“What are you going to do withthat?” enquired Hall.
“Why!—eat it, I suppose,” said Bertram.
“People don’t eatthose,” replied Hall.
“Why not?” asked Bertram.
“Try it and see,” was the response.
Bertram did, and desisted not until his teeth ached and he feared to break them. There was certainly no fear of breaking the biscuit. Was it a sort of practical joke biscuit—a rather clever imitation of a biscuit in concrete, hardwood, or pottery-ware of some kind?
“I understand why people do not eat them,” he admitted.
“Can’t be done,” said Hall. “Why, even the Kavirondo who eat live slugs, dead snakes, uncooked rice, raw flesh or rotten flesh and any part of any animal there is, do not regard those things as food. . . . They make ornaments of them, tools, weapons, missiles, all sorts of things. . . .”
“I suppose if one were really starving one could live on them for a time,” said the honest and serious-minded Bertram, ever a seeker after truth.
“Not unless one could get them into one’s stomach, I suppose,” was the reply; “and I don’t see how one would do it. . . . I was reduced to trying once, and I tried hard. I put one in a basin and poured boiling water on it. . . . No result whatever. . . . I left it to soak for an hour while I chewed and chewed a piece of bully-beef. . . . Result? . . . It was slightly darker in colour, but I could no more bite into it than I could into a tile or a book. . . .”
“Suppose you boiled one,” suggested Bertram.
“Precisely what I did,” said Hall, “for my blood was up, apart from the fact that I was starving. It was a case of Hallversusa Biscuit. I boiled it—or rather watched the cook boil it in achattie. . . . I gave it an hour. At the end of the hour it was of a slightly still darker colour—and showed signs of splitting through the middle. But never a bit could I get off it. . . . ‘Boil the dam’ thing all day and all night, and give it me hot for breakfast,’ said I to the cook. . . . As one who patiently humours the headstrong, wilful White Man, he went away to carry on the foolish struggle. . . .”
“What was it like in the morning?” enquired Bertram, as Hall paused reminiscent, and chewed the cud of bitter memory.
“Have you seen a long-sodden boot-sole that is resolving itself into its original layers and laminæ?” asked Hall. “Where there should be one solid sole, you see a dozen, and the thing gapes, as it were, showing serried rows of teeth in the shape of rusty nails and little protuberances of leather and thread?”
“Yes,” smiled Bertram.
“That was my biscuit,” continued Hall. “At the corners it gasped and split. Between the layers little lumps and points stood up, where the original biscuit holes had been made when thedreadful thing was without form, and void, in the process of evolution from cement-like dough to brick-like biscuit. . . .”
“Could you eat it?” asked Bertram.
“Couldyoueat a boiled boot-sole?” was the reply. “The thing had turned from dry concrete to wet leather. . . . It had exchanged the extreme of brittle durability for that of pliant toughness. . . .Eatit!” and Hall laughed sardonically.
“What becomes of them all, then, if no one eats them?” asked Bertram.
“Oh—they have their uses, y’ know. Boxes of them make a jolly good breastwork. . . The Army Service Corps are provided with work—taking them by the ton from place to place and fetching them back again. . . . I reveted a trench with biscuits once. . . . Looked very neat. . . . Lonely soldiers, in lonely outposts, doGOD BLESS OUR HOMEand other devices with them—and you can make really attractive little photo-frames for ‘midgets’ and miniature with them if you have a centre-bit and carving tools. . . The handy-men of the R.E. make awf’ly nice boxes of children’s toy-building-bricks with them, besides carvedplaquesand all sorts of little models. . . . I heard of a prisoner who made a complete steam-engine out of biscuits, but I never saw it myself. . . . Oh, yes, the Army would miss its biscuits—but I certainly never saw anybody eat one. . . .”
Nor did Bertram, throughout the campaign. And here again it occurred to his foolish civilian mind that if the thousands of pounds spent on wholly and utterly inedible dog-biscuit had been spent on the ordinary biscuits of civilisation and the grocer’s shop, sick and weary soldiers, working and suffering for their country in a terrible climate, might have had a sufficiency of food that they could have eaten with pleasure and digested with benefit, without costing their grateful country a penny more.
“Which would be the better,” asked Bertram of himself—“to send an army ten tons of ‘biscuit’ that it cannot eat, or one ton of real biscuit that it can eat and enjoy?”
But, as an ignorant, simple, and silly civilian, he must be excused. . . .
Dessert followed, in the shape of unripe bananas, and Bertram left the table with a cupful of thin soup, a small piece of cheese, and half a crisp, but pithy and acidulous banana beneath his belt. As the Colonel left the hut he hurried after him.
“If you please, sir,” said he, “may I go out with the force that is to attack the German post to-morrow?”
Having acted on impulse and uttered the fatal words, he regretted the fact. Why should he be such a silly fool as to seek sorrow like this? Wasn’t there danger and risk and hardship enough—without going out to look for it?
“In what capacity?” asked Colonel Rock, and added: “Hall is in command, and Stanner is his subaltern.”
“As a spectator, sir,” said Bertram, “and I might—er—be useful perhaps—er—if—”
“Spectator!” mused the Colonel. “Bright idea! We mightallgo, of course. . . . Two hundred men go out on the job, and a couple of thousand go with ’em to whoop ’em on and clap, what? Excellent notion. . . . Wonder if we could arrange a ‘gate,’ and give the gate-money to the Red Cross, or start a Goose Club or something. . .” and he turned to go into his tent.
Bertram was not certain as to whether this reply was in the nature of a refusal of his request. He hoped it was.
“May I go, sir?” he said.
“You may not,” replied the Colonel, and Bertram felt very disappointed.
That night Bertram was again unable to sleep. Lying awake on his hard and narrow bed, faint for want of food, and sick with the horrible stench of the swamp, his mind revolved continually round the problem of how to “personally conduct” a convoy of a thousand porters through twenty miles of enemy country in such a way that it might have a chance if attacked. After tossing and turning for hours and vainly wooing sleep, he lay considering the details of a scheme by which the armed escort should, as it were, circulate round and round from head to tail of the convoy by a process which left ten of the advance-guard to occupy every tributary turning that joined the path and to wait at the junction of the two paths until the whole convoy had passed and the rear-guard had arrived. The ten would then join the rear-guard andmarch on with them. By the time this had been repeated sufficiently often to deplete the advance-guard, the convoy should halt while the bulk of the rear-guard marched up to the head of the column again and soda capo. It would want a lot of explaining to whoever was in command of the rear-guard, for it would be impossible for him, himself, to struggle up and down a line miles long—a line to which anything might happen, at any point, at any moment. . . . He could make it clear that at any turning he would detail ten men from the advance-guard, and then, when fifty had been withdrawn for this flanking work, he would halt the column so that the officer commanding the rear-guard could send fifty back. . . . Ten to one the fool would bungle it, and he might sit and await the return of the fifty until the crack of doom, or until he went back and fetched them up himself. And as soon as he had quitted the head of the column there would be an attack on it! . . . Yes—or perhaps the ass in command of the ten placed to guard the side-turnings would omit to join the rear-guard as it passed—and he’d roll up at his destination, with a few score men short. . . . What would be done to him if he—
Bang! . . .
