge I should stand alone and unapproachable
until all men were as wise as myself. That would be something, but manlike
I was ungrateful. It seemed bitterly unfair that Charlie's memory should
fail me when I needed it most. Great Powers above--I looked up at them
through the fog smoke--did the Lords of Life and Death know what this
meant to me? Nothing less than eternal fame of the best kind, that comes
from One, and is shared by one alone. I would be content--remembering
Clive, I stood astounded at my own moderation,--with the mere right to
tell one story, to work out one little contribution to the light
literature of the day. If Charlie were permitted full recollection for one
hour--for sixty short minutes--of existences that had extended over a
thousand years--I would forego all profit and honor from all that I should
make of his speech. I would take no share in the commotion that would
follow throughout the particular corner of the earth that calls itself
"the world." The thing should be put forth anonymously. Nay, I would make
other men believe that they had written it. They would hire bull-hided
self-advertising Englishmen to bellow it abroad. Preachers would found a
fresh conduct of life upon it, swearing that it was new and that they had
lifted the fear of death from all mankind. Every Orientalist in Europe
would patronize it discursively with Sanskrit and Pali texts. Terrible
women would invent unclean variants of the men's belief for the elevation
of their sisters. Churches and religions would war over it. Between the
hailing and re-starting of an omnibus I foresaw the scuffles that would
arise among half a dozen denominations all professing "the doctrine of the
True Metempsychosis as applied to the world and the New Era"; and saw,
too, the respectable English newspapers shying, like frightened kine, over
the beautiful simplicity of the tale. The mind leaped forward a
hundred--two hundred--a thousand years. I saw with sorrow that men would
mutilate and garble the story; that rival creeds would turn it upside down
till, at last, the western world which clings to the dread of death more
closely than the hope of life, would set it aside as an interesting
superstition and stampede after some faith so long forgotten that it
seemed altogether new. Upon this I changed the terms of the bargain that I
would make with the Lords of Life and Death. Only let me know, let me
write, the story with sure knowledge that I wrote the truth, and I would
burn the manuscript as a solemn sacrifice. Five minutes after the last
line was written I would destroy it all. But I must be allowed to write it
with absolute certainty.
There was no answer. The flaming colors of an Aquarium poster caught my
eye and I wondered whether it would be wise or prudent to lure Charlie
into the hands of the professional mesmerist, and whether, if he were
under his power, he would speak of his past lives. If he did, and if
people believed him ... but Charlie would be frightened and flustered, or
made conceited by the interviews. In either case he would begin to lie,
through fear or vanity. He was safest in my own hands,
"They are very funny fools, your English," said a voice at my elbow, and
turning round I recognized a casual acquaintance, a young Bengali law
student, called Grish Chunder, whose father had sent him to England to
become civilized. The old man was a retired native official, and on an
income of five pounds a month contrived to allow his son two hundred
pounds a year, and the run of his teeth in a city where he could pretend
to be the cadet of a royal house, and tell stories of the brutal Indian
bureaucrats who ground the faces of the poor.
Grish Chunder was a young, fat, full-bodied Bengali dressed with
scrupulous care in frock coat, tall hat, light trousers and tan gloves.
But I had known him in the days when the brutal Indian Government paid for
his university education, and he contributed cheap sedition to _Sachi
Durpan_, and intrigued with the wives of his schoolmates.
"That is very funny and very foolish," he said, nodding at the poster. "I
am going down to the Northbrook Club. Will you come too?"
I walked with him for some time. "You are not well," he said. "What is
there in your mind? You do not talk."
"Grish Chunder, you've been too well educated to believe in a God, haven't
you?"
"Oah, yes, _here!_ But when I go home I must conciliate popular
superstition, and make ceremonies of purification, and my women will
anoint idols."
"And hang up _tulsi_ and feast the _purohit_, and take you back into caste
again and make a good _khuttri_ of you again, you advanced social
Free-thinker. And you'll eat _desi_ food, and like it all, from the smell
in the courtyard to the mustard oil over you."
"I shall very much like it," said Grish Chunder, unguardedly, "Once a
Hindu--always a Hindu. But I like to know what the English think they
know."
"I'll tell you something that one Englishman knows. It's an old tale to
you."
I began to tell the story of Charlie in English, but Grish Chunder put a
question in the vernacular, and the history went forward naturally in the
tongue best suited for its telling. After all it could never have been
told in English. Grish Chunder heard me, nodding from time to time, and
then came up to my rooms where I finished the tale.
"_Beshak,_" he said, philosophically. "_Lekin darwaza band hai_. (Without
doubt, but the door is shut.) I have heard of this remembering of previous
existences among my people. It is of course an old tale with us, but, to
happen to an Englishman--a cow-fed _Malechh_--an outcast. By Jove, that is
most peculiar!"
"Outcast yourself, Grish Chunder! You eat cow-beef every day. Let's think
the thing over. The boy remembers his incarnations."
"Does he know that?" said Grish Chunder, quietly, swinging his legs as he
sat on my table. He was speaking in English now.
"He does not know anything. Would I speak to you if he did? Go on!"
"There is no going on at all. If you tell that to your friends they will
say you are mad and put it in the papers. Suppose, now, you prosecute for
libel."
"Let's leave that out of the question entirely. Is there any chance of his
being made to speak?"
"There is a chance. Oah, yess! But _if_ he spoke it would mean that all
this world would end now--_instanto_--fall down on your head. These things
are not allowed, you know. As I said, the door is shut."
"Not a ghost of a chance?"
"How can there be? You are a Christian, and it is forbidden to eat, in
your books, of the Tree of Life, or else you would never die. How shall
you all fear death if you all know what your friend does not know that he
knows? I am afraid to be kicked, but I am not afraid to die, because I
know what I know. You are not afraid to be kicked, but you are afraid to
die. If you were not, by God! you English would be all over the shop in an
hour, upsetting the balances of power, and making commotions. It would not
be good. But no fear. He will remember a little and a little less, and he
will call it dreams. Then he will forget altogether. When I passed my
First Arts Examination in Calcutta that was all in the cram-book on
Wordsworth. Trailing clouds of glory, you know."
"This seems to be an exception to the rule."
"There are no exceptions to rules. Some are not so hard-looking as others,
but they are all the same when you touch. If this friend of yours said
so-and-so and so-and-so, indicating that he remembered all his lost lives,
or one piece of a lost life, he would not be in the bank another hour. He
would be what you called sack because he was mad, and they would send him
to an asylum for lunatics. You can see that, my friend."
"Of course I can, but I wasn't thinking of him. His name need never appear
in the story,"
"Ah! I see. That story will never be written. You can try,"
"I am going to."
"For your own credit and for the sake of money, _of_ course?"
"No. For the sake of writing the story. On my honor that will be all."
"Even then there is no chance. You cannot play with the Gods. It is a very
pretty story now. As they say, Let it go on that--I mean at that. Be
quick; he will not last long."
