FOOTNOTES:[9]"Turnovers," Vol. VII.
FOOTNOTES:
[9]"Turnovers," Vol. VII.
[9]"Turnovers," Vol. VII.
IT![10]
Therewas no talk of it for a fortnight. We spoke of latitude and longitude and the proper manufacture of sherry cobblers, while the steamer cut open a glassy-smooth sea. Then we turned towards China and drank farewell to the nearer East.
"We shall reach Hongkong without being it," said the nervous lady.
"Nobody of ordinary strength of mind ever was it," said the big fat man with the voice. I kept my eye on the big fat man. He boasted too much.
The China seas are governed neither by wind nor calm. Deep down under the sapphire waters sits a green and yellow devil who suffers from indigestion perpetually. When he is unwell he troubles the waters above with his twistings and writhings. Thus it happens that it is never calm in the China seas.
The sun was shining brightly when the big fat man with the voice came up the companion and looked at the horizon.
"Hah!" said he, "calm as ditch water! Now I remember when I was in theFloridain '80, meeting a tidal-wave that turned us upside down for five minutes, and most of the people inside out, by Jove!" He expatiated at length on the heroism displayed by himself when "even the Captain was down, sir!"
I said nothing, but I kept my eyes upon the strong man.
The sun continued to shine brightly, and it also kept an eye in the same direction. I went to the far-off fo'c'sle, where the sheep and the cow and the bo'sun and the second-class passengers dwell together in amity. "Bo'sun," said I, "how's her head?"
"Direckly in front of her, sir," replied that ill-mannered soul, "but we shall be meetin' a head-sea in half an hour that'll put your headatween of your legs. Go aft an' tell that to them first-class passengers."
I went aft, but I said nothing. We went, later, to tiffin, and there was a fine funereal smell of stale curries and tinned meats in the air. Conversation was animated, for most of the passengers had been together for five weeks and had developed two or three promising flirtations. I was a stranger—a minnow among Tritons—a third man in the cabin. Only those who have been a third man in the cabin know what this means. Suddenly and without warning our ship curtsied. It was neither a bob nor a duck nor a lurch, but a long, sweeping, stately old-fashioned curtsy. Followed a lull in the conversation. I was distinctly conscious that I had left my stomach two feet in the air, and waited for the return roll to join it. "Prettily the old hooper rides, doesn't she?" said the strong man. "I hope she won't do it often," said the pretty lady with the changing complexion.
"Wha-hoop! Wha—wha—wha—willywhoop!" said the screw, that had managed tocome out of the water and was racing wildly.
"Good heavens! is the ship going down?" said the fat lady, clutching her own private claret bottle that she might not die athirst. The ship went down at the word—with a drunken lurch down she went, and a smothered yell from one of the cabins showed that there was water in the sea. The portholes closed with a clash, and we rose and fell on the swell of the bo'sun's head-sea. The conversation died out. Some complained that the saloon was stuffy, and fled upstairs to the deck. The strong man brought up the rear.
"Ooshy—ooshy—wooshy—wogglewop!" cried a big wave without a head. "Get up, old girl!" and he smacked the ship most disrespectfully under the counter, and she squirmed as she took the drift of the next sea.
"She—ah—rides very prettily," repeated the strong man as the companion stairs spurned him from them and he wound his arms round the nearest steward.
"Damn prettily," said the necked officer."I'm going to lie down. Never could stand the China seas."
"Most refreshing thing in the world," said the strong man faintly.
I took counsel purely with myself, which is to say, my stomach, and perceived that the worst would not befall me.
"Come to the fo'c'sle, then, and feel the wind," said I to the strong man. The plover's-egg eyes of three yellowish-green girls were upon him.
"With pleasure," said he, and I bore him away to where the cut-water was pulling up the scared flying-fishes as a spaniel flushes game. In front of us was the illimitable blue, lightly ridged by the procession of the big blind rollers. Up rose the stem till six feet of the red paint stood clear above the blue—from twenty-three feet to eighteen I could count as I leaned over. Then the sapphire crashed into splintered crystal with a musical jar, and the white spray licked the anchor channels as we drove down and down, sucking at the sea. I kept my eye upon the strong man, and I noticed that his mouth was slightly open, the better to inhale the rushing wind. When I looked a second time he was gone. The driven spray was scarcely quicker in its flight. My excellent stomach behaved with temperance and chastity. I enjoyed the fo'c'sle, and my delight was the greater when I reflected on the strong man. Unless I was much mistaken, he would know all about it in half an hour.
I went aft, and a lull between two waves heard the petulant pop of a champagne cork. No one drinks champagne after tiffin except....It.