Bertram’s heart seemed to leap out of his body and then to stand still. His bones seemed to turn to water, and his tongue to leather. Had a shell burst beneath his bed? . . . Was he soaring in the air? . . . Had a great mine exploded beneath the Camp, and was the M’paga Field Force annihilated? . . . Captain Hall sat up, yawned, put his hand out from beneath the mosquito curtain of his camp-bed and flashed his electric torch at a small alarm-clock that stood on a box within reach.
“What was that explosion?” said Bertram as soon as he could speak.
“Three-thirty,” yawned Hall. “Might as well get up, I s’pose. . . . Wha’? . . . ’Splosion? . . . Some fool popped his rifle off at nothing, I sh’d say. . . . Blast him! Woke me up. . .”
“It’s not an attack, then?” said Bertram, mightily relieved. “It sounded as though it were right close outside the hut. . . .”
“Well—you don’t attack withonerifle shot—nor beat off an attack withnone. I don’t, at least,” replied Hall. . . “Just outside, was it?” he added as he arose. “Funny! There’s no picket or sentry there. You must have been dreaming, my lad.”
“I was wide awake before it happened,” said Bertram. “I’ve been awake all night. . . . It was so close, I—I thought I was blown to bits. . . .”
“’Oo wouldn’ sell ’is liddle farm an’ go ter War,” remarked Hall in Tommy vein. “It’s a wearin’ life, being blowed outer yer bed at ar’ pars free of a mornin’, ain’t it, guv’nor?”
A deep and hollow groan, apparently from beneath Bertram’s bed, almost froze that young gentleman’s blood.
Pulling on his slippers and turning on his electric torch, Hall dashed out of the hut. Bertram heard him exclaim, swear, and ask questions in Hindustani. He was joined by others, and the group moved away. . . .
“Bright lad nearly blown his hand off,” said Hall, re-entering the hut and lighting a candle-lamp. “Says he was cleaning his rifle. . . .”
“Do you clean a rifle while it is loaded, and also put one hand over the muzzle and the other on the trigger while you do it?” asked Bertram.
“Idon’t, personally,” replied Captain Hall, shortly. He was loath to admit that this disgrace to the regiment had intentionally incapacitated himself from active service, though it was fairly obvious.
“I wish he’d gone somewhere else to clean his rifle,” said Bertram. “I believe the thing was pointed straight at my ear. I tell you—I felt as though a shell had burst in the hut.”
“Bullet probably came through here,” observed Hall nonchalantly as he laced his boots. (Later Bertram discovered that it had actually cut one of the four sticks that supported his mosquito curtain, and had torn the muslin thereof.)
Sleep being out of the question, Bertram decided that he might as well arise and watch the setting-forth of the little expedition.
“Going to get up and see you off the premises,” said he.
“Stout fella,” replied Hall. “I love enthusiasm—but it’ll wear off. . . . The day’ll come, and before long, when you wouldn’t get out of bed to see your father shot at dawn. . . . Not unless you were in orders to command the firing-party, of course,” he added. . .
Bertram dressed, feeling weak, ill and unhappy. . . .
“Am I coming in, sah, thank you?” said a well-known voice at the doorless doorway of the hut.
“Hope so,” replied Bertram, “if that’s tea you’ve got.”
It was. In a large enamel “tumbler” was a pint of glorious hot tea, strong, sweet and scalding.
“Useful bird, that,” observed Hall, after declining to share the tea, as he was having breakfast at four o’clock over in the Mess. “I s’pose you hadn’t ordered tea at three forty-five, had you?”
Bertram admitted that he had not, and concealed the horrid doubt that arose in his mind—born of memories of Sergeant Jones’s tea at Kilindini—as to whether he was not drinking, under Hall’s very nose, the tea that should have graced Hall’s breakfast, due to be on the table in the Mess at that moment. . . .
If Captain Hall found his tea unduly dilute he did not mention the fact when Bertram came over to the Messbanda, and sat yawning and watching him—the man who could nonchalantly sit and shovel horrid-looking porridge into his mouth at four a.m., and talk idly on indifferent subjects, a few minutes before setting out to make a march in the darkness to an attack at dawn. . . .
Ill and miserable as he felt, Bertram forgot everything in the thrilling interest of watching the assembly and departure of the little force. Out of the black darkness little detachments appeared, sometimes silhouetted against the red background of cooking fires, and marched along the main thoroughfare of the Camp to the place of assembly at the quarter-guard. Punctual to the minute, the column was ready to march off, as Captain Hall strolled up, apparently as unconcerned as if he were in some boring peace manœuvres, or about to ride to a meet, instead of to make a cross-country night march, by compass, through an African jungle-swamp to an attack at dawn, with the responsibility of the lives of a couple of hundred men upon his shoulders, as well as that of making a successful move on the chess-board of the campaign. . . .
At the head of the column were a hundred Sepoys of the Hundred and Ninety-Eighth, under Stanner. In the light of the candle-lantern which he had brought from thebanda, Bertram scrutinised their faces. They were Mussulmans, and looked determined, hardy men and fine soldiers. Some few looked happily excited, some ferocious, but the prevailing expression was one of weary depression and patient misery. Very many looked ill, and here and there he saw a sullen and resentful face. On the whole, he gathered the impression of a force that would march where itwas led and would fight bravely, venting on the foe its anger and resentment at his being the cause of their sojourning in a stinking swamp to rot of malaria and dysentery.
How was Stanner feeling, Bertram wondered. He was evidently feeling extremely nervous, and made no secret of it when Bertram approached and addressed him. He was anything but afraid, but he was highly excited. His teeth chattered as he spoke, and his hand shook when he lit a cigarette.
“Gad! I should hate to get one of their beastly expanding bullets in my stomach,” said he. “They fire a brute of a big-bore slug with a flat nose. Bad as an explosive bullet, the swine,” and he shuddered violently. “Stomach’s the only part I worry about, and I don’t give a damn for bayonets. . . . But a bullet through your stomach! You live for weeks. . . .”
Bertram felt distinctly glad to discover that a trained regular officer, like Stanner, could entertain these sensations of nervous excitement, and that he himself had no monopoly of them. He even thought, with a thrill of hope and confidence, that when his turn came he would be less nervous than Stanner. He knew that Stanner was not frightened, and that he did not wish he was snug in bed as his brother-officers were, but he also knew that Bertram Greene would not be frightened, and hoped and believed he would not be so palpably excited and nervous. . . .
Behind the detachment of the Hundred and Ninety-Eighth came a machine-gun team ofaskarisof the King’s African Rifles, in charge of a gigantic Sergeant. The dismounted gun and the ammunition-boxes were on the heads of Swahili porters.
Bertram liked the look of the Sergeant. He was a picture of quiet competence, reliability and determination. Although a full-blooded Swahili, his face was not unhandsome in a fierce, bold, and vigorously purposeful way, and though he had the flattened, wide-nostrilled nose of the negro, his mouth was Arab, thin-lipped and clear cut as Bertram’s own. There was nothing bovine, childish nor wandering in his regard, but a look of frowning thoughtfulness, intentness and concentration.