"How do you mean?"
"What I say. He has never, so far, thought about a woman."
"Hasn't he, though!" I remembered some of Charlie's confidences.
"I mean no woman has thought about him. When that comes;
_bus_--_hogya_--all up! I know. There are millions of women here.
Housemaids, for instance."
I winced at the thought of my story being ruined by a housemaid. And yet
nothing was more probable.
Grish Chunder grinned.
"Yes--also pretty girls--cousins of his house, and perhaps _not_ of his
house. One kiss that he gives back again and remembers will cure all this
nonsense, or else"--
"Or else what? Remember he does not know that he knows."
"I know that. Or else, if nothing happens he will become immersed in the
trade and the financial speculations like the rest. It must be so. You can
see that it must be so. But the woman will come first, _I_ think."
There was a rap at the door, and Charlie charged in impetuously. He had
been released from office, and by the look in his eyes I could see that he
had come over for a long talk; most probably with poems in his pockets.
Charlie's poems were very wearying, but sometimes they led him to talk
about the galley.
Grish Chunder looked at him keenly for a minute.
"I beg your pardon," Charlie said, uneasily; "I didn't know you had any
one with you."
"I am going," said Grish Chunder,
He drew me into the lobby as he departed.
"That is your man," he said, quickly. "I tell you he will never speak all
you wish. That is rot--bosh. But he would be most good to make to see
things. Suppose now we pretend that it was only play"--I had never seen
Grish Chunder so excited--"and pour the ink-pool into his hand. Eh, what
do you think? I tell you that he could see _anything_ that a man could
see. Let me get the ink and the camphor. He is a seer and he will tell us
very many things."
"He may be all you say, but I'm not going to trust him to your gods and
devils."
"It will not hurt him. He will only feel a little stupid and dull when he
wakes up. You have seen boys look into the ink-pool before."
"That is the reason why I am not going to see it any more. You'd better
go, Grish Chunder."
He went, declaring far down the staircase that it was throwing away my
only chance of looking into the future.
This left me unmoved, for I was concerned for the past, and no peering of
hypnotized boys into mirrors and ink-pools would help me to that. But I
recognized Grish Chunder's point of view and sympathized with it.
"What a big black brute that was!" said Charlie, when I returned to him.
"Well, look here, I've just done a poem; did it instead of playing
dominoes after lunch. May I read it?"
"Let me read it to myself."
"Then you miss the proper expression. Besides, you always make my things
sound as if the rhymes were all wrong."
"Read it aloud, then. You're like the rest of 'em."
Charlie mouthed me his poem, and it was not much worse than the average of
his verses. He had been reading his books faithfully, but he was not
pleased when I told him that I preferred my Longfellow undiluted with
Charlie.
Then we began to go through the MS. line by line; Charlie parrying every
objection and correction with:
"Yes, that may be better, but you don't catch what I'm driving at."
Charles was, in one way at least, very like one kind of poet.
There was a pencil scrawl at the back of the paper and "What's that?" I
said.
"Oh that's not poetry at all. It's some rot I wrote last night before I
went to bed and it was too much bother to hunt for rhymes; so I made it a
sort of blank verse instead."
Here is Charlie's "blank verse":
"We pulled for you when the wind was against us and the sails were low.
_Will you never let us go?_
We ate bread and onions when you took towns or ran aboard quickly when
you were beaten back by the foe,
The captains walked up and down the deck in fair weather singing songs,
but we were below,
We fainted with our chins on the oars and you did not see that we were
idle for we still swung to and fro.
_Will you never let us go?_
The salt made the oar bandies like sharkskin; our knees were cut to the
bone with salt cracks; our hair was stuck to our foreheads; and our lips
were cut to our gums and you whipped us because we could not row,
_Will you never let us go?_
But in a little time we shall run out of the portholes as the water runs
along the oarblade, and though you tell the others to row after us you
will never catch us till you catch the oar-thresh and tie up the winds in
the belly of the sail. Aho!
_Will you never let us go?_"
"H'm. What's oar-thresh, Charlie?"
"The water washed up by the oars. That's the sort of song they might sing
in the galley, y'know. Aren't you ever going to finish that story and give
me some of the profits?"
"It depends on yourself. If you had only told me more about your hero in
the first instance it might have been finished by now. You're so hazy in
your notions."
"I only want to give you the general notion of it--the knocking about from
place to place and the fighting and all that. Can't you fill in the rest
yourself? Make the hero save a girl on a pirate-galley and marry her or do
something."
"You're a really helpful collaborator. I suppose the hero went through
some few adventures before he married."
"Well then, make him a very artful card--a low sort of man--a sort of
political man who went about making treaties and breaking them--a
black-haired chap who hid behind the mast when the fighting began."
"But you said the other day that he was red-haired."
"I couldn't have. Make him black-haired of course. You've no imagination."
Seeing that I had just discovered the entire principles upon which the
half-memory falsely called imagination is based, I felt entitled to laugh,
but forbore, for the sake of the tale.
"You're right _You're_ the man with imagination. A black-haired chap in a
decked ship," I said.
"No, an open ship--like a big boat."
This was maddening.
"Your ship has been built and designed, closed and decked in; you said so
yourself," I protested.
"No, no, not that ship. That was open, or half decked because--By Jove
you're right You made me think of the hero as a red-haired chap. Of course
if he were red, the ship would be an open one with painted sails,"
Surely, I thought, he would remember now that he had served in two galleys
at least--in a three-decked Greek one under the black-haired "political
man," and again in a Viking's open sea-serpent under the man "red as a red
bear" who went to Markland. The devil prompted me to speak.
"Why, 'of course,' Charlie?" said I.
"I don't know. Are you making fun of me?"
The current was broken for the time being. I took up a notebook and
pretended to make many entries in it.
"It's a pleasure to work with an imaginative chap like yourself," I said,
after a pause. "The way that you've brought out the character of the hero
is simply wonderful."
"Do you think so?" he answered, with a pleased flush. "I often tell myself
that there's more in me than my mo--than people think."
"There's an enormous amount in you."
"Then, won't you let me send an essay on The Ways of Bank Clerks to
_Tit-Bits_, and get the guinea prize?"
"That wasn't exactly what I meant, old fellow; perhaps it would be better
to wait a little and go ahead with the galley-story."
"Ah, but I sha'n't get the credit of that. _Tit-Bits_ would publish my
name and address if I win. What are you grinning at? They _would_."
"I know it. Suppose you go for a walk. I want to look through my notes
about our story."
Now this reprehensible youth who left me, a little hurt and put back,
might for aught he or I knew have been one of the crew of the _Argo_--had
been certainly slave or comrade to Thorfin Karlsefne. Therefore he was
deeply interested in guinea competitions. Remembering what Grish Chunder
had said I laughed aloud. The Lords of Life and Death would never allow
Charlie Mears to speak with full knowledge of his pasts, and I must even
piece out what he had told me with my own poor inventions while Charlie
wrote of the ways of bank clerks.