The strong man had ordered the champagne. There were bottles of it flying about the quarter-deck. The engaged couple were sipping it out of one glass, but their faces were averted like our parents of old. They were ashamed.
"You may go! You may go to Hongkong for me!" shouted half-a-dozen little waves together, pulling the ship several ways at once. She rolled stately, and from that moment settled down to the work of the evening. I cannotblame her, for I am sure she did not know her own strength. It didn't hurt her to be on her side, and play cat-and-mouse, and puss-in-the corner, and hide-and-seek, but it destroyed the passengers. One by one they sank into long chairs and gazed at the sky. But even there the little white moved, and there was not one stable thing in heaven above or the waters beneath. My virtuous and very respectable stomach behaved with integrity and resolution. I treated it to a gin cocktail, which I sucked by the side of the strong man, who told me in confidence that he had been overcome by the sun at the fo'c'sle. Sun fever does not make people cold and clammy and blue. I sat with him and tried to make him talk about theFloridaand his voyages in the past. He evaded me and went down below. Three minutes later I followed him with a thick cheroot. Into his bunk I went, for I knew he would be helpless. He was—he was—he was. He wallowed supine, and I stood in the doorway smoking.
"What is it?" said I.
He wrestled with his pride—his wicked pride—but he would not tell a lie.
"It," said he. And it was so.
The rolling continues. The ship is a shambles, and I have six places on each side of me all to myself.
FOOTNOTES:[10]"Turnovers," Vol. I.
FOOTNOTES:
[10]"Turnovers," Vol. I.
[10]"Turnovers," Vol. I.
A FALLEN IDOL[11]
Willthe public be good enough to look into this business? It has sent Crewe to bed, and Mottleby is applying for home leave, and I've lost my faith in man altogether, and the Club gives it up. Trivey is the only man who is unaffected by the catastrophe, and he says "I told you so." We were all proud of Trivey at the Club, and would have crowned him with wreaths of Bougainvillea had he permitted the liberty. But Trivey was an austere man. The utmost that he permitted himself to say was: "I can stretch a little bit when I'm in the humour." We called him the Monumental Liar. Nothing that the Club offered was too good for Trivey. He had the soft chair opposite the thermantidote in the hot weather, andhe made up his own four at whist. When visitors came in—globe-trotters for choice—Trivey used to unmuzzle himself and tell tales that sent the globe-trotter out of the Club on tiptoe looking for snakes in his hat and tigers in the compound. Whenever a man from a strange Club came in Trivey used to call for a whisky and ginger-wine and rout that man on all points—from horses upward. There was a man whose nickname was "Ananias," who came from the Prince's Plungers to look at Trivey; and, though Trivey was only a civilian, the Plunger man resigned his title to the nickname before eleven o'clock. He made it over to Trivey on a card, and Trivey hung up the concession in his quarters. We loved Trivey—all of us; and now we don't love him any more.
A man from the frontier came in and began to tell tales—some very good ones, and some better than good. He was an outsider, but he had a wonderful imagination—for the frontier. He told six stories before Trivey brought uphis first line, and three more before Trivey hurled his reserves into the fray.
"When I was at Anungaracharlupillay in Madras," said Trivey quietly, "there was a rogue elephant cutting about the district. And I came upon him asleep." All the Club stopped talking here, until Trivey had finished the story. He told us that he, in the company of another man, had found the rogue asleep, but just as they got up to the brute's head it woke up with a scream. Then Trivey, who was careful to explain that he was a "bit powerful about the arms," caught hold of its ears as it rose, and hung there, kicking the animal in the eyes, which so bewildered it that it stayed screaming and frightened until Trivey's ally shot it behind the shoulder, and the villagers ran in and hamstrung it. It evidently died from loss of blood. Trivey was hanging on the ears and kicking hard for nearly fifteen minutes. When the frontier man heard the story he put his hands in front of his face and sobbed audibly. We gave him all the drinks he wanted, and he recovered sufficiently to carry awayeighty rupees at whist later on; but his nerve was irretrievably shattered. He will be no use on the frontier any more. The rest of the Club were very pleased with Trivey, because these frontier men, and especially the guides, want a great deal of keeping in order. Trivey was quite modest. He was a truly great soul, and popular applause never turned his head. As I have said, we loved Trivey, till that fatal day when Crewe announced that he had been transferred for a couple of months to Anungaracharlupillay. "Oh!" said Trivey, "I dare say they'll remember about my rogue elephant down there. You ask 'em, Crewe." Then we felt sorry for Trivey, because we were sure that he was arriving at that stage of mental decay when a man begins to believe in his own fictions. That spoils a man's hand. Crewe wrote up once or twice to Mottleby, saying that he would bring back a story that would make our hair curl. Good stories are scarce in Madras, and we rather scoffed at the announcement. When Crewe returned it was easy to see that he was bursting with importance. He gave abig dinner at the Club and invited nearly everybody but Trivey, who went off after dinner to teach a young subaltern to play "snooker." At coffee and cheroots, Crewe could not restrain himself any longer. "I say, you Johnnies, it's all true—every single word of it—and you can throw the decanter at my head and I'll apologise. The whole village was full of it. There was a rogue elephant, and it slept, and Trivey did catch hold of its ears and kick it in the eyes, and hang on for ten minutes, at least, and all the rest of it. I neglected my regular work to sift that story, and on my honour the tale's an absolute fact. The headsman said so, all the shikaries said so, and all the villagers corroborated it. Now would a whole village volunteer a lie that would do them no good?"