And Sergeant Simba was what he looked, every inch a soldier, and a fine honourable fighting-man, brave as the lion he was named after; a subordinate who would obey and follow his white officer to certain death, without question or wavering; a leader who would carry his men with him by force of his personality,courage and leadership, while he could move and they could follow. . . . Beside Sergeant Simba, the average German soldier is a cur, a barbarian, and a filthy brute, for never in all the twenty years of his “savage” warfare has Sergeant Simba butchered a child, tortured a woman, murdered wounded enemies, abused (nor used) the white flag, fired on the Red Cross, turned captured dwelling-places into pig-styes and latrines in demonstration of hiskultur—nor, when caught and cornered, has he waggled dirty hands about cunning, cowardly head with squeal ofKamerad!Kamerad! . . . Could William the Kultured but have officered his armies with a hundred thousand of Sergeant Simba, instead of with his high-well-born Junkers, the Great War might have been a gentleman’s war, a clean war, and the wordGermanmight not have become an epithet for all time, nor the “noble and knightly” sons of ancient houses have received commissions as Second Nozzle-Holder in the Poison-Gas Grenadiers, Sub Tap-Turner in a Fire-Squirting Squadron, or Ober Left-behind to Poison Wells in the Prussic (Acid) Guard. . . .
As Bertram watched this sturdy-looking Maxim-gun section, with their imperturbable, inscrutable faces, an officer of the King’s African Rifles emerged from the circumambient gloom and spoke with Sergeant Simba in Swahili. As he departed, after giving his orders and a few words of advice to Sergeant Simba, he raised his lantern to the face of the man in charge of the porters who carried the gun and ammunition. The man’s face was instantly wreathed in smiles, and he giggled like a little girl. The officer dug him affectionately in the ribs, as one smacks a horse on dismounting after a long run and a clean kill, and the giggle became a cackle of elfin laughter most incongruous. Evidently the man was the officer’s pet butt and prize fool.
“Cartouchie n’gapi?” asked the officer.
“Hundrem millium,Bwana,” replied the man, and as the officer turned away with a laugh, Bertram correctly surmised that on being asked how many cartridges he had got, the man had replied that he possessed a hundred million.
Probably he spoke in round numbers, and used the only English words he knew. . . . The African does not deal in larger quantities than ten-at-a-time, and his estimates are vague, and still more vague is his expression of them. He will tell you that a place is “several nights distant,” or perhaps that it is “a fewrivers away.” It is only just, however, to state that he will cheerfully accept an equal vagueness in return, and will go to your tent with the alacrity of clear understanding and definite purpose, if you say to him: “Run quickly to my tent and bring me the thing I want. You will easily distinguish it, as it is of about the colour of a flower, the size of a piece of wood, the shape of elephant’s breath, and the weight of water.Youknow—it’s as long as some string and exactly the height of some stones. You’ll find it about as heavy as a dead bird or a load on the conscience. That thing that looks like a smell and feels like a sound. . . .” He may bring your gun, your tobacco-pouch, your pyjamas, your toothbrush, or one slipper, but he will bringsomething, and that without hesitation or delay, for he immediately and clearly grasped that that particular thing, and none other, was what you wanted. He recognised it from your clear and careful description. It was not as though you had idly and carelessly said: “Bring me my hat” (or my knife or the matches or some other article that he handled daily), and left him to make up his mind, unaided, as to whether you did not really mean trousers, a book, washhand-stand, or the pens, ink, and paper of the gardener’s aunt. . . .
Behind the Swahili was a half-company of Gurkhas of the Kashmir Imperial Service Troops. As they stood at ease and chatted to each other, they reminded Bertram of a class of schoolboys waiting to be taken upon some highly pleasurable outing. There was an air of cheerful excitement and joyous expectancy.
“Salaam,Subedar Sahib,” said Bertram, as the fierce hard face of his little friend came within the radius of the beams of his lantern.
“Salaam,Sahib,” replied the Gurkha officer, “Sahib ata hai?” he asked.
“Nahin,” replied Bertram. “Hamara Colonel Sahib hamko hookum dea ki‘Mut jao,’” and the Subedar gathered that Bertram’s Colonel had forbidden him to go. He commiserated with the young Sahib, said it was bad luck, but doubtless the Colonel Sahib in his wisdom had reserved him for far greater things.
As he strolled along their flank, Bertram received many a cheery grin of recognition and many a “Salaam, Sahib,” from the friendly and lovable little hill-men.
In their rear, Bertram saw, with a momentary feeling that wassomething like the touch of a chill hand upon his heart, a party of Swahili stretcher-bearers, under an Indian of the Subordinate Medical Department, who bore, slung by a crossbelt across his body, a large satchel of dressings and simple surgical appliances. . . . Would these stretcher-bearers come back laden—sodden and dripping with the life-blood of men now standing near them in full health and strength and vigour of lusty life? Perhaps this fine Sergeant, perhaps the Subedar-Major of the Gurkhas? Stanner? Hall? . . .
Suddenly the column was in motion and passing through the entrance by which Bertram had come into the Camp—was it a month ago or only yesterday?
Without disobeying the Colonel, he might perhaps go with the column as far as the river? There was a water-picket there permanently. If he did not go beyond the picket-line, it could not be held that he had “gone out” with the force in face of the C.O.’s prohibition.
Along the narrow lane or tunnel which wound through the impenetrable jungle of elephant-grass, acacia scrub, live oak, baobab, palm, thorn, creeper, and undergrowth, the column marched to the torrential little river, thirty or forty yards wide, that swirled brown, oily, and ugly, between its reed-beds of sucking mud. Here the column halted while Hall and Stanner, lantern in hand, felt their slow and stumbling way from log to log of the rough and unrailed bridge that spanned the stream. On the far side Hall waited with raised lantern, and in the middle stayed Stanner and bade the men cross in single file, the while he vainly endeavoured to illuminate each log and the treacherous gap beside it. Before long the little force had crossed without loss—(and to fall through into that deep, swift stream in the darkness with accoutrements and a hundred rounds of ammunition was to be lost for ever)—and in a minute had disappeared into the darkness, swallowed up and lost to sight and hearing, as though it had never passed that way. . . .
Bertram turned back to Camp and came face to face with Major Manton.
“Morning, Greene,” said he. “Been to see ’em off? Stout fella.” And Bertram felt as pleased and proud as if he had won a decoration. . . .
The day dawned grey, cheerless and threatening over alandscape as grey, cheerless and threatening as the day. The silent, menacing jungle, the loathsome stench of the surrounding swamp, the heavy, louring sky, the moist, suffocating heat; the sense of lurking, threatening danger from savage man, beast and reptile, insect and microbe; the feeling of utter homelessness and rough discomfort, combined to oppress, discourage and disturb. . . .
Breakfast, eaten in silence in the Messbanda, consisted of porridge that required long and careful mastication by any who valued his digestion; pieces of meat of dull black surface and bright pink interior, also requiring long and careful mastication by all who were not too wearied by the porridge drill; and bread.