I got together and placed on one file all my notes; and the net result was
not cheering. I read them a second time. There was nothing that might not
have been compiled at secondhand from other people's books--except,
perhaps, the story of the fight in the harbor. The adventures of a Viking
had been written many times before; the history of a Greek galley-slave
was no new thing, and though I wrote both, who could challenge or confirm
the accuracy of my details? I might as well tell a tale of two thousand
years hence. The Lords of Life and Death were as cunning as Grish Chunder
had hinted. They would allow nothing to escape that might trouble or make
easy the minds of men. Though I was convinced of this, yet I could not
leave the tale alone. Exaltation followed reaction, not once, but twenty
times in the next few weeks. My moods varied with the March sunlight and
flying clouds. By night or in the beauty of a spring morning I perceived
that I could write that tale and shift continents thereby. In the wet,
windy afternoons, I saw that the tale might indeed be written, but would
be nothing more than a faked, false-varnished, sham-rusted piece of
Wardour Street work at the end. Then I blessed Charlie in many
ways--though it was no fault of his. He seemed to be busy with prize
competitions, and I saw less and less of him as the weeks went by and the
earth cracked and grew ripe to spring, and the buds swelled in their
sheaths. He did not care to read or talk of what he had read, and there
was a new ring of self-assertion in his voice. I hardly cared to remind
him of the galley when we met; but Charlie alluded to it on every
occasion, always as a story from which money was to be made.
"I think I deserve twenty-five per cent., don't I, at least," he said,
with beautiful frankness. "I supplied all the ideas, didn't I?"
This greediness for silver was a new side in his nature. I assumed that it
had been developed in the City, where Charlie was picking up the curious
nasal drawl of the underbred City man.
"When the thing's done we'll talk about it. I can't make anything of it at
present. Red-haired or black-haired hero are equally difficult."
He was sitting by the fire staring at the red coals. "I can't understand
what you find so difficult. It's all as clear as mud to me," he replied. A
jet of gas puffed out between the bars, took light and whistled softly.
"Suppose we take the red-haired hero's adventures first, from the time
that he came south to my galley and captured it and sailed to the
Beaches."
I knew better now than to interrupt Charlie. I was out of reach of pen and
paper, and dared not move to get them lest I should break the current. The
gas-jet puffed and whinnied, Charlie's voice dropped almost to a whisper,
and he told a tale of the sailing of an open galley to Furdurstrandi, of
sunsets on the open sea, seen under the curve of the one sail evening
after evening when the galley's beak was notched into the centre of the
sinking disc, and "we sailed by that for we had no other guide," quoth
Charlie. He spoke of a landing on an island and explorations in its woods,
where the crew killed three men whom they found asleep under the pines.
Their ghosts, Charlie said, followed the galley, swimming and choking in
the water, and the crew cast lots and threw one of their number overboard
as a sacrifice to the strange gods whom they had offended. Then they ate
sea-weed when their provisions failed, and their legs swelled, and their
leader, the red-haired man, killed two rowers who mutinied, and after a
year spent among the woods they set sail for their own country, and a wind
that never failed carried them back so safely that they all slept at
night. This, and much more Charlie told. Sometimes the voice fell so low
that I could not catch the words, though every nerve was on the strain, He
spoke of their leader, the red-haired man, as a pagan speaks of his God;
for it was he who cheered them and slew them impartially as he thought
best for their needs; and it was he who steered them for three days among
floating ice, each floe crowded with strange beasts that "tried to sail
with us," said Charlie, "and we beat them back with the handles of the
oars."
The gas-jet went out, a burned coal gave way, and the fire settled down
with a tiny crash to the bottom of the grate. Charlie ceased speaking, and
I said no word,
"By Jove!" he said, at last, shaking his head. "I've been staring at the
fire till I'm dizzy. What was I going to say?"
"Something about the galley."
"I remember now. It's 25 per cent. of the profits, isn't it?"
"It's anything you like when I've done the tale."
"I wanted to be sure of that. I must go now. I've--I've an appointment."
And he left me.
Had my eyes not been held I might have known that that broken muttering
over the fire was the swan-song of Charlie Mears. But I thought it the
prelude to fuller revelation. At last and at last I should cheat the Lords
of Life and Death!
When next Charlie came to me I received him with rapture. He was nervous
and embarrassed, but his eyes were very full of light, and his lips a
little parted.
"I've done a poem," he said; and then, quickly: "it's the best I've ever
done. Read it." He thrust it into my hand and retreated to the window.
I groaned inwardly. It would be the work of half an hour to
criticise--that is to say praise--the poem sufficiently to please Charlie.
Then I had good reason to groan, for Charlie, discarding his favorite
centipede metres, had launched into shorter and choppier verse, and verse
with a motive at the back of it. This is what I read:
"The day Is most fair, the cheery wind
Halloos behind the hill,
Where he bends the wood as seemeth good,
And the sapling to his will!
Riot O wind; there is that in my blood
That would not have thee still!
"She gave me herself, O Earth, O Sky;
Grey sea, she is mine alone!
Let the sullen boulders hear my cry,
And rejoice tho' they be but stone!
"Mine! I have won her O good brown earth,
Make merry! 'Tis hard on Spring;
Make merry; my love is doubly worth
All worship your fields can bring!
Let the hind that tills you feel my mirth
At the early harrowing,"
"Yes, it's the early harrowing, past a doubt," I said, with a dread at my
heart, Charlie smiled, but did not answer.
"Red cloud of the sunset, tell it abroad;
I am victor. Greet me O Sun,
Dominant master and absolute lord
Over the soul of one!"
"Well?" said Charlie, looking over my shoulder.
I thought it far from well, and very evil indeed, when he silently laid a
photograph on the paper--the photograph of a girl with a curly head, and a
foolish slack mouth.
"Isn't it--isn't it wonderful?" he whispered, pink to the tips of his
ears, wrapped in the rosy mystery of first love. "I didn't know; I didn't
think--it came like a thunderclap."
"Yes. It comes like a thunderclap. Are you very happy, Charlie?"
"My God--she--she loves me!" He sat down repeating the last words to
himself. I looked at the hairless face, the narrow shoulders already bowed
by desk-work, and wondered when, where, and how he had loved in his past
lives.
"What will your mother say?" I asked, cheerfully.
"I don't care a damn what she says."
At twenty the things for which one does not care a damn should, properly,
be many, but one must not include mothers in the list. I told him this
gently; and he described Her, even as Adam must have described to the
newly named beasts the glory and tenderness and beauty of Eve.
Incidentally I learned that She was a tobacconist's assistant with a
weakness for pretty dress, and had told him four or five times already
that She had never been kissed by a man before.