You might have heard a cigar-ash fall after this statement. Then Mottleby said, with deep disgust: "What can you do with a man like that? His best and brightest lie, too!" "'Tisn't!" shrieked Crewe. "It's a fact—a nickel-plated, teak-wood, Tantalus-action, forty-five rupee fact." "That onlymakes it worse," said Mottleby; and we all felt that was true. We ran into the billiard-room to talk to Trivey, but he said we had put him off his stroke; and that was all the satisfaction we got out of him. Later on he repeated that he was a "bit powerful about the arms," and went to bed. We sat up half the night devising vengeance on Trivey. We were very angry, and there was no hope of hushing up the tale. The man had taken us in completely, and now that we've lost our champion Ananias, all the frontier will laugh at us, and we shall never be able to trust a word that Trivey says.
I ask with Mottleby: "What can you do with a man like that?"
FOOTNOTES:[11]"Turnovers," Vol. I.
FOOTNOTES:
[11]"Turnovers," Vol. I.
[11]"Turnovers," Vol. I.
NEW BROOMS[12]
"If seven maids with seven mopsSwept it for half a year,Do you suppose," the Walrus said,"That they could sweep it clear?"
Ram Buksh, Aryan, went to bed with his buffalo, five goats, three children and a wife, because the evening mists were chilly. His hut was builded on the mud scooped from a green and smelly tank, and there were microbes in the thin blood of Ram Buksh.
Ram Buksh went to bed on a charpoy stretched across the blue tepid drain, because the nights were hot; and there were more microbes in his blood. Then the rains came, and Ram Buksh paddled, mid-thigh deep, in water for a day or two with his buffaloes tillhe was aware of a crampsome feeling at the pit of his stomach. "Mother of my children," said Ram Buksh, "this is death." They gave him cardamoms and capsicums, and gingelly-oil and cloves, and they prayed for him. "It is enough," said Ram Buksh, and he twisted himself into a knot and died, and they burned him slightly—for the wood was damp—and the rest of him floated down the river, and was caught in an undercurrent at the bank, and there stayed; and when Imam Din, the Jeweller, drank of the stream five days later, he drank Lethe, and passed away, crying in vain upon his gods.
His family did not report his death to the Municipality, for they desired to keep Imam Din with them. Therefore, they buried him under the flagging in the court-yard, secretly and by night. Twelve days later, Imam Din had made connection with the well of the house, and there was typhus among the women in the zenana, but no one knew anything about it—some died and some did not; and Ari Booj, the Faquir, added tothe interest of the proceedings by joining the funeral procession and distributing gratis the more malignant forms of smallpox, from which he was just recovering. He had come all the way from Delhi, and had slept on no less than fifteen different charpoys; and that was how they got the smallpox into Bahadurgarh. But Eshmith Sahib's Dhobi picked it up from Ari Booj when Imam Din's wife was being buried—for he was a merry man, and sent home a beautiful sample among the Sunday shirts. So Eshmith Sahib died.
He was only a link in the chain which crawled from the highest to the lowest. The wonder was not that men died like sheep, but that they did not die like flies; for their lives and their surroundings, their deaths, were part of a huge conspiracy against cleanliness. And the people loved to have it so. They huddled together in frowsy clusters, while Death mowed his way through them till the scythe blunted against the unresisting flesh, and he had to get a new one. They died by fever, tens of thousands in a month; they diedby cholera a thousand in a week; they died of smallpox, scores in the mohulla, and by dysentery by tens in a house; and when all other deaths failed they laid them down and died because their hands were too weak to hold on to life.