The bread was of interest—equally to the geologist, the zoologist, the physiologist, the chemist, and the merely curious. To the dispassionate eye, viewing it without prejudice or partiality, the loaf looked like an oblate spheroid of sandstone—say the Old Red Sandstone in which the curious may pick up a mammoth, aurochs, sabre-toothed tiger, or similar ornament of their little world and fleeting day—and to the passionate hand hackingwithprejudice and partiality (for crumb, perhaps), it also felt like it. It was Army Bread, and quite probably made since the outbreak of the war. The geologist, wise in Eras—Paleolithic,Pliocene,Eocene,May-have-been—felt its challenge at once. To the zoologist there was immediate appeal when, by means of some sharp or heavy tool, the outer crust had been broken. For that interior was honey-combed with large, shiny-walled cells, and every cell was filled with a strange web-like kind of cocoon of finest filaments, now grey, now green, to which adhered tiny black specks. Were these, asked the zoologist, the eggs of insects, and, if so, of what insects? Were they laid before the loaf petrified, or after? If before, had the burning process in the kiln affected them? If after, how did the insect get inside? Or were they possibly of vegetable origin—something of a fungoid nature—or even on that strange borderland ’twixt animal and vegetable where roam the yeasty microbe and boisterous bacillus? Perhaps, after all, it was neither animal nor vegetable, but mineral? . . . So ponders the geologist who incurs Army Bread in the wilds of the earth.
The physiologist merely wonders once again at the marvels of the human organism, that man can swallow such things and live; while the chemist secretes a splinter or two, that he may make aqualitative and quantitative analysis of this new, compound, if haply he survive to return to his laboratory.
To the merely curious it is merely curious—until he essays to eat it—and then his utterance may not be merely precious. . . .
After this merry meal, Bertram approached the Colonel, saluted, and said:
“Colonel Frost, of the Hundred and Ninety-Ninth, ordered me to be sure to request you to return his nine cooking-pots at your very earliest convenience, sir, if you please.”
Colonel Rock smiled brightly upon Bertram.
“He always was a man who liked his little joke,” said he. . . . “Remind me to send him—”
“Yes, sir,” interrupted Bertram, involuntarily, so pleased was he to think that the Pots of Contention were to be returned after all.
“. . . A Christmas-card—will you?” finished Colonel Rock.
Bertram’s face fell. He thought he could hear, afar off, the ominous sound of the grinding of the mill-stones, between the upper and the nether of which he would be ground exceeding small. . . . Would Colonel Frost send him a telegram? What would Colonel Rock say if he took it to him? Could he pretend that he had never received it. Base thought! If he received one every day? . . .
Suppose he were wounded. Could he pretend that his mind and memory were affected—loss of memory, loss of identity, loss of cooking-pots? . . .
“By the way,” said the Colonel, as Bertram saluted to depart, “you’ll leave here to-morrow morning with a thousand porters, taking rations and ammunition to Butindi. You will take the draft from the Hundred and Ninety-Ninth as escort, and report to Major Mallery there. Don’t go and get scuppered, or it’ll be bad for them up at Butindi. . . . Start about five. Lieutenant Bridges, of the Coolie Corps, will give you a guide. He’s been up there. . . . Better see Captain Brent about it to-night. He’ll hand over the thousand porters in good condition in the morning. . . . The A.S.C. people will make a separate dump of the stuff you are to take. . . . Make sure about it, so that you don’t pinch the wrong stuff, and turn up at Butindi with ten tons of Number Nine pills and other medical comforts. . . .”
Bertram’s heart sank within him, but he strove to achieve alook that blent pleasure, firmness, comprehension, and wide experience of convoy-work into one attractive whole. Wending his way to hisbanda, Bertram found Ali Suleiman making work for himself and doing it.
“I am going to Butindi at five to-morrow morning,” he announced. “Have you ever been that way?”
“Oh, yes, sah, please God, thank you,” replied Ali. “I was gun-bearer to abwana, one ’Mericani gentlyman wanting to shoot sable antelope—very rare inseck—but a lion running up and bite him instead, and shocking climate cause him great loss of life.”
“Then you could be guide,” interrupted Bertram, “and show me the way to Butindi?”
“Yes, sah,” replied Ali, “can showBwanaeverythings. . . .Bwanataking much quinine and othern’dawa[133a]there though. Shocking climate causingBwanabadhoma, bad fever, and perhaps great loss of life also. . . .”
“D’you get fever ever?” asked Bertram.
“Sometimes, sah, but have never had loss of life,” was the reassuring answer. . . .
That morning and afternoon Bertram spent in watching the work of the Camp, as he had no duties of his own, and towards evening learnt of the approach of the expedition of the morning. . . .
The column marched along with a swing, evidently pleased with itself, particularly the Swahili detachment, who chanted a song consisting of one verse which contained but one line. “Macouba Simba na piga mazungo,”[133b]they sang with wearying but unwearied regularity and monotony. At their head marched Sergeant Simba, looking as fresh as when he started, and more like a blackened European than a negro.
The Subedar and his Gurkhas had been left to garrison the outpost, but a few had returned on the stretchers of the medical detachment.
Bertram, with sinking heart and sick feelings of horror, watched these blood-stained biers, with their apparently lifeless burdens, file over the bridge, and held his breath whenever a stretcher-bearer stumbled on the greasy logs.
As the last couple safely crossed the bridge and laid their dripping stretcher down for a moment, the occupant, a Gurkha rifleman, suddenly sat up and looked round. His face wascorpse-like, and his uniform looked as though it had just been dipped in a bath of blood. Painfully he rose to his feet, while the Swahili bearers gaped in amazement, and tottered slowly forward. Reeling like a drunken man, he followed in the wake of the disappearing procession, until he fell. Picking up the empty stretcher, the bearers hurried to where he lay—only to be waved away by the wounded man, who again arose and reeled, staggering, along the path.
Bertram met him and caught his arm as he collapsed once more.
“Subr karo,” said Bertram, summoning up some Hindustani of a sort. “Stretcher men baitho.”[134a]
“Nahin,Sahib,” whispered the Gurkha; “kuch nahin hai.”[134b]He evidently understood and spoke a little of the same kind. No. It was nothing. Only seven holes from Maxim-gun fire, that had riddled him as the German N.C.O. sprayed the charging line until akukrihalved his skull. . . . It was nothing. . . . No—it would take more than aGermaniand his woolly-hairedaskaristo put Rifleman Thappa Sannu on a stretcher. . . .
Bertram’s hand seemed as though it were holding a wet sponge. He felt sick, and dreaded the moment when he must look at it and see it reeking red.
“Mirhbani,Sahib,” whispered the man again. “Kuch nahin hai.Hamko mut pukkaro.”[134c]
He lurched free, stumbled forward a dozen yards, and fell again.
There was no difficulty about placing him upon the stretcher this time, and he made no remonstrance, as he was dead.
Bertram went to hisbanda, sat on the edge of his bed, and wrestled manfully with himself.
By the time Hall had made his report to the Colonel and come to the hut for a wash and rest, Bertram had conquered his desire to be very sick, swallowed the lump in his throat, relieved the stinging in his eyes, and contrived to look and behave as though he had not just had one of the most poignant and disturbing experiences of his life. . . .