Charlie spoke on and on, and on; while I, separated from him by thousands
of years, was considering the beginnings of things. Now I understood why
the Lords of Life and Death shut the doors so carefully behind us. It is
that we may not remember our first wooings. Were it not so, our world
would be without inhabitants in a hundred years.
"Now, about that galley-story," I said, still more cheerfully, in a pause
in the rush of the speech.
Charlie looked up as though he had been hit. "The galley--what galley?
Good heavens, don't joke, man! This is serious! You don't know how serious
it is!"
Grish Chunder was right, Charlie had tasted the love of woman that kills
remembrance, and the finest story in the world would never be written.
WITH THE MAIN GUARD
Der jungere Uhlanen
Sit round mit open mouth
While Breitmann tell dem stories
Of fightin' in the South;
Und gif dem moral lessons,
How before der battle pops,
Take a little prayer to Himmel
Und a goot long drink of Schnapps.
_Hans Breitmann's Ballads_.
"Mary, Mother av Mercy, fwhat the divil possist us to take an' kepe this
melancolius counthry? Answer me that, sorr."
It was Mulvaney who was speaking. The time was one o'clock of a stifling
June night, and the place was the main gate of Fort Amara, most desolate
and least desirable of all fortresses in India. What I was doing there at
that hour is a question which only concerns M'Grath the Sergeant of the
Guard, and the men on the gate.
"Slape," said Mulvaney, "is a shuparfluous necessity. This gyard'll shtay
lively till relieved." He himself was stripped to the waist; Learoyd on
the next bedstead was dripping from the skinful of water which Ortheris,
clad only in white trousers, had just sluiced over his shoulders; and a
fourth private was muttering uneasily as he dozed open-mouthed in the
glare of the great guard-lantern. The heat under the bricked archway was
terrifying.
"The worrst night that iver I remimber. Eyah! Is all Hell loose this
tide?" said Mulvaney. A puff of burning wind lashed through the
wicket-gate like a wave of the sea, and Ortheris swore.
"Are ye more heasy, Jock?" he said to Learoyd. "Put yer 'ead between your
legs. It'll go orf in a minute."
"Ah don't care. Ah would not care, but ma heart is plaayin' tivvy-tivvy on
ma ribs. Let me die! Oh, leave me die!" groaned the huge Yorkshireman, who
was feeling the heat acutely, being of fleshly build.
The sleeper under the lantern roused for a moment and raised himself on
his elbow,--"Die and be damned then!" he said. "_I_'m damned and I can't
die!"
"Who's that?" I whispered, for the voice was new to me.
"Gentleman born," said Mulvaney; "Corp'ril wan year, Sargint nex'. Red-hot
on his C'mission, but dhrinks like a fish. He'll be gone before the cowld
weather's here. So!"
He slipped his boot, and with the naked toe just touched the trigger of
his Martini. Ortheris misunderstood the movement, and the next instant the
Irishman's rifle was dashed aside, while Ortheris stood before him, his
eyes blazing with reproof.
"You!" said Ortheris. "My Gawd, _you!_ If it was you, wot would _we_ do?"
"Kape quiet, little man," said Mulvaney, putting him aside, but very
gently; "'tis not me, nor will ut be me whoile Dina Shadd's here. I was
but showin' something."
Learoyd, bowed on his bedstead, groaned, and the gentleman-ranker sighed
in his sleep. Ortheris took Mulvaney's tendered pouch, and we three smoked
gravely for a space while the dust-devils danced on the glacis and scoured
the red-hot plain.
"Pop?" said Ortheris, wiping his forehead.
"Don't tantalize wid talkin' av dhrink, or I'll shtuff you into your own
breech-block an'--fire you off!" grunted Mulvaney.
Ortheris chuckled, and from a niche in the veranda produced six bottles of
ginger ale.
"Where did ye get ut, ye Machiavel?" said Mulvaney. "'Tis no bazar pop."
"'Ow do _Hi_ know wot the Orf'cers drink?" answered Ortheris. "Arst the
mess-man."
"Ye'll have a Disthrict Coort-martial settin' on ye yet, me son," said
Mulvaney, "but"--he opened a bottle--"I will not report ye this time.
Fwhat's in the mess-kid is mint for the belly, as they say, 'specially
whin that mate is dhrink, Here's luck! A bloody war or a--no, we've got
the sickly season. War, thin!"--he waved the innocent "pop" to the four
quarters of Heaven. "Bloody war! North, East, South, an' West! Jock, ye
quakin' hayrick, come an' dhrink."
But Learoyd, half mad with the fear of death presaged in the swelling
veins of his neck, was pegging his Maker to strike him dead, and fighting
for more air between his prayers. A second time Ortheris drenched the
quivering body with water, and the giant revived.
"An' Ah divn't see thot a mon is i' fettle for gooin' on to live; an' Ah
divn't see thot there is owt for t' livin' for. Hear now, lads! Ah'm
tired--tired. There's nobbut watter i' ma bones, Let me die!"
The hollow of the arch gave back Learoyd's broken whisper in a bass boom.
Mulvaney looked at me hopelessly, but I remembered how the madness of
despair had once fallen upon Ortheris, that weary, weary afternoon in the
banks of the Khemi River, and how it had been exorcised by the skilful
magician Mulvaney.
"Talk, Terence!" I said, "or we shall have Learoyd slinging loose, and
he'll be worse than Ortheris was. Talk! He'll answer to your voice."
Almost before Ortheris had deftly thrown all the rifles of the Guard on
Mulvaney's bedstead, the Irishman's voice was uplifted as that of one in
the middle of a story, and, turning to me, he said--
"In barricks or out of it, as _you_ say, sorr, an Oirish rig'mint is the
divil an' more. 'Tis only fit for a young man wid eddicated fistesses. Oh
the crame av disruption is an Oirish rig'mint, an' rippin', tearin',
ragin' scattherers in the field av war! My first rig'mint was
Oirish--Faynians an' rebils to the heart av their marrow was they, an'
_so_ they fought for the Widdy betther than most, bein' contrairy--Oirish.
They was the Black Tyrone. You've heard av thim, sorr?"
Heard of them! I knew the Black Tyrone for the choicest collection of
unmitigated blackguards, dog-stealers, robbers of hen-roosts, assaulters
of innocent citizens, and recklessly daring heroes in the Army List. Half
Europe and half Asia has had cause to know the Black Tyrone--good luck be
with their tattered Colors as Glory has ever been!
"They _was_ hot pickils an' ginger! I cut a man's head tu deep wid my belt
in the days av my youth, an', afther some circumstances which I will
oblitherate, I came to the Ould Rig'mint, bearin' the character av a man
wid hands an' feet. But, as I was goin' to tell you, I fell acrost the
Black Tyrone agin wan day whin we wanted thim powerful bad, Orth'ris, me
son, fwhat was the name av that place where they sint wan comp'ny av us
an' wan av the Tyrone roun' a hill an' down again, all for to tache the
Paythans something they'd niver learned before? Afther Ghuzni 'twas."