To and fro stamped the Englishman, who is everlastingly at war with the scheme of things. "You shall not die," he said, and he decreed that there should be no more famines. He poured grain down their throats, and when all failed he went down into the strife and died with them, swearing, and toiling, and working till the last. He fought the famine and put it to flight. Then he wiped his forehead, and attacked the pestilence that walketh in the darkness. Death's scythe swept to and fro, around and about him; but he only planted his feet more firmly in the way of it, and fought off Death with a dog-whip. "Live, you ruffian!" said the Englishman to Ram Buksh as he rode through the reeking village. "Jenab!" said Ram Buksh, "it is as it was in the days of our fathers!" "Then stand back while I alterit," said the Englishman; and by force, and cunning, and a brutal disregard of vested interests, he strove to keep Ram Buksh alive. "Clean your mohullas; pay for clean water; keep your streets swept; and see that your food is sound, or I'll make your life a burden to you," said the Englishman. Sometimes he died; but more often Ram Buksh went down, and the Englishman regarded each death as a personal insult.
"Softly, there!" said the Government of India. "You're twisting his tail. You mustn't do that. The spread of education forbids, and Ram Buksh is an intelligent voter. Let him work out his own salvation."
"H'm!" said the Englishman with his head in a midden; "collectively you always were a fool. Here, Ram Buksh, the Sirkar says you are to do all these things for yourself."
"Jenab!" says Ram Buksh, and fell to breeding microbes with renewed vigour.
Curiously enough, it was in the centres of enlightenment that he prosecuted his experiments most energetically. The education hadbeen spread, but so thinly that it could not disguise Ram Buksh's natural instincts. He created an African village, and said it was the hub of the universe, and all the dirt of all the roads failed to convince him that he was not the most advanced person in the world. There was a pause, and Ram Buksh got himself fearfully entangled among Boards and Committees, but he valued them as a bower-bird values shells and red rags. "See!" said the Englishman to the Government of India, "he is blind on that side—blind by birth, training, instinct and associations. Five-sixths of him is poor stock raised off poor soil, and he'll die on the least provocation. You've no right to let him kill himself."
"But he's educated," said the Government of India.
"I'll concede everything," said the Englishman. "He's a statesman, author, poet, politician, artist, and all else that you wish him to be, but he isn't a Sanitary Engineer. And while you're training him he is dying. Goodness knows that my share in the Governmentis very limited nowadays, but I'm willing to do all the work while he gets all the credit if you'll only let me have some authority over him in his mud-pie making."
"But the liberty of the subject is sacred," said the Government of India.
"I haven't any," said the Englishman. "He can trail through my compounds; start shrines in the public roads; poison my family; have me in court for nothing; ruin my character; spend my money, and call me an assassin when all is done. I don't object. Let me look after his sanitation."
"But the days of a paternal Government are over; we must depend on the people. Think of what they would say at home," said the Government of India. "We have issued a resolution—indeed we have!"
The Englishman sat down and groaned. "I believe you'll issue a resolution some day notifying your own abolition," said he. "What are you going to do?"
"Constitute more Boards," said the Government of India. "Boards of Control and Supervision—Fund Boards—all sorts of Boards. Nothing like system. It will be at work in three years or so. We haven't any money, but that's a detail."
The Englishman looked at the resolution and sniffed. "It doesn't touch the weak point of the country."
"Whatwilltouch the weak point of the country, then?" said the Government of India.
"I used to," said the Englishman. "I was the District Officer, and I twisted their tails. You have taken away my power, and now——"
"Well," said the Government of India, "you seem to think a good deal of yourself."
"Never mind me," said the Englishman. "I'm an effete relic of the past. But Ram Buksh will die, as he used to do."
And now we all wait to see which is right.
FOOTNOTES:[12]"Turnovers," Vol. III.
FOOTNOTES:
[12]"Turnovers," Vol. III.
[12]"Turnovers," Vol. III.
TIGLATH PILESER[13]
ThankHeaven he is dead! The municipality sent a cart and a man only this morning, and, all the servants aiding with ropes and tackle, the carcase of Tiglath was borne away—a wobbling lump. His head was thrust over the tailboard of the cart. Upon it was stamped an expression of horror and surprise, unutterable and grotesque. I have put away my rifle, I have cheered my heart with wine, and I sit down now to write the story of Tiglath, the Utter Brute. His own kind, alas! will not read it, and thus it will be shorn of instruction; but owners will kindly take notice, and when it pleases Heaven to inflict them with such an animal as Tiglath they will know what to do.
To begin with, I bought him, his vices thick as his barsati, for a hundred and seventyrupees, a five-chambered, muzzle-loading revolver, and a Cawnpore saddle.
"Of course, for that price," said Staveley, "you can't expect everything. He's not what one would call absolutely sound, y' know, but there's no end of work in him, and if you only give him the butt he'll go like a steam-engine."