“Ripping little show,” said Captain Hall, as he prepared for abath and change. “The Gurkhas did in their pickets without a sound. Gad! They can handle thosekukrisof theirs to some purpose. Sentry on a mound in the outpost pooped off for some reason. They must just have been doing their morning Stand-to. . . . All four sides of the post opened fire, and we were only attacking on one. . . . They’d got a Maxim at each corner. . . . Too late, though. One hurroosh of a rush before they knew anything, and we were in thebomawith the bayonet. Most of them bunked over the other side. . . . Got three white men, though. A Gurkha laid one out—on the Maxim, he was—and the Sergeant of the Swahilis fairly spitted another with his bayonet. . . . Third one got in the way of my revolver. . . I don’t s’pose the whole thing lasted five minutes from the time their sentry fired. . . . The Hundred and Ninety-Eighth were fine. Lost our best Havildar, though. He’d have been Jemadar if he’d lived. He was leading a rush of his section in fine style, when he ‘copped a packet.’ Stopped one badly. Clean through the neck. One o’ those beastly soft-nosed slugs the swine give theiraskarisfor ‘savage’ warfare. . . . As if a German knew of any other kind. . . .”
“Many casualties?” asked Bertram, trying to speak lightly.
“No—very few. Only eleven killed and seven wounded. Wasn’t time for more. Shouldn’t have had that much, only the blighter with the Maxim was nippy enough to get going with it while we charged over about forty yards from cover. The Gurkhas jumped the ditch like greyhounds and over the parapet of the inner trench like birds. . . . Youshouldha’ been there. . . . They never had a chance. . . .”
“Yes,” said Bertram, and tried to visualise that rush at the belching Maxim.
“Didn’t think much of theirbundobust,” continued Hall. “Their pickets were pretty well asleep and the place hadn’t got a yard of barbed wire nor even a row of stakes. They hadn’t a field of fire of more than fifty yards anywhere. . . . Bit provincial, what? . . .”
While Hall bathed, Bertram went in search of Captain Brent of the Coolie Corps.
Dinner that night was a vain repetition of yesterday’s, save that there was more soup and cold bully-beef gravy available, owing to the rain.
The roof of thebandaconsisting of lightly thatched grass, reeds, twigs, and leaves, was as a sieve beneath the tropical downpour. There was nothing to do but to bear it, with or without grinning. Heavy drops in rapid succession pattered on bare heads, resounded on the tin plates, splashed into food, and, by constant dropping, wore away tempers. By comparison with the great heat of the weather, the rain seemed cold, and the little streams that cascaded down from pendent twig or reed were unwelcome as they invaded the back of the neck of some depressed diner below.
A most unpleasant looking snake, dislodged or disturbed by the rain, fell with sudden thud upon the table from his lodging in the roof. Barely had it done so when it was skewered to the boards by the fork of Captain Tollward. “Good man,” said Major Manton, and decapitated the reptile with his knife.
“Just as well to put him out of pain,” said he coolly; “it’s amamba. Beastly poisonous,” and the still-writhing snake was removed with the knife and fork that had carved him. “Lucky I got him in the neck,” observed Tollward, and the matter dropped.
Bertram wondered what he would have done had a small and highly poisonous serpent suddenly flopped down with a thump in front of his plate. Squealed like a girl perhaps?
Before long he was sitting huddled up beneath a perfect shower-bath of cold drops, with his feet in an oozy bog which soon became a pool and then a stream, and by the end of “dinner” was a torrent that gurgled in at one end of the Messbanda, and foamed out at the other. In this filthy water the Mess servants paddled to and fro, becoming more and more suggestive of drowned birds, while the yellowish khaki-drill of their masters turned almost black as it grew more sodden. One by one the lamps used by the cook and servants went out. That in thebandawent out too, and the Colonel, who owned a tent, followed its example. Those officers who had only huts saw no advantage in retiring to them, and sat on in stolid misery, endeavouring to keep cigarettes alight by holding them under the table between hasty puffs.
Having sat—as usual—eagerly listening to the conversation of his seniors—until the damp and depressed party broke up, Bertram splashed across to hisbandato find that the excellent Alihad completely covered his bed with his water-proof ground-sheet, had put his pyjamas and a change of underclothing into the bed and the rest of his kit under it. He had also dug a small trench and drain round the hut, so that the interior was merely a bog instead of a pool. . . .
Bertram then faced the problem of how to undress while standing in mud beneath a shower-bath, in such a manner as to be able to get into bed reasonably dry and with the minimum of mud upon the feet. . . .
As he lay sick and hungry, cold and miserable, with apparently high promise of fever and colic, listening to the pattering of heavy drops of water within the hut, and the beating of rain upon the sea of mud and water without, and realised that on the morrow he was to undertake his first really dangerous and responsible military duty, his heart sank. . . . Who washeto be in sole charge of a convoy upon whose safe arrival the existence of an outpost depended? What afoolhe had been to come! Why shouldhebe lying there half starving in that bestial swamp, shivering with fever, and feeling as though he had a very dead cat and a very live one in his stomach? . . . Raising his head from the pillow, he said aloud: “I would not be elsewhere for anything in the world. . . .”
When Bertram was awakened by Ali at four o’clock the next morning, he feared he would be unable to get up. Had he been at home, he would have remained in bed and sent for the doctor. His head felt like lead, every bone in his body ached, and he had that horrible sense of internalmalaise, than which few feelings are more discouraging, distressing and enervating.
The morning smelt horrible, and, by the light of the candle-lamp, the floor was seen to have resigned in favour of the flood. Another problem: Could a fair-sized man dress himself on a tiny camp-bed beneath a small mosquito curtain? If not, he must get out of bed into the water, and paddle around in that slimy ooze which it hid from the eye but not from the nose. Subsidiaryproblem: Could a man step straight into a pair of wet boots, so as to avoid putting bare feet into the mud, and then withdraw alternate feet from them, for the removal of pyjamas and the putting-on of shorts and socks, while the booted foot remained firmly planted in the slush for his support?
Or again: Sitting precariously on the edge of a canvas bed, could an agile person, with bare feet coyly withdrawn from contact with the foulness beneath, garb his nether limbs to the extent that permitted the pulling-on of boots? . . .
He could try anyhow. . . . After much groping and fumbling, Bertram pulled on his socks and shorts, and then, still lying on his bed, reached for his boots. These he had left standing on a dry patch beneath his bed, and now saw standing, with the rest of his kit, in a couple of inches of filthy water. Balancing himself on the sagging edge of the strip of canvas that served as bed-laths, palliasse and mattress, he struggled into the resisting and reluctant boots, and then boldly entered the water, pleased with the tactics that had saved him from touching it before he was shod. . . . It was not until he had retrieved his sodden puttees and commenced to put them on, that he realised that he was still wearing the trousers of his pyjamas!
And then it was that Bertram, for the first time in his life, furiously swore—long and loud and heartily. Let those who say in defence of War that it rouses man’s nobler instincts and brings out all that is best in him, note this deplorable fact.
Could he keep them on, or must he remove those clinging, squelching boots and partially undress again?
Striped blue and green pyjamas, showing for six inches between his shorts and his puttees, would add a distinctly novel touch to the uniform of a British officer. . . . No. It could not be done. Ill as he felt, and deeply as he loathed the idea of wrestling with the knots in the sodden boot-laces of those awful boots, he must do it—in spite of trembling hands, swimming head, and an almost unconquerable desire to lie down again.