"Don't know what the bloomin' Paythans called it. We call it Silver's
Theayter. You know that, sure!"
"Silver's Theatre--so 'twas, A gut betune two hills, as black as a bucket,
an' as thin as a girl's waist. There was over-many Paythans for our
convaynience in the gut, an' begad they called thimselves a Reserve--bein'
impident by natur! Our Scotchies an' lashins av Gurkys was poundin' into
some Paythan rig'mints, I think 'twas. Scotchies an' Gurkys are twins
bekaze they're so onlike, an' they get dhrunk together whin God plazes. As
I was sayin', they sint wan comp'ny av the Ould an wan av the Tyrone to
double up the hill an' clane out the Paythan Reserve. Orf'cers was scarce
in thim days, fwhat with dysintry an' not takin' care av thimselves, an'
we was sint out wid only wan orf'cer for the comp'ny; but he was a Man
that had his feet beneath him, an' all his teeth in their sockuts."
"Who was he?" I asked,
"Captain O'Neil--Old Crook--Cruikna-bulleen--him that I tould ye that tale
av whin he was in Burma.[1] Hah! He was a Man. The Tyrone tuk a little
orf'cer bhoy, but divil a bit was he in command, as I'll dimonstrate
presintly. We an' they came over the brow av the hill, wan on each side av
the gut, an' there was that ondacint Reserve waitin' down below like rats
in a pit.
[Footnote 1:
Now first of the foemen of Boh Da Thone
Was Captain O'Neil of the Black Tyrone.
_The Ballad of Boh Da Thone. _]
"'Howld on, men,' sez Crook, who tuk a mother's care av us always. 'Rowl
some rocks on thim by way av visitin'-kyards.' We hadn't rowled more than
twinty bowlders, an' the Paythans was beginnin' to swear tremenjus, whin
the little orf'cer bhoy av the Tyrone shqueaks out acrost the
valley:--'Fwhat the devil an' all are you doin', shpoilin' the fun for my
men? Do ye not see they'll stand?'
"'Faith, that's a rare pluckt wan!' sez Crook. 'Niver mind the rocks, men.
Come along down an' take tay wid thim!'
"'There's damned little sugar in ut!' sez my rear-rank man; but Crook
heard.
"'Have ye not all got spoons?' he sez, laughin', an' down we wint as fast
as we cud. Learoyd bein' sick at the Base, he, av coorse, was not there."
"Thot's a lie!" said Learoyd, dragging his bedstead nearer. "Ah gotten
_thot_ theer, an' you knaw it, Mulvaney." He threw up his arms, and from
the right arm-pit ran, diagonally through the fell of his chest, a thin
white line terminating near the fourth left rib.
"My mind's goin'," said Mulvaney, the unabashed. "Ye were there. Fwhat I
was thinkin' of! Twas another man, av coorse. Well, you'll remimber thin,
Jock, how we an' the Tyrone met wid a bang at the bottom an' got jammed
past all movin' among the Paythans."
"Ow! It _was_ a tight 'ole. I was squeezed till I thought I'd bloomin'
well bust," said Ortheris, rubbing his stomach meditatively,
"'Twas no place for a little man, but _wan_ little man"--Mulvaney put his
hand on Ortheris's shoulder--"saved the life av me. There we shtuck, for
divil a bit did the Paythans flinch, an' divil a bit dare we: our business
bein' to clear 'em out. An' the most exthryordinar' thing av all was that
we an' they just rushed into each other's arrums, an' there was no firing
for a long time. Nothin' but knife an' bay'nit when we cud get our hands
free: an' that was not often. We was breast-on to thim, an' the Tyrone was
yelpin' behind av us in a way I didn't see the lean av at first But I knew
later, an' so did the Paythans.
"'Knee to knee!' sings out Crook, wid a laugh whin the rush av our comin'
into the gut shtopped, an' he was huggin' a hairy great Paythan, neither
bein' able to do anything to the other, tho' both was wishful.
"'Breast to breast!' he sez, as the Tyrone was pushin' us forward closer
an' closer.
"'An' hand over back!' sez a Sargint that was behin'. I saw a sword lick
out past Crook's ear, an' the Paythan was tuk in the apple av his throat
like a pig at Dromeen fair.
"'Thank ye, Brother Inner Guard,' sez Crook, cool as a cucumber widout
salt. 'I wanted that room.' An' he wint forward by the thickness av a
man's body, havin' turned the Paythan undher him. The man bit the heel off
Crook's boot in his death-bite.
"'Push, men!' sez Crook. 'Push, ye paper-backed beggars!' he sez. 'Am I to
pull ye through?' So we pushed, an' we kicked, an' we swung, an' we swore,
an' the grass bein' slippery, our heels wouldn't bite, an' God help the
front-rank man that wint down that day!"
"'Ave you ever bin in the Pit hentrance o' the Vic. on a thick night?"
interrupted Ortheris. "It was worse nor that, for they was goin' one way
an' we wouldn't 'ave it. Leastaways, I 'adn't much to say."
"Faith, me son, ye said ut, thin. I kep' the little man betune my knees as
long as I cud, but he was pokin' roun' wid his bay'nit, blindin' an'
stiffin' feroshus. The devil of a man is Orth'ris in a ruction--aren't
ye?" said Mulvaney.
"Don't make game!" said the Cockney. "I knowed I wasn't no good then, but
I gev 'em compot from the lef' flank when we opened out. No!" he said,
bringing down his hand with a thump on the bedstead, "a bay'nit ain't no
good to a little man--might as well 'ave a bloomin' fishin'-rod! I 'ate a
clawin', maulin' mess, but gimme a breech that's wore out a bit, an'
hamminition one year in store, to let the powder kiss the bullet, an' put
me somewheres where I ain't trod on by 'ulkin swine like you, an' s'elp me
Gawd, I could bowl you over five times outer seven at height 'undred.
Would yer try, you lumberin' Hirishman."
"No, ye wasp, I've seen ye do ut. I say there's nothin' better than the
bay'nit, wid a long reach, a double twist av ye can, an' a slow recover."
"Dom the bay'nit," said Learoyd, who had been listening intently, "Look
a-here!" He picked up a rifle an inch below the foresight with an
underhand action, and used it exactly as a man would use a dagger.
"Sitha," said he, softly, "thot's better than owt, for a mon can bash t'
faace wi' thot, an', if he divn't, he can breeak t' forearm o' t' gaard,
'Tis not i' t' books, though. Gie me t' butt"
"Each does ut his own way, like makin' love," said Mulvaney, quietly; "the
butt or the bay'nit or the bullet accordin' to the natur' av the man.
Well, as I was sayin', we shtuck there breathin' in each other's faces and
swearin' powerful; Orth'ris cursin' the mother that bore him bekaze he was
not three inches taller.