"Staveley," I answered, "when you admit that he is not perfection I perceive that I am in for a really Good Thing. Don't hurt your conscience, Staveley. Tell me what is his chief vice—weakness, partiality—anything you choose to call it. I shall get to know the minor defects in the course of nature; but what is Tiglath's real shouk?"
Staveley reflected a moment. "Well, really, I can't quite say, old man, straight off the reel, y' know. He's a oner to go when his head's turned to home. He's a regular feeder, and vaseline will cure that little eruption"—with its malignant barsati—"in no time. Oh, I forgot his shouk: I don't know exactly how to describe it, but he yaws a good deal," said Staveley.
"He how muches?" I asked.
"Yaws," said Staveley; "goes a bit wide upon occasions, but a good coachwan will cure that in one drive. My man let him do what he liked. One fifty and a hundred, ten and ten is twenty—one-seventy. Many thanks, indeed. I'll send over his bedding and ropes. He's a powerful upstanding horse, though rather picked up just at present."
Staveley departed, and I was left alone with Tiglath. I called him Tiglath because he resembled a lathy pig. Later on I called him Pileser on account of his shouk; but my coachwan, a strong, masterless man, called him "haramzada chor, shaitan ké bap" and "oont ki beta." He certainly was a powerful horse, being full fifteen-two at the withers, with the girth of a waler, and at first the docility of an Arab. There was something wrong with his feet—permanently—but he was a considerate beast, and never had more than one leg in hospital at a time. The other three were still movable, and Tiglath never grudged them in my service. I write this in justice to his memory; the creaking of the wheels of the municipal cart being still in my ears.
For a season—some twelve days—Tiglath was beyond reproach. He had not a cheerful disposition, nor did his pendulous underlip add to his personal beauty; but he made no complaints, and moved swiftly to and from office. The hot weather gave place to the cool breezes of October, and with the turn of the year the slumbering devil in the soul of Tiglath spread its wings and crowed aloud. I fed him well, I had aided his barsati, I had lapped his lame legs in thanda putties, and adorned his sinful body with new harness. He rewarded me upon a day with an exhibition so new and strange that I feared for the moment his reason had been unhinged. Slowly, with a malevolent grin, Tiglath, the pampered, turned at right angles to the carriage—a newly-varnished one—and backed the front wheels up the verandah steps, letting them down with a bump. He then wheeled round and round in the portico, and all but brought the carriage over. Theshow lasted for ten minutes, at the end of which time he trotted peacefully away.
I was pained and grieved—nothing more, upon my honour. I forbade the sais to kick Tiglath in the stomach, for I was persuaded that the harness galled him, and, in this belief, at the end of the day, undressed him tenderly and fitted sheepskin all over the said harness. Tiglath ate the sheepskin next day, and I did not renew it.
A week later I met the Judge. It was a purely accidental interview. I would have avoided it, as the Judge and I did not love each other, but the shafts of my carriage were through the circular front of his brougham, and Tiglath was rubbing the boss of his headstall tenderly against the newly-varnished panels of the same. The Judge complained that he might have been impaled as he sat. My coachwan declared on oath that the horse deliberately ran into the brougham. Tiglath tendered no evidence, and I began to mistrust him.
At the end of a month I perceived that my friends and acquaintances avoided me markedly. The appearance of Tiglath at the band-stand was enough to clear a space of ten yards in my immediate neighbourhood. I had to shout to my friends from afar, and they shouted back the details of the little bills which I had to pay their coach-builders. Tiglath was suffering from carriagecidal mania, and the coachwan had asked for leave. "Stay with me, Ibrahim," I said. "Thou seest how the sahib log do now avoid us. Get a new and a stout chabuq, and instruct Tiglath in the paths of straight walking."
"He will smash the Heaven-born's carriage. He is an old and stale devil, but in this matter extreme wise," answered Ibrahim. "Kitto sahib's filton hath he smashed, and Burkitt sahib's brougham gharri, and another tum-tum, and Staveley sahib's carriage is still being mended. What profit is this horse? He feigns blindness and much fear, and in the guise of innocency works evil. I will stay, sahib, but the blood of this thy new carriage be upon the brute's head and not upon mine own."