And then—alas! for the moral maxims of the copy-books, the wise saws and modern instances of the didactic virtuous—sheer bad temper came to his assistance. With ferocious condemnations of everything, he cut his boot-laces, flung his boots into the water, splashed about violently in his socks, as he tore off the offending garments and hurled them after the boots, and thencompleted his dressing with as little regard to water, mud, slime, filth, and clay as though he were standing on the carpet of his dressing-room in England.
“I’m fed up!” quoth he, and barged out of thebandain a frame of mind that put the Fear of God and Second-Lieutenant Bertram Greene into all who crossed his path. . . . (Cupidforsooth!)
The first was Ali Suleiman, who stood waiting in the rain, until he could go in and pack his master’s kit.
“Here—you—pack my kit sharp, and don’t stand there gaping like a fish in a frying-pan. Stir yourself before I stiryou,” he shouted.
The faithful Ali dived into thebandalike a rabbit into its hole. Excellent! This was the sort ofbwanahe could reverence. Almost had he been persuaded that this new master was not a real gentleman—he was so gentle. . . .
Bertram turned back again, but not to apologise for his harsh words, as his better nature prompted him to do.
“Where’s my breakfast, you lazy rascal?” he shouted.
“On the table in Messbanda, please God, thank you, sah,” replied Ali Suleiman humbly, as one who prays that his grievous trespasses may be forgotten.
“Then why couldn’t you say so, you—you—you—” and here memories of the Naval Officer stole across his subconsciousness, “you blundering burden, you posthumous porridge-punter, you myopic megalomaniac, you pernicious, piebald pacifist. . . .”
Ali Suleiman rolled his eyes and nodded his head with every epithet.
“Oh, my God, sah,” said he, as Bertram paused for breath, “I am a dam man mos’ blasted sinful”—and, so ridiculous a thing is temper, that Bertram neither laughed nor saw cause for laughter.
Splashing across to the Messbanda, he discovered a battered metal teapot, an enamelled tumbler, an almost empty tin of condensed milk, and a tin plate of very sad-looking porridge. By the light of a lamp that appealed more to the olfactory and auditory senses than to the optic, he removed from the stodgy mess the well-developed leg of some insect unknown, and then tasted it—(the porridge, not the leg).
“Filthy muck,” he remarked aloud.
“Sahib calling me, sir?” said a voice that made him jump, andthe Cook’s Understudy, a Goanese youth, stepped into the circle of light—or of lesser gloom.
“Very natural you should have thought so,” answered Bertram. “I saidFilthy Muck.”
“Yessir,” replied the acting deputy assistant adjutant cooklet, proudly, “I am cooking breakfast for the Sahib.”
“Youcooked this?” growled Bertram, and half rose, with so menacing an expression and wild an eye that the guilty fled, making a note that this was a Sahib to be properly served in future, and not, as he had foolishly thought him, a poor polite soul for whom anything was good enough. . . .
Pushing the burnt and nauseating horror from him, Bertram essayed to pour out tea, only to find that the fluid was readily procurable from anywhere but the spout. A teapot that will not “pour out” freely is an annoyance at the best of times, and to the most placid of souls. (The fact that tea through the lid is as good as tea through the spout is more than counter-balanced by the fact that tea in the cup is better than tea on the table-cloth. And it is a very difficult art, only to be acquired by patient practice, to pour tea into the cup and the cup alone, from the top of a spout-bunged teapot. Try it.)
Bertram’s had temper waxed and deepened.
“Curse the thing!” he swore, and banged the offending pot on the table, and, forgetting his nice table-manners, blew violently down the spout. This sent a wave of tea over his head and scalded him, and there the didactic virtuous, and the copy-book maxims, scored.
Sorely tempted to call to the cooklet in honeyed tones, decoy him near with fair-seeming smiles, with friendly gestures, and then to fling the thing at his head, he essayed to pour again.
A trickle, a gurgle, a spurt, a round gush of tea—and the pale wan skeletal remnants of a once lusty cockroach, sodden and soft, leapt into the cup. Swirling round and round, it seemed giddily to explore its new unresting-place, triumphant, as though chanting, with the Ancient Mariner, some such pæan as
“I was the first that ever burstInto this silent tea. . . .”
“I was the first that ever burstInto this silent tea. . . .”
Heaven alone knew to how many cups of tea that disintegrating corpse had contributed of its best before the gusts of Bertram’s temper had contributed to its dislodgment.
(Temper seems to have scored a point here, it must be reluctantly confessed.)
Bertram arose and plunged forth into the darkness, not daring to trust himself to call the cook.
Raising his clenched hands in speechless wrath, he drew in his breath through his clenched teeth—and then slipped with catastrophic suddenness on a patch of slimy clay and sat down heavily in very cold water.
He arose a distinctly dangerous person. . . .
Near the ration-dump squatted a solid square of naked black men, not precisely savages, rawshenzisof the jungle, but something between these and the Swahilis who work as personal servants, gun-bearers, and the better class ofsafariporters. They were big men and looked strong. They smelt stronger. It was a perfectly indescribable odour, like nothing on earth, and to be encountered nowhere else on earth—save in the vicinity of another mass of negroes.
In the light of a big fire and several lanterns, Bertram saw that the men were in rough lines, and that each line appeared to be in charge of a headman, distinguished by some badge of rank, such as a bowler hat, a tobacco tin worn as an ear-ring, a pair of pink socks, or a frock coat. These men walked up and down their respective lines and occasionally smote one of their squatting followers, hitting the chosen one without fear or favour, without rhyme or reason, and apparently without doing much damage. For the smitten one, without change of expression or position, emitted an incredibly thin piping squeal, as though in acknowledgment of an attention, rather than as if giving natural vent to anguish. . . .
Every porter had a red blanket, and practically every one wore apanga. The verbs are selected. Theyhadblankets and theyworepangas. The blankets they either sat upon or folded into pads for insertion beneath the loads they were to carry upon their heads. Thepangaswere attached to strings worn over the shoulder. This useful implement serves the African as toothpick, spade, axe, knife, club, toasting-fork, hammer, weapon, hoe, cleaver, spoon, skinning-knife, and every other kind of tool, as well as being correct jungle wear for men for all occasions, and in all weathers. He builds a house with it; slays, skins and dismembers a bullock; fells a tree, makes a boat, digs a pit; fashionsa club, spear, bow or arrow; hews his way through jungle, enheartens his wife, disheartens his enemy, mows his lawn, and makes his bed. . . .
Not far away, a double company of the Hundred and Ninety-Eighth “stood easy.” The fact that they were soaked to the skin did nothing to give them an air of devil-may-care gaiety.
The Jemadar in command approached and saluted Bertram, who recognised the features of Hassan Ali.
“It’syou, is it!” he grunted, and proceeded to explain that the Jemadar would command the rear-guard of one hundred men, and that by the time it was augmented to a hundred and fifty by the process of picking up flankers left to guard side-turnings, the column would be halted while fifty men made their way up to the advance-guard again, and so on.
“D’you understand?” concluded Bertram.
“Nahin,Sahib,” replied the Jemadar.