"Prisintly he sez:--'Duck, ye lump, an' I can get at a man over your
shouldher!'
"'You'll blow me head off,' I sez, throwin' my arm clear; 'go through
under my arm-pit, ye bloodthirsty little scutt,' sez I, 'but don't shtick
me or I'll wring your ears round.'
"Fwhat was ut ye gave the Paythan man for-ninst me, him that cut at me
whin I cudn't move hand or foot? Hot or cowld was ut?"
"Cold," said Ortheris, "up an' under the rib-jint. 'E come down flat. Best
for you 'e did."
"Thrue, my son! This jam thing that I'm talkin' about lasted for five
minutes good, an' thin we got our arms clear an' wint in. I misremimber
exactly fwhat I did, but I didn't want Dinah to be a widdy at the Depot.
Thin, after some promishkuous hackin' we shtuck again, an' the Tyrone
behin' was callin' us dogs an' cowards an' all manner av names; we barrin'
their way.
"'Fwhat ails the Tyrone?' thinks I; 'they've the makin's av a most
convanient fight here.'
"A man behind me sez beseechful an' in a whisper:--'Let me get at thim!
For the Love av Mary give me room beside ye, ye tall man!"
"'An' who are you that's so anxious to be kilt?' sez I, widout turnin' my
head, for the long knives was dancin' in front like the sun on Donegal Bay
whin ut's rough.
"'We've seen our dead,' he sez, squeezin' into me; 'our dead that was men
two days gone! An' me that was his cousin by blood could not bring Tim
Coulan off! Let me get on,' he sez, 'let me get to thim or I'll run ye
through the back!'
"'My troth,' thinks I, 'if the Tyrone have seen their dead, God help the
Paythans this day!' An' thin I knew why the Oirish was ragin' behind us as
they was.
"I gave room to the man, an' he ran forward wid the Haymaker's Lift on his
bay'nit an' swung a Paythan clear off his feet by the belly-band av the
brute, an' the iron bruk at the lockin'-ring.
"'Tim Coulan 'll slape easy to-night,' sez he, wid a grin; an' the next
minut his head was in two halves and he wint down grinnin' by sections.
"The Tyrone was pushin' an' pushin' in, an' our men was swearin' at thim,
an' Crook was workin' away in front av us all, his sword-arm swingin' like
a pump-handle an' his revolver spittin' like a cat. But the strange thing
av ut was the quiet that lay upon. 'Twas like a fight in a drame--except
for thim that was dead.
"Whin I gave room to the Oirishman I was expinded an' forlorn in my
inside. 'Tis a way I have, savin' your presince, sorr, in action. 'Let me
out, bhoys,' sez I, backin' in among thim. 'I'm goin' to be onwell!' Faith
they gave me room at the wurrud, though they would not ha' given room for
all Hell wid the chill off. When I got clear, I was, savin' your presince,
sorr, outragis sick bekaze I had dhrunk heavy that day.
"Well an' far out av harm was a Sargint av the Tyrone sittin' on the
little orf'cer bhoy who had stopped Crook from rowlin' the rocks. Oh, he
was a beautiful bhoy, an' the long black curses was slidin' out av his
innocint mouth like mornin'-jew from a rose!
"'Fwhat have you got there?' sez I to the Sargint.
"'Wan av Her Majesty's bantams wid his spurs up,' sez he. 'He's goin' to
Coort-martial me.'
"'Let me go!' sez the little orf'cer bhoy. 'Let me go and command my men!'
manin' thereby the Black Tyrone which was beyond any command--ay, even av
they had made the Divil a Field orf'cer.
"'His father howlds my mother's cow-feed in Clonmel,' sez the man that was
sittin' on him. 'Will I go back to _his_ mother an' tell her that I've let
him throw himself away? Lie still, ye little pinch av dynamite, an'
Coort-martial me aftherward.'
"'Good,' sez I; ''tis the likes av him makes the likes av the
Commandher-in-Chief, but we must presarve thim. Fwhat d'you want to do,
sorr?' sez I, very politeful.
"'Kill the beggars--kill the beggars!' he shqueaks; his big blue eyes
brimmin' wid tears.
"'An' how'll ye do that?' sez I. 'You've shquibbed off your revolver like
a child wid a cracker; you can make no play wid that fine large sword av
yours; an' your hand's shakin' like an asp on a leaf. Lie still an' grow,'
sez I.
"'Get back to your comp'ny,' sez he; 'you're insolint!'
"'All in good time,' sez I, 'but I'll have a dhrink first.'
"Just thin Crook comes up, blue an' white all over where he wasn't red.
"'Wather!' sez he; 'I'm dead wid drouth! Oh, but it's a gran' day!'
"He dhrank half a skinful, and the rest he tilts into his chest, an' it
fair hissed on the hairy hide av him. He sees the little orf'cer bhoy
undher the Sargint.
"'Fwhat's yonder?' sez he.
"'Mutiny, sorr,' sez the Sargint, an' the orf'cer bhoy begins pleadin'
pitiful to Crook to be let go: but divil a bit wud Crook budge.
"'Kape him there,' he sez, ''tis no child's work this day. By the same
token,' sez he, 'I'll confishcate that iligant nickel-plated
scent-sprinkler av yours, for my own has been vomitin' dishgraceful!'
"The fork av his hand was black wid the backspit av the machine. So he tuk
the orf'cer bhoy's revolver. Ye may look, sorr, but, by my faith, _there's
a dale more done in the field than iver gets into Field Ordhers!_
"'Come on, Mulvaney,' sez Crook; 'is this a Coort-martial?' The two av us
wint back together into the mess an' the Paythans were still standin' up.
They was not _too_ impart'nint though, for the Tyrone was callin' wan to
another to remimber Tim Coulan.
"Crook stopped outside av the strife an' looked anxious, his eyes rowlin'
roun'.
"'Fwhat is ut, sorr?' sez I; 'can I get ye anything?'
"'Where's a bugler?' sez he.
"I wint into the crowd--our men was dhrawin' breath behin' the Tyrone who
was fightin' like sowls in tormint--an' prisintly I came acrost little
Frehan, our bugler bhoy, pokin' roun' among the best wid a rifle an'
bay'nit.
"'Is amusin' yoursilf fwhat you're paid for, ye limb?' sez I, catchin' him
by the scruff. 'Come out av that an' attind to your duty.' I sez; but the
bhoy was not pleased.
"'I've got wan,' sez he, grinnin', 'big as you, Mulvaney, an' fair half as
ugly. Let me go get another.'
"I was dishpleased at the personability av that remark, so I tucks him
under my arm an' carries him to Crook who was watchin' how the fight wint.
Crook cuffs him till the bhoy cries, an' thin sez nothin' for a whoile.
"The Paythans began to flicker onaisy, an' our men roared. 'Opin ordher!
Double!' sez Crook. 'Blow, child, blow for the honor av the British
Arrmy!'