I have no space to describe the war of thenext few weeks. Foiled in his desire to ruin only neighbours' property, Tiglath fell back literally, upon his own—my carriage. He tried the verandah step trick till he bent the springs, and wheeled round till the turning action grew red-hot; he scraped stealthily by walls; he performed between heavy-laden bullock-trains, but his chief delight was apas de fantasieon a dark night and a high, level road. Yet what he did he did staidly and without heat, as without remorse. He was vetted thrice, and his eyes were pronounced sound. After this information I laid my bones to the battle, and acquired a desperate facility of leaping from the carriage and kicking Tiglath on the stomach as soon as he wheeled around; leaping back at the risk of my life when he set off at full speed. I pressed the lighted end of a cheroot just behind the collar-buckle; I applied fusees to those flaccid nostrils, and I beat him about the head with a stick continually. It was necessary, but it was also demoralising. A year of Tiglath would have converted me into a cold-blooded vivisectionist, or a native bullock-driver. Each day I took stock of the injuries to my carriage. I had long since given up all hope of keeping it in decent repair; and each day I devised fresh torments for Tiglath.
He never meant to injure himself, I am certain, and no one was more astonished than he when he backed on the Balumon road, and dropped the carriage into a nullah on the night of the Jamabundi Moguls' dance. I did not go to the dance. I was bent considerably, and one side of the coachwan's face was flayed. When he had pieced the wreck together, he only said, "Sahib!" and I said only "Bohat acha." But we each knew what the other meant. Next morn Tiglath was stiff and strained. I gave him time to recover and to enjoy life. When I heard him squealing to the grass-cutter's ponies I knew that the hour had come. I ordered the carriage, and myself superintended the funeral toilet of Tiglath. His harness brasses shone like gold, his coat like a bottle, and he lifted his feet daintily. Had he even then, at the eleventh hour, given promise of amendment, I should have held my hand. But as I entered the carriage I saw the hunching of his quarters that presaged trouble. "Go forward, Tiglath, my love, my pride, my delight," I murmured. "For a surety it is a matter of life and death this day." The sais ran to his head with a fragment of chupatti, saved from his all too scanty rations; the man loved him. And Tiglath swung round to the left in the portico; round and round swung he, till the near ear touched the muzzle of the shot-gun that waited its coming. He never flinched; he pressed his fate. The coachwan threw down the reins as, with four ounces of No. 5 shot behind the hollow of the root of the ear, Tiglath fell. In his death he accomplished the desire of his life, for he fell upon the shaft and broke it into three pieces. I looked on him as he lay, and of a sudden the reason of the horror in his eyes was made clear. Tiglath, the breaker of carriages, the strong, the rebellious, had passed into the shadowy spirit land, where there was nought to destroy and no power to destroy it with. The ghastly fore-knowledge of the flitting soul was written on the glazing eyeball.
I repented me, then, that I had slain Tiglath, for I had no intention of punishing him in the hereafter.
FOOTNOTES:[13]"Turnovers," Vol. IV.
FOOTNOTES:
[13]"Turnovers," Vol. IV.
[13]"Turnovers," Vol. IV.
THE LIKES O' US[14]
Itwas the General Officer Commanding, riding down the Mall, on the Arab with the perky tail, and he condescended to explain some of the mysteries of his profession. But the point on which he dwelt most pompously was the ease with which the Private Thomas Atkins could be "handled," as he called it. "Only feed him and give him a little work to do, and you can do anything with him," said the General Officer Commanding. "There's no refinement about Tommy, you know; and one is very like another. They've all the same ideas and traditions and prejudices. They're all big children. Fancy any man in his senses shooting about these hills." There was the report of a shot-gun in the valley. "I suppose they've hit a dog. Happy asthe day is long when they're out shooting dogs. Just like a big child is Tommy." He touched up his horse and cantered away. There was a sound of angry voices down the hillside.
"All right, yousoor—I won't never forget this—mind you, not as long as I live, and s' 'elp me—I'll——" The sentence finished in what could be represented by a blaze of asterisks.
A deeper voice cut it short: "Oh, no, you won't, neither! Look a-here, you young smitcher. If I was to take yer up now, and knock off your 'ead again' that tree, could ye say anythin'? No, nor yet do anythin'. If I was to——Ah! you would, would you? There!" Some one had evidently sat down with a thud, and was swearing nobly. I slid over the edge of thekhud, down through the long grass, and fetched up, after the manner of a sledge, with my feet in the broad of the back of Gunner Barnabas in the Mountain Battery, my friend, the very strong man. He was sitting upon a man—a khaki-coloured volcano of blasphemy—and was preparing tosmoke. My sudden arrival threw him off his balance for a moment. Then, readjusting his chair, he bade me good-day.
"'Im an' me 'ave bin 'avin' an arg'ment," said Gunner Barnabas placidly. "I was going for to half kill him an' 'eave 'im into the bushes 'ere, but, seein' that you 'ave come, sir, and very welcome when youdocome, we will 'ave a court-martial instead. Shacklock, are you willin'?" The volcano, who had been swearing uninterruptedly through this oration, expressed a desire, in general and particular terms, to see Gunner Barnabas in Torment and the "civilian" on the next gridiron.