“Then fall out,” snapped Bertram. “I’ll put an intelligent private in command, and you can watch him until you do,” and then he broke into English: “I’ve had about enough of you, my lad, and if you give me any of your damned nonsense, I’ll twist your tail till you howl. Call yourself anofficer! . . .” and here the Jemadar, saluting repeatedly, like an automaton, declared that light had just dawned upon his mind and that he clearly understood.
“And so you’d better,” answered Bertram harshly, staring with a hard scowl into the Jemadar’s eyes until they wavered and sank. “So you’dbetter, if you want to keep your rank. . . . March one hundred men down the path past the Officers’ Mess, and halt them a thousand yards from here. . . . The coolies will follow. You will return and fall in behind the coolies with the other hundred as rear-guard. See that the coolies do not straggle. March behind your men—so that you are the very last man of the whole convoy. D’you understand?”
Jemadar Hassan Ali did understand, and he also understood that he’d made a bad mistake about Second-Lieutenant Greene. He was evidently one of those subtle and clever people who give the impression that they are nothushyar,[142]that they are foolish and incompetent, and then suddenly destroy you when they see you have thoroughly gained that impression.
Respect and fear awoke in the breast of the worthy Jemadar,for he admired cunning, subtlety and cleverness beyond all things. . . . He marched a half of his little force off into the darkness, halted them some half-mile down the path (or rivulet) that led into the jungle, put them in charge of the senior Havildar and returned.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Bridges, in a cloak and pyjamas, had arrived, yawning and shivering, to superintend the loading up of the porters. At an order, given in Swahili, the first line of squatting Kavirondo arose and rushed to the dump.
“Extraordinary zeal!” remarked Bertram to Bridges.
“Yes—to collar the lightest loads,” was the illuminating reply.
The zeal faded as rapidly as it had glowed when he coldly pointed with thekiboko, which was his badge of office and constant companion, to the heavy ammunition-boxes.
“I should keep that near the advance-guard and under a special guard of its own,” said he.
“I’m going to—naturally,” replied Bertram shortly, and added: “Hurry them along, please. I want to get off to-day.”
Bridges stared. This was a much more assured and autocratic person than the mild youth he had met at the water’s edge a day or two ago.
“Well—if you like to push off with the advance-guard, I’ll see that a constant stream of porters files off from here, and that your rear-guard follows them,” said he.
“Thanks—I’ll not start till I’ve seen the whole convoy ready,” replied Bertram.
Yesterday he’d have been glad of advice from anybody. Now he’d take it from no one. Orders he would obey, of course—but “a poor thing but mine own” should be his motto with regard to his method of carrying out whatever he was left to do. They’d told him to take their beastly convoy; they’d left him to do it; and he’d do it as he thought fit. . . . Curse the rain, the mud, the stench, the hunger, sickness and the beastly pain that nearly doubled him up and made him feel faint. . . .
Grayne strolled over.
“Time you bunged off, my lad,” quoth he, loftily.
“If you’ll mind your own business, I shall have the better chance to mind mine,” replied Bertram, eyeing him coldly—and wondering at himself.
Grayne stared open-mouthed, and before he could speakBertram was hounding on a lingering knot of porters who had not hurried off to the line as soon as their boxes of biscuit were balanced on their heads, but stood shrilly wrangling about something or nothing.
“Kalele!Kalele!” shouted Bertram, and sprang at them with raised fist and furious countenance, whereat they emitted shrill squeals and fled to their places in the long column.
He had no idea what “Kalele!” meant, but had heard Bridges and the headman say it. Later he learnt that it meant “Silence!” and was a very useful word. . . .
Ali Suleiman approached, seized three men, and herded them before him to fetch Bertram’s kit. Having loaded them with it, he drove them to the head of the column and stationed them in rear of the advance-guard.
Returning, he presented Bertram with a good, useful-looking cane.
“Bwanawanting akiboko,” said he. “Shenzisnot knowing anything withoutkibokoand not feeling happy in mind. Not thinkingBwanais a real master.”
Yesterday Bertram would have chidden Ali gently, and explained that kind hearts are more than coronets and gentle words than cruel whips. To-day he took the cane, gave it a vicious swish, and wished that it were indeed akiboko, one of those terrible instruments of hippopotamus hide, four feet in length, as thick as a man’s wrist at one end, tapering until it was of the thinness of his little finger at the other. . . .
A big Kavirondo seized a rum jar. His bigger neighbour dropped a heavy box and tried to snatch it from him. He who had the lighter jar clung to it, bounded away, and put it on his head. The box-wallah, following, gave him a sudden violent blow in the back, jerking the jar from his head.
Raising his cane, Bertram brought it down with all his strength on the starboard quarter of the box-wallah as he stooped to grab the jar. With a wild yelp, he leapt for his box and galloped to his place in the column.
“Excellent!” said Bridges, “you’ll have no trouble with thesafaripeople, at any rate.”
“I’ll have no trouble with anybody,” replied Bertram with a quiet truculence that surprised himself, “not even with aBalliolnegro.”
Bridges decided that he had formed his estimate of Lieutenant Greene too hastily and quite wrongly. He was evidently a bit of a tough lad when he got down to it. Hot stuff. . . .
At last the dump had disappeared completely, and its original components now swayed and turned upon the heads of a thousand human beasts of burden—human in that they walked erect and used fire for cooking food; beasts in that they were beastly and beast-like in all other ways. Among them, and distinguished by being feebler of physique, and, if possible, feebler of mind, was a party of those despised savages, the Kikuyu, rendered interesting as providing the great question that shook the Church of England to its foundations, and caused Lord Bishops to forget the wise councils of good Doctor Watts’ hymn. (It is to be feared that among the even mightier problems of the Great War, the problem of the spiritual position and ecclesiastical condition of the Communicating Kikuyu has been temporarily lost sight of. Those who know the gentleman, with his blubber-lipped, foreheadless face, his teeth filed to sharp points, his skin a mass of scar patterns, done with a knife, and his soulless, brainless animalism and bestiality, would hate to think he was one short on the Thirty-Nine Articles or anything of that sort.)
Bertram gave a last injunction to Jemadar Hassan Ali, said farewell to Bridges, and strode to the head of the column. Thence he sent out a “point” of a Havildar and three men, and waited to give the word to advance, and plunge into the jungle, the one white man among some fifteen hundred people, all of whom looked to him, as to a Superior Being, for guidance and that competent command which should be their safeguard.
As the point disappeared he turned and looked along the apparently endless line, cried “Quick March,” and set off at a smart pace, the first man of the column.
He was too proud and excited to realise how very ill he felt, or to be ashamed of the naughty temper that he had so clearly and freely exhibited.
Bertram never forgot this plunge into the primeval jungle with its mingled suggestions of a Kew hot-house, a Turkish bath, a shower bath, a mud bath and a nightmare.
His mind was too blunted with probing into new things, his brain too dulled by the incessant battering of new ideas, too drunk with draughts of strange mingled novelty, too covered with recent new impressions for him to be sensitive to fresh ones.