"That bhoy blew like a typhoon, an' the Tyrone an' we opined out as the
Paythans broke, an' I saw that fwhat had gone before wud be kissin' an'
huggin' to fwhat was to come. We'd dhruv thim into a broad part av the gut
whin they gave, an' thin we opined out an' fair danced down the valley,
dhrivin' thim before us. Oh, 'twas lovely, an' stiddy, too! There was the
Sargints on the flanks av what was left av us, kapin' touch, an' the fire
was runnin' from flank to flank, an' the Paythans was dhroppin'. We opined
out wid the widenin' av the valley, an' whin the valley narrowed we closed
again like the shticks on a lady's fan, an' at the far ind av the gut
where they thried to stand, we fair blew them off their feet, for we had
expinded very little ammunition by reason av the knife work."
"Hi used thirty rounds goin' down that valley," said Ortheris, "an' it was
gentleman's work. Might 'a' done it in a white 'andkerchief an' pink silk
stockin's, that part. Hi was on in that piece."
"You could ha' heard the Tyrone yellin' a mile away," said Mulvaney, "an'
'twas all their Sargints cud do to get thim off. They was mad--mad--mad!
Crook sits down in the quiet that fell whin we had gone down the valley,
an' covers his face wid his hands. Prisintly we all came back again
accordin' to our natures and disposishins, for they, mark you, show
through the hide av a man in that hour.
"'Bhoys! bhoys!' sez Crook to himself. 'I misdoubt we could ha' engaged at
long range an' saved betther men than me.' He looked at our dead an' said
no more.
"'Captain dear,' sez a man av the Tyrone, comin' up wid his mouth bigger
than iver his mother kissed ut, spittin' blood like a whale; 'Captain
dear,' sez he, 'if wan or two in the shtalls have been discommoded, the
gallery have enjoyed the performinces av a Roshus.'
"Thin I knew that man for the Dublin dockrat he was--wan av the bhoys that
made the lessee av Silver's Theatre grey before his time wid tearin' out
the bowils av the benches an' t'rowin' thim into the pit. So I passed the
wurrud that I knew when I was in the Tyrone an' we lay in Dublin. 'I don't
know who 'twas,' I whispers, 'an' I don't care, but anyways I'll knock the
face av you, Tim Kelly.'
"'Eyah!' sez the man, 'was you there too? We'll call ut Silver's Theatre.'
Half the Tyrone, knowin' the ould place, tuk ut up: so we called ut
Silver's Theatre.
"The little orf'cer bhoy av the Tyrone was thremblin' an' cryin', He had
no heart for the Coort-martials that he talked so big upon. 'Ye'll do well
later,' sez Crook, very quiet, 'for not bein' allowed to kill yourself for
amusemint.'
"'I'm a dishgraced man!' sez the little orf'cer bhoy.
"Put me undher arrest, sorr, if you will, but by my sowl, I'd do ut again
sooner than face your mother wid you dead,' sez the Sargint that had sat
on his head, standin' to attention an' salutin'. But the young wan only
cried as tho' his little heart was breakin'.
"Thin another man av the Tyrone came up, wid the fog av fightin' on him."
"The what, Mulvaney?"
"Fog av fightin'. You know, sorr, that, like makin' love, ut takes each
man diff'rint. Now I can't help bein' powerful sick whin I'm in action.
Orth'ris, here, niver stops swearin' from ind to ind, an' the only time
that Learoyd opins his mouth to sing is whin he is messin' wid other
people's heads; for he's a dhirty fighter is Jock. Recruities sometime
cry, an' sometime they don't know fwhat they do, an' sometime they are all
for cuttin' throats an' such like dirtiness; but some men get
heavy-dead-dhrunk on the fightin'. This man was. He was staggerin', an'
his eyes were half shut, an' we cud hear him dhraw breath twinty yards
away. He sees the little orf'cer bhoy, an' comes up, talkin' thick an'
drowsy to himsilf. 'Blood the young whelp!' he sez; 'blood the young
whelp;' an' wid that he threw up his arms, shpun roun', an' dropped at our
feet, dead as a Paythan, an' there was niver sign or scratch on him. They
said 'twas his heart was rotten, but oh, 'twas a quare thing to see!
"Thin we wint to bury our dead, for we wud not lave thim to the Paythans,
an' in movin' among the haythen we nearly lost that little orf'cer bhoy.
He was for givin' wan divil wather and layin' him aisy against a rock. 'Be
careful, sorr,' sez I; 'a wounded Paythan's worse than a live wan.' My
troth, before the words was out of my mouth, the man on the ground fires
at the orf'cer bhoy lanin' over him, an' I saw the helmit fly. I dropped
the butt on the face av the man an' tuk his pistol. The little orf'cer
bhoy turned very white, for the hair av half his head was singed away.
"'I tould you so, sorr!' sez I; an', afther that, whin he wanted to help a
Paythan I stud wid the muzzle contagious to the ear. They dare not do
anythin' but curse. The Tyrone was growlin' like dogs over a bone that had
been taken away too soon, for they had seen their dead an' they wanted to
kill ivry sowl on the ground. Crook tould thim that he'd blow the hide off
any man that misconducted himself; but, seeing that ut was the first time
the Tyrone had iver seen their dead, I do not wondher they were on the
sharp. 'Tis a shameful sight! Whin I first saw ut I wud niver ha' given
quarter to any man north of the Khaibar--no, nor woman either, for the
women used to come out afther dhark--Auggrh!
"Well, evenshually we buried our dead an' tuk away our wounded, an' come
over the brow av the hills to see the Scotchies an' the Gurkys taking tay
with the Paythans in bucketsfuls. We were a gang av dissolute ruffians,
for the blood had caked the dust, an' the sweat had cut the cake, an' our
bay'nits was hangin' like butchers' steels betune ur legs, an' most av us
were marked one way or another.
"A Staff Orf'cer man, clean as a new rifle, rides up an' sez: 'What damned
scarecrows are you?'
"'A comp'ny av Her Majesty's Black Tyrone an' wan av the Ould Rig'mint,'
sez Crook very quiet, givin' our visitors the flure as 'twas.
"'Oh!' sez the Staff Orf'cer; 'did you dislodge that Reserve?'
"'No!' sez Crook, an' the Tyrone laughed.
"'Thin fwhat the divil have ye done?'
"'Disthroyed ut,' sez Crook, an' he took us on, but not before Toomey that
was in the Tyrone sez aloud, his voice somewhere in his stummick: 'Fwhat
in the name av misfortune does this parrit widout a tail mane by shtoppin'
the road av his betthers?'
"The Staff Orf'cer wint blue, an' Toomey makes him pink by changin' to the
voice av a minowderin' woman an' sayin': 'Come an' kiss me, Major dear,
for me husband's at the wars an' I'm all alone at the Depot.'
"The Staff Orf'cer wint away, an' I cud see Crook's shoulthers shakin'.