Private Shacklock was a tow-haired, scrofulous boy of about two-and-twenty. His nose was bleeding profusely, and the live air attested that he had been drinking quite as much as was good for him. He lay, stomach-down, on a little level spot on the hillside; for Gunner Barnabas was sitting between his shoulder-blades, and his was not a weight to wriggle under. Private Shacklock could barely draw breath to swear, but he did the best that in himlay. "Amen," said Gunner Barnabas piously, when an unusually brilliant string of oaths came to an end. "Seein' that this gentleman 'ere has never seen the inside o' the orsepitals you've gotten in, and the clinks you've been chucked into like a hay-bundle,per-haps, Privite Shacklock, you will stop. You are a-makin' of 'im sick." Private Shacklock said that he was pleased to hear it, and would have continued his speech, but his breath suddenly went from him, and the unfinished curse died out in a gasp. Gunner Barnabas had put up one of his huge feet. "There's just enough room now for you to breathe, Shacklock," said he, "an' not enough for you to try to interrupt the conversashin I'm a-havin' with this gentleman.Choop!" Turning to me, Gunner Barnabas pulled at his pipe, but showed no hurry to open the "conversashin." I felt embarrassed, for, after all, the thus strangely unearthed difference between the Gunner and the Line man was no affair of mine. "Don't you go," said Gunner Barnabas. He had evidently been deeply moved by something. He dropped hishead between his fists and looked steadily at me.
"I met this child 'ere," said he, "at Deelally—a fish-back recruity as ever was. I knowed 'im at Deelally, and I give 'im a latherin' at Deelally all for to keep 'im straight, 'e bein' such as wants a latherin' an' knowin' nuthin' o' the ways o' this country. Then I meets 'im up here, a butterfly-huntin' as innercent as you please—convalessin'. I goes out with 'im butterfly-huntin', and, as you see 'ere, a-shootin'. The gun betwixt us." I saw then, what I had overlooked before, a Company fowling-piece lying among some boulders far down the hill. Gunner Barnabas continued: "I should ha' seen where he had a-bin to get that drink inside o' 'im. Presently, 'e misses summat. 'You're a bloomin' fool,' sez I. 'If that had been a Pathan, now!' I sez. 'Damn your Pathans, an' you, too,' sez 'e. 'I strook it.' 'You did not,' I sez, 'I saw the bark fly.' 'Stick to your bloomin' pop-guns,' sez 'e, 'an' don't talk to a better man than you.' I laughed there, knowin' what I was an' what'e was. 'You laugh?' sez he. 'I laugh,' I sez, 'Shacklock, an' for what should I not laugh?' sez I. 'Then go an' laugh in Hell,' sez 'e, 'for I'll 'ave none of your laughin'.' With that 'e brings up the gun yonder and looses off, and I stretches 'im there, and guv him a little to keep 'im quiet, and puts 'im under, an' while I was thinkin' what nex', you comes down the 'ill, an' finds us as we was."
The Private was the Gunner's prey—I knew that the affair had fallen as the Gunner had said, for my friend is constitutionally incapable of lying—and I recognised that in his hands lay the boy's fate.
"What doyouthink?" said Gunner Barnabas, after a silence broken only by the convulsive breathing of the boy he was sitting on. "I think nothing," I said. "He didn't go at me. He's your property." Then an idea occurred to me. "Hand him over to his own Company. They'll school him half dead." "Got no Comp'ny," said Gunner Barnabas. "'E's a conv'lessint draft—all sixes an' sevens. Don't matter to them what he did." "Thrashhim yourself, then," I said. Gunner Barnabas looked at the man and smiled; then caught up an arm, as a mother takes up the dimpled arm of a child, and ran the sleeve and shirt up to the elbow. "Look at that!" he said. It was a pitiful arm, lean and muscleless. "Can you mill a man with an arm like that—such as I would like to mill him, an' such as he deserves? I tell you, sir, an' I am not smokin' (swaggering), as you see—I could take that man—Sodger 'e is, Lord 'elp 'im!—an' twis' off 'is arms an' 'is legs as if 'e was a naked crab. See here!"
Before I could realise what was going to happen, Gunner Barnabas rose up, stooped, and taking the wretched Private Shacklock by two points of grasp, heaved him up above his head. The boy kicked once or twice, and then was still. He was very white. "I could now," said Gunner Barnabas, "I could now chuck this man where I like. Chuck him like a lump o' beef, an' it would not be too much for him if I chucked. Can I thrash such a man withboth 'ands? No, nor yet with my right 'and tied behind my back, an' my lef' in a sling."