Had an elephant emerged from the dripping jungle, wagged its tail and sat up and begged, he would have experienced no great shock of surprise. He, a town-bred, town-dwelling, pillar of the Respectable, the Normal and the Established, was marching through virgin forest at the head of a thousand African porters and two hundred Indian soldiers and their camp-followers, surrounded by enemies—varying from anex-Prussian Guard armed with a machine-gun to a Wadego savage armed with a poisoned arrow—to the relief of hungry men in a stockaded outpost! . . . What further room was there for marvels, wonders, and surprises? As he tramped, splashed, slipped and stumbled along the path, and the gloom of early morning, black sky, mist, and heavy rain slowly gave way to dawn and daylight, his fit of savage temper induced by “liver,” hunger, headache and disgust, slowly gave way, also, to the mental inertia, calm, and peace, induced by monotonous exercise. The steady dogged tramp, tramp, tramp, was an anodyne, a sedative, a narcotic that drugged the mind, rendering it insensitive to the pains and sickness of the body as well as to its own worries, anxieties and problems. . . .
Bertram felt that he could go on for a very long time; go on until he fell; but he knew that when he fell it would be quite impossible for him to get up again. Once his legs stopped moving, the spell would be broken, the automaton would have “run down,” and motion would cease quite finally. . . .
As daylight grew, he idly and almost subconsciously observed the details of his environment.
This was better than the mangrove-thicket of the swamp, in a clearing of which the base camp lay. It was the densest of dense jungle through which the track ran, like a stream through acañon, but it was a jungle of infinite variety. Above the green impenetrable mat of elephant grass and nameless tangle of undergrowth, scrub, shrub, liana, bush, creeper, and young trees, stood, in solid serried array, great trees by the million, palm, mango, baobab, acacia, live oak, and a hundred other kinds, with bamboo and banana where they could, in defiance of probability, squeeze themselves in. Some of the trees looked like the handiwork of prentice gods, so crude and formless were they, their fat trunks tapering rapidly from a huge ground-girth to a fine point, and putting forth little abortive leafless branches suggestive of straggly hairs. Some such produced brilliant red blossoms, apparently on the trunk itself, but dispensed with the banality of leaves and branches. Some great knotted creepers seemed to have threaded themselves with beads as big as a man’s head, and the fruit of one arboreal freak was vast sausages.
Through the aerial roadways of the forest, fifty feet above the heads of thesafari, tribes of monkeys galloped and gambolled as they spied upon it and shrieked their comment.
Apparently the varied and numerous birds held views upon the subject ofsafarisalso, and saw no reason to conceal them.
One accompanied the advance-guard, piping and fluting: “Poli-Poli!Poli-Poli!” which, as Ali Suleiman informed Bertram, is Swahili for “Slowly!Slowly!”
Another bird appeared to have fitted up his home with a chime of at least eight bells, for, every now and then, a sweet and sonorous tolling rang through the jungle. One bird, sitting on a branch a few feet from Bertram’s head, emitted two notes that for depth of timbre and rich sonorous sweetness could be excelled by no musical instrument or bell on earth. He had but the two notes apparently, but those two were marvellous. They even roused Bertram to the reception of a new impression and a fresh sensation akin to wonder.
From many of the overhanging trees depended the beautifully woven bottle-like nests of the weaver-bird. Brilliant parrots flashed through the tree-tops, incredible horn-bills carried their beaks about, the hypocritical widower-bird flaunted his new mourning, the blue starling, the sun-bird, and the crow-pheasant, with a score of other species, failed to give the gloomy, menacing jungle an air of brightness and life, seemed rather to emphasise its note of gloom, its insistence upon itself as the home of deathwhere Nature, red in tooth and claw, pursued her cycle of destruction with fierce avidity and wanton masterfulness. . . .
Suddenly a whistle rang out—sharp, clear, imperative. Its incisive blow upon the silence of the deadly jungle startled Bertram from his apathy. His tired wits sprang to life and activity, urged on his weary flagging muscles. He wheeled round and faced the Sepoys just behind him, even as the blast of the whistle ceased.
“Halt!Baitho!”[148]he shouted—gave the drill-book sign to lie down—and waited, for a second that seemed like a year, to feel the withering blast of fire that should tear through them at point-blank range. . . . Why did it not come? . . . Why did no guttural German voice shout an order to fire? . . . . He remained standing upright, while the Sepoys, crouching low, worked the bolts of their rifles to load the latter from their magazines. He was glad to see that they made ready thus, without awaiting an order, even as they sank to the ground. Would it not be better to march in future with a cartridge in the chamber and the cut-off of the magazine open? . . . Accidents? . . . Not if he made them march with rifles at the “slope.” . . . Better the risk of an accident than the risk of being caught napping. . . . Why did not the accursed German give the order to fire? . . . Was it because Bertram had got his men crouching down so quickly? . . . Would the crashing volley thunder out, the moment they arose? . . . They could not stay squatting, kneeling and lying in the mud for ever. . . . Where was the ambush? . . . Had they Maxims in trees, commanding this path? . . . Were the enemy massed in a clearing a foot or two from the road, and separated from it only by a thin screen of foliage? . . . . What should he do if there were a sudden bayonet-charge down the path, by huge ferociousaskaris? . . . You can’t meet a charge with efficient rifle-fire when you are in single file and your utmost effort at deployment would get two, or possibly three crowded and hampered men abreast. . . . On the other hand, the enemy would not be charging under ideal conditions either. . . . More likely a machine-gun would suddenly nip out, from concealment beside the path, and wither the column away with a blast of fire at six hundred rounds a minute. . . . Perhaps the “point” marching on ahead would have the sense and the courage and the time to get into the gun-team with their bayonets before itgot the gun going? . . .Why did not the enemy fire? . . . He would go mad if they didn’t do so soon. . . . Were they playing with him, as a cat plays with a mouse? . . .
The whistle rang out again, harsh, peremptory, fateful—and then Ali Suleiman laughed, and pointed at a small bird. As he did so, the bird whistled again, with precisely the note of a police-whistle blown under the stress of fear, excitement or anger, a clamant, bodeful, and insistent signal.
Bertram would have welcomed warmly an opportunity to wring little birdie’s neck, in the gust of anger that followed the fright.
Giving the signal to rise and advance, Bertram strode on, and, still under the stimulus of alarm, forgot that he was tired.
He analysed his feelings. . . . Was he frightened and afraid? Not at all. The whistle had “made him jump,” and given him a “start,” of course. The waiting for the blast of fire, that he knew would follow the signal, had been terribly trying—a torture to the nerves. The problem of what to do, in response to the enemy’s first move, had been an agonising anxiety—but he would certainly have done something—given clear orders as to object and distance if there had been anything to fire at; used his revolver coolly and set a good example if there had been a charge down the path; headed a fierce rush at the Maxim if one had come out of cover and prepared to open fire. . . . No—he decidedly was not frightened and afraid. . . He was glad that he had remained erect, and, with his hand on his revolver, had, with seeming coolness, scanned the surrounding trees and jungle for signs of an ambushed enemy. . . .
The road forked, and he turned to Ali Suleiman, who had marched near him from the start, in the proud capacity of guide.
“Which of these paths?” said he.
“The left hands, sah, please God,” was the reply; “the right is closed also.”
“What d’you mean?” asked Bertram, staring down the open track that branched to the right.