"His Corp'ril checks Toomey. 'Lave me alone,' sez Toomey, widout a wink.
'I was his batman before he was married an' he knows fwhat I mane, av you
don't. There's nothin' like livin' in the hoight av society.' D'you
remimber that, Orth'ris!"
"Hi do. Toomey, 'e died in 'orspital, next week it was, 'cause I bought
'arf his kit; an' I remember after that"--
"GUARRD, TURN OUT!"
The Relief had come; it was four o'clock. "I'll catch a kyart for you,
sorr," said Mulvaney, diving hastily into his accoutrements. "Come up to
the top av the Fort an' we'll pershue our invistigations into M'Grath's
shtable." The relieved Guard strolled round the main bastion on its way to
the swimming-bath, and Learoyd grew almost talkative. Ortheris looked into
the Fort ditch and across the plain. "Ho! it's weary waitin' for Ma-ary!"
he hummed; "but I'd like to kill some more bloomin' Paythans before my
time's up. War! Bloody war! North, East, South, and West."
"Amen," said Learoyd, slowly.
"Fwhat's here?" said Mulvaney, checking at a blurr of white by the foot of
the old sentry-box. He stooped and touched it. "It's Norah--Norah
M'Taggart! Why, Nonie, darlin', fwhat are ye doin' out av your mother's
bed at this time?"
The two-year-old child of Sergeant M'Taggart must have wandered for a
breath of cool air to the very verge of the parapet of the Fort ditch, Her
tiny night-shift was gathered into a wisp round her neck and she moaned in
her sleep. "See there!" said Mulvaney; "poor lamb! Look at the heat-rash
on the innocint skin av her. 'Tis hard--crool hard even for us. Fwhat must
it be for these? Wake up, Nonie, your mother will be woild about you.
Begad, the child might ha' fallen into the ditch!"
He picked her up in the growing light, and set her on his shoulder, and
her fair curls touched the grizzled stubble of his temples. Ortheris and
Learoyd followed snapping their fingers, while Norah smiled at them a
sleepy smile. Then carolled Mulvaney, clear as a lark, dancing the baby on
his arm--
"If any young man should marry you,
Say nothin' about the joke;
That iver ye slep' in a sinthry-box,
Wrapped up in a soldier's cloak."
"Though, on my sowl, Nonie," he said, gravely, "there was not much cloak
about you. Niver mind, you won't dhress like this ten years to come. Kiss
your friends an' run along to your mother."
Nonie, set down close to the Married Quarters, nodded with the quiet
obedience of the soldier's child, but, ere she pattered off over the
flagged path, held up her lips to be kissed by the Three Musketeers.
Ortheris wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and swore
sentimentally; Learoyd turned pink; and the two walked away together. The
Yorkshireman lifted up his voice and gave in thunder the chorus of _The
Sentry-Box_, while Ortheris piped at his side.
"'Bin to a bloomin' sing-song, you two?" said the Artilleryman, who was
taking his cartridge down to the Morning Gun, "You're over merry for these
dashed days."
"I bid ye take care o' the brat," said he,
"For it comes of a noble race"
Learoyd bellowed. The voices died out in the swimming-bath.
"Oh, Terence!" I said, dropping into Mulvaney's speech, when we were
alone, "it's you that have the Tongue!"
He looked at me wearily; his eyes were sunk in his head, and his face was
drawn and white, "Eyah!" said he; "I've blandandhered thim through the
night somehow, but can thim that helps others help thimselves? Answer me
that, sorr!"
And over the bastions of Fort Amara broke the pitiless day.
WEE WILLIE WINKIE
"An officer and a gentleman."
His full name was Percival William Williams, but he picked up the other
name in a nursery-book, and that was the end of the christened titles. His
mother's _ayah_ called him Willie-_Baba_, but as he never paid the
faintest attention to anything that the _ayah_ said, her wisdom did not
help matters.
His father was the Colonel of the 195th, and as soon as Wee Willie Winkie
was old enough to understand what Military Discipline meant, Colonel
Williams put him under it. There was no other way of managing the child.
When he was good for a week, he drew good-conduct pay; and when he was
bad, he was deprived of his good-conduct stripe. Generally he was bad, for
India offers so many chances to little six-year-olds of going wrong.
Children resent familiarity from strangers, and Wee Willie Winkie was a
very particular child. Once he accepted an acquaintance, he was graciously
pleased to thaw. He accepted Brandis, a subaltern of the 195th, on sight.
Brandis was having tea at the Colonel's, and Wee Willie Winkie entered
strong in the possession of a good-conduct badge won for not chasing the
hens round the compound. He regarded Brandis with gravity for at least ten
minutes, and then delivered himself of his opinion.
"I like you," said he, slowly, getting off his chair and coming over to
Brandis. "I like you. I shall call you Coppy, because of your hair. Do you
_mind_ being called Coppy? it is because of ve hair, you know."
Here was one of the most embarrassing of Wee Willie Winkie's
peculiarities. He would look at a stranger for some time, and then,
without warning or explanation, would give him a name. And the name stuck.
No regimental penalties could break Wee Willie Winkie of this habit. He
lost his good-conduct badge for christening the Commissioner's wife
"Pobs"; but nothing that the Colonel could do made the Station forego the
nickname, and Mrs. Collen remained Mrs. "Pobs" till the end of her stay.
So Brandis was christened "Coppy," and rose, therefore, in the estimation
of the regiment.
If Wee Willie Winkie took an interest in any one, the fortunate man was
envied alike by the mess and the rank and file. And in their envy lay no
suspicion of self-interest. "The Colonel's son" was idolized on his own
merits entirely. Yet Wee Willie Winkie was not lovely. His face was
permanently freckled, as his legs were permanently scratched, and in spite
of his mother's almost tearful remonstrances he had insisted upon having
his long yellow locks cut short in the military fashion. "I want my hair
like Sergeant Tummil's," said Wee Willie Winkie, and, his father abetting,
the sacrifice was accomplished.
Three weeks after the bestowal of his youthful affections on Lieutenant
Brandis--henceforward to be called "Coppy" for the sake of brevity--Wee
Willie Winkie was destined to behold strange things and far beyond his
comprehension.
Coppy returned his liking with interest. Coppy had let him wear for five
rapturous minutes his own big sword--just as tall as Wee Willie Winkie.
Coppy had promised him a terrier puppy; and Coppy had permitted him to
witness the miraculous operation of shaving. Nay, more--Coppy had said
that even he, Wee Willie Winkie, would rise in time to the ownership of a
box of shiny knives, a silver soap-box and a silver-handled
"sputter-brush," as Wee Willie Winkie called it. Decidedly, there was no
one except his father, who could give or take away good-conduct badges at
pleasure, half so wise, strong, and valiant as Coppy with the Afghan and
Egyptian medals on his breast. Why, then, should Coppy be guilty of the
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