He dropped Private Shacklock on the ground and sat upon him as before. The boy groaned as the weight settled, but there was a look in his white-lashed, red eyes that was not pleasant.
"I do not knowwhatI will do," said Gunner Barnabas, rocking himself to and fro. "I know 'is breed, an' the way o' the likes o' them. If I was in 'is Comp'ny, an' this 'ad 'appened, an' I 'ad struck 'im, as Iwouldha' struck him, 'twould ha' all passed off an' bin forgot till the drink was in 'im again—a month, maybe, or six, maybe. An' when the drink was frizzin' in 'is 'ead he would up and loose off in the night or the day or the evenin'.All acause of that millin' that 'e would ha forgotten in betweens.That I would be dead—killed by the likes o' 'im, an' me the next strongest man but three in the British Army!"
Private Shacklock, not so hardly pressed as he had been, found breath to say that if he could only get hold of the fowling-piece againthe strongest man but three in the British Army would be seriously crippled for the rest of his days. "Hear that!" said Gunner Barnabas, sitting heavily to silence his chair. "Hear that, you that think things is funny to put into the papers! He would shoot me, 'e would, now; an' so long as he's drunk, or comin' out o' the drink, 'e will want to shoot me. Look a-here!"
He turned the boy's head sideways, his hand round the nape of the neck, his thumb touching the angle of the jaw. "What do you call those marks?" They were the white scars of scrofula, with which Shacklock was eaten up. I told Gunner Barnabas this. "I don't know what that means. I call 'em murder-marks an' signs. If a man 'as these things on 'im, an' drinks, so long as 'e's drunk, 'e's mad—a looney.Butthat doesn't 'elp if 'e kills you. Look a-here, an' here!" The marks were thick on the jaw and neck. "Stubbs 'ad 'em," said Gunner Barnabas to himself, "an' Lancy 'ad 'em, an' Duggard 'ad 'em, an' wot's come tothem?You'vegot 'em," he said, addressinghimself to the man he was handling like a roped calf, "an' sooner or later you'll go with the rest of 'em. But this time I will not do anything—exceptin' keep you here till the drink's dead in you."
Gunner Barnabas resettled himself and continued: "Twice this afternoon, Shacklock, you 'ave been so near dyin' that I know no man more so. Once was when I stretched you, an' might ha' wiped off your face with my boot as you was lyin'; an' once was when I lifted you up in my fists. Was you afraid, Shacklock?"
"I were," murmured the half-stifled soldier.
"An' once more I will show you how near you can go to Kingdom Come in my 'ands." He knelt by Shacklock's side, the boy lying still as death. "If I was to hit you here," said he, "I would break your chest, an' you would die. If I was to put my 'and here, an' my other 'and here, I would twis' your neck, an' you would die, Privite Shacklock. If I was to put my knees here an' put your 'eadso, I would pull off your 'ead, Privite Shacklock,an' you would die. If you think as how I am a liar, say so, an' I'll show you.Doyou think so?"
"No," whispered Private Shacklock, not daring to move a muscle, for Barnabas's hand was on his neck.
"Now, remember," went on Barnabas, "neither you will say nothing nor I will say nothing o' what has happened. I ha' put you to shame before me an' this gentleman here, an' that is enough. But I tell you, an' you give 'eed now, it would be better for you to desert than to go on a-servin' where you are now. If I meets you again—if my Batt'ry lays with your Reg'ment, an' Privite Shacklock is on the rolls, I will first mill you myself till you can't see, and then I will say why I strook you. You must go, an' look bloomin' slippy about it, for if you stay, so sure as God made Paythans an' we've got to wipe 'em out, you'll be loosing off o' unauthorised amminition—in or out o' barricks, an' you'll be 'anged for it. I know your breed, an' I know what these 'ere white marks mean. You're mad, Shacklock,that's all—and here you stay, under me. An' nowchoop, an' lie still."
I waited and smoked, and Gunner Barnabas smoked till the shadows lengthened on the hillside, and a chilly wind began to blow. At dusk Gunner Barnabas rose and looked at his captive. "Drink's out o' 'im now," he said.
"I can't move," whimpered Shacklock. "I've got the fever back again."
"I'll carry you," said Gunner Barnabas, swinging him up and preparing to climb the hill. "Good-night, sir," he said to me. "It looks pretty, doesn't it? But never you forget, an' I won't forget neither, that this 'ere shiverin', shakin', convalescent a-hangin' on to my neck is a ragin', tearin' devil when 'e's lushy—an' 'e a boy!"
He strode up to the hill with his burden, but just before he disappeared he turned round and shouted: "It's the likes o' 'im brings shame on the likes o' us. 'Tain't we ourselves, s'elp me Gawd, 'tain't